As you say, the US has many alternative sources of cheap goods but there are limited sources of US technology. China also has no alternative buyers of its products. Round One of the international confrontation will be won by the US.
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Uncertainty over how the dispute would be resolved in the one-month deadline set by Washington will reinvigorate a hunt for haven assets in a world already hampered by slowing growth.
An easy bet will be to short the expected losers: risk-sensitive currencies from Asia to South America, they say. “To be honest, I thought the dollar would be rising at a much faster pace than this -- markets were pricing in a Goldilocks environment and they were clearly wrong,” said Stephen Miller, an adviser at asset manager GSFM and a former head of fixed income at BlackRock Inc.’s Australian business.
“Right now I’d be long U.S. dollar versus EM currencies, the likes of Argentina and Turkey.” There’s a 60% chance that China and U.S. won’t reach a deal in the coming weeks, according to analysts at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., after last week’s talks laid bare divisions including the removal of existing tariffs and a breakdown in trust. While both nations plan to continue negotiations, traders are waiting for Beijing’s retaliation measures after Washington slapped more duties.
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In recent years, their challenges have increased. Climate change stretches the dry season, or makes rainfall erratic. Last year some farms went up to 45 days without rain. The farmers watched their maize and bean plants wilt and die. Then they reaped only more debt from their meager coffee harvest.
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Match, which is owned by billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, runs dozens of dating sites like Tinder, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish and Hinge. But the bulk of the company’s earnings gains were fueled by Tinder, which lured in more than 384,000 new subscribers in the quarter, boosting direct revenue 38 percent from the year earlier period.
The online dating app, where users swipe right to indicate interest in a potential date, now boasts 4.7 million global subscribers. Overall, Match’s average subscribers increased 16 percent with most of the new users flowing in from outside North America.
“The world is changing," said Mandy Ginsberg, chief executive officer of Match. “I’ve been here a long time and 100 percent of the revenue used to be in the U.S. and now the growth and more revenue is outside of the U.S."
With arranged marriages on the decline in India and the stigma towards online dating eroding in Japan, Ginsberg is concentrating on international expansion. There are more than 400 million single people living outside North America and Europe, two-thirds of whom have not yet tried a dating product, according to Match. Ginsberg recently revamped the company’s leadership team in Asia -- appointing general managers in Tokyo, Seoul and Delhi -- to try and grow Match’s footprint across the continent.
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Most of the downgrades were less severe than in the previous report in February, apart from Germany, where the 2019 prediction was slashed to just 0.5 percent from 1.1 percent. Officials in Brussels warned that downside risks to the region’s outlook remain “prominent.”
The forecasts reflect more pronounced weakness in the region, which has stumbled due to a slowdown in the global economy, unresolved trade disputes and “exceptional weakness” in manufacturing. Meanwhile sentiment has taken a hit from disruptions in the auto industry, social unrest, and uncertainty related to Brexit.
German carmaker BMW said on Tuesday that the economic backdrop is “increasingly challenging” and business conditions are “expected to remain volatile.”
“As initial deadlines for U.S.-China trade negotiations and Brexit have passed without resolution, various uncertainties continue to loom large,” the European Commission said in its quarterly report. “An escalation of trade tensions could prove to be a major shock.”
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3M Co. agreed to buy medical-products maker Acelity Inc. for about $4.3 billion, its biggest acquisition ever, as new Chief Executive Officer Mike Roman takes a more aggressive approach to expanding the beleaguered company.
The purchase, from a group of funds advised by Apax Partners, is spurring 3M to scale back share repurchases to conserve cash. 3M will cut buybacks to between $1 billion and $1.5 billion this year from a previous expectation of as much as $4 billion, according to a statement Thursday. The company valued the purchase at $6.7 billion including Acelity’s debt, which was $2.4 billion on Dec. 31.
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The Brazilian economy has reached a tipping point ▪ GDP growth has returned ▪ Consumer and industry confidence are high ▪ Inflation and interest rates are at all-decade lows ▪ Country risk is on the decline ▪ Capital markets are active as ever… ▪ …and BOVESPA is at its highest point to date.
But to expand growth and make other advances, the country will need to close gaps with developed and emerging economies: ▪ Productivity has grown very little over the last decade ▪ The demographic and workforce boom is over, meaning that productivity gains will be needed to drive growth ▪ We lack innovation, patents, and a skilled workforce… ▪ … and we have not seen any sign of homegrown tech or innovation giants among our top-performing companies.
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Time-honored locations – such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – continue to attract the world’s wealthy, but no country is experiencing HNWI inflows quite like Australia.
The Land Down Under has a number of attributes that make it an attractive destination for migrating millionaires. The country has a robust economy, and is perceived as being a safe place to raise a family. Even better, Australia has no inheritance tax and a lower cost of health care, which can make it an attractive alternative to the U.S.
In 2018, Australia jumped ahead of both Canada and France to become the seventh largest wealth market in the world.
Greece, which was one of the worst performing wealth markets of the last decade, is finally seeing a modest inflow of millionaires again.
This article by Adam Satariano and Nicole Perlroth for the New York Times may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Even with teams working around the clock, it was weeks before Mondelez recovered. Once the lost orders were tallied and the computer equipment was replaced, its financial hit was more than $100 million, according to court documents.
After the ordeal, executives at the company took some solace in knowing that insurance would help cover the costs. Or so they thought.
Mondelez’s insurer, Zurich Insurance, said it would not be sending a reimbursement check. It cited a common, but rarely used, clause in insurance contracts: the “war exclusion,” which protects insurers from being saddled with costs related to damage from war.
Mondelez was deemed collateral damage in a cyberwar.
The 2017 attack was a watershed moment for the insurance industry. Since then, insurers have been applying the war exemption to avoid claims related to digital attacks. In addition to Mondelez, the pharmaceutical giant Merck said insurers had denied claims after the NotPetya attack hit its sales research, sales and manufacturing operations, causing nearly $700 million in damage.
When the United States government assigned responsibility for NotPetya to Russia in 2018, insurers were provided with a justification for refusing to cover the damage. Just as they wouldn’t be liable if a bomb blew up a corporate building during an armed conflict, they claim not to be responsible when a state-backed hack strikes a computer network.
The disputes are playing out in court. In a closely watched legal battle, Mondelez sued Zurich Insurance last year for a breach of contract in an Illinois court, and Merck filed a similar suit in New Jersey in August. Merck sued more than 20 insurers that rejected claims related to the NotPetya attack, including several that cited the war exemption. The two cases could take years to resolve.
