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Liverpool complete £123million deal for Bradley Barcola
Liverpool have completed the signing of Bradley Barcola from Paris St Germain in a £123million ($166. 4 million) deal.
Bradley Barcola transfer news: Liverpool complete £123m signing of France winger from PSG
Bradley Barcola joins Liverpool for a fee potentially rising to £123m; France winger becomes clubs second most expensive purchase behind £125m deal for Alexander Isak from Newcastle in 2025; Barcola follows Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo into Anfield this summer
Prominent Black Democrats rally behind Keisha Lance Bottoms
Republicans want to make Bottoms' record as Atlanta mayor a major liability in the governor's race, but her successor, Andre Dickens, offered an unequivocal defense on Sunday.
BitGo acquires NYDIG’s institutional trading business
The transaction allows NYDIG to focus on power generation, bitcoin mining and data center development, the company said.
U.S. Bank expands business banking roster
The super-regional lender is adding bankers to serve business clients in Florida and Georgia, where it already has wealth and middle market bankers, an executive said.
Plan to cut number of polling sites in a major Texas county draws protests as Senate race looms
Plans in one of Texas’ largest counties to use dozens fewer polling location than previous years is drawing protests from Democrats who say the reductions could create confusion in the November midterm elections.
Why Republicans are focusing on transgender issues in competitive 2026 campaigns
Campaign ads in several midterm elections portray Democrats as “radical” on transgender youth medical care and sports participation. Republicans are leaning on a strategy that proved successful in 2024.
Liverpool forward deal now in Leeds United's hands
Liverpool are in the process of shaking up their forward options. The Reds are buying Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain for a fee that could reach £123m.At the same time talks are underway to ...
Meep, meep. ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ opens with $15.5 million, 'Spider-Man' stays No. 1 for fifth weekend
Three years after Warner Bros.
Meep, meep. ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ opens with $15.5 million, 'Spider-Man' stays No. 1 for fifth weekend
Three years after Warner Bros.
LIST: San Antonio area businesses closed due to storm damage, power outages
Power outages and storm damage have forced several San Antonio-area businesses to close Saturday.
3.2K views · 13 reactions | Our media and politics reporter Ken...
Our media and politics reporter Ken Bensinger examines how political campaigns in the U.S. are increasingly paying social media influencers for support, though the ties are not always clearly...
'Silo' showrunner Graham Yost breaks down episode 9's bombshell ending and surprise Peter Gabriel cameo
Explosions! Conspiracies! Peter Gabriel!
Arkansas Awards $149.3M in Rural Health Transformation Grants
Arkansas awarded $149.3 million in rural health grants to 50 projects after healthcare providers submitted more than 500 proposals for funding.
New youth crisis center opens in Belmont County with $5.3M state investment
Children and families in southeastern Ohio now have a new option for behavioral health care closer to home with the opening of a youth crisis stabilization cent
Concept Video Imagines Apple's Foldable iPhone Ultra Reveal
A new fan-made concept video imagining Apple's rumored foldable iPhone is circulating online, weeks before the company is expected to unveil the device at its annual fall keynote. The video was created by designer Gunhoo Lee to provide a realistic look at what a brief "iPhone Ultra" reveal could look like, showcasing its 7.8-inch inner display, Touch ID authentication, mechanical hinge, dual battery system, and A20 chip.
Employers face ‘existential reckoning’ as health costs surge
Employers are expecting a median 9.2% increase in medical spending next year, according to a new survey. But they’ve underestimated actual cost growth for the past three years, so even that figure may be too optimistic.
Monogram Health to pay $2.4M to settle Medicare Advantage upcoding allegations
The Justice Department told Healthcare Dive that Monogram, a home health company, overcharged Medicare through contracts with Cigna and Humana by inflating diagnostic codes.
BenQ's New iScreenBar is a Monitor Light Bar Made for the iMac
BenQ today announced the launch of the iScreenBar, which it says is the first monitor light bar built for the iMac. The iScreenBar is meant to look like an extension of the iMac, offering desk lighting that does not clash with the iMac's design or block the camera or microphone. It's made from aluminum and lights an area of 33.5 by 19.7 inches at 500 lux.
