China and the United States have agreed to halt additional tariffs as both countries engage in new trade negotiations with the goal of reaching an agreement within 90 days, the White House said on Saturday.
The breakthrough came after a dinner meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires.
Trump agreed not to boost tariffs on $200bn of Chinese goods to 25 percent on January 1 as previously announced, while Beijing agreed to buy an unspecified but “very substantial” amount of agricultural, energy, industrial and other products, the White House said in a statement.
China “is open to approving the previously unapproved” deal for US company Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) to acquire Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors (NXPI.O) “should it again be presented”.
In July, Qualcomm – world’s biggest smartphone-chip maker – walked away from a $44bn deal to buy NXP Semiconductors after failing to secure Chinese regulatory approval, becoming a high-profile victim of the Sino-US trade dispute.
The White House said that if agreement on trade issues including technology transfer, intellectual property, non-tariff barriers, cyber theft and agriculture has not been reached with China in 90 days that both parties agree that the 10 percent tariffs will be raised to 25 percent.
Trump slapped 10 percent tariffs on $200bn in Chinese goods in September. China responded by imposing its own round of tariffs. Trump has also threatened to add tariffs on another $267bn of Chinese imports.
‘Friendly and candid’ meeting
The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said the negotiations were conducted in a “friendly and candid atmosphere”.
“The two presidents agreed that the two sides can and must get bilateral relations right,” Wang told reporters, adding they agreed to further exchanges at appropriate times.
“Discussion on economic and trade issues was very positive and constructive. The two heads of state reached consensus to halt the mutual increase of new tariffs,” Wang said.
“China is willing to increase imports in accordance with the needs of its domestic market and the people’s needs, including marketable products from the United States, to gradually ease the imbalance in two-way trade.”
Xi also agreed to designate the drug fentanyl as a controlled substance, the White House said. For more than a year, Trump has raised concerns about the synthetic opioid being sent from China to the United States, which is facing an epidemic of opioid-related deaths.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says the decision means that “people selling fentanyl to the United States will be subject to China’s maximum penalty under the law.”
Seattle Mariners second baseman Robinson Cano is reportedly on the move.
According to Fancred’s Jon Heyman, the Mariners agreed Saturday to ship Cano, pitcher Edwin Diaz and $20 million in cash to the New York Mets in exchange for outfielder Jay Bruce, pitcher Anthony Swarzak, outfield prospect Jarred Kelenic and pitching prospects Justin Dunn and Gerson Bautista.
MLB Network’s Jon Morosi confirmed Cano agreed to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate the move, which is expected to be finalized Monday.
MLB.com lists Kelenic and Dunn as the Mets’ No. 3 and 4 prospects, respectively.
A lifetime .304 hitter, Cano is an eight-time All-Star, five-time Silver Slugger and two-time Gold Glove winner.
Cano played nine seasons with the New York Yankees and was the starting second baseman for the 2009 World Series-winning team. He also finished top-six in the AL MVP voting from 2010-2013.
After nine seasons in the Bronx, Cano signed a 10-year, $240 million deal with the M’s before the 2014 campaign. His batting numbers have since taken a slight dip (.826 OPS in five Seattle seasons compared to .860 OPS in nine Yankee years), although he experienced asignificant park shiftgoing from the hitter’s paradise of Yankee Stadium to the pitcher-friendly Safeco Field.
He’ll be entering his age-36 season in 2019, but the 14-year veteran still hit 10 home runs and knocked in 50 runners in addition to an .845 OPS in 80 games last season.
Cano only played half the year because he was suspended for 80 games after testing positive for furosemide. Per Victor Mather and Billy Witz of the New York Times, that is “a diuretic sometimes used to hide the presence of other banned substances.” He denied knowingly taking a banned substance.
Cano finished serving that suspension in August 2018 and is eligible to play this upcoming season.
He will assuredly be the Mets’ everyday starter at second base.
Rookie Jeff McNeil took hold of that position last year and did well thanks to a .329 batting average and .852 OPS. New York needs to find a home for him somewhere in the lineup. He played at third base a bit during his minor league career, so perhaps he could see some time there.
However, the Mets are risking a longer-term problem.
