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Trump trade czar eyes exit hailing tariff power his critics hate

InternationalDec 27. 2020Robert Lighthizer and Liu He, China’s vice premier, wave before a meeting at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, on Oct. 11, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Shawn Donnan

Robert Lighthizer has built a career on being a wily contrarian.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that President Donald Trump’s trade czar is going out tilting at a consensus among mainstream economists that Trump’s signature policies — his tariffs on billions in imports from China and steel from around the world — have been a failure by most metrics.

The U.S. is on track to end Trump’s presidency and a pandemic-affected 2020 with a trade deficit in goods and services larger than the one he inherited, Lighthizer’s critics point out. At least 100,000 fewer Americans were employed in manufacturing in November than at the start of Trump’s presidents.Yet the U.S. trade representative, who is preparing to leave office in January believing he has overseen a sea change in American trade policy, particularly toward China, sees a different storyline borne out by the data.

Strip away the impact of this year’s pandemic, Lighthizer argues, and it’s clear the Trump trade doctrine has delivered. Five of the six quarters prior to the pandemic saw decreases in the U.S. goods and services deficit, he points out, though in the eight prior to that the trend went the other way. Before Covid-19 hit the economy in February, he adds, the U.S. had gained more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs on Trump’s watch.

Most importantly, though, those changes had translated into higher wages for American workers with the median household income in 2019 rising 6.8% from the year before.

“That’s the highest in American history,” Lighthizer said in an interview.

It may frustrate his critics but Lighthizer’s pushback is evidence that, as in its other forms, Trumpism’s trade legacy may be an enduring one.

President-elect Joe Biden and his aides have already signaled that in part by vowing a pro-worker focus as they rebuild the U.S. economy and a trade policy that will be a component of what they are dubbing a “foreign policy for the middle class.” Though what that means in substance remains unclear.

More clear is that Trump’s protectionist episode and the support it garnered him again in key industrial states like Ohio this year are likely to continue encouraging the Democratic Party’s own trade skeptics and progressives. Which is why the battle over the economics of Trump’s trade legacy matters and will shadow the work of Lighthizer’s likely successor, Katherine Tai, the senior congressional staffer Biden has chosen for the role.

It is in many ways a theological battle. Adam Posen, the head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which has led the analytical charge against Trump’s trade policies since 2016, likens any statistical defense of them to those offered by climate change deniers, or vaccine skeptics. To critics like Posen, Trump and Lighthizer’s preferred tool — the tariff, or import tax — has just gone through a very public discrediting experiment.

To Lighthizer and his supporters, however, the mighty American tariff has finally been absolved of what protectionists have long argued has been the unfair taint hanging over them since the Smoot-Hawley era of the 1930s, which economists have long blamed for at least prolonging the Great Depression around the world.

Lighthizer argues none of the critics’ predictions of economic or financial market collapses and price surges that accompanied the rollout of Trump’s tariffs in 2018 and 2019 have materialized. “It’s an important lesson that these catastrophes that they predicted didn’t happen,” he says.

Nor have the steel tariffs that critics have pointed to as one cause in the industrial output recession that the U.S. suffered in 2019 really hurt manufacturers, he argues.

Manufacturing jobs grew most robustly in 2018 when the tariffs first went in place and steel prices rose, he points out. And conversely that jobs growth slowed as steel prices fell in 2019. To Lighthizer, that is proof that a rescue effort for an essential industry could be done without major economic disruption.

“You have to have a steel industry,” Lighthizer says. “There is literally no evidence to support this notion that introducing the tariffs had a negative impact on manufacturing.”

Critics would argue the slump in steel prices that followed the initial spike and the softening manufacturing jobs market and industrial output in 2019 were evidence of an impact on demand. Prices rose and demand fell in response. Which meant that by the end of 2019 even U.S. Steel Corp. was announcing layoffs.

The tariffs levied on imports from China worth some $370 billion before they went into place have also had no negative economic effect, Lighthizer insists, despite credible studies pointing to the opposite.

Lighthizer contends the tariffs together with a “Phase One” trade deal signed with Beijing in January have helped rebalance trade with China and been part of an effective pressure campaign to shift supply chains out of China.

“The administration’s policy has put tariffs on things that they had taken advantage of us on. It has helped to block their anti-market industrial policy. It has done all of these things. Without question it has changed the nature and it has set up rules which no one else had done before,” Lighthizer said.