Kellogg Square business center, sold for $11.3 million, to become 'catalyst' growth of Old Town Goleta - Santa Barbara News-Press
As new housing projects make progress near Old Town Goleta, Kellogg Square will provide business and retail infrastructure.
AliveCor device nearly doubles arrhythmia detection compared to traditional ambulatory monitoring
The KardiaMobile 6L device identified dozens of arrhythmias completely missed by conventional systems.
Penobscot Community Health Care needs $3M to avoid bankruptcy
Maine's largest federally qualified health center, Penobscot Community Health Care, faces a $3 million deficit that could force it into bankruptcy.
Simplifying Science: How Brianna Davis Nailed the Three-Minute Thesis
After winning the College of Life Sciences' 3MT competition and placing third at the university level, Brianna Davis shares her experience.
Air taxi vertiport coming to downtown LA sports complex
Archer Aviation, the official air taxi provider for the 2028 Olympic Games in Southern California, adds the venue to its network of flight facilities in the region.
VA deploys Oracle EHR to 3 medical centers in Indiana
The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress on its goal to add the new electronic health record to all of its medical centers. Past deployments have been plagued by technical challenges and delays.
Dragon Con 2026: 10 things to do, including costumes, science and wrestling
Among the many things to do at Dragon Con 2026 in Atlanta are watching wrestling, collecting artist sketches and cheering on robots.
Dragon Con 2026: 10 things to do, including costumes, science and wrestling
Among the many things to do at Dragon Con 2026 in Atlanta are watching wrestling, collecting artist sketches and cheering on robots.
Will a ‘reset’ reignite investment in women’s health startups?
After peaking in 2024, venture investments in startups involved in the space declined last year. But a broader adoption of AI and a widening definition of what constitutes women’s health could spur a rebound, some say.
Do not eat wild mushrooms, says Summit County Public Health
With the damp weather rolling in, Summit County Public Health (SCPH) reminds the community about wild mushrooms popping up in yards.
The Latest: Canada’s prime minister promises retaliatory tariffs as negotiations with the US falter
President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on scores of Canadian imports kicked in Saturday.
Minnesota Department of Agriculture launching new workshops to support farmer mental health
The sessions are designed to help those who live and work in agricultural communities recognize signs of struggle and connect farmers with supportive resources.
Gap Inc. taps Walmart alum in ‘fashiontainment’ push
Justin Breton is joining the retailer as vice president of development and will report to entertainment chief Pam Kaufman.
Chiefs Balancing Flexibility but 'Open for Business' With Roster Cuts Looming
With the 53-man roster deadline on the horizon, KC's leaving the door open for an addition.
Health systems warn patients of MyChart phishing scam
Scammers are masquerading as MyChart to trick patients into providing personal information. Epic says that the increase in phishing attempts are just cybercriminals taking advantage of the MyChart brand rather than a security concern.
Healthcare was built around specialties. Patients experience it as one journey.
Care coordination starts by designing healthcare around people, not disconnected systems.
Why environmental performance is becoming a business priority for solid waste
For solid waste operators, environmental performance has always been essential. What’s shifting now is its central place in core business strategy.
Madison back-to-school Free Haircutz event pairs style with health services
Families packed the Alliant Energy Center for the 18th annual Back to School Free Haircutz event.
Synthetic everything is warping America
It's poisoning the signals people rely on to understand reality.
U.S.-Canada Trade Talks Collapse, Sparking Tariffs and Political Fallout in Wisconsin
Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed late Friday. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put the brakes on negotiations, accusing the U.S. of pushing for “unfair” and “uneconomic” terms.
US business activity surges to 52-month high: S&P Global
Strong business investment and high equity prices will likely fuel 2.1% economic growth this year, Goldman Sachs said.
Prince Harry, Elton John, others ordered to pay $13M after losing privacy case
Prince Harry and six others have been ordered to pay an initial 9.5 million pounds ($13 million) to the publisher of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper following their failed invasion of privacy case.
Resistance 1.0 Was Not Crazy
The much-derided movement was right about Trump’s nature, and how to defeat him.
