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One of 33 unearthed pipes has very high coliform bacteria level

Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu (center) looks at the bundle of unearthed pipes at the beach front in Boracay over the weekend. Teams from the Department of Environment and Natural Resource have been ordered to use ground penetrating radar to detect buried pipes, some of which have been found to be discharging wastewater directly into the sea. — DENR

ONE of 33 pipes so far found buried right at Boracay’s famed White Sand Beach area has tested positive for very high coliform bacteria levels, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Western Visayas Region (DENR-6). Regional Director Jim O. Sampulna said the pipe’s coliform level was at 74,000 most probable number per 100 milliliters (MPN/100ml), way above the standard safe level of 400 MPN/100ml. “Secretary (Roy A. Cimatu) was worried because he did not expect that,” Mr. Sampulna said. The owner of the tested pipe has yet to be identified, he said. All the unearthed pipes will be tested, he added. DENR-6 has previously found three pipes discharging wastewater directly to the sea. — Louine Hope U. Conserva

Green energy, tourism, and agro-industry ideal for Iloilo ecozones — PEZA advisor

ILOILO CITY — Green energy, tourism, and agro-industry have been put forward as the ideal sectors for special economic zones in Iloilo considering available resources and the needs of the province as well as the city.
Joseph Timothy Rivera, appointed Philippine Economic and Zone Authority (PEZA) special advisor for the Middle East and Northern Europe, said renewable energy would do well for improving Iloilo’s power supply.
“I suggest solar power generation and wind power turbine generation. So that the rates of Panay Electric Company (PECO) will become lower and power outages of Iloilo Electric Cooperative (ILECO) will reduce,” Mr. Rivera, a native of Iloilo, told the local media at the sidelines of last week’s Ecozone Property Development Forum.
PECO is the sole power distributor in Iloilo City while ILECO serves the province.
For tourism, Mr. Rivera, a realtor, suggested building retirement villages within ecozones, where incentives are given to investors.
He cited that the Philippine Countryside Farms & Homeland Development Corp. (PhilCoF) is already setting up two retirement villages in Western Visayas — one in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo and the other in the island province of Guimaras.
Mr. Rivera said he is assisting PhilCoF in its PEZA registration for the two projects.
The PEZA advisor also pointed to the vast idle lands in the province as potential sites for agro-industrial centers.
“Because with more economic zones, more jobs will be generated which is sustainable for the (shift to) federal… government. It is one of the tools and mechanisms to make federalism possible. Each region cannot effectively develop under federalism if they don’t have their own economic growth,” he said.
The Duterte administration is aiming to establish two new economic zones in every city and province in the country.
Mr. Rivera said PEZA is currently coordinating with the planning office of Iloilo City and the provincial government for the identification of the potential sites.
Meanwhile, PEZA is organizing a visit by a Qatar and Kuwaiti business delegation to the province in October for possible investments in ecozones.
He said PEZA is following a “reverse approach” wherein they let investors determine what industry they want to venture into, then the local government would scout for a potential site.
“Seldom could we have investors, like the Arabs, that will just lend you money and let you decide on what type of industry to choose. Normally, investors already have their target,” he said.
Mr. Rivera stressed that ecozones generate more jobs and increase the value of land in the surrounding area. — Louine Hope U. Conserva

Davao hopes to draw more tourists from Down Under with PHL-Australia Friendship Week

DAVAO CITY’S hosting this year of the Philippines-Australia Friendship Week from May 21 to 27 is expected to bring in more tourists from Australia. “The Australian Embassy’s action of holding the Philippines-Australia Friendship Day is a vote of confidence in a peaceful Davao,” City Tourism Operations Office (CTOO) Chief Generose D. Tecson said at the event’s launch Monday. Ms. Tecson said Australians are among the top 10 foreign visitors in the city, with 5,930 recorded in 2017. Internationally-renowned aboriginal art advocate Jeremy Donovan opened the celebration by playing the didgeridoo, a wind instrument developed by Australia’s aboriginal people. The Philippines-Australia Friendship Day is celebrated every May 22 to highlight the ties between the two countries. Among the activities lined up this year are turnover of books and educational resources, unveiling of an Australian Corner at the Davao City Library and Information Center, grant handover to the Philippine Eagle Foundation, outdoor games, and a barbecue party at the University of Mindanao. — Carmencita A. Carillo

Nation at a Glance — (05/23/18)

News stories from across the nation. Visit www.bworldonline.com (section: The Nation) to read more national and regional news from the Philippines.

