TWTR - Twitter, Inc.
41.63 +0.62 (1.51%)
Pre-Market: 5:42AM EDT
| Previous Close | 42.18 |
| Open | 41.82 |
| Bid | 40.71 x 800 |
| Ask | 0.00 x 2900 |
| Day's Range | 40.81 - 42.69 |
| 52 Week Range | 26.19 - 43.48 |
| Volume | 14,070,412 |
| Avg. Volume | 13,322,536 |
| Market Cap | 31.694B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 0.19 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 13.55 |
| EPS (TTM) | 3.03 |
| Earnings Date | Oct 24, 2019 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | N/A |
| 1y Target Est | 41.99 |
- Financial Times
Hong Kong peg holds strong in face of speculators and protesters
This summer’s protests against a proposed extradition law with China have shaken Hong Kong to its foundations. One user of the protesters’ main online discussion forum called for massed cash withdrawals and currency conversions a couple of weeks ago, to try to cause grief for local banks. “Converting to a foreign currency (like the US dollar) also protects yourself, so if the currency peg goes pear-shaped you won’t be left holding Hong Kong dollars,” the protester urged.
- Bloomberg
Trump-Abe Trade Deal Helps U.S. Farmers, Staves Off Auto Tariffs
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. The U.S. and Japan agreed in principle on a trade deal that would slash Tokyo’s tariffs on American beef, pork and other agricultural products, while delaying for now the threat of additional levies on Japanese auto exports to the U.S.U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the agreement Sunday on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, following a bilateral meeting earlier in the day. In announcing the deal, Trump also said Japan would purchase large quantities of U.S. wheat and corn.“If you say ‘win-win,’ it’s a capital letter ‘Win’ for the U.S. and a small-letter ‘win’ for Japan,” said Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to the U.S. The deal would put the U.S. back in line with its rivals for Japan’s agricultural market in terms of tariffs, a position Washington would already enjoy had Trump not rejected an earlier multilateral trade deal.“In Japan’s case, it’s a small win plus non-negative assurance that no unilateral measures will be taken by the U.S., like on limiting car importations or some relations with security issues,” Fujisaki said. While Japan kept the threat of tariffs at bay, it didn’t get a removal of existing auto tariffs in exchange for its farm concessions, nor a public promise not to impose higher car levies.It was Trump’s threat of punitive tariffs on Japanese auto exports that spooked Abe into agreeing last September to start bilateral trade talks with the U.S. Trump has in turn come under pressure from U.S. farmers, reeling from the trade war with China, who have also been hobbled by the tariff disadvantage in the Japanese market compared with competitors from signatories of the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional trade deal he rejected.“We’ve agreed in principle,” Trump said. “We’ve agreed to every point.” He also referred to a “massive” purchase of wheat and a “very, very large order of corn” that he said would happen quickly. Trump said there would be no change to U.S. tariffs on Japanese cars.The countries have reached consensus on “core elements” and were aiming to sign a deal during United Nations meetings next month, Abe said. The prime minister said that agricultural product purchases were a possibility, adding that crop pests had resulted in the need for “emergency support” to enable the private sector to buy American corn.“If we are to see the entry into force of this trade agreement, I’m quite sure that there will be the immense positive impact on both the Japanese as well as American economies,” Abe said.While the proposed deal may provide Trump with a fillip as he heads into his re-election campaign facing rising tensions with China, the initial reaction in Japan was mixed. Some officials in Tokyo have said the country shouldn’t give up its leverage over U.S. farmers without substantial concessions, and Japanese trade agreements generally require parliament approval.“As I expected, Japan gave ground on agriculture and didn’t win anything on autos,” former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, an opponent of Abe’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said on Twitter. “This kind of obseqious diplomacy makes Abe happy, and hurts the people.”Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters it wasn’t true that Japan had been “steamrollered” by the U.S and added that he didn’t think punitive so-called Section 232 tariffs would be applied to Japan.Whether or not the threat has been removed is key to evaluating the deal, according to Junichi Sugawara, a senior research officer for Mizuho Research Institute Ltd. “Without knowing that, it’s too early to say whether this will be a good agreement for Japan,” Sugawara said.U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the proposed deal would open markets to $7 billion of American products including ethanol, as well as beef, pork, dairy products and wine. He said tariffs on some Japanese industrial products would be reduced, but that these wouldn’t include cars. The proposed agreement also includes a clause on e-commerce, he said.Level FieldThe farming provisions of the deal won some early praise in the U.S., with the National Pork Producers Council and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, of Kansas, among those welcoming a deal they said would put American agriculture on a level playing field with the 11 TPP-member nations.Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said removing the trade barriers would allow greater sales of U.S. farm products in Japan. Some in Japan said that was an acceptable price to pay.“If we’re being realistic, the U.S. had been waving the 25% auto tariff card,” said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Research Institute Inc. “Japan’s managed to avoid that, there are probably no quotas, and for now there’s no comment on currencies. I think they’ve managed to end up with a passable result.”(Adds comments from Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary in 10th paragraph.)\--With assistance from Yuko Takeo and Emi Nobuhiro.To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net;Jennifer Jacobs in Biarritz, France at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Josh Wingrove in Biarritz, France at jwingrove4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Gordon at cgordon39@bloomberg.net, Brendan Scott, Paul JacksonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Corporate America Sounds Alarm on Trump’s Threats Over China
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. U.S. companies are concerned about President Donald Trump’s threats to ban them from doing business in China, and they’re poised to halt new investments if the trade war escalates, the leader of group of top chief executive officers said.U.S. company executives get worried when they hear talk from Trump about invoking emergency powers on trade, said Josh Bolten, president and chief executive officer of the Business Roundtable and a former chief of staff to President George W. Bush.“He has a lot of authority through the national security statutes to disrupt trade and commerce in a way that would cause huge damage -- not just to the Chinese economy, but to the global economy and the U.S. economy,” Bolten said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”Trump responded to the latest tit-for-tat retaliation from China on Friday by tweeting U.S. companies are “hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative” to China. He also suggested he was looking at the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 in ordering U.S. companies to quit China. “Case closed!” Trump concluded in a tweet.‘Take a Look’White House economic director Larry Kudlow downplayed Trump’s China threat, saying on CBS that the president doesn’t intend to try to block investment in China right now and that “maybe the way it was phrased was a little tougher than usual.”“He’s asking American companies to take a look, take a fresh look at frankly moving out of China,” Kudlow said.Still, Bolten said the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 623-point tumble on Friday in response to Trump’s threat -- while also increasing the tariff rate on $550 billion in Chinese goods -- was a sign of investors “tapping the brake lightly.” A lot of U.S. businesses are “poised right on top of the brake” on new spending if the trade war isn’t resolved, he said.“The risk is that everybody’s going to slam on the brake, and that would be a disaster — not just for the Chinese, but for the United States as well,” Bolten said.The Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of large U.S. companies including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and General Motors Co. It’s chairman is JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon.Bolten said the group supports Trump’s aim to address allegations of intellectual property theft and other trade issues with China, but it fears the trade war spiraling out of control -- and trying to de-couple completely from China “is not benign and certainly not helpful.”To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Merkel Defends Macron's Zarif-to-Biarritz Gambit: G-7 Update
(Bloomberg) -- Group of Seven leaders have gathered in Biarritz, France and the host, French President Emmanuel Macron, has just pulled a massive surprise on his guests by inviting the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.Merkel Defends Macron Decision to Fly in Zarif (6:39 p.m.)As news of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s lightning visit to Biarritz was still sinking in, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rode to Macron’s rescue. She espoused the French line that it is a meeting of two foreign ministers and therefore not part of the G-7. She told reporters that every attempt to solve the crisis in Iran was welcome. She later said she only knew Zarif was coming a short time before he arrived.The picture that is forming is that the French gave delegations a very short warning that this was happening. In any case, Zarif is leaving tonight. The turning point for flying Zarif over was the dinner last night. Merkel said that a "good talk about Iran will now be communicated to Zarif," in person, by his counterpart.That dinner is beginning to loom large in the G-7 storyline for 2019. All seem to agree it was tense, it was about both Iran and whether to let Russia’s Vladimir Putin back into the G-7 -- and that’s about it. Macron has said he believes the other leaders vested him with powers to deal directly with Iran at the dinner, though Trump has said Macron doesn’t speak for him.French Official Wants to See How Far Talks Can Go (4:43 p.m.)The French official was asked if there’s any chance Zarif could meet the U.S. delegation. He said that’s not planned at the moment. This is just a French-Iranian meeting at the moment. But they want to see how far those talks can go.French Won’t Say If Zarif Is Meeting Macron (4:05 p.m.)A French official said that Zarif hasn’t been invited to the G-7 talks. He’s instead meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. The official refused to say whether Zarif will also be seeing Macron.Zarif Confirmed as Iranian Dignitary in Biarritz (3:44 p.m)It appears Macron has thrown a curve ball at his fellow leaders by inviting Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Biarritz. It’s unclear in what capacity as French organizers have point blank refused to confirm anything. Officials from other delegations were surprised. The Italians found out from French news wire AFP.Macron had wanted to rip the script, and he had already irritated