The deal he negotiated with China is often derided by critics as a dressed-up collection of unrealistic purchase commitments that Beijing has yet to live up to. It also failed to address fundamental issues like Chinese industrial subsidies.

Yet Lighthizer and his supporters argue the more important components include a mechanism to deal with bilateral economic disputes and new Chinese commitments on intellectual property. It guarantees greater access for U.S. financial services companies to the Chinese market. Its currency rules may prove important in the future. Beyond the commitment to buy more U.S. agricultural exports by Beijing were real changes in the regulatory barriers to those farm products, Lighthizer says.

“And they’ve implemented almost all of it,” he says.

The Trump administration has helped usher in an awakening around the world to the threat posed by China and its economic model, Lighthizer says, though he conceded that China’s own behavior in recent years has contributed to that.The mainstream view before the Trump administration, Lighthizer says, was that “China was a force for good in the trade world. And that’s completely changed not only here but in Europe and Africa and South America.”

Had Trump won the November election and were Lighthizer staying on he would be continuing to press for change in the relationship with China. Lighthizer believes the Biden administration should use the leverage it has from the existing tariffs to build on Trump’s trade deal and avoid a return to the endless and usually ineffective “dialogues” that prior administrations got caught up in.

Lighthizer believes he might have been able to close a deal with the U.K. before a congressional deadline next year. But he is also not convinced about the economic value of such a deal. His U.K. counterparts seem to want a deal for other reasons including a validation of their post-Brexit place in the world.

Were he to continue in office Lighthizer also would be turning his spotlight to a growing trade deficit with the European Union, one driven largely by automobiles. And to the World Trade Organization, to which he still attributes many of the failings in the global trading system.

Lighthizer is now in discussions with his EU counterpart, Valdis Dombrovskis, over a possible solution to a long-running trade fight over subsidies provided to Airbus SE and Boeing Co. that has led to a new round of WTO-authorized trans-Atlantic tariffs.But Lighthizer’s complaint is that the WTO system now often results in few substantial changes in practice.

That fits into the broader context of a discussion over new rules curtailing industrial subsidies — and China’s in particular — that many trade policy makers would like to see the WTO have. For now, Lighthizer says, the WTO is like a laughably ineffective on that front and the Airbus case is an example of it. He remains convinced some European governments will continue to find ways to subsidize Airbus as it competes with Boeing and wants to see countries like France and Germany forced to pay some sort of compensation.

“It literally is like somebody is robbing your house,” Lighthizer says. “You go to court and have them stop robbing your house and they start robbing your garage.”His skepticism is what drove a U.S. war on the institution’s appellate body, which Lighthizer crippled by blocking the appointment of new judges. He’d like to see a system of one-off arbitration instead and argues the appeals process until now has removed any incentive to negotiate new rules.He also has flagged his desire to see the WTO engage in a global renegotiation of its members’ tariff schedules. Too many large developing economies benefit from high tariff walls negotiated when they first joined the institution, he says.

The answer for Lighthizer is a universal tariff level, a 10% flat tax for trade if you will. With a bit of wiggle room allowed for “some small amount of your goods because you have political reasons.”

Which really comes back to Lighthizer’s belief in the power of tariffs, the one that irritates his critics and economists most. The cure is simple, Lighthizer said: “Everyone ought to have the same tariffs.”

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Authorities probing Nashville blast converge on home in city’s suburbs

InternationalDec 27. 2020

By The Washington Post · Derek Hawkins, Michael Kranish, Simone Sebastian

ANTIOCH, Tenn. – Authorities investigating the Christmas morning explosion in downtown Nashville converged on a home in Antioch, Tenn., about 10 miles southeast of the blast site Saturday afternoon, as law enforcement agents continued to gather evidence and run down hundreds of tips.

Investigators think the person living at that address has a connection to the bombing. One theory investigators are pursuing is that the man blew himself up in the RV, according to two people familiar with the matter, who cautioned that officials are still pursuing numerous leads and that no final conclusions have been reached.

Several neighbors said a light-colored recreational vehicle similar to the one that blew up Friday morning had been parked in the backyard of the home for several months before the explosion. So far, investigators have not found evidence pointing to other potential conspirators or threats to public safety, according to multiple people familiar with the case.

A day after the explosion, AT&T communication networks remained disrupted throughout Tennessee, knocking out residential phones, cellphones and service at 20 call centers for 911. Business and government functions were hobbled, and flights were temporarily grounded at Nashville International Airport.

Tony Rodriguez lives in the second home of the duplex that law enforcement searched today. He said investigators removed a computer motherboard from his neighbor’s home, among other affects.

