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Category - Global Middle Class

    Germany's Largest Auto Makers Back Abolition of EU-U.S. Car Import Tariffs

    This article by William Boston and Bojan Pancevski for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    That would mean scrapping the EU’s 10% tax on auto imports from the U.S. and other countries and the 2.5% duty on auto imports in the U.S. As a prerequisite, the Europeans want Mr. Trump’s threat of imposing a 25% border tax on European auto imports off the table.

    Over the past few weeks, Mr. Grenell has held closed-door meetings with the chiefs of all major German automotive companies, including bilateral meetings with the CEOs of Daimler AG , BMW AG and Volkswagen AG , which operate plants in the U.S. Overall, Germany’s auto makers and suppliers provide 116,500 jobs in the U.S., according to the Association of German Automotive Manufacturers.

    During these talks, which the ambassador initiated, the managers said they would back the scrapping of all import tariffs on trans-Atlantic trade in automotive products as the keystone of a broader deal covering industrial goods. The German government is on board and Mr. Grenell promised to support the idea, according to U.S. and German officials.

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    Starbucks Delivers the Wrong Kind of Jolt

    This article by Sarah Halzack for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    So I'm paying more attention to the weak comparable sales guidance the company offered for the third quarter, and the factors it says have been weighing on sales of late.

    Executives said Tuesday that in the U.S. market, Starbucks struggled to draw customers in the afternoons. This has been an ongoing problem for Starbucks, and executives haven’t demonstrated they have a clear solution. They've recently put up some TV advertising emphasizing Starbucks as an afternoon destination, and perhaps we'll soon see payoff from that.

    But it'd have an easier time luring people for more than just their morning caffeine fix if it could establish itself as more of a go-to for food, not just beverages. And speaking of its menu, the chain has work to do on its signature drink offerings, too. Look at what has happened to Frappuccino sales:

    Perhaps this shouldn't come as a shock, given that Frappuccinos pack a lot of calories and customers are increasingly looking for healthy choices. But Starbucks needs some new hits to give people a reason to come back through its doors, especially with so many insurgent and boutique coffeehouses chasing the same customers.

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    Xi Can Make Life Difficult for U.S. Companies After Trump Threat

    This article from Bloomberg news may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Pressuring companies through bureaucratic means “is a practice that the Chinese have used for a long time and our companies are on guard,” William Zarit, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in the People’s Republic of China, said on Bloomberg Television. “This is definitely a concern.”

    South Korean and Japanese companies have all felt this effect, with their businesses in China hurt as part of a dispute between states.

    In 2017, following the Seoul government’s decision to deploy an anti-missile system that China opposed, China forced South Korean retailer Lotte Shopping Co. to suspend operations at many of its hypermarkets in the country for alleged violations of fire-safety rules. The company eventually decided to pull out of China, but still can’t sell all its units and continues to rack up losses. In total due to the dispute, Lotte Group lost an estimated 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in the year from March 2017, according to Yonhap News Agency.

    The backlash also led to boycotts, with consumers shunning cars from Hyundai Motor Co. and cosmetics from Amorepacific Group. Chinese tourists cancelled Korean vacations, forcing airlines to scrap flights and hotels to slash rates. The Bank of Korea estimated that 0.4 percentage point was cut from 2017’s gross domestic product.

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    Emerging Asia Hit by Biggest Foreign Investor Exodus Since 2008

    This article by Yumi Teso for Garfield Clinton Reynolds, and Adam Haigh for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “It’s not a great set-up for emerging markets,” James Sullivan, head of Asia ex-Japan equities research at JPMorgan Chase & Co., told Bloomberg TV from Singapore.

    “We’ve still only priced in about two thirds of the U.S. rate increases we expect to see over the next 12 months. So, the Fed is continuing to get more hawkish, but the market still hasn’t caught up.”

    While many emerging-market investors and analysts have praised Asian economic fundamentals, pointing to world-leading growth rates and political stability, some are starting to raise red flags as global liquidity starts to shrink. The Bloomberg JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index sank to a 2018 low on Monday, extending two weeks of declines after the Fed and European Central Bank both took steps toward policy normalization.

    Yet some still remain optimistic. Bank of America Merrill Lynch expects some of the regional currencies including the baht and the Philippine peso to appreciate slightly by the end of the year, a research note sent Monday showed. Six of 10 best- performing emerging currencies so far this year are in Asia, led by the ringgit’s 1.2 percent advance and the Chinese yuan’s 1.1 percent gain.

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    Truckers Protest High Gas Prices in Spotty Strikes Across China

    This article by Te-Ping Chen for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    While trucker protests in China have occurred in the past amid complaints of road tolls, fuel prices and excessive fees, Geoff Crothall, spokesman for the labor monitoring group, said he couldn’t recall trucker protests of a similar scale. He estimated thousands of truckers participated.

    As they have the world over, gas prices have risen in China this year, by 8.6%, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. Taxes and other fees generally make gas more expensive in China than the U.S., and on top of that the government sets the prices, lagging changes in international oil markets by 10 days or more.

    China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which sets those prices, announced Friday that it would cut the retail price of gasoline and diesel by 130 yuan ($20.29) per ton for gasoline and 125 yuan per ton for diesel. The new prices, effective this past Saturday, reflect a recent retreat in global oil prices. In the central province of Anhui, a transportation hub where protests occurred, gasoline now costs $3.99 a gallon, and diesel $4.04 a gallon.

