THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2019

Volume 6, Number 151

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• ‘Extinction Rebellion’–British Green Fascism To Destroy Industrial Civilization
• U.S. Judge Throws Out DNC Case Vs. Trump and Wikileaks, Opines Suit ‘Entirely Divorced’ From Facts
• Guardian Again Exposes British Role in Anti-Trump Coup
• FBI Director Christopher Wray Is In the Way
• U.S. Withdrawal From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Effective August 2nd
• Military and Industry Leaders Fret That U.S. Is Losing Hypersonic Arms Race
• Russian UN Envoy Blasts West for Protecting Al Nusra Terrorists in Syria
• Federal Reserve Chairman Powell Is Unable To Explain Fed’s Quarter-Point Rate Cut
• Forecast 90.000 Auto Jobs To Be Eliminated in Europe by 2030

• Chinese Investments in Europe Going Down Substantially
• Brazil Welcomes China’s Wang Yi, Looks Forward to Closer Cooperation and Investment
• Despite U.S. Threats, for Ibero-America, All Roads Lead to China

EDITORIAL

‘Extinction Rebellion’—British Green Fascism To Destroy Industrial Civilization

July 31 (EIRNS)—The Extinction Rebellion (XR), spawned in the U.K. last October and spreading rapidly across Europe and the United States, must not be taken lightly as merely psychotic lunacy, although it is that as well. Their intention is not hidden—the destruction of modern industrial civilization. The founding declaration, published in the Guardian on Oct. 26, 2018, signed by 94 academics, politiciansand social activists, states that governments are guilty of “failing to acknowledge that infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is non-viable.” This fundamental lie—that we live in a world of scarce resources—was refuted by Lyndon LaRouche in his 1983 book There Are No Limits to Growth. Based on that lie, the XR declaration concludes: “It is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.”

The authors were Dr. Alison Green, a psychologist at England’s Arden University, and Molly Scott Cato, a British Member of the European Parliament from the British Green Party, who is not only anti-carbon but also a raving anti-nuclear campaigner (demonstrating that the XR intention is not actually anti-carbon, but anti-industry and anti-science). The signers include the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who encourages children to skip school—a “children’s crusade”—to demand de-industrialization. A large number of the signers are psychiatrists, and, not surprisingly, XR prides itself on being modeled on “The Committee of 100,” Bertrand Russell’s civil disobedience movement from 1960. It was Russell—described by Lyndon LaRouche as the “most evil man of the 20th century,” who described “mass psychology” as the most important tool for politics: “Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda,” Russell wrote in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society. “Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education.’ Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part. What is essential in mass psychology is the art of persuasion. If you compare a speech of Hitler’s with a speech of (say) Edmund Burke, you will see what strides have been made in the art since the 18th century. What went wrong formerly was that people had read in books that man is a rational animal, and framed their arguments on this hypothesis…. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.”

The XR is now shutting down traffic and defacing monuments, but can be expected to proceed to terrorist attacks on CO2-producing factories and power plants soon. They are fascists, even though their shirts are green rather than brown. They are at the center of the ongoing destruction of Germany, the leading industrial nation of Europe. A key speaker at the ongoing five-day conference of XR in Dortmund is Christoph Schmidt, who has been chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Council of Economic Experts for the past 10 years, during which her German government has begun the total shut down of nuclear power and the closure of all coal-fired power plants, planning to survive primarily on windmills and solar panels. The international XR movement is also targetting the United States, focussed on the September UN Climate Action Summit in New York.

This demonic movement must be exposed and repudiated, but that will only be successful if the populations of Europe and the U.S. are at the same time given the tools to break through the cultural and psychological warfare. Never has the opportunity to do exactly that been greater than it is today, as a primary result of the enthusiasm and optimism awakened by the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, together with the announcement by President Donald Trump and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine of the Artemis Moon-Mars project, to return to the Moon by 2024 in a crash program, and to stay there, building the industrial and scientific capacity to serve as the base for human travel to Mars and beyond. The LaRouche PAC petition, “We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission” is aimed at providing that spark of creativity and optimism, especially in the youth, who have been denied that vision of the future since the assassination of John Kennedy, the Indochina War, and the prosecution of Lyndon LaRouche. The exoneration of LaRouche today can, and must, awaken American patriots and citizens of the world to the reality of the lost decades since his ideas were suppressed, by the same British imperial forces now being exposed as the instigators of the failed coup attempt against President Trump.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

