Xi Jinping, Cryptocurrencies, Viktor Orban, John Bolton, Patrick Reed

Xi Jinping, Cryptocurrencies, Viktor Orban, John Bolton, Patrick Reed

Marc Ross Daily
April 9, 2018
Curation and commentary from Marc A. Ross

Reporting from Alexandria, Virginia

Marc Ross Daily  = Global Business News at the Intersection of Politics + Policy + Profits

Subscribe here: https://goo.gl/bSQKwA

TOP FIVE

✔️ Xi to outline economic reforms amid trade tension

✔️ Regulators worldwide are cracking down on cryptocurrencies

✔️ European right greets Viktor Orban's Hungary win

✔️ John Bolton comes prepared

✔️ Patrick Reed won the Masters

ROSS RANT

Make that walkabout a priority; your imagination will thank you

Made famous in the United States by famed Australian philosopher Crocodile Dundee, a walkabout is a journey through the wilderness of one's choosing to satisfy an itch, a desire to be elsewhere, the craving for the open road, or to engage the space over the horizon.

A walkabout can be a simple bike ride to your local art museum or possibly a more adventurous cross-continental journey to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. A walkabout can be joining the local historical society or taking a gap year to teach economics in Canada.

Regardless of the distance traveled or the actions taken, your imagination will thank you for the change of scenery. The brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. Same morning routine. Same office commute. Same weekly meetings. Same quarterly reports. Same yearly industry conference. Sameness overload. 

This sameness can suppress your ability to generate new ideas.

Without generating new ideas, you become a manager and not a leader.

Changing up the pace, the people, the poetry can have profound results. From developing new skills and insights, but more importantly, your ability to generate new ideas.

You are a mashup of what you let into your life - friends, meals, music, books, art, lectures, movies, experiences, etc.

Every new idea is a mashup of one or more previous ideas. Without developing new ideas, the mashup process stalls.

So make time for that walkabout. Big or small, your imagination will thank you.

GEOECONOMICS

Xi Jinping to outline economic reforms amid trade tension: FT reports, Xi Jinping will on Tuesday give the most anticipated speech of his already historic presidency. During an address to a Chinese government-hosted forum on Hainan island, Mr Xi’s challenge will be to outline bold new economic reforms and measures to open markets without appearing to bend to US pressure on trade.

Analysts are hoping that Chinese President Xi Jinping will use his speech tomorrow at the Boao Forum for Asia to announce a serious market reform push. 

NYT: Amid fears of trade war, Trump predicts China will relent

China’s largest movie studio is vast, and so is its audience. But filmmakers have to toe the party line. LAT reports, Hengdian World Studios, built on farmland in the 1990s, claims to be the largest outdoor film studio in the world, and the source of an estimated 1,200 Chinese films and TV shows. It has 13 themed shooting areas scattered throughout a nondescript town in southeastern China's Zhejiang province.

Regulators worldwide are cracking down on cryptocurrencies. India’s next. WSJ reports, the country will prevent banks and financial institutions from engaging in digital currencies.

NAFTA: Leaders from the United States, Canada, and Mexico are not likely to announce a preliminary deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement when they gather in Peru for a summit later this week.

Lula da Silva surrendered to Brazilian police on Saturday to begin serving a 12-year jail sentence for corruption.

Brexit banking: Barclays is preparing to split its euro trading division and move part of the unit that trades eurozone government bonds and interest rate swaps away from its main trading floor in London.

May on tour: May will meet her Danish and Swedish counterparts on Monday in a tour of Scandinavian capitals to discuss Brexit and Russia.

DW: European right greets Viktor Orban's Hungary win

This will be Orban’s third consecutive term as PM and fourth overall. 

AMERICAN POLITICS

Plan accordingly: Both the House and Senate are in session this week.

The Hill: Day one in Trump's White House: John Bolton comes prepared

Farmers who propelled Trump to presidency fear becoming pawns in trade war: WP reports, Trump’s aggressive attacks on China over trade are putting Republicans in a difficult spot — torn between siding with Trump and acknowledging the economic peril to many of their constituents. The issue presents yet another challenge to the GOP in a tough midterm election year even in the rural areas across the Upper Midwest that swept Trump to victory — and where control of the Senate could be decided.

