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tongoscar

A world trade war is brewing. The US-China deal doesn't stop it - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The United States has signed a partial trade agreement with China. But that doesn't mean simmering conflicts and uncertainty over trade won't drag down the global economy this year.
  • President Donald Trump has heralded the "phase one" US-China trade deal as a significant breakthrough.
  • The two sides are keeping substantial tariffs in place. About two-thirds of all US imports from China — roughly $370 billion worth — will still be covered by tariffs after the deal is signed, according to a December analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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  • China isn't the only world power tangling with the United States over trade.
  • New tariffs would escalate an already tense relationship between Washington and Brussels. The Trump administration imposed a 25% tariff on most European wine in October, in retaliation for government subsidies received by planemaker Airbus (EADSF).
  • An agreement that addresses these issues with Europe will be one of Trump's priorities for 2020, according to William Reinsch, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served for 15 years as president of the National Foreign Trade Council.
tongoscar

Donald Trump's trade wars have not been 'easy to win'  | Financial Times - 0 views

www.ft.com/...98-36ed-11ea-a6d3-9a26f8c3cba4

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The phase one trade agreement between the US and China signed on Wednesday is only a truce in the trade war, rather than a major reversal of the tariffs imposed since 2018. Nevertheless, it halts a dangerous political momentum.
  • Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs describes this as a “subtraction of the negatives”. Paradoxically, the worse the effects on US growth rates in the past two years, the greater the scope for a bounceback this year. Mr Trump’s initial confidence about the effects of trade protection was based on a belief that China’s bilateral trade surplus with the US would force President Xi Jinping to make major policy concessions to safeguard his own export sector. The outcome was rather different: China retaliated with similar measures and this damaged American manufacturers. 
  • The damage to financial and business confidence triggered by the trade announcements hurt US growth still further. The tightening in financial conditions caused by the rising dollar and the collapse in equities late in 2018 would probably have been more severe if the Fed had not reduced policy interest rates by 75 basis points since then.
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  • The good news is that part of this overall drag may disappear before the end of 2020, boosting American GDP growthby at least half a percentage point.What about the longer-term benefits of the trade deal?The purchase of $200bn of additional US exports in the energy, agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors, spread over two years, will reduce the bilateral trade deficit with China. But many of these exports will probably be redirected from elsewhere and will not boost US domestic output in those sectors. Longer term, China’s business restrictions, including alleged unfair trading practices, appear to be easing. Given the political boost from the phase one deal, Chinese economic reformers such as vice-premier Liu He may be in the ascendancy in Beijing for a while. 
  • The trade war has significantly damaged US growth in 2018-19Since President Donald Trump became more aggressive in his threats about trade protection early in 2018, US tariffs on Chinese goods have risen markedly, prompting retaliation from China. There have been only a few comprehensive studies on the overall impact of tariffs on the US growth rate. A notable exception is the work of Jan Hatzius’s US economics team at Goldman Sachs. They have estimated the possible impact of rising tariffs on net trade flows, real incomes, financial conditions and business confidence, and have combined these effects to produce the aggregate growth estimates shown in the graph below. As the negative effects of rising tariffs fade in 2020, the US growth rate is expected to be boosted by at least half a percentage point.
johnsonel7

Fact check: Trump utters series of false and misleading claims at coronavirus briefing ... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump coronavirus facts

shared by johnsonel7 on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Trump repeated his previous claim that "this was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country." He added, "Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened."Facts First: This is false. The US intelligence community and public health experts had warned for years that the country was at risk from a pandemic. Experts had also warned that the country would face shortages of critical medical equipment, such as ventilators, if a pandemic occurred.
  • While there is no polling data on how long Americans want the country's institutions to remain closed, it is clear that not "everybody" wants workplaces to reopen quickly amid an ongoing pandemic. A poll released on Thursday found that large majorities of Americans say the closure of businesses, schools and entertainment activities was necessary to address the pandemic.
  • Facts First: Study after study has shown that Americans are bearing the cost of the tariffs; Americans make the actual tariff payments. That aside, it's not true that the Treasury has never received "10 cents" from tariffs on China. The US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries; FactCheck.org reported that the US generated an "average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb."
lucieperloff