Rodriguez said he never spoke to his neighbor and didn’t know his name. The few times Rodriguez saw the man, he was tinkering with an antennae above the house and power washing the driveway behind their home. Rodriguez said the neighbor kept several “No Trespassing” and warning signs around his property, particularly where he kept the RV.

“He always seemed like an oddball,” Rodriguez said.

In an afternoon news conference in Nashville, FBI special agent Douglas Korneski said that there was “activity going on” in the Antioch area but that he “can’t confirm any individuals or anybody we’ve identified.”

The blast rocked the city around dawn Friday when an RV detonated near an AT&T transmission building on the city’s busy Second Avenue, home to a strip of honky-tonk bars and restaurants.

The incident – which officials described as an “intentional act” and “deliberate bomb” – left dozens of buildings mangled and sent three people to the hospital with what police said were noncritical injuries.

Officials said Saturday that the city was safe and that there were no known threats, but the area remained sealed off and under curfew over the weekend as investigators combed through the wreckage.

“It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle created by a bomb that throws evidence over multiple city blocks,” U.S. Attorney Donald Cochran said. “They’ve got to gather it, they’ve got to catalogue it, they’ve got to put it back together and find out what the picture of that puzzle looks like.”

Earlier in the day, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee asked President Donald Trump for federal assistance in response to the explosion, saying the damage to businesses and the disruptions in Internet and cell service caused by the blast were too severe for the state to handle alone.

The Republican governor said he spent part of the morning touring the destruction left by the explosion. “The damage is shocking and it is a miracle that no residents were killed,” Lee wrote in a tweet.

In a letter to Trump, Lee referred to the incident as an “attack” carried out with a “vehicle-born improvised explosive device” and called on the president to issue an emergency disaster declaration, unlocking financial and physical assistance from the federal government.

The governor estimated that the state had spent at least $175 million responding to other disasters since early 2019 and said federal help was essential.

“These extraordinary state and local expenditures have reduced our capacity to recover from this current event,” Lee wrote. “Given these factors, the severity and magnitude of the current situation is such that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments.”

The White House has not publicly responded to Lee’s request. Trump was briefed on the situation yesterday and is monitoring developments, a spokesperson said Friday.

The shocking sequence of events leading to the explosion began before daybreak Friday morning, when residents were startled awake by the crackle of gunfire and called 911. Some later speculated that the noise was a recording intended to wake them up.

Shortly afterward, a strange warning began to play from a light-colored, older-model RV parked on Second Avenue.

“It was a computerized message of ‘Evacuate now. . . . This vehicle has a bomb and will explode,'” said Betsy Williams, who lives in a building adjacent to the blast site. The warning soon changed to a 15-minute countdown, prompting some residents to flee.

Police arrived at the scene around 6 a.m. local time. They didn’t see any evidence of a shooting, officials said, but saw the RV and called in a bomb squad. A half-dozen officers went door-to-door telling residents to leave the area, even turning away a man walking his dog.

The vehicle detonated at 6:30 a.m., spraying debris and ash through the streets and sending a column of flames and smoke curling above the rooftops.

Near the spot where the RV was parked on Second Avenue, about 15 people were at the five-story Nashville Downtown Hostel – a much smaller number than the capacity of 300, because of the pandemic and Christmas. Unlike some others in the area who evacuated before the blast, the staff and guests at the hostel were unaware of the situation until the blast went off at 6:29 a.m., a time recorded by the building’s closed-circuit television camera.

The video from the camera, provided by the hostel to The Washington Post, shows a double set of glass doors at the entrance, with “NASHVILLE” printed on them in dark lettering. Three police officers can be seen walking at a steady pace on the street. Moments later, the blast blows out the doors; debris rains down. Flashes of light fill the scene as the concussive force ripped across the entryway.

Ron Limb, 54, the hostel’s owner, was home in bed, awakened by a call from someone at the hostel. It is one of two such properties he owns in Nashville, a city that he said he fell in love with when he moved from California, attracted by its vibrant culture and youthful outlook. The building began life in 1880 and once was a candy factory. Limb bought it in 2011, spent a year restoring it, and has since introduced thousands of guests from around the world to his adopted hometown.

Limb said the staff rushed into action.

“They went around, knocked on every door, got every guest out of the building,” Limb said. “Some were asleep, rushed out in pajamas and underwear, without provisions to deal with the 20-degree weather.”