Global markets rise as Beijing and Washington avert trade war

New York — Global stock markets got a bounce Monday (US time) after the US and China effectively called a truce in what had been a spiraling trade dispute, letting investors heave a sigh of relief.
Analysts said China made no concrete commitments but still won at least a temporary reprieve from the Trump team, which looming US import tariffs off the table.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told “Fox News Sunday” that “right now, we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold.” Xinhua quoted China’s Vice Premier Liu He as saying “the two sides reached a consensus, will not fight a trade war, and will stop increasing tariffs on each other.”
Even though details were sketchy, Wall Street took the opportunity to kick off the week with a rally, with industrial stocks that had been seen as most vulnerable to a trade war lifting the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average higher.
The Dow closed up almost 300 points, adding 1.2 percent. Aircraft giant Boeing, a major supplier to China, jumped 3.6 percent. United Technologies grew 2.3 percent and Caterpillar gained two percent.
Steels stocks slump
“We don’t really know the details of this agreement,” Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital told AFP, “but the market is very sensitive to the trade war threat and investors think the negotiations seem to be going in the right direction.”
General Electric gained 0.3 percent after announcing it would merge its transport business with the rail transport business Wabtec in an $11.1 billion deal.
Among those unable to celebrate the apparent trade truce were metal stocks that had stood to gain from reduced Chinese imports: AK Steel fell 5.1 percent and US Steel sank 3.8 percent.
Elsewhere, London stocks ended the session with a gain of one percent and Paris closed 0.4 percent higher, while Frankfurt was shut for a public holiday.
The Milan stock market however dropped 1.5 percent amid concerns that Italy is inching towards becoming the first EU founding member to have a eurosceptic government.
In Asia, the Hang Seng, Nikkei and Shanghai Composite all recorded solid gains.
Traders are also awaiting the release on Wednesday of minutes from the US Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting, hoping for fresh clues about its plans for raising interest rates.
Continuing improvement in the US economy and signs of rising inflation have fanned expectations the central bank will lift borrowing costs four times this year. — AFP

Indonesia’s stock rout claims another victim: the IPO market

The selloff sweeping the Indonesian market is turning into a spoiler for the local bourse’s goal of listing the most new companies in two decades.
At least three companies deferred initial public offering plans last week, data compiled by Bloomberg show. State-backed insurer PT Asuransi Tugu Pratama Indonesia cut its issue size Friday by 37 percent and priced at the bottom of a marketed range. As the market slide gathered pace in recent weeks, hospital operator PT Medikaloka Hermina, Islamic finance group PT Bank BRISyariah and bathroom and kitchen products distributor PT Surya Pertiwi all priced their share sales near the low end.
Indonesian stocks, bonds and the rupiah are in the middle of a selloff sweeping emerging markets as foreign investors dump riskier assets amid a rally in U.S. dollar and Treasury yields. With the nation’s benchmark index tumbling 14 percent from its February record and the currency weakening to a 31-month low, the Indonesia Stock Exchange’s bid to list 50 companies this year remains a challenge.
“The market for IPO and other fundraising activities will be tough this year,” John Teja, a director at PT Ciptadana Sekuritas Asia, said in a May 17 interview. “Some companies may decide to defer or cancel the plan, and those who decide to go ahead will see very weak demand.”
Plastic pipe producer PT Wahana Vinyl Nusantara, paint manufacturer PT Avia Avian and local developer PT Wijaya Karya Realty announced the postponement of their IPOs last week. While Wijaya Karya Realty said it may consider selling shares in the second half, Avia Avian is delaying its offering to next year and Wahana Vinyl said it will monitor the market before revising its plan.
Overall fundraising from equity and rights offerings in Indonesia has fallen 4.2 percent this year to 8.88 trillion rupiah ($625 million), data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“The stocks are more volatile now, and investors may adopt a ‘wait and watch’ policy until volatility subsides,” Laksono Widodo, managing director of PT Mandiri Sekuritas in Jakarta, said by phone.
The stock selloff prompted Mandiri Sekuritas to slash its year-end forecast for the Jakarta Composite Index by about 5 percent to 6,400, after first-quarter earnings growth missed the brokerage’s forecasts, according to Widodo. The rupiah may trade at 13,800 to the U.S. dollar by year-end, weaker than Mandiri’s earlier forecast of 13,600, he said.
Global funds have sold $3 billion of Indonesian stocks this year, with foreign investors being net sellers for 20 days on the trot, according to data compiled by Bloomberg show. Net sales of rupiah bonds have surged to $2.3 billion since the end of March, set for the biggest quarterly withdrawal since Bloomberg started collecting the data in 2009.
The rupiah, which has declined 4 percent this year, is among the worst performers in Asia during the period, while the benchmark bond yield is trading at its highest in 14 months. The rupiah rose 0.3 percent to 14,138 at close, the first gain in three days. — Bloomberg

