Day: April 6, 2024

5 апреля 1919 года разведка молодой Советской республики доложила высшему руководству, что Финляндия на подступах к Петрограду концентрирует войска. Цель: отторжение части российской территории для создания государства Ингерманландия. Со столицей в Питере.

Вода начала подтапливать Старый город без захода в другие районы, сообщается в официальном Telegram-канале администрации Орска Оренбургской области.

Польша и ее союзники подняли в воздух свою авиацию. Это было сделано из-за “интенсивных” действий России на Украине, утверждает Оперативное командование польских Вооруженных сил.

По российским законам работники, находящиеся в официальных трудовых отношениях и уплачивающие налоги, могут претендовать на возврат средств за приобретение недвижимости.

Улыбки на лицах курсантов сияют в лучах восходящего солнца ярче погон. Город стоит на побережье Азовского моря, и где, как не здесь, готовить настоящих моряков? С 1960 года мариупольская мореходка – единственное учебное заведение на юго-востоке Украинской ССР, где выпускали морских специалистов – штурманов и механиков. Она была филиалом Одесской морской академии, а сейчас это Азовский морской институт, филиал Севастопольского государственного университета.

washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is on a five-day visit to China, where she expressed concern to Chinese officials Friday about state subsidies that fuel manufacturing overcapacity in industries such as electric vehicles, solar panels and semiconductors.

U.S. officials and economists have warned that China’s overcapacity — when its production ability significantly exceeds what is needed in markets — will further drive down prices and cost jobs, especially if China seeks to offload excess production through exports instead of domestic consumption.

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping Tuesday, said China’s “unfair” trade policies and “non-market” practices harm the interests of American workers and families.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave reporters at a regular briefing Wednesday a rundown of the conversation the two leaders had on trade, according to Beijing. He said “the U.S. has adopted a string of measures to suppress China’s trade and technology development and is adding more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists. This is not ‘de-risking,’ but creating risks.”

So, when is an industry at overcapacity?

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that for capital-intensive industries such as steel, oil refining and semiconductors, when capacity utilization is below 75% for an extended period of time, most observers would label that excess capacity.

Hufbauer told VOA that China’s massive government-stimulated and bank-financed investment has resulted in almost all the country’s capital-intensive manufacturing industries having overcapacity.

“If China does pursue a massive export ‘solution,’ that will hurt manufacturing firms in Japan, the E.U., Korea and other industrial countries. But low prices will be welcome in many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia,” he said.

A report last week by the New York-based Rhodium Group, which researches the Chinese market, shows that the utilization rate of China’s silicon wafer capacity dropped from 78% in 2019 to 57% in 2022. In 2022, China’s lithium-ion battery production reached 1.9 times the domestic installation volume, showing that the problem of overcapacity in clean energy fields is emerging.

China’s exports of electric vehicles, solar cells and lithium batteries have increased even more significantly. Data shows that in 2023, China’s electric vehicle export volume was seven times that of 2019, while its solar cell export volume in 2023 was five times that of 2018, an increase of 40% from 2022.

The report notes that while temporary overcapacity may be harmless and a normal part of the market cycle, it becomes a problem when it is perpetuated by government intervention.

The Rhodium Group’s report says that China’s National People’s Congress in March focused on industrial policies that benefit high-tech industries, while there is little financial support for household consumption.

“This policy mix will compound the growing imbalance between domestic supply and demand,” says the report. “Systemic bias toward supporting producers rather than households or consumers allows Chinese firms to ramp up production despite low margins, without the fear of bankruptcy that constrains firms in market economies.”

Overcapacity a decade ago

China’s structural overcapacity problem is not a new phenomenon. Rhodium Group’s report says the last time China had large overcapacity issues was from 2014 to 2016, a few years after the government launched a massive stimulus package in response to the global financial crisis that began in 2008. The stimulus package centered on infrastructure and real estate construction, triggering major capacity build-up in a range of associated industries.

In 2014, as the demand for real estate and infrastructure construction weakened, there was obvious overcapacity in heavy industrial products such as steel and aluminum.

“Ultimately, China’s excess capacity is due to state interference in the market,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Genuinely private participants can’t sustain excess capacity for long because it causes losses. But state support for production of some goods and services, called “strategic” or something like that, enables companies to survive despite these losses.”

Scissors said China’s overcapacity in the new energy sectors of electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries concerns the Biden administration as it wants to expand those sectors in the U.S.

