Friday, May 31, 2019

The Possible Outline Of A Deal Between Xi And Trump In June

Will The Trade War Force A New Equilibrium?

  • Both parties agree to roll back all tariffs immediately. 
  • The US ends its harassment of Huawei, although it could choose to not use Huawei equipment for its 5G efforts. China lays to rest its rare earth minerals threats. 
  • China agrees to a set of structural reforms and agrees to a review of the progress every two years. 
  • China agrees to buy substantially more agricultural products from the US. 
  • China agrees to additional purchases to the tune of $30 billion. 
  • Both powers agree to call a meeting of the WTO for a new round of negotiations with all countries of the world participating. The US takes all its grievances to the WTO. The negotiations might last a few years. 
  • The two powers organize a gathering of the top 100 technology companies of the world for a Privacy And Security Summit along the lines of the Rio Summit in 1992 for the environment on the sidelines of the G20 Summit next year. The top 20 economies and the top 100 tech companies thrash out solutions. How much of it is about agreeing on common standards? How much of it is about lawmaking and law enforcement? How could the law enforcement agencies of the world cooperate? How much of it is technical? How much is beyond reach and awaiting further advances in technology? 
  • The T100 is a permanent forum meeting annually on the sidelines of G20. 



No President Is Above the Law First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third, when the federal government tried to investigate, now-President Donald Trump did everything he could to delay, distract, and otherwise obstruct that investigation....... That’s a crime. ..... He’s referring President Trump for impeachment, and it’s up to Congress to act.

Business groups are considering legal action against the White House over Mexico tariffs The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce is mulling its legal options in response to the duties...... While top business organizations have repeatedly slammed tariffs Trump levied on trading partners such as Mexico, Canada and China, a lawsuit would mark a major escalation in their opposition to White House trade policy....... The duties could damage key U.S. industries such as auto manufacturing, and crucial 2020 electoral states such as Arizona, Michigan and Texas could feel particularly sharp pain from the tariffs.

GOP lawmakers, business groups slam Trump's Mexico tariff threat
Making Sense of the New American Right
Trump and Bibi’s Bad Week
Trump's approval rating hits highest point in two years
Jeremy Siegel says Trump must cut a trade deal with China to protect the two pillars his re-election case: The strong stock market and economy “The market wants a solution,” says Siegel. “Don’t forget, the market didn’t really want this trade war.” .... Since Trump’s tariff-threat tweet on May 5, the S&P 500 has lost about $1.1 trillion in value. ....... stocks could drop 10% to 20% if the U.S. and China were to dig in during trade talks, he said, “The market is going to continue to react” if Trump wants to push China to be the end....... “You can pull victory out of defeat. No one is really going to look at the details,” the Wharton professor said, stressing that the president has a bully pulpit to cast any agreement with China as a victory even if it’s just so-so.

Beijing experts’ latest message as trade talks stall: The US needs China sentiment contrasts with that of Chinese state-run media, which is emphasizing China’s ability to stand up to the U.S. ...... as long as there is negotiation, then there will be results ..... Beijing would like to keep negotiating with the U.S. It could even be a years-long process that cycles through negotiation and fights ...... China has been removing ownership restrictions in some industries such as financial services and autos. This March, Beijing also rushed to pass a new foreign investment law that officially prohibits forced technology transfer and increases the protection of intellectual property rights. In June, the government is also set to release an expanded list of industries to which foreign businesses can have access. ...... Some have hoped the trade tensions would push Beijing toward important changes to the structure of its economy.



