Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Part I

Trade and the Relationship Between Nations: President Trump’s Visit to Asia and the Worldview Issues Behind Trade

For all of human history, trade has been one of the most important dynamics when it comes to human interaction, and it’s for that reason that President Donald J. Trump is in Asia. He’s attempting to bring about through personal diplomacy and a good deal of American foreign policy presence, he’s hoping to reset the trade equation. Now, of course, he’s a part of upsetting the trade equation, and he’s done so quite deliberately in terms of a system of tariffs. The most immediate issue when it comes to the bilateral relationship is between the United States and China, just given the size of the economies and the issues that are at stake. And so it is really interesting that as the president is in Asia, it all underlines the importance for the United States and for just about every other country on the planet when it comes to trade.

The New York Times ran a headline “Asia Caught in Middle of US Rivalry with China.” David Pearson’s the reporter, and as he tells us, even as President Trump is visiting the region, the two superpowers, the United States and China, are attempting to influence trade, not just when it comes to a bilateral transaction between the United States and China, but when it comes to all the other nations of Asia as well. Now, what is the reset that’s going on here or the reset that is threatened? The United States and our allies have been united in a system of trade, in that system of trade now also includes China, but China is creating a lot of disequilibrium in that system, and it is because China intends to be the dominant partner. China intends to be the dominant power when it comes to world trade. So what the New York Times is pointing to is the fact that even as Asia is really the target of the entire presidential visit and the president hopes to have multilateral agreements or bilateral agreements with multiple partners, it is also true that the big issue is China.

And the big issue is China when it comes to many of our other trading partners in the region. And the big question when it comes to the United States and China, and not just on trade but in terms of the projection of power is which is the rising power? Which is the declining power? Now throughout most of say the 20th Century, it was clear that the United States was the dominant power, and that was true in Asia as much as anywhere else. It is also true that the United States came up against some limitations to national power and national influence, just say Vietnam for example.

But in the aftermath of the end of the 20th Century, it is clear that so much of the trade that had been first of all between the United States and Europe now is between the United States and Asia. And when you think about the coming power versus the declining power, the so-called Asian tigers have been absolutely crucial to American economic power and also American trade policy over the course of the last generation and more. So you’re seeing showmanship here. You’re also seeing a clash of civilizations, and that’s what many people will miss.

When you look at a picture and you see President Donald Trump, you see the President of the United States with the Premiere of China, with the man who is the chairman of the Communist Party in China, you are not looking at two persons who hold equivalent positions. The United States and China are fundamentally different nations. If you want to find the successor to Leninism, you will look to China. And as a matter of fact, right now, China is probably far more Leninist than it is Maoist in terms of the shape of its Marxist experiment. But you’re also looking at the fact that China is absolutely convinced that it is going to win the battle with the United States. China is absolutely convinced that it is the rising power and the United States is the declining power. Following traditional Marxist dogma, the Chinese are absolutely convinced in their communism, in their Marxism that the United States is a fundamentally decadent culture, a decadent civilization, and they look to the consumer society in the United States. And guess what? They intend both to profit by it economically, and that is the reason for a lot of the trade conflict. They also intend to eclipse it politically.

And so one of the problems by the way is that the United States as a free society is facing a challenger that doesn’t play by the same rules. Now, here’s the disequilibrium of Donald Trump as President of the United States. He says out loud what former presidents said in private. He is saying out loud that we need a reset with China. He is very loud about the necessity of that reset. He also wants a big deal. This is a president who loves a big deal, and that includes a big trade deal. And the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant made the announcement just yesterday that at least the framework for an agreement with China has been reached. Well, what would be the leverage in this?

Well, for the United States it’s market. The United States is the giant consumer market, and China has made itself rich by importing all kinds of goods to the United States over the years, but China also has something America wants. Now, in one sense, you could say, “Well, it’s a trade issue.” Yes, the United States wants China to buy more American soybeans, but that’s not the big issue. The big issue is that the United States and our allies need rare earths that are primarily if not exclusively available right now in commercial terms from China. Now, the United States is also indicating that it is putting a lot of hope, for example, in mining opportunities for those rare earth minerals, especially in Australia. And so that’s also a part of a developing agreement the President is hoping to cement during his time in Asia, but you’re looking at a fairly long runway there to have all of that going.

Now, why would these rare earth minerals be so important? It is because high technology requires them. And you think, “Well, that would mean some of these super weapons and supercomputers.” No, in your household you already have microchips operating and you’re already dependent on systems that have to use these rare earths. And so this is where China was able to flex its muscle a bit, but it’s also clear that President Trump flexed a lot of American muscle. It will be fascinating to see what this framework looks like, and it will be important to see whether it eventuates into a formal treaty. But all of this underlines trade. And here’s where I want us to think about trade and understand that where you find civilization, you find trade. Where you find a couple of villages in Mesopotamia, you find trade.