FT - Peter Navarro - OpEd: Donald Trump is standing up for American interests

LAT - Editorial: China sees right through Trump's posturing

FT - Editorial: History holds little hope of a winnable trade war

US-China on the Hill:

Wednesday @ 230pm ET: Senate Finance subcommittee hearing on tariffs with China.

Thursday @ 1000am ET: House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the effects of tariff increases.

Detroit: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan will be at Harvard University on Wednesday to talk about rebuilding Michigan’s biggest city.

WSJ: Mark Zuckerberg’s Washington mission: Stay cool in a very hot seat

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to meet US lawmakers today ahead of Tuesday and Wednesday's Congressional hearings.

Facebook on the Hill:

Tuesday @ 215pm ET: Facebook's Zuckerberg testifies at Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Commerce Committee joint hearing.

Wednesday @ 1000am ET: Facebook's Zuckerberg testifies at House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

Zuckerberg has prepared for his testimony with a crash course in charm and humility - I need this course.

Facebook PR chief Elliot Schrage manages between 500 and 700 full-time policy and communications employees.

That is a lot of people to attend focus groups, read polling data, and say no comment.

Tim Cook of Apple took a shot at Facebook’s business model in an MSNBC/Recode interview: “We’re not going to traffic in your personal life. I think it’s an invasion of privacy.”

FL-SEN: Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) today is set to announce his candidacy for his party's nomination for US Senate.

The race to replace Paul Ryan is on: Politico reports, two top members of Paul Ryan's leadership team, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise, have begun angling for his job in the event the speaker calls it quits after the election. They're closely monitoring the moves of the other and quietly courting Republicans who could help them clinch the top post, according to 20 GOP lawmakers and aides interviewed for this story.

NYT: Republicans seize on impeachment for edge in 2018 midterms

Good luck with that. This move will only propel Whole Foods Republicans to vote Dem in House races, or worse for the party, not voting at all, which will impact Senate races. 

ENTERPRISE

FT: HSBC brings in AI to help spot money laundering

"Bank is latest to harness tech as a cheaper and better way of tackling crime"

Alibaba and other investors have pushed the valuation of the Chinese AI start-up SenseTime to $3 billion.

Shipping emissions: The International Maritime Organisation will meet in London this week to figure out how to cut carbon emissions from the shipping industry, which is currently unregulated on that front.

Car dealerships face conundrum: Get big or get out: WSJ reports, in the age of Uber and Tesla, locally owned dealerships are becoming a thing of the past. https://on.wsj.com/2uVvaBr

Netflix reportedly put up a $300+ million bid for LA-based billboard company Regency Outdoor Advertising.

Netflix plans to boost marketing spending to $2 billion in 2018.

A billboard spot on Sunset Strip could cost $140,000 a month.

TRENDS

Theme park designers are preaching the importance of play over technology these days. https://lat.ms/2GPRcqU

Play > Technology

Brigadoon > Conference

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future http://bit.ly/2uZmSZ5

How planned mergers like CVS-Aetna are reshaping US healthcare by muscling out doctors. https://nyti.ms/2IE2Zca

The future of what: Data! What is it good for? These days there’s nothing but data out there - social media statistics, Spotify artist insights, info about who your fans are, where they are, and when they listen to your music. But what do you do with all this data? And who is really benefiting from it? http://bit.ly/2GJhD5o

Barron's: AI: Coming to a portfolio near you: Fund shops and other financial firms are in a race to use artificial intelligence to improve their stock-picking, provide better guidance for customers, and save money in the process. What managing your money will look like in the not so distant future. http://bit.ly/2H9EcQ2

CULTURE

Gisele Bündchen is a force of nature https://on.wsj.com/2Ewoady

"Never do meetings unless someone is writing a check." -- Mark Cuban

Olivier awards: The musical Hamilton stormed the Olivier awards last night, taking home seven awards and dispelling any wonderings about whether a show about one of the least well-known founding fathers of the US would do well in the UK.

SOTD

Ten Fé - Single, No Return http://bit.ly/2qgE2Nf

SPORT

Patrick Reed won the Masters - few seem to care.

Bananas vs. sports drinks? Bananas win in study https://nyti.ms/2Ej2S35

Sad news from the Paris-Roubaix race: Belgian cyclist Michael Goolaerts, 23, has died after suffering a cardiac arrest during the event on Sunday. 