The Agency at the Center of America's Tech Fight With China - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...partment-technology-china.html

knowledge bias government technology

shared by lucieperloff on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Bureau of Industry and Security, a division of the Commerce Department, wields significant power given its role in determining the types of technology that companies can export and that foreign businesses can have access to.
  • American industry has held too much sway over the bureau.
  • putting a hard-liner at the helm could backfire and harm U.S. national security by starving American industry of revenue it needs to stay on the cutting edge of research and encouraging it to relocate offshore.
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  • The bureau’s powers became clear during the Trump administration, which wielded its authority aggressively, though somewhat erratically, using the agency to curb exports of advanced technology goods like semiconductors to the telecommunications company Huawei and other Chinese businesses.
  • The Biden administration is still carrying out a review of its China policies and has not indicated how it plans to use the bureau’s powers.
  • They have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch because the United States are going to continue to grow and expand.”
  • That includes how to use the Commerce Department’s powers, including whether to block more exports of American technology, whether to keep or scrap Mr. Trump’s tariffs on foreign metals, and how to set the standards for national security reviews of foreign investments.
  • “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system — all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to,”
  • Congress updated its laws governing export controls, giving the Bureau of Industry and Security more power to determine what kind of emerging technologies cannot be shared with China and other geopolitical rivals.
  • It’s that these guys have been trained for 30 years to think that exports are good for America and that’s that,” Mr. Scissors said. “So surprise, they don’t want tighter export controls.”
  • “The sense of urgency in recent years inclined our leadership to make decisions without reference to what industry thought,
  • the Biden administration is considering candidates to lead the Bureau of Industry and Security.
  • Mr. Wolf, who was previously assistant secretary at the bureau, issued the sanctions against ZTE. He has consistently argued that restrictions that are unclear and unpredictable can backfire, “harming the very interests they were designed to protect.”
  • The administration may also be considering less prominent candidates for the bureau’s three Senate-confirmed posts,
  • Whoever leads the bureau, officials at the National Security Council are likely to play a guiding role, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
tongoscar

Trump trade war, tariffs giving China political, defense opportunity - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/al-defense-opportunity-2019-11

shared by tongoscar on 25 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • "We're the ones that are deciding whether or not we want to make a deal," Trump said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York this month. "We're close."
  • The reality of what Beijing wants is far more complicated than an end to the recent economic hostilities. Instead, it is balancing a variety of interests, some more important than the trade war.
  • Beijing's ideal scenario includes a free hand to violate human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; it includes continuing to press for reunification with Taiwan; and it includes achieving the aims of China 2025, the Chinese Communist Party's plan to transition the country's economy to one based on technology.
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  • Trump's laser focus on trade has given Beijing the latitude to deal with those and other critical issues without fear interference from the White House.
  • Trump is correct to say that the Chinese economy is slowing down, but there is little evidence to support his assertion that Beijing is "dying" to make a deal anytime soon.
  • For months, Chinese economic data has been trending down, but it's only in the past few week that policymakers have slightly lowered key interest rates to keep money flowing through the economy.
  • China has also ignored US ire over its "Made in China 2025," a plan to build up China's tech sector using methods US officials have said violate the aims of the trade war — methods that allow more state control of China's economy and encourage more intellectual-property theft.
Javier E

Opinion | If You Want to Understand How Dangerous Elon Musk Is, Look Outside America - ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...twitter-free-speech-india.html

