French government blamed as €33bn deal to create world’s third largest carmaker stalls
The proposed €33bn merger of Fiat Chrysler and Renault has collapsed after an intervention from the French government, Renault’s biggest shareholder.
Fiat Chrysler, an Italian-American company, withdrew from a 50-50 merger proposal for its French rival after a board meeting on Wednesday. A deal would have created the world’s third-largest carmaker behind Volkswagen and Toyota.
Continue reading...Officials say language classes and recreation programs for immigrant children staying in federal shelters ‘not directly necessary’
Vice President Mike Pence will meet Wednesday with top Mexican officials who are seeking to head off the administration’s threatened tariffs, the Hill reports.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard is representing his country at the talks and expected to argue Mexico is already taking steps to prevent migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Paul Manafort should not be held in solitary confinement, and nor should anyone else. Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chair, is reportedly heading for Rikers Island where he’s likely to be held in solitary while awaiting trial on New York state charges.
Yes - released from solitary.
NYT used the term solitary confinement, & that’s what I am commenting on.
“Protective custody” IS a separate practice, but does not necessarily exclude solitary. If he is in fact not being held in solitary, great. Release everyone else from it too.
Democrats are turning a president enraged at the blocking of his border wall into an unhinged beast
Donald Trump’s threats of higher import tariffs against Mexican goods can be better understood not as an escalation of his trade war with the rest of the world, but as the act of a desperate man, prepared to upset most US business leaders to achieve his aim of building a border wall with the country’s southern neighbour.
His anger, which he will bring with him on a state visit to London on Monday, is not so much with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration in Mexico City as with Congress, which has blocked the border wall, or at least restricted funding to such an extent that its completion is unlikely before the next presidential race gets under way.
Continue reading...Mexico’s president hinted on Saturday that his country could tighten migration controls in order to defuse Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican goods. Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said he expected “good results” from talks in Washington next week.
Related: 'No idea too lunatic': how Trump's shock troops attack US democracy
Continue reading...After 5% tariff announced, president tweets ‘Mexico has taken advantage of the US for decades’
Donald Trump has defended his decision to impose new tariffs on Mexico as stock markets worldwide were rattled by fears of an escalation in trade tensions.
“Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” Trump tweeted. “Because of the Dems, our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!”
Continue reading...During Donald Trump’s campaign to be president, he regularly cited China’s export subsidies as “evil”, and in his manifesto he pledged to “cut a better deal with China that helps American businesses and workers compete”.
The president turned decades of musings into a policy mission after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, handed him a book by the academics Peter Navarro and Greg Autry – Death by China – which set out to explain how China manipulated the global trade system for its own ends.
Continue reading...The US Federal Reserve snubbed Donald Trump’s call for a cut in interest rates on Wednesday as the central bank noted economic activity was still rising at “a solid rate”.
After a two-day meeting the Fed board unanimously decided to hold rates steady at a range between 2.25% and 2.5%.
Continue reading...Records obtained by Guardian show Stephen Moore reprimanded by judge for not paying alimony, child support and other debts
Stephen Moore, the economics commentator chosen by Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, was found in contempt of court after failing to pay his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony, child support and other debts.
Related: Trump’s Federal Reserve pick owes $75,000 in taxes, US government alleges
Continue reading...Australian treasury yields hit a record low in a grim portent for the economy, while the Nikkei falls 3% in wider share selloff
Shares in Asia Pacific have slumped after a key market indicator flashed an “amber warning” that the United States is heading for a recession.
Bond yields also continued to fall across the world with Australian 10-year treasury yields falling to a record low on Monday of 1.756% in what analysts see as a strong indicator of a downturn hitting the resource-rich country.
Continue reading...Central banks in spotlight amid Brexit uncertainty and growth concerns
The Bank’s reticence to raise rates has been hinted at by Gertjan Vlieghe and Silvana Tenreyro, two of the nine-member monetary policy committee.
Weaker growth prospects have come on top of concerns about Brexit, according to Martin Beck, lead UK economist at Oxford Economics, a consultancy. He expects a 9-0 vote to keep policy unchanged, saying:
The economy’s recent performance has been broadly in line with the MPC’s expectations. But public pronouncements by some committee members on downside risks have indicated a dovish shift around the pace of future rate hikes.
In light of the continued failure to get a Brexit deal through Parliament, Brexit uncertainty remains a key block on action by the MPC.
The Bank of England will also be in action later this week, with a monetary policy announcement on Thursday at midday.
Anything other than a unanimous vote to keep interest rates on hold would be a shock, for fairly obvious reasons.
Continue reading...The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel
The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
America’s first Gilded Age began in the late 19th century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and William H “the public be damned” Vanderbilt.
Continue reading...Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, we must demand that they pay their fair share
Donald Trump tells us the US economy is “absolutely booming”, the “strongest we’ve ever had” and “the greatest in the history of America”.
Well, at his Mar-a-Lago country club where the price of admission has doubled to $200,000, he is right. The economy could not be better for the top 1% and corporate America.
Continue reading...It epitomises China’s position in the global economy that a seismic warning about its health last week came from a US company: Apple. The iPhone maker cut sales forecasts, citing the unforeseen “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China – a vital growth market. At the same time the head of Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, warned his employees that “winter is coming” in the world’s second-largest economy.
If China is indeed entering an economic winter, then the chill will spread around the globe. Forty years after communist China opened its doors to trade with the west in a dash for growth, the country’s mix of free-market policies and central planning faces one of its sternest tests.
Continue reading...As US officials fly to Beijing for negotiations, the president says the Chinese ‘sort of have to’ make a deal on tariffs
Donald Trump has said China’s weakening economic growth puts the United States in a strong position as negotiators from the world’s two largest economies prepare for trade talks on Monday.
US officials are heading to Beijing this weekend for the first face-to-face talks since Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, agreed in December to a 90-day truce in the trade war as they sought to strike a deal.
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