U.S. Judge Throws Out DNC Case vs. Trump and WikiLeaks, Opines Suit ‘Entirely Divorced’ from Facts

July 31 (EIRNS)—Federal Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York, yesterday dismissed a lawsuit brought last year by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) against Donald Trump, the 2016 Trump campaign, WikiLeaks and the Russian government for allegedly conspiring with Russia to disrupt the 2016 campaign. Note that Judge Koeltl dismissed the case “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be brought up again.

President Trump tweeted last night that Judge Koeltl’s 81-page ruling was “yet another total & complete vindication & exoneration from the Russian, WikiLeaks and every other form of HOAX perpetrated by the DNC, Radical Democrats and others. This is really big ‘stuff’ especially coming from a highly-respected judge who was appointed by President Clinton.”

As reported by Fox News, Judge Koeltl minced no words, writing that the DNC’s argument was “entirely divorced” from the facts. It had raised a “number of connections and communications between the defendants and with people loosely connected to the Russian Federation, but at no time does the DNC allege any facts…to show that any of the defendants—other than the Russian Federation—participated in the theft of the DNC’s information… Nor does the DNC allege that the defendants ever agreed to help the Russian Federation steal the DNC’s documents.”

Judge Koeltl also cited the case of the Pentagon Papers, to assert that Donald Trump and members of his campaign have First Amendments rights and that even had the Trump campaign taken “stolen material” from Russian hackers, this would not be a crime, as long as they didn’t participate in the actual hacking. WikiLeaks was also protected by the First Amendment, he said, because it didn’t steal documents but only disseminated information which was in the public interest.

Koeltl did add, according to the Washington Examiner, that while the Russian government was “undoubtedly” involved in hacking the DNC servers, federal law prohibits lawsuits against foreign governments, with few exceptions.

Beating a dead horse, DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson responded to the ruling, wailing that it “raises serious concerns about our protections from foreign election interference and theft of private property to advance the interests of our enemies. At a time when the Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress are ignoring warnings from the president’s own intelligence officials about foreign interference in the 2020 election, this should be of concern to anyone who cares about our democracy and the sanctity of our elections.”

Guardian Again Exposes British Role in Anti-TrumpCoup

July 31 (EIRNS)—The British daily Guardian on Monday, July 29, published an intriguing piece about text messages exchanged between Andrew McCabe, then Deputy Director of the FBI, and Jeremy Fleming, then Deputy Director of MI5 (now head of GCHQ), about “our strange situation” following Britain’s referendum in June of 2016, voting for Brexit. The “our” appears to refer to fostering the mutual delusion that Russia had succeeded in its efforts to “interfere” in trans-Atlantic elections with the Brexit vote.

In August 2016, according to one of Fleming’s texts, the FBI and MI5 had met concerning “the situation.” Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly emphasized that Donald Trump’s election in the U.S. was part of an international revolt against globalization, a revolt which most emphatically included the U.K. exit, or Brexit, from the EU.

In his text message about the August 2016 meeting, Fleming appeared to be making a reference to Peter Strzok, the disgraced lead FBI investigator, who travelled to London that month to meet the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. “Downer had agreed to speak with the FBI about a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, who had told him that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in the race,” the British daily Guardian asserts.  As is now well known, Papadopoulos was subjected to multiple entrapment attempts by British agents on British soil, with Robert Mueller using the fruits of these completely illegal operations to collect the first scalp in his prosecutorial rampage.

In this context, the Guardian’s leak about the texts appears to have two goals. One is stoking opposition to incoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has expressed outright skepticism about Russiagate. Johnson’s heresy is emphasized in the Guardian piece itself.  The other goal appears to be putting some form of lipstick on the British side of the Papadopoulos entrapment operation, instigated and conducted, in all probability, by MI5 and MI6, prior to the anticipated release of new facts about this in the U.S. as the result of investigations by Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.

