U.S. company and rivals use Chinese vendor’s equipment to run wireless networks across Mexico; ‘We just continue supplying them’
Huawei’s success in Mexico shows the uphill climb U.S. officials face convincing private-sector leaders that the company poses a threat to information security.
U.S. officials have told telecommunications executives around the world to steer clear of Huawei Technologies Co., calling the company a national-security threat, but that hasn’t prevented AT&T Inc. from using the Chinese company’s equipment in Mexico.
While AT&T has kept Chinese equipment out of its domestic networks, industry executives say the U.S. company uses Huawei’s gear to run a large part of the wireless network in Mexico, where the electronics giant is as welcome as any other supplier. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 16-04-2019
Source: Foreign Affairs By Kori Schake
U.S. President Donald Trump’s sharp-elbowed nationalism, opposition to multilateralism and international institutions, and desire to shift costs onto U.S. allies reflect the American public’s understandable weariness with acting as the global order’s defender and custodian. Over the last three decades, post–Cold War triumphalism led to hubris and clouded strategic thinking. After the 9/11 attacks, Washington stumbled badly in Afghanistan and Iraq; more recently, Russia has reasserted itself in eastern Europe and the Middle East, and China’s economic and military power have significantly expanded. Even among Trump’s opponents, these developments have led many to conclude that the only solution is a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 16-04-2019
Source: Foreign Affairs By Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner
Subject: The Open World
Since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, it has become commonplace to bemoan the fate of the U.S.-led liberal international order—the collection of institutions, rules, and norms that has governed world politics since the end of World War II. Many experts blame Trump for upending an otherwise sound U.S. grand strategy. They hope that once he is gone, the United States will resume the role it has occupied since the fall of the Soviet Union: as the uncontested hegemon ruling benevolently, albeit imperfectly, over a liberalizing world.
It won’t. Washington’s recent dominance was a historical anomaly that rested on a rare combination of favorable conditions that simply no longer obtain, including a relatively unified public at home and a lack of any serious rivals abroad. American leaders must recognize this truth and adjust their strategy accordingly. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
EU, U.S. nearing the end of a battle over plane-maker subsidies after 15 years of WTO litigation
BRUSSELS—The European Union is preparing tariffs on $12 billion of U.S. products over subsidies to Boeing Co., raising the stakes on the Trump administration’s plan for punishing the EU’s support to rival plane maker Airbus SE .
Europe’s move came after a U.S. said on Monday it intended to impose tariffs on $11.2 billion of imports from the EU. Brussels’s swift response highlights its resolve to go blow-for-blow with Washington over the matter.
Both are salvos in the two sides’ long-running fight at the World Trade Organization over government subsidies to the jet makers, which dominate the large commercial airplane market. Both the U.S. and EU are starting the process to impose the tariffs, but essentially are staking out what they believe is the appropriate penalty for the other’s trade transgressions. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Trump pushes back against critics who say the U.S. is falling behind by relying on businesses to take the lead
WASHINGTON—President Trump touted U.S. progress in the race to next-generation 5G wireless infrastructure Friday—pushing back against critics who contend China is inching ahead—as his administration unveiled initiatives designed to advance the networks’ rollout.
Joined at the White House by hard-hat tower climbers, farmers and ranchers—representing groups that could benefit from 5G’s rolloutin the U.S.—Mr. Trump said the emerging technology presents “astonishing and really thrilling opportunities.”
“The race to 5G is a race America must win,” he said, adding “it’s a race we will win.” Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 11-04-2019
Source: The Economist: Free exchange
Why Stephen Moore and Herman Cain are poor picks for the Fed
There are more than a few echoes of the Nixon era in the presidency of Donald Trump. Monetary reverberations are among them.Facing re-election in 1972, Richard Nixon felt he needed a strong economy at his back, and made a habit of haranguing Arthur Burns, the chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time. Burns recounted the meetings in his diaries: “The president looked wild; talked like a desperate man; fulminated with hatred against the press; took some of us to task…” Historians reckon Burns was too accommodating of Nixon’s demands, and so helped launch the inflation of the 1970s. Mr Trump is now waging his own assault on the Fed’s independence. He has repeatedly complained about the central bank’s decisions and urged it to take a more doveish stance.
