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The World BusinessMirror
Friday, July 21, 2017
briefs Japan returns to trade surplus in June due to export growth Japanese trade returned to surplus in June, with both imports and exports continuing the strong growth they have had all year. Exports rose 9.7 percent from a year earlier (estimate 9.5 percent). Imports increased 15.5 percent (estimate 14.4 percent). The trade surplus was ¥439.9 billion ($3.9 billion). The nation’s modest economic recovery reflected in the trade data and the move to tighter policy by other major central banks is putting pressure on policy-makers in Japan to be clearer about their plans to normalize monetary policy. Bloomberg News
McCain’s brain tumor is aggressive type WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain’s tumor is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, and his family and doctors are deliberating next treatment options. The senator had undergone surgery last week to have a blood clot removed from above his left eye, and that clot turned out to be a sign that a tumor called a glioblastoma had begun growing. McCain’s doctors at the Mayo Clinic said they managed to remove all the tumor that was visible on brain scans. But this kind of tumor, formally known as a glioblastoma multiforme, is aggressive and sneaky. It puts out microscopic roots that go deeper into brain tissue, explained Dr. Joshua Bederson, chairman of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, who has no direct knowledge of McCain’s care. Still, a tumor above the eye is in a location that permits removal with far less risk of damage to language, motor and other brain functions than in many other areas, he noted. AP
Saudis release woman in viral miniskirt video without charge DUBAI, United Arab Emirates— Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday that a woman who was detained after wearing a miniskirt in a video that went viral has been released without charge. The decision not to press charges was a rare win for supporters of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, who criticized the public outcry against her. It also comes as Saudi Arabia overhauls its prosecution system under a new, young heir to the throne who has taken steps to try and modernize the country and its public image. The viral video and the reaction to it in Saudi Arabia prompted police to bring the woman in for questioning for wearing “immodest clothes” in violation of the kingdom’s conservative Islamic dress code. Her release from detention without charge suggests that the subsequent international attention brought to the case may have helped lead to her quick release. Some women fleeing allegedly abusive families have languished in prison without charge, and others in the past have been imprisoned for defying Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving. AP
Report: Trump ends covert plan to arm Syrian rebels WASHINGTON—President Donald J. Trump has decided to halt the Central Intelligence Agency’s yearslong covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the regime of the nation’s president Bashar al-Assad. Russia had long pushed the US to end the program. The phasing out of the secret program was reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday. Officials told the newspaper that ending the operation reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia. The program was a key component begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to relinquish power. But even its supporters have questioned its usefulness, since Moscow sent forces in Syria two years later. AP
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Trump’s honeymoon with China ends as dialogue turns frosty
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he brief honeymoon between the world’s two largest economies appears to be over.
Three months ago, President Donald J. Trump had warm words for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping after the two leaders bonded at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Within weeks, the Trump administration was touting early wins in talks with China, including more access for US beef and financial services, as well as help in trying to rein in North Korea. Now, the two sides can barely agree on how to describe their disagreements. High-level economic talks in Washington broke up on Wednesday with the two superpowers unable to produce a joint statement. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross scolded China over its trade imbalance with the US in his opening remarks, and then both sides canceled a planned closing news conference. Both sides later made separate statements following the talks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Ross said China “acknowledged our shared objective to reduce the trade deficit which both sides will work cooperatively to achieve.” China’s foreign ministry issued a reciprocal statement, saying both sides agree to start “constructive cooperation” to narrow the trade gap. Trump campaigned on “protecting the forgotten man and putting America first, but if you can’t deliver their jobs back to them, the next best thing is to get them some retribution and that’s what’s happening here,” said Stephen Myrow, managing partner at research firm Beacon Policy Advisors Llc. in Washington.
$309B The amount of trade deficit of US with China
It was the first meeting under the Trump administration of the two countries’ most senior economic officials, a ritual that began in 2008. Rebranded as the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue this year, the discussions were led by Mnuchin and Ross on the American side, and Vice Premier Wang Yang for the Chinese. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen took part in the talks, and executives, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, met on the sidelines.
