Category Archives: Global economy

China confirms ‘phase one’ trade deal with US

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  • Beijing says deal includes rollback of tariffs in phases
  • Trump hails ‘amazing deal for all’

China and the US have reached an initial deal to resolve a bruising trade war between the two countries, according to statements from both sides.

China’s vice-commerce minister Wang Shouwen said in a late night briefing on Friday that the US had agreed to cancel some of its existing tariffs on Chinese goods, while Donald Trump tweeted that the two countries had agreed to a “very large Phase One Deal”.

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China steps in as Zambia runs out of loan options

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Southern Africa’s third largest economy is a textbook example of the increasing debt facing a fast-growing continent

Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, was having a power cut, so the only light in the restaurant was from Fumba Chama’s mobile phone. The rapper, better known as PilAto, had just finished uploading a new track to Twitter. The bitter-sweet lyrics (in Bemba) of Yama Chinese describe the concerns of many Zambians: “They put on smart suits and fly to China to sell our country. The roads belong to China. The hotels are for the Chinese. The chicken farms are Chinese. Even the brickworks are Chinese.”

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Donald Trump calls for World Bank to halt all China lending

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President says China has plenty of money amid market jitters about trade talks and Beijing vow to be ‘strong backup’ for Hong Kong police

Donald Trump has called for the World Bank to stop lending money to China, a day after the institution adopted a lending plan to Beijing despite Washington’s objections.

The World Bank on Thursday adopted a plan to aid China with $1bn to $1.5bn in low-interest loans annually until 2025. The plan called for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8bn.

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UK growth will dip to 1% even if no-deal Brexit avoided, warns OECD

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Prospect of crashing out of EU leaves UK more exposed to global financial risks, thinktank says

The UK’s GDP growth rate will slip to 1% next year even if a no-deal Brexit is avoided, according to the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation.

The OECD said the economy would slow down from growth of 1.2% this year if parliament passes Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal before the 31 January deadline, before returning to 1.2% in 2021.

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Paul Keating’s speech on Australia’s China policy – full text | Paul Keating

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Australia can’t go on downplaying the largest economic shift in world history. Read the former PM’s speech in full

Taking some longer view of the strategic scenery, I have come to some key beliefs about the changes that are taking place globally.

The international system is fundamentally anarchic in structure. Two world wars in a century and Vietnam, Iraq, Syria gives the evidence of that. We should not confuse the relative peace of the last 30 years with the anarchy which lies latent.

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US-China trade war: hopes of deal rise after partial easing of tariffs

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IMF says deal to alleviate trade tensions could persuade it to revise up growth forecasts

China has raised hopes that a deal can be reached to end its trade war with the US after agreeing with Washington to roll back some tariffs.

The prospect of an agreement sent stock markets soaring to all-time highs and prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to say a deal easing trade tensions between the US and China could persuade its officials to revise up forecasts for global growth next year.

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World’s largest trade deal RCEP faces delay as India pushes back against China

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Sixteen-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will cover half the planet’s people

The world’s largest trade deal is unlikely to be signed this year, with a draft statement from south-east Asian leaders suggesting it will be delayed until 2020, despite China’s desire to bring it into operation as soon as possible as a counterweight to its debilitating tariff war with the US.

The 16-country Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – known as the RCEP – would be the world’s largest when operational, spanning India to New Zealand, including 30% of global GDP and half of the world’s people.

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China warns US: criticism of Uighur detentions is not ‘helpful’ for trade talks

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Beijing voices anger over ‘gross interference’ after 23 countries criticise arbitrary detentions in Xinjiang

China’s UN envoy has sounded a warning note over trade talks with Washington after the US joined 22 other countries at the UN in criticising Beijing over the detention of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.

China has been widely condemned for setting up internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centres” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills. The United Nations says at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.

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It’s time to boycott any company doing business in Xinjiang | Michael Caster

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Forced labour in China’s internment camps taints the supply chains of many western companies. We need to take action

Any western company doing business in Xinjiang should consider their supply chains tainted by forced labour drawn from internment camps. Hardly a drop in the ocean of the vast global economy, this involves companies such as Ikea, H&M, Volkswagen and Siemens.

This month, the United States banned the import of products made by a firm in Xinjiang over its use of forced labour. It also blacklisted 28 Chinese entities for their role in the repression of Uighurs and issued visa restrictions on key Chinese officials. Following suit, two major Australian companies have now also announced they are ending partnership with their cotton supplier in Xinjiang.

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China overtakes US in rankings of world’s richest people

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Credit Suisse survey shows Brexit effect has reduced number of UK millionaires by 27,000

The number of wealthy Chinese people has overtaken the number of rich Americans for the first time, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

The bank’s annual wealth survey found there were 100 million Chinese people among the world’s top 10% of richest people, compared with 99 million in the US.

