1.
How The U.S.-China Trade War Will Transform The Global
Economy
Forbes, Jul 13, 2018
The
trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump started will profoundly reshape the
global economy. We need to be prepared for it. Here’s a brief description of
the transformational forces unleashed by the trade war and what they may
wrought in the future.
The
trade war has accelerated several trends that had been underway for some time.
Consider the following.
In
2017, exports from EU (the collective of 28 member countries, as distinct from
the Euro Zone) to Asia was bigger than that to the U.S.; and, more
significantly, EU’s exports to Asia in the last decade have been growing almost
twice as fast as its exports to the U.S. While Asia’s exports to the EU in 2017
was still slightly lower than that to the U.S., but it is also faster growing,
making the EU increasingly more important to Asia, according to the IMF's
Direction of Trade data. From a simple perspective of market size, Asia
today is far more important to the EU than the U.S., and the EU will soon be
more important to Asia than the U.S.
Asia’s
market size for imports reflects its vibrant and growing consumer markets that
are increasingly prosperous. Measured by estimates of private consumer
expenditure, Asia today is just about as big as the U.S. The big difference is,
however, that private consumer expenditure in Asia is growing at twice the
speed compared with the U.S. If Japan is excluded, Asia’s growth is three times
faster. Even more striking is China where private consumer expenditure has been
growing at an average of 13.8% a year in the last decade, over four times
faster than in the U.S., according to the World Bank WDI database and
Eurostat. Not surprisingly China is now the largest market for an
expanding list of countries, which includes Australia, Brazil, Russia, South
Africa, South Korea and Indonesia, among others. Indeed, if the current growth
rates of imports respectively in the U.S. and China hold in the next few years,
by 2021 China will surpass the U.S. to become the largest market for imports in
the world. This is a mere three years away, according to the IMF and the Bureau
of Business Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Against
the backdrop of these powerful trends, Trump’s trade war is creating new
impetus for the EU and Asia to speed up the opening of their markets to forge
closer economic ties. This will lead to even faster growth than in the last
decade in trade between the EU and Asia, accompanied by rising investment.
Virtually everywhere outside of the U.S., a new sense of urgency is now afoot
as policy makers seek to fast track regional free trade agreements. For
instance, after Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a successor,
renamed as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific
Partnership, was signed in March this year by 11 countries on both sides of the
Pacific. Within Asia, China and Japan are seeking to mend fences, and the
Regional and Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes China, is being
prioritized as a major step toward Asia’s economic integration. A direct
consequence of the Trump trade war, therefore, is faster and wider economic
integration outside of the U.S., accelerating the shift of
global economic center of gravity toward Asia.
Such
a development in turn has profound business implications. As Europe and Asia
forge closer economic ties, their tariffs against each other’s exports will
come down. Businesses operating in these increasingly open markets will have to
adapt to intensifying competition, thereby becoming more efficient, innovative
and dynamic. The network of global supply chains that has revolutionized the
nature of trade and investment since the 1980s will expand and become more
productive and more densely intertwined across Europe and Asia while withering
in the U.S. While 326 million American consumers are increasingly “protected”
by Trump’s tariff wall, over four billion consumers in Europe and Asia will
thrive and enjoy more, better and cheaper products and services provided by
competitive and creative businesses.
2. Australia's new PM is Scott Morrison as moderate Malcolm
Turnbull is forced out
Socially conservative architect of hardline asylum
policies takes the helm as fifth prime minister in five years
The Guardian 24 Aug 2018
Australia
has a new prime minister in Scott Morrison – the socially conservative architect of Australia’s hardline
anti-asylum seeker policies – after he mounted a late challenge during a
drawn-out struggle for power in the governing Liberal party.
On
Friday, incumbent Malcolm Turnbull failed in his attempt to stare down a
challenge from hard right MP Peter Dutton, with insurgents in his party
gathering enough signatures to call for a “spill” – or leadership contest.
That
led to a three-way challenge that included Morrison, Turnbull’s treasurer,
Dutton, the former home affairs minister, and Julie Bishop, the foreign
minister. Turnbull himself stood aside from the contest.
Bishop
was eliminated in the first round, and Morrison beat Dutton in a subsequent
run-off, 45 votes to 40, suggesting the party is still deeply divided.
There
appears no end in sight to the civil war consuming the ruling Liberal-led
coalition government. The country may be headed to an election, with Turnbull
saying he will not stay in parliament. His resignation in between general
elections would erase the government’s single-seat majority in the House of
Representatives.
Australia
has now had five prime ministers in just over five years. Since 2010, four
prime ministers have lost office, not at the ballot box, but torn down by their
own parties, earning Canberra the unhappy appellation “the coup capital of the
Pacific”.
Morrison
was sworn in as prime minister on Friday by the governor general – the Queen’s
representative in Australia – General Sir Peter Cosgrove.
In
his first address as prime minister-elect, Morrison counselled unity for a
riven party.
“Our
job ... is to ensure that we not only bring our party back together, which has
been bruised and battered this week, but that will enable us to ensure we bring
the parliament back together,” he said.
