Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 19 June 2018
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, published Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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​Global
- Chinese markets plunge on Trump’s newest tariff threat: Shanghai down 3.8%, Shenzhen falls 5.8% (CNBC) Chinese markets led losses in Asia on Tuesday, with major markets in the region closing sharply lower after U.S. President Donald Trump fired a fresh salvo in the ongoing trade spat between the U.S. and China. (See more detail under China, below.) The dollar index was down 0.2% to 94.646. Brent crude futures were lower by 0.98% at $74.60 per barrel and U.S. crude futures dropped 1.08% to trade at $65.14. Spot gold was up 0.3% at $1,281.45 an ounce by 0046 GMT.
- Inflation Forecasts (The Daily Shot) These charts show inflation forecasts for the US, the UK, Japan, and the Eurozone. These forecasts do not see increased inflation on the horizon.
U.S.
- U.S. futures fell on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump requested for $200 billion in Chinese goods be identified for potential additional tariffs.
- The implied open for the Dow Jones industrial average was more than 220 points to the downside as of 12:03 a.m. ET.
- U.S. stocks closed moderately lower on Monday amid trade jitters.
- Judge strikes down Kansas voter ID law, orders Kobach take legal classes (The Hill) A federal judge on Monday permanently struck down Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship voter registration law, handing down a blistering ruling against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the country’s most vocal advocates of voter-ID laws. In the 118-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson wrote that the state’s requirement that voters show proof of citizenship during registration violated both the Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act. Robinson struck down the stringent law, and ordered Kobach to take six additional hours of continuing legal education that “pertain to federal or Kansas civil rules of procedure or evidence.” Judge Robinson was appointed by George W. Bush in 2001.
- Quiz: How well can you tell factual from opinion statements? (Pew Research Center) Almost 3/4 of those taking the survey could not correctly identify all 5 factual statements presented as being factual. And 65% could not successfully identify all 5 opinion statements as opinions. No wonder the country is in a mess.
- More than 60% of voters oppose Trump administration’s family separation policy, poll says (CNBC)
- American voters broadly oppose the Trump administration’s policy to separate families illegally crossing U.S. borders, according to a Quinnipiac poll.
- The survey underscores the political backlash the White House faces for the practice.
- 55% of Republicans support the policy.
- Trump has so far resisted calls to abandon the policy.
- Migrant parents torn from children: ‘We came because we didn’t want to be killed’ (The Guardian) Parents tell a Texas court their reasons for coming to the US as families are divided at the US border.
- U.S. Treasury Ownership (The Daily Shot) This chart shows the holders of Treasuries (across maturities). The title is misleading – foreigners actually own 37% of Treasuries. The Fed owns about 14% and private domestic interests own the remaining 49%. So domestic ownership of U.S. Treasuries is almost 50% greater than foreign ownership. This data does not include Treasuries owned by the federal government.
EU
- Sharp fall in number of people seeking asylum in EU (The Guardian) Fewer than 730,000 applications were made in 2017, a 44% drop from the 1.3 million made in 2016.
UK
- EU’s ‘No Deal’ Brexit Warning on the Table (Bloomberg) The European Union’s 27 remaining leaders may warn the U.K. that it faces crashing out of the bloc without a deal and call for contingency preparations, as an update due from the Brexit negotiators is set to highlight the limited progress made since March.
With Brexit negotiations slowly meandering toward the end of the latest three-month period as lawmakers in London bicker over the course the U.K. government should take, diplomats from the EU’s 27 other countries are now seriously considering whether a statement following a summit next week should say that “no deal” is a real proposition, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Israel
- Israel indicts former cabinet minister on Iran spying charges (The Guardian) Gonen Segev, former energy and infrastructure minister in the 1990s, allegedly met Iranian ‘operators’ in hotels and apartments around world.
Iraq
- I Fought Against Muqtada al-Sadr. Now He’s Iraq’s Best Hope. (Foreign Policy) The Muqtada al-Sadr of 2018, whose Sairun coalition won the most seats in this recent Iraq parliamentary election, is not the Muqtada al-Sadr of 2004 – the man who once directed his Mahdi militias to fight U.S. forces in Najaf and Baghdad.
While Sadr may have acted counter to U.S. interests in the past, he is now more aligned with Western attempts to reign in Iranian influence and Sunni extremism. Sadr has, in his view, always been a pragmatist. But his pragmatic approach went from trying to change the situation in Iraq through physical violence (2003 to 2008) to understanding the power of politics and civic actions (2011 to 2018). Today, Sadr understands the need for coalition support to help bolster Iraq’s security forces, thereby preventing another collapse that allows an extremist group like the Islamic State to emerge.
India
- India Joins the Tariff War: The Party is Just Starting! (Mish Talk) In response to Trump’s tariffs on steel, India will put tariffs on Harley motorcycles, lentils, and almonds.
- Nobody’s Protecting India’s Bravest Journalists (Foreign Policy) Indian journalists are increasingly at risk from fanatics, criminals, and online mobs – and the government is doing barely anything to protect them. One of the reasons is that these journalists are often reporting on the corruption of those government officials.
Taiwan
- Japanese airlines rename ‘Taiwan’ as ‘China Taiwan’ on websites (The Guardian) Japan’s two largest airlines have changed “Taiwan” to “China Taiwan” on their Chinese-language websites, officials said Tuesday, a move likely to please Beijing but anger the self-ruled island. The change, which was made last week, is meant to accommodate customers, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways said. The description remains “Taiwan” on their websites in Japanese and other languages.
China
- Trump ratchets up China trade conflict with fresh tariff threat (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods, prompting a swift warning from Beijing of retaliation, as the trade conflict between the world’s two biggest economies quickly escalated. Trump’s latest move, as Washington fights trade battles on several fronts, was unexpectedly swift and sharp. It was retaliation, he said, for China’s decision to raise tariffs on $50 billion in U.S. goods, which came after Trump announced similar tariffs on Chinese goods on Friday.
- Shanghai Plunges 3.2%, below 3,000 for 1st Time in 2 Years, After Trump Threatens to Massively Escalate Trade War and China Threatens to Massively Retaliate (Wolf Street) See also next article. The Shanghai Composite Index plunged 3.2% by midday in China on Tuesday, to 2,924, the lowest level since June 2016. The index is down 12% since the end of February. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 2.4% by midday. Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 1.5%. But US futures edged down only a smidgen.
It would be the second wave of tariffs, following the already decided first wave of 25% tariffs on $50 billion in goods, with $34 billion of imports to be hit on July 6, and $16 billion to be hit at a later date.
But instead of buckling under Trump’s first wave and addressing the IP-theft issues brought forth by the US, China vowed to retaliate in equal measure, which caused the infuriated White House to massively escalate the trade war with the second wave of threats.
- Chinese stocks have fallen heavily after US President Donald Trump ordered officials to identify a further $200 billion worth of imports that could be subject to a 10% tariff.
- US stock futures also fell, and global benchmark bonds rallied in further signs of market unease.
- China said it would “fight back firmly” against any initial tariffs.
- Electric Power Anomaly in China (The Daily Shot) In the breakdown of components of Industrial production for China, production of electrical power seems abnormally high. Is too much Bitcoin mining going on?
