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Capitalism: Begun the Trade War has
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  • A state report on Foxconn’s Wisconsin factory depicts a project gone far off course. The report, issued this month by Wisconsin’s Division of Executive Budget and Finance and obtained through a records request, confirms that the company has not built the enormous Gen 10.5 LCD factory specified in its contract. It also says that the building the company claims is a smaller Gen 6 LCD factory shows no signs of manufacturing LCDs in the foreseeable future and “may be better suited for demonstration purposes.”

    Foxconn is quite smart, as US planned to confiscate fully ready modern LCD factory and now all they can get is empty building.

    Sad for them.

  • 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.

  • More pain than gain: Trump’s trade war with China fails to boost US manufacturing

    A report by consulting firm Kearney found that US’ trade war against China hasn’t achieved the key objective of reversing America’s decline in manufacturing. Jobs haven’t returned to the US, it said. Statistics showed that tariffs did succeed in reducing the trade deficit with China in 2019. However, the overall US trade imbalance was bigger than ever and has continued climbing, soaring to a record $84 billion in August as US importers shifted to cheaper sources of goods from Vietnam, Mexico and other countries.

    The trade deficit with China has risen more due to the pandemic, and is currently back to where it was at the start of the Trump administration.

    “The move by the US administration to impose a 25 percent tariff on selected goods from China disrupted the global supply chain and slowed the growth of the world’s largest manufacturing site, intensifying the relationship between these top economic superpowers,” said the report.

    The goal of bringing back US factory production has also not been achieved. Job growth in manufacturing started to slow in July 2018, and manufacturing production peaked in December 2018.

    By early 2020, even before the pandemic reached the United States, manufacturing job development had stalled out, with factories cutting staff.

    Meanwhile, President Trump’s trade advisers argue the tariffs succeeded in forcing Beijing to a phase one trade deal, with the Chinese government having agreed to buy more US goods. They also say that tariffs, which remain on about $370 billion in Chinese goods annually, will over time force China to end unfair practices and help rebuild the US manufacturing base.
  • 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.
  • According to the Financial Times, Huawei is about to enter domestic silicon production with its partner company Shanghai IC R&D. And a big note here is that the manufacturing facility will not use any US technology. The production is allegedly going to start as soon as the end of this year, and the first process that will come out the door will be a rather outdated 45 nm node. The company is expecting to move on to a more advanced 28 nm node by the end of next year. While the capacities are unknown, we can assume that it will be enough for the company's purposes. With this move, Huawei will be 100% independent from any US influence and will own the complete vector of software and hardware, that is a custom made design by the company.

  • 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.

  • Brazil’s top four telecom companies have decide not to meet with a visiting senior U.S. official who has advocated excluding China’s Huawei Technologies from the Brazilian 5G equipment market, an industry source said on Friday. The carriers declined a U.S. embassy invitation to meet on Monday in Sao Paulo with Keith Krach, U.S. under secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, the person in contact with telecom sector executives said.

    “This invitation is not compatible with free-market choices that we are used to. We should be able to freely make our best financial decisions,” the source said, requesting anonymity. The invitation from U.S. ambassador Todd Chapman was first reported by Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, which together with the Valor Economico business daily said the companies preferred not to attend.

    Telefonica Brasil SA, Grupo Oi SA, TIM Participações SA, controlled by Telecom Italia SpA and Claro, owned by Mexico’s America Movil, each control between 19% and 29% of Brazil’s wireless market. They already use Huawei equipment in preparation for the auctioning of spectrum concessions next year in Brazil and do not support a ban on Huawei sought by the U.S. government.
  • 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.

  • WASHINGTON—The Commerce Department said Thursday it wouldn’t enforce its order that would have effectively forced the Chinese-owned TikTok video-sharing app to shut down, in the latest sign of trouble for the Trump administration’s efforts to turn it into a U.S. company.