social media india global impact influence government repression tool twitter

shared by Javier E on 15 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Twitter was an intoxicating window into my fascinating new assignment. Long suppressed groups found their voices and social media-driven revolutions began to unfold. Movements against corruption gained steam and brought real change. Outrage over a horrific gang rape in Delhi built a movement to fight an epidemic of sexual violence.
  • “What we didn’t realize — because we took it for granted for so long — is that most people spoke with a great deal of freedom, and completely unconscious freedom,” said Nilanjana Roy, a writer who was part of my initial group of Twitter friends in India. “You could criticize the government, debate certain religious practices. It seems unreal now.”
  • Soon enough, other kinds of underrepresented voices also started to appear on — and then dominate — the platform. As women, Muslims and people from lower castes spoke out, the inevitable backlash came. Supporters of the conservative opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and their right-wing religious allies felt that they had long been ignored by the mainstream press. Now they had the chance to grab the mic.
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  • Viewed from the United States, these skirmishes over the unaccountable power of tech platforms seem like a central battleground of free speech. But the real threat in much of the world is not the policies of social media companies, but of governments.
  • The real question now is if Musk’s commitment to “free speech” extends beyond conservatives in America and to the billions of people in the Global South who rely on the internet for open communication.
  • ndia’s government had demanded that Twitter block tweets and accounts from a variety of journalists, activists and politicians. The company went to court, arguing that these demands went beyond the law and into censorship. Now Twitter’s potential new owner was casting doubt on whether the company should be defying government demands that muzzle freedom of expression.
  • The winning side will not be decided in Silicon Valley or Beijing, the two poles around which debate over free expression on the internet have largely orbited. It will be the actions of governments in capitals like Abuja, Jakarta, Ankara, Brasília and New Delhi.
  • Across the world, countries are putting in place frameworks that on their face seem designed to combat online abuse and misinformation but are largely used to stifle dissent or enable abuse of the enemies of those in power.
  • other governments are passing laws just to increase their power over speech online and to force companies to be an extension of state surveillance.” For example: requiring companies to house their servers locally rather than abroad, which can make them more vulnerable to government surveillance.
  • while much of the focus has been on countries like China, which overtly restricts access to huge swaths of the internet, the real war over the future of internet freedom is being waged in what she called “swing states,” big, fragile democracies like India.
  • it seems that this is actually what he believes. In April, he tweeted: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
  • Musk is either exceptionally naïve or willfully ignorant about the relationship between government power and free speech, especially in fragile democracies.
  • The combination of a rigid commitment to following national laws and a hands-off approach to content moderation is combustible and highly dangerous.
  • Independent journalism is increasingly under threat in India. Much of the mainstream press has been neutered by a mix of intimidation and conflicts of interests created by the sprawling conglomerates and powerful families that control much of Indian media
  • Twitter has historically fought against censorship. Whether that will continue under Musk seems very much a question. The Indian government has reasons to expect friendly treatment: Musk’s company Tesla has been trying to enter the Indian car market for some time, but in May it hit an impasse in negotiations with the government over tariffs and other issues
sissij

Beginning 'Brexit' and Bracing for Impact - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-britain-eu-economy-banks.html

new york times social media bias

shared by sissij on 30 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Britain’s exit from Europe — Brexit
  • But the reassuring talk did not reckon with one significant detail: Nothing has actually happened yet.
  • The markets essentially shrugged. The move was as expected as the next Super Bowl. The pound dipped a tad. So did shares on London’s stock market.
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  • Trade would revert to the rules of the World Trade Organization, making Britain’s exports to Europe vulnerable to tariffs and other barriers to commerce, including health and safety rules.
  • Brexit supporters called the outcome a template for how a pragmatic British government would prevent businesses from abandoning its shores — with tax cuts, friendly regulation and deal making.
  • But consumer spending has been increasingly paid for by debt. The British pound has surrendered 17 percent of its value against the dollar since the referendum, raising the cost of imported goods.
  • During the campaign, Brexit supporters argued that Europe would ultimately make it happen because its most powerful member, Germany, now sends a parade of BMWs, Audis and Volkswagens to Britain.
  • Even if European leaders seek middle ground, any one of the member nations could hijack the proceedings with their demands while the clock ticks away.
  • Britain really is departing the largest consumer market on earth.
  • sissij on 30 Mar 17
     
    As we learned in TOK, economics is a very hard to predict human social study. The depression and recession has already showed how market failure affect our optimistic prediction in economics. I think this also shows how the confidence of the general population is important for economics. We can not yet make a conclusion whether the departure of Britain from the Europe league is good or bad. --Sissi (3/30/2017)
anonymous

Opinion | The Pandemic and the Future City - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cities-covid-remote-work.html

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Pandemic and the Future City
  • Lessons from Alexander Hamilton and the book trade.
  • In 1957 Isaac Asimov published “The Naked Sun,” a science-fiction novel about a society in which people live on isolated estates, their needs provided by robots and they interact only by video
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  • how will we live once the pandemic subsides?
  • First, it seems safe to predict that we won’t fully return to the way we used to live and work.
  • A year of isolation has, in effect, provided remote work with a classic case of infant industry protection, a concept usually associated with international trade policy that was first systematically laid out by none other than Alexander Hamilton.
  • never coming close to overtaking physical books
  • Given a break from competition, for example through temporary tariffs, these industries could acquire enough experience and technological sophistication to become competitive
  • the pandemic, by temporarily making our former work habits impossible, has clearly made us much better at exploiting the possibilities of remote work, and some of what we used to do — long commutes so we can sit in cubicles, constant flying to meetings of dubious value — won’t be coming back.
  • f history is any guide, however, much of our old way of working and living will, in fact, return.
  • what the internet did and didn’t do to the way we read books.
  • Hamilton asserted that there were many industries that could flourish in the young United States but couldn’t get off the ground in the face of imports.
  • And while big chains have suffered, independent bookstores have actually been flourishing.
  • for many readers this convenience is offset by subtler factors. The experience of reading a physical book is different and, for many, more enjoyable than reading e-ink.
  • what I find in a bookstore, especially a well-curated independent store, are books I wasn’t looking for but end up treasuring.
  • The remote work revolution will probably play out similarly, but on a much vaster scale.
  • The advantages of remote work — either from home or, possibly, in small offices located far from dense urban areas — are obvious.
  • Both living and work spaces are much cheaper; commutes are short or nonexistent; you no longer need to deal with the expense and discomfort of formal business wear, at least from the waist down.
  • The advantages of going back to in-person work will, by contrast, be relatively subtle — the payoffs from face-to-face communication, the serendipity that can come from unscheduled interactions, the amenities of urban life.
  • But these subtle advantages are, in fact, what drive the economies of modern cities
  • until Covid-19 struck these advantages were feeding a growing economic divergence between large, highly educated metropolitan areas and the rest of the country
  • We may commute to the office less than we used to; there may well be a glut of urban office space. But most of us won’t be able to stay very far from the madding crowd.
runlai_jiang

