The Marijuana Myth

 With the midterms bearing down and the post-George Floyd crime wave still underway, President Biden and his fellow Democrats face a dilemma: Continue hammering the theme that law enforcement is racist or position themselves as guardians of law and order?

Innate inclination won out again last week. Biden announced that he was pardoning all individuals who have ever been federally convicted of marijuana possession. His reason for doing so, Biden said, was to “right” the racial “wrongs” that the criminal justice system has allegedly perpetrated. “While white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people are arrested, prosecuted and convicted at disproportionately higher rates,” Biden said in a video.

This claim—equal marijuana use, unequal criminal justice treatment—has been a cornerstone of the Left’s war on cops for decades. It is routinely trotted out as Exhibit A in the Left’s narrative about racist policing; it got an added boost from Michele Alexander’s disastrously influential book, The New Jim Crow.

Predictably, the New York Times regurgitated the equal-use claim in its coverage of the Biden marijuana pardons: “While studies show white and Black people use marijuana at similar rates, a Black person is more than three times as likely to be arrested for possession than a white person, according to a report from the ACLU that analyzed marijuana arrest data from 2010 to 2018.”

The significance of the equal use claim extends beyond the war on cops, however. It is part of a larger narrative that denies both the existence of significant racial differences in culture and behavior and the role played by those differences in explaining socioeconomic disparities. It is worth assessing the equal use claim against the data, therefore, since a worldview hangs upon it.

Historically, marijuana use and culture has been more embedded in black communities than in white, as twentieth-century chronicles of urban black life by Claude Brown, Richard Wright, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others make clear. That disparity continues today, despite the flower power revolution that created generations of Grateful Dead potheads. Blacks comprise one-third of all treatment admissions nationally for marijuana abuse, though they represent only about 13 percent of the nation’s population. Among cannabis users, blacks have a nearly 70 percent higher rate of cannabis dependence than whites (16.82 percent v. 10.01 percent).

Cannabis is the illicit drug for which black drug abusers are most frequently treated (29 percent of all drug treatments), according to a 2013 U.S. Treatment Episode Data Set compiled by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. By contrast, 12 percent of whites in drug treatment were there for cannabis abuse.

A 2016 study by Washington, D.C.’s Department of Health found that there were 38 times more blacks than whites in treatment for marijuana disorder. The rate of marijuana use in D.C. was 62 percent higher for blacks than for whites.

The journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence has called for research into the cultural norms that lead to such higher rates of cannabis abuse disorders among blacks.

As for drug use more generally, from 2017 to 2019, the rate of treatment admissions for substance abuse disorder was nearly 58 percent higher for blacks than for whites (85.5 per 10,000 population, compared to 54.2 per 100,000).

Drug abuse data is a more reliable indicator of drug use than self-reported surveys. Adult surveys exclude prisoners, street vagrants, and other individuals not tied to a stable home; school surveys exclude dropouts. Those excluded populations are precisely the ones with higher rates of drug use; if blacks are overrepresented in those populations, which they are, their rate of drug use will be underreported.

A core claim, then, of the New Jim Crow anti-cop Left is not supported by the evidence. The superstructure that has been built up around that claim is equally detached from reality.

Even if marijuana use and abuse were spread equally among black and white populations, possessing a small amount of marijuana lands no one in federal or state prison, absent more significant criminal activity, as even radical prison abolitionists are increasingly willing to admit. Marijuana possession convictions are usually the result of plea bargaining down from more serious charges, whether drug trafficking or other felonies. In 2013, over 91 percent of federal marijuana possession convictions came from arrests made at the border. The median quantity of marijuana possessed by those border offenders was over 48 pounds. That load would make for one very big blunt, but it is not likely that the possessors intended to smoke their suitcases of pot themselves. Rather, U.S. attorneys were charging traffickers with the easier-to-prove possession offense.

Away from the border, marijuana possession arrests (now a thing of the past) were usually made during the investigation of more serious crime. No police officer sets out to arrest someone for the possession or use of recreational weed. Instead, if the police stop someone who appears to be casing a target or hiding a gun and they discover marijuana on him, they may use that marijuana possession to summons him or to bring him in to the station house. Even so, state convictions for marijuana possession have been rare—0.3 of one percent of state prisoners had low-level marijuana possession as their most serious offense, according to a 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics report.