Co-Host of Side Dish, Headkrack with the latest in entertainment headlines
Scammers are targeting celebrity podcasts in a new elaborate ruse. Plus Cosmopolitan has a new trend with some funny candidates.
Why certain meds can make heatwaves harder to handle
Some of the most prescribed medications, including those used to treat depression, ADHD and high blood pressure, can increase the risk of dehydration and other heat-related conditions.
Providence Health Plan to close completely after Medicare Advantage deal falls through
The regional health plan was in talks with an unnamed national insurer to keep its MA plans afloat. But the agreement sputtered “despite significant effort on all sides,” a Providence spokesperson said.
Mental health provider accused of sharing data with Meta, Google settles lawsuit for $3M
While LifeStance Health maintains it did not knowingly do anything wrong and is committed to the privacy of its patients, it has agreed to make sure that no third-party tracking technologies are running on its website.
Activists urge Campbell to investigate, sue health centers that cut off gender care for minors
Attorney General Andrea Campbell says she is standing up for the transgender community in the face of attacks from the Trump administration. Some want her to be much more aggressive.
Epic debuts instant prior authorization checks at 4 health systems
Ochsner Health, Froedtert ThedaCare Health, Denver Health and Summit Health are debuting the application programming interface, which Epic says should speed up preapprovals for medical items and services.
Ardagh considers sale of metal beverage can business
The company’s beverage can sales and global volumes were down 1% year over year in its most recent quarter.
How Brookhaven National Laboratory’s CFO finances big science
Dr. Susan McKeon explains why the financial decisions behind some of the world's most ambitious scientific research requires a different type of CFO approach.
Rosie O’Donnell sends message to Trump while hosting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’: ‘Hi, I know you’re watching’
Rosie O’Donnell made her return to TV on Monday, as she guest-hosted ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live.’ And, yes, Trump was a topic.
macOS Tahoe 26.7 is Full of References to Unreleased Apple Products
The macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate that Apple seeded today has references to several unreleased products, from home devices to iPhones, iPads, AirPods, and Macs. Some of these codenames have shown up in prior software updates but have new feature flags, while others haven't been seen in the code before.
Former OHSU Health CEO sues for $15.5 million, says he was fired for speaking up
Tarek Salaway says federal regulators later flagged some of the safety problems he raised before OHSU fired him.
Developers secure construction financing for Neyland Entertainment District
Arctos, RVX Ventures, and Magellan Development have secured an undisclosed amount of construction financing for the Neyland Entertainment District that will be built adjacent to the University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium.
7+ Florida Politics Now: Election Day preview
On this episode, we’re previewing the upcoming primary elections.
‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit
ChatGPT prompts show how an expert witness report was created in a $61 million lawsuit over an explosion that killed three people.
Oh look, it’s the new 223mph, €1m+ Brabus Bodo Cabriolet
Liked the Brabus Bodo Coupe? Here’s the limited edition droptop
‘A game changer’: UHS closes $835M Talkspace acquisition
Bringing Talkspace on board should expand behavioral health services for UHS’ existing patients, while ushering more consumers through the health system’s doors, UHS CEO Marc Miller said.
City of Albany projecting $33M budget gap in 2027
City officials shared that outlook on Saturday as part of a mid-year update to the city’s financial plan.
Country music star eyeing early retirement. Here’s what to know
The singer recently shared his timeline for getting out of the business.
Angry at the Supreme Court, liberals push a slew of plans for overhauling it
As the midterms near, Democrats are proposing adding more justices, limiting their terms and more.
Astronomers find water in the harsh environment near the Milky Way's black hole — Space photo of the week
Astronomers detected dust and water surprisingly close to the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, offering a rare direct view of how evolved stars may behave in hostile settings.
New College picks Tampa business leader as board chairperson
Ron Christaldi joined the board in 2019 and played a role in the school’s conservative takeover.
The Friday Checkout: Can Kroger’s new e-commerce chief sort out its messy online business?
Nate Faust brings a founder’s energy and an outsider’s perspective to a digital business that has become overly complex.
