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Huawei products should not be linked to politics: Ren
U.S. ban not to affect Huawei's high-end and 5G products: Ren
https://youtu.be/Yz6tKCEhvqA
Huawei is a commercial company, and the use of its products is a choice for consumers based on their likes and should not be linked to politics, said Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. on Tuesday.
Ren made the remarks after the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce put Huawei and its affiliates on an "Entity List," which would restrict the sale or transfer of U.S. technologies to the company. The ban has triggered opposition from markets worldwide.
Huawei maintains mass production capacities for specific key components, including chips, and the U.S. ban will not result in negative business growth, Ren told reporters.
The telecommunications giant projected slower but positive growth this year.
Huawei posted a 39 percent year-on-year revenue growth in the first quarter of the year. The growth has slowed slightly in the second quarter, but the slowing will not hurt the company, Ren said.
"Huawei had made preparations for the extreme situations even before the Chinese Lunar New Year," he said.
He noted, however, that it would not reject the U.S. supply chain, citing Huawei's announced purchase of 50 million chips from Qualcomm in 2018.
"As long as the U.S. government allows U.S. companies to export the components, Huawei will continue to buy while sticking to its own research and development," he said.
Ren said he appreciated the support of a large number of U.S. components suppliers over the years, and they are also lobbying for the easing of U.S. government-imposed restrictions.
He said Huawei is also in talks with companies like Google for potential remedy solutions, he said.
China can hardly make the US clear about all these
issues. The only option for China is to do its own things well and
accept the fact that the China-US trade war will last in the days that
follow. As China becomes stronger, it will eventually see the US willing
to reflect upon itself.
The overall output value of China's satellite navigation
and positioning services industry reached 301.6 billion yuan ($43
billion) in 2018, up 18.3 percent on a year-on-year basis, with the
country's home-developed BeiDou satellite system contributing 80 percent
to the core production value, reads an official white paper.
China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation
Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch
Center in Sichuan Province at 11:48 p.m. Friday.
The latest ban on Huawei reflects Washington's dangerous
Cold War mentality that will lead to further US-China decoupling, which
is also casting a shadow over stalled trade talks between the two
countries and will hurt the global tech industry, Chinese analysts said
on Thursday.
The US cannot strangle Huawei, nor will it be able to
contain the development of China and deprive the 1.4 billion Chinese
people of their development rights.
Punitive duties on US$200bil in goods raises stakes in trade talks.
https://youtu.be/82NLXvMtn64
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He arrives at the the Office of the United States Trade Representative for negotiations on a trade deal
The United States pulled the trigger Friday on a steep increase in tariffs on Chinese products and Beijing immediately vowed to hit back, turning up the heat before a second day of trade negotiations.
President Donald Trump got a briefing from his trade negotiators after the first day of talks with the Chinese side on Thursday, but made no move to hold off on the tariffs -- dashing hopes there might be a last-minute reprieve as the negotiations continued.
Minutes after the US increased punitive duties on $200 billion in imports from 10 to 25 percent, the Chinese commerce ministry said it "deeply regrets" the move and repeated its pledge to take "necessary countermeasures", without elaborating.
Locked in a trade dispute for more than a year, officials from the world's two biggest economies returned to the bargaining table late Thursday, led by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Since last year, the two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade, gutting US agricultural exports to China and weighing on both countries' manufacturing sectors.
Trump began the standoff because of complaints about unfair Chinese trade practices.
The US team met with Trump late Thursday night to brief him and "agreed to continue discussions" on Friday, the White House said in a statement.
AFP / Jonathan WALTER US-China trade
Lighthizer and Mnuchin met the Chinese delegation for about 90 minutes Thursday evening and they had a working dinner with Liu.
"We hope the US and the Chinese side can meet each other halfway and work hard together to resolve existing problems through cooperation and consultation," the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement.
Despite optimism from officials in recent weeks that the talks were moving towards a deal, tensions reignited this week after Trump angrily accused China of trying to backpedal on its commitments.
"They took many, many parts of that deal and they renegotiated. You can't do that," Trump said on Thursday.
But he held out hopes of salvaging a deal.
"It's possible to do it," Trump said. "I did get last night a very beautiful letter from President Xi (Jinping)."
At the same time, he said he would be happy to keep tariffs in place. And he has threatened to extend the tough duties to all Chinese goods.
Michael Taylor, a managing director for Moody's Investors Service, said the tariff hike "further raises tensions" between the two countries.
"While we believe that a trade deal will eventually be reached between the US and China, the risk of a complete breakdown in trade talks has certainly increased," Taylor said.