As in the United States, U.K. intelligence institutions continue to insist that there is a magical Russian hand behind the Brexit vote, rather than voter repulsion at the EU and globalist institutions.  Their investigations focus on £8 million donated by Aaron Banks (a businessman who co-founded the Leave campaign) to the Leave campaign, which, they insinuate, was Russian money.  This insistence is pursued, of course, in the face of a total lack of factual foundation.  And, as has been the pattern with previous Guardian leaks, they only seem to highlight British culpability in instigating the coup in the U.S.

FBI Director Christopher Wray Is In the Way

July 31 (EIRNS)—In a July 30th story in The Hill, investigative reporter John Solomon exposes the fact that FBI Director Christopher Wray is fighting hard to prevent exposure of FBI crimes in the recent attempted coup d’état in the United States.  One person attempting to stand in the way of Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the coup’s perpetrators, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, is now departing the Trump Administration, despite his long-term friendship and sponsorship by Vice-President Mike Pence.  Could Wray be next?

Solomon’s article concerns the FBI’s fierce resistance to an FOIA suit involving a small number of documents the State Department sent to the FBI from MI6’s Christopher Steele. Solomon writes, “To hear the FBI tell it, the release of former Deputy Assistant Secretary [of State] Kathleen Kavalec’s documents is tantamount to giving up the keys to President Trump’s nuclear briefcase, aiding the enemy or assisting terrorists.”  In addition, the FBI alludes to the British temper tantrum which has occurred whenever further disclosure of their role in the coup is threatened.  According to Solomon, the FBI argues that it can’t afford to “jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States and certain foreign governments.”  Then comes the kicker.  According to Solomon the FBI actually claimed that “FBI special agents have privacy interests from unnecessary, unofficial questioning as to the conduct of investigations and other FBI business.”

One document Wray’s FBI wants to keep secret is a five-page memo that Kavalec downloaded from Steele from an internet storage site after meeting with him on Oct. 11, 2016. She sent it to then-FBI section chief Steven Laycock, now an assistant director, two days later. It was transmitted as a non-classified email and based on open source media reporting.  In it, Kavalec debunks Steele’s fake theory that the Russian Alfa Bank and Donald Trump were communicating via a server in Trump Tower, and presents other complete refutations of Steele’s garbage. Solomon states “Under the FBI’s human source rules, a U.S. government’s negative assessment of an informer’s information would constitute ‘derogatory information’ that would have to be disclosed to the FISC if Steele’s work was being used to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant.”  Eight days later, the FBI made its FISA Court application to surveil Carter Page based almost totally on Christopher Steele’s dirty ramblings. The FBI affiants declared to the FISA Court, under oath, that they possessed no derogatory information about Steele.  This and other coverups have occurred under Wray’s tenure as Solomon documents.

Solomon ends his article with this warning: “When the government gets stuff wrong, as it did in the Russia case on [then-FBI Director] Comey’s watch, transparency is the best panacea for restoring public trust.

“Claiming FBI agents have a privacy right to avoid facing hard questions, portraying public source documents as national secrets and doing the Muhammad Ali ‘rope-a-dope’ dance to thwart disclosure is not an acceptable alternative.

“It’s a lesson Chris Wray should learn, quickly.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

U.S. Withdrawal from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Effective on Aug. 2

July 31 (EIRNS)—Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Britain’s Sky News in a July 30 interview that Moscow will not be taking any steps concerning the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to accommodate U.S. demands to destroy the 9M729 cruise missile, which allegedly violates the treaty, before the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty takes effect on Aug. 2. Ryabkov also said that there’s not enough trust between Russia and NATO such that Russia will trust pledges to not deploy INF-range missiles in Europe made by the alliance or any of its members. “The more NATO says it has no intentions, plans, the less we believe so,” he said.

The Russians are also expecting the U.S. to withdraw its signature from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (the U.S. signed but never ratified the treaty) as well. “The attempts by American colleagues to substantiate their refusal to ratify it [the CTBT] by unfounded claims to Russia over the Treaty’s fulfillment cause sincere bewilderment,” Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva and other international organizations Andrey Belousov told a plenary session of the Disarmament Conference in Geneva yesterday. Belousov was referring to the accusation made by Maj. Gen. Robert Ashley, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, made on May 29 that Russia was carrying out nuclear weapons testing in violation of the treaty.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying explicitly rejected adding China to the INF Treaty or negotiating a new one that includes China and other nuclear-armed states.  “China is concerned about and opposed to the possible annulment of this treaty due to the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the treaty,” she said during her regular press briefing yesterday. “We hope the U.S. and Russia can resolve differences through dialogue and make efforts to preserve the treaty.” Expanding the treaty, she said, will bring a host of complex issues covering political, military, legal, and other areas which China will not agree to. As for disarmament in general, she said, the U.S., which is the largest nuclear state, “should create favorable conditions for other countries to participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations instead of shifting blames to others.”

