As a result of this ‘trade war’ China has let the yuan slide versus the USD which is a warning to Trump, specifically Mnuchin, popularly known as one of the most slippery dealers (IndyMAC and One West) to ever walk the earth (and China knows that). China is hoping that a lower yuan will offset tariffs just as the US has ‘weaponized’ the dollar and has imposed sanctions and tariffs on China. Because the sums are so vast with China holding so much US debt, and because China depends on exports to the west, China is somewhat boxed in.

China has condemned the inauguration of the newest branch of the US military, the Space Force, describing its creation as a threat to peace that endangers global stabilit
y.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Monday that Beijing was "deeply concerned" and "resolutely opposed" to the Space Force, which received its first funding after US President Donald Trump signed the annual military budget last week.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Washington's new military branch sets a dangerous precedent for the militarization of outer space.

The specific US actions are a serious violation of the international consensus on the peaceful use of outer space, undermine global strategic balance and stability, and pose a direct threat to peace and security in outer space.

He called on the international community to "adopt a cautious and responsible" approach to space, in order to prevent it from becoming a conflict zone

Tesla, which supposedly has lots of cash in the bank and tons of working capital (just ask David Einhorn), is tapping a group of Chinese banks for a relatively small $1.4 billion USD, five year loan, for the company's Shanghai plant. Part of the loan will be used to roll over an existing loan, according to Reuters.

Among the banks participating in the loan are China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Earlier this year the banks had offered Tesla an even smaller 12 month facility of 3.5 billion yuan (about $475 million USD) that comes due in March of 2020. The new loan will help Tesla roll over the previous debt and the rest will be used on Tesla's "China operations".

Bloomberg has compiled a list of long-time China watchers that are warning about an extended slowdown.

George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University's China Centre and author of "Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy:"

In the spirit of self-criticism, I'd say my best call on the economy was an early spot of the huge demographic shift that kicked off in earnest in 2012, an abiding assertion that China's elevated growth rates could not be sustained, and anticipation of a financial crisis that turned up in 2015-16. Worst call was thinking that crisis might turn into a 'Minsky Moment' for China, as per 2007-08, and failing to integrate properly the tools the state has to prevent catastrophic failure.

In early 2014 Washington staged a blatant coup d’etat in Ukraine breaking the historic relationship with Russia and setting the stage for the subsequent NATO demonization of Russia. The one in charge for the Obama Administration of the Ukraine coup was then-Vice President Joe Biden. Today a bizarre Democrat impeachment attempt aimed at President Donald Trump has curiously enough put the spotlight on the dubious role that Joe Biden played in Ukraine affairs in 2014 and after. That Biden-steered coup had the unintended effect of causing a 180 degree geopolitical pivot of Moscow from West to East. The opening of a massive new gas pipeline now is only one of those unintended consequences.

SOURCE: RIGGED GAME
PAM MARTENS AND RUSS MARTENS OF WALL STREET ON PARADE.
One has to wonder how much money it would take for the New York Fed to throw at Wall Street before the New York Times reports to its readers on the biggest Wall Street bailout by the Fed since the financial crisis.

Last Thursday, December 12, the New York Fed announced that over the next month it would shower the trading houses (primary dealers) on Wall Street with a total of $2.93 trillion in short-term loans. The money is for a Wall Street liquidity crisis that has yet to be explained in credible terms to the American people and yet the New York Times does not appear to have an investigative reporter assigned to investigate what’s really going on just 11 years after those same trading houses blew themselves up in the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression and took the U.S. economy along for the ride.

With North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s New Years’ deadline for resuming negotiations quickly approaching, some Pentagon leaders are fretting that Kim may send the US a “Christmas gift” or possibly ring in the new year with a new long-range missile test. Kim announced a unilateral moratorium on such tests in April 2018.

“A long-range ballistic missile” test is expected before year's end, according to Gen. Charles Brown, commander of Pacific Air Forces and air component commander for US Indo-Pacific Command.

“What I would expect is some type of long-range ballistic missile would be the gift. It’s just a matter of does it come on Christmas Eve, does it come on Christmas Day, does it come after the New Year,” Brown told reporters at a breakfast roundtable on Tuesday, according to The Hill.

According to the PLA Daily, Beijing’s military mouthpiece, the naval aviation unit under the command of the Southern Theatre Command completed an early warning reconnaissance drill in mid-November.

Naval commander Yan Liang told the publication: “Different from the exercises conducted last year on early warning reconnaissance, this drill was much longer in time span, put in a confrontational mode from the start and had an emphasis on night-time training.”

He added: “This kind of drill continuously challenged the limits of our personnel and equipment, and helped strengthen the emergency combat capabilities of the army."

The drill involved one squadron of planes sharing intelligence with a second.

