More "progress" for Huawei

Italy has prevented telecoms group Fastweb from signing a deal for Huawei [HWT.UL] to supply equipment for its 5G core network, three sources close to the matter said, the clearest sign yet Rome is adopting a tougher stance against the Chinese group.

The decision, made at a cabinet meeting late on Thursday, marks the first time Italy has vetoed a supply deal over 5G core networks with Huawei.

Visiting Italy in September, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Chinese mobile telecoms technology as a threat to Italy’s national security.

and

Bulgaria and the United States signed on Friday a declaration on security of next generation 5G mobile telecoms networks, which should ensure protected and clean communications, officials said on Friday.

Bulgaria has joined the U.S. State Department’s Clean Network initiative, which says it seeks to eliminate “long-term threats to data privacy, security, and human rights posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party”.

“Bulgaria is in a good company. As a member of the NATO Alliance it now joins 27 of the 30 NATO member states as a member of the Clean Network”, said Keith Krach, U.S. undersecretary for economic affairs in a video released by the Bulgarian government from the signing.

Perhaps the most telling verdict on the trade war for this president who regards the stock market as the ultimate judge of his performance comes from a study by economists at the New York Federal Reserve and Columbia University. They estimate that the trade war lowered the market capitalisation of US listed companies by $1.7tn, equivalent to a 6 per cent fall in the value of the S&P 500 constituents. That reflects how new tariff announcements reduced profit expectations at exposed firms. The study found no beneficial effects for firms receiving tariff protection.

The reality is that Chinese retaliation has wreaked havoc with US exports. As Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark note in a paper for the Brookings Institution, US tariffs forced American companies to accept lower profit margins, cut wages and jobs for US workers and raise prices for American consumers. While the bilateral trade deficit with China has shrunk, they add, the overall trade deficit has not come down because US tariffs on China diverted trade flows, causing US deficits with Europe, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to increase as a result.

If the performance of US equities has been remarkable despite trade wars and the pandemic, it is down to ultra loose policy and high performing Big Tech, not mainstream business. Note, too, that tariffs have not delivered much revenue to the US Treasury because the government has had to distribute most of the money in subsidies to placate angry farmers over lost exports to China.

Huawei created 224,300 jobs in Europe in 2019, and paid taxes totaling € 6.6 billion.During the same period, Huawei's contribution to European GDP is estimated at € 16.4 billion.

Small welcome from EU

The European Union will slap tariffs on up to $4 billion worth of U.S. products Monday, after what it described as a “lack of progress” from America on resolving a long-standing dispute over aircraft subsidies.

The EU and the U.S. have been at odds over the issue since 2006. The World Trade Organization agreed last year that the EU did not follow best trade practices when granting aid to Airbus. In light of that decision, the U.S. imposed duties on $7.5 billion of imported goods from Europe.

Fifteen Asia-Pacific nations including China and Japan plan to sign the world’s biggest free trade deal this weekend. The FTA will cut tariffs, strengthen supply chains with common rules of origin, and codify new e-commerce rules. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to be announced at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, which Vietnam is hosting virtually. It will involve the ten member states of the ASEAN bloc – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – as well as their trade partners Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

The new economic bloc will thus represent around a third of the world’s gross domestic product and population. It will become the first-ever free trade agreement to include China, Japan, and South Korea – Asia’s first, second and fourth-largest economies. One of the original partners, India, said last November that it would not participate in the negotiations due to concern that opening up its market would cause its trade deficit with China to grow. Malaysian Trade Minister Azmin Ali, who told reporters the deal would be signed on Sunday, called it the culmination of “eight years of negotiating with blood, sweat and tears.”

First proposed in 2011, RCEP will eliminate as much as 90 percent of the tariffs on imports between its signatories within 20 years, and the deal will come into effect by early as next year. It will also establish common rules for e-commerce, trade, and intellectual property.

“China has pulled off a diplomatic coup in dragging RCEP over the line,” Shaun Roache, Asia-Pacific chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, told Bloomberg. “While RCEP is shallow, at least compared to TPP, it is broad, covering many economies and goods, and this is a rarity in these more protectionist times.”

China’s Premier Li Keqiang told the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Hanoi on Friday morning that East Asian leaders would witness the approval of RCEP “shortly.” He said via a webcast that “The signing of RCEP will send a clear, strong, positive signal for advancing regional integration and economic globalization.”