U.S. Stocks Surge After China's Xi Eases Trade Fears - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...wall-street-selling-1523324208

Tariff China

shared by runlai_jiang on 11 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Major U.S. stock indexes climbed Tuesday, with the Dow adding more than 400 points, as remarks from Chinese President Xi Jinping soothed concerns about a trade war that had rattled markets in recent weeks
  • Speaking at the Boao Forum, an annual economic summit, Mr. Xi pledged Beijing’s commitment to further economic liberalization as well as promising greater intellectual property protection and increased access to China’s financial and manufacturing sectors for foreign companies.
  • his conciliatory tone was taken well by the market
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  • In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rallied 1.7%, as did Shanghai’s composite index, with Chinese banks among the sharpest risers.
tongoscar

US-China tech war to be 'defining issue of this century', despite signing of phase one ... - 0 views

www.scmp.com/...-issue-century-despite-signing

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Forget the phase one deal, a bitter superpower tech war will overshadow any minor progression in US-China relations emanating from this week’s trade agreement.That is the message contained in a new report to be released on Monday, the author of which says that tariffs are “a subset in a much larger, overarching, systemic rivalry between two superpowers, which is the defining issue of this century”.
  • The US has already used export controls to ban Chinese firms from accessing vital US technology and as smart devices, 5G and the internet of things become more pervasive, the definition of “dual use goods”, commercial products that can be used for military purposes, will widen.
  • Even while pursuing a trade accord on one hand, the US has been actively trying to reduce technological integration with China on the other.As US President Donald Trump and China’s Vice-Premier Liu He were signing the phase one deal in the White House, the US was lobbying Britain to ban Huawei from its “critical national infrastructure” and considering plans to invest at least US$1.25 billion “in Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE”.
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  • China is aiming to increase its reliance on domestic production for key components, including chips and controlling systems, to 75 per cent by 2025, the former minister said.
  • A ban on Huawei buying US tech combined with the overall market uncertainty from the tech war led to Broadcom revising down its 2019 revenue estimate by US$2 billion.However, given that the most advanced Chinese producers of semiconductor technology are two to three generations behind their US rivals, China would be the major short-term loser should decoupling continue, Capri said.
  • “While there are changes to some Chinese technology policies, phase two is unlikely to make much progress in addressing the two countries’ rivalry,” said Chris Rogers, Research Analyst at Panjiva, S&P Global Market Intelligence.
tongoscar

China, South Korea, Japan to hold trilateral talks over trade, regional disputes - Mark... - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...e-regional-disputes-2019-12-22

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • BEIJING — The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea are holding a trilateral summit in China this week amid feuds over trade, military maneuverings and historical animosities.
  • Economic cooperation and the North Korean nuclear threat are the main issues binding the Northeast Asian troika.
  • Tensions rooted in South Korean resentment over Japan’s 20th century colonial occupation spiked this year to a level unseen in decades as they traded blows over wartime history, trade and military-to-military cooperation.
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  • South Korea’s relations with China, its biggest trading partner, have been strained over Seoul’s decision to host a U.S. anti-missile system that Beijing perceives as a security threat.
  • Tokyo, in turn, agreed to resume discussions with Seoul on their dispute over Japan’s tightened controls on exports of key chemicals used by major South Korean companies to make computer chips and smartphone displays.
  • China’s relations with Japan had been more acrimonious than with any other foreign state, but have in recent years undergone a remarkable transformation, partly as a result of the U.S.-China tariff war.
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