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Chinese Officials Call For Renegotiation Of "Phase One" Trade Deal
Amid the ongoing diplomatic spat between Washington DC and Beijing, which now also includes the deployment of B-1B bombers and warships in the South China Sea, late on Monday (local time) China's Global Times reported, citing sources close to the Chinese government, that some "hawkish" officials in China are calling for a renegotiation the the "phase one" trade deal with Washington as well as a "tit-for-tat approach on spiraling trade issues after US' malicious attacks on China ignited a tsunami of anger among Chinese trade insiders."
The calls to renegotiate the current version of the deal - which has yet to be actively implemented - emerge amid dissatisfaction because "China has made compromise for the deal to press ahead."
While in the past, these same trade negotiators "believed that it would be worthwhile to make certain compromise to reach a partial truce in the 22-month trade war and ease escalating tensions", given what the Global Times called "President Donald Trump's hyping an anti-China conspiracy that aims to cover up his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic", advisors close to the trade talks have suggested Chinese officials rekindling the possibility of invalidating the trade pact and negotiating a new one to tilt the scales more to the Chinese side, sources close the matter told the Global Times.
A former Chinese trade official told the Global Times on condition of anonymity on Monday that China could complete such procedures based on force majeure provisions in the pact.
"It's in fact in China's interests to terminate the current phase one deal. It is beneficial to us. The US now cannot afford to restart the trade war with China if everything goes back to the starting point," another trade advisor to the Chinese government told the Global Times, pointing to the staggering US economy and the coming of the US presidential election this year.
"After signing the phase one deal, the US intensifies crackdown in other areas such as technology, politics and the military against China. So if we don't retreat on trade issues, the US could be trapped," the former official noted.
Some could disagree, and counter that Trump can certainly restart the trade war especially since it suits his pre-election agenda - after all, now that the fate of the market is entirely in the hands of the Fed which has gone full MMT, Trump is no longer afraid by the market's response to a renewed trade war. In fact, with over 60% of the US population seeking to distance US from China, it would appear that Trump's best bet to winning independent votes is precisely to keep hammering China.
Confirming this, Trump said on Friday that he was "very torn" about whether to end the China-US phase one deal, Fox News reported, with some observers interpreting his words as equating to a threat from the US to re-launch a trade war against China. Then again, over the weekend, the SCMP reported that US source familiar with recent discussions stated US officials acknowledged China was largely delivering its pledges on structural issues such as opening market access and improving IP protection but they have yet to agree in some details including IP action plan and easing equity caps for foreign investors. Furthermore, the source stated fallout from the virus meant agreement on purchasing US goods has become much more important and that many believe China needs to increase pace on purchases.
Meanwhile, Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who advises the government on trade issues, told the Global Times on Monday that China has "well documented" Washington's usual threats after previous rounds of confrontation. That means if the trade war restarts, "China knows how to respond, and it is able to retaliate quickly and inflict serious harm on the US economy," Gao said.
Still, as the Global Times concludes, analysts noted that terminating the phase one trade deal would be China's "last option" and one that China would only resort to under extremely hostile conditions.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/tsunami-anger-chinese-officials-call-renegotiation-phase-one-trade-deal
615f5e
way to go retard and that wasn't even you.
Meet the Fed’s Global Plunge Protection Team
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 455 points by the closing bell on Friday. It seemed sadistic to average folks. One hour before the stock market opened, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported the worst U.S. unemployment figure since the Great Depression (14.7 percent) along with the staggering loss of 20.5 million jobs in just the month of April. Within the first half hour of trading, the Dow was up more than 300 points. It then added to those gains in afternoon trading.
None of the explanations offered by mainstream media to explain the incongruous stock trading were accurate. It was not because the stock market had anticipated worse or that the market was rallying because it thought the worst of the economic fallout was behind us. It was because the one emergency funding facility that the Federal Reserve has quietly ramped up more than any other, its Foreign Central Bank Liquidity Swap Lines, was working its magic on Friday.
To understand what happened on Friday, you need to understand what Fed Chair Jerome Powell was methodically setting in place in February.
Beginning on February 3, Powell started dialing the head of one central bank after another. We know this because his daily calendars are made public. Before the month of February was over, Powell had spoken to, or met with, the heads of 14 different foreign central banks. This was an unprecedented number of central bank contacts in such a short period of time for a man telling Americans everything was fine with our banks and our financial system.
Equally curious, it wasn’t just the biggest players that Powell spoke to, like Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB); Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan; Mark Carney, then Governor of the Bank of England; and Yi Gang, Governor of The People’s Bank of China. Powell also dialed up the heads of the following central banks: Canada, Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and France. All in one month.
Two weeks after the last phone calls were made in February, the Fed sprang into action.
On March 15, the Fed announced that foreign central banks with regular U.S. dollar liquidity operations would “begin offering U.S. dollars weekly in each jurisdiction with an 84-day maturity, in addition to the 1-week maturity operations currently offered.”
On March 19, the Fed announced that on top of its standing U.S. dollar liquidity swap lines with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank, it would be opening up “U.S. dollar liquidity arrangements (swap lines) with the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Banco Central do Brasil, the Danmarks Nationalbank (Denmark), the Bank of Korea, the Banco de Mexico, the Norges Bank (Norway), the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden).”
On March 20, the Fed announced that itself along with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank would be increasing the frequency of its 7-day swap line offerings from weekly to daily.
As the chart above indicates, the outstanding swap lines on the Fed’s balance sheet have grown from $45 billion on March 18 to $348.5 billion by April 1 and now stand, as of last Wednesday’s H.4.1 report from the Fed, at a stunning $444.89 billion.
That is the largest of the Fed’s emergency programs by a factor of more than two to one. Its repo loans have an outstanding balance of $172.7 billion. Its Discount Window loans stand at $26.5 billion. Its Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) loans (where it is accepting stocks and Wall Street toxic waste known as CDOs and CLOs as collateral from the trading houses on Wall Street in return for ¼-percent interest loans) stands at $14.9 billion. Its Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility has racked up $42.8 billion. The Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility, where it buys the small business loans the banks have made (that were already guaranteed by the Small Business Administration) stands at $29.1 billion. The Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility stands at $3.9 billion.
The Fed’s announced purchases of investment grade corporate bonds, junk bonds and junk bond Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which have set an initial goal of scooping up $750 billion in sinking paper, have yet to invest a dime; likely because the legality of those programs are still being debated.
moar here
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/05/meet-the-feds-global-plunge-protection-team/
US Customs and Border Patrol CBP104 Q9 drone circling Grand Marais, NE Minnesota-been here a few times over the last several weeks.