Data by Gallup shows that Americans' views of China have continued to worsen after 2018.

The deterioration started with the U.S.-China trade war under President Donald Trump, continued during the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China and has recently taken on yet another dimension among concerns about widespread Chinese tech and industrial espionage and subversion as well as continued human rights abuses and tension surrounding Taiwan.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, among American adults in 2024, unfavorable views of China were voiced by 77 percent of respondents after having reached a high of 84 percent in early 2023. In 2005, that figure had stood at just 47 percent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 2023, 77 percent of Americans said the viewed Taiwan very or mostly favorable. At the same time, 66 percent saw the military power of China as a critical threat, up from 41 percent in 2016.

64 percent said the same about the economic power of China.

Republicans voters saw China more critical with just 6 percent who had a favorable view in 2023, compared to 18 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Independents.

That year, favorable views of China in the U.S. reached an all-time low of just 15 percent overall. Again, Republicans were more critical of China's military and economic prowess, with 80-81 percent seeing it as a major threat.

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

A confluence of factors continues to impact San Francisco’s office market, with vacancy and availability rates reaching record highs in the first quarter of 2024, according to commercial real estate analysts at global companies Avison Young and CBRE.

Availability - the combination of vacancy and sublease opportunities in the market - reached 36.7 percent of all office square footage from January to April, according to recently released market analyses from the leading commercial real estate firms.

“We’re at mostly record levels, and I say that kind of cautiously optimistic,” Dina Gouveia, west region market intelligence manager for Avison Young, told The Epoch Times April 25.

According to Ms. Gouveia vacancies only saw a “slight uptick” during the first quarter which might mean such is slowing.

“[I]f we can continue that slower velocity of additional vacancies ... then it would be a very good indicator of us being near a bottom,” she said.

Much of the issue, experts say, is the city’s reliance on the tech industry, with more than 44 percent of its office space housing technology companies.

Additionally, tech firms lead the list of upcoming lease expirations—accounting for 45.8 percent, according to Avison Young.

San Francisco’s office market was deeply affected as the number of work-from-home employees skyrocketed during the pandemic, though recent trends show a slight return to the office.

Remote job postings fell more than 5 percent to 22.2 percent in the first quarter compared to the end of last year, according to the Avison Young report.

Job postings increased 22.7 percent in the first quarter following seven consecutive quarters of decline. The listings were led by legal services, engineering, consulting, research, accounting, and recruiting companies. Media and tech industries, however, both experienced declines, according to the report.

Unemployment, however, ticked up to 4.4 percent in the first quarter, a sharp increase from its low of 2.3 percent in June 2022.

According to the report, slightly less than 1 million total square footage was leased in the first quarter—a 63.3 percent drop from the five-year pre-pandemic average.

Analysts noted signs they deemed optimistic, including Netherlands-based payment company Adyen’s sublease of space at 505 Brannan Street—in the city’s South of Market district—and multinational accounting company KPMG’s lease renewal at 55 2nd Street, in the city’s financial district. Combined, those leases total 300,000 square feet, experts said.

Sublease opportunities offer lower rents than signing new leases that require build outs and significant capital to develop properties, which is spurring the sector of the market, while also allowing businesses with existing leases to rent out some of their vacant space.

“The amount of sublease activity that we’ve seen has increased a lot because tenants are looking for plug-and-play opportunities,” Ms. Gouveia said. “A lot more activity is happening because tenants ... want to take advantage of pre-built spaces and lower rents.”

High interest rates are making it harder for companies with limited cash to refinance loans. At the same time, rates are also slowing down new purchases, according to analysts.

With an uncertain market—in part due to conflicting signals from the Federal Reserve about the future of interest rates—prospective tenants are seeking flexibility when looking to renew leases or relocate.

“Interest rates are a huge catalyst,” Ms. Gouveia said. “We’re hearing a little bit of two different stories that interest rates are going down and then they’re not. If the interest rates do come down ... that will stimulate the commercial market quite a bit.”