Health advocacy group sues AMA to make billing codes public
PatientRightsAdvocate.org is challenging the doctor’s association’s copyright of the current procedural terminology, or CPT, system. Use of the codes is required by law, and that means they should be freely available, per the suit.
Skanska small business outreach lead sees opportunity in DBE changes
After hitting hiring goals on a Los Angeles International Airport project, DBE compliance officer Teresa Maxwell outlined how the firm connects with contractors local to its projects.
Who's rising and who's falling after the Steelers' first preseason game against the Packers?
The Steelers beat the Packers, 28-9, on Thursday night at Acrisure Stadium. Let's take a look at the Steelers who are rising and falling: Rising • Mason...
Ardagh considers selling off metal packaging business after restructuring
Ardagh Holdings, which has a 76% stake in Ardagh Metal Packaging, disclosed Thursday it may take steps to facilitate a sale to a third-party buyer. AMP’s revenues totaled $5.5 billion last year.
Moment of Science: Ozone
You can't escape ozone in a big city, but we can all work to make less of it. Dan Smith shows how combining three oxygen atoms can make a big difference in our daily health. 💨🫁
Twitch is Mining Peoples' Streams to Train Amazon's AI
Here's how to opt out of Twitch's new generative AI training setting.
Opinion: AI isn’t the business
AI will transform how businesses operate without replacing what makes them valuable.
Science labs can flourish when they focus on the ‘why’
Open-ended experiments that engage students with a “need to know” factor rather than a “cookie-cutter” approach are key, say veteran science teachers.
How Ted Lasso handles Jamie Tartt’s absence
After hinting at an explanation in the season 4 premiere, ‘Ted Lasso’ has revealed why fans won’t see Phil Dunster’s Jamie Tartt hanging around the Richmond pitch.
Arizona health experts say Trump vaccine order won’t bring immediate changes
The president said the move comes in response to a recent rise in autism, a connection local health experts say is disproven.
Cardiac CT's future could include AI-driven prevention, noncontrast imaging
Structural heart disease is just one of the many areas where cardiac CT is expected to expand in the near future.
In a partisan age, a Democratic governor goes outside her brand for a running mate
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), facing a tough reelection fight, chooses former mayor John Giles, a lifelong Republican who recently became an independent.
Christal Jordan has the latest in entertainment headlines
Music artist Jelly Roll says he's taking a step back from music amid his divorce. And fans seem to think Usher had a look-alike perform for him.
Small business optimism rebounds to highest level since Aug. 2025: NFIB
Small businesses last month scaled back both actual and planned price increases for the first time this year, the National Federation of Independent Business said.
‘Star Wars’ and Marvel set first-ever crossover with Kevin Smith-penned comic event
‘Star Wars’ and Marvel collide in first-ever crossover. See an exclusive look at the Kevin Smith-written comic book event, ‘Hope Assembles.’ (exclusive)
Nottingham Forest complete Ousmane Diomande signing from Sporting CP
The 22-year-old joins for a fee of €40million (£34.3m; $46.2m) and has signed a four-year deal, with the option of a further year.
Island businesses hit by ferry disruption to share £3m support package
CalMac's west coast ferry network was badly disrupted by breakdowns earlier this year.
The next challenge for AI in healthcare isn’t adoption. It’s connection.
Healthcare organizations are moving beyond AI experimentation and focusing on operational value.
McConnell’s Home Offers Telling Clue to Health Mystery
A peek inside the 84-year-old senator’s home has raised fresh questions about his ability to get around.
New CSS Attacks Can Break Webmail Defenses to Steal Passwords and Tokens
Outlook CSS techniques can spoof Microsoft sign-in and capture passwords, while Gmail image-set() can trigger external requests from malicious email c
New site recommended for Caddo Parish sports complex
A new area is under consideration for a proposed $70 million Caddo Parish sports complex, following a presentation Thursday to the Caddo Parish Economic Development Committee.
Take-Two sticks to annual bookings outlook, says on track for 'GTA VI' November launch
Take-Two Interactive maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date for its highly anticipated title "Grand Theft Auto VI", bringing the blockbuster release one step closer to fans.