“The U.S. has raised concerns about Chinese overproduction for years,” he told VOA. “What’s changed is there is now emerging American industrial policy clashing with long-standing and widespread Chinese industrial policy.”

The Rhodium Group’s report says China’s surge in exports of new energy products over the past few years could be devastating for market-constrained producers in advanced economies such as the U.S.

Beijing’s policy planning will exacerbate the growing imbalance between domestic supply and demand, it reads, putting China on the road to trade confrontation with the rest of the world.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

Last month Donald Trump’s handlers pulled him from the campaign trail, while leaking that his campaign couldn’t afford to keep doing rallies. It was obvious at the time that they were really just trying to get him out of the public eye, because his rally speeches had become so senile that they were generating headlines about his cognitive collapse.

Of course pulling your senile candidate from the campaign trail is a good way to generate headlines about the fact that you’re hiding him. It took the media a few weeks to finally catch on, but they eventually started talking about his disappearing act. So Trump’s babysitters put him out there for a pair of events on the same day earlier this week.

But Trump once again came off as senile, at one point vowing to deport crime victims and such. So now Trump has once again disappeared from the campaign trail. He’s nowhere.

How long will Trump remain in hiding this time? How long before the media calls it out this time? And will anyone in the media finally acknowledge that Trump’s disappearing act is because he’s too senile to be out there?

The post Looks like senile Donald Trump is back in hiding appeared first on Palmer Report.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Here’s the thing about Bidenomics. President Biden has rebuilt the economy in such obvious and overwhelming fashion, even those who don’t want it to be true can’t pretend anymore. In other words, even Fox News now has to admit how strong the economy is, because its audience already knows it’s true.

To that end, President Biden and his 2024 campaign are now sticking it to Fox News by assembling all the times that Biden’s booming economy has forced Fox to admit the truth:

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The post President Biden sticks it to Fox News appeared first on Palmer Report.

washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on China Friday to address its industrial overcapacity, reform its trade practices and create a “healthy economic relationship” with the United States.

“The United States seeks a healthy economic relationship with China that benefits both sides,” Yellen said in remarks in the industrial southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “But a healthy relationship must provide a level playing field for firms and workers in both countries.”

Yellen also met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and other high-level central bank officials Friday. During the meeting, Yellen told Chinese officials that their industrial overcapacity, particularly in green energy sectors, threaten American production of electric vehicles and solar panel parts.

China has supported its solar panel and EV makers through subsidies, building production capacity far beyond the domestic market’s demand and exporting its products globally. Although this production has massively cheapened prices for these green products — crucial in efforts to fight climate change — American and European governments worry that Chinese products will flood the market and put their own domestic production at risk.

During a meeting Friday with Guangdong province Governor Wang Weizhong, Yellen said the U.S. and China must communicate regarding areas of disagreement, including green industrial policy.

“This includes the issue of China’s industrial overcapacity, which the United States and other countries are concerned can cause global spillovers,” she said.

China has sought to downplay these concerns, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noting earlier this week that China’s green production is a positive in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Wang said U.S. reluctance to export technology to China, a policy related to U.S. fears of industrial overcapacity, meddles with global supply and demand.

“As for who is doing nonmarket manipulation, the fact is for everyone to see,” he said. “The U.S. has not stopped taking measures to contain China’s trade and technology. This is not ‘de-risking,’ rather, it is creating risks.”

Beyond addressing overcapacity, Yellen also expressed concerns about Chinese trade practices.

Yellen said China has pursued “unfair economic practices, including imposing barriers to access for foreign firms and taking coercive actions against American companies.”

She urged Chinese officials to reform these policies.

“I strongly believe that this doesn’t only hurt these American firms,” Yellen said in a speech at an event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Guangzhou. “Ending these unfair practices would benefit China by improving the business climate here.”

Yellen’s visit to China, her second, marks the first visit by a senior U.S. official to China since November meetings between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Both He and Yellen said the U.S. and China need to, in He’s words, “properly respond to key concerns of the other side” to form a more cooperative economic relationship.

Yellen said, “It also remains crucial for the two largest economies to seek progress on global challenges like climate change and debt distress in emerging markets in developing countries and to closely communicate on issues of concern such as overcapacity and national security-related economic actions.”

She added that U.S. efforts to push Chinese policies are geared toward reducing global risk.

“This is not anti-China policy,” she said. “It’s an effort for us to mitigate the risks from the inevitable global economic dislocation that will result if China doesn’t adjust its policies.”