the Americans who accused the French of trying to manipulate the agenda to embarrass the president. Zarif was in Paris only last week, meeting with Macron about the future of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Zarif described the talks as “constructive and good”, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.The Biggest Source of Tension Is Russia (2:26 p.m.)G-7 leaders just can’t seem to get on the same page about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who was booted out of the club after ordering the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Whether to let him back in has become a sore point at the current gathering, according to an EU official briefed on the gala dinner Saturday night. The official described the mood as tense.Indeed, Trump described it as a” lively discussion” and Johnson agreed: “It was lively!” There are several reasons why the leaders are on the outs with Putin: from the festering conflict with Ukraine, the suspected meddling in their elections to its intervention in Syria.The U.K. holds Putin responsible for deploying a chemical weapon on British soil to poison a suspected Russia double agent and rallied international support to eject Russian diplomats. Trump went along with it but he’s always been of the view that it’s illogical not to have such an important global player at the table.Next year he will have the option to invite Putin as a guest.Johnson Goes Swimming (2:02 p.m.)Johnson has been switching from goofy Boris to serious statesman with some success. On arrival to the dinner on Saturday he struck a pose that saw his French hosts break out in laughter. And today he took a dip in the ocean before breakfast with Trump.While out on his swim, the prime minister said he had Brexit epiphany: “From here you cannot tell there is a gigantic hole in that rock. There is a way through. My point to the EU is that there is a way through, but you can’t find the way through if you just sit on the beach.”One local hotelier however suggested another interpretation of that symbolism. She warned that it’s not safe to swim out to the rock, because the waters can get choppy.No Coordinated Fiscal Stimulus (1:47 p.m.)In his midday update, Macron said there won’t be any coordinated stimulus for the global economy coming out of this meeting.“We need boosters for global economy,” he said. Still, “it’s not at the G-7 level that we decided to make budgetary or tax cuts.”He said leaders discussed mechanisms for shoring up growth, which would involve a combination of tax cuts, deregulation and stimulus spending for different countries.Trump Pulls Macron Back Over Iran (12:34 p.m.)Macron is touting an agreement to send a joint message from the G-7 to Iran as one of his victories from last night’s dinner. “We’ve enacted a common communication, which in my view has a lot of value,” he said this morning in a French television interview.But Trump cast doubt on how much authority Macron will have. “We’ll do our own outreach,” he said. “But I can’t stop people from talking.”One person familiar with the situation says Trump does not agree that Macron can convey a message from the G-7 to Iran since the leaders didn’t all settle on what the message should be.Trump has pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, using sanctions to cut off their sales of oil in a way that’s hurting that nation’s economy. White House officials say the G-7 countries agreed Trump’s pressure campaign on Iran is having an impact, and that it should continue.Macron Is Talking Up Progress on Iran (11:50 a.m.)The French president is trying to show that he’s achieved something on the geopolitical issues he’s raised. He told TF1 television Sunday that leaders agreed they need to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons and destabilizing the region -- which was the state of play before talks began.The G-7 also agreed on a common way of communicating over Iran and a decision on action that enables them to “reconcile their positions a bit,” he said.When Johnson Sees Tusk, It Could Get Tense (11:20 a.m.)Johnson took care of Brexit business with Macron and Merkel in the days just before the G-7 -- everyone made their position clear (no budging).But the U.K. prime minister is beginning to realize that getting a divorce deal done with the European Union by the Oct. 31 deadline was not going to be quite as easy as he might have thought. As for the Europeans, they too are starting to think about what they can do to avert a no-deal scenario that could be economically bad news for all countries involved.Ian Wishart sets out the stakes, and the mood, as Johnson meets Donald Tusk, the EU’s president who tends to speak on behalf of the bloc’s leaders on matters related to Brexit.What is Macron’s Plan for Iran? (11 a.m.)After their 3-hour informal Saturday dinner where they discussed matters including Iran, leaders of the G7 gave Macron -- as chair of the Group -- the authority to hold talks and pass on a message from them to the Persian state, according to a French official.The official added that the message, based on the content of leaders talks Saturday, hadn’t yet been passed on. The official didn’t respond to request for details on the content of the message and of last night’s talks content.Second Thoughts on Trade War? (10: 52 a.m.)Trump rarely displays doubt, so when shows even a glimmer of it, it grabs one’s attention. The president is feeling the heat at the G-7 from his aggressive trade stance against China. Leaders are being careful on how to bring it but they are bringing it up -- persistently.During a meeting with Boris Johnson , he was asked whether he had “any second thoughts on escalating the trade war” with China, after he announced higher tariffs late Friday.“Yeah, sure, why not?” Trump replied. Reporters asked again whether he had second thoughts. “Might as well, might as well,” he replied, before reporters asked again. “I have second thoughts about everything,” he said.Trump has seen his poll numbers sag ahead of his 2020 re-election bid and he is relying on a strong economy to stay in power for another term.Trump Says ‘Very Close’ To Japan Trade Deal (9:50 a.m.)The U.S. is close to reaching a trade deal with Japan, Donald Trump said, as his trade chief hinted an announcement could come within hours.“We’re very close to a major deal with Japan,” Trump said Sunday morning during a meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Group of Seven summit, with Trump due to meet Japan’s Shinzo Abe later Sunday morning in France. “Prime Minister Abe and I are very good friends, really good friends. We’ve been working on it for five months.”Japanese media have reported that the U.S. and Japan have agreed on a trade deal that will keep U.S. tariffs on Japanese cars in place while removing barriers to U.S. beef and pork sales to Japan.Johnson Finds a Way to Raise Tariffs With Trump (9:30 a.m.)Part of Johnson’s balancing act at the G-7 is to strike a good relationship with Trump -- whom he needs post-Brexit for a trade deal with the U.S. -- but also speak truth to power. Back home, the perception of a U.K. prime minister being America’s poodle is a bad look, especially if you could be heading into an election.So at the breakfast with Trump, Johnson found a way to raise criticism, “sheep-like.”Here it was: “I congratulate the president on everything that the American economy is achieving. It’s fantastic to see that. But just to register a faint, sheep-like note of our view on the trade war -- we’re in favor of trade peace on the whole, dialing it down a beat.”Johnson said that “the U.K. has profited massively in the last 200 years from free trade and that’s what we want to see. So, we’re keen to see that. We don’t like tariffs on the whole.”Trump responded with a tongue-in-cheek question about how the U.K. had fared in the past three years.Would Trump Declare a National Emergency on China? (9 a.m.)Trump has said a 1977 law known as the Emergency Economic Powers Act would allow him to order companies to leave China, though experts say that was never the intent of the law. In addition, it would be massive disruption to ask companies to pull up stakes in China, or even to re-route supply chains located there.Asked about whether it was on the cards, here was the answer: “For many years this has been going on. In many ways it’s an emergency. I have no plan right now. Actually we’re getting along very well with China right now. We’re talking. I think they want to make a deal much more than I do. We’re getting a lot of money,”The law isn’t usually used to regulate international trade, but more regularly has been used to impose sanctions on countries resulting from national security threats. President Jimmy Carter invoked it in 1979 during the Iran hostage crisis.Johnson Doesn’t Need any Advice, Says Trump (8:45 a.m.)There were 18 people sitting in on the working breakfast between Trump and Johnson. The two men had been photographed on Saturday night walking and talking in the margins of the summit.Trump was asked if he had Brexit advice for Johnson: “He needs no advice, he’s the right man for the job. I’ve been saying that for a long time. It didn’t make your predecessor very happy.”Johnson: “You’re on message there, I’m very grateful... we’re looking forward to having some pretty comprehensive talks about how to take forward the relationship in all sorts of ways.... And we’re very excited about that.”Trump: “we’re going to do a very big trade deal, bigger than we’ve ever had with the U.K. and now at some point they won’t have the obstacle, they won’t have the anchor around their ankle because that’s what they have.”Putin at Next Year’s G-7? It’s possible (8:35 a.m.)U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters it’s “certainly possible” he will invite Vladimir Putin as a guest of next year’s Group of Seven summit. He’s said before how he thinks it makes no sense not to have the Russian president at the table. Putin was ejected from the G-8 in 2014 over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. His eventual return into the fold has been a topic of debate -- but Europeans have said the Ukraine crisis needs to be resolved first.Next year Trump is the host, and as such has the discretionary power to invited who he wants. Macron this year, for example, invited the leaders of India, Chile, Australia and Spain.The most-watched bilateral is about to start (8:15 a.m.)Donald Trump is up and tweeting that there have been some very good meetings and leaders are getting along. He is about to sit down with Boris Johnson, making his debut at the summit after replacing Theresa May as prime minister. The two men seem to get on famously, in stark contrast with the forced, strained relationship with May.For a run-down on what to expect, read this:Protesters Kept at Bay, Police Use Tear Gas (last night)French riot police deployed water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd of activists that included Yellow Vest protesters, environmentalists and even some Basque separatists. They have been largely kept at a safe distance from the leaders, who are in the heavily-guarded red zone.Earlier stories:Macron Rips Up Agenda for His G-7 in a Fit of Climate FuryMacron Riles Bolsonaro, Setting Up G-7 Fight Over Amazon FiresDonald Trump Is Coming for Europe’s Most Important Alliance\--With assistance from Josh Wingrove and Alex Morales.To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Biarritz, France at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Helene Fouquet in Biarritz at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;Arne Delfs in Biarritz at adelfs@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Craig Gordon, Flavia Krause-JacksonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Why Is Twitter (TWTR) Up 7.6% Since Last Earnings Report?
