Trump & Sending World Trade Back to the 1930s

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 1/30/2017 04:43:00 PM
The infantile Trump time travels back to the Great Depression and wishes things now are the way they were then. Sales of dystopian novels have taken off as the ramifications of US President Donald Trump--I have to re-read that every now and again out of disbelief--become clear. Having pushed through with quite frankly anti-Islamic policies to ban citizens of seven countries whose citizens have never caused a single fatality Stateside from entering the US, it's probably only a matter of time before his isolationist-protectionist policies are unleashed at a time you least expect it. We are getting a flavor of it already...
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Fightback: Mexico's Options in a 'Post-NAFTA' Age

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/27/2017 06:53:00 PM
It's time to get it on? And so what was perhaps inevitable has finally broken out: Mexican President Pena Nieto's fruitless efforts to get on the good side of his American counterpart have come to an impasse. Appointing a Trump-friendly foreign minister and sending him to Washington ahead of time before a meeting between North American leaders didn't work. In recent days, Trump made an executive order concerning the construction of a US-Mexico wall and tweeted that Pena Nieto shouldn't bother coming to the White House if his country didn't intend to pay for the wall. Perhaps preserving a shred of dignity, Pena Nieto then...
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PRC Stocks: China's Own Plunge Protection Team

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 1/23/2017 05:02:00 PM
Waning stocks? China has its own version of this fellow. Financial markets are not known to be an especially humorous topic given how much is at stake. More so now with so many persons' savings invested in them, panics and crashes have become anathema to the public at large and the officials who seek to curry their favor. In the United States, this dynamic has given rise to the so-called "Plunge Protection Team" that supposedly stands at the ready to buoy financial markets if they are headed south: A colloquial name given to the Working Group on Financial Markets. The Plunge Protection Team was created to make financial...
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Trump & Autos: Koreans Suck Up, Germans Don't

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 1/18/2017 03:13:00 AM
BMW seemingly says, "Yo Trump, remember our yuuuge Spartanburg, South Carolina plant?"  I just wanted to update you on this mildly disturbing trend of various multinational concerns actually paying attention to what the trade troglodyte Trump has to say. Invariably, his complaint will have something to do with automaker x moving production to Mexico, presumably at the expense of American jobs. I will not get into a long spiel about how global supply chains are so interconnected that most things are no longer "made" in a single country. Rather, let's focus on the misguided actions stemming from those responding to...
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Davos Elite No Better Predicting 2017 Than Anyone Else

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 1/16/2017 02:35:00 PM
There's a fine line between what you want to believe in and what really happens that even Davos attendees fail to appreciate. At the start of 2016, the conventional wisdom was that neither Trump's election nor Brexit were on the cards. We know how those things turned out. The interesting question is, how much better at prediction were the creme de la creme at Davos than the rest of us mere mortals? Alas, the answer was that they were no better: “If you bother to read some of the serious analysis of Trump’s support, you realize that it’s a very fragile thing and highly unlikely to deliver what he needs in the crucial first...
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Taiwan's Tab for 21 States Still Recognizing It as "China"

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 1/15/2017 02:35:00 PM
Every country still recognizing Taiwan has its price--except perhaps for the Holy See. With the possible exception of the Vatican which does not really need to be bought off--it's a comparatively affluent microstate with strong objections to communism, atheism, and PRC-arranged ordination of (fake) Catholic clergy--Taiwan has paid a price for it still being recognized as "China" by a few states. 21, to be exact. For a historical overview, the culmination of US efforts to bring the PRC in from the cold is best represented by it gaining a UN Security Council seat as "China" on October 25, 1971. Since that day, Taiwan has...
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Jack Ma & The Legend of Alibaba's 1M US Jobs

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/11/2017 02:39:00 PM
The guy on the right can pretend to be a huckster like the guy on the left...when it suits. [DISCLAIMER: The blogger is an investor in Alibaba.] Well, here's another entry in this seemingly never-ending parade of international businesspersons pledging jobs Stateside for American workers. If you don't know Jack Ma, you really should. He's the Chinese founder of Alibaba, the world's largest business-to-business ["B2B"] site, bar none. It's quite an accomplishment considering that he's not American, although China is arguably better-placed as a producer nation as opposed to a consumer nation like the United States. That...
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LG & Samsung's Trump Trade Appeasement Strategy

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/09/2017 02:11:00 PM
Another University of Birmingham graduate (like myself) is rather well-known for his appeasement strategies. The year is 2017, and instead of military conflict, the matter foremost on the minds of many is trade conflict. Rhetorically at least, the new American leader begrudges almost everything made elsewhere by foreigners (or even US-based corporations). What's a profit-oriented business concern to do? We've heard of automakers being pressured to keep or add plant capacity Stateside. Ditto for telecommunications firms.Trump is not even in office yet and these sorts of headlines just keep rolling in. The latest case in...
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Trump the Trade Comic: GM Small Cars in Mexico

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/05/2017 04:17:00 PM
American nagger-in-chief Doanld Trump has made a habit of criticizing any and all American firms having manufacturing activities overseas. From his nuance-free viewpoint, all such manufacturing is a net loss for the United States, especially in terms of foreigners "stealing jobs." Although there are literally hundreds of economically sensible reasons for doing so--many of which actually benefit Americans overall--the latest Trumpian idiocy takes the cake. Let us consider the ways. Rick Newman of Yahoo Finance has the lowdown... (1) The latest target of Trump's ire is the manufacture of a small car in Mexico that is sold...
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First Train Bound for London Leaves Yiwu, China

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/03/2017 02:53:00 PM
The land leg of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative keeps reaching farther. Your initial thought might be, "That post title is a typo," but I assure you that it's not. Current Premier Xi Jinping has been championing a "One Belt, One Road" initiative to replicate the old Silk Road through which goods flowed throughout the Eurasian landmass--with China obviously playing an important role. The modern initiative seeks to not only consolidate trade with its existing partners but also create new trade linkages with frontier markets. Think of Afghanistan, Iran, etc. that China is courting favor with which haven't been as open...
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Will 2016's Record PRC FDI in US Continue in 2017?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 1/02/2017 03:36:00 PM
2016 was a banner year for Chinese investment in the United States. Unbeknownst to many amid the China-bashing engaged in by Donald Trump and others is that, actually, investment by China-based companies in the United States hit an all-time high in 2016. As is often the case, rhetoric often does not match up to reality. That is, the Chinese have actually found the US to be a good place to invest that's fairly receptive to PRC money (outside of "national security"-related sectors): Chinese companies invested a record $45.6bn in the US in 2016 despite a presidential campaign heavy on Beijing bashing. But Donald Trump’s...
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