Trade irritants
After last year’s forum, the two countries released a 6,589-word statement asserting the mutual interest they share in each other’s prosperity. The document a l so i nc luded com m it ment s, such as one by China to reduce excess capacity in its steel industry—still a major irritant as the Trump administration weighs whether to impose tariffs and quotas on steel imports. “The Trump administration may have had unrealistic expectations of what China will do to balance trade,” said Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. in
Container vans at a port in China. US officials complain of the trade gap between the US and China in favor of the latter. Bloomberg
Hong Kong. “Now it is the start of real hard negotiations.” At opening remarks by the two sides on Wednesday, Ross complained about the trade gap with China in unusually blunt terms. While US exports to China have grown in recent years, imports from the Asian countr y have expanded even faster, leading to a $309-billion trade deficit, Ross said. “If this were just the natural product of free-market forces, we could understand it, but it’s not,” Ross said, as Wang looked on. “So it’s time to rebalance in our trade and investment relationship in a more fair, equitable and reciprocal manner.” In his opening remarks, Wang called cooperation “a realistic choice” for both countries, while adding his own view of how the US- China relationship should proceed. “Dia log ue cannot immed iately address all differences, but confrontation will immediately damage the interests of both,” Wang said, according to the staterun Xinhua News Agency.
Canceled briefings
Shortly after, the Treasur y sent an e-mail to reporters, saying the US had canceled a news
conference scheduled at the end of the day, when Mnuchin and Ross were to discuss the outcome of the meeting, which they expected to be concrete Chinese commitments. The Treasury department later e-mailed a notice that China had canceled its own media briefing. W hile confronting the Chinese over the US trade deficit will play well politically in America, it’s not a good strategy for making progress with Chinese leaders, who are under their ow n political pressures at home, said David Loevinger, managing director of emerging markets sovereign research at TCW Group Inc. The US has had success by allying with economic reformers who will push back against “powerful vested interests” in China opposed to opening up its economy, said Loevinger, who played a leading role in economic talks with the Chinese as Treasury’s senior coordinator for China affairs in the Obama administration. “In some ways the Teddy Roosevelt strategy of talking softly and carrying a big stick is effective with China, but in the administration’s case, they’re tweeting loudly with very little follow-up,” he said. Bloomberg News
As US attention wanes, China woos Myanmar
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AYPYITAW, Myanmar— When Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, wanted to hold a peace conference to end her country’s long-burning insurgencies, a senior Chinese diplomat went to work. The official assembled scores of rebel leaders, many with longstanding connections to China, briefed them on the peace gathering and flew them on a chartered plane to Myanmar’s capital. There, after being introduced to a beaming Suu Kyi, they were wined and dined, and sang rowdy karaoke late into the night. A cease-fire may still be a long way off, but the gesture neatly illustrates how Myanmar, a former military dictatorship that the US worked hard to press toward democracy, is now depending on China to help solve its problems. The pieces all fell into place for China: It wanted peace in Myanmar to protect its new energy investments, it had the leverage to press the rebels, and it found an opening to do a favor for Myanmar to deliver peace. China is now able to play its natural role in Myanmar in a more forceful way than ever before as the US under the Trump administration steps back from more than six years of heavy engagement in Myanmar, including some tentative contacts with some of the rebels. The vacuum left by the US makes China’s return all the easier. When Myanmar began to adopt democratic reforms in 2011, the Obama administration quickly reciprocated, loosening sanctions as part of a broader effort to strengthen relationships with
Southeast Asian nations as a bulwark against China’s rise. As Myanmar’s relations with China cooled, the result of what many saw as heavy-handed intervention by Beijing, Barack Obama became, in 2012, the first US president to visit the country. He came again in 2014, promoting stronger trade and security relations, and counted the country’s opening as a foreign policy coup. But the US did little to build on the new relationship, and now the tables have turned. As the Trump administration pays little attention, China is exercising strategic and economic interests that come from geographic proximity, using deep pockets for building billiondollar infrastructure and activating ethnic ties with some of the rebel groups, all areas where the US cannot compete. “China wants to show: ‘We are doing our best at your behest,’” said Min Zin, executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy in Myanmar, who attended the peace gathering in May. “As the United States recedes, Aung San Suu Kyi is relying more and more on China in Myanmar and on the international stage.” A n d n o t o n l y M y a n m a r. Across Southeast Asia, China is energetica l ly br ing ing nations into its orbit, wooing US friends and allies with military hardware, infrastructure deals and diplomatic attention. In the Philippines, a US ally, President Duter te is leaning strongly toward Beijing. T he military government in Thailand, another US ally, has bought submarines from China and, at
