Free Republic

The agreement reached by President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China to effectively pause their trade war and work toward a pact appears to be aimed at giving the two leaders some political breathing room after an escalating fight has begun inflicting economic damage on both sides of the Pacific. The temporary truce, forged over a working dinner on Saturday night in Buenos Aires, does little to resolve the deep differences between the two nations and is more a political agreement than a substantive one. Both sides immediately positioned the cease-fire as a domestic victory while staking out areas...

BEIJING — China’s leaders have sought to project confidence in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and trade threats, but as it becomes clear a protracted trade war with the United States may be unavoidable, there are growing signs of unease inside the Communist political establishment. In recent days, officials from the Commerce Ministry, the police and other agencies have summoned executives from exporters to ask about plans to lay off workers or shift supply chains to other countries. With stocks slumping into bear territory and the currency dropping 9 percent against the dollar since mid-April, censors have been deleting...

OK sorry this is from the New York Times, but they are occasionally completely right no some issues. I believe this is one of those rare moments: -- BEIJING — China will refuse to discuss President Trump's two toughest trade demands when American negotiators arrive in Beijing this week, people involved in Chinese policymaking say, potentially forcing Washington to escalate the dispute or back down. The Chinese government is publicly calling for flexibility on both sides. But senior Beijing officials do not plan to discuss the Trump administration's two biggest demands: a mandatory $100 billion cut in America’s $375 billion...

DAVOS, Switzerland — No one was declaring President Trump a changed man. Privately, executives and global leaders who had gathered in Davos continued to worry that the American president could yet indulge his worst instincts — and his penchant for shock on Twitter — to deliver a geopolitical crisis, open up a new front in trade hostilities or offend a vast group of people.But a rough consensus emerged over Mr. Trump’s two-day visit that his administration had shown itself to be more pragmatic than advertised. Many were inclined to view the president’s most extreme positions as just aggressive bargaining postures.“There’s...

HONG KONG — Struggling to respond to precipitous declines on China’s stock markets over the last three weeks, the country’s biggest brokerage firms unveiled a government-endorsed plan on Saturday to buy shares starting on Monday, in a bid to stabilize the markets. The government-controlled Securities Association of China said that 21 big brokerage firms had agreed to set up a fund worth at least 120 billion renminbi, or $19.4 billion, to buy shares in the largest, most stable companies, and would stop liquidating their own portfolios of shares. But some experts said that this might not be enough to stop...