    Rising fuel costs have elsewhere prompted worker frustrations to spill over, most notably in Brazil, where protesters blocked highways and halted shipments of food, fuel and medicine before the government called in the military to help end the strike. Other trucker protests have also recently broken out in Iran.

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    Brazil Joins Turkey With Stepped-Up Currency Defenses Amid Rout

    This article by Tugce Ozsoy, Julia Leite and Ben Bartenstein for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Turkey and Brazil intensified efforts to protect their currencies from speculative attacks by investors as emerging markets face their biggest test since the 2013 taper tantrum.

    Turkey surprised analysts by tightening monetary policy Thursday for the third time in less than two months, while Brazil’s central bank sold extra foreign-exchange swap contracts for the second time this week, boosting investors’ protection again further declines in the currency. The lira surged and the real briefly pared losses after the actions.

    Thursday’s actions are the latest in a series of efforts to shore up defenses in developing nations as policy makers from Argentina to India try to cope with higher U.S. interest rates, growing budget deficits, accelerating inflation and political instability. Emerging markets haven’t been in this precarious a position since five years ago, when concern the developed world was pulling back on monetary stimulus sparked a rout in stocks and currencies.

    "The failure to act preemptively to address macro imbalances has forced those central banks to take desperate measures to stem the pressure on their currencies," said Delphine Arrighi, a money manager at Old Mutual in London. "The risk is a tightening of financial conditions in EM that could ultimately impact growth negatively."

    Turkey raised its one-week repo rate by 1.25 percentage point to 17.75 percent, a bigger increase than any analyst surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted. The move signaled policy makers trying to clamp down on double-digit inflation are willing to stand up against political pressure to keep borrowing costs low.

    “Is this the start of a new era of Turkish central bank policy -- actually moving ahead of the market? Let’s hope so,”

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    Requiem for a construction bubble

    This article by Pete Wargent appeared in Livewire and may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Apartment construction to fall sharply
    We have significant evidence to show that new apartment projects are struggling to get finance approved, and therefore total residential construction is expected to slow in H2 2018. Dwellings approved but not yet commenced have already increased to the highest level on record, driven by apartment project approvals

    Apartment default rising
    Liaison with industry contracts indicates that settlement defaults for some of the major developers have increased, particularly in relation to offshore buyers. The resale market is considered healthy enough at this juncture for most developers not to be materially impacted, however there is a strong likelihood that residential construction activity will now fall

    Employment growth to fall
    Construction now directly employs just under 1.2 million persons in Australia, recently capturing a record high in absolute terms and, at 9.6 per cent of employment, the construction sector is at its most bloated in approximately a century4.

    About ¾ of construction jobs are accounted for by the residential sector5. There is significant potential for employment growth to slow sharply over the next 12 months

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    Dollar Tantrums, Original Sin

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Maybank which may be of interest. Here is section:

    The Original Sin index ranges from zero (“sinless”) to one (“sin-full” or fully dependent on foreign currency debt). We focus on sovereign and corporate bond issuance in ASEAN and India, and track how the index behaved during the Quantitative Easing periods and after the taper tantrums. 

    We detect increases in “original sin” in Indonesia and the Philippines in recent years, but find no visible increase in Thailand, Malaysia or India (see Figures 4 to 9). 

    Indonesia’s original sin index has been steadily rising, with a peak of 0.41 as of May 2018 (see Fig 5). This suggests that Indonesia corporations and the sovereign are borrowing more in foreign currencies in recent years, as the Fed normalizes policy rates. For Philippines, the original sin index rebounded in 2018 to 2009 levels after declining for the past two years (see Fig 7). This suggests that the financial stress is a more recent phenomenon, as investors are more worried about the peso risks (on higher inflation and widening current account deficit). 

    On the other hand, Malaysia and India have seen a decline in their original sin index, suggesting a gradual reduction in their foreign currency exposure in recent years (see Figures 6 & 9). Thailand’s index has been very low since the early 2000s, barely reaching 0.1, reflecting its low interest rates and abundant domestic liquidity, given the massive current account surplus (see Fig 8).

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    Petrobras Punished by Wall Street for Caving on Fuel Prices

    This article by Peter Millard for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full:

    The reaction was swift and severe. Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Pedro Parente woke up this morning to a wave of downgrades from the same Wall Street analysts who had been praising him since he took the helm of the state-controlled oil producer two years ago.

    Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG all cut their recommendations after Parente announced a 10 percent cut in wholesale diesel prices late Wednesday to help the government negotiate an end to a nationwide truckers strike that has wrought havoc on Latin America’s largest economy.

    “The just announced diesel price reduction in response to truckers’ protest is likely to materially damage Petrobras’ perceived independence in a way that may be difficult to recover,” Frank McGann, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, wrote in a report where he cut his recommendation on the company’s American depositary receipts to neutral and his price objective to $17.

    “We think that the investment case for Petrobras has been seriously damaged, and the risk profile has risen.”

    While Parente said Petrobras isn’t bowing to pressure and that the temporary measure doesn’t mean a change in its pricing policy, shares extended losses in after hours trading to as low as $13.40 in late New York trading.

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