Associate solitary reporter Ko Il-sun, who is based in Seoul, is fluent in Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese.
Donald Trump’s trade war against China is escalating, as China’s central bank devalued the renbinmi, and the Dow fell more than seven hundred fifty points (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/investing/dow-stock-market-today/index.html).
China is notorious for manipulating its currency (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/05/trump-blasts-china-yuan-drop-as-currency-manipulation-1634502) and for grabbing our intellectual property.
Their bad.
The GOP is not at all fond of trade wars, but Trump started a major big trade war with China in 2017. His Republican allies in Congress constantly keep their eyes fixed firmly on polls. The few remaining Republicans in the House (cf. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/05/kenny-marchant-texas-republican-reitres-congress-1447980) are all afraid to go against him lest he tell RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel to primary the ones who don’t heed his wishes.
So, early this morning, for the benefit of his health, ASR Ko, an American citizen, walked from Seoul to Beijing, a distance of only 592 miles, to have a little chat with President for Life Xi Jing-ping.
The interview lasted about five seconds, because that’s how long it took Xi to remind Ko that China had an Emperor until 1911, and that China’s project in the twentieth century was to reclaim its status as a world power. Ko was then taken by the People’s Revolutionary Army to the Beijing Office for Criminal Deportation.
As of press time, Trump’s ambassador to Beijing, Terry Branstad, was unaware of the situaiton of Ko.
Branstad was Iowa's Republican governor from 1983 to 1999. No doubt, he's much happier being in Beijing, far away from Iowa, where Trump's trade war with China is beginning to ruin the Hawkeye Sate's agriculture-based economy.
Now about Kashmir: Trump has claimed that he offered India’s prime minister, Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, to mediate the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. India promptly denied that Trump had made such an offer, because India and Pakistan had previously agreed that they would handle their very significant disagreements about the fate of Jammu and Kashmir on a strictly bilateral basis. But now India has told tourists in Jammu and Kashmir to leave, and the situation has become increasingly dangerous (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/asia/india-pakistan-kashmir-intl-hnk/index.html).
Our New Delhi-based associate solitary reporter, Mahd Ahmed, a world-famous expert in internaiontal relations, told us that Trump hasn’t the faintest idea how to mediate such a very serious dispute between South Asia’s two nuke-armed states.