Given the concentration of street crime in black neighborhoods, officers make more street investigations there and thus will be more likely to uncover marijuana, especially if racial norms are (or were) different around outdoor use and possession.

Marijuana possession convictions—or indeed, any type of drug enforcement–is not what creates racial disparities in the prisoner population, despite Michelle Alexander’s “New Jim Crow” argument. If all drug prisoners in state prisons (which is where the vast bulk of the nation’s prisoners are incarcerated) were removed from the rolls, the proportion of black prisoners would not change. Violent crime and property offenses drive the black incarceration rate, not drug enforcement.

Biden’s indictment of the racial “wrongs” in marijuana enforcement, like the entirety of the New Jim Crow thesis, ignores the fact that the impetus for stricter drug enforcement has always come from black communities themselves, as research by Randall Kennedy, Michael Fortner, and James Forman has documented. During police-community meetings in high crime neighborhoods, I have routinely heard complaints about the smell of marijuana in hallways and about the youth trespassing in building lobbies smoking weed. If the police ignore those heartfelt requests for enforcement because Biden and the ACLU tell them that they would be racist to act on the complaints, the police would deny the law-abiding, hardworking inhabitants of crime-ridden areas the government protection that they deserve.

That indifference appears to be what the Left seeks, however. After Biden’s pardon announcement, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, a member of the George Soros progressive prosecutor club, announced that the White House had taken a “momentous step toward justice and equity.” It has been “long understood,” Foxx said, that the “war on drugs was a war on Black and Brown communities.” Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, in a hot race for the U.S. Senate, lauded Biden’s pardons as a “massive step towards justice” (the “racial” in “racial justice” being so obvious as to not need stating).

If reenslaving blacks is the point of drug enforcement, Biden, Foxx, and Fetterman would have a hard time explaining why rural white counties have the most draconian arrest and prosecution policies.

Even though federal marijuana possession convictions are a proxy for serious dealing, there is at present no one even serving time in federal prison for marijuana possession. In 2017, only 92 people were sentenced on federal marijuana possession charges, out of nearly 20,000 drug convictions, reports the New York Times. The Biden marijuana initiative is intended to remind the Democratic base that the party remains committed to the systemic racism narrative, recent gestures about “refunding the police” notwithstanding.

But the black community suffers disproportionately from the effect of marijuana and other drugs on its children and on its broader social capital, an effect that results from drug use itself, not from drug criminalization, as the legalizers maintain. It was that public health reality that drove the black war on drugs. Denying that reality and insisting that drug enforcement is about white supremacy are not blows for racial justice; they are simply means to preserve an ideology of resentment and hatred.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal. A New York Times bestseller, she is the author of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-marijuana-myth/

Harvard’s own freshman survey data undermine one of its justifications for affirmative action

 Every year since 2013, usually during the first week of September, the Harvard Crimson publishes survey results profiling the incoming freshman class, including their political and social orientations. These feature-length reports have consistently shown that a dominant majority of Harvard’s incoming students identify as politically and socially progressive, with ever-fewer students identifying as conservative. This year, however, the Crimson didn’t publish the feature and didn’t reply to my inquiry about whether they would do so. Harvard may have good reasons for wanting to delay such a report, given an upcoming Supreme Court case.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court will reexamine a half-century-old justification for race-based university admissions—namely, that racial diversity generates viewpoint diversity on campus and contributes to the lively exchange of ideas. Past results of Harvard’s freshman surveys, which detail growing racial diversity but diminishing viewpoint diversity, discredit this justification. Of the Class of 2025, for example, only 1.4 percent identify as very conservative; only 7.2 percent identify as somewhat conservative; and only 18.6 percent identify as moderate. By contrast, 72.4 percent of freshmen identify as predominantly liberal. Yet this class is the “the most diverse class in the history of Harvard,” according to William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid.

Other survey responses drive the point home. Of members of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate in the 2020 presidential election, 87 percent backed Joe Biden. Meantime, 82 percent said they supported the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which resulted in at least $1 billion in damages and numerous deaths, while nearly half (49.8 percent) said that they supported defunding the police. This doesn’t sound like viewpoint diversity to me.

