by admin | May 25, 2021 | Investing, World
Washington : US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a plan to restrict Chinese investment in US technology companies as part of an effort to fight the theft of intellectual property.
“Certain countries direct and facilitate systematic investment in US companies and assets in order to obtain cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property in industries those countries deem important,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House.
According to the statement, Trump instructed the Treasury Department to investigate acquisitions of assets by foreigners via the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, a government agency, and report to him “regarding appropriate measures to address these concerns”.
Trump asked Congress to update the 2017 Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) to improve protections “from new and evolving threats posed by foreign investment”, Efe news reported.
A better FIRRMA, according to the statement, would provide additional tools for the Trump administration to fight investment practices that threaten US technological leadership, national security and future economic prosperity.
In recent months, Washington and Beijing have raised investors’ concerns about a possible trade war due to the imposition by both sides of tariffs on a variety of products.
Tensions increased in March, when the Trump administration announced tariffs totalling $50 billion on steel and aluminium products imported from China, and Beijing responded with tariffs on 128 US products.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Investing, World
Washington : US President Donald Trump’s administration is set to announce measures this week cracking down on Chinese investment in key technologies in America, a media report said on Monday.
The move is expected to increase tensions in the intensifying trade clash between Washington and Beijing, the CNN report said.
The planned US restrictions on Chinese investments in “industrially significant technology” are in large part fuelled by American concerns about “Made in China 2025” — Beijing’s plan to boost industries like robotics, electric cars and aerospace with the aim of becoming a global leader in those areas.
The measures are set to include rules that would bar firms with at least 25 per cent Chinese ownership from buying companies involved in technology deemed significant by the White House, according to a report late Sunday by The Wall Street Journal.
The limit on Chinese ownership could end up being even lower, it added.
It remains unclear exactly how the Trump administration will define what technology is “industrially significant”.
Neither the Treasury Department, which is drawing up the rules, and the White House comment on the development, CNN reported.
The measures are part of the same broad US move to confront Beijing over its trade practices as the tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods that the Trump administration detailed earlier this month.
Beijing has vowed to strike back in equal measure against the tariffs, the first wave of which will take effect on July 6.
The US government says the flurry of measures against China were a response to the theft of American intellectual property and pressure US companies face to hand over technology to Chinese firms in order to do business in the country.
Chinese officials have repeatedly rejected the US allegations, accusing Washington of making unilateral and protectionist moves.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump cited an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to American national security as he maintained long-standing economic restrictions on North Korea, including the freezing of any assets in Washington, a media report said.
An official declaration, contained in a notice to Congress, came on Friday despite Trump’s assertion this month that his June 12 historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons threat, reports The Washington Post.
Harsh economic restrictions will continue for one year under the declaration Trump signed Friday.
The paperwork keeps in place restrictions first imposed a decade ago by President George W. Bush.
The ban on the transfer of any American assets by North Korea’s leaders or its ruling party has been extended or expanded several times by former President Barack Obama and Trump himself in response to North Korean missile tests and other actions.
“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula (and_ the actions and policies of the government of North Korea… Continue to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the US,” Trump wrote in the declaration.
Friday’s development comes in contrast to a tweet on June 13 where Trump said: “Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office… There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
The move follows as the US and South Korea cancelled two more training exercises on Friday, reports the BBC.
The Pentagon said the goal was to support diplomatic negotiations.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Michael Hernandez,
Washington: President Donald Trump falsely claimed Monday that crime in Germany is on the rise in an attempt to defend his own controversial immigration policies.
“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” Trump said on Twitter, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition.
“Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” Trump added.
Germany this year recorded its lowest crime rate since 1992.
Trump’s pronouncement comes as he faces widespread criticism at home for his hardline immigration policies, particularly his decision to require undocumented parents to be separated from their children if they are apprehended by immigration enforcement agents.
The result of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy has been met with universal opposition from Democrats, and over the weekend, several prominent Republicans decried the policy.
“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,” former first lady Laura Bush wrote in a scathing Washington Post op-ed, further likening the detention centers to internment camps the U.S. sent Japanese citizens to in a “shameful” period during World War II.
The Department of Homeland Security separated roughly 2,000 children from undocumented adults between April 19 and May 31, sending apprehended children to detention centers or foster care, according to the department.