One of the very interesting things is that even as I’m recording this here on the shore of the Bosphorus, which is one of the most important waterways of trade in all of world history, the waterway that very narrowly separates Asia and Europe, and you look at this and you realize this has been the scene for so much of the world’s trade for so many centuries, but you also come to understand that as you look at trade, we are looking at a situation which involves all kinds of reciprocity.

And this gets back to something fundamental to the biblical worldview. Trade is found in the Scripture. I mean, for one thing, you had trade routes that were already apparent in the scripture, but you also had trade when it comes, first of all to the most, let’s say, the smallest of civilizational units. In a neighborhood, you could have bartering and trade, you could have buying and selling. By definition, that commercial transaction comes down to the fact that one person has something that someone else is willing to trade for. And so you have to have two parties in a classic trade equation, both of whom believe that they are getting out of that trade exchange something that is to their advantage. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any exchange. You have say a piece of fruit to sell. Someone else has a piece of meat to sell. You want fruit, he wants meat. You find a way to transact in order for you to get what you need.

World trade is exactly that with unbelievable complexity, and that’s one of the reasons why it is so difficult to achieve these long-lasting trade agreements. And so over the course of the last several decades, you’ve had the Reagan administration and the Clinton administration and the Obama administration announce vast world trade agreements, and yet right now we find ourselves back in the maelstrom of having to negotiate these things over again. And that’s because markets change, conditions change, consumer interests change, technological needs change, but we understand that trade is one of the ways we see the relationship between nations. Here’s another little interesting footnote in world history.

When you think about trade and you think about the Bosphorus here, you think about trade between Asia and Europe, you have to fast-forward into the 16th century and the early 17th century and you find something absolutely amazing, at least I find it amazing, and that is that after the death of King Henry VIII when after you had Edward VI come to the throne and die, and then Mary, Bloody Mary come to the throne and die, then you had Elizabeth come to the throne, and of course that is now seen as one of the golden eras in England’s history. Queen Elizabeth and her illustrious reign.

But Queen Elizabeth was faced with a huge trade challenge, and that is the fact that the Spanish with the Spanish Armada and all the rest controlled so much of the trade, and that included trade with North Africa. England was really emerging as a vast commercial powerhouse. She certainly wanted it to expand that way, but where could England look for trade? This is where Elizabeth had a plan, and of course she also had members of her court to help her to bring this about. She made overtures to the Islamic world. And so it’s very interesting you go back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and this is one of the reasons why you have a relationship right now between say the British and the Arabs that has a very long history most people don’t know about. It goes back to Queen Elizabeth, and it goes back to her relationship with Islamic princes and Sultans and all the rest.

By the way, the fascination with the Ottoman Empire and with the Muslim world was already present in her father King Henry VIII. King Henry VIII liked to dress up in Muslim attire to sleep. He liked the idea of pajamas, and he wore Arab pajamas, and if you’re King Henry VIII, you could wear whatever you want to wear. And so there was a fascination with the East, and Elizabeth saw this as an opportunity. She had an intrepid young man in her service, and by the way, he began in the service of previous monarchs. And when he left, he never knew exactly who was going to be on the throne in England when he got back.

It was an arduous and long journey, but he made some of those very initial trade agreements that helped to create the contact between the two cultures, the culture of England, later of course, the culture of Great Britain and of the Arab world, the Muslim world, and that included with the Ottoman Empire. But it’s also fascinating to know that Elizabeth had to write court letters. That’s one of the ways that these kind of trade arrangements were made. You would have someone with something like the rank of an ambassador, we would say today, who would take a formal letter. If you’re representing the Queen of England, you take a letter from the Queen of England, but the Queen of England did not know to whom she should address the letter, and at least one major Muslim leader was very offended by the way she addressed. And he said it is like she came up with this from the Old Testament. That was not meant as a compliment.

Part II

The Welfare State and Falling Birth Rates: Finland’s Population Decline Shows Poverty is Not the Best Explanation

Well, at this point, let’s shift gears. Let’s look at a different topic. I want to look at a report from National Public Radio. It was released just yesterday. Sarah McCammon is the reporter on the story. It really is in worldview terms, fascinating. The headline is: “Finland’s Stubbornly Low Birth Rate Shows why a Population Shift may be Inevitable.” In journalism, that’s an awkward headline, but I’m going to read it again. “Finland’s Stubbornly Low Birth Rate Shows why a Population Shift may be Inevitable.” So the headline is telling us that a vast decrease in births and an absolutely cratering birth rate in many nations is going to lead to what’s called here a population shift. That’s an understatement. It’s not just a population shift, that’s a neutral term. This will not be a neutral development. It’ll be a devastating development, and Christians have to look at this, and we’re not primarily interested in the economics. We’re not primarily interested in this birth rate by itself. We’re desperately interested in what is behind it because there is no leading indicator which would come with more revelatory power when it comes to worldview than birth rate.