Without viewpoint diversity as a justification, race-based admissions—that is, affirmative action—may not survive. Since 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others, has argued that affirmative action violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit public and private universities receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin. This straightforward legal argument is likely to play well with a Supreme Court that leans toward originalism, but this doesn’t mean that the justices’ decision will rest on that philosophy alone. In fact, the Court’s jurisprudence on race-conscious admissions has centered predominantly not on the legality of the policy but on its implications for higher education.

In his landmark opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Lewis Powell argued that the use of race as a factor in college admissions ought to be permitted because it would (presumably) lead to greater student-body diversity. This was a laudable goal for a university, he said, for it would allow it to achieve “a robust exchange of ideas.”

Sandra Day O’Connor recapitulated Powell’s argument in her opinion for the Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s policy of intentionally favoring applicants from certain racial groups over others with similar qualifications. O’Connor justified the decision largely by appealing to its supposed policy implications. She cited several amicus briefs submitted by left-wing academics, corporations, and professional organizations, all of which alleged countless studies showing that racial and ethnic diversity guaranteed greater viewpoint diversity and, in turn, increased tolerance of differing opinions.

But is this true? Has the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions achieved the “robust exchange of ideas” on which it was originally justified by the courts?

In an amicus brief supporting SFFA’s challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF) says “no.” In the years since Grutter was decided, “the American university campus,” LIF argues, “has become less ideologically diverse and more intolerant of ideas challenging campus dogmas.” The group cites several nonpartisan surveys to support the claim. A 2021 survey of 37,104 students conducted jointly by the College Pulse, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and RealClearEducation found that more than 80 percent of students reported some amount of self-censorship.

Similarly, LIF notes that a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study released in January showed that 65 percent of college students felt today’s “campus climate prevents people from saying what they believe for fear of offending someone.” What’s more, less than half of all college students “said they were comfortable offering dissenting opinions to ideas shared by other students or the instructor in the classroom.” And 71 percent of students who identified as Republican “felt that the campus climate chilled speech.”

The Court now seems likely to strike down the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education next June. Given the originalist-bent of the Court’s majority, the decision will rely most heavily on the text of both Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit racial discrimination. But it may also have something to say about the faulty premise underlying race-conscious admissions all these years. Contrary to what O’Connor claimed in Grutter, affirmative action has not led to greater diversity of thought on America’s college campuses.

Renu Mukherjee is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.

https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-action-and-viewpoint-diversity-at-harvard

Biden’s attempt to boost the 'bioeconomy' could do the opposite

 Half a century ago, biotechnology became a marketing buzzword for the products and processes that used then-new techniques of genetic modification, such as recombinant DNA technology, or “gene splicing.” Today, that term has given way to “the bioeconomy,” the economic output from biotechnology, which President Biden’s September 12 “Executive Order 14081 on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing” seeks to grow with new industrial policy.

With its many bureaucratic requirements and initiatives, the executive order may be counterproductive. Fifty years of experience with biotechnology should have taught us that scientific, technological, and commercial successes benefit from three things: government funding of basic, pre-commercial research beyond the capability of a single company; a stable economic environment conducive to investment; and the avoidance of unreasonable restraints on the private sector pursuing new products and technologies.

The order aims to “coordinate a whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security.” It builds on the provisions of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, signed a month earlier. That act established a National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative, which authorized increased financial support, the development of new tools, additional testing facilities, education and training, and other provisions intended to enhance U.S. biotechnology and biomanufacturing competitiveness.

The administration’s industrial policy begins with virtue-signaling platitudes, such as its emphasis on “principles of equity, ethics, safety, and security that enable access to technologies, processes, and products in a manner that benefits all Americans.” It then drifts toward gratuitous restraints, requiring that the government “launch a Biosafety and Biosecurity Innovation Initiative, which shall seek to reduce biological risks associated with advances in biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and the bioeconomy.” This is in addition to the directive in the National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative, which states that the National Science Foundation should enter an agreement with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to “conduct a review, and make recommendations with respect to, the ethical, legal, environmental, safety, security, and other appropriate societal issues . . . related to engineering biology research and development,” because “we must take concrete steps to reduce biological risks associated with advances in biotechnology.”