Twitter (TWTR) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.
- Financial Times
Hong Kong police deploy water cannons for first time in protests
Hong Kong police used water cannon for the first time and fired tear gas at protesters as the political crisis afflicting the Asian financial hub returned to violence after a lull the previous week. Protesters on Sunday afternoon blocked roads and hurled petrol bombs at police hours after family members of the police held a separate rally elsewhere in the city. Ms Lam’s push to pass an extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for the first time sparked the protests in June.
- Financial Times
European Commission plans to simplify eurozone budget rules
Brussels is planning to simplify the eurozone’s complex budgetary rules to provide governments with softer debt reduction targets that do not push struggling economies into trouble during downturns. In what is set to be one of the most politically sensitive debates for the next European Commission, officials are considering ways to rewrite the bloc’s Stability and Growth Pact, which has come under fire for being impossible to enforce and overly flexible for governments that are in breach of the rules. The plan, known informally as “SGP 2.1”, is designed to help restore trust among eurozone capitals in the EU executive’s enforcement of the rules.
- Financial Times
Central bankers rethink everything at Jackson Hole
For the world’s central bankers gathered in Jackson Hole, there was a sense that things would never be the same again. , president of the St Louis Federal Reserve, told the Financial Times. “Something is going on, and that’s causing I think a total rethink of central banking and all our cherished notions about what we think we’re doing,” he said.
- Bloomberg
Australia to Block Websites Hosting Live-Streamed Terror Attacks
(Bloomberg) -- Australia will establish a mechanism for internet providers to quickly and effectively block websites hosting terror attacks in the wake of the Christchurch shooting, according to an emailed statement.The government is also creating a center to rapidly detect and shut down the sharing and live-streaming of the violent material as an attack takes place, according to the statement. They are recommendations from an industry and government body established after a man in March live-streamed the killing of more than 40 people in two Christchurch mosques.“The shocking events that took place in Christchurch demonstrated how digital platforms and websites can be exploited to host extreme violent and terrorist content,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in the statement. “That type of abhorrent material has no place in Australia and we are doing everything we can to deny terrorists the opportunity to glorify their crimes, including taking action locally and globally.”Read More: Facebook, Twitter Pressed to Help Prevent Domestic TerrorismTo contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Burgess in Melbourne at mburgess46@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Linus ChuaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Macron Rips Up Agenda for His G-7 in a Fit of Climate Fury
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Emmanuel Macron has gone off script.It took the French president less than 24 hours to wrong foot his closest partners and toss a curve ball into the buildup to the Group of Seven summit. His fellow leaders hadn’t even landed. And all this when Macron was supposed to be shoring up the European alliance for another confrontation with Donald Trump.When the summit begins Saturday in the French beach resort of Biarritz, the European contingent is supposed to be holding the line over Brexit, pushing for tougher action on climate change and addressing the trade tensions threatening global growth without provoking the U.S. leader. Now they are going to be distracted by a rift between Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel over how to tackle the environmental threat posed by Brazil.For Macron, for the European Union, and for the transatlantic relationship, the consequences could be far-reaching.Preparations for the summit began to unravel on Thursday evening as Biarritz was about to go into lockdown. The strip of sand that will provide the backdrop for the family photo was still crammed with bathers taking their last swim. Even Macron’s close advisers had no idea about the bombshell the president (who is not a regular tweeter like Trump) was about to drop.Alarmed by the record number of fires ravaging the Amazon jungle, Macron announced that the “emergency” would be a central focus of his summit, abandoning months of careful choreography that even involves France’s most celebrated chef preparing meat for Trump and vegetarian fare for special guest Narendra Modi.Problem was he didn’t seem to have let key players in on his decision. Within two hours, his call to arms was met with a furious response from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who accused Macron of colonial posturing. Affairs relating to Brazil should not be discussed without Brazil at the table, Bolsonaro said.Read more: The Amazon Rainforest Is on Fire, and It’s Getting WorseMacron’s critics on social media pointed out that he’d used an outdated picture of an older blaze.Officials in the G-7 clan were waking up to the news along with the rest of the world. Concern about the environment is something shared by many Europeans, and the sense from officials was that they were willing to accept having the burning of the rainforest thrust onto the agenda at the last moment.A slow drip of benign responses began to come in. A spokesman for the U.K.’s Boris Johnson said the British leader would echo his call for action on the Amazon. Merkel’s spokesman backed Macron’s decision to involve the international community, siding with him against Bolsonaro.Trump, meanwhile, exchanged attacks with Beijing over trade. Markets tumbled as the president said he’d “ordered” the U.S. to disengage from China. But rather than seeking to capitalize, the French leader upped the ante.Another ShockerMaybe he took offense at the colonialist jibe, maybe it was headlines from Brazilian officials bringing up forest fires in Portugal and Siberia. Whatever it was, Macron had another shocker up his sleeve.In a terse statement from the Elysee palace, he branded Bolsonaro a liar and vowed to block the EU’s trade deal with South America’s biggest economies unless Brazil takes its environmental obligations seriously.Tearing up a summit agenda is one thing. But this was a whole other order of magnitude.The EU’s trade accord with Mercosur has been 20 years in the making, will ease tariffs on some $90 billion of annual commerce, and was Europe’s biggest riposte to Trump’s assault on the multilateral trading order. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, invited to the summit as Macron’s special guest, is set to be one of the biggest winners from the deal and invested time and political capital to get it over the line just eight weeks ago. Sanchez had no warning the announcement was coming, according to an official.In the OpenThe public slapdown in the end came from Merkel.Her spokesman told Bloomberg that the chancellor doesn’t believe shooting down the trade deal will achieve Macron’s aim of slowing deforestation in Brazil and actually contains binding commitments on climate protection. She doesn’t think threatening to block the accord is an appropriate response to what is happening in Brazil, he added.After Macron’s political maneuvering over talks with Washington, Merkel had already concluded that she couldn’t rely on France when it comes to trade. Now their split is out in the open.EU President Donald Tusk on Saturday backed Merkel’s stance, while seeking to calm the tensions."We, of course, stand by the EU-Mercosur agreement which is also about protecting the climate and environment," he said at a press conference ahead of the talks. All the same, "it is hard to imagine a harmonious process of ratification by the European countries as long as the Brazilian government allows the destruction of the green lungs of our planet, Earth."Merkel is due to land in Biarritz around 3:30 p.m. and will head straight into a bilateral meeting with her French counterpart.Johnson is seeking to divide them over Brexit. Trump is cranking up the pressure on a host of issues from trade to Iran and economic policy. Both are looking for encouragement that there are cracks in the EU’s essential alliance.Macron just handed it to them on a plate.(Updates with comment from Donald Tusk in fourth to last paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Biarritz, France at adelfs@bloomberg.net;Helene Fouquet in Biarritz, France at hfouquet1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, ;Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Robert JamesonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- South China Morning Post
Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian, known for his Twitter outbursts, is given senior foreign ministry post
China's former No 2 diplomat in Pakistan, known for taking to Twitter to defend his government in bellicose terms, has been handed a senior role in Beijing's foreign ministry.Recently updated records on the foreign ministry's website indicate that Zhao Lijian, who left his position as deputy chief of mission in Islamabad earlier this month, now serves as deputy director general of the ministry's information department.In his new role, Zhao serves directly beneath the department's newly appointed director general, Hua Chunying, and alongside fellow deputies Geng Shuang and Yu Dunhai.Both Hua and Geng regularly host ministry press conferences for domestic and international reporters, suggesting that Zhao may be in line to take on public-facing duties.One of the first Chinese diplomats to open an official account on Twitter, Zhao has used the platform prolifically during his four-year tenure at the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, tweeting over 51,000 times to his more than 200,000 followers.He has been joined on Twitter in recent weeks by other official Chinese government accounts, including that of the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai.But while others have generally used the platform as merely an additional channel through which to share official remarks in diplomatic terms, Zhao has made a name for himself for using Twitter to directly confront critics of the Chinese government, in a manner that some have compared to that of US President Donald Trump.After a BBC video documenting limits on public expressions of faith in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in June, Zhao told the broadcaster: "Don't [poke] your nose everywhere. Xinjiang is none of your business. Take care of your Brexit first!"Meanwhile, a group of 22 Western countries that had issued a letter condemning the Chinese government's mass internment of largely Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang were united by "white supremacy", Zhao charged.Zhao has also taken to Twitter to push back against the US administration's treatment of Huawei and deem the British government "shameless" for its calls for restraint from Hong Kong authorities, arguing that many British citizens were "descendants of war criminals".But arguably his most infamous moment came in July when he was branded a "racist disgrace" by a former Obama administration official after he argued that Washington did not have the right to criticise China's policies in Xinjiang because racism existed in the US."If you're in Washington DC, you know the white never go to the SW area, because it's an area for the black & Latin. There's a saying 'black in & white out', which means that as long as a black family enters, white people will quit, & price of the apartment will fall sharply," he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.You are a racist disgrace. And shockingly ignorant too. In normal times, you would be PNGed for this.Ambassador Cui, I expect better of you and your team. Please do the right thing and send him home. https://t.co/KIKanBjQ2L" Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) July 15, 2019Susan Rice, who served as president Barack Obama's national security adviser, responded via Twitter that Zhao was "a racist disgrace [and] shockingly ignorant too," and suggested that he should be declared persona non grata.Several weeks later, on August 8, Zhao announced on Twitter that his four-year tour had come to an end and that he was leaving Pakistan with a "heavy heart, because Pakistan has stolen my heart."Suggesting that he intended to use Twitter in his new role in Beijing, Zhao said he would be returning to the platform "after I settle down".This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2019 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
- Reuters
UPDATE 2-Trump challenges court ruling barring him from blocking Twitter users
President Donald Trump is challenging a federal appeals court decision that ruled he violated the U.S. Constitution by blocking people whose views he disliked from his Twitter account. Trump has more than 63 million followers on Twitter, and often uses his account to make significant announcements, including Friday when his tweets about trade with China sent U.S. stock and oil prices down sharply.
