BitGou: Wednesday Morning Briefing: Net support for impeachment grew steadily during U.S. congressional hearings, poll shows

Highlights

Public support for impeaching President Donald Trump has tracked steadily higher over the past few weeks while a U.S. House of Representatives committee held a series of televised impeachment hearings, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has invited Donald Trump to its first impeachment hearing, scheduled for December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against the president within weeks.

President Donald Trump said he will designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups for their role in trafficking narcotics and people, prompting a speedy request for talks by Mexico. Once a particular group is designated as a terrorist organization, under U.S. law it is illegal for people in the United States to knowingly offer support and its members cannot enter the country and may be deported.

The United States and China are close to agreement on the first phase of a trade deal, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, after top negotiators from the two countries spoke by telephone and agreed to keep working on remaining issues.

World shares made another push for an elusive record high on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington and Beijing were in the final throes of inking an initial trade deal. Meanwhile U.S. stocks will keep rising in 2020 but at a much more modest pace than this year, with plenty to potentially slow the ascent, according to a Reuters poll of strategists.

World

NATO is expected to ask a group of “wise persons” to help reform the alliance after U.S. President Donald Trump questioned its relevance and French President Emmanuel Macron said it was dying. At a London summit on December 4 marking NATO’s 70th anniversary, leaders of the 29 member states will try to put on a show of unity but face questions about the future of the U.S.-led alliance.

As the final searches for any pro-democracy protesters still hiding in Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University came up empty on Wednesday, academic authorities prepared for the clean-up following a near two-week siege of the campus by riot police. Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Beijing’s meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hwang Hyeon-dong lives in a 71-square foot cubicle near his university campus in Seoul, which comes with a shared bathroom and kitchen plus all the rice he can eat, that he rents for $302 a month. He is among South Korea's 'Dirt Spoons', those born to low-income families who have all but given up on social mobility and are increasingly impatient with liberal President Moon Jae-in.

Iran’s top leader on Wednesday denounced an outbreak of deadly unrest as a “very dangerous conspiracy” as authorities reported about 731 banks and 140 government sites had been torched in the disturbances.

Hundreds of French farmers angered by international trade deals and government policy drove tractors along the main highways into Paris on Wednesday, blocking commuter traffic and adding to the social unrest facing President Emmanuel Macron.

Business

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