Let’s just put it this way. When you abandon the Christian worldview and you embrace Secularism, guess what one of the signs is? You stop having babies. But all right, we’re talking about Finland, which by the way is one of the most secularized of European nations, but let’s go to the report from NPR, “Families in the US and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives.” And reporting from Finland, we are told that that is now a huge problem in that Scandinavian nation. “Researchers say Finnish people are increasingly delaying having children or not having them at all. The nation’s total fertility rate, that’s TFR, if you’re looking at the statistics, a technical term used by demographers has fallen to historic lows in recent years. Although there have been some signs of a possible rebound in recent months, the number remains less than 1.3 children per woman well, below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population.”

Okay, so it turns out Finland has the lowest fertility rate of all Nordic countries. I’ll just say that means it’s really, really low. You have to look to a country like Korea in order to see a similar cratering birth rate. And it’s not just those countries, it’s many others. And by the way, as you note, the lead at NPR mentioned the United States. The United States is not where Finland is, but we are headed in that same direction. So obviously for Christians, just massive issues here, but why would NPR run this story in this way, and why would they say that a population shift may be inevitable? Well, here’s a background. If you look at many of the arguments that people have been making about the falling birth rate, they’ve been trying to make economic and political arguments.

They’ve been saying, look, when you look at populations, you’re looking at people who would like to have more children, but they can’t afford to. And so you need a welfare state. You need a lot more government support. You need to subsidize children. You need a much bigger social service system. Well, let’s just put it this way, it’s hard to get bigger on any of those issues than Finland. Finland is one of the most classic welfare states, but in Finland, they now have a decreasing birth rate that’s showing up in a devastating way. As we’re told in the article, benefits for Finnish parents, “go far beyond free baby clothes and blankets. Both mothers and fathers receive government-subsidized parental leave, low-cost childcare, and national healthcare.” So if you’re talking about people saying we would have more babies if only we had more government support, if we had more healthcare, if we had more government coverage, right down to baby clothes and blankets, the whole thing, if you make it economically more attractive, we’ll have more babies.

Well, Finland made it about as attractive as it could possibly be made, and yet the birth rate is cratering there. This is surprising the Finns, and that becomes very clear. “Births have fallen across the region.” That means the Nordic region. “With Finland’s falling to the lowest rate among the five nations down by a third since 2010.” So, again, 15 years, the birth rate falling by a third, you can do the math. This can’t last. One of the persons cited in the article said, what is puzzling researchers is how this could be true because all of these countries are relatively good in providing support to families, “but there aren’t really good explanations for the very low fertility rates at present.” Okay, so this tells us something, and it seems to be something that is a wake-up call, something that must be shocking to those who are behind these governments and looking at these statistics.

The fall off on the birth rate can’t primarily be about economics. It just can’t be. Common sense says it can’t be, and that’s because in times of great poverty people still had more children. You look even at the Great Depression, there was a dip in the birth rate, but there wasn’t a catastrophic fall off on the birth rate. Now, you’re also looking, some of you are thinking, well, yes, but they didn’t have modern birth control and contraception and all the rest. Some of that is true, but when you look across human records, you look at birth rates, you look at economic factors, they aren’t directly correlated. That’s just not an argument that holds water. It is, of course, commonsensical to say that if people don’t think they can afford to have a baby, they’ll have less incentive to have a baby. But the definition of what it means to have the means to have a baby, let’s be honest, that has been recalibrated in a consumer society to mean something very different than it meant to our grandparents. We’ll just leave it at that. 

But here’s where the Fin issue becomes really fascinating because in Finland, they pay for virtually everything, and it is a welfare state almost from say, cradle to grave, and yet the birth rate is falling precipitously there. It is interesting to see people ask, “How could this be so?” And you know one of the things they’re blaming? Smartphones. No kidding. Smartphones. We are told, “Many young people are focusing on their education and careers. Those who have children are having them later. Young people are also having a harder time forming relationships, and some researchers think technology is partly to blame.” One person said, “Screens are away from actual physical, embodied interactions, and it’s in those interactions the babies get made.”

Okay, that is the weirdest explanation of sex education I have ever heard. Where do babies come from? It all starts with embodied interactions. Okay, well, hard to argue with that, but the person goes on. The expert cited here to say, “The physical part of our humanity is obviously at stake.” Now, I realize there could be a translation issue here, but I’m going to look at that sentence again. The physical part of our humanity is obviously at stake.” The biblical worldview reminds us that we don’t have humanity apart from the physical part. All this to say, when Christians look at a falling birth rate, we know that it is a theological problem. It is a spiritual problem. It is a worldview problem. We see that it is correlated with secularization. The more secular a society becomes, the lower the birth rate goes. We also understand that changes in lifestyle issues have made a big difference, and one of those is women going into the workplace and putting off having children.