- Investor's Business Daily
Twitter Stock Shows How Swing Trading Is Different
The short-term nature of swing trading requires a different set of rules and strategies in order to manage positions. A recent trade in Twitter stock demonstrates. Stock Market Weakness Can Lead To Early Sells The last earnings report led to an 8.9% gain in Twitter (TWTR) (1). Triple-digit earnings growth the last two quarters was enough to get investors' attention....
- Bloomberg
Clarida Says Global Outlook Has Worsened: Jackson Hole Update
(Bloomberg) -- Central bankers from around the world are gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual retreat.This year’s meeting occurs against a backdrop of volatile financial markets, rising fears of recession and global trade tensions. On Friday, the trade war between the world’s biggest economies escalated further as China announced that it would levy retaliatory tariffs on another $75 billion of U.S. goods. President Donald Trump quickly tweeted that he’ll respond later in the day.Markets gyrated as the U.S.-China news unfolded and as comments emerged from Jackson Hole, headlined by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell who said the U.S. economy was in a favorable place but faced “significant risks.”Here’s a running summary of news and commentary from the gathering.Fed’s Clarida: 4:25 p.m.Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida says the U.S. economy is in a good place, but the global outlook has worsened and policy makers will take that into account when they meet next month.“We adjusted policy at our July meeting. We take our policy decisions one meeting at a time,” he tells CNBC in an interview at Jackson Hole. “But as we’ve indicated, we will do what we need to, to put in place the appropriate policies and we’ll act as appropriate to keep the economy in a good place.”“We run monetary policy for the U.S., but we have to take into account global developments,” he said. “They impact exports, they impact inflation, and we are going to factor that in.”BOE’s Carney: 3 p.m.A collapse of Brexit talks resulting in the U.K. leaving the European Union without a transition agreement would likely prompt the Bank of England to loosen monetary policy, Governor Mark Carney said in a speech at the symposium.Carney, who is a few months away from stepping down as BOE governor, also laid out a proposal for an overhaul of the global financial system that would eventually replace the dollar as a reserve currency with some form of global digital currency -- similar to Facebook Inc.’s proposed Libra.Read more about Carney’s remarks here.Choose a Rule: 12:55 p.m.Former Federal Reserve Economist and European Central Bank policy maker Athanasios Orphanides renewed the argument for central bankers to set interest rates by following a formulaic policy rule.“Monetary policy is most effective when it is formulated in a systematic manner, following a clearly communicated monetary policy rule,” Orphanides wrote in the third paper presented Friday at Jackson Hole.A long-time proponent of policy formulas, Orphanides argued that choosing a simple rule as a benchmark would help the Fed communicate its reasons for interest-rate movements and shield it from the perception that it was influenced by political pressure. That’s a timely point as the Fed has been under relentless pressure from Trump to slash rates.Orphanides, who is now an economics professor at MIT, recommended a so-called first-difference rule, which would adjust the benchmark interest rate according to changes in near-term projections for inflation and growth. He and New York Fed President John Williams co-authored a paper on the concept in 2002.World’s Central Bank: 11:55 a.m.Powell and his colleagues don’t want the Fed to be viewed as the world’s central bank, but their monetary policy has huge ripple effects on economies in Europe and Asia, according to the second paper presented Friday at Jackson Hole.University of Maryland economist Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, in a review of policy implications, found that Fed interest rate changes have “large spillover effects” on emerging markets, affecting capital flows, domestic borrowing and exchange rates.Developing countries can mitigate the impact of U.S. rate change in part by having a flexible exchange rate and by strengthening institutions to reduce corruption and ensure the rule of law, the economist wrote in the paper “U.S. Monetary Policy and International Risk Spillovers.”Riders on the Storm: 10:30 a.m.Central bankers are like “riders on the storm,” their policies buffeted by global forces beyond their control. That was the argument made in a paper by that name which was the first presented Friday at Jackson Hole.In it, economists Oscar Jorda of the San Francisco Fed and Alan Taylor of the University of California, Davis argue that central banks that ignore global interest rate trends risk generating imbalances and credit dislocations in their own economies.The research has some relevance for Fed officials today, as they struggle over what policy changes, if any, to make in response to weakening economies and falling interest rates overseas, and a rising dollar.Much of the paper deals with the so-called neutral interest rate that neither spurs nor restricts a nation’s economy.Powell Speaks: 10 a.m.Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says the U.S. economy is in a favorable place but faces “significant risks” as growth abroad slows amid trade uncertainty, keeping another rate cut on the table when officials meet next month.“We will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion, with a strong labor market and inflation near its symmetric 2% objective,” Powell said in the text of his remarks to the conference.“We have seen further evidence of a global slowdown, notably in Germany and China. Geopolitical events have been much in the news, including the growing possibility of a hard Brexit, rising tensions in Hong Kong, and the dissolution of the Italian government,” he said.Fed’s Harker: 9:45 a.m.Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker weighed in with the hawks in a Jackson Hole interview, saying lower rates wouldn’t boost the economy when the concern is a trade war.“Right now, we are where we need to be,” Harker told Bloomberg Television. “There are clearly downside risks to the economy. We would have to act as appropriate if those look like they are coming to fruition.”“If business investment is not being held back by the cost of capital, us reducing interest rates will have no effect,” he said. “What is holding you back is uncertainty around policy, particularly trade policy.”Fed’s Mester: 9 a.m.Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester says she will probably favor keeping rates on hold when policy makers gather in September, but she has an “open mind” about the argument for further cuts.“At this point, if the economy continues where it is, I would probably say we should keep things where they are, but I am very attuned to the downside risks of the economy,” Mester said in interview Friday with CNBC television.Mester isn’t a voter on the Federal Open Market Committee this year. Several of the Fed’s policy makers have voiced their resistance this week to the notion that the U.S. economy needs lower interest rates.The Cleveland official told Bloomberg’s Michael McKee Friday that China’s latest plan to impose additional tariffs against the U.S. just adds to the uncertainty surrounding businesses’ plans.“If we were ever data-dependent before, we have to be uber-data dependent now,” she said.As Mester spoke from Jackson Hole, U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his tweets pressuring the Fed. He’s repeatedly called for the central bank to slash rates more aggressively.Fed’s Kaplan: 8:40 a.m.Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, who is not an FOMC voter this year, also sounded hesitant about cutting at the next Fed meeting, set for Sept. 17-18.“Even though I am open to an adjustment either in September or the next few meetings, I prefer not to have to make an adjustment,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Friday, because it encourages risk taking.“The fulcrum or center of gravity of U.S. economic today policy is not monetary policy. It is trade uncertainty, it is probably immigration policy to some extent, it is policies that relate to improved skills training, infrastructure spending,” he said. “That is the center of gravity.”Fed’s Bullard: 8 a.m.Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Friday that the central bank needs to take out additional “insurance” in lowering interest rates, and hinted he might be willing to support a cut larger than a quarter point.“I think there will be a robust debate about 50, so I think it’s creeping on to the table here, but obviously the markets have a base case of 25 basis points,” Bullard said in a Bloomberg TV interview with Michael McKee from Jackson Hole.Bullard said the Fed needs to be cushioning against the impact of a global manufacturing slowdown and U.S. trade war with China. He compared the situation to the mid-1990s, when a Fed led by Alan Greenspan reduced rates 75 basis points to keep the expansion going.“That’s what they did in the 1990s, I don’t know where we will end up,” Bullard said.Insurance Cut: 7:30 a.m.“How much risk are we facing from the fact that we’ve got a global manufacturing contraction going on?,” Bullard asked in an earlier interview Friday with CNBC television. “There is some downside risk, and I would like to take out more insurance against the downside risks.”One of the most dovish members of the Federal Open Market committee, Bullard said low inflation and the unusual dynamic in the U.S. Treasuries market also provide policy makers justifications to cut.“The yield curve has inverted,” he said, referring to the fact that yields on longer-dated debt have fallen below yields on short-term securities. He also noted that the federal funds rate is high relative to Treasury yields. “We have one of the higher rates on the yield curve. That is not a good place to be.”\--With assistance from Vince Golle, Michael McKee, Christopher Condon, Steve Matthews and Brian Swint.To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Jackson Hole at rmiller28@bloomberg.net;Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Alister BullFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- InvestorPlace
4 China Stocks Getting Slammed as Trump Wages Currency War
