Shocking News! The world slowly improves...

No there won't be a massive trade war between the US and China which results in global depression and no, the Democrats in the US congress will not kill all free trades deals and no,... lots of other silly doomsday predictions will not come true. As two stories (with small headlines) from today indicate. The first, from Nikkei, is that China is joining an international group attempting to create an integrated global patent system:

In a meeting in Hawaii on Friday, Japan Patent Office Commissioner Makoto Nakajima and his U.S., European and South Korean counterparts were to decide to let China participate in realizing previously agreed-on goals for integration. These include standardization of patent application formats, joint use of patent examination results, mutual training opportunities for examiners, and information sharing.

The officials were to also agree to aid China's efforts to modernize its patent system, such as digitizing the filing process and holding training sessions for examiners.

The second non-doomsday story is that the President and the Democrats have agreed on labor and environmental standards for bi-lateral trade deals. This really should be seen as a tremendous positive for the global free-trade movement as it shows convincingly that the Dems are not the Smoot-Hawley wanna-bes they had sometimed seemed in recent months. Nor will they be pushed down the anti-globalization road by the hard left-wing luddites of the party. This is very very good news. Don't yawn...