    The Commerce Department’s action delayed implementation of an order, set to take effect on Thursday, that would have barred companies from providing internet-hosting or content-delivery services to TikTok—moves that would effectively make it inoperable
  • 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.”
  • @jleo

    China, Australia, Japan and 12 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have formed the world's largest free trade zone. The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the online summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Reuters reports.

    Yes and it proves that China is now designated leader of globalist corporatism empire.

  • 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.
  • Axios' Jonathan Swan reports that in Trump's final weeks in office the president plans to unveil a series of "hardline policies" on China with the ultimate aim of making it "politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course."

    "He'll try to make it politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course as China acts aggressively from India to Hong Kong to Taiwan, and the pandemic triggers a second global wave of shutdowns."

    Finally.

  • 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

  • China will increase duties on the export of Australian wines from November 28. They will be from 107 to 212 percent, writes CNN. Beijing decided to take revenge on the trading partner for the fact that Australia in 2018 did not allow Huawei to install 5G networks.

  • 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.

  • Reuters, quoting an editorial via the government-backed China Daily, said it viewed "worrisome signs" Washington's decision to limit visitor visas for members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families.

    "Even if the incoming administration has any intention of easing the tensions that have been sown, and continue being sown, some damage is simply beyond repair, as the sitting U.S. president intends," the paper added.

    Issue is that we now have idealists running both countries. And it is extreme danger. As constantly state how they can overcome objective things that result in the trade wars.

  • 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.

  • WASHINGTON — American imports from China are surging as the year draws to a close, fueled by stay-at-home shoppers who are snapping up Chinese-made furniture and appliances, along with Barbie Dream Houses and bicycles for the holidays.

    The surge in imports is another byproduct of the coronavirus, with Americans channeling money they might have spent on vacations, movies and restaurant dining to household items like new lighting for home offices, workout equipment for basement gyms, and toys to keep their children entertained.

    That has been a boon for China, the world’s largest manufacturer of many of those goods. In November, China reported a record trade surplus of $75.43 billion, propelled by an unexpected 21.1 percent surge in exports compared with the same month last year. Leading the jump were exports to the United States, which climbed 46.1 percent to $51.98 billion, also a record.

    That surge has defied the expectations of American politicians of both parties, who earlier this year predicted that the pandemic, which began in China, would be a moment for reducing trade with that country and finally bringing factories back to the United States.

    Despite the shipping disruptions, some companies that have kept their production in China throughout Mr. Trump’s trade wars are now feeling vindicated.

    Mr. ( Jay) Foreman ( CEO of the toy company Basic Fun!,) said he considered moving some operations to Vietnam or India, like many toymakers did amid the trade wars last year, but “staying in China ended up to be the best move.”

    “China still has the best production supply chain of anybody in the world, and as it turned out, they were able to tackle the pandemic faster and more efficiently than anybody else,” he said. “China certainly has tested the boundaries and proven that they can weather the storm, as great as a storm as we’ve seen in a hundred years.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/business/economy/us-china-trade-covid.html?referringSource=articleShare

  • "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.

  • DJI — one of the largest and most popular drone companies in the world — has been added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List, designating the Chinese company as a national security concern and banning US-based companies from exporting technology to the company.

    Import banning to US is expected to happen in January, and this can also touch service and replacement parts.

  • 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.

  • “We will not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “Between SMIC’s relationships of concern with the military industrial complex, China’s aggressive application of military civil fusion mandates and state-directed subsidies, SMIC perfectly illustrates the risks of China’s leverage of U.S. technology to support its military modernization.”

    And Chinese officials tried to offer various things to at least delay attack on SMIC.

  • This is satire, like The Onion:

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

    image

    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

  • The Department of Homeland Security has today published a report saying US companies should avoid “data services and equipment” from companies in China. The 15-page report says that businesses are exposing “themselves and their customers to heightened risk” when dealing with the People’s Republic. That includes sharing data flows to servers and companies in the country, as well as using devices created by companies with “an ownership nexus in the PRC.”

    https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/20_1222_data-security-business-advisory.pdf

    Materialism rules and capitalism kills.