Cano has five years left on a deal that goes until he’s 40 years old. His game is aging gracefully right now, but at some point, time will catch up to him. If that happens before the end of his deal, then that could be a problem for the National League team. Aging NL players can’t become designated hitters to avoid the field and rest more as they wind down their careers, so the Mets may be in a tough spot down the line.
During the first quarter of Saturday’s game at Madison Square Garden, Hezonja threw down a dunk as Antetokounmpo attempted to come up with a block from behind. However, the Greek Freak wound on up the floor, resulting in Hezonja stepping over Antetokounmpo on his way back down the court:
“I’m gonna punch him in his nut next time,” Antetokounmpo told reporters after the game.
Let that be a warning to Hezonja—and the rest of the NBA, for that matter.
Hezonja isn’t the first basketball player tostep overan opponent, and he probably won’t be the last. But the Greek Freak is making it clear that he won’t tolerate being disrespected like that.
Of course, Antetokounmpo would be hearing from the league office if he ever followed through on his word.
It probably didn’t help that the incident came in a hard-fought game, a 136-134 overtime victory for New York. While that dunk turned out to be Hezonja’s only points of the night, Antetokounmpo (33 points, 19 rebounds, seven assists, three steals and two blocks) had a monster performance in a losing effort.
Regardless, this beef makes future matchups must-watch television for the rest of the season. The good news for basketball fans is that there isn’t a long wait before Antetokounmpo and Hezonja will be back on the court together again. The Bucks and Knicks play a home-and-home later this month, New York on Christmas Day and in Milwaukee on Dec. 27.
The G-20 illustrates global philosophy in Trump era: Everybody plus one.
BUENOS AIRES — Donald Trump has issues. And the team of G-20 “sherpas” negotiating the joint statement to sum up the annual leaders’ summit were more than happy to take note of them if it meant the explosive American president wouldn’t blow up their work.
One of Trump’s issues is the multilateral trading system that most other G-20 leaders cherish, but that he believes has long allowed other countries to take advantage of the United States.
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So at around 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, after nearly a week of intense negotiations, the sherpas wrote an awkward line into the fourth paragraph of their draft communique: “We also note current trade issues.”
Trump also has issues with the Paris climate change accords. But rather than argue the point, 19 of the G-20 leaders used the document to reaffirm their commitment to fight global warming, and a separate paragraph was written laying out Trump’s singular opposition.
“The United States reiterates its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and affirms its strong commitment to economic growth and energy access and security, utilizing all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment,” they wrote.
The White House was thrilled. And the rest of the G20 could hardly have been happier.
Nearly two years into a world reordered by Trump, the globe has readjusted. Leaders of other major economic powers have learned — and accepted — they will not succeed in shifting Trump’s views either by logical argument or by charm. So their goal is to agree to disagree, to avoid taking offense even when Trump is offensive. In other words, the best way to protect the multilateral system is to let the Big Guy go his own way, even as they keep him at the table. That’s what they did in Buenos Aires. And the G-20 lives on to reconvene in Osaka in 2019.
The Trump administration seemed particularly pleased with a provision in the communique calling for reform of the World Trade Organization — a goal shared by the European Union, in part because it believes a more robust WTO would force Trump himself to play by the rules.
“Today is a great day for the United States. The G-20 just adopted a communique by consensus,” a senior White House official said in Buenos Aires, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s a consensus that meets many of the U.S.’s biggest objectives. I think really the headline story is on trade reform. For the first time ever, the G-20 recognized the WTO is currently falling short of meeting its objectives and that it’s in need of reform.”
In other words, Trump may read the same lines in the communique differently than the other 19 leaders, but so what? He’s on board.
“We also did a great job of promoting U.S. pro-growth policies,” the White House official said. “We highlighted the pro-growth tax policies of the United States. We have language in the communique on the president’s workforce development initiative, talking about how we need to re-skill workers to harness technologies and make the most of the modern economy.”
“Finally, we had a paragraph where we specifically preserved and explained our position for why we’re withdrawing from the job-killing Paris agreement,” the White House officials said, adding: “I think across the board it was really a resounding success.”
Other nations were more excited about the continued shared vision for a well-functioning rules-based system. The EU, in particular, triumphed in a line in the communique that stated, “We renew our commitment to work together to improve a rules-based international order that is capable of effectively responding to a rapidly changing world.”