- Tariffs increase -
The renewed tensions roiled global stock markets this week and unnerved exporters, though Chinese shares led gains across most Asian and European markets on Friday.
AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (L) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wait to greet Chinese Vice Premier Liu He for trade talks
Liu said on his arrival in Washington that the prospects for the talks were "promising," but warned that raising tariffs would be "harmful to both sides," and called instead for cooperation.
"I hope to engage in rational and candid exchanges with the US side," he told Chinese state media.
"Of course, China believes raising tariffs in the current situation is not a solution to the problem, but harmful to China, to the United States and to the whole world."
The higher duty rates will hit a vast array of Chinese-made electrical equipment, machinery, auto parts and furniture.
But due to a quirk in the implementation of the higher tariffs, products already on ships headed for US ports before midnight will only pay the 10 percent rate, US Customs and Border Protection explained.
That could effectively provide a grace period for the sides to avert serious escalation.
AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds An anti-China protester (C) yells at a pro-China demonstrator outside the Office of the United States Trade Representative as US and Chinese officials hold tariff negotiations in Washington
"While we are disappointed that the stakes have been raised, we nevertheless support the ongoing effort by both sides to reach agreement on a strong, enforceable deal that resolves the fundamental, structural issues our members have long faced in China," said business lobby the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
The US is pressing China to change its policies on protections for intellectual property, massive subsidies for state-owned firms, and reduce the yawning trade deficit.
Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the two sides had clashed over how much of the final trade agreement should be enshrined in a public document, something Beijing has long resisted.
"What the Chinese step-back primarily says is they don't want to publicly acknowledge that their existing laws, especially on IP, are flawed," he told AFP.
Washington is counting on the strong US economy to be able to withstand the impact of higher costs from the import duties and retaliation better than China, which has seen its growth slow.
A Chinese central bank advisor told state-run Financial News that Trump's tariff hike and Chinese retaliation would lower economic growth by 0.3 percentage points.
It is "within a controllable range", the advisor Ma Jun saidA.
Chinese
Vice Premier Liu He (left) shakes hands with US Trade Representative
Robert Lighthizer (center) alongside US Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin as Liu arrives at the Office of the US Trade Representative for
trade negotiations in Washington DC, Friday. Photo: AP
After
months of truce, the trade war between China and the US escalated on
Friday, after the US shrugged off widespread warnings and moved to hike
tariffs on Chinese goods, drawing a firm response from China, which
vowed to retaliate.
Though Chinese and US officials are
continuing talks, the renewed tensions between the world's two largest
economies significantly complicated ongoing negotiations, dimmed the
prospects of any potential trade agreement and stoked fear that a
full-fledged trade war could still break out. And the US is to blame for
the risky turn of events, Chinese officials and analysts stressed.
After
days of repeated threats, US officials on Friday noon (Beijing Time)
increased an existing 10 percent tariff on $200 billion in Chinese goods
to 25 percent, breaking a truce reached by the leaders of the two
countries in December 2018 and highlighting the unreliable and
unpredictable nature of the US administration.
Minutes after the US tariff hike took effect, China struck back. In a statement, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce
(MOFCOM) said that China "will have to take necessary countermeasures,"
while still urging the US to meet China halfway in ongoing negotiations
in Washington.
Even as tensions escalated, officials pushed
through with the 11th round of negotiations as they try to make a
last-ditch effort to bring the months-long talks back on track for a
trade agreement.
The Chinese delegation was seen arriving at the
Office of the US Trade Representative at around 5 pm on Thursday US
time and left about an hour and half later. The talks will continue on
Friday morning, according to US media reports.
"We are now at a
very delicate place, where further negotiations have become
significantly more difficult… the risk of a further escalation also
increased," Song Guoyou, director of Fudan University's Center for
Economic Diplomacy, told the Global Times on Friday. "We cannot allow
this to become normal. That would be dangerous."
Forced retaliation
Chinese
officials have repeatedly stressed that China does not want to fight a
trade war, but Washington's aggressiveness and belligerence left them no
other option but to fight back, analysts said.
"China will also
have to make good on its own words, otherwise, it will be at a huge
disadvantage to the US team at the negotiations," said He Weiwen, a
former senior Chinese trade official, told the Global Times on Friday,
referring to China's earlier vow to retaliate if the US went ahead with
the tariff threat.
Though the MOFCOM on Friday did not say what
countermeasures China will take and when it will implement them, there
are many ways China can inflict pain on the US economy, according to
analysts.