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US delays China tariff increase as Trump claims ‘substantial’ deal

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  • US had planned to raise tariffs on $250bn of goods to 30%
  • Trump: ‘All would like to see something significant happen!’

Donald Trump announced a “very substantial phase one deal” to solve the long-running trade dispute with China.

After a two-day meeting in Washington between US and Chinese officials on Friday Trump announced a delay on plans to raise tariffs on $250bn worth of goods to 30% on 15 October.

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Former world leaders warn US-China trade dispute could lead to new cold war

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Kevin Rudd is among a coalition of former leaders who have urged the US and China to settle their differences

The ongoing trade war between the US and China, with its associated decoupling of the two powerhouse economies, was a step in the direction of a new cold war, a coalition of former world leaders has warned.

Writing on behalf of the global leadership foundation in an opinion piece published in the New York Times overnight, former prime ministers Kevin Rudd of Australia, Helen Clark of New Zealand and Carl Bildt of Sweden have urged presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to end their trade dispute for the sake of the world at large.

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Trump’s trade tactics imperil the jobs of those who might vote for his second term

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The only tool he has to placate US consumers is successive interest rate cuts – but the whole world is playing at that game

Donald Trump’s cunning plan to make America great again by launching a trade war with China has officially backfired. Last week, a keenly watched measure of US manufacturing showed firms cutting back on production and jobs at a rate not seen since 2009. Recession warning lights are flashing and the outlook seems a world away from the cheery one presented by the president when he entered the White House in 2017.

It is quite something for a president to impose a trade policy that weighs heavily on parts of a crucial sector for the US economy – and it’s a bizarre tactic given that the votes of manufacturing workers delivered him his first term in office.

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‘Tone deaf’ ads use slave ship images to promote UK sea-going sector

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Campaign accused of ignoring colonial abuses when setting out maritime industries’ future

Historians and academics have labelled a new government campaign “tone deaf” and “historically illiterate” for using images of ships used for slavery and colonisation to promote Britain’s maritime sector.

The UK has a long history with commercial shipping, reaching as far back as 1700 ⚓️
 
Our #Maritime2050 plan maps out the next 30 years of innovation. Find out more https://t.co/VqYPNw300C #LISW19 pic.twitter.com/0Olw3gk2F8

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US and China begin imposing new tariffs as trade war escalates

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Chinese exports worth $125bn will face new taxes from 1 September, while China places levy on oil as agreement becomes more distant

China and the United States have begun imposing additional tariffs on each other’s goods in the latest escalation of their bruising trade war that has sent shockwaves through the global economy.

A new round of tariffs took effect from 0401 GMT on Sunday, with Beijing’s levy of 5% on US crude oil marking the first time the fuel has been targeted since the world’s two largest economies started their trade war more than a year ago.

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The IMF is hurting countries it claims to help | Mark Weisbrot

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The fund browbeats poor countries into accepting neoliberal measures that exacerbate inequality and economic distress

When people think of the damage that wealthy countries – typically led by the US and its allies – cause to people in the rest of the world, they probably think of warfare. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from the 2003 invasion, and then many more as the region became inflamed.

Related: Brexit: EU ‘would block trade deal if Britain reneged on bill’

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Shares across Asia fall sharply amid US-Chinese trade tensions

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Investors seek safe havens such as US treasuries and gold as the superpower standoff shows no sign of being resolved

Shares in Australia and across Asia Pacific have fallen sharply amid a new flare-up of US-Chinese trade tensions.

Despite a senior Chinese leader saying Beijing wanted to resolve the dispute with “calm negotiations”, indices were deep in the red on Monday.

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The west takes its eyes off Africa at its peril | Larry Elliott

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The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bomb

Time was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.

In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a bigger picture. There was the occasional financial panic, but the G7 thought the problems of economic management had largely been solved and all that was needed was a bit of tinkering by technocratic central bankers.

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Macron hopes to convince G7 leaders to halt trade war and heal divisions

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French president Emmanuel Macron has said he hopes to convince world leaders to pull back from trade war and heal growing divisions at the G7 summit in Biarritz, despite signs that will be a daunting task.

Related: Boris Johnson prepares for Biarritz balancing act with Donald Trump

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Here are the reasons for Trump’s economic war with China

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On Friday the US president ‘hereby ordered’ companies to halt business with China, among other attacks – how did we get here?

Even by Donald Trump’s standards his Twitter rant attacking China on Friday was extraordinary. In a series of outbursts Trump “hereby ordered” US companies to stop doing business with China, accused the country of killing 100,000 Americans a year with imported fentanyl and stealing hundred of billions in intellectual property.

The attack marked a new low in Sino-US relations and looks certain to escalate a trade war already worrying investors, manufacturers and economists who are concerned that the dispute between the two economic superpowers could trigger a recession.

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