Morrison
said his government intended to address, as its major priorities, Australia’s
“economic and national security”. But he also nominated Australia’s
long-running drought – 100% of the state of New South Wales is currently
drought-affected – as a key issue. “This is our most urgent and pressing need
right now.”
Morrison
sought to downplay suggestions an early election was imminent. “We intend to be
governing,” the incoming prime minister said. “I don’t think anybody should be
making any plans for any elections any time soon.”
In
his valedictory speech, Turnbull sounded a warning against the rising tide of
populist anti-immigration political rhetoric, promoted from within his own
party. “We are the most successful multicultural society in the world, and I
have always defended that and advanced that as one of our greatest assets,” he
said. “We must never allow the politics of race or division or of setting
Australians against each other to become part of our political culture.”
Turnbull
also made another thinly veiled swipe at actors “outside the parliament”
undermining his leadership – widely interpreted as an attack on the influence
of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation newspapers and TV channels, which have
consistently campaigned against him.
“There
was a determined insurgency from a number of people both in the party room and
backed by voices, powerful voices, in the media, really to bring – if not bring
down the government – certainly bring down my prime ministership,” he said.
Morrison
was treasurer in Turnbull’s administration, and before that, as immigration
minister, he was behind Australia’s controversial hardline asylum-seeker
policies – including indefinite detention on remote foreign islands.
The
son of a policeman and an active member of a Sydney Pentecostal evangelical
megachurch, Morrison wears his political ambition and his conservative
credentials proudly.
He
voted no in Australia’s plebiscite on same-sex marriage, listed “church” as one
of his interests in his Who’s Who report, and regards former prime minister
John Howard as his political inspiration.
Before
his election to parliament in 2007 he was a factional kingpin in the rightwing
of the New South Wales Liberal party.
Morrison’s
first task as prime minister will be to promote rapprochement between the rival
wings of his own party, a relationship that has grown increasingly toxic as
Turnbull gave ground to conservative insurgents – especially over climate
change and energy policy – only to be rewarded with more and more demands.
But
there appears no immediate end to hostilities between the party’s “small l
liberal” moderate wing and its hard-right conservative faction. After the
leadership vote, conservative former prime minister Tony Abbott – himself
ousted by Turnbull in 2015 – said: “We’ve lost a prime minister but we still
have a government to save, that is what we will all do our best to do now.”
Turnbull,
a wealthy former investment banker and lawyer, was publicly derided by some in
his own party as “Mr Harbourside Mansion” over his home in the most expensive
suburb in the country. He attracted the opprobrium of conservative party
members for his outspoken support for same-sex marriage and promotion of action
on climate change and the Paris emissions targets.
The
Coalition government has faced persistently poor polling since 2016 and
historically voters have tended to punish governments that change leaders
mid-term.
The
government also has a money problem. The opposition Labor party – allied to the
union movement and other moneyed leftwing lobby groups – has amassed a massive
war chest to fight the next election, not due until next year, but now likely
much sooner.
The
largest donor to the government last election – with the largest contribution
in Australian political history of $1.75m – was Turnbull.
Facing
challenge, Turnbull said this week he would resign immediately from parliament
if he lost the prime ministership. On Friday, having been deposed, Turnbull
promised to leave parliament “not before too long”.
3. Both low- and high-carb diets can raise risk of early death,
study finds
Eating a moderate amount of carbohydrates best for healthy lifespan, say
researchers
The Guardian 16 Aug 2018
Ditching
the carbs has become a popular weight-loss strategy. Photograph: Monkey
Business Images/REX/Shutterstock
Eating
either a low-carb diet or a high-carb diet raises the risk of an early death,
according to a major new study which will dismay the many people who have
ditched the likes of bread, rice and potatoes for weight loss or health
reasons.
Researchers
who pooled the results of eight large studies have found that eating a moderate
amount of carbohydrates is best for a healthy lifespan. Less than 40% or more
than 70% of calories from carbohydrates carried a higher risk of mortality.
Not
all low-carb diets are equal, however. People who ate a lot of meat and fats
instead of carbohydrates, such as lamb, chicken, steak, butter and cheese, had
a higher mortality risk than those who got their protein and fats from
plant-based foods such as avocados, legumes and nuts. Popular weight loss diets
such as Atkins and Dukan include a substantial amount of meat-based foods.
“Low-carb diets that replace carbohydrates
with protein or fat are gaining widespread popularity as a health and weight
loss strategy,” said Dr Sara Seidelmann, a clinical and research fellow in
cardiovascular medicine from Brigham and Women’s Hospital inBoston, who led the research published in the
Lancet public health journal.
“However, our data suggests that animal-based
low-carbohydrate diets, which are prevalent in North America and Europe, might
be associated with shorter overall life span and should be discouraged.
Instead, if one chooses to follow a low-carbohydrate diet, then exchanging
carbohydrates for more plant-based fats and proteins might actually promote
healthy ageing in the long term.”
Seidelmann,
who is both a cardiologist and a nutritionist, told the Guardian the team had
published a substantial body of work “to thoroughly answer a question and not
simply provide just one piece of the picture”.
“Nutrition
is high up on everybody’s mind but there is such confusion about what we should
eat. One day, a study is coming out telling us high carb is better, another day
a study is telling us low carb is better.”