The bottom line is that the longer you wait, speaking of women in this case, the longer a woman waits to become a mother, the harder it is for her to do two things. Number one, to get pregnant at a certain age, and then secondly, to have multiple babies. Those two things just go together. That’s biology, but it’s also evidence of the accumulated decisions made by human beings as moral agents, and these decisions come with consequences. And here’s just something we have to face. I think it’s very interesting that in 2025, there are those who are saying, “You know, evidently, money isn’t the most important factor here. “If money were the most important factor, then Finland would have a skyrocketing birth rate, not a falling birth rate. And so they wonder what kind of problem it is. And here’s where Christians say it is a worldview problem. It is a conviction problem.

If you do not see a part of human existence directly assigned towards a man and a woman coming together in marriage and having children to the glory of God, being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth, then you’re going to see this as a sociological problem or a financial problem. There will be a sociological and a financial dimension, but Christians understand this is first and foremost a spiritual problem. Money will not fix it.

Part III

Reproduction by Skin Cell and the Death of Motherhood: This New Reproductive Technology is an Assault on Motherhood

In a related development, I want to turn to an article by Mary Wakefield published at The Spectator, very important conservative news source. It’s entitled “The Elimination of Motherhood.” She writes, this, “Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University have created the beginnings of a baby using not human eggs, but skin cells.” She says, “My reaction upon reading this news was to try to fold it up and tuck it away deep in some mental crevice where I’d be sure never to see it again, because the implications are just too grim, the potential for suffering too much to bear.”

She says, “What the lab has done is devise a way to persuade human skin cells to behave like sex cells, eggs, and sperm, and to divide using not only mitosis, which replicates all 46 chromosomes, but meiosis, which results in just 23. Once they discarded half their chromosomes, the skin cells can then be fertilized with sperm just as if they were human eggs.” The scientists created 82 potential little skin cell babies this way, and seven survived dividing and developing dutifully becoming embryos. That means human embryos. So we’re looking at the ethics of human embryo research here, absolutely problematic. But what Mary Wakefield sees here is something that I think many people have missed. She sees this as the death of motherhood, and she sees this as a part of the modern secular dream, and in particular of the modern secular homosexual dream.

Because this would allow two homosexual men “to have a baby without even an egg,” as she says. This means that, “Two humans of the same biological sex will be able to make a baby out of their combined genetic material. Two men will be able to have their own genetic child, one of them donating a cell that cosplays as egg and is fertilized by the other sperm.” So let me just stop here and say we are already talking about things I never had to explain to my grandfather, and my grandfather shouldn’t and couldn’t have explained to me. This is new territory. It’s dangerous new territory. I reported on the development of these cells, and I pointed to the fact that this is already transgressing where human beings should not go. I think to that argument, Mary Wakefield makes the very important point that this is really the subversion of motherhood.

And if you take the egg away and you don’t need the mother, you don’t need the female for the production of eggs, then all you need is a womb. And with the development of so-called artificial wombs, you won’t need women at all. And as a matter of fact, you won’t even need female cells from female bodies because after all, the cells can simply be taken. If you use this process, you can take the cell of either gender and turn it into an egg. All right, she asked the question coming in the future, she says, where comes the question, where’s my mother? The answer would then come, you never had one. She then writes this. “They say you can’t miss what you never had.” Listen to this. “I wish that were true. Samantha Weising, an American woman who grew up with two decent fathers, but no mother has written, ‘I felt the loss. I felt the hole. As I grew, I tried to fill that hole with aunts, my dad’s lesbian friends and teachers. I remember asking my first grade teacher, if I could call her mom. I asked that question of any woman who showed me any amount of love and affection. It was instinctive. I craved a mother’s love even though I was well-loved.’”

Listen to this next sentence, “but at least children who grow up apart from their biological mothers can go in search of them. At least they have mothers to find, to create children who have never had a mother of any sort is to conjure Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” Well, the implications of this are huge, but I think Mary Wakefield is one of those who sees the problem, and then she also understands the moral context in which this now emerges, and there are people who are going to say, no, this technology has nothing to do with the deliberate subversion of motherhood, it has everything to do with allowing persons who are infertile to have babies or people who, let’s just say, don’t bring a sperm and egg to the equation to have a baby. That’s already from the Christian worldview, a horrifying problem that defies creation order and Genesis.

But now you can see there’s more to the story. I think Mary Wakefield is absolutely right. Her article, by the way, isn’t just interesting. It’s one of those articles you see that is absolutely heartbreaking. After all, just imagine a child asking, who is my mother? And being told you never had one just days ago that might’ve been dismissed as science fiction, but after this announcement, it can be dismissed no more. Christians, at the very least, have to understand what is at stake and why even if others go here, we cannot.