We asked the Democrats running for president how they would negotiate with China on trade. Here’s what they said “Donald Trump has shown he knows nothing about trade,” says Rep. Seth Moulton...... Five Democrats say any trade deal with China should address human rights issues. Among them: Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said he would target American firms that provide surveillance equipment. ...... “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden told a crowd in Iowa earlier this month. ....... Sanders: It is in the interests of the United States to work to strengthen institutions like the WTO and the UN rather than trying to go it alone. American concerns about China’s technology practices are shared in Europe and across the Asia-Pacific. We can place far more pressure on China to change its policies if we work together with the broader international community and the other developed economies. International institutions also offer China a template for reforming its own internal intellectual property and industrial practices. ...... Sanders: Yes. Labor protections are very weak in China, and the rights of workers are an essential component of human rights. The Trump administration has proven itself indifferent to labor rights, and apparently would prefer that American workers are reduced to the position of Chinese workers, rather than that labor everywhere enjoy basic protections and strong standard of living. The Trump administration has also done nothing to pressure China over its abhorrent treatment of the Uighur and Tibetan peoples. Future trade negotiations should, for example, target American corporations that contribute surveillance technologies that enable China’s authoritarian practices............ Sanders: While China has adopted some better practices, it still has a long way to go. The Trump administration is correct to put pressure on China to reform its practices, and I hope that some good comes from current trade negotiations. The economic relationship between the United States and China has been the engine of global growth for the past 25 years, and we should acknowledge that in China it has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. In both China and the United States, however, the benefits of this growth have not been shared equally, and have accrued in a very disproportionate way to the very wealthiest. The problem is that the Trump administration is mainly interested in addressing some of the imbalances between America and China overall, when it also needs to address basic drivers of economic inequality. The future of this relationship requires both a degree of pressure on China, and reform of the economy inside the United States itself. ....... Sanders: The U.S. has a role to play in supporting bilateral and multilateral diplomacy between China and others in the region to deescalate and handle disputes. The best policy in both the near and long term is to strengthen international institutions, in this case the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The United States should press China to abide by internationally agreed guidelines for managing maritime issues, in no small part by ratifying UNCLOS itself. ......





Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now worth more than Tesla Musk is the largest shareholder and CEO of both companies, with a 54% stake in SpaceX and more than 20% ownership of Tesla........ investors shouldn’t rule out the possibility that Musk could use his SpaceX stake to “collateralize” Tesla. “There’s a precedent for Elon Musk to think across his portfolio of companies”

Cramer: The US economy ‘could be on the verge of a significant slowdown’ executives are also weighing the odds of the Democratic Party winning the White House in 2020 ...... “yields don’t protect you anymore ... the stocks keep falling on fears of a worldwide tariff-related slowdown.”

Markets signal to US and China on the trade war: You have ‘blundered into a minefield’

The New York Fed’s gauge of recession probability over the next 12 months is now at 27.5%, the highest since the financial crisis.

..... “It’s like lighting a match. You think you know how to control it. That’s where the uncertainty comes in” ...... Whether it’s increased expectations for interest rate cuts, decreasing expectations for inflation or queasy bond and stock market investors who are more aggressively pricing in slower growth, the message is being sent to the U.S. and China that danger lurks. ..... the ecosystem around the economy and the trade headlines remains fragile.

China won when Trump blindsided Mexico with tariffs, says former Mexican ambassador to China
US manufacturing activity dives to more than 9-year low on trade war worries, survey shows
Grover Norquist urges Trump to get rid of trade tariffs, calling them taxes on US consumers
Major Wall Street banks jeer Trump’s Mexico tariffs: ‘Damaging at a number of levels’
‘Very dangerous’: Putin, Trump want to weaken the European Union, top official says
GOP lawmakers, business groups slam Trump's Mexico tariff threat