Trump, of course, is not always so big on working together.
An EU official described a sometimes tense negotiating process in the development of the communique, that involved a careful step by step process to make sure that Washington was on board at all times, and that serious tensions on trade between the U.S. and China did not derail the effort. The effort was helped by an experienced Canadian diplomat and a veteran Russian sherpa.
The EU official acknowledged some frustration over the way some big powers, including China and the U.S. under Trump, sometimes flout the rules. “It is an irritant,” the official said.
“It was an issue for the US to say that there are trade tensions,” the EU official said. “So you will see the sentence is a bit strange, ‘We know there are trade issues.’ It’s not a very nice sentence. It was obtained at 5 in the morning.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that a decade after the first G-20 summit, the multilateral approach was facing severe threats, and did not necessarily provide all the answers. .
Multilateralism “must be fought for,” Merkel said. “But we are doing that. It’s gotten harder. The fact that Paris was created was a great moment, even though this great moment was not enough to solve the problem.”
Still, she and other leaders hailed the summit as a success. Argentinian President Mauricio Macri said the communique proved the G20 to be “a common space for dialogue and working collaboratively.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been at sharp odds with Trump in recent weeks, boasted of collaborative success at the G-20. “With Donald Trump, we really got an agreement,” Macron said. “This G-20, these discussions that we have had allowed us to have consensus, and whatever disagreements may exist on certain subjects, to build a common path.”
Speaking at his own news conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “The world is looking to the G20 to address the big issues that we are facing and these are things that we have done in that communique and around the table.”
Early in his presidency, Trump openly groused about having to attend international summits. But White House aides said Trump has grown more confident on the world stage in recent months, having built relationships with foreign leaders and beefed up his knowledge of policy issues. Administration officials have followed suit, as they’ve learned how to go toe-to-toe with negotiators from other countries.
Similarly, world leaders and their top deputies have learned how to live with Trump. Gone are the days when the U.S. president’s unorthodox foreign policy pronouncements prompted panic. Instead, foreign officials now remain calm, focus on areas of agreement and — most importantly — try find ways to get on Trump’s good side.
There was perhaps no better example of the flattery factor than Japanese Prime Minister Shinzö Abe’s praise of Republicans’ performance in the recent midterm elections, despite the fact that the GOP lost the House.
“I’d like to congratulate you on your historic victory in the midterm election in the United States,” he told Trump in Buenos Aires.
The G-20 may also have benefited from the fact that Trump and the White House viewed a Saturday dinner meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping as the most important event in Argentina. In fact, senior aides paid little attention to the negotiations over the G-20 communique, leaving most of the work to lower-level officials.
In the final run-up to the Trump-Xi meeting, senior officials were seen bustling around the president’s hotel, rushing to prep sessions. Though senior Chinese and U.S. officials had been discussing the contours of a potential trade deal for weeks, few knew exactly what would be decided until hours before the meeting.
But when it comes to surprises from Trump, the rest of the world now seems surprised only when there is no surprise.
White House aides hope the G20 summit will showcase the president’s deal-making skills. But Mueller’s latest move threatens to overshadow any achievements.
An EU strategy to reach net zero emissions by 2050 could motivate greater ambition at the UN climate summit in Poland, according to a survey of the Energy Visions community. But there is skepticism about whether that goal can actually be reached.
Former WSJ editorial writer Mary Kissel, who recently took a senior State Department job, has repeatedly slammed Trump’s foreign policy — and once even drew his ire on Twitter.
In an interview with POLITICO, the president draws a red line in his funding fight with Democrats and said he doesn’t ‘do anything … just for political gain.’
Bedford, England – As about 300 protesters surrounded the Yarl’s Wood detention centre on Saturday to demonstrate against the treatment of immigrants held inside, Eulalee, a 60-year-old Jamaican woman said: “We are no illegal people”.
She arrived to the UK 18 years ago, and although she has the right to remain as a British Commonwealth citizen, she says she was detained for six weeks in March in the Bedfordshire centre, and is yet to be granted indefinite leave to stay.
As protesters chanted “Tear down the fences, open the borders!”, Eulalee cried and told Al Jazeera: “I would never do anything to jeopardise the law in this country or anywhere.
“The Home Office denied me of my freedom and rights by taking me for no reason and putting me in the centre.”
