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President Trump said he would impose tariffs, effective immediately, on all steel and aluminum shipped into the United States from Brazil and Argentina. “Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers,” Trump said in Monday morning tweet. He then directed his attention to the Federal Reserve, saying the central bank should “act so that countries, of which there are many, no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies. This makes it very hard for our [manufacturers] & farmers to fairly export their goods....

Global trade conflicts and the increasing trend towards unilateral trade agreements have raised alarm bells in Beijing about how China can continue to feed its 1.4 billion people. Last month the State Council, the country’s cabinet, published a policy paper on food security – the first in 23 years. It said that while the current food supply situation was “very sound” it also flagged concerns about potential disruptions due to trade friction with the US. Climate change is another worry for future food production. China’s devastating experiences with hunger and famine mean that the prospect of food shortages touches a...

An epidemic of African Swine Fever is sweeping through China's hog farms, and the effects are rippling across the globe, because China is a superpower of pork. Half of the world's pigs live in China — or at least they did before the epidemic began a year ago. "Every day, we hear of more outbreaks," says Christine McCracken, a senior analyst at RaboResearch, which is affiliated with the global financial firm Rabobank. McCracken and her colleagues now estimate that by the end of 2019, China's production of pork could be cut in half. "That's roughly 300 million to 350 million...

* China is grappling with a widespread African swine flu (ASF) epidemic, a disease fatal to pigs but harmless to humans. * ASF's effects on pigs are gruesome. Symptoms include diarrhea, depression, and miscarriages. * The government is urging farmers to cull infected pigs to prevent the spread of the disease, which is in turn dramatically decreasing the country's pork production. * Dutch bank Rabobank estimates that the country will kill 150 million to 200 million pigs — or one third of the country's supply — this year. * China is the world's largest pork producer and consumer. The steep...

Full title: Chinese shoppers say they would shun American brands during the world’s busiest 24 hours of online shopping https://amp-scmp-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3035584/chinese-shoppers-say-they-would-shun-american-brands-during?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scmp.com%2Fbusiness%2Fchina-business%2Farticle%2F3035584%2Fchinese-shoppers-say-they-would-shun-american-brands-during

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. retail sales fell for the first time in seven months in September, suggesting that manufacturing-led weakness could be spreading to the broader economy, keeping the door open for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates again later this month.

Reuters reports that China will exempt some American agricultural products from its latest round of tariffs. This is welcome news—particularly for our pork and soybean producers who’ve been on the front lines of the trade war. But what does the news really mean? Did China blink? Are they throwing us a bone? Or is just part of Xi Jinping’s 200 IQ 4D underwater chess gambit to win the trade war? The answer begins and ends with the economic data. First up: pigs. China is by far the largest pork consumer on earth, and is expected to consume more than 50...

China already lost in the trade war with the U.S. Although you will never hear Chinese authorities, especially President Xi Jinping, admit it as such, the evidence is everywhere and only becoming more compelling by the day. Reuters recently reported that based on the Chinese government's own data, China's economic slowdown has worsened in August, with "growth in industrial production is at its weakest in 17-1/2 years amid spreading pain from a trade war with the United States and softening domestic demand. Retail sales and investment gauges worsened too." Despite such poor readings, Premier Li Keqiang insists that China is...

The political network funded in part by billionaire libertarian Charles Koch is going to try a new strategy against President Donald Trump’s trade war with China after conceding that its previous campaign hasn’t worked. Koch network leaders said Thursday that their digital and TV ad blitz that emphasized how Americans could experience financial pain from the tariff fight wasn’t panning out the way they had hoped. “The argument that, you know, the tariffs are adding a couple thousand dollars to the pickup truck that you’re buying is not persuasive,” a senior Koch official says. he political network funded in part...

China's economy is grinding to its slowest levels of growth in decades. The country's second-quarter growth of 6.2% was the slowest rate seen since it began reporting quarterly figures. The preliminary third-quarter estimate of 6% to 6.5% is the slowest ever forecast. Though global stock markets have stabilized and trade talks with the US have resumed after a two-month hiatus, China's economy faces trouble from several different sectors, Nomura Research Institute chief economist Richard Koo wrote in a Wednesday report. A large part of China's economic prowess comes from its ability to provide cheaper labor than other industrial nations at...

