BitGou: Friday Morning Briefing: President Trump set to declare border emergency

2019年2月15日星期五

Friday Morning Briefing: President Trump set to declare border emergency

TRUMP

President Trump was poised to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that Democrats vowed to challenge as an unconstitutional attempt to fund his proposed border wall without approval from Congress. Trump will almost certainly face legal challenges over his decision to declare a national emergency to get additional funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, circumventing the power of Congress to set spending policy.

It’s been the better part of a year since Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un stood face to face for the first time at their unprecedented summit in Singapore. Here is a breakdown of what Trump and Kim have agreed to, what has - and hasn’t - happened since they last shook hands, and what may be on the negotiating table.

U.S.-China trade talks

Top U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators had “productive meetings”, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a tweet on Friday, as the world’s largest economies wound down two days of high-level talks to resolve their bruising trade war. Chinese President Xi Jinping said trade talks with the United States will continue in Washington next week and that he hopes the two sides will be able to reach a mutually beneficial deal in the upcoming negotiations, state media reported.

What's at stake in U.S.-China trade talks? The governments of the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariff battle for months as Washington presses Beijing to address long-standing concerns over Chinese practices and policies around industrial subsidies, market access and intellectual property rights protections. Here is a look at the key issues in the talks and their implications.

World

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the EU’s top diplomat in Brussels, a day after Vice President Mike Pence accused America’s traditional European allies of trying to undermine U.S. sanctions against Iran. The meeting with Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, was scheduled before Pence’s rebuke of European powers during a Middle East peace conference in Warsaw.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan to expect a strong response to a bomb attack in the disputed region of Kashmir that killed 44 paramilitary policemen, ratcheting up tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a snap national election for April 28 after parliament voted down his budget bill, spelling an uncertain few months for a country whose political landscape is increasingly fragmented. Sanchez, who took office in June as the head of a minority government holding less than a quarter of parliamentary seats, called the election after his former Catalan nationalist allies refused to back his budget.

Myanmar’s army chief, who is facing international calls that he be prosecuted for genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, has denied any systematic army persecution and said such accusations were an insult to his country’s honor. Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 431 days, follow updates on the case.

Brexit

Through the Brexit Looking Glass - What happens next?
With just six weeks until the United Kingdom is due by law to leave the EU, the options include a disorderly Brexit, a delay to Brexit or no Brexit at all. British Prime Minister Theresa May's hope of presenting a united front to convince Brussels to make changes to the deal suffered a heavy blow on Thursday when both eurosceptic and pro-EU lawmakers in her party refused to endorse her approach, condemning her to defeat in parliament.

As the United Kingdom’s Brexit crisis deepens, two of the titans of Wall Street have starkly differing views of the ultimate outcome: Goldman Sachs sees a 50 percent probability of a ratified deal while JPMorgan sees a delay. For full coverage of The Road to Brexit.

Business

Exclusive: Trafigura halts oil trade with Venezuela - source

Global commodities firm Trafigura has decided to stop trading oil with Venezuela due to U.S. sanctions on the OPEC nation’s energy sector, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

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How Amazon scrapped its plans for a New York headquarters

More than a year of work to bring Amazon’s headquarters and tens of thousands of jobs to New York City ended with a couple of phone calls. Jay Carney, the company’s top policy executive, told New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that the world’s biggest online retailer would not go ahead with plans to invest $2.5 billion to build a second head office in the New York City borough of Queens.

5 Min Read

Private equity firms win over Scout24 with improved $6.4 billion bid

Hellman & Friedman and Blackstone have won over Scout24 after raising their offer for the online classifieds group to 5.7 billion euros ($6.4 billion) including debt, setting up the biggest takeover of a listed German company by private equity.

4 min read