Yarl’s Wood, the only centre in the UK designed to hold women, is managed by private security company Serco.
It was flagged in 2015 as a “place of national concern” amid allegations of detainees suffering abuse and harassment at the hands of security guards.
About 200 women are thought to be currently held at Yarl’s Wood [Claire Gilbody-Dickerson/Al Jazeera]
Saturday’s protest, organised by campaign group Movement for Justice, saw people standing on the other side of the barbed wire fences, calling for the detention centre and others like it across the country to be shut down.
Women inside could be seen squeezing their hands through their tiny bedroom windows to wave at the protesters.
“We’re all sad and crying,” said one of them, using a speaker. “Everyone is getting mad in here.”
The woman, having lived in the UK for 16 years, said she has been in Yarl’s Wood for 11 months.
Britain is the only EU country with no limit on the amount of time an individual can spend in an “Immigration Removal Centre” (IRC).
The woman also claimed there was a pregnant woman in the centre, as well as cancer patients and anaemic and diabetic people.
Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify these claims.
If true, this would contravene the government’s “at risk” policy, whereby those deemed to be at risk of harm if detained should not be placed in an IRC.
“We are suffering. If we go back to our country we are going to die,” the woman said. “That’s why we came to this country.”
Eulalee, whose family is all in the UK, said her 37-year-old son was detained and deported in 2008. He was murdered five months after being sent to Jamaica, she said.
“I’ve never seen my son’s face since he’s returned.”
Hoping to hear of a positive decision from the Home Office in March next year, Eulalee said: “They make me feel like nobody, I feel so empty inside.
“I have nowhere to stay in Jamaica and here is my home now, and I should be allowed to stay here.”
‘It disproportionately affects black and brown people’
The government’s “at risk” policy also bans victims of sexual violence from being detained, but research by Women for Refugee Women in November last year found 85 percent of the detained females they spoke to had been victims of rape or other gender-related violence, including forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).
Movement for Justice representative Karen Doyle said most in the Bedford centre currently are women who were detained during an immigration raid on a brothel “after being horrendously abused, and have the least means to assert their rights”.
According to a report by the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons last year, 28,000 people entered the facility in 2016-17.
Doyle said Yarl’s Wood is now at half capacity, meaning around 200 people are detained.
One of the protesters, 22-year-old politics student Dylan Bradbury, branded the UK’s immigration system racist, saying: “It disproportionately affects … black and brown people and also women.
“It is part of the general hostile environment policies of the Tories (Conservatives) which is designed to divide people.”
Student Sophia Taha said she was protesting because “in the detention centre, you don’t know when you’re leaving, you have committed no crime other than existing, and we’re not okay with that”.
The Home Office released a statement saying: “Detention and removal are essential elements of an effective immigration system.
“Those with no right to be in the UK should return to their home country. We will help those who wish to leave voluntarily but when they refuse to do so, we will take steps to enforce their removal.”
Chicago Bulls power forward Lauri Markkanen is reportedly expected to make his season debut Saturday against the Houston Rockets.
According to K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, Markkanen will play if he gets through warm-ups without issue, but the Bulls have yet to determine if he will start or come off the bench.
Regardless of how he is utilized, Markkanen will be on a minutes restriction.
Markkanen had an encouraging debut season as he earned first-team All-Rookie honors in 2017-18 after getting selected No. 7 overall out of Arizona. He averaged 15.2 points and 7.5 rebounds and also shot 36.2 percent from three-point range.
He injured his elbow in practice prior to the start of the 2018-19 campaign, which caused him to miss Chicago’s first 23 games.
Although the Bulls signed Jabari Parker to a two-year, $40 million deal this summer, they remain in rebuilding mode. Missing Markkanen for the start of the season didn’t help matters, either.
The Bulls are off to a disappointing 5-18 start, but Markkanen’s return could provide a significant boost to a frontcourt that has primarily featured Parker and rookie Wendell Carter Jr.
Power forward Bobby Portis has appeared in just four games this season because of a knee injury, so Markkanen will add some much-needed depth.
Look for Parker and Carter to get the bulk of the minutes up front on Saturday, but once Markkanen shakes the rust off, it could result in Parker either being relegated to the bench or playing more small forward in place of Justin Holiday.
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