Military and Industry Leaders Fret that U.S. Is Losing Hypersonic Arms Race

July 31 (EIRNS)—Military, industrial and academic leaders participating in a high-level conference at Purdue University this week came to the conclusion that the U.S. is losing the hypersonic arms race to Russia and China. “The speed, precision and lethality of the new weaponry threaten to render traditional military assets—tanks, aircraft carriers, amphibious assault vessels—obsolete virtually overnight,” theWashington Times reports. “Across the board, stakeholders agree that Washington has allowed Beijing and Moscow to make massive strides while failing to keep pace or to develop a comprehensive strategy to counter enemy first strikes.”

Loren Thompson, the head of the Lexington Institute in Washington D.C., in his column in Forbes, picks up on this discussion as well., “Not only are Russia and China investing in a new generation of weapons aimed at negating America’s huge investment in strategic systems, but their emerging hypersonic weapons will be too maneuverable to make reliable guesses about where they are headed,” he writes. “In the compressed timeframe commanders will have to respond against weapons approaching at a speed of nearly two miles per second, they must have immediate and detailed data on precisely what paths the attackers are taking. Otherwise, defense will be essentially impossible.” He wrote earlier in the piece that for a variety of technical reasons which he cites, the U.S. has no capability to detect and track the kinds of hypersonic vehicles that Russia and China are developing, because the U.S. strategic defense architecture is oriented towards ballistic missiles and their warheads, not towards hypersonic vehicles which have entirely different characteristics.

Russian UN Envoy Blasts West for Protecting Al Nusra Terrorists in Syria

July 31 (EIRNS)—The UN Security Council met on Syria yesterday, and judging from the news reports, UN officials and trans-Atlantic members of the council tried to make Russia a pariah state for allegedly indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Idlib province. Mark Lowcock, the UN’s coordinator of humanitarian affairs (OCHA), accused the Syrian government and the Russian military of using scorched-earth tactics in Idlib. “You in this Security Council have ignored all the previous pleas you have heard. You know what is happening and you have done nothing for 90 days as the carnage continues in front of your eyes,” he said. “Are you again going to shrug your shoulders…. Or are you going to listen to the children of Idlib and do something about it?”

Karen Pierce, the U.K.’s UN representative, fully backed up Lowcock’s claims. “What is happening in Idlib makes a mockery of [UNSC] permanent state responsibilities,” she said in reference to Russia and its ability to veto any collective action by the council. She vowed that Syrian and Russian units that are proven to have bombed civilian sites will eventually be subject to international charges.

Russian Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia responded to all of this with a very strong statement charging that the real objective of such invective aimed at Russia is to protect Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the terrorist group that controls most of Idlib province “in order to use them as a tool against the legitimate Syrian authorities in the future.”

“The real matter of concern is the intensified activity of terrorists from ‘Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’ who attack civil population and make them victims of criminal provocations,” Nebenzia said. “Thereby we point out that jihadists enhance their military capacity through obtaining more ordnance of foreign production, i.e., air vehicles and multiple rocket launchers. Today Mark Lowcock humbly kept silent about the number of victims of these attacks by terrorists.” He reminded the council that HTS is Jabhat al-Nusra, a listed terrorist organization.

“It was said today that Russia launches deliberate airstrikes against hospitals and schools. This is lies.” Nebenzia went on. He suggested that Lowcock ought to go to Syria and visit the Russian Reconciliation Center “in order to verify information about the facilities that have gone through the deconfliction procedures and that we allegedly attack.” This, he said, is what ought to be done, “instead of spouting baseless allegations here at the Council that are verified by nobody and based on very doubtful, rather than ‘directly verified’ sources as we are told.”