China's second aircraft carrier, the first domestically built one, called the Shandong, was delivered and commissioned by President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, at a commissioning ceremony in Shandong, an eastern Chinese province on the Yellow Sea, on Tuesday, reported China News Service.

Trump who was too much of a coward to put any concessions on the table in Hanoi is blowing up the Korean nuclear freeze. Russia and China are trying to save the freeze, by doing Trump should have done, and remove the very top layer of UNSC sanctions declared in 2017. As the Russians correctly point out Pyongyand should be rewarded for its willingness to talk and to limit and downscale its nuclear capabilities.

Of course, the effort was doomed from the start. US has veto power in the UNSC, so this is an illusion. In fact, as things stand the US and its Western European poodles won’t even let the Russian Chinese-backed proposal be voted on.

Beijing has opened a new front on the internet for its more than a decade-old campaign to shut down a performing arts company whose shows challenge the Chinese regime’s human rights record and cultural identity.

Google search results for the Shen Yun Performing Arts company are steering users toward Chinese regime propaganda. Among the top results are several articles that align with the regime’s talking points or are directly produced by the regime. Other search engines don’t produce these results.

Whether Google is actively seeking to target Shen Yun with the Chinese Communist Party’s viewpoint is not clear. The search engine may itself be manipulated.

Chinese criminals have been flying drones onto farms and infecting perfectly healthy pigs with African swine fever, lowballing the farmer for their sick pigs, and then selling the tainted meat as healthy, according to SCMP, citing China Comment - a magazine affiliated with state news agency Xinhua.

Nobody's leaving; trade war or not, foreign investments are up, especially in the hi-tech sector

The 15% tariff imposed on $120 billion in Chinese goods in September will be halved to 7.5%:

In a statement issued Friday, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) called the deal a “historic and enforceable agreement” and said the U.S. agreed to modify its tariff actions “in a significant way.”

The U.S. will maintain the 25% tariffs on about $250 billion of annual Chinese imports it imposed during the 18-month trade war, the USTR said. But it will halve the tariffs on an additional $120 billion of Chinese imports to 7.5%, the USTR said. China retaliated with similar measures.

Trump is bigging the deal as “very large” securing “massive purchases” and “many structural” changes by the Chinese.

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

The supergiant Azadegan oil field, comprising major north and south sites, is as important to Iran’s overall strategic plan to survive the current sanctions environment and to prosper when they are lifted as the flagship South Pars supergiant gas field and the added-value products of its petrochemicals sector. Last week Iran’s Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) announced that five new development wells and an appraisal well are to be spudded in North Azadegan to maintain current production levels. OilPrice.com understands from various senior energy sources in Iran that this is only part of the picture, with much bigger plans having been agreed for rollout in the coming six months with the help of China and Russia.

Update: after much confusion, China is now confirming some of the details revealed overnight, whiled denying others despite the country's stern silence overnight. Here are the highlights from the press conference

President Donald Trump has signed off on a phase-one trade deal with China which would avert imminent U.S. tariffs and reduce sanctions in exchange for a promise from China to purchase U.S. agricultural produce, reports said.

The agreement would delay the Dec. 15 introduction of a new wave of tariffs on $160 billion in Chinese-made consumer electronics and toys. It would also reduce some of the existing tariffs on the Asian country by half.

Trade officials had met with Trump Thursday afternoon at White House, to brief the President about the agreement. The terms in the agreement have been agreed and negotiators are working to finalize the legal text, CNN reported citing officials familiar with the agreement.

Markets are closed in Beijing, the workday is over, and there no official reports in local media of an actual trade deal, that is because, as we explained on Thursday night, the language of the deal will never be made public and there would be no signing event between President Trump and President Xi. One may ask if there is even a "deal"?

As the WSJ writes this morning, China indicated that a near-term trade agreement with the U.S. has yet to be completed despite President Trump’s signoff, highlighting the unpredictability of a negotiation process that has rattled global markets and businesses.

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On December 3rd, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO must address the “security implications” of China’s rise as a “military power”, and in true Orwellian doublespeak, insisted that he did not want to make an adversary out of Beijing but rather was interested in analysing how best to respond to the challenges China poses in a balanced way…by announcing it a ‘security threat’.

But we know this is not the whole story.

Of course no bully likes it when their victim suddenly learns the art of self-defense, and who would be more paranoid of aggression than those who have been practising it for years on others only to increasingly find the tables turned.

This western paranoia of the communist boogeyman has its roots in Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech which ushered in the Cold War.