This new focus on issues like risk, safety, ethics, and equity ignores the last half century of public policy on biotechnology. Specifically, it neglects the many exacting analyses of the risks and benefits of biotechnology research and products, the landmark 1986 Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, and the subsequent refinements that have reduced regulatory stringency as the industry has accumulated experience to allay initial concerns.

As long ago as 1989, a U.S. National Research Council study, reflecting the consensus of the scientific community, concluded that the new molecular genetic-engineering techniques were merely extensions, or refinements, of earlier, less precise, less predictable methods. Despite the reassurance offered by that assessment, U.S. agencies have consistently over-regulated, thereby delaying or preventing the introduction of many innovative products.

The agencies’ excessive or unscientific regulation includes: unnecessary USDA permits for plants that are better defined and more predictable than most unregulated ones; stultifying EPA regulation of plants with improved resistance to pests and pathogens; the EPA’s classification of a harmless bacterium called “ice-minus” Pseudomonas syringae as a pesticide (supposedly because frost is a pest), making its testing and commercialization too burdensome to pursue and thus resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in frost damage to crops; and the FDA’s stifling oversight of genetically engineered animals, which it has regulated as “new animal drugs.”

The current regulation of biotechnology and of the “bioeconomy” imposes substantial and often excessive burdens in time and money before research can be conducted and products sold. These burdens limit the participation of academic and commercial entities in new discoveries.

The prospect of continuing regulatory excesses overshadows the positive aspects of Biden’s executive order, but it is not the only concern. The order also creates a bureaucratic maze of new initiatives and an alphabet soup of acronymic federal agencies tasked to create commissions, prepare reports, and, well, you name it: “Within 2 years of the date of this order, agencies at which recommendations are directed in the implementation plan required under subsection (C) of this section shall report to the Director of OMB, the APNSA, the APEP, the APDP, and the Director of OSTP on measures taken and resources allocated.” And so on.

Instead of creating a massive make-work project for bureaucrats, the Biden administration should simplify the implementation of the order and put the highest priority on regulatory reforms that would stimulate growth of the bioeconomy.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, was the founding director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology. John J. Cohrssen is an attorney who has served in several government posts in both the executive and legislative branches of government, including as legal counsel for the White House Working Group responsible for the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology.

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-biotech-executive-order-is-a-bureaucratic-bonanza

China says its zero-COVID policy is the best, most cost-effective, will improve

 China's COVID-19 measures are the best, most cost-effective and will continue to improve, a spokesman for the ruling Communist Party said on Saturday.

"We firmly believe that the light is ahead and perseverance is victory," Sun Yeli told a news conference in Beijing ahead of the party's 20th congress.

Sun was responding to a question about whether China risks being isolated from the rest of the world if it continues with its zero-COVID policy.

President Xi Jinping is poised to win a third five-year term as general secretary of the party, the most powerful job in the country, at the congress to be held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for a week starting on Sunday. 

https://sports.yahoo.com/china-says-zero-covid-policy-093156238.html

Xi says China will seek to lift birth rate in face of ageing population

 China will enact policies to boost its birth rate, President Xi Jinping said on Sunday, as policymakers worry that an imminent decline in China's population could hurt the world's second-biggest economy.

"We will establish a policy system to boost birth rates and pursue a proactive national strategy in response to population ageing," Xi told some 2,300 delegates in a speech opening the once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing.

Although China has 1.4 billion people, the most in the world, its births are set to fall to record lows this year, demographers say, dropping below 10 million from last year's 10.6 million babies - already down 11.5% from 2020.

The authorities imposed a one-child policy from 1980 to 2015, later switching to a three-child policy, acknowledging the nation is on the brink of a demographic downturn.

Its fertility rate of 1.16 in 2021 was below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population and among the lowest in the world.

Over the past year or so, authorities have introduced measures such as tax deductions, longer maternity leave, enhanced medical insurance, housing subsidies, extra money for a third child and a crackdown on expensive private tutoring.

Still, the desire among Chinese women to have children is the lowest in the world, a survey published in February by think-tank YuWa Population Research showed.