China’s request, deported Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group that China accuses of fomenting violence in China. In Malaysia China is offering Prime Minister Najib Razak lucrative deals, like high-speed train projects. After the Obama administration made big gains in Myanmar, China’s president, Xi Jinping, was reported to have asked, “Who lost Myanmar?” The message has gotten through, as China pushes on multiple fronts to bring the country back into its fold. Suu Kyi seems receptive. She has visited Beijing twice since becoming Myanmar’s de facto leader last year. In contrast, she skipped an invitation from Washington to attend a conclave of Southeast Asian foreign ministers—she is also foreign minister of Myanmar—organized by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. China and Myanmar have also found common cause in their hard line on Muslims. At the UN several months ago, China blocked a statement supported by the US on the persecution of the Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Myanmar. But nowhere is China’s effort to win over Myanmar clearer than as mediator in Myanmar’s ethnic civil wars, the mission, Suu Kyi says, is dearest to her heart. “I do believe that as a good neighbor China will do everything possible to promote our peace process,” she said during a visit to China last year. “If you ask me what my most important aim is for my country, it is to achieve peace and unity among the different peoples of our union.”
China is well positioned to help. Among the armed groups most resistant to peace talks are the United Wa State Army and the Kokang Army, both of which have been tacitly supported by China for years in their battles with the Myanmar military. The Wa, whose army is said to have 20,000 members, use Chinese currency in their autonomous region, where illegal narcotics are made and exported into China. Two Wa arms factories produce weapons with the help of former Chinese Army officers, and the Wa have received Chinese armored combat vehicles and tank destroyers, probably through Chinese middlemen, experts say. A third group, the Arakan Army, uses Chinese arms and vehicles provided by the Wa. China’s special envoy for Asian affairs, Sun Guoxiang, brought the leaders of all three to the peace conference, as well as the leaders of four other rebel groups, most of whom use Chinese weapons. “China wants quiet in Myanmar,” said Maung Aung Myoe, an expert on the Myanmar military at the International University of Japan. “It hurts their interests to have fighting because it disrupts China’s trade. China now owns the peace process. The Myanmar military knows that.” China has a particular interest in pressing the Arakan rebels to the peace table. They operate in the western state of Rakhine, where they can wreak havoc with the Chinese-built pipelines that carry oil and natural gas from the Bay of Bengal to southern China. New York Times News Service
Trump angry at Sessions, Comey, and warns Mueller
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ASHINGTON—President Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.” In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Trump complained that Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said. In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Trump criticized both the acting FBI director who has been filling in since Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election. Trump said Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office. Asked if Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.” While the interview touched on an array of issues, including health care, foreign affairs and politics, the investigation dominated the conversation. He said that as far as he knew, he was not under investigation himself, despite reports that Mueller is looking at whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey. “I don’t think we’re under investigation,” he said. “I’m not under investigation. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong.” Describing a newly disclosed informal conversation he had with President Vladimir Putin of Russia during a dinner of world leaders in Germany this month, Trump said they talked for about 15 minutes, mostly about “pleasantries.” But Trump did say that they talked “about adoption.” Putin banned American adoptions of Russian children in 2012 after the US enacted sanctions on Russians accused of human-rights abuses, an issue that remains a sore point in relations with Moscow. Trump acknowledged that it was “interesting” that adoptions came up since his son, Donald Trump Jr., said that was the topic of a meeting he had with several Russians with ties to the Kremlin during last year’s campaign. Even though e-mails show that the session had been set up to pass along incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, the president said he did not need such material from Russia about Clinton last year because he already had more than enough. New York Times News Service