Bitcoin a shadowy new realm as US weighs security clearances

As the Pentagon struggles to recruit a more tech-savvy workforce, it’s facing the confusion of many an old-timer: What to make of people who invest or trade in Bitcoin.
The question is whether owning Bitcoins or lesser-known cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and Ethereum is an indicator of risky personal behavior — one that should flag extra scrutiny in security clearances — or just another investment choice.
“There are a lot of good things about cryptocurrencies, but at the same time there are these security risks,” said Param Vir Singh, director of the PNC Center for Financial Services Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. “Think about a knife: It could be used for good things and it can be used for bad things as well.”
The debate is playing out across the government, as the Defense Department and other agencies struggle to define the currencies. Some see them simply as new investments and payment methods, while others worry they provide potential vehicles for illegal activities, from money laundering to drug-dealing.
It’s a debate that matters for the sprawling U.S. national security apparatus, which has to keep track of more than 4 million people with some form of security clearance. That includes workers who, at least in theory, could sell secrets to America’s enemies with the aid of anonymous transactions facilitated by cryptocurrencies.
Terrorists, Cybercriminals
Terrorists and cybercriminals use cryptocurrencies to shield their transactions from investigators and often demand payment in Bitcoins and other digital assets, according to international law-enforcement groups including the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre.
At the same time, young investors have decamped from the halls of prominent financial institutions for the evolving world of cryptocurrency investing, and entire states have pegged their futures to its popularity. The instrument is going mainstream as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. moves forward with Bitcoin trading operations.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin has fallen about 50 percent from its December high to about $8,400 as regulators around the world continue to evaluate how to manage digital assets and some Wall Street pros dismiss the market. Warren Buffett, for example, has likened Bitcoin to “rat poison squared.”
If the U.S. government were to decide that owning cryptocurrencies is a security risk, it could have a “huge negative impact” on the growing market, according to Singh.
Any move to more closely investigate job applicants who own cryptocurrencies also could hamper the Pentagon’s efforts to expand its operations in cyberspace, a goal that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has made a priority.
“If we’re going to say that if you’ve got a Bitcoin or another digital currency account that could be a signal or shoot up a red flag for a security clearance, guess what? Those people aren’t going to sit around waiting to try to onboard for a government job,” Greg Touhill, a retired Air Force general who was the first Federal Chief Information Security Officer, said in an interview. “It would grow the backlog considerably, in my view.”
Conflicting Messages
The Pentagon has sent conflicting messages about how it’s handling the matter.
After a Defense Security Service employee suggested in an email that Bitcoin be considered a foreign currency and reported on the lengthy SF-86 security form filled out by clearance applicants, DSS quickly countered by issuing official guidance saying…there is no official Department of Defense guidance, according to ETHNews, an online cryptocurrency news site.
“There is no current Department of Defense guidance related to the reporting of ownership of cryptocurrencies,” according to a statement posted to the DSS website. “DSS is working with DoD policy offices for further clarification and once such guidance is issued, DSS will ensure the widest dissemination to industry.”
The equivocation has been cited by law firms and job search sites. ClearanceJobs.com put it bluntly: “Should you report your Bitcoin to your security officer? It depends upon who you ask.”
Huge Backlog
The lack of clear direction from the Pentagon only adds to the headaches already faced by government contractors that need to hire workers with security clearances.
Their top priority is overhauling a clearance system with a backlog of more than 700,000 background investigations and billions of dollars in associated costs.
Raytheon Co. Vice President Jane Chappell told the Senate Intelligence Committee in March that fixing the clearance system should be a priority for the country and that the backlog was hurting “programs that provide critical warfighter capabilities.”
For now, it appears the Pentagon needs further information from the country’s financial regulators. Without a clear policy from the Treasury Department, Securities and Exchange Commission or other agencies, it will be very difficult for the Pentagon to issue guidance, according to Singh.
In the U.S., Bitcoin isn’t treated as a foreign currency for tax purposes, according to a Treasury Department spokeswoman, but Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network monitors virtual currency exchanges to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.
If the U.S. government were to assess that BitCoin is a form of foreign currency, “such activities could have an impact on a security clearance determination,” Major Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Bad Intent
The government should keep in mind that owning cryptocurrencies may not indicate bad intent, said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.
“I don’t know if the government has a clear understanding of what makes a person actually a security risk,” Aftergood said. “Instead they look at proxy factors like excessive debt, drug use and contact with the criminal justice system, which don’t necessarily translate to risk.”
But Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, said the Pentagon is right to scrutinize clearance applicants who own cryptocurrencies, even those who are buying and holding them as investments, known as “HODL’ers.”
“Since Bitcoin’s only real use is to buy drugs, etc., it deserves suspicion,” he said. “As for the HODL’ers, eh, they will pass through the clearance process OK because its clear they are just little speculators. Or outright delusional speculators, in which case, do you really want that type in government?” — Bloomberg