More strikingly Mr Trump, who has already chosen three of the five sitting members of the Fed’s board of governors, has named Stephen Moore and Herman Cain to fill the remaining two vacancies. In contrast to candidates who have come before, both are political activists. But the parallel with the 1970s is less apt than it seems. There are different ways to politicise monetary policy, and Mr Trump’s is particularly poisonous. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Im Streit über illegale Subventionen für ihre jeweiligen Flugzeugbauer drohen die USA mit weiteren Zöllen
San Francisco/Toulouse/Washington – Im Streit über die Beihilfen für ihre jeweiligen Flugzeugbauer legen die USA nach und gehen wegen der Subventionen für den europäischen Flugzeugbauer Airbus auf Konfrontationskurs mit der Europäischen Union. Und das wenige Tage, nachdem die in Genf ansässige WTO letztinstanzlich festgestellt hat, dass auch der US-Flugzeugbauer Boeing illegale Subventionen vom Staat erhalten hat.Im Fall des Flugzeugbauers Airbus, an dem Frankreich, Deutschland, Spanien und Großbritannien beteiligt sind, fiel das endgültige Urteil im Vorjahr. Im Fall von Boeing stand das Langstreckenflugzeug Boeing 787. Die EU hat eine illegale Förderung durch staatliche Stellen moniert, zum Beispiel Gelder der Weltraumbehörde Nasa, die in Forschung und Entwicklung von Boeing in Seattle geflossen sind, oder Steuervergünstigungen, die die US-Regierung dem Unternehmen gewährt hat.
Mohamed A. El-Erian, Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he served as CEO and co-Chief Investment Officer, was Chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council. He previously served as CEO of the Harvard Management Company and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. He is the author, most recently, of The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse.
With the return of Europe’s economic doldrums and signs of a coming growth slowdown in the United States, advanced economies could be at risk of falling into the same kind of long-term rut that has captured Japan. To avoid that outcome, policymakers must recognize and address the deeper structural forces at work.
NEW YORK – Not too long ago, the conventional wisdom held that “Japanification” could never happen in Western economies. Leading US economists argued that if the combined threat of weak growth, disinflation, and perpetually low interest rates ever materialized, policymakers would have the tools to deal with it.They had no problem lecturing the Japanese about the need for bold measures to pull their country out of a decades-old rut. Japanification was regarded as the avoidable consequence of poor policymaking, not as an inevitability.
Date: 04-04-2019
Source: The Economist: Schumpeter
For American firms, it feels like a Chinese burn
Anyone who has suffered a Chinese burn as a child will remember the pain when two hands grip the forearm and twist the skin in opposite directions. Americans doing business in China know the feeling well. The growing strategic rivalry between the two superpowers is putting pressure on American businesses and investors in two ways. One grip on the forearm is that of the American government, which is increasing scrutiny of American firms operating in China on national-security and human-rights grounds. The other is that of China’s Communist regime, which is attempting to force companies in China, including foreign ones, to bend to its rules. At worst, this means pushing them to assist China’s armed forces and its police state. That presents firms with a big ethical quandary.
The predicament is unprecedented. During the cold war business was largely untroubled by superpower rivalry because the Soviet Union was an unwelcoming, closed economy. China, by contrast, is America’s biggest trading partner. Americans have invested more than $250bn in the country since 1990.The weight that Chinese firms listed on the mainland have in equity benchmarks such as the msci index is rising. Whatever the outcome of trade talks between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, heightened attention to security-related matters has made life uncomfortable for Chinese firms like Huawei. American companies are smarting, too. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Howard Davies, the first chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (1997-2003), is Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was Director of the London School of Economics (2003-11) and served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry.
European governments have seemingly concluded that hosting large, risky, and volatile financial firms and markets is not worth it, while the US administration still regards the financial sector as a comparative advantage for New York. Which side has made the wiser choice?
LONDON – US President Donald Trump made his intentions on financial regulation clear from the very start of his administration. He issued an executive order requiring that, for every new regulation imposed, at least two should be targeted for repeal. No such deregulatory zeal is evident in Europe.
The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, signed by Trump in May 2018, has, in practice, emphasized the second part of its title over the third. According to a set of regulatory principles issued by the administration, regulators must consider the competitiveness of US firms and advance American interests in international financial forums. The Treasury was instructed to produce four reports, covering banks, capital markets, asset management and insurance, and non-banks and fintech, to show how the principles could be realized through a variety of deregulatory initiatives. All four reports have now been issued. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
NEW YORK – Not too long ago, the conventional wisdom held that “Japanification” could never happen in Western economies. Leading US economists argued that if the combined threat of weak growth, disinflation, and perpetually low interest rates ever materialized, policymakers would have the tools to deal with it. They had no problem lecturing the Japanese about the need for bold measures to pull their country out of a decades-old rut. Japanification was regarded as the avoidable consequence of poor policymaking, not as an inevitability.