Limb said fire sprinklers had been activated, causing flooding in the building. Police blocked him from the scene for security reasons, and he spent hours trying to get the city to turn off the water, a task he said was accomplished midday Saturday.

The area around the blast site remained closed off as agents worked their way inward from the outermost perimeter of the crime scene. A curfew remained in effect for the area through Sunday.

While there were no confirmed fatalities, Nashville Police Chief John Drake said in a Friday night news conference that officers found tissue that could be human remains near the explosion that they were preparing to examine. He said police had not identified a suspect or motive. The department released a photo of the RV, which they said arrived on the street at 1:22 a.m. Friday.

Mayor John Cooper said at least 41 businesses were damaged and “there will be others as we see the full extent of this.” He said the city would focus on rebuilding but cautioned that it “will be some time before Second Avenue is back to normal.”

In his letter to Trump, Lee noted that many of the buildings rocked by the blast were historic and needed to be assessed by an engineer to make sure they are structurally sound.

As business owners and residents started to take stock of the damage Saturday, a city non-emergency number for people in the affected area remained out of service.

“We are aware property owners/residents are experiencing difficulties, and are working to resolve them as soon as possible,” Cooper tweeted. “Please know the explosion impact area is still a federal investigation zone.”

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McConnell, GOP face splits with Trump over defense, relief

InternationalDec 27. 2020Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wears a protective mask while walking to his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 21, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Oliver Contreras.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Laura Davison, Billy House

Congressional Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, face high-stakes decisions in coming days over two giant pieces of bipartisan legislation that President Donald Trump savaged this week.

Trump on Wednesday vetoed a $740.5 billion annual defense spending bill, which passed both chambers of Congress with greater than two-thirds majorities earlier this month.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he will “not stand by and watch this travesty of a bill happen without reigning in Big Tech,” but the outcome of the legislation now rests with lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans a vote to override that veto next week, with McConnell’s office pledging guidance on his intentions after the House acts.

Also in play is a mammoth $2.3 trillion covid-19 relief and government funding bill. Since the measure passed this week Trump has attacked it repeatedly for including “wasteful” spending and for having insufficient stimulus checks — after the White House earlier signaled he would sign the legislation.

House Republicans blocked a bid Thursday by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to increase the payments to $2,000 — up from the $600 previously authorized. Democrats blocked a Republican counterproposal that would repurpose foreign-aid money in the portion of the bill to fund the government.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday night, said Congress should “reexamine how our tax dollars are spent overseas,” though those provisions were part of a bipartisan appropriations process.

Democrats plan to vote Monday on new legislation to codify the $2,000 payments for most American adults and children. They could also vote on another stopgap measure to fund the government past the current spending deadline of midnight that day. While that would avert a government shutdown if the Senate also passes it and the president signs it, it is still unclear what Trump plans to do with the larger pandemic relief and annual spending bill Congress passed on Dec. 21. The bill has been flown to Florida, where Trump is spending the holidays, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“We can only do in the House what we can do,” Hoyer told reporters Thursday. “we are not going to let the government shut down. We are not going to the let the American people down from our perspective.”

David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell, didn’t respond to questions about Trump’s call for increased direct payments and Pelosi’s plan to pursue this in the House.

How Republican leaders respond to Trump’s criticisms could affect the outcome of the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate for the next two years — and whether McConnell will continue to oversee the flow of legislation and political and judicial nominations in Washington.

Trump rejected the defense policy bill on Wednesday, saying the legislation was a “gift” to China and Russia and failed “to include critical national security measures.”

Trump wanted to attach to the defense measure an unrelated provision to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects technology companies from liability for most content published by their users. He had also criticized the legislation because it contained a provision for renaming military installations that honor Confederate generals.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe, said the defense bill is “vital to our national security and our troops.” Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said Trump’s complaints about technology liability could be addressed in different legislation.

“I hope all of my colleagues in Congress will join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation,” Inhofe said in a statement shortly after Trump vetoed the bill.

The bill, which includes military pay raises, hazard pay and health benefits for soldiers, has successfully cleared Congress for the past 59 years.

Lawmakers’ plans to override Trump’s defense bill veto next week will be the first time Trump is overruled by Congress. If Trump vetoes the combined pandemic relief and spending bill, that could be the second. Trump has rejected several bills during his tenure, but Congress has yet to successfully override any of his vetoes.