Singapore bourse sued by India exchange in dispute over futures

The National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. sued Singapore Exchange Ltd. in a Mumbai court, escalating a dispute that threatens to leave international investors without one of the world’s most widely-used offshore futures contracts.
NSE is trying to stop its Singapore counterpart from launching derivatives that could replace the Nifty 50 contracts that have traded in the city-state for 18 years and are used to hedge positions that foreigners take in one of Asia’s biggest equity markets. Indian exchanges ended agreements that allowed offshore derivatives in February, leaving SGX and others scrambling.
“SGX has been notified by NSE of an application made in the Bombay High Court for an interim injunction on our new products,” SGX said in a statement Tuesday. “We have full confidence in our legal position and will vigorously defend this action.”
The Singapore bourse’s stock tumbled on news of the lawsuit, falling the most since April 4.
Vikram Limaye, NSE chief executive officer, declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone Tuesday. His exchange’s move is another ratcheting up of tensions between bourses in India and Singapore amid efforts by the former to keep trading onshore.
China and Malaysia are among other emerging economies in the region that have taken steps to keep control of capital flows even as they push to further integrate into global markets. In India’s case, it’s been promoting a tax-free trading zone in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, known as Gift City, as an alternative to offshore centers.
“The principal objective is to prevent India’s turnover from being affected by overseas venues,” said Gopalan Sridhar, a Singapore-based fund manager at Aquarius Investment Advisors Pte. At the same time, “NSE is trying to increase access to international investors by increasing trading hours and allowing U.S. clients to trade.”
U.S. regulators last week approved allowing NSE members to accept American customer funds for trading in futures and options contracts on the Mumbai bourse.
Shock Move
In a surprise announcement in February, India’s national exchanges said they would end all licensing agreements with overseas bourses and also stop providing live prices. The international community responded with alarm and the move drew a rebuke from MSCI Inc., with the index compiler calling the move anti-competitive.
Singapore has become a hub of offshore trading for many markets, including China, Japan and Indonesia. In response to the February move, many analysts cut their ratings on SGX’s stock. The company’s shares fell as much as 2.4 percent in Tuesday trading.
SGX said last month it would launch India derivatives in June even as it continues to evaluate a venture with NSE in Gift City. In its Tuesday statement, the Singapore bourse said it’s essential to maintain liquidity in overseas markets to connect international participants to Gift City.
“The case may drag on for years but it is the short term decision which matters most,” Sandeep Parekh, founder at Finsec Law Advisors, said by phone. “SGX will be in a problem if court grants a stay; if they don’t grant it, then NSE will be in a bind — it is highly likely that NSE will terminate all its partnerships with SGX, including the proposed Gift City venture.” — Bloomberg