A week after North Korea resumed its "dotard" insults at President Trump and their ambassador to the United Nations said further denuclearization talks are no longer needed, Reuters reported Thursday via Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) that, even if denuclearization talks resumed between both countries, the Trump administration has nothing to offer:

North Korea's foreign ministry criticized the Trump administration for meeting with officials at the UN Security Council and suggested that it would be ready to respond to any corresponding measures that Washington imposes.

"The United States said about corresponding measure at the meeting, as we have said we have nothing to lose and we are ready to respond to any corresponding measure that the US chooses," said KCNA citing a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

According to TASS News and social media footage, a fire has erupted onboard Russia's only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, at a naval dock in Murmansk, northwest Russia. The aircraft carrier was undergoing repairs and maintenance when fuel tanks caught fire.

RT News reports a "blaze was sparked by welding in the first power section on the ship's deck, after which the fire spread to a space of 600 square meters."

Two recent developments highlight how the new world is being invented by the Chinese—and how it will affect the Middle East and central Asia.

Last month, while Congress busied itself with impeachment hearings, a mammoth Chinese cargo train arrived in Turkey en route to the heart of Europe. It will be remembered as the first freight train to pass from China across central Asia and under the Bosphorus Strait, using the Marmaray tunnel as part of China’s historic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Like the Suez Canal in its day, this “Iron Silk Road” through central Asia is a time saver, with the added bonus of circumventing sea routes now controlled by the West. It will reduce the transportation time between China and Turkey from one month to 12 days, while the entire journey from Xi’an to Prague in the heart of Europe will take only 18 days, half the time of a similar journey by sea and at similar cost.

Very little headlines come out of the Middle East these days about the two-decade war the US has been fighting against terrorism. But what you hear on an increasing frequency are headlines outlining how Russia and China are the new enemies. The shift happened several years ago when the US military figured out that a great power competition was underway.

Instead of fighting unconventional enemies in the deserts of the Middle East, the Pentagon is preparing for major conflicts against Russia and China.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are being plowed into hypersonics, fifth-generation fighters and bombers, directed energy, space, cyber, quantum science, artificial intelligence, and automation.

The ongoing recession in the global auto market has undoubtedly been lead by China - and if November's trends are any indication, the entire industry could be setting up for an ugly 2020.

Sales of sedans in China fell 4.2% in November to 1.97 million units, according to the CPCA on Monday.

This marks the 17th decline in the last 18 months and all but ensures that China will see a second straight annual drop for its auto market, according to Bloomberg.

Authored by Anes Alic via OilPrice.com,

They control the vast majority of the world’s oil and gas assets, yet the average person has never even heard of them, outside of those that are famous for things like getting attacked by missiles or becoming embroiled in a high-profile corruption scandal.

State-owned oil and gas companies (aka, the national oil companies, or NOCs) control at least US$3 trillion in oil and gas assets, compared to around $2.5 trillion as of 2017, and hold an estimated 90% of all known reserves--considerably more than publicly listed companies such as BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco leads the pack as the world’s most profitable company.

That means that NOCs control about as much wealth as all U.S. billionaires or roughly twice the assets of global multilateral development banks.

Moscow Creates 'Anti-Missile Dome’ Over Northern Fleet As Battle For Arctic Heats Up
The international struggle for military supremacy in the Arctic has just risen to absurd new heights.

Following the collapse of the arms control regime that for decades aided the US’s tenuous grip on power in the region, the US, Russia and China are now engaged in a winner-takes-all struggle for control of territory north of the Arctic Circle.

And as Russia moves to defend its territory (Russia and Canada have the most territory inside the Arctic Circle), the Russian army is reportedly preparing to upgrade the equipment on the anti-aircraft regiment of its Northern Fleet with its new state-of-the-art S-400 missile defense systems.

The upgrades will create what RT described as a "missile defense dome" able to stop a flurry of NATO missiles.

The latest PISA international test results are in, and it’s not pretty for the West. The top four countries are all Chinese.

While the Western world controlled the 20th century, the 21st century could be soon controlled by China.

Six of the world's largest asset managers, including BlackRock and Vanguard, are eager to do more business in China, reported Bloomberg.

Sources said these firms had told regulators they plan to apply for fully-foreign-owned mutual fund licenses after China Securities Regulatory Commission said in Oct., that it would allow overseas institutions more power over onshore ventures in 2020.

Fidelity told Bloomberg via a statement this week that it's preparing to file for a mutual fund license in China.

These big Wall Street banks see nearly $12.8 trillion of investable assets in Chinese households.

Though China's economy is slowing with growth rates crashing to three-decade lows and a trade war with the US with no immediate resolution, Western bankers understand that by 2030, the center of the global economy could be China, not the US.

The celebration in London of NATO’s 70th year has ended with a renewed purpose: the “challenges” posed by China. NATO is a military alliance, but the attendees were careful to point out that they do not view China as an enemy. So what is the point?