"The most direct countermeasure would be raising
existing tariffs on US goods or imposing tariffs on more US products,"
Song said. "However, we cannot rule out other policy tools."
Song
pointed out that with the overall trade relationship souring, US
companies' operations and investments in China could also be impacted,
given the rising anger among the Chinese public toward the US.
In
the wake of renewed tensions, calls on Chinese social media to boycott
US products rose, including US films, iPhones and computers. "Why
retaliate? All we need to do is boycotting US products," one internet
user said on Sina Weibo.
Chinese analysts also suggested that
China could target the US financial system, the backbone of the US
economy, including unloading China's holdings of US Treasury bonds. Big
US corporations and products, such as agricultural goods, will also
likely encounter more scrutiny and resistance in China.
"Such an impact on US companies and industries will not be less severe than from the tariffs," Song said.
Many
US business groups have expressed strong opposition to the tariffs. On
Wall Street, US stocks have also suffered losses in the past few days,
as have stocks in major bourses across the world.
Complicated outlook
While
it remains to be seen whether trade officials could still make a
breakthrough at the talks, it is clear that the escalation complicates
the talks and dims prospects for a deal, analysts said.
"I don't
expect too much from this round of talks," a source in Washington
familiar with the talks told the Global Times on Friday, noting that US
President Donald Trump had miscalculated.
"He initially wanted to
show how he forced China into making concessions," the source, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "But that is like forcing China
not to sign the deal quickly."
However, citing US eagerness, other observers have also argued that there is still a chance for the two sides to reach a deal.
"I
think there is still a chance for the two countries to reach an
agreement," Sang Baichuan, director of the Institute of International
Business at the University of International Business and Economics in
Beijing, told the Global Times on Friday, noting that the two sides
still appear eager to reach a deal, despite their tough rhetoric.
In
what appears to be an attempt to leave room for talks, US officials
offered a grace period for the tariff hike. Trump also said on Thursday
that a deal is still "possible" this week and that he might speak to
Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone, CNBC reported.
Asked about
the phone call, Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign
Ministry, said on Friday that he was not aware of such a plan but the
two leaders have maintained close contact.
The sewing lines at Bernhard Furniture Company which where skilled craft
jobs are growing without the help of tariffs, and company officials
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc
Trump's tariffs won't restore U.S. furniture jobs :
https://www.reuters.tv/v/PvWi/2018/09/27/trump-s-tariffs-won-t-restore-u-s-furniture-jobs
In a town where a 30-feet tall chair is the chief landmark, and which is synonymous with a U.S. furniture industry decimated over the years by imports from China, many greet the possibility of tariffs on Chinese goods with a shrug.
No wonder. Of three once bustling Thomasville furniture plants in the city limits, one is being demolished and cleared for parkland, another may become the site of a new police station, and a third is being converted into apartments.
President Donald Trump is threatening to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on $500 billion of goods imported from China each year, including roughly $20 billion of furniture, as a way to bring back hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost to China and other low-cost competitors.
Yet, the transformation of U.S. industries since China’s emergence as the world’s low-cost producer almost two decades ago means many no longer directly compete with Chinese imports, so tariffs may not translate so easily into more U.S. jobs.
At family-owned Bernhardt Furniture in Lenoir, some 90 miles west of Thomasville, executives say it would take about $30 million in capital investment - some 10 percent of annual sales - to resurrect standard wood furniture lines now mainly made in countries like China and Vietnam.
That is too much to commit based on a policy that a future administration could reverse.
"The theory is you turn (imports) off, the jobs come back. That's not really true... The buildings don't exist. The people don't exist. The machinery does not exist," to make the sorts of furniture that now gets imported, said Alex Bernhardt Jr., chief executive and the company founder's great grandson.
What the company needs now, executives say, is the open markets and steady economy that have allowed it to grow its workforce from below 800 at the end of the 2007-2009 recession to almost 1,500 today - partly on the basis of exports to China.
DIFFERENT COMPANY
That growth has been largely driven by demand for more customized, higher end furniture. In expanding, the 129-year-old company has been hiring not only factory workers, but also designers, marketing experts and other professionals.
In all, it is a different firm from what it was three decades ago when it first began dividing product lines between the United States and Asia.
Economists say the same is true across much of U.S. manufacturing. To invest and hire more workers, executives would need certainty, for example, that consumers would prefer U.S.-made products at a potentially higher price. They would need confidence that tariffs would last beyond the Trump administration and that production could not be shifted to other more cost-competitive countries.
Even then, there may be little incentive to go back to old product lines for industries that have changed dramatically because of globalization.