NYSE names first woman chief in exchange’s 226-year history

The New York Stock Exchange promoted Stacey Cunningham to president, making her the first woman to be the sole head of the 226-year-old market.
Previously chief operating officer, Cunningham replaces Tom Farley, who’s leaving the company, according to Josh King, a spokesman for NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
NYSE’s move means two of the top three U.S. stock exchange operators are led by women. Adena Friedman became chief executive officer of Nasdaq Inc. last year. For a time in the last decade, NYSE was jointly run by a woman, Catherine Kinney, but Cunningham is the first not to share the president title.
Cunningham, 43, got her first taste of NYSE in 1994, when she interned as a trader on the floor. She worked as a NYSE floor specialist for Banc of America Specialist Inc. from 1996 to 2005 before joining Nasdaq as an executive, according to her LinkedIn profile. She shifted over to NYSE in 2012, becoming COO in 2015.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Farley is leaving NYSE to run a special-purpose acquisition company backed by Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC. The SPAC, called Far Point, wants to raise $400 million to acquire financial-technology companies, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation. ICE’s King declined to comment. — Bloomberg

Oil rises as Venezuela sanctions stoke crude supply risk concern

Oil extended gains as a new wave of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela stoked concerns over its crude production and as analysts forecast further declines in American stockpiles.
Futures in New York added as much as 0.4 percent after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered sanctions on debt owed to Venezuela after the Latin American country’s President, Nicolas Maduro, won a second term in an election that raised scorn from the international community. Meanwhile, crude inventories in the U.S. are forecast to fall for a third week in a Bloomberg survey before government data due Wednesday.
Oil is trading near the highest level since 2014 as geopolitical tensions, U.S. sanctions on Iran and plunging production in OPEC-producer Venezuela raise concerns over supply. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries continues to tighten global inventories with output cuts due to last until the end of the year. The International Energy Agency said it expects some of the biggest oil-producing nations to meet any shortfalls.
“Bullish factors are everywhere,” Takayuki Nogami, chief economist at state-backed Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp., said by phone from Tokyo. “OPEC tends to show a willingness to monitor the markets, but is slow to take action. The market is aware of that and doesn’t expect OPEC to act swiftly and cool down prices.”
Oil Prices
West Texas Intermediate for June delivery, which expires Tuesday, climbed as much as 31 cents to $72.55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and traded at $72.44 at 1:12 p.m. in Tokyo. The more-active July contract rose 15 cents to $72.50. Total volume traded was about 39 percent below the 100-day average.
Brent futures for July settlement added as much as 26 cents to $79.48 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract on Monday gained 0.9 percent to $79.22. The global benchmark crude traded as at $6.83 premium to WTI for the same month.
Yuan-denominated futures climbed 0.6 percent to 485.5 yuan a barrel in morning trading on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange. The contract fell 0.8 percent on Monday.
Trump issued an order prohibiting purchases of debt owed to the Venezuelan government including Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the Latin American nation’s state-owned oil company. The order follows the first wave of restrictions last year that banned the purchase of new debt from the government.
Supply Risks
Venezuelan crude output may drop below 1 million barrels per day in the coming months from an April level of 1.5 million, Barclays Plc said in a May 18 report, when it raised its forecast for Brent to $70 per barrel from its previous outlook of $63.
The IEA started discussions with major oil producing countries about their ability “to make up the loss from Venezuela or elsewhere,” Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Paris-based agency, as an energy security organization, is “ready to act if and when it is at all necessary,” Birol said.
In the U.S., crude inventories probably fell by 2 million barrels last week, according to the Bloomberg survey of analysts. Stockpiles at the key pipeline and storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, are estimated to have declined by 250,000 barrels, according to a forecast compiled by Bloomberg. — Bloomberg