NAFTA, Shinzo Abe, US-China, John Bolton, Rag & Bone

NAFTA, Shinzo Abe, US-China, John Bolton, Rag & Bone

Marc Ross Daily
April 3, 2018
Curation and commentary from Marc A. Ross

Reporting from Alexandria, Virginia

Marc Ross Daily  = Global Business News at the Intersection of Politics + Policy + Profits

Subscribe here: https://goo.gl/bSQKwA

TOP FIVE

✔️ Industry giants push back on looming China trade action

✔️ John Bolton, cyber warrior

✔️ More than 25 million people went on a cruise in 2017

✔️ Mueller probe into UAE influence broadens

✔️ Indie bookstores grow in the age of Amazon

ROSS RANT

Sure, China is a competitor, but it's also a marketplace

Much of the press coverage on the current state of US-China commercial relations is focused on competition, and not enough on the market for American goods and services.

China as a competitor has been dominating press headlines for years. Candidates seeking high office in the United States have been informing voters that China is a competitor and the only solution is tough action. Political columnists use China to score easy points and advance one-sided protectionist remedies.

Years of one-sided opinion is having a negative impact on US-China commercial relations and is fostering a tit-for-tat retaliatory tariff environment.

In the United States, negative views of China have increased by 26 percentage points between 2006 and 2016. And American negativity towards China has been higher than Chinese negativity toward the United States in every year since 2014.

A January 2017 Pew Research survey of Americans found that 65 percent of respondents said China is either an adversary (22 percent) or a serious problem (43 percent), while only about a third (31 percent) said China is not an issue.

And in a separate Spring 2016 survey by Pew Research, a majority (55 percent) of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of what more and more Americans see as their largest Asian rival.

This hostile environment is the public affairs reality that American business is facing right now.

Many now see China, one of America's most significant and most promising markets, as a loser for US business. Unfortunately, this belief is fertile ground for politicians supporting protectionist policies and trade halting tariffs. Actions that if successfully passed would force Beijing to respond with retaliatory trade tactics including increased limits stifling full access to the growing Chinese consumer marketplace for American goods and services.

It is time for those that care about a productive and engaged US-China commercial relationship to take these polls seriously and engage Americans in Main Street coffee shops and at picnic tables for backyard BBQs.

For far too long American business has overly relied on a model dependent on high-level government relationships and support from the White House and corresponding federal agencies to manage the US-China relationship.

This model to manage the US-China relationship is exhausted and broken.

US companies exported $135 billion in goods to China in 2017, and it is still the third-largest US goods export market behind Canada and Mexico, our neighbors and NAFTA partners.

Thirty states experienced at least triple-digit goods export growth to China since 2006, and four states saw growth of more than 500 percent over the same period: Alabama, Montana, North Dakota, and South Carolina. Every US state had triple-digit services export growth to China since 2006, 16 states had export growth of more than 400 percent.

At a grassroots level, it is critical to remind Americans US goods and services exported to China come from a wide range of industries. Goods such as transportation equipment, agriculture products, computers and electronics, and chemicals. These exports also sustain logistics jobs in America’s ports and warehouses throughout the country.  Also, US services exports come from the travel, education, and transportation sectors as well as professional business and financial services.

Leaders of American business needs to play a decisive role in reversing this trend and ensuring American goods and services reach the ever-expanding Chinese marketplace. Sitting on the sidelines will be too detrimental for America's economic security. 

GEOECONOMICS

Trump pushing for preliminary NAFTA deal by mid-April, sources say: Bloomberg reports, The White House wants leaders from Canada and Mexico to join in unveiling the broad outlines of an updated pact at the Summit of the Americas that begins April 13.  

Trump will welcome PM Shinzo Abe of Japan to Mar-a-Lago from April 17-18, 2018.

China to start paying for oil in yuan as early as this year: report: Asia Times reports, Beijing is forging ahead in its efforts to internationalize the yuan, with sources saying this week that China may begin paying for crude oil with the local unit as early as this year. 

Industry giants push back on looming China trade action: NYT reports, as the United States prepares stiff trade measures and China retaliates, stock markets have plummeted and some of America’s biggest companies have lodged objections. The idea of addressing China’s unfair trade practices is popular, but details of President Trump’s plan have set off fierce opposition.