Wall Street is getting hit hard on Friday after China announced overnight a new batch of trade tariffs on U.S. imports.President Donald Trump wasted no time responding, hinting on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) that he is preparing to take action to stop the U.S. dollar's rise to record highs. He added additional criticism at the Federal Reserve as well, who he believes is contributing to the problem with a reluctance to cut interest rates further. * 7 Retail Stocks to Buy on the Dip As a reminder, China responded to Trump's last salvo of import tariffs with an aggressive weakening of their currency -- which then caused the U.S. Treasury to label the country a currency manipulator. Stocks fell hard and fast this morning in response to all this. Here are four that are among the worst affected:InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Alibaba (BABA)Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), China's version of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is down nearly 4% as I write this to cut back below its 200-day and 50-day moving averages. This after stalling out near the prior high set in late July. Shares have been in a long sideways pattern since the trade war kicked off in late 2017 and look likely to revisit the late 2018 lows near $130 -- which would be worth a loss of more than 20% from here.The company will next report results on Nov. 1 before the bell. Analysts are looking for earnings of $10.64 per share. When the company last reported on Aug. 15, earnings of $12.55 beat estimates by $2.09 on a 42% rise in revenues. Luckin Coffee (LK)Luckin (NASDAQ:LK), which is China's take on Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) with a heavy emphasis on preordering and lower prices, looks set to return to its post-IPO lows as the trade war creates a drag on Chinese consumers. The company has no clear path to profitability despite impressive revenue growth as it aggressively expands its store base. Higher prices are likely needed, which undercuts the reason people are visiting in the first place. * 10 Marijuana Stocks That Could See 100% Gains, If Not More The company will next report results on Nov. 14 before the bell. Analysts are looking for a loss of 48 cents per share on revenues of $206.9 million. When the company last reported on Aug. 14, a loss of 48 cents per share missed estimates by three cents. JD.com (JD)Chinese online retailer JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) has stalled out near triple-top resistance around the $32-a-share level. Watch for another test of the 200-day average leading to a violation that could well give way to a retest of the late 2018 lows near $20. Such a move would be worth a loss of roughly a third from here.The company will next report results on Nov. 19 before the bell. Analysts are looking for earnings of $1.18 per share on revenues of $128.1 billion. When the company last reported on Aug.13 earnings of $2.30 beat estimates by $1.76 on a 22.9% rise in revenues. Petrochina (PTR)Shares of China's large energy conglomerate, Petrochina (NYSE:PTR), are in deepening trouble, falling to fresh lows today to cap a 40%+ decline off of the highs set in 2018. This violates the early 2016 lows and returns prices to levels not seen since 2009 as the last bear market was bottoming.Hayman Capital investor Kyle Bass railed against the company on Twitter this week, wondering why the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allows the company to be U.S.-listed when it owns the Pacific Bravo tanker, which is carrying Iranian oil against sanctions.As of this writing, William Roth did not hold any of the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 7 Retail Stocks to Buy on the Dip * 7 Marijuana Stocks With Critical Levels to Watch * 7 Internet of Things Stocks to Buy Now The post 4 China Stocks Getting Slammed as Trump Wages Currency War appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Bloomberg
Powell Warns of ‘Significant Risks,’ Hardening Rate-Cut Bets
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy is in a favorable place but faces “significant risks,” reinforcing bets for another interest-rate cut next month though the remarks failed to mollify President Donald Trump.“Trade policy uncertainty seems to be playing a role in the global slowdown and in weak manufacturing and capital spending in the United States,” Powell said Friday in a speech to the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, minutes after China announced it would impose additional tariffs on $75 billion of American goods.“We will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion, with a strong labor market and inflation near its symmetric 2% objective,” the chairman said.Treasury yields fell after Powell’s remarks and traders of fed funds futures extended slightly the amount of easing they expect from the U.S. central bank this year. That trend increased after Trump said he would respond to the latest Chinese tariff news, with U.S. stock prices dropping over 1%. Fed officials next meet Sept. 17-18.Powell “is trying to set the record straight,” said Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities USA. “They are aware of higher risks since July 31, and they are saying they can ease while not ringing any alarm bells.”Trump TweetsTrump, who has been repeatedly calling on the Fed to cut rates to support the economy during his trade war, immediately criticized Powell after the speech, tweeting “as usual the Fed did NOTHING.”It would be unusual for Fed officials to cut rates at Jackson Hole -- outside of a normally scheduled policy meeting -- unless there were signs of a sharp downturn or a financial panic. Trump added that the U.S. has a strong dollar and a “very weak Fed,” and said he would “work ‘brilliantly’ with both.”Citing slowing global growth and muted inflation, the Fed cut interest rates last month for the first time in more than a decade, reducing its target range by a quarter-percentage point to 2%-2.25%. Powell described the rate reduction at the time as “a mid-cycle adjustment to policy,” telling reporters on July 31 that it wasn’t the beginning of a long series of cuts.But in his remarks Friday, Powell didn’t use that characterization and noted that events since that meeting “have been eventful.”Global Risks“We have seen further evidence of a global slowdown, notably in Germany and China. Geopolitical events have been much in the news, including the growing possibility of a hard Brexit, rising tensions in Hong Kong, and the dissolution of the Italian government,” Powell said, also mentioning one of the running salvos in Trump’s trade war with China.The chairman also stressed that the Fed had a limited ability to cushion the headwinds from uncertainty stemming from the escalating trade war.“In principle, anything that affects the outlook for employment and inflation could also affect the appropriate stance of monetary policy, and that could include uncertainty about trade policy,” Powell said. “There are, however, no recent precedents to guide any policy response to the current situation.”“He certainly didn’t lean against the September ease, which the markets have priced in,” said William English, a professor at Yale University and former senior Fed economist. “If he thought they were priced in the wrong place I think he would have put in a bit more protest, and this didn’t feel to me like he was protesting.”Investors have fully priced in another quarter point reduction at next month’s meeting and Powell’s remarks suggest the committee remains on alert for risks in the economy.“We are carefully watching developments as we assess their implications for the U.S. outlook and the path of monetary policy,” Powell said.Powell’s remarks examined U.S. monetary policy since World War II. He broke the analysis into three long-run questions: Can the central bank restrain inflation? Can the central bank buffer inevitable financial excess? Can the central bank still provide stimulus and counter-cyclical policy in a time of very low interest rates?He answered the first two positively, saying that the Fed has the tools to quell inflation, while the post-crisis financial system is more resilient and monitoring has improved. Answers on the third question are a work in progress, he said.“Our economy is now in a favorable place, and I will describe how we are working to sustain these conditions in the face of significant risks we have been monitoring,” he said.Hawks vs DovesThe chairman may face opposition from some of his colleagues at next month’s meeting. The July rate cut drew two dissents in favor of holding policy steady, from Kansas City Fed chief Esther George and Boston’s Eric Rosengren, and both reiterated this week that they want to see more evidence of a U.S. slowdown before moving rates again.Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker and Cleveland’s Loretta Mester made similar arguments on Friday. “Right now, we are where we need to be,” Harker said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “There are clearly downside risks to the economy. We would have to act as appropriate if those look like they are coming to fruition.” Neither of them are voters this year on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.(Updates with Fed presidents pushing back on need for cuts in final two paragraphs.)\--With assistance from Christopher Condon.To contact the reporters on this story: Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net;Rich Miller in Washington at rmiller28@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Sarah McGregorFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
The Patrick Byrne Show Distracted From Overstock’s Woes
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s kinda, sorta funny, I suppose, that Patrick Byrne resigned Thursday as chief executive of Overstock.com Inc. a week after issuing a bizarre press release bragging about his romantic entanglement with a Russian spy while also being involved with the “deep state” and the “Men in Black.” Just as it’s kinda, sorta funny that President Donald Trump canceled a state visit to Denmark because its prime minister told him she wouldn’t discuss his “absurd” idea of selling Greenland to the U.S.Except that Byrne (like Trump) has been prone to saying and doing unhinged things since at least the mid-2000s. What’s more, as Bloomberg Opinion’s Barry Ritholtz pointed out Thursday on Twitter, “He was a terrible CEO of a not very good company.”I began paying attention to Byrne in 2005, six years after he took over an online retailer and renamed it Overstock. That year, he held the looniest conference call I’ve ever heard. He claimed that there was a vast conspiracy to drive down Overstock’s shares orchestrated by someone he called the “Sith Lord.” He wouldn’t name the Sith Lord, but described him as “one of the master criminals of the 1980s.” He titled the conspiracy “the Miscreants Ball.”