Trump retreats from China tariffs amid White House trade discord

President Donald Trump retreated from imposing tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods because of White House discord over trade strategy and concern about harming negotiations with North Korea, according to people briefed on the administration’s deliberations.
Trump also succumbed to pressure from farm-state Republicans, who heavily lobbied the White House to resolve its trade differences with China, which had especially targeted U.S. agricultural products with planned retaliatory tariffs.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the administration’s plan to impose tariffs had been suspended, and Trump said on Twitter on Monday that the Chinese had agreed to purchase unspecified amounts of American farm products. Some of his loyalists led by former chief strategist Steven Bannon criticized the deal as a capitulation.
The agreement at least delays a trade war between the world’s two largest economies, a prospect that has rattled financial markets for months. But many U.S. concerns about China’s economic practices remain unresolved: its acquisition of American technologies; the country’s plans to subsidize the growth of advanced domestic industries such as artificial intelligence and clean energy; and U.S. companies’ access to China’s markets.
Bannon blamed Mnuchin. Trump “changed the dynamic regarding China but in one weekend Secretary Mnuchin has given it away,” he said in an interview. “Mnuchin has completely misread the geopolitical, military, and historical precedents, and what President Trump had done was finally put the Chinese on their back heels.”
Some White House officials blame poor coordination among the warring factions in Trump’s economic team for the retreat, according to several people briefed on the matter. Within the administration, divisions are raw between free-trade supporters such as Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and China hawks led by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
During a trip to Beijing earlier this month, Navarro and Mnuchin argued about the U.S. negotiating position, and Navarro wasn’t deeply involved last week in negotiations with a Chinese delegation in Washington.
The divisions are apparent in Trump’s public actions. In April, the Commerce Department cut off Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. from its American suppliers in response to what Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called “egregious” violations of U.S. sanctions against doing business in Iran and North Korea.
Trump reversed the action via tweet a week ago, declaring that it would cost “too many jobs in China.”
‘Broad Outline’
The Wall Street Journal reported that China and the U.S. have agreed on the “broad outline” of a settlement to the seven-year ban on ZTE.
“China is pushing the president around, and he seems to accept it,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said in a speech on Monday. “The way to win real concessions from China is to stay tough, not to bluster and back off at the first sign of friction.”
While Schumer is a Democrat, he has consistently complimented Trump’s confrontation of China.
The White House said in a statement Monday that “the president and his entire administration are committed to ending decades of unfair and illegal trading practices that harm our farmers, workers and many other parts of the U.S. economy.”
“The president will not back down until we see meaningful and lasting change,” the White House added.
North Korea Specter
Looming large over negotiations with China are separate but inextricable talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program. Trump is counting on Chinese President Xi Jinping to maintain pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose country is economically dependent on China.
Last week, North Korea’s state-run news agency and top officials began issuing threats to back out of a planned June 12 summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim. Trump suggested himself that Xi was pulling strings in Pyongyang to put pressure on U.S. trade negotiators.
White House officials think Trump could take a harder line on China after the North Korea summit, the people briefed on administration discussions said.
Some Republicans warned Trump that congressional seats held by their party that should have been safe in midterm elections were endangered by the trade dispute. Several farm-state lawmakers expressed relief that a damaging round of tariffs is — for now — no longer on the horizon.
‘Catastrophic’ Tariffs
“It would be catastrophic,” Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said. The Chinese had targeted soybeans, one of his state’s top exports to the country, as one product for retaliatory tariffs.
“We have made the case to the White House at least twice in the last four months,” he said in an interview.
But Trump loyalists including Bannon and campaign trade adviser Dan DiMicco were among the loudest critics of the president’s retreat.
“It gives the appearance that the Chinese are doing what they’ve always done to us: put in significant delay tactics,” DiMicco, who now serves on an advisory committee for the the U.S. Trade Representative, said in a phone interview. “It’s a road we’ve been down for 25 years and has gotten us nothing but trouble – -more theft of IP, more stealing and hacking of proprietary information of companies in this country, ever growing trade deficit in manufactured goods.” — Bloomberg