In early Sept., China said it would waive soybean tariffs and start buying. Then in late Oct., China repeated it. Now a new headline from China states that it has waived duties of soybeans and pork, but does that mean China is actually going to start buying, or is it a feel-good narrative for President Trump to pump on Twitter?

We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity.

Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the 11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days.

Along the way, the Yuxinou stops in, among other places, Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Rotterdam: a who’s who of Eurasian cities. It carries laptops, BMWs, spare parts, clothes, machinery, international post packages, chemical products, medicine and medical instruments – all manner of goods, made in China and made in Europe. And all that for only 20% of air freight cost.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

How in the world is America supposed to remain “the greatest country on Earth” when other nations are absolutely running circles around us when it comes to education? As you will see below, one survey found that 15-year-old students in China are almost four full grade levels ahead of 15-year-old students in the United States in mathematics. This is one of the most damning indictments of our education system that I have ever come across, and it is yet another clear indication that what we are doing is simply not working. Our children are not being given the tools that they need to compete in our modern society, and we have only ourselves to blame.

In an interview with Margaret Hoover (PBS), former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated that China is not a dictatorship because ‘no government can survive without the will of the majority of its people.’

While China is bracing for what may be a historic D-Day event on December 9, when the "unprecedented" default of state-owned, commodity-trading conglomerate Tewoo with $38 billion in assets may take place, it has already been a banner year for Chinese bankruptcies.

According to Bloomberg data, China is set to hit another dismal milestone in 2019 when a record amount of onshore bonds are set to default, confirming that something is indeed cracking in China's financial system and "testing the government’s ability to keep financial markets stable as the economy slows and companies struggle to cope with unprecedented levels of debt."

After a brief lull in the third quarter, a burst of at least 15 new defaults since the start of November have sent the year’s total to 120.4 billion yuan ($17.1 billion), and set to eclipse the 121.9 billion yuan annual record in 2018.

The 1949 NATO Treaty never attempted to single out a specific enemy for the alliance to fight against, and while it was clear at the time the Soviet Union was the focus, the lack of specificity has meant numerous attempts in recent history to add enemies, or make up new things for the alliance to do.

During this week’s NATO meeting, they are going to officially add a new nation to the list of “challenges,” in the form of China, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg saying NATO has to “tackle the issue” of China’s growing capabilities.

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

The 1949 NATO Treaty never attempted to single out a specific enemy for the alliance to fight against, and while it was clear at the time the Soviet Union was the focus, the lack of specificity has meant numerous attempts in recent history to add enemies, or make up new things for the alliance to do.

During this week’s NATO meeting, they are going to officially add a new nation to the list of “challenges,” in the form of China, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg saying NATO has to “tackle the issue” of China’s growing capabilities.

China is a major military and economic power, though not hostile to any NATO member nations. That China is a Pacific nation makes them a strange enemy for an alliance supposedly focused on the north Atlantic to single out.

NATO, however, is at a crossroads trying to figure out its identity and purpose, and China’s sheer size makes it an attractive target to justify NATO’s continued existence.

Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng confirmed to reporters on Thursday what the Global Times had already leaked previously, namely that tariffs must be reduced by the US to reach a phase one trade deal, reported Reuters.

"The Chinese side believes that if the two sides reach a phase one deal, tariffs should be lowered accordingly," Feng told reporters.

His comments were a reiteration of Beijing's hard stance of tariff rollbacks in the last month or no phase one trade deal. Feng said both trade teams are in communication, but didn't say if the trade talks were going well.

Leaders of far-right Ukrainian groups that rose to prominence in the 2014 coup d’etat they helped orchestrate, including the Azov Battalion and Right Sektor, have recently traveled to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Beijing protests there. It’s unclear why the groups, sporting the apparel of a far-right hooligan group called “Honor” or “Gonor,” have gone to Hong Kong, but the fact that both the 2014 Ukrainian coup and the present protests in Hong Kong have enjoyed extensive support from the CIA-spawned National Endowment for Democracy may give a clue.

China wasted no time to issue a harshly worded response to the passage of the Uighur bill, and in a statement published moments ago by the Chinese foreign ministry, said that whereas "the US plan to use the Xinjiang-related issue to sow Chinese ethnic relations, undermine Xinjiang's prosperity and stability, and curb China's development", this is "absolutely impossible" and Beijing urges the US to "immediately correct its mistakes, prevent the aforementioned Xinjiang-related bill from becoming law, and stop using the Xinjiang-related issue to interfere in China's internal affairs."

The statement ends ominously, saying that "China will respond further according to the development of the situation."

In other words, even more words, and no actions, suggesting that at this point, Xi may have capitulated and is scared of actually doing something instead of just speaking.