(1)At the same time — and this is what caught my attention — Overstock filed a lawsuit against Gradient Analytics, a research firm, and Rocker Partners, a hedge fund run by David Rocker and Marc Cohodes — yes, the very same Marc Cohodes who was the subject of my columns this week about MiMedx Group Inc. — that specialized in short-selling. Byrne claimed in the lawsuit (as I wrote at the time) “that they were acting in concert to hurt the company and manipulate its stock price.”It wasn’t long before Byrne was including certain financial journalists in the conspiracy. When a television interviewer asked him if he was accusing Herb Greenberg,(2) the great former MarketWatch reporter, of “helping others front-run” the company’s stock, he replied, “That’s correct.” His “thesis” was that Greenberg was taking orders from Rocker.That wasn’t the worst of it. Byrne became convinced that an illegal practice called “naked short-selling”(3) was Wall Street’s dirty little secret, and he devoted himself to rooting it out and exposing it. (Barron’s once described naked short-selling, rather aptly, as “the grassy knoll of the equity markets, denounced by crackpots, devotees of penny stocks, and troubled companies eager to divert attention from their failings.”)Overstock’s director of communications, Judd Bagley, would “friend” Byrne’s critics on Facebook, then publish the names of their friends on a website, especially those friends who could serve as “evidence” of a conspiracy. (I’m one of the journalists this happened to.) Byrne started a conspiracy-minded website called Deep Capture, the purpose of which was to smear his critics, myself included.If the purpose of all this was to silence us, it worked. I wrote three columns about Byrne, and then moved on. So did most of the other journalists who had once covered him and Overstock. Rocker, the rare short-seller willing to talk to reporters on the record, stopped giving interviews. The journalist (and my friend and former co-author) Bethany McLean once told an interviewer that in effect, Byrne had won, because his tactics had caused his critics to stop writing about him.Since his Deep Capture days, Byrne has found a different means to distract people from Overstock’s lousy performance: In 2015, he announced the formation of a company that would issue a cryptocurrency called tZero. For a while, at least, it worked. Between July 2017 and January 2018, the Overstock share price went from around $20 to almost $87. But it couldn’t last. With the company’s free cash flow negative $168 million in 2018, and its net income negative $169 million,(4) the stock sank back down to earth, bottoming out at $9.40 a share in June.Yet when he finally stepped down, it wasn’t because the company was losing money, or because the tZero effort was faltering, or because, as usual, Byrne was too busy with his side ventures to focus on the company he was supposed to be running. It was because he wrote a bonkers press release.On Thursday evening, Byrne was interviewed by CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Byrne claimed that FBI agents — including James Comey! — had instructed him to “rekindle” his relationship with the Russian spy, Maria Butina. Later that evening, as Cuomo discussed the interview with another CNN host, Don Lemon, he defended Byrne. “He’s not some lunatic or something like that,” he said.Clearly, Cuomo should have had a seat on the Overstock board.(1) Byrne later told me that his Sith Lord conference call was “one of the 10 proudest moments of my life.”(2) Alas, Greenberg has since left financial journalism and now runs his own investment research firm, Pacific Square Research.(3) Don’t ask.(4) According to Bloomberg data.To contact the author of this story: Joe Nocera at jnocera3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Market Realist
Google Doesn’t Want Hong Kong Protests to Trigger YouTube Boycott
Google said yesterday that it would be shutting down 210 YouTube channels pumping out misinformation about the Hong Kong protests.
- Bloomberg
Powell Admits Fed Has No Playbook for a Trump Trade War
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t like how President Donald Trump’s trade war is impacting the U.S. economy. To make matters worse, the central bank has no playbook for how to deal with the current situation, he said in prepared remarks at the Kansas City Fed’s Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.He had no idea the starkest example would come about an hour after he delivered his speech when Trump announced he would have an afternoon response to China’s threat to impose additional tariffs on $75 billion of American goods. The stock market, which had been up after Powell spoke, immediately reversed course and was down 1.7% just before noon. So he and other Fed officials have to draw up their own plan of attack. His suggestion? More interest-rate cuts.Noticeably missing from his remarks was the phrase “mid-cycle adjustment,” which he and other officials used last month to describe their potentially one-off rate reduction. Instead, he chose to emphasize that the Fed would “act as appropriate to sustain the expansion.” Bond traders read between the lines to take that as openness to as many cuts as the data justifies. Two-year Treasury yields fell about 9 basis points, reversing Thursday’s move after a flurry of regional Fed presidents sounded hawkish and gave Powell cover to push back on market expectations.What can’t go ignored is that Powell’s speech came amid heavy fire from Trump, who has criticized the central bank for not lowering interest rates faster and sooner. The president, of course, has long been fixated on the Fed, clearly viewing it as an easy scapegoat for any economic weakness. But his derision was especially apparent this week:On Monday, he tweeted about “the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell and the Fed” and said officials should cut rates by 100 basis points. On Wednesday, he lamented that “the only problem we have is Jay Powell and the Fed. He’s like a golfer who can’t putt.” He again called for a “BIG CUT,” and then asked “WHERE IS THE FEDERAL RESERVE?” On Thursday, after seeing Germany issue negative-yielding 30-year bonds, he complained that “our Federal Reserve does not allow us to do what we must do. They put us at a disadvantage against our competition.” On Friday, just about an hour before Powell was scheduled to speak, Trump flipped to encouragement: “Now the Fed can show their stuff!” he tweeted.The symposium’s theme in 2019 is “Challenges for Monetary Policy,” though the organizers probably didn’t think the U.S. president’s Twitter feed would be such a glaring obstacle. Trump wasted little time analyzing Powell’s remarks:Then he couldn’t resist a potshot, comparing the Fed chief with President Xi Jinping of China.Powell did somewhat push back against Trump, in a telling passage about how much he and other policy makers are struggling to get their hands around his trade policy. Remember the context here — the Fed cut interest rates for the first time in more than a decade on July 31, and a day later, Trump announced additional tariffs on Chinese goods and sent markets into a tizzy. He wasted even less time on Friday, declaring on Twitter “I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon.” Here’s the central bank’s thinking about trade in its entirety:“We have much experience in addressing typical macroeconomic developments under this framework. But fitting trade policy uncertainty into this framework is a new challenge. Setting trade policy is the business of Congress and the Administration, not that of the Fed. Our assignment is to use monetary policy to foster our statutory goals. In principle, anything that affects the outlook for employment and inflation could also affect the appropriate stance of monetary policy, and that could include uncertainty about trade policy. There are, however, no recent precedents to guide any policy response to the current situation. Moreover, while monetary policy is a powerful tool that works to support consumer spending, business investment, and public confidence, it cannot provide a settled rulebook for international trade. We can, however, try to look through what may be passing events, focus on how trade developments are affecting the outlook, and adjust policy to promote our objectives.”All told, though, it comes off as rather meek, and an implicit acknowledgment that the central bank will err on the side of easing as long as trade tensions remain heated. “It will at times be appropriate for us to tilt policy one way or the other because of prominent risks,” Powell said. Further interest-rate cuts are not a consensus view. Regional Fed presidents including Boston’s Eric Rosengren, Kansas City’s Esther George, Philadelphia’s Patrick Harker, Dallas’s Robert Kaplan and Cleveland’s Loretta Mester all expressed stronger reluctance to further easy monetary policy, given their respective views of the U.S. economy.Powell is going to have to bridge the divide between that contingent and those who side more with St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. He said on Friday that he expects a “robust debate” on a half-point rate cut among the Federal Open Market Committee voters, adding that “our job is to get the yield curve uninverted.”At least for today, it’s mission accomplished. The yield curve from two to 10 years, which closed with a negative spread on Thursday for the first time since 2007, is back to positive as short-term yields fell the most on renewed expectations for persistent Fed easing. Ahead of Powell’s remarks, Kaplan commented that he was open to cutting interest rates, but he’d prefer not to. I’d wager that’s Powell’s line of thinking as well. But clearly, he feels the Trump administration’s policies have boxed him in. The path forward, as long as the U.S.-China trade war wages on, appears to be ever-lower interest rates. To contact the author of this story: Brian Chappatta at bchappatta1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Brian Chappatta is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering debt markets. He previously covered bonds for Bloomberg News. He is also a CFA charterholder.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
China Hits Back at Trump With Higher Tariffs on Soy, Autos