Across the Rust Belt and the former factory towns of the south, the transformation is apparent. In Buffalo, an old steel mill is now a solar panel factory, and a retail goods manufacturer now houses an office and restaurant park. Near Dayton, Ohio, a shuttered GM plant has reopened as a Chinese-owned auto glass company. Abandoned factories throughout North Carolina have landed on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of "brownfield" sites that need cleanup.
Some companies are considering moving production from China as a result of the tariffs, but the jobs are unlikely to head home.
Illinois-based CCTY Bearing, for example, said it planned to move U.S.-bound production from Zhenjiang, China, to a new plant near Mumbai in India to keep labor costs down.
JLab Audio's China-made Bluetooth products are not being taxed yet, but its chief executive Win Cramer had been scouting for suppliers in Vietnam and Mexico.
"I would love to build products onshore, but consumers have proven time and time again that "Made in America" isn't as valuable a statement as it once was," Cramer said. "They make decisions based on the cost."
The price of, say, its Bluetooth earbud would jump from $20 to as much as $50 if it was made in the United States, Cramer said, far more than what tariffs would add to the cost of imports.
To be sure, early reactions suggest that foreign companies that make U.S.-bound goods in China may move some of that production to the United States. Still, countries such as Vietnam may ultimately benefit the most from Trump's tariffs.
Japanese construction and mining equipment maker Komatsu Ltd < 6301.T > has said it has already shifted some of its production of parts for U.S.-built excavators from China. Part of that production moved to the United States, but some also went to Mexico and Japan.
In South Korea, LG Electronics <066570 .ks=""> and its rival Samsung Electronics <005930 .ks=""> are considering moving parts of U.S.-bound refrigerator and air conditioner production to Mexico, Vietnam or back home, but not to the United States, according to company sources and local media.
STEADY RECOVERY
The responses to Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum show how such steps create both winners and losers.
Producers such as U.S. Steel and Century Aluminum have said they will add at least several hundred jobs as a result of the higher prices they can charge.
Mid-Continental Nail, however, laid off 130 workers because of those higher steel prices, and furniture parts maker Leggett & Platt has warned that rising metal prices would prompt it to shift production abroad.
So far, Washington has imposed duties on $250 billion of Chinese imports and Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on all Chinese goods.
Many economists project new tariffs would on balance either slow down hiring or cause job losses in a manufacturing sector where employment has grown by 10 percent over the past eight years without special protection.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Q1AFUW)
The furniture industry, among the hardest hit by Chinese imports, has added 43,000 jobs since its employment hit a low of 350,000 in 2011, helped by the recovering housing market and strong consumer demand.
Industry officials say skilled upholsterers and other workers are hard to find, echoing the Federal Reserve's concern about the impact of worker shortages on the U.S. economy.
In Thomasville, few expect that tariffs will bring furniture manufacturing back to its heyday, nor does the community need it, says city manager Kelly Craver, whose parents worked in the furniture and textile industries.
Since the recession, Thomasville has become a residential hub for growing nearby cities such as Greensboro and Charlotte. It also has its own mix of manufacturing and white collar jobs.
Mohawk Industries recently expanded its Thomasville laminate flooring facility while the Old Dominion Freight Line transportation firm and the fast-growing Cook Out burger chain have corporate headquarters there.
"We, for the very first time in this city's existence, are going to have a diversified economy," Craver said.
I was going to write about disruptive technology but the whole week was taken up with the disruption that Donald J Trump caused in upsetting the US establishment by winning the Presidential elections.
The establishment was so confident of a Hillary win that the New York Times predicted 85 per cent chance of her winning and the Economist magazine showed a cover picture with Hillary as America and the rest of the world’s best hope.
Trump’s victory repeated the Brexit phenomenon that the elites don’t get it.
The voters are angry and even if Hillary had the support of women, African Americans and Latinos, it was not enough.
Trump basically tapped into the anger in the dominant American white voter that life has not been good in the last 30 years, attributing this to globalisation, immigration, disruptive technology and mostly, the failure of the elites to listen.
There was something quite Darwinian about the US elections.
Here was an alpha male challenging the establishment, both on the Republican and Democratic sides.
Against all odds, he defeated the Bush dynasty and the Republican party leadership to win the nomination.
Then he crushed the alpha female (Hillary), partly because somehow no one could quite trust what she really stood for.
Certainly, Wall Street would have benefited most, being her major supporter.
But no one quite trusts banksters these days.
Trump put the Clinton/Obama dynasty into its place.
We are likely to see some major changes affecting Wall Street.
Remember how in 1934, newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt sent Joseph Kennedy Senior to go after Wall Street?