Demographers say measures taken so far are not enough. They cite high education costs, low wages and notoriously long working hours as issues that still need to be addressed, along with COVID-19 policies and economic growth concerns. 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/xi-says-china-seek-lift-052649660.html

Cardinal Health, IBD Stock Of The Day, Stands Out As It Sets Up

 Cardinal Health (CAH) stock is Friday's IBD Stock Of The Day, as the multinational medical and pharmaceutical distributor is close to an early buy point as medical stocks attempt to weather the current market environment.

Health care companies are often somewhat insulated from recessionary risks, given how much the government and insurers cover medical costs. Medical stocks, including Cardinal Health stock, often are defensive growth names that perform well in choppy or weak markets. And in the current market, medical companies and pharmaceutical stocks are showing some strength.

Cardinal Health, based in Dublin, Ohio, offers a wide assortment of health care services and medical supplies to hospitals, labs, pharmacies and long-term care facilities. The company reports that it serves around 90% of hospitals and 60,000 pharmacies in the U.S.

The medical and pharmaceutical distributor also has global operations, with business in more than 35 countries and more than 10,000 specialty physician offices and clinics. Cardinal Health serves in total around 27 million patients through its different business segments.

On Aug. 11, Cardinal Health missed fiscal fourth-quarter earnings views but topped revenue predictions. EPS grew 36% to $1.05 per share, ending a five-quarter string of year-over-year declines. Revenue grew 11% to $47.1 billion. Management also affirmed its fiscal 2023 EPS guidance of $5.05-$5.40 per share. CAH shares jumped more than 5% on Aug. 11.

Analysts forecast just 3% earnings growth in fiscal 2023 to $5.23 per share. However, Wall Street expects more robust earnings growth of 18%, to $6.18 per share, in 2024.

Cardinal Health will report Q1 2023 earnings on Nov. 4. Analysts forecast earnings falling 26% to 96 cents per share. Sales are expected to increase 10% to $48.3 billion, according to FactSet.

Cardinal Health Stock

CAH shares fell 1.15% to 68.08 during market trading Friday. Cardinal Health is working on a flat base, part of a base-on-base formation. The official buy point is 72.38, according to MarketSmith analysis. Aggressive investors could use the high of 71.12 on Oct. 11 as an early entry point. However, with the market in correction investors should exercise caution.

CAH shares have been finding support at its rising 50-day moving average, closing just above that key level Friday. The stock's relative strength line has also been trending up for months. Cardinal Health hit relative strength highs on Oct. 11.

In August, Cardinal Health stock cleared a cup base with a 64.63 buy point. Between Aug. 11 and Aug. 15, CAH shares jump 8% before hitting its recent high of 72.28 on Sept. 2 as it worked on its new flat base.

Cardinal Health stock ranks second in the Medical-Wholesale Drug/Supplies industry group, trailing only McKesson (MCK). MCK stock also is trading around its 50-day line in a flat base with a rising RS line. McKesson fell 0.5% Friday.

https://www.investors.com/research/ibd-stock-of-the-day/cardinal-health-stock-stands-out-as-it-sets-up/

What Warren Buffet bailing on Chinese economy signifies

 It was with great fanfare that Warren Buffet paid out $230 million for a 10 percent stake in Tesla rival BYD.  He had been to the future, and it was China.

Now, 14 years after his initial investment in China’s premier manufacturer of electric vehicles, Buffett is quietly pulling the plug on this and his other China plays.  It is worth asking why.  

After all, this is the same man who parlayed a small investment into a failing New England textile company called Berkshire Hathaway nearly 70 years ago into a fortune now worth close to 100 billion dollars.  If Buffett is ditching China, it means that, in his view, the risk/reward ratio has tilted decisively into the red.  

Here’s my take on what I think the aptly named Oracle of Omaha is thinking.

In a few days, the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will open.  Party leader Xi Jinping will be supposedly “elected” to a third five-year term, but in reality he will really be locking down his control of China for life.  

Buffett and Bill Gates take the stage to salute BYD in Beijing in 2010; Buffet’s initial investment is now worth some $7.5 billion.