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. China threatened to impose additional tariffs on $75 billion of American goods including soybeans, automobiles and oil, in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s latest planned levies on Chinese imports that pushed U.S. stocks and farm commodities lower.Some of the countermeasures will take effect starting Sept. 1, while the rest will come into effect from Dec. 15, according to the announcement Friday from the Finance Ministry. This mirrors the timetable the U.S. has laid out for 10% tariffs on nearly $300 billion of Chinese shipments.An extra 5% tariff will be put on American soybeans and crude-oil imports starting next month. The resumption of a suspended extra 25% duty on U.S. cars will resume Dec. 15, with another 10% on top for some vehicles. With existing general duties on autos taken into account, the total tariff charged on U.S. made cars would be as high as 50%.China’s tariff threats take aim at the heart of Trump’s political support -- factories and farms across the Midwest and South at a time when the U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing down. Soybean prices sank to a two-week low.The move drew a sharp reaction from Trump that sent stocks tumbling further on concern the talks are falling apart. “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them,” he tweeted. “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”Among automakers, Tesla Inc. and Germany’s Daimler AG and BMW AG are the most vulnerable to the additional levies. Shares of the two German companies fell more than 2% in Frankfurt, while Tesla dropped 2.2% in New York.BMW and Daimler ship large numbers of sport utility vehicles from plants in South Carolina and Alabama to China, while Tesla doesn’t yet make its electric cars in the country. Six of the top 10 vehicles exported from the U.S. to the world’s biggest car market are from the two German brands, according to forecaster LMC Automotive.U.S. stocks dropped along with Treasury yields and oil prices. Emerging-market currencies also declined, while havens such as the yen and gold gained.The tariffs beginning in September include 10% on pork, beef, and chicken, and various other agricultural goods, while soybeans will have the extra 5% tariff on top of the existing 25%. Starting in December, wheat, sorghum, and cotton will also get a 10% tariff.While China will impose a new 5% levy on oil, there was no new tariff on liquefied natural gas.In Washington, the initial reaction from the White House was aimed at easing concerns about the fallout. “The amount of money being tariffed is not material in terms of macro growth,” Trump adviser Peter Navarro said on Fox Business Network. The retaliation will “absolutely not” slow growth, he said.China’s announcement comes as leaders from the Group of Seven nations prepare to meet in France and central bankers gather in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to discuss issues such as the global slowdown. The Chinese announcement was foreshadowed by a tweet from Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a newspaper controlled by the ruling Communist Party.China promised earlier this week that any new tariffs from the U.S. would lead to escalation and retaliation. The U.S. has said it will put 10% tariffs on some $110 billion of Chinese goods starting Sept. 1 and the same levy on another $160 billion on Dec. 15, a staggered approach aimed at ease the impact on the American economy.After Trump gave the go-ahead earlier this month for tariffs on the nearly $300 billion in Chinese imports that haven’t been hit by higher duties, China halted purchases of agricultural goods and allowed the yuan to weaken.Since then, negotiators have spoken by phone and are planning another call in coming days. People familiar with their intentions previously said that the Chinese delegation is sticking to their plan to travel to the U.S. in September for face-to-face meetings, which may offer a chance for further reprieve.The U.S. side is still hoping for that visit to happen, with Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow telling Fox Business Network that “hopefully we are still planning on having the Chinese team come here to Washington D.C. to continue the negotiations.”“I don’t want to predict, but we will see,” Kudlow said on Thursday in Washington.(Updates with Trump’s tweet in fifth paragraph. An earlier version corrected source of statement in second paragraph.)\--With assistance from Anthony Palazzo.To contact the reporters on this story: Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at flung6@bloomberg.net;James Mayger in Beijing at jmayger@bloomberg.net;Miao Han in Beijing at mhan22@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, Brendan MurrayFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Macron Opposes Mercosur Trade, Saying Brazil ‘Lied’ on Climate
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Outraged over the Amazon fires, Emmanuel Macron branded Brazil’s president a liar and threatened to block the European Union’s trade deal with the Mercosur countries as he prepares to whip the Group of Seven leaders into climate action.The French president’s office said that it has become clear that Jair Bolsonaro wasn’t serious about his commitments on tackling climate change when he spoke to world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka earlier this year."The president can only conclude that President Bolsonaro lied to him in Osaka," at the G-20, the statement said. "Under these conditions, France is opposed to the Mercosur deal."A day before he’s due to welcome G-7 leaders to Biarritz, Macron said he would make the burning of the Amazon jungle a priority at the summit. That provoked an angry response from Bolsonaro, who accused him of acting like a colonialist."The news is really worrisome, but we need to lower the temperature, there are fires in Brazil every year," Brazilian Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias told reporters in Brasilia. "There were fires in Portugal, in Siberia, there were fires all over the world and Brazil wasn’t questioning them."Trade, ClimateThe way that an environmental dispute escalated so quickly into a new front in the global trade tensions shows the growing importance of climate as a fundamental plank of geopolitics. Even before Macron’s announcement, Ireland said it could not vote for the Mercosur agreement and Finland wants the EU to consider a ban on Brazilian beef.The EU has sought to leverage the size of its market to pressure trading partners into doing more to reduce emissions and is also concerned that its companies will be undercut by rivals operating in places with looser restrictions.But the configuration of the G-7 right now will make it difficult for Macron to make a lot headway beyond some token words. Donald Trump famously ripped up last year’s communique and does not want to be cornered. U.K.’s Boris Johnson is eager to tighten his bond with the U.S. president and at odds with European allies over Brexit. Italy is mired in a messy political crisis at home and has no prime minister. Japan is unlikely to stick its neck out -- it is more concerned about the potential fallout from the U.S. trade war with China.In fact, the run-up to the G-7 was overshadowed by China whacking the U.S. with higher tariffs on soybeans, cars and oil in retaliation for Trump’s latest planned levies.And Trump himself has signaled where his priorities lie. On waking up he began tweeting against the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and China’s Xi Jinping -- not on the Amazon fires. A U.S. official said that the U.S. are deeply concerned about the impact of the fires while indicating the administration did not see it as part of the broader climate issue.The EU wrapped up 20 years of negotiations to seal an accord with South America’s leading customs union just weeks ago, in what was then seen as a major retort toTrump’s attacks on the global system of free trade. The deal could affect almost 90 billion euros ($100 billion) of goods and Brazil expects to see its economy increased by about $90 billion over the next 15 years.Officials on both sides are still fine-tuning the agreement and it still needs to be approved by EU governments before it can enter into force. A Brazilian official, with direct knowledge of the government’s position, said that the EU-Mercosur deal is not ready to be signed yet, and that while the deal could be rejected or put to one side, it could not be changed.The official added that France stood to lose a lot if the agreement didn’t go through, citing the presence of supermarket chain Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA and carmakers such as Renault SA and Peugeot SA.Another senior government official however said that France’s position is a cause of concern and that the Bolsonaro administration needed to change the narrative. There are signs that the president is already poised to do that.Speaking on Friday morning in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said the government is considering declaring a state of emergency in the region, allowing the president to deploy armed forces and extra funding to the region: “We discussed a lot of things and whatever is within our reach we will do. The problem is resources.”(Adds Johnson’s tweet.)\--With assistance from Arne Delfs, Alex Morales, Kati Pohjanpalo, Peter Flanagan, Rachel Gamarski, Mario Sergio Lima and Josh Wingrove.To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Bairritz, France at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;Simone Iglesias in Brasília at spiglesias@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Ben SillsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- IPO-Edge.com
P&G Veteran’s SPAC to Merge with Digital Marketing Agency, Renamed Blue Impact
Blank-check company Legacy Acquisition Corp. has agreed to purchase a global digital marketing company to be renamed Blue Impact Inc., clearing the way to grow organically and through M&A. Legacy, which raised $300 million almost two years ago, is led by former Procter & Gamble executive Edwin Rigaud but the new company will be […]
- Bloomberg
Europe Has Dug In Against Trump’s Iran ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump wants America’s closest allies to ratchet up the pressure on Iran. But this weekend in France he’ll find they’re still reluctant to join him.Divisions over Iran will be on full display when Trump meets his European peers at a Group of Seven meeting starting Saturday in the coastal city of Biarritz. While the agenda will focus on the global economy, the most pressing security challenge will be navigating the wreckage of Trump’s decision last year to abandon the 2015 deal constraining Tehran’s nuclear program.Even with Iran downing an American drone and being accused of a spate of tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf, European nations want to preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action they say kept a rein on Iran’s nuclear program. But they’ve failed to find a way to help Tehran get the economic benefits promised under the deal. Iran is desperate to get its oil back on world markets, but that’s a non-starter for the U.S.No compromise has emerged.The Iran debate -- and the distrust it has fueled -- reflects the strains between the U.S. and Europe in the Trump era: displeasure over his maximalist approach, umbrage over his scorn for allies and, beneath it all, wariness about his intentions. In the case of Iran, allies can’t shake the suspicion that Trump, or his more hawkish advisers, want to provoke a war, no matter his insistence otherwise.Read More: Multilateralism Is Dead. Long Live the G-7“I’ve heard several folks in Europe say, ‘Look, all of us were serving as diplomats during the Iraq War, so we’ve seen the beginnings of this movie before and we’re not going to get dragged into it again,”’ said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The Europeans will not want to side with the administration on issues that could lead to military conflict.”The president hasn’t laid the groundwork for a productive summit. He’s arriving in France on the warpath over trade, allied contributions to NATO and a self-inflicted feud with Denmark over what appeared at first to be a joke: a suggestion the U.S. buy Greenland.Trump’s best shot at winning some European support will come by working his personal rapport with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The two unconventional leaders will meet for breakfast on Sunday, and Johnson may want to straddle European backing for the JCPOA with the need to keep Trump on his side for an eventual trade deal following Brexit.A U.S. official, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, said the administration is “optimistic” that Johnson could bring the U.K. closer to the U.S. position on isolating Iran.A U.K. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pushed back on expectations that Johnson could be swayed. The new prime minister doesn’t want to rock the boat for French President Emmanuel Macron, who is the host of the G-7, the official said. The U.K. is sticking to its support for the nuclear deal.Read More: Johnson’s G-7 Goal is to Be Serious and Get Something From EveryoneBut that too has its dangers. One person familiar with the White House thinking on the matter, who also asked not to be identified, said the administration realizes it needs to be careful calibrating its attitude toward Johnson, who may be wary of being seen as too close to Trump ahead of a possible election later this year.“The president wants to give Boris Johnson a big boost -- he sees Johnson as Britain’s Trump, a like-minded model,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The challenge is Boris Johnson is winding up for an election and he’s got to walk a very fine line on what the domestic instinct is toward Trump.”U.S. officials are playing down the disagreements between Washington and European capitals, arguing that all sides agree on the threat posed by Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist groups, its development of ballistic missiles and its attacks on tanker traffic around the Strait of Hormuz.‘Tactical Disagreements’“We have had tactical disagreements but there isn’t any disagreement on end states,” Brian Hook, the State Department’s Iran envoy, told Bloomberg TV on Aug. 21. “We share the same threat assessment. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the principle driver of instability in today’s Middle East.”Anxiety is growing in Europe about a growing list of Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear accord, which the Islamic Republic had obeyed until Trump quit the deal. Angry that the Europeans haven’t been able to deliver economic benefits in defiance of Trump’s sanctions, Iran now has exceeded enriched-uranium limits set by the agreement and is threatening further violations if Europe doesn’t find a way around the American restrictions.Zarif’s DiplomacyIranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif -- who was recently sanctioned by the U.S. -- will be in France ahead of the summit on Friday to urge the Europeans to stick to the nuclear deal.According to press reports and a person familiar with Emmanuel Macron’s thinking, the French president is also circulating a proposal under which the U.S. would ease some restrictions on Iranian oil exports in exchange for the start of a diplomatic dialogue.U.S. officials say Iran would need to make far bigger concessions for them to entertain such an offer. The idea flies in the face of the administration’s approach, which is to keep ramping up its “maximum pressure” campaign, under the belief that sanctions will so ruin Iran’s economy that its leaders will have no choice but to negotiate.Two recent cases show just how different the U.S. and European approaches to Iran have become, and how wary U.S. allies are in being associated with the Trump administration’s stance.Gibraltar CourtThe U.K. rebuffed a demand from the White House to keep holding an Iranian oil tanker laden with $130 million in crude allegedly bound for Syria in Gibraltar. A court in the territory deemed it could no longer keep the ship after Iran offered assurances it wouldn’t go to Syria.Senior U.S. officials had conveyed “grave disappointment” over the decision to let the tanker go, even raising the possibility that an eventual U.S.-U.K. trade deal might be in jeopardy. The Justice Department filed a complaint aimed at blocking the ruling. But the Grace 1 -- renamed the Adrian Darya 1 -- left as planned.Even more embarrassing to the U.S. has been Europe’s shunning of the plan the Americans call Project Sentinel -- a bid to protect ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. In July, the U.K. signed up but was careful to portray its participation as a European-led initiative that was getting help from -- and not being led by -- the U.S. France and Germany flatly refused to join, leaving the U.S. with two partners: Australia and the U.A.E.“It’s absolutely necessary to keep the Gulf open, but the fact that they won’t do it tells you something about how toxic President Trump is in European politics,” said Nicholas Burns, a former senior State Department official and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. “The Europeans don’t trust that Trump will keep his word that he won’t attack Iran.”\--With assistance from Kevin Cirilli and Helene Fouquet.To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry LiebertFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
Donald Trump raises tariffs on Chinese goods after stocks tumble
Donald Trump announced on Friday night that he was increasing tariffs on almost all Chinese imports, ramping up the trade war with Beijing after triggering a sharp market sell-off earlier in the day by warning US companies to leave China. In a series of tweets after the stock market closed, Mr Trump said he was raising existing tariffs on $250bn worth of Chinese imports from 25 per cent to 30 per cent on October 1, and raising tariffs on $300bn of Chinese goods, due to start on September 1, from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.
- Bloomberg
Emmanuel Macron's Bittersweet Brexit Victory
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is barreling through Europe’s capitals with nothing concrete to say on Brexit beyond an unappealing offer of “new deal or no deal.” With Angela Merkel offering a response so cryptic that Germany was still explaining it a day later, France’s Emmanuel Macron was on hand to clarify: The European Union’s red lines, including upholding the single market and peace in Ireland, won’t shift.The French president was also sending a more subtle message to his fellow EU leaders: I told you so.It was Macron after all who predicted that the Brits would try to delay and renegotiate Brexit rather than jump over the cliff of a no-deal withdrawal back in March – something that duly happened. It was Macron who then guessed correctly that anything longer than a technical extension to that original March Brexit day would be seen by London as a chance for a do-over of the agreed deal. And it was Macron who angered his fellow member states after rejecting talk of pushing back Brexit until 2020 – a softer position supported by Merkel – in favor of an Oct. 31 deadline.The hard-Brexit antics of Johnson since he took power from Theresa May and Nigel Farage’s Brussels-baiting after his recent success in the European Parliament elections have vindicated Macron’s realism. Merkel’s “good cop” will probably have less sway at the next EU summit.Yet it’s hard to see this confirmation of Macron’s perspicacity as anything other than bittersweet. There was nothing from Johnson that promised viable alternatives to the thorny Irish backstop (the guarantee of no hard border between north and south) that would let him go home with a new deal. Failing some 11th-hour miracle, such as a successful U.K. parliamentary revolt blocking no deal and delivering an impasse-breaking general election or second referendum, Britain is on its way out. That leaves some big questions for Macron, Merkel and the rest of the EU about what they should do next.Most attention is usually given to putting out immediate economic fires. How can Brussels ease the estimated hit of losing up to 1.5% of the EU’s annual output post-Brexit, especially as recession looms on the continent? And how can Macron avoid political blowback if French fishing fleets find themselves barred from British waters and blame the Elysee Palace? The answers might involve some sticking plasters to make sure no-deal contingency plans work, more public spending to support business, and even more European Central Bank stimulus.But Brexit isn’t just about trade and money, it’s about geopolitics too. The U.K. is a nuclear power with a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, and Johnson took care to remind Macron that British helicopters were transporting French troops in Mali. Although Macron has been making enthusiastic noises about multilateral problem-solving ahead of this weekend’s G7 summit in Biarritz, a U.K. that’s shifting its focus back across the Atlantic toward Washington adds to the long list of reasons for the EU to feel isolated in a hostile world.U.S. President Donald Trump is openly anti-EU. This week he lobbed Twitter bombs at the German economy, Europe’s reliance on the NATO umbrella and ECB policy. The G7 has been disrupted by Trump in the past, and having his pal Johnson there will up the ante. Meanwhile, China is exploiting European divisions to try to deepen its presence in EU member states such as Italy.Ideally the EU would rise to the challenge of what Sciences Po Professor Zaki Laidi calls its “De Gaulle” moment – the realization that it must defend its interests alone. That requires more support for the federalist ambitions sketched out by Macron, especially from Merkel and her successor.There are glimpses of hope. France and Germany are planning to build a fighter plane together, while the continent appears to be taking a common stand against Trump’s trade threat. Christine Lagarde’s imminent coronation at the ECB gives heart to those who believe the euro zone needs to develop a common fiscal policy, rather than always depending on ineffective quantitative easing. The former Polish deputy prime minister Jacek Rostowski thinks Germany’s economic struggles will give Macron the upper hand in trying to pursue deeper ties.Nevertheless, crises have a habit of creating disunity. The combination of Brexit, the recession threat, trade spats and disputes with Italy could easily push things further apart. Macron will be perfectly aware of that.To contact the author of this story: Lionel Laurent at llaurent2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
