trade war

In the escalating US-China Trade war, US President Donald Trump announced 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, which are to come into effect on September 24th.
Nearly 200 pages long, the list covers almost 6,000 individual items. Some are quite common, such as coal, printing ink, pneumatic tires and spark plugs. Others are more exotic, from live eels and frogs’ legs to rail locomotives and chandeliers.
This comes in addition to tariffs on approximately $53 billion of Chinese goods. China retaliated with tariffs on $53 billion of US goods.

Let's not go over the book and the Op-Ed again. We've heard enough about that, right? And no need to discuss Obama's speech again either, the two that most definitely did not cause Señor T to fall asleep. He'll probably be up all night worrying about the one Obama gave in Orange County today.

BEIJING – The United States’ ongoing attempts to wage a trade war on China will likely fail in terms of scuttling the growing East Asian economy’s hopes to improve its manufacturing base, yet many fear that the ongoing trade war between the two will derail world economic growth and ultimately harm all parties involved.
Such has been the conclusion of global commentators who watched this week as global share prices hit a slump Friday, marking their worst week in about six months.

Trump is a bloated, ugly, hated, unhealthy and very stupid man. Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, is the opposite. Trump burns with jealous rage ever since his Ivanka had the hots for Trudeau when he visited the White House last year. That's all pretty sick. Sicker yet is that Trump allows his neurosis to dictate a negative turn in American policy towards our closest ally.

Friday was a bad day on Wall Street-- and on stock exchanges around the world. Why? After all, Marco Rubio, who once said that Trump was so mentally unstable he couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear launch codes, has now reminded fellow Republicans that "he’s had the nuclear codes for a year and a half, and we’ve been all right." So what could have roiled the markets so badly?

Tourism is up all over the world-- up 8% to quantify it. But not in Trumpland. My pal Roland and I travel a lot and he wants to go to exciting, adventurous places, and that often happens to mean places with unstable and even fascist governments. He's always trying to drag me back to Israel, Egypt and Turkey, places we've enjoyed but that I don't want to go to until their political situations are in better shape.

China is putting its foot down over American meddling in its affairs, and is warning of a military response to the stationing of US military forces at a covert embassy in Taiwan. China consider Taiwan to be Chinese, and hence, no embassy could legitimately exist there. For this reason, if the US positions military on Chinese soil without permission from the Chinese government, the Chinese government is declaring that it will view this as an invasion, and respond accordingly.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday a plan to spend $113 million on infrastructure, energy, and technology in the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The plan comes about at a time when China is perceived as a threat to America’s trade hegemony, while a burgeoning trade war between China and the US is waging, and when Beijing is investing large amounts of capital and diplomatic influence to eminently position itself.

In the face of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs contest with Mexico, the Mexicans are on walkabout to find alternative suppliers of goods that Mexico imports from the USA. One of those goods happens to be wheat, and as Mexico partially replaces America as one of its leading suppliers, the US will find itself sitting on a surplus supply and will possess that much less market domination. America has been Mexico’s leading wheat supplier since NAFTA in 1994.

The G20 represents about 80% of the world’s agricultural trade. At the recent summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, affirmed their commitment to free and open trade, a rules based system, and a multilateral order, and confirmed the joint opposition to unnecessary tariffs, trade wars, and unilateral protectionism. It even praised the WTO, which Trump has a major issue with. Essentially, it was a meeting of countries to agree that they don’t agree with Trump’s manner of doing business.