How did Trump get there?
Firstly, as a businessman, he understood that the old model was broken because he read the signals right – the average American voter was angry and wanted their issues fixed.
Secondly, he knew that the mainstream establishment media was against him but they didn't get what his pollsters were reading.
The Web traffic was showing that his outrageous statements were touching raw nerves.
Politics ultimately is about the gut rather than the rational mind.
Thirdly, the pollsters were reading the old tea leaves, not appreciating how voters were refusing to show their hand till the last minute.
An American friend had this insight – most of his friends refused to tell anyone that they supported Trump.
They did not want to appear politically incorrect to support a ranting candidate that was not playing to the traditional songs.
But they wanted change – and Obama did not deliver what they wanted.
What next for Trump and for Asia?
Based upon his campaign language, Trump is likely to be quite tough on allies and competitors alike.
American military support wouldn’t come free for allies and he is also likely to be tougher on his foes.
This means essentially that everyone will have to look after their own interests.
The election also showed that what concerns the voter most is the need for good jobs.
This is where globalisation and technology disruption have upset the status quo.
Jobs either go abroad where wages are cheaper or technology is such that most manufacturing can be done onshore, but robotics are replacing grunt labour.
Hence the only Tech Age solution is proper education and training on the job.
In the tech age, governments cannot assume that the market will provide the jobs without state help.
Employers need to be aware that you can’t shed labour without investing in people.
Universities and schools have been disrupted by the Internet, because the best teaching is now accessible online and mostly free.
Massive Open Online Curriculum (MOOC) means that anyone can access the best online lecture course by some of the top lecturers at the best universities, fully up to date.
Who needs uninterested local professors who are still teaching out-dated texts they learnt thirty years ago?
Digital divide
The Digital Divide means the line between those who are digitally connected and those who are not.
Increasingly, societies are networks across which goods, services, information and value are traded, exchanged and created.
Those who have access to these networks grow wealthier, outstripping those who are not.
Hong Kong is a perfect example of how cities become successful by being a free port, where there are low transaction costs, with rule of law and access to free information.
Having superior marine port, airport and road and now rail connection to the Mainland of China made Hong Kong not just the entrepot centre for Chinese trade with the world, but also a globally connected city.
But making money through trade, finance and real estate is no longer viable when every business is disrupted by technology.
Alibaba, Amazon, Google and Facebook are just a bunch of smart people that integrate multiple markets using their digital platform.
Their cost expense ratios are a fraction of the traditional bricks and employee business of Walmart, real estate developers, banks and newspapers.
They have global reach, especially the young and mobile.
All this means that as America becomes strong under Trump (which he promised), every country or city needs to compete even more fiercely in the digital age.
Cities have better chances of getting their acts together to get the government, business and civil society to work together and achieve how they really want to compete in the digital age.
I was in Shenzhen last month looking at how they are coping with the digital age.
Shenzhen is now green and dynamic, with showcase drone technology, Huawei telecommunications and genomic technology that are at the cutting edge of innovation.
No one I talked to cared about the angst that was going on in Hong Kong, where the young and old are still squabbling over their own identities.
Shenzhen was moving to compete head-on with Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Shanghai and Hangzhou. And this is a city that thirty years ago had no university of its own and no serious manufacturing to speak of. This is an immigrant city par excellence finding its own place in global technology.
Disruption comes from sheer willpower. Either you disrupt or you become disrupted.
Trump and Shenzhen are showing the way. Everyone else please wake up.
By Andrew Sheng, Asia News Network/The Star
The writer, a Distinguished Fellow of Hong Kong-based think-tank Fung Global Institute, writes on global issues from an Asian perspective.
DONALD
Trump’s shock upset in last week’s US presidential elections have
triggered a massive move in the global currency markets over the past
few days.
The alternative view - By M. Shanmugam
REGIONAL
currencies coming under pressure after the US presidential election
were something that was expected given that the Federal Reserve was
looking at raising interest rates before the year ends.
SINGAPORE/KUALA
LUMPUR: Malaysia's ringgit plunged to its weakest in more than 12 years
in offshore markets on Friday as investors dumped government bonds,
forcing the central bank to use its persuasive powers to keep the spot
rate steady by deterring sellers onshore.
Sep 29, 2016 ...US presidential hopefuls show a country lacking in leadership, debate falls intotrite format. Monday's first presidential debate between ...
Homegrown BeiDou system guarantees industry safety
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc 
US president-elect Donald Trump gives a speech during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York on Nov 8, 2016. PHOTO: AFP