George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt. When you hear their names what comes to mind? The White House? Possibly. Mount Rushmore? Probably. How blasé. What ought to come to mind are tariffs. Yes, tariffs. Despite the mainstream media’s copious efforts to cast President Trump and those who support tariffs as economically illiterate at best — and as wannabe-Stalinists at worst — in reality most of America’s Founding Fathers and former presidents favored tariffs. In fact, America’s first major piece of legislation was the Tariff Act of 1789. Why? Tariffs are the form of taxation most consistent with the...

President Trump needs a trade deal with China as quickly as possible to avert a sharp slowdown of the US economy, as recent polls have made clear. There won’t be any deal unless the US finds some way to walk back its efforts to keep China’s top telecommunication firm Huawei out of world markets. The summary dismissal today of National Security Adviser John Bolton increases the prospects of a deal, although the immediate motivation for Bolton’s departure most likely lies elsewhere. China and the United States seemed on track for a trade deal in early December 2018 when XI Jinping...

Trade wars and sanctions are economic weapons against rival regimes, and like actual military warfare, often lead to unanticipated and sometimes devastating blowback from the targeted regimes. A prime example was President Obama sanctioning Russia over its annexation of Crimea. The sanctions were designed to block Russia from any access to western financing, aimed at causing a dire financial and economic crisis in Russia that would force it to relinquish Crimea and end support for Ukraine’s breakaway territories.

J.P. Morgan estimates that President Trump’s tariffs will cost American families up to $1,000 next year. We have heard this before and we’ll hear it again. But the fact is that tariffs have not yet—nor will they likely—increase the cost of living. Further, the myopic obsession with the price of goods ignores the more pressing problem: millions of Americans remain chronically unemployed, and millions more have been reduced to surviving on part-time McJobs and welfare. Turns out, cheap goods aren’t so cheap if you don’t have a job.

Beijing announced the exemption plan in May and invited interested parties to apply to have certain products added to the list. A second round of applications started last week. The commission said it “will continue to conduct the work of tariff exemption on US goods and will announce follow-up waiver lists at appropriate times”. The statement came as top trade negotiators from China and the United States prepare to meet in Washington next month in their latest attempt to resolve their trade war. Working level preparations for the meeting are currently under way. China is expected to agree to buy...

One of the standard criticisms of President Trump’s trade war with China is that China has the upper hand because it is not a democracy. Meanwhile, President Trump faces voters in 14 months, so therefore it was a mistake to challenge the status quo that allows China to steal intellectual property and pay for its economic and military growth via unending half-trillion-dollars-a-year trade surpluses with the United States. Foolish Trump! The problem with this view is that it greatly underestimates the vulnerability of Xi Jinping -- or any other Chinese Communist Party head. The Politburo and its Central Committee can...

What a difference two weeks makes. Two Fridays ago, pundits seemed to be beside themselves over what was the latest flare up in the U.S.-China trade war. President Trump raised tariffs in retaliation for China’s retaliatory tariffs, he called Fed Chairman Jerome Powell an “enemy,” and the Dow plummeted 623 points while the Nasdaq closed 3% lower. Now it seems like trade deal optimism is back in the air. New formal talks between the U.S. and China have been announced for next month, and there are even high-level Chinese sources suggesting a breakthrough could occur at those meetings.

Did Beijing blink? Just days after massive new tariffs went into effect on both sides of the US-China bilateral trade relationship, China announced it would send a team of negotiators to Washington next month. “Serious” mid-level talks would begin almost immediately in an effort to wind down the trade war, China also announced: China said Thursday its trade representatives will fly to Washington in early October to resume negotiations with the United States, raising the possibility that both sides might arrest a recent deterioration in the bilateral relationship that has cast a shadow over the world economy.China’s top trade...

The public continues to hear or read that President Trump's trade policies are hurting the U.S. economy and destroying our relationship with the world and hurting the U.S. consumer.  They say the tariffs are especially harmful and causing price increases.  I am having trouble finding factual data that support those talking points.  Why do we see general statements in the media instead of the actual data? Here are some of the data: In 2016, the last year of President Obama, exports were $1.45 trillion, and imports were $2.19 trillion. In 2017, the first year of President Trump, exports were $1.55 trillion (up around...

The U.S.-China trade war is clearly putting a dent in China’s economy, but it seems to be helping other countries in Asia. Vietnam is the most prominent beneficiary. “We’ve already seen in our seaborne shipping data that a drop in imports from China has been substituted by supplies from other countries,” wrote Chris Rogers, an analyst at the trade-data provider Panjiva, in an email to Barron’s. “For example in July, total U.S. seaborne imports from China fell by 3.0% year over year while those from Vietnam climbed 28.5% and shipments from India and Thailand rose 17.6% and 16.0% respectively.” While...