Making Sense of the New American Right The conservative intellectual movement has been and continues to be fractious, contentious, combustible, and less of a force than most assume....... The debate over Trump's character and fitness for office opened, or poured salt on, wounds that have not and will not heal. ...... The president did not win a majority, captured a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Mitt Romney, and took the Electoral College thanks to 77,000 votes spread over three states. It is also the case that to date President Trump has been most successful when he has adhered to the traditional Republican program of tax cuts, defense spending, and judicial appointments. ........ The rise of Donald Trump, Brexit, and nation-state populism throughout the world certainly suggest that something has changed in global politics. American conservatism ought to investigate, recognize, and assimilate the empirical reality before it. The trouble is that no one has concluded definitively what that reality is. ....... They believe the nation-state is the core unit of geopolitics and that national sovereignty and independence are more important than global flows of capital, labor, and commodities....... the conservative terrain has become so difficult to navigate that it's useful to have a map. ..... the people who remind us that America is not ruled from above but driven from below. ...... Social decline, he said, is related to the loss of manufacturing jobs. It happened in the inner cities. Now it's happening in the Rust Belt and in rural America. When jobs disappear and low-skilled male wages decline, family formation breaks down. ...... advocated a national industrial strategy ...... the frayed bonds that barely connect working-class Americans to each other ....... they are certain American foreign policy should be restrained, within constitutional bounds, and prioritize diplomacy over military force. ...... Economic freedom has brought about a global system of trade and finance that has outsourced jobs, shifted resources to the metropolitan coasts, and obscured its self-seeking under the veneer of social justice. Personal freedom has ended up in the mainstreaming of pornography, alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction, abortion, single-parent families, and the repression of orthodox religious practice and conscience. ..... the "strong gods" of familial, national, and religious authority. ...... turning away from the secular world and shielding, as best you can, spiritual life. ...... "to use these values [of civility and decency] to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral." ...... Rather than asking the question, ‘What should conservatives/progressives do?' considerable advances can be made through certain purely practical considerations: ‘How can the integrity of the national political community be assured?' ‘How can commercial activity and technological development continue to be turned toward the common good, and toward our own strategic advantage?' ......... For decades now our politics and culture have been dominated by a particular philosophy of freedom. It is a philosophy of liberation from family and tradition; of escape from God and community; a philosophy of self-creation and unrestricted, unfettered free choice. ........ "celebrates the individual," Hawley went on. But "it leads to hierarchy. Though it preaches merit, it produces elitism. Though it proclaims liberty, it destroys the life that makes liberty possible. Replacing it and repairing the profound harm it has caused is one of the great challenges of our day."

Trump and Bibi’s Bad Week Even on Fox News, Mueller’s statement was greeted as a significant blow to the President, with the network’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, telling viewers that Mueller had directly rebutted Trump’s claim of “no collusion, no obstruction.” ...... Washington and Jerusalem are facing twin crises, disputes over the reach of executive power in the face of scandal and investigation. .....

politics have become a crude reality show

.... “There are all kinds of things happening that, several years ago, could only be a figment of our imagination.” ..... We are living in a real-time seminar on democracy’s dysfunctions. ....... the context of the rise of authoritarian-minded right-wing populists across the Western world ...... It can all seem overwhelming—too many little crises to keep track of. ...... Whether or not there is anything to be done about it, the collapse of the liberal order is, in fact, happening. ........ the number of democratic countries in the world has fallen every year for the past dozen years. ...... E.U. parliamentary elections confirmed that the right-wing populism that fuelled Brexit and political discontent across the continent remains a potent force; populist parties received the largest share of the vote in four of Europe’s six largest countries. ...... Tumult is the new normal.



Trump’s Crazy Mexico Tariff Is Stoking a Meltdown on Wall Street In writing about Donald Trump, there is a daily temptation to say that this time he’s gone too far. ...... Trump’s move could derail congressional approval of a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico. ......

The only real constraints on Trump’s actions are the courts, the opinion polls, and the financial markets.

...... If the new tariffs do go into effect, they will raise the prices for consumers on a wide range of goods, which could produce a popular backlash. ...... eighty-two per cent of self-identified Republicans approve of Trump’s trade policies...... the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has already indicated that he won’t jump to attention. ..... (On Thursday, López Obrador sent Trump a letter in which he said, “Please, remember that I do not lack valor, that I am not a coward nor timorous but rather act according to principles.”) ...... Trump seems to believe that he can target anybody for his bullying ..... this latest Trump power play is so extreme and potentially self-destructive that, according to the Wall Street Journal, even his own hard-line trade adviser, Robert Lighthizer, opposed it. ....... On Wall Street, there is a lot of nervousness about where things are heading, and whether Tariff Man understands the risks that he is taking. Financial markets don’t usually go south gradually; they collapse suddenly, in a heap. ....... he’s going to have to blink on tariffs, because the market can’t live with this level of crazy.”

Trump's approval rating hits highest point in two years 48 percent approve of the job Trump is doing ..... “Every point of increase in this range of 45 to 50 improves the possibility of re-election.” ...... The president’s job approval rating is at 42.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. A recent Rasmussen Reports survey found Trump at 48 percent, but six other recent polls found him ranging between 38 percent and 44 percent.

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