Trump to unveil China tariff list this week, targeting tech goods: Reuters reports, the Trump administration this week plans to introduce a list of $50 billion to $60 billion worth of annual Chinese imports targeted for US tariffs as part of an effort to punish China over its technology transfer policies. Administration officials have said that the US Trade Representative's office is expected to publish the list, which is expected to target "largely high-technology" products, by Friday. 

The US wrote the rules for global trade. Now China is using them against Trump. WP reports, the Chinese government designed its first concrete response to President Trump’s recent wave of protectionist policies to inflict noticeable political and economic pain upon the United States while remaining within the bounds of global trade rules. China imposed tariffs on a relatively modest $3 billion in American imports. But by hitting numerous products, including fruit, wine, ginseng and pork, that affect congressional districts across the country, China demonstrated that it can exert pressure within the American system.

Anchorage Daily News: Here’s what the Trump-China trade negotiations could mean for Alaska’s gas pipeline http://bit.ly/2q3TTxw

"Working on the premises that US-China trade relations don't escalate into a tit-for-tat imposition of tariffs across a host of sectors, LNG presents a real opportunity for the U.S. and China to forge common ground (and economic benefit)," said Jamian Ronca Spadavecchia, managing director at Oxbow Advisory, where he works on business, trade and government policy analysis. 

AMERICAN POLITICS

John Bolton, cyber warrior: Politico reports, John Bolton has spent years imploring the US to go on the attack in cyberspace — a stance that some digital warfare experts caution could set up the nation for a conflict it would be better off avoiding. 

Corruption, not Russia, is Trump's greatest political liability: New York Magazine reports, instead of draining the swamp, the president is monetizing it.  What appears to be an embarrassment of riches for Democrats may in fact be a collection of distractions, and it's likely that several of Trump’s most outrageous characteristics will fail to move the needle in the states and districts where the needle needs moving. https://goo.gl/pwVvGb

WSJ: Mueller probe into UAE influence broadens

Beware of an ambitious state AG: Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) said he is launching a probe into Facebook Inc.'s use of personal data and is asking the company to disclose every time-shared user information with a political campaign or political action committee.

ENTERPRISE

LAT: Apple will dump Intel and use its own chips in Macs, sources say

Rag & Bone aims to revitalize the brand in Japan.

More than 25 million people went on a cruise in 2017.

Beauty mogul Bobbi Brown launches a lifestyle brand: NYT reports, Bobbi Brown spent more than 20 years building a major beauty brand and proving her doubters wrong, and now she's expanding with a new lifestyle venture dubbed Beauty Evolution. The brand will focus on wellness products including a vanilla collagen cocktail and a chocolate protein drink.

Indie bookstores grow in the age of Amazon: NPR reports, independent bookstores took hits as first large chains and then Amazon grabbed market share, but many indies learned to adapt and their numbers have climbed about 40% since 2009, Harvard Business School professor Ryan Raffaelli said. "Real estate developers are actually willing to give deals to some of the independent bookstores because the independent bookstore is a mark of authenticity," he said.

Reuters: Walmart opens first small high-tech supermarket in China

CBS plans to make an all-stock offer for Viacom.

Hostility from Trump, criticisms from Capitol Hill threaten to weaken the tech industry: WP reports, Monday was just the latest bad day for Silicon Valley, which has seen its biggest brands politically battered over several months as the president has lashed out on social media and US and European regulators have scrutinized the industry.

TRENDS

6 billion: That’s Starbucks’ own estimate for how many cups it distributes worldwide, or around 1 percent of the 600 billion paper and plastic cups that Earth uses in a given year.

CULTURE

23 percent: Black Panther was responsible for a staggering 23 percent of all movie ticket sales in the first three months of the year, the second-highest percentage ever. Titanic” took up 25 percent of winter sales in 1998.

LAT: Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas will be reborn as Virgin Hotels property

SPORT

Baseball: FiveThirtyEight gives the Astros and Indians each a 14 percent chance of winning the World Series, with the Dodgers (12 percent) and Yankees (9 percent) also in the hunt.

When 26.2 miles just isn't enough – the phenomenal rise of the ultramarathon: They are an almost-impossible test of the human body and spirit, yet the number of ultramarathons has increased 1,000% over the last decade. Adharanand Finn of Guardian asks what’s behind this rapid increase – and whether racing 100 miles or more is actually good for you. http://bit.ly/2GtUZOr