“Besides—and we repeatedly stated it before—I cannot recall any statement made by either the High Commissioner on Human Rights or UN OCHA about the principles of ‘precaution and distinction’ when the coalition was ‘ironing’ and razing down to the ground such cities as Raqqa, Hajin and Mosul,” Nebenzia declared.

At the end, Nebenzia vowed that Russia will continue with its policy of seeking a political settlement in Syria, will continue to cooperate with Turkey on this, and will continue to work through the Astana process. “We urge not to impede our efforts by creating political ‘cover up’ for terrorists and their provocations,” he said.

ECONOMY

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell Is Unable To Explain Fed’s Quarter-Point Rate Cut

July 31 (EIRNS)—Federal Reserve System Chairman Jerome Powell appeared today to be reprising Robert Mueller’s befuddled testimony in the House from last week, when Powell announced to the media that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), with just two dissenting votes, had decided on a quarter-point cut in the discount rate. Powell was essentially unable to explain why the FOMC was making the cut—as opposed to a larger half-point cut which many expected—and was not promising more. He said that the U.S. economy is doing very well and “confidence is rebounding” (from what?), seeking to point to “world market factors.” But he could not deny outright that the Fed had made a mistake in raising the discount rate in December, which it appeared now to be trying to correct. He called this rate cut a “mid-cycle adjustment,” surely an anodyne term without a real meaning, but suggesting that Fed policy had been off and needed “adjusting.”

And Powell said the FOMC action should not be seen as the start of a string of interest-rate cuts; but also said, that he had not said this would be the only cut it made!

Certainly Wall Street stock traders and analysts who call themselves “the market” took “mid-cycle adjustment” for what it did not promise—heading back toward zero rates. The stock market dropped sharply with much complaining about how Powell had “disappointed.” Powell and the FOMC certainly now know that they face a stock crash if they don’t at least promise much more QE at their next meeting in September.

But more importantly, the short industrial/manufacturing recovery in the U.S. economy under President Donald Trump has ended, and Federal Reserve officials think the economy will now sink—whether or not they blame themselves for it, as the President does—and will need a zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and QE to handle the consequences of a financial collapse.

Forecast 90,000 Auto Jobs To Be Eliminated in Europe by 2030

July 31 (EIRNS)—Against the background of nearly all auto-makers in Germany and Europe, including supply sector companies such as Germany’s Eisenmann firm, which just filed bankruptcy, the Fraunhofer Institute of Labor Economy and Organization has published a survey that forecasts the elimination of 90,000 jobs in the European auto manufacturing sector by 2030. In the case of Eisenmann, 3,000 jobs are threatened.

The survey’s forecast is a rather conservative one, given the pace of short-work (the potential layoffs of the future) and layoffs in leading car-making companies which already affect about 25,000 jobs in Germany alone this year. The only German auto-maker reporting rising sales is Volkswagen, but because of its production in China, which is more than half the company’s total output.

It is high time to revitalize discussions about a reconversion program, as the LaRouche organization has proposed repeatedly, that would turn at least substantial parts of the auto industry into sites for manufacturing maglev components for inter-city and urban transport, and of spacecraft and/or their components.

Chinese Investments in Europe Going Down Substantially

July 31 (EIRNS)—Research by Baker McKenzie and Rhodium Group shows China invested $380 million in Germany in the first half of 2019, down 75% from $1.51 billion a year earlier. Europe as a whole underwent a 26% decline, to $9 billion—the lowest first-half total since 2015 and 83% below the peak of $53.9 billion in 2017. Baker McKenzie said the “deal pipeline” offers few reasons for optimism regarding the second half of this year.

The deal pipeline has been emptying in past months: apart from restructurings in China foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies, which have to do with a shift from the previous emphasis on financial and real estate involvement abroad, the increased “screening” of Chinese investments plans in Europe has slowed down many potential investments by China in infrastructure projects and industry.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Brazil Welcomes China’s Wang Yi, Looks Forward to Closer Cooperation and Investment

July 31 (EIRNS)—During his July 25-26 visit to Brazil, to attend a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers and also participate in the Third Brazil-China Global Strategic Dialogue with Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi received a very warm welcome. Aside from his discussions with Araujo, he also met with President Jair Bolsonaro, who emphasized that he seeks closer ties with China, through increased bilateral trade and economic cooperation, and told Wang how much he is looking forward to visiting China in late October.