In response, the highest quality properties have seen lease term lengths decrease from quarter-to-quarter to make them less risky.

Such wariness from tenants is forcing some landlords to lower rents and offer concession packages to attract business, though a disparity still remains between what tenants want to pay and what landlords can offer given their current debt load.

Many landlords are working with their lenders to restructure debt before loans come due, and analysts expect rent prices to become more favorable for tenants once such is realized.

“Rents will definitely come down,” Ms. Gouveia said. “And once that debt workout happens, there’s going to be a larger reset.”

Distressed properties at risk of default are creating buying opportunities of which private buyers are increasingly taking advantage. Industrial investors and real estate investment trusts, however, are on the sidelines, with 100 percent of all investment activity coming from private buyers in the first quarter, according to the report.

On the other hand, the percentage of private sellers also increased to begin the year compared to prior years, with analysts pointing to uncertainty that their debt can be restructured due to high interest rates and limited financing opportunities.

Refinancing has proven challenging because lenders are reluctant to write loans for office buildings because defaults are looming and valuations are plummeting, with true market values unclear, according to analysts.

A pending election is also slowing activity, as many firms want more certainty before making large capital decisions.

“Because we’re coming up on an election year, a lot of companies go dormant on their expansion plans, and servicers are also in that wait-and-see mode,” Ms. Gouveia said.

Another global commercial real estate leader, CBRE, found that San Francisco’s office market is facing unique challenges given crime and homelessness impacting the city.

According to Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, more office tenants are signing new leases, showing a willingness to recommit to the city, but are still somewhat tentative when doing so.

“This dynamic is still somewhat tenuous as employers and their employees still have concerns about public safety and the cost of doing business,” he told The Epoch Times by email.

Noting that some workers are returning to the office for more days a week he suggested such is not enough for a recovery, which, he said, will require a desire to compete in a robust economic environment.

“Additional mandates are unlikely to increase office attendance materially at this point, but rather a booming economy will compel more people to want to be in the office and be better connected to the next growth cycle,” Mr. Yasukochi said.

While artificial intelligence could play a significant role in buoying the tech sector that the city relies on, a fast recovery, he said, is not anticipated.

“The San Francisco office market is beginning to transition out of its four-year downturn,” Mr. Yasukochi said. “While it will take many years to rebalance supply and demand, we are starting to see positive signs.”

Authored by Breeauna Sagdal via The Brownstone Institute,

Seasoned veterinarians and livestock producers alike have been scratching their heads trying to understand the media’s response to the avian flu.

Headlines across every major news outlet warn of humans becoming infected with the “deadly” bird flu after one reported case of pink-eye in a human. 

The entire narrative is predicated upon a long-disputed claim that Covid-19 was the result of a zoonotic jump—the famed Wuhan bat wet-market theory. 

While the source of Covid is hotly contested within the scientific community, the policy vehicle at the center of this dialectic began years prior to Sars-CoV-2 and is quite resolute in force and effect. 

In 2016, the Gates Foundation donated to the World Health Organization to create the OneHealth Initiative. Since 2020, the CDC has adopted and implemented the OneHealth Initiative to build a “collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach—working at the local, regional, national, and global levels—with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.”

In the aftermath of Covid-19, the OneHealth Initiative began taking shape, due largely in part to millions of tax dollars appropriated through ARP (American Rescue Plan) funding. 

Through its APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Investigation System) the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) was given $300 million in 2021 to begin implementing “a risk-based, comprehensive, integrated disease monitoring and surveillance system domestically…to build additional capacity for zoonotic disease surveillance and prevention,” globally. 

“The One Health concept recognizes that the health of people, animals, and the environment are all linked,” said USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt. 

According to the USDA’s press release, the Biden-Harris administration’s OneHealth approach will also help to ensure “new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices,” by “making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America.” 

In other words, the federal government is using regulatory enforcement to intervene in the marketplace, in addition to subsidizing corporations with tax dollars to direct a planned economic outcome—ending meat consumption. 

