That cartoon says it all, really!

kingdragonfly: 
The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a well-connected executive at Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, has destabilizes the market. It's pretty much assured the Chinese will retaliate via an expansion of Trump's trade war.

It's actually done the reverse and achieved concessions, China has started buying US soy beans, the US has deferred the next round of trade-war tariffs.

However, it's set a pretty ugly precedent, arrest a foreign executive and (regardless of their guilt or not) use that as a bargaining chip for unrelated (ie - not Huawei) business.

I don't know where the global economy is headed.  There have been some dire warnings - but also some very confident denials.  Everybody seems to have some skin it it, be that fund managers and corporates, banks, and investors down to suburban homeowners and people with money in super schemes.  

kingdragonfly: You could be right. Regarding Trump and China, as they say "even a broken clock is correct two times a day"

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/421098-trumps-trade-war-with-china-gathers-steam-and-purpose

Yeah - and this is a problem:

"Other countries have also been on the losing end of China’s malpractices, and are increasingly speaking out, perhaps emboldened by Trump’s leadership. "

I don't really think so, Trump's interests are based on his concept of "MAGA" via hobbling competition, and maintaining US military presence.  Most other countries' leaders realise Trump is an idiot. 

Some of the reaction is just plain xenophobia.  OTOH, China's anti-democratic system, and plans for centralised control of individuals through their "social credit" system should give everybody who values privacy of information, diversity and egalitarianism real cause for concern.  OTOH I expect those in power in China look at the West, where private enterprise like Twitter, Facebook, Fox News etc set dialogue (usually biased and quite reactionary/right wing) and consider that to be true chaos, and their "benevolent" dictatorship controlling the dialogue can't be worse.

The devil and the deep blue sea.  We (IMO) need a strong US (and EU) to counter a dystopian future, and I really don't think a coalition of selfish US billionaires / oligarchs with a dumb as a rock frontman has any chance of delivering what's needed.  

The Washington Post - Republicans failed to govern. Democrats have a chance to succeed.

This week was a vivid demonstration of the inability of conservatives to deliver results after the great populist revolts in 2016 in Britain and the United States.

 

And it showed that there is a golden opportunity for liberals in both countries to tackle the public concerns that motivated the mistaken decisions to vote for Brexit and Donald Trump.

 

To put it bluntly, the Tories under Prime Minister Theresa May and the Republicans under President Trump have failed as governing parties. ...

 

... Trump’s tantrum this week, threatening to shut down the government if he didn’t get his promised wall, embarrassed even Republicans.

 

It was a sign of how empty Trump’s cupboard has become that political leverage is the threat to implode his own administration.

 

Whatever else the past two years have shown, it’s that the Republicans under Trump could not govern effectively, even when they controlled both houses of Congress.

 

Well, those days are over. They lost their chance. What about the Democrats?

 

NYTimes: It was an unusual invocation of the War Powers Act, a 1973 law by which Congress sought at the end of the Vietnam War to reassert its constitutional role in deciding when the United States would go to war. Mr. Sanders called it the first time Congress had used the law to make clear “that the constitutional responsibility for making war rests with the United States Congress, not the White House.”

gzt: Senate votes 56-41 to end war in Yemen:

NYTimes: It was an unusual invocation of the War Powers Act, a 1973 law by which Congress sought at the end of the Vietnam War to reassert its constitutional role in deciding when the United States would go to war. Mr. Sanders called it the first time Congress had used the law to make clear “that the constitutional responsibility for making war rests with the United States Congress, not the White House.”

Good news. I like the new President, President Senate. 

Looks like Michael Flynn is going to jail: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/mueller-flynn-sentencing-response/index.html

And: https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1073670358094544896

"A sitting National Security Advisor, former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33 year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents."

BarTender:

 

"A sitting National Security Advisor, former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33 year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents."

 

Any idiot in the administration that come with the excuse that "I didn't know I was not supposed to lie under oat/to federal agents/any situation" is an idiot and deserves whatever the law can throw at them.

The Washington Post - Trump routinely says things that aren’t true. Few Americans believe him.

A new Washington Post Fact Checker poll

 

For months, President Trump has claimed that U.S. Steel has announced plans to build more than six new plants.
Throughout the midterm election, he repeatedly said that Democrats had signed onto an “open borders” bill.
And he has long charged that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 election.

 

None of these claims is true. What’s more, most Americans don’t believe them, according to a new Washington Post Fact Checker poll.

 

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans - including fewer than 4 in 10 Republicans - believe these or several other prominent claims by the president, according to the poll.

 

Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers - about 1 in 6 adults in the survey - did majorities accept several, though not all, of his falsehoods as true.

 

Where Americans get their information is a significant factor in determining what they believe.

 

Among adults who say Fox News is one of their top two sources for political news, 33 percent believe in Trump’s false claims tested in the poll, on average, compared with 21 percent of those who say Fox is not a main news source.

 

The Washington Post - All the things Trump didn’t count on

 

Trump seems to have gotten a bunch of things wrong:

 

• He thought former attorney general Jeff Sessions would shut down the Russia probe;
• He thought the bullying and lies and congressional allies would impede investigators;
• He thought Cohen would never flip and would never have tapes and other evidence;
• He never thought Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg or American Media executives or David Pecker would cooperate with authorities;
• He never thought his tweets and public outbursts were helping to incriminate him;
• He never thought the shady operation of his foundation would draw the attention of the press, and in turn of New York state authorities;
• He never thought his pardon power would be so useless (If he pardons associates, the dam may break in Congress; if he tries to pardon himself it likely would be ineffective);
• He never thought he’d have to answer prosecutors' questions, or that his written answers may have locked him into answers that could be disputed by multiple witnesses;
• He never thought he’d face Democrats in Congress with subpoena power; and
• He never thought his media circus would be entirely ineffective in stopping skilled prosecutors.

Sideface:

 

And he has long charged that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 election.

 

I suspect they were only fraudulent if said votes weren't for him.