Keep in mind that Wang’s visit came just a week after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s four-nation junket to Ibero-America, during which he announced that the region’s nations are bound together by their desire to combat terrorism and corruption and that it would be the basis for a renewed U.S.-Ibero-America alliance. Pompeo, who along with National Security Adviser John Bolton has courted Bolsonaro, also railed against China at every opportunity.

Reality tends to intervene, however, and these attacks are falling on deaf ears. In the early days of his administration, since his Jan. 1 inauguration, Bolsonaro (and Araujo) publicly and strongly attacked China. But China today has surpassed the U.S. as Brazil’s most important trading partner and is also its largest investor. Brazilian law professor Menezes de Carvalho expressed to Xinhua that almost half of China’s total investments in Ibero-America go to Brazil.

In his joint July 26 press conference with Wang Yi, Araujo downplayed previous negative comments, stressing instead that Brazil wants Chinese investment in infrastructure and energy projects, which he said, could be financed not only through the BRICS’ New Development Bank, but also through bilateral accords. China, he reported, will open its market to Brazilian agricultural products as well as manufactures, machinery and precision instruments.

Wang Yi pointed out that as two important emerging countries, Brazil and China should make use of existing bilateral mechanisms, to incorporate Brazil’s development program into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—deepen cooperation in such areas as agriculture, mining, infrastructure, aviation, aerospace, etc. Brazil, he said, has international influence, and China wants to support it in playing a greater role regionally and internationally. He underscored that Sino-Brazilian bilateral cooperation can also serve as a model for relations between China and Ibero-America more broadly, and stated that 19 Ibero-American countries have signed on to the BRI, optimizing possibilities for their development and promoting South-South cooperation.

Despite U.S. Threats, for Ibero-America, All Roads Lead to China

July 31 (EIRNS)—In comments reported by South China Morning Post today, U.S. academic Kevin Gallagher pointed out that while the U.S. is pointing fingers and making angry speeches about China in Ibero-America, China quietly continues making investments and trade deals in the region, and addressing its infrastructure needs. Countries are just “getting down to business with their largest trading partner,” Gallagher observed.

Bilateral trade between the two regions in 2018 amounted to $307.4 billion, a 18.9% increase over the previous year, China’s Commerce Ministry reports.

A few examples suffice:

• Chile: Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi had a productive and warm meeting in Santiago July 27-28, discussing a number of projects with Foreign Minister Teodoro Ribera and President Sebastián Piñera. Ignoring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s threats about China, Chile has enthusiastically joined the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and is seeking Chinese investment in the project to build a trans-Pacific fiber optic cable between Chile and China, and in building Chile’s 5G network (probably by Huawei). Bidding on both these projects will begin soon. In November, Chile will be hosting the annual Leaders Forum of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

• Colombia: President Ivan Duque, one of the Trump Administration’s staunchest regional allies, is finishing up a state visit to China today, where he met with President Xi Jinping, among other top officials. In addition to expanding economic and trade ties, Duque has also visited leading high-tech, innovation companies in Shanghai. Duque explained prior to his trip that, in going to China, “I’m following the path that Uruguay opened some years ago”—Uruguay is a close partner of China’s in the BRI—“which Panama also opened up” in 2017.

• Argentina: Failing to get U.S. and other foreign investment, neocon President Mauricio Macri has turned to China for infrastructure investment, even while trying to bow to the U.S. A recent Poliarquia poll showed that 80% of Argentines favor Chinese investment, Global Americans news site reported.

• China’s Commerce Ministry in July organized a Seminar on China-Latin America Cooperation on the Belt and Road, attended by delegations from 10 countries. Exemplary of the power of the BRI, Undersecretary of Industry in the Department of Tourism and Economic Development for the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, Jesús Gilberto Elias Ogaz enthused that “we’re convinced that this seminar will be very positive in forging a consensus on cooperation, and create synergy to unleash the Chinese [Silk] Road toward Latin America—not only a road of goods and services, but of ideas, technology, art and culture—everything to build a community of a shared future, with concrete actions to align our economies.”

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