The decision about whether to expand the stimulus payments will also highlight growing political division in Trump’s party, splitting populists eager for more direct aid, like Senator Josh Hawley, against fiscal conservatives, including Senator Pat Toomey, who have been lobbying for months to keep the overall size of the stimulus package under $1 trillion.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged McConnell to take up a vote on the larger payments in a tweet Wednesday.

Trump’s moves also complicate the campaign politics for Georgia Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are seeking to ward off Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. A double win for Democrats would give them control of the Senate, albeit only through the tie-breaking vote of Kamala Harris as vice president.

Warnock and Ossoff have backed bigger payments, and dared their opponents to do the same. Loeffler stopped short of specifically calling for $2,000 payments, saying at an event Wednesday that she supports “redirecting any wasteful spending to be very targeted at families and businesses who have been impacted by this virus.”

The president has given Democrats an opportunity, by pitting himself against arguments put forward by his own party, said Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the right-leaning American Action Forum.

“For Pelosi and Schumer, it was never a problem with them to have higher rebates, so they are happy to put McConnell and McCarthy on the spot and cause problems for the Georgia delegation,” Gray said. “Fundamentally, the president has abdicated his responsibility. He was completely disengaged from the process.”

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Tech worker turns hobby into a startup nearing unicorn status

InternationalDec 27. 2020Gary Kim, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Danggeun Market, at the company’s office in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 18, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by SeongJoon Cho.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Sohee Kim

In his spare time, Gary Kim enjoyed trading used gadgets on an online bulletin board for employees of the South Korean messaging-app operator Kakao Corp.

Then he and a colleague realized it could become a money-making business. In 2015, with cash they got from selling Kakao stock options, they — and a former Naver Corp. engineer — launched a venue for selling second-hand goods online that’s now called Karrot.

It was initially only for people in South Korea’s Silicon Valley, the Pangyo Techno Valley outside Seoul, and has retained that localized approach even as it expanded throughout the country and beyond. Users who verify their location trade mostly face to face with others within a radius that’s usually about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles), in what’s known as a nearby marketplace.

Danggeun Market Inc., the startup behind Karrot, is planning to raise as much as 100 billion won ($90 million) in financing next summer, potentially pushing its valuation to about $1 billion, Kim said. It has — so far — been boosted by the pandemic, he said.

“We are hoping to become a unicorn,” Kim, 42, said in an interview in Seoul.

If it succeeds, Karrot would join a growing list of South Korean technology startups valued at more than $1 billion that serve the country’s deep and tech-savvy market. CB Insights, which provides analysis of private companies, has 11 Korean startups on its latest global unicorn list.

As well as buying and selling second-hand goods ranging from headphones to luxury yachts, Karrot users can share community information — on everything from job openings to lost-and-found items and housing listings — and trade with local businesses that advertise on the app.

“It’s an online gathering place for the local community,” said Kim, who serves as the company’s co-chief executive officer alongside Paul Kim, the other former Kakao employee who’s one of the co-founders. “If neighbors are gathered at a certain place, everyone wants to join.”

Karrot is now South Korea’s largest second-hand marketplace and second-biggest company in the country’s e-commerce industry after Coupang Corp., according to data-analysis company MobileIndex.

Joyce Yi, a 52-year-old English teacher, said she’s traded more than 20 items through the app since March, including a coffee-maker, books and an air-conditioner.”When I moved to Seoul from LA, I didn’t know anything about my new place and how to use the parcel delivery system — then I heard my friend bought a Louis Vuitton bag for $200 through Karrot,” she said. “Karrot is my first choice for shopping. It has cheaper and diverse options and I don’t need to go far to check out items.”

Although the Seoul-based startup is reporting losses, it’s generating tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue mainly from local advertisements, according to Kim. Monthly active users more than doubled to 12 million in October compared to January, while sales quadrupled in October from a year earlier, he said.

Until now, the covid-19 pandemic has helped the business, with users more actively selling through the app while spending more time at home, Kim said. The virus has had less impact in South Korea than in the U.S. or European countries.

“It’s a plus,” Kim said at the company’s headquarters in the Gangnam district of the capital. “Thankfully, our users don’t think there’s a risk of trading in person as everyone wears masks.”

But if the coronavirus has been a boost, it’s also a threat, according to Jay Choi, a senior associate at SoftBank Ventures Asia, which has invested in Karrot. New infections have risen to record levels in the country this month, raising the prospect of tougher social-distancing measures.

“The covid-19 pandemic poses risks and gives opportunity at the same time,” Choi said. “There was a concern that in-person trading may not survive if a city is locked down.”