Insurers want to hike small businesses’ premiums by 14% next year: KFF
It’s becoming harder for small employers to offer insurance coverage, and another year of double-digit premium increases won’t help. Insurers say their hands are tied.
Opinion | A political debate that was actually civil
Democratic candidates for the Sixth District offered a glimpse of what politics can be: civil, substantive, and focused on the problems voters actually care about.
Sen. McConnell discharged from rehab center, continuing recovery at home
The Kentucky Republican has been absent from the Senate since he was hospitalized June 14 following a fall at home.
BP to sell landfill RNG business Archaea Energy
The energy major announced it’s marketing Archaea amid a strategic pivot to streamline its business. BP’s $4.1 billion acquisition of Archaea four years ago stands as a high water mark in the RNG industry.
Global business travel spending to hit record $1.71T in 2026: GBTA
Although business travel spending is increasing, the number of trips is growing at a slower rate, indicating corporate travel is becoming more selective.
Hinge Health expands into gastrointestinal care with $105M acquisition
Hinge is purchasing Cylinder Health in a “logical extension” of the San Francisco-based company’s business, one analyst commented.
Medicover to sell India hospital business to KKR for €1.2 billion
Swedish healthcare provider Medicover agreed on Thursday to sell its India hospital business to funds managed by global investment firm KKR for €1.2 billion ($1.39 billion).
Medicare cuts to impact 1.3M N.Y. seniors
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is slamming the Trump administration’s new Medicare cuts.
Activist pressure pushes Eagan-based Solventum to divest billion-dollar business
Activist investor Trian had been pushing the 3M spinoff to make changes, including the divestiture.
Activist pressure pushes Eagan-based Solventum to divest billion-dollar business
Activist investor Trian had been pushing the 3M spinoff to make changes, including the divestiture.
Sanofi suspends chronic lung disease phase 2 study, tied to ‘strategic business reasons’
Sanofi halted a phase 2 trial testing a monoclonal antibody, SAR445399, in non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis, Fierce Biotech has learned. The trial, which began only back in April, was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to measure the reduction in mucus plug score following treatment with SAR445399 compared with placebo in adults aged 18 to 80 years with NCFB, a chronic lung disease. The trial was officially reported as halted on July 29, the day before Sanofi’s second-quarter earnings call. The decision to pause the trial was made “as part of a company-wide portfolio review for strategic business reasons,” and not due to safety concerns, a Sanofi spokesperson told Fierce. The move to pause the NCFB trial comes during a trying time for Sanofi following a year filled with a series of trial fails. In February, the French pharma ousted CEO Paul Hudson and appointed Merck KGaA leader Belén Garijo, M.D., Ph.D., to steer the ship. Since then, Garijo has been doing a deep dive on correcting the company’s strewn R&D and clinical strategies. On July 24, Sanofi scrapped amlitelimab for atopic dermatitis, despite its lore as being a potential $5 billion blockbuster. During its second-quarter report, the company abandoned two more assets, balinatunfib and itepekimab, following failed trial results in psoriasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respectively. SAR445399, only first revealed by Sanofi in 2023, is an anti-interleukin-1 receptor 3 monoclonal antibody developed to block the interleukin 1, 33, and 36 cytokine pathways. These pathways can be important in chronic immune-related dermatologic diseases, such as atopic dermatitis and hidradenitis suppurativa, as well as respiratory conditions, such as NCFB. Related Sanofi’s new CEO ‘looking deeply’ at late-stage pipeline as clinical clearout continues NCFB affects roughly half a million people in the U.S., with a global incidence of greater than one million cases. In August 2025, Insmed received FDA approval for Brinsupri, a DPP1 inhibitor targeting neutrophil activation, for treatment of NCFB in adults and kids ages 12 and older. The British biotech Infex Therapeutics showed promising NCFB phase 2a data using their monoclonal antibody, INFEX702, which acts by disabling Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria known to be a major pathogen of NCFB. Sanofi is currently running a separate phase 2 study testing SAR445399 as a potential treatment for the inflammatory skin condition hidradenitis suppurativa.
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.
There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. 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