China-Africa relations: Creating the World's largest free-trade zone

China has announced that it will help to finance the development of an Africa-wide free-trade area, which on completion will be the world's largest, spanning 55 nations with a combined GDP of US$3.4 trillion and about 1.3 billion consumers. Speaking at an event to mark the 20th anniversary of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing welcomed the development of the African Continental Free-Trade Area (AfCFTA) and "will provide cash assistance and capacity-building training to its secretariat."

China would also continue to invest in infrastructure and industrial projects in Africa via its Belt and Road Initiative, and open up its market of 1.4 billion consumers to African products, he told the more than 150 guests, including several African ambassadors to China, who attended the event in Beijing. China and Africa needed to deepen free-trade cooperation and improve the connectivity of industrial and supply chains so that "Africa can better access the vast China market and join the international economic circulation," Wang said.

The free-trade area, which has its headquarters in the Ghanaian capital Accra, is expected to come into effect next year, after being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. All but one of the 55 members of the African Union ― Eritrea ― have signed the deal, while 30 have also ratified it. The country is, however, Africa's largest trading partner, with two-way trade hitting US$208.7 billion in 2019, according to official figures from Beijing.

Chinese firms have also built dozens of economic cooperation zones and industrial estates across Africa, Wang said. Since the creation of the FOCAC, China had helped build and finance more than 6,000km (3,700 miles) of railways, a similar amount of roads, nearly 20 ports, more than 80 large-scale power plants, 130-plus medical facilities, 45 stadiums and about 170 schools, Wang said. Beijing is also funding the construction of the new Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. According to figures from the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, Beijing advanced US$148 billion worth of loans to Africa between 2000 and 2018.

Apple knows that good things will come to an end soon

Foxconn is building assembly lines for Apple's iPad tablet and MacBook laptop at its plant in Vietnam's northeastern Bac Giang province, to come online in the first half of 2021, the person said, declining to be identified as the plan was private.

The lines will also take some production from China, the person said, without elaborating how much production would shift.

"The move was requested by Apple," the person said. "It wants to diversify production following the trade war." -Reuters

French authorities are requiring large tech companies to pay a digital tax of 3% of the revenue generated in the country. According to reports, Google, Facebook and Amazon have already received relevant notifications.

Capitalist countries love each other more and more.

Travel visas for all members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their families have been greatly restricted to unprecedented levels.

And it is good thing, time to grow real communist party inside US.

"I urge all NATO allies and Turkey and other allies to look into whether there are ways to find a positive solution," Jens Stoltenberg told a joint news conference with Prime Minister of Montenegro Zdravko Krivokapic in Brussels.

"I regret that we are in a situation where NATO allies have to impose sanctions on each other."

Remember - such idealists always made huge wars with millions of innocent people dead.

The US Department of Commerce intends to add up to 80 companies to its "black" Entity List, almost all of which are Chinese, according to Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. Among these companies is SMIC, China's leading semiconductor IC contract manufacturer. The move will effectively limit SMIC's ability to buy key components from US suppliers to build high-end chipsets.

China's Foreign Ministry said that if this report turns out to be true, the blacklisting would be evidence of US harassment of Chinese companies and that Beijing will continue to take "necessary measures" to protect their rights. “We urge the United States to end misguided policies and unjustified harassment of foreign companies,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday.

Problem of Chinese opportunists is that they are idealists and US act purely out of their materialistic interests.

This is satire, like The Onion:

TRADE WARS: Kmart Australia Retaliates By Removing All Chinese-Made Goods From Its Shelves

Kmart says it will do its bit to support Australia in the escalating trade war with China, by committing to remove all Chinese-made items from its stores. A spokesperson for the company said it was an important symbolic gesture. “It’s something small we can do to show our support. We started by removing any clothing made in China, then homewares, sheets and towels, electrical appliances, toys, underwear, maternity wear, belts, hats and sporting goods. Then we moved to Christmas decorations, books, nappies, pet items, handbags, footwear, stationery, swimwear and sleepwear.

“From there it was just a matter of removing the shelves, the light globes, the flooring, the shopping trolleys and the curtains on the change rooms and we were done. You can hardly notice a difference at all”. He said there was still a great range of items in store. “All of the self-serve checkouts were made in Japan. So come in and take a look”. Kmart rejected claims it had put all of its eggs in one basket. “Our baskets are actually made in China, so no, we haven’t put anything in a basket”. Other retailers such as Target, Big W and Bunnings are expected to make similar announcements soon.

https://www.theshovel.com.au/2020/12/17/trade-wars-kmart-australia-retaliates-by-removing-all-chinese-made-goods-from-its-shelves/?fbclid=IwAR2N6_kuOS307nEg9vWZhFh5Ta3y3BndpqjP4ene0nsyOJdSSUAbcoGUZew