Karrot is aiming to become as popular as Kakao Talk, the country’s largest messaging app, Kim said. Kakao Talk has about 36 million monthly active users, according to MobileIndex.

The company has no immediate plans to go public, but it will ultimately do so, Kim said. For now, it can stay afloat using funds from long-term investors who believe in its vision, he said.

Karrot has raised a total of 48.1 billion won from investors including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Altos Ventures, Kakao Ventures and Goodwater Capital.

Karrot will increase the number of employees to 300 in 2021 from 100 this year as it seeks to become the first Korean app that’s successful in both the U.S. and western Europe, Kim said. The company’s overseas expansion strategy is to enter cities with dense populations of environmentally conscious people who want to reuse old goods, he said. It prefers places where there isn’t a dominant market player. So far, Karrot is available in 42 areas of the U.K. and two cities in Canada, while the company is currently operating beta services in Manhattan and New Jersey.

“Our ultimate goal is to make a global local community service platform like Facebook,” Kim said.

Meanwhile, as his startup expands overseas, Kim continues his hobby of online trading in Seoul, now using his own firm’s app. Recently, he bought a table for his daughter and an electric piano for half the usual price.

“I go out by myself to trade used stuff,” he said. “Nobody recognizes that I’m the head of the company.”

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Stalled E.U.-China deal signals European unease

InternationalDec 27. 2020

By The Washington Post · Emily Rauhala

Chances looked good for the resolution of a years-in-the-making investment agreement between China and the European Commission before the end of the year. This week, that changed.

In the span of days, reports of an emerging consensus gave way to news that negotiators had hit snags, as European officials voiced concern about forced labor in China and a senior aide to President-elect Joe Biden appeared to urge Europe to pump the breaks.

China and Germany are pushing the deal, which would make it easier for European and Chinese companies to invest in each other’s economies. But voices on both sides of the Atlantic are questioning whether this is the right time for Europe to deepen ties with Beijing.

The back and forth says much about how central – and how fraught – the issue of relations with China has become, both within the European Union and between Europe and the United States.

Within the E.U., there is growing unease about Beijing’s human rights record and role in international affairs, but little agreement on what to do about it.

Biden has promised to re-engage with Europe and to rally allies to respond to an increasingly assertive China. The timing and terms of that effort are not yet clear.

Against this backdrop, the fate of the investment pact is seen as an early signal of tensions set to play out in years to come, on issues ranging from trade to tech regulation to climate change.

“This is going to be a jumping-off point for a lot of these questions,” said Andrew Small, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

In some ways, the investment agreement, known as the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, or CAI, seems straightforward.

For years, Europe has been pressing for greater access to China’s tightly controlled market. Europe contends that Chinese companies have more access to Europe than vice versa – and they want to change that.

Negotiations started in 2014. Progress has been slow, but picked up in the second half of 2020, as Germany began a six-month E.U. presidency and a push to get the deal done.

Biden’s election win, meanwhile, gave China a new sense of urgency. With Trump on the way out, Beijing sees a window to act before Biden, who is set to take office in January, seeks European cooperation to counter China.

It is not clear Beijing’s strategy will work. Early last week, Chinese diplomats touted progress, playing up the idea an agreement could be reached before the new year.

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with ambassadors from E.U. nations in Beijing. “China and Europe are hopefully reaching consensus on the comprehensive investment agreement,” he told the ambassadors, according to the South China Morning Post.

But the same day, Jake Sullivan, a top aide to Biden, responded to a news story about the potential deal with a tweet suggesting Europe ought to wait. “The Biden-Harris administration would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices,” he wrote.

On Tuesday, Poland expressed concern about the timing. “Europe should seek a fair, mutually beneficial Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China. We need more consultations and transparency bringing our transatlantic allies on board,” Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau tweeted. “A good, balanced deal is better than a premature one.”

On Wednesday, France added its voice. Franck Riester, a French trade minister, told Le Monde his country will not sign an agreement unless China addresses the issues of forced labor in Xinjiang.

By Thursday, Christmas Eve, the South China Morning Post was reporting that Li was scrambling to salvage the deal, calling up Spain and the Netherlands to try to secure support.

If the agreement comes together, it will be a major diplomatic victory for China. But the stalled progress is revealing – and could signal trouble ahead for China-E.U. ties.

A central challenge is that much has changed since the E.U. and China entered talks in 2014. Under President Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, China has become more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad.