AP

The 70-year-old dictator is, like the late Chairman Mao whom he greatly admires, a radical Communist ideologue. This means his decade-long drive to concentrate all power in the hands of the state—which is to say his hands–will not only continue, but accelerate.  China’s hugely successful private sector will be bled dry, and the deadly assault on the most productive members of society—people like Alibaba-founder Jack Ma–will continue.

So will Xi’s insane Covid-Zero policy.

After the likely Wuhan lab leak, Xi announced that he was personally overseeing the pandemic response.  And the policy that he settled upon to stop the spread of the coronavirus was to lock down entire cities, even provinces.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to further consolidate his hold over every element of Chinese finance and politics during the upcoming 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

REUTERS

Because the lockdowns are so closely identified with Xi himself, no one in China has dared to criticize this fruitless effort to stamp out the coronavirus, even as it continues to wreak havoc in the economy.  Indeed, the immediate imposition of a rigid lockdown as soon as a handful of cases of Covid are detected has become almost a kind of loyalty test for Communist officials, a pledge of allegiance to the new Chinese emperor.    

Worse yet for China’s economic prospects, a new series of articles in the People’s Daily suggests that the deadly lockdowns, which arguably kill more people than Covid, will continue for several more years.  The official press has been at pains to stress the correctness of the Chinese response, even as every other country on the planet has abandoned it.

Under Ji’s watch, China remains the only major nation still in lockdown, a move that is stifling the economy and further eroding civil rights.

STRINGER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

It is largely because of these two “C”s—Communism and Covid—that China’s economy is in crisis.  Buffet is undoubtedly aware that official statistics show the country’s growth has been cut in half—and the actual situation is undoubtedly far more dire.  The property sector is bust, banks are going belly up, and Chinese consumers are tightening their belts.  The Chinese economy is headed for a very hard landing, as political controls tighten and Covid lockdowns continue.  

Even without these domestic political headwinds, Buffet is undoubtedly also factoring in recent U.S. actions that will further hamstring China’s technological and military advance.  Under the bipartisan CHIPS act, the U.S. has just imposed new export controls on semiconductor chips—not just those made domestically but those made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment—that will make it much harder for China to successfully produce state-of-the-art electric vehicles, cell phones, or computers in the future.

Since the pandemic, China has seen economic growth halved as workers remain stuck at home and unable to keep the nation’s factories humming.

ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterst

Any such attack on Taiwan would dramatically speed up the decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies.  The outcome, if not Armageddon, would be to divide the world into two competing blocks, with the U.S. and Europe on one side, facing a hostile China-Russia axis on the other.  The value of Buffet’s investments in China would plummet.

China recently flexed its military might via a series of menacing fly-overs across Taiwanese territory, which the government considers an inviolable part of China itself.

AP

Such sanctions, unseen since the days of the Cold War, raise the specter of open conflict, especially since they will also deny China the ability to import to chips manufactured in Taiwan.  If Xi wants the island’s chips, he will have to take the state-of-the-art chipmaking facilities by force.  His escalatory rhetoric and increasingly aggressive actions—recently sending drones and missiles over Taiwanese territory—suggests he is contemplating just that.  

Even in the absence of open conflict, public sentiment in the West has already turned strongly against China.  It is not just that Beijing likely released a pandemic on the world, killing millions and causing trillions of dollars in economic damage.  The genocide of the Uyghurs, the crushing of a free Hong Kong and its support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have all progressively hardened attitudes against China.  Some 82 percent of Americans now have a negative view of the East Asian giant, with anti-China sentiment running even higher in Australia and Japan.

Recent US sanctions have made it far harder for China to import goods made in Taiwan such as these semi-conductor chips, which are crucial components of China’s electric-car industry.

REUTERS

The big box stores of America may still be packed with cheap Chinese goods, but those in the market for a big-ticket electric vehicle probably don’t want to support a genocidal regime that is openly hostile to America.  Add to this the growing anti-CCP sentiment in the US, and BYD may well find itself shut out of the American car market in the future, by consumer boycotts, if not by tariffs.  

Warren Buffet has plenty of reasons to take his money and run.  

And, as always, where Buffet leads, others will follow.

Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Pandemics.  

https://nypost.com/2022/10/15/warren-buffet-bails-as-chinese-economy-flounders-tensions-rise/