Footage and photographs released by the department depict people, including children, housed in large metal chain-link cages within one of the administration’s makeshift shelters.
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy refers all undocumented adults for criminal prosecution, a break with past administrations who limited criminal referral for most adults who illegally cross into the U.S. with their juvenile family members. The children, who are not charged with a crime, are separated as a result of their parents’ criminal case. As a matter of regulation, they are not allowed to be detained with their parents during legal proceedings.
First lady Melania Trump, whose immigration history remains murky, appeared to break with her husband in a statement issued to CNN by her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, in which she said Melania Trump “hates to see” families broken apart.
“She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart,” Grisham said.
Republican Senator Susan Collins further said the policy is “traumatizing” children, denying the administration’s rationale for the policy as a deterrent for future undocumented migration.
Collins said the Trump administration is trying to “send a message” with its policy but warned “using children is not the answer”.
Trump and his top officials have variously argued they are simply following federal law, which is not the case, while seeking to blame Democrats for their policy.
Trump did so again on Monday, asking rhetorically on Twitter: “Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws? Where is the outcry for the killings and crime being caused by gangs and thugs, including MS-13, coming into our country illegally?”
The “spectacularly cruel policy,” Amnesty International said, “will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of the USA”.
“This is nothing short of torture,” said Amnesty International’s Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas. “The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both U.S. and international law.”
Earlier in the day, the UN strongly rapped the policy, urging the U.S. to carry out a full halt to a practice that punishes “children for their parents’ actions.
“I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children, and I encourage the government to at last ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in order to ensure that the fundamental rights of all children, whatever their administrative status, will be at the center of all domestic laws and policies,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
Undeterred, the American president was unwavering in his commitment to his administration’s immigration crackdown.
“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said at the White House.
In her own stern defense, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a gathering of sheriffs that the U.S. “will not apologize for the job we do or for the job law enforcement does”.
She later told reporters at the White House that the separation policy is not child abuse while urging Congress to act on the matter.
“Congress could fix this tomorrow,” she said, repeatedly denying that the separation of families is administration policy after Trump’s senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, told the New York Times “it was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period”.
It is unclear if Trump will support legislation that closes what the administration is calling “a loophole” if the bill does not also include funding to build his oft-promised border wall, which he initially said Mexico would pay for.
Nielsen further scoffed at the suggestion that the administration is trying to send a message with its implementation, saying: “I find that offensive. No, because why would I ever create a policy that purposely does that?”
In May, Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, explicitly said the policy would serve as a deterrent.
“It could be a tough deterrent — would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers,” Kelly told National Public Radio during a controversial interview in which he argued that undocumented migrants would not be able to easily assimilate into American society because “they don’t have skills”.
In an apparent nod to Trump’s immigration policy, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman said the UN chief “believes that refugees and migrants should always be treated with respect and dignity, and in accordance with existing international law”.
“Children must not be traumatized by being separated from their parents. Family unity must be preserved,” said Stephane Dujarric.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, World
San Francisco : The US senate has voted to reinstate a ban on Chinese telecom company ZTE which prevents it from buying US components and using US software despite President Donald Trump’s attempts to lift sanctions on the firm, the media reported.
The Senate has passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act which included an amendment to stop Trump’s deal allowing US companies to trade with ZTE.
Several Republican and Democratic Senators said their vote related to national security issues after numerous intelligence warnings about ZTE this year.
“The legislation which is considered crucial for continuing defense funding, was passed with 85-10 votes, one of a handful of times the Republican-controlled Senate has deviated from a Trump policy,” Business Insider reported on Tuesday.
Mark Warner, Vice-Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee had tweeted that the Senate had “blocked” the Trump administration from making a “bad deal with ZTE”.
“The amendment is not guaranteed to become law. The bill will now need to be reconciled with a House version — where the amendment could be stripped out — voted through both the House and the Senate and signed into law by Trump,” the report added.
The Shenzhen-headquartered telecommunications firm was hit with a trade ban by the US Commerce Department for seven years after failing to follow through with a punishment for violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
That ban essentially shut down ZTE, which relies on US parts like Qualcomm processors.
However, on Trump’s orders, the administration made a deal earlier this month to end ZTE’s sanctions in exchange for a $1 billion fine.
ZTE, which employs 70,000 people in China, described the move by the US regulators to cut it off from its US parts suppliers as a “death sentence”.
—IANS