In the United States, this has led to fundamental reconsideration of the practice of engaging China at all. For a while, Europe seemed to take a softer line. But China’s initial coverup of the coronavirus outbreak, repression in Xinjiang and the crackdown on Hong Kong may well change that.

“This [agreement] feels like it comes from when it was first negotiated,” said Small of the German Marshall Fund. “The overall political consensus is that the moment has passed, it fees like a tail end of the old, legacy agenda.”

Those who support the deal are trying to cast it as a practical, if imperfect step – not an endpoint for a new era in China-E.U. relations. Those who oppose it argue that it would be unwise to reward Beijing right now, especially with U.S. ties on the line.

“After this year, with China’s terrible behavior around the world, it would send a weird signal,” said Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“This is not about pragmatic, everyday business – it’s not something that we are just getting done,” she said. “At this critical moment, to do something like this with China, is not business as usual.”

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30400271?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

RV that exploded in Nashville broadcast a message warning of imminent blast, police say

InternationalDec 26. 2020Police block off Nashville, Tenn.’s Broadway while investigating an explosion Friday, Dec. 25, 2020. Photo for The Washington Post by William DeShazer

By The Washington Post, Derek Hawkins, Paulina Firozi and Michael Kranish

Hours after a recreational vehicle exploded in downtown Nashville, Tenn., on Christmas morning, law enforcement officials – still without a suspect or motive for the blast – surveyed a devastated landscape including more than 40 damaged businesses, three people hospitalized with injuries, and disruptions to Internet and cell service. Authorities grounded planes and the mayor imposed a nighttime curfew on the busy historical district near the blast site.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/6dc5c5e8-aa8c-4355-af3d-763f3c994259

On a holiday many hoped would bring a sense of calm in a chaotic year, the early-morning explosion dealt a terrifying blow.

“This is not how anybody wanted to spend Christmas morning,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said at a news conference. “We are very lucky that there were not more injuries.”

“One more event in Nashville’s 2020,” he added.

Police and city officials called the incident an “intentional act” – Cooper, a Democrat, called it a “deliberate bomb” – and vowed to bring a plethora of local, state and federal law enforcement resources to bear to find a suspect. While there were no confirmed fatalities, Nashville’s police chief said investigators found tissue that could be human remains near the explosion that they were preparing to examine.

The chain of events began around 5:30 a.m. local time, when residents on Second Avenue, home to a row of restaurants and honky-tonk night clubs, heard what they thought were rapid-fire gunshots. Some later speculated that the sound of gunfire was an amplified recording designed to awaken them.

Then came a bizarre recorded warning from a loudspeaker on the RV, police and residents said.

“It was a computerized message of ‘Evacuate now. … This vehicle has a bomb and will explode,'” said Betsy Williams, who lives in a building adjacent to the blast site.

Soon after, the message changed to a 15-minute countdown to detonation.

Police and a bomb-sniffing dog investigate an explosion Friday, Dec. 25, 2020. Photo for The Washington Post by William DeShazer

Officers responded to the area about 6 a.m. local time after receiving a report of gunfire on Second Avenue North, said Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.

When they arrived, Aaron said, they didn’t see any immediate evidence of gunshots but encountered a “suspicious” RV parked near an AT&T transmission building, heard the broadcast message coming from the vehicle and called in the police bomb squad.

Officers went door to door, telling residents to evacuate, even turning around one man who was out walking his dog, Aaron said. Moments later, at about 6:30 a.m., the RV detonated near Second Avenue North and Commerce Street, smashing windows, signs and garage doors and sending a ball of bright orange flames into the sky.

The explosion destroyed storefronts, scattered ash and debris through the streets and sent at least three people to the hospital with noncritical injuries, police said.

Cooper said the explosion was “intended to create chaos and fear in this season of hope.”

In an evening news conference, he said the city was imposing a curfew on the area around the explosion through Sunday and was working with the governor to declare a civil emergency.

At least 41 businesses were damaged, the mayor said.

“We stand with our downtown residents and business owners for whom this was a terrible day,” he said.

Nashville Police Chief John Drake said police had not identified a suspect or a motive. He said it was not clear whether anyone was inside the vehicle when it detonated.

In a video posted on social media, which The Washington Post has not independently verified, a voice can be heard saying: “This area must be evacuated now. If you can hear this message, evacuate now.” The message was followed by the sounds of an explosion, and the video of the street scene turned to a blur.

Aaron credited the officers on the scene who alerted residents to evacuate. “We think lives were saved by those officers,” he said.