China said to consider ending birth limits as soon as 2018

China is planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a historic end to a policy that spurred countless human-rights abuses and left the world’s second-largest economy short of workers.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has commissioned research on the repercussions of ending the country’s roughly four-decade-old policy and intends to enact the change nationwide, said the people, who asked not to be named while discussing government deliberations. The leadership wants to reduce the pace of aging in China’s population and remove a source of international criticism, one of the people said.
Proposals under discussion would replace the population-control policy with one called “independent fertility,” allowing people to decide how many children to have, the person said. The decision could be made as soon as the fourth quarter, the second person said, adding that the announcement might also be pushed into 2019.
“It’s late for China to remove birth limits even within this year but it’s better than never,” said Chen Jian, a former division chief at the National Family Planning Commission, who’s now a vice president of the China Society of Economic Reform. “Scrapping birth limits will have little effect on the tendency of China’s declining births.”
Danone, which has doubled its share of China’s baby food market in the past five years, rose to a session high in Paris before paring gains. U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc shares erased declines in London.
The policy change would close the book on one of the largest social experiments in human history, which left the world’s most-populous country with a rapidly aging population and 30 million more men than women. The policies have forced generations of Chinese parents to pay fines, submit to abortions or raise children in the shadows.
Two-Child Policy
The U.S. and other Western nations have criticized the coercive measures required to enforce the birth limits, including steep fines, sterilization and forced abortions. The 2015 shift toward a two-child policy was part of a gradual effort to loosen the birth limits over the years as China’s working-age population began to wane.
An initial feasibility study was submitted to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in April, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions. That study found there would be “limited” benefits to lifting birth restrictions nationwide. Li requested more research on the social impact of scrapping the policy altogether, the person said.
Neither the State Council Information Office nor the National Health Commission immediately returned faxed requests for comment Monday.
“The policy shift will hardly boost the number of newborns in China,” said Huang Wenzheng, a specially-invited senior researcher of Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank.”China’s number of births will continue to drop dramatically, considering a sharp decrease in the number of fertile women and declining fertility willingness. ”
Still, the move underscores growing concern among Chinese policy makers that more dramatic action is needed three years after allowing all families to have two children instead of one. Births fell 3.5 percent to 17.2 million nationwide last year, according to the Bureau of National Statistics, erasing almost half of the increase in births caused by relaxing the policy.
China’s graying society will have broad consequences for the nation and the world, weighing on President Xi Jinping’s effort to develop the economy, driving up pension and healthcare costs, and sending foreign companies further afield for labor. The State Council last year projected that about a quarter of China’s population will be 60 or older by 2030, up from 13 percent in 2010.
“The low birth rate and low number of newborns from the previous two years after the two-child policy sent a strong message to the decision-makers that the young generation has a weak willingness to have more children,” Chen said. “China’s population issues will be a major hurdle for President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a modernized country by 2035.”
In March, China removed the term “family planning” from the name of the newly consolidated National Health Commission — the first time since 1981 that no agency bears the name. Xi and Li also omitted any reference to the phrase from key policy reports in recent months.
Gender Gap
While China credits birth limits with helping to launch a decades-long economic boom under reformer Deng Xiaoping, they have also exacerbated demographic imbalances, with many parents choosing to abort female fetuses. China has 106 men for every 100 women, compared with 102 globally, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Such moves have done little to increase the fertility rate, with many parents concerned about the costs of raising additional children in a society accustomed to focusing family resources on one. Nonetheless, Chinese policy makers have resisted calls by economists and demographers to relinquish control amid concerns over the impact of a sudden increase in births or older parents angry about missing the chance to expand their families.
Even a short-lived baby boom could prove lucrative for businesses who cater to childrens’ needs in the world’s most populous county. Chinese consumers bought $19.4 billion of infant products between September 2016 and August 2017, an 11 percent increase, according to an annual report released by Nielsen Holdings Plc in November. — Bloomberg

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