Category Archives: Trade

U.S. Warns China About Australia Clash

China, Trade, ,

The Biden administration warned China Tuesday that the United States would not “leave Australia alone on the field” in its ongoing economic clash with Beijing.

China and Australia have been at odds since 2017, first when parliament outlawed foreign political donations in order to stem Chinese influence in Canberra, and later when Australia locked Chinese tech giant Huawei out of its 5G network.

Beijing responded by imposing a series of punishing tariffs and limits on a range of imports from Australia including coal, wine, barley, live seafood, beef and timber.

China is Australia’s largest trading partner by far, with bilateral trade growing from $132 billion in 2014-15 to $231 billion for 2019-20. Australia is also one of the few countries to maintain a trade surplus with China, with Canberra exporting $150 billion to China against $81 billion in imports.

To date, the United States has not intervened in the standoff. The issue did not play a role in former President Donald Trump’s policy vis-à-vis China.

But speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald ahead of a meeting between American and Chinese officials, who are scheduled to convene in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18, Kurt Campbell, President Biden’s point man for the Indo-Pacific region said the new administration would link its China policy with Beijing’s treatment of U.S. allies.

“We have made clear that the U.S. is not prepared to improve relations in a bilateral and separate context at the same time that a close and dear ally is being subjected to a form of economic coercion,” Campbell told the newspaper on March 16.

Last year, Britain’s The Guardian reported that sanctions have cost the Australian economy $19 billion, but predicted that the number could grow to $28 billion if travel by Chinese nationals to Australia does not rebound after Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

US Hosts Maritime Trade Talks with UK On Board the HMS Queen Elizabeth

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Official Portrait of  Robert E. Lighthizer.

UK International Trade Secretary Dr. Liam Fox hosted several events designed to reinforce the economic relationship between the UK and the USA. The events took place on October 22, 2018 on board the UK’s Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth, docked in New York Harbor.

The New York events come in the wake of the announcement by the US Treasury Secretary, Robert Lighthizer, that the US will commence talks with the UK to forge a new US-UK Free Trade Agreement to go into effect when the UK leaves the European Union.

The Department for International Trade presented a round-table discussion including some of the UK’s key computer companies. They presented their new technological advances to several US Fortune 500 companies in the hopes of forging some business partnerships.

The Secretary, Dr. Fox, spoke during the proceedings. He emphasized the ability of the UK to protect against serious cyber threats as they grow in number and danger. He announced a new sub-committee of the Board of Trade which will investigate what methods UK companies can use to grow the amount of imports in the cyber space, and how UK-US cooperation can improve the fight against cyber-attacks.

The floating backdrop of the great ship helped set the stage for Dr. Fox’s joining with the Maritime UK to host the very first Maritime Nations Forum between the US and the UK. The forum focused on the ways these two great sea-faring nations can improve maritime trade and relations.

Despite Threat of Trade War US Economy Strong

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Courtesy of wikideas.

The major indicators did not falter the day after President Trump announced he was raising the threatened tariffs on China from 10% to 25% on $200 billion worth of products. The NASDAQ composite, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were all higher by a bit following the announcement.

The consensus among analysts is that US business will survive the latest signs of a coming trade war as well as they have previous similar threats from the president and from reactions from abroad.

In an interview Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab& Co. Inc said,

“The economy generally is so strong that, despite the challenges of the potential trade war, the strength of the economy is more than offsetting that. Corporations have posted record profits this quarter that we haven’t seen in over a decade.”

There have been warnings, however, from companies such as Coca Cola, General Motors, Caterpillar, Ford and Harley Davidson that the tariffs of 25% already imposed on steel and 10% on aluminum; and previous tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods, will have negative consequences on 2018 earnings, and further into the future. Retaliatory tariffs have already been imposed by China and US allies like the European Union, Mexico and Canada. There are also many smaller businesses that have suffered from the tariff policy.

Not everyone is suffering. Many companies have seen higher profits during Q2. Apple’s sales in China flew to 19 percent from March to June. Caesars Entertainment Corp showed an 89.3% increase in profits to $282 million. And even though Caterpillar predicted higher prices, the company’s net income rose 112% during Q2 to $1.7 billion.

These data points are not indicative of anything, since the tariffs will not be imposed until September at the earliest, and their effect will not be manifest until months later. US Business is still fearful of what tariffs will do to their bottom lines:

“We said before that this round of tariffs amounted to doubling down on the recklessness of imposing trade policy that will hurt U.S. families and workers more than they will hurt China. Increasing the size of the tariffs is merely increasing the harm that will be done,” National Retail Federation CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement. “Quite simply, there has been no better example of cutting off one’s nose in order to spite the face.”

New Iran Sanctions Disrupt US and Overseas Business

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

The effect of the US pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement will not only reverberate in Iran. US companies will also feel the bite of newly imposed economic sanctions on the regime of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.

The US withdrawal from the agreement will force the US government to revoke existing licenses allowing for US companies to do business with Iran. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday that licenses held by Boeing Company and Airbus Group, Boeing’s European competitor, will be nullified by the US withdrawal from the agreement.

“The existing licenses will be revoked,” Mnuchin said to reporters.

The company responded by saying it will consult with the government on what their next move should be.

“As we have throughout this process, we’ll continue to follow the U.S. government’s lead,” Boeing commented.

Airbus is also dependent on licensing from the US to sell its airplanes to Iran due to the US-made parts Airbus uses in its aircraft.

There will be waivers and exemptions made under certain conditions for certain products and countries, but those conditions were not discussed by Mnuchin.

Mnuchin added that the new sanctions will also seriously limit the sale of oil by Iran, which sells about 5 percent of the world’s oil, making it the fifth largest oil producer in the world. He said that there will be a 6-month grace period to allow countries to finish up existing contracts and implement “significant reductions” in the amount of crude oil they purchase from Iran.

The secretary said he does not believe the price of oil will rise by much since he expects other countries will respond to the new sanctions with increased oil production.
Mnuchin said that the goal of the new sanctions is to force Iran to come to the table to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

Trump Getting Ready to Pull US Out of NAFTA

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Reports have emerged that the Trump administration is taking concrete steps to pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, also known as NAFTA.

According to Politico, two White House officials stated that a draft order to withdraw from NAFTA has already been submitted for the last stages of review, and could be released by the end of this week, or early next week.

The order was written by Trump’s head of the National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, in corroboration with the White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. It is still unclear what the order states, but the effect on trade can be predicted by an examination of the top 20 exports arriving from Mexico to the US.

In January Capital Economics’ chief emerging markets economist Neil Shearing published a chart in a memo to clients graphing the top 20 exports from Mexico according to their 2015 US dollar value.

About 25 percent of Mexico’s total exports to the US, by far the largest slice, came from the auto sector, valued at about $80 billion. The next three items are electrical components, food, and computers, together valued at about $55 billion.

“The upshot, then, is that targeted measures imposed on the vehicle, electronics, and food and beverage sectors would hit Mexico’s economy especially hard,” wrote Shearing. “Similarly, in the event of a blanket tariff across all sectors, producers in these areas would be among the hardest hit.”

In wake of the reports that Trump is on the verge of pulling out of NAFTA the peso is crashing, down over 2.2 percent at 19.2704 as of 12:53pm Wednesday afternoon.