Three people were injured, including one officer who was knocked off his feet, according to police. Bomb-sniffing dogs combed the area as a precaution but no other explosives were found, Aaron said.

Several of the buildings have structural damage, officials said. Police do not know whether anyone was in the RV when it exploded, “so I can’t tell you at this point whether there is a fatality in this scenario,” Aaron said.

Williams, the Second Avenue resident, said she was asleep with her wife, Kim Madlom, when they were jolted awake by the sound of gunfire a little before 5:30 a.m. and called 911. When the sound repeated in the same pattern, she figured it must have been a recording, she said.

“It was like it was being fired right next to your head almost,” Madlom told The Post. “It was unrealistically loud in retrospect, and it was the exact same pattern all three times.”

Peering out her third-story window, the 59-year-old said she could see an RV parked across the street. It was a light-colored vehicle the size of a small bus that looked at least a couple of decades old, she said.

As she surveyed the scene, a voice came booming from the camper: “It was saying, ‘This vehicle has a bomb, you must evacuate the area.'”

Then a countdown message began, telling people they had 15 minutes to leave, Madlom said. She and her three family members decided to flee. “That was the thing that made us go,” she said.

They scrambled into an elevator as the RV blared an 11-minute warning, then piled into their car to keep watch from a secure distance. After about 20 minutes, there was no explosion. Thinking the whole episode was a “sick prank,” Madlom said, they headed back.

The RV detonated just as they were rounding the corner back onto Second Avenue, according to Madlom.

“It was the biggest plume of fire that shot up,” she said. “We could see that from up the street. We were just shocked.”

From a block away, they could see that their building’s back windows were blown out. Somehow, Madlom said, their Christmas tree was still lit. Firefighters soon arrived and told them to clear the area.

Madlom, who works as a vacation property manager and hospital receptionist, says she and her family are staying in a local hotel, processing what happened and counting their blessings. Their building is badly damaged, and they don’t know what, if any, belongings they’ll be able to recover. But they’re grateful they weren’t physically harmed.

“We almost didn’t go,” she said. “We almost didn’t take it seriously. Whoever did this certainly intended for us all to leave.”

Police said the department’s hazardous-devices unit was headed to the area when the explosion happened.

“We do believe the explosion was an intentional act,” Aaron, the police department spokesman, told reporters.

Supervisory Special Agent Joel Siskovic said the FBI is leading the investigation, working with state and local authorities.

“The main thing right now is public safety to make sure that everyone in the surrounding area is accounted for and, at the same time, ensuring that the city itself is safe from any other potential incident,” said Michael Knight, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Nashville, which is also probing the incident.

Investigators are working to create a timeline of events before and after the explosion, Knight said.

The explosion was felt at nearby residential facilities, including a hostel and a condominium building called the Exchange Lofts. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic and Christmas, there were far fewer people at those buildings than usual.

Windows and doors were blown out at the hostel, a low-cost residence for travelers, and the handful of guests were evacuated. At the upscale Exchange Lofts, where condos are typically owned as second homes by business executives, the impact of the explosion was recorded by a Nest security camera in a unit owned by music executive Aaron Trevethan.

In the video, the tranquil scene of couches and chairs arrayed around a flat-screen television is suddenly interrupted by sounds of a blast, which sent bright flashes of light through the windows, caused debris to fall from the ceiling and resulted in a swaying effect captured by the camera.

Trevethan, who was at his California home when he was alerted early Christmas morning about the blast, said it is hard to tell the extent of damage from the video because “everything shook so bad.”

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said on Twitter that he would “supply all of the resources needed to determine what happened and who was responsible.” He thanked first responders and called on Tennesseans to join him and his wife “in praying for those who were injured.”

The Justice Department said in a statement that acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen had been briefed on the incident and had “directed that all DOJ resources be made available to assist in the investigation.”

Hours after the blast took place, President Donald Trump left his Mar-a-Lago resort and headed to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The president spent at least three hours at the club, his second consecutive day there since arriving in Florida for the holidays.

Trump did not comment about the blast, but the White House said he was monitoring the situation.

“President Trump has been briefed on the explosion in Nashville, Tennessee, and will continue to receive regular updates,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “The President is grateful for the incredible first responders and praying for those who were injured.”

The White House has said Trump is spending his time in Florida participating in calls and meetings, though officials have not provided any details on his activities.

President-elect Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion, according to his office.

“The president-elect and Dr. Biden thank all the first responders working today in response to the incident,” Biden’s office said in a statement, “and wish those who were injured a speedy recovery.”