Bloomberg Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned himself in to the police, finally ending a tense stand-off with authorities after ignoring a court-ordered deadline to begin a prison sentence. Lula left the metalworkers union headquarters, where he had hunkered down since last week, and is in police custody, TV footage showed. He ended up leaving by foot, ...
Read More »Macron, Merkel may agree with US on China
Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will attempt a pincer movement on Donald Trump, with China emerging as the likely target of their joint effort to avert a trade war with the US. The leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies will visit the president in Washington within days of each other this month as the clock ...
Read More »Italy’s League sees chance of deal with Five Star: Corriere
Bloomberg Italy’s euroskeptic League leader Matteo Salvini sees a “real†chance that Italy’s next government will be between the center-right coalition and the populist Five Star Movement, according to an interview in Corriere della Sera. The coalition’s policy differences with Five Star “are less pronounced than people think,†Salvini said in the article. “There’s a real possibility to build a ...
Read More »Populist Orban faces a reckoning in polls
Bloomberg Sixteen years ago, Viktor Orban refurbished a palace overlooking the Danube River in Budapest as a new office to mark his re-election as Hungary’s prime minister. Then a surprise defeat prevented him from moving in and he spent the rest of the decade in opposition. The older, grayer, and heavier Orban is now the ringleader of Europe’s nationalist insurgence ...
Read More »Najib doubles down on longtime voter bases in election manifesto
Bloomberg Prime Minister Najib Razak is doubling down on his traditional vote banks in an election manifesto, pledging that under his government Malaysians would live “peacefully and prosperously.†His Barisan Nasional coalition is pledging to introduce a law for Shariah-compliant property sales, help ethnic Malay farmers resolve their debts, build more affordable housing for the police and military, and ensure ...
Read More »US needs China more than China needs the US
Not one to be outdone by any adversary, Donald Trump has upped the ante in a rapidly escalating trade war with China, threatening an additional $100 billion of tariffs on top of the initial round of $50 billion. In doing so, the Trump administration is failing to appreciate a crucial reality: The United States needs China more than China needs ...
Read More »In property, HNA finds a handy saviour
Real estate is fast turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving for troubled conglomerate HNA Group Co. Under pressure to reverse a multibillion-dollar buying spree to pare its debt load, HNA is in the midst of a fire sale. It seems property is the answer. In February, HNA sold two parcels of land on the site of ...
Read More »Global shipping is part of the climate problem, too
When almost all the world’s governments agreed in Paris more than two years ago to address climate change, they sidestepped an important issue: carbon emissions from international shipping. Next week in London, they have a chance to put this right. Shipping is by far the most energy-efficient mode of transport, and it moves some 80 percent of world trade by ...
Read More »Brewing trade war will leave markets with few winners
In the childhood tale, Goldilocks ate the porridge, sat in the chair and slept in the bed until the bears showed up to settle the score. And so it was in markets last year, as each downdraft was followed by a stronger updraft as investors responded to economic and financial conditions that were just right. But this year, the bears ...
Read More »Big Tech needs strict privacy principles, not a breakup
A new idea has come into vogue — breaking up Big Tech. The list of people calling for antitrust action against Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and other big tech companies is growing. New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway has lead the charge, arguing that these companies’ size and technological disruption have lead to a host of social ills, from ...
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