STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: A fight between two bullies that will not be contained in the schoolyard
If you cannot win a race fair and square, if you seek or impose unfair advantage, then there’s no point in the race anymore. Sport is an obvious place to start. If you take performance-enhancing drugs and the rest of the competitors do not, then it clearly is no longer a fair race. The competition has moved off the track and field and into the laboratory. It is now a competition between chemists, not athletes. I’m sure that war can be fought in the laboratory and be kept off the field. The US-China trade war has already started. Whatever you may think of US President Donald Trump, he does seem to follow his threats through to action, which is not necessarily a good thing, but a fact. Effective on Monday, the US imposed a 10% tariff on $200bn of imports from China. That is stage one, with that rate to be increased to 25% in January 2019. Unless a deal starts to emerge from further talks, the intention is to impose further tariffs on the rest of the $500bn imports from China into the ...
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