Climate-Smart Commodities – Planning the Economy through Subsidized Intervention

Under the recently announced Climate-Smart Commodities program, the USDA has appropriated $3.1 billion in tax subsidies to one hundred and forty-one new private Climate-Smart projects, ranging from carbon sequestration to Climate-Smart meat and forestry practices.

Private investors such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – who just committed $1 billion to the development of lab cultured meat-like molds, and meat grown in petri dishes, to

Ballpark, formerly known for its hot dogs but is now harvesting python meat, is rushing to cash in on this new industry, and the OneHealth/USDA certification program. 

Culling The Herd – Regulatory Intervention in the Marketplace 

Meanwhile, the last vestiges of America’s food freedom and decentralized food sources are quietly being targeted by the full force of the federal government. 

The once voluntary APHIS System is poised to become the mandatory APHIS-15, which among many other changes, “the system will be renamed Animal Health, Disease, and Pest Surveillance and Management System, USDA/APHIS-15. This system is used by APHIS to collect, manage, and evaluate animal health data for disease and pest control and surveillance programs.”

Among those “many changes” that APHIS-15 is undergoing, one should be of particular interest to the public—the removal of all references to the voluntary* Bovine Johne’s Disease Control Program. 

“Updating the authority for maintenance of the system to remove reference to the Bovine Johne’s Disease Control Program.” 

In addition to removing references to the once-voluntary herd culling program, the USDA is also implementing mandatory RFID ear tags in cattle and bison.

According to the USDA/APHIS-15, expanded authority places disease tracing in their jurisdiction and the radio frequency ear tags are necessary for the “rapid and accurate recordkeeping for this volume of animals and movement,” which they say “is not achievable without electronic systems.”

The notice clearly spells out that RFID tags “may be read without restraint as the animal goes past an electronic reader.” 

“Once the reader scans the tag, the electronically collected tag number can be rapidly and accurately transmitted from the reader to a connected electronic database.”

However, industry leaders and lawmakers alike have said the database will be used to track vaccination history and movement, and that this data may be used to impact the market rate of cattle and bison at the time of processing. 

Centralized Control of Processing/Production via Public-Private Partnership Agreements

In addition to the vast new authority of the USDA funded through the OneHealth Initiative, and the ARP, the EPA has also created its own unique set of regulatory burdens upon the entire meat industry. 

On March 25, 2024, the EPA finalized a new set of Clean Water Act rule changes to limit nitrogen and phosphorus “pollutants” in downstream water treatment facilities from processing facilities. While the EPA’s interpretation of authority and jurisdiction over wastewater is concerning long-term, the broader context of consolidated processing under four multinational meat-packing companies is of much greater concern for the immediate future. 

With few exceptions, in the United States it is illegal to sell meat without a USDA certification. Currently, the only way to access USDA certification is through a USDA-certified processing facility. 

According to the EPA, the new rules will impact up to 845 processing facilities nationwide, unless facilities drastically limit the amount of meat they process each year. 

With processing capabilities being the number one barrier to market for livestock producers, and billions of dollars in grants being awarded to Climate-Smart food substitutes, the amount of government intervention into the marketplace becomes very clear. 

The Rise of Authoritarianism and Economic Fascism – Control the Supply

The United States, once a consumer-demand free market society, is currently witnessing the use of government force, and intervention tactics to steer and manipulate the marketplace. Similar to 1930’s Italy, this is being achieved by the state within the state, through the use of selectionism, protectionism, and economic planning between public-private partnership agreements. 

The long-term and unavoidable problem with economic fascism is that it leads to authoritarian and centralized control, from which escape is impossible. 

As each industry becomes centralized and consolidated under the few, consumer choice simultaneously disappears. As choice disappears, so does the ability of the individual to meet their specific and unique needs. 

Eventually, the individual no longer serves a role outside of its usefulness to the state—the final exhale before the last python squeeze.