Britain to submit 'Brexit bill' proposal before December EU meeting - reuters

Britain to submit 'Brexit bill' proposal before December EU meeting

William James

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will submit proposals on how to settle its divorce bill with the European Union before an EU summit next month and is expected to negotiate hard, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday.

The EU told Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock the Brexit talks, repeating its early December deadline for her to flesh out Britain’s opening offer on the financial settlement.

“We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the Council,” Hammond told the BBC, referring to the Dec. 14-15 meeting of EU heads of government.

He was speaking three days before he sets out Britain’s budget plan, where he will have to find room within tight fiscal constraints to help May convince voters that the Conservative government is tackling Britain’s domestic problems at the same time as negotiating its exit from the EU.

Last week, May met fellow EU leaders to try to break a deadlock over how much Britain will pay on leaving the bloc, an issue threatening to derail British hopes for a negotiated exit and an agreement on a new trading relationship by March 2019.

May has signalled she would increase an initial offer that is estimated at some 20 billion euros ($24 billion) - about a third of what Brussels wants.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond arrives at the BBC in London, November 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner

But Hammond, who has been criticised by supporters of Brexit for being too conciliatory towards Brussels and lobbying for a “softer” exit, said Britain would take a tough stance about how much it owes.

“There are some things that we’re very clear we do owe under the treaties, other things where we dispute the amounts or even whether something should be included,” Hammond said in a separate interview with ITV television.

“Of course we’ll negotiate hard to get the very best deal for the British taxpayer.”

Asked about the prospect of Brexit without a trade deal, Hammond said he was “increasingly confident” that an agreement could be reached because it was in the interests of both parties.

Hammond says hopeful main elements of EU-UK trade deal agreed before Brexit

Hammond says hopeful main elements of EU-UK trade deal agreed before Brexit

Despite scepticism in Brussels over the tight timetable, May and her chief negotiator David Davis have been clear they want to have a full post-Brexit free trade deal sealed by the time Britain leaves.

However, Hammond set out a softer stance on the timing of the trade deal.

“We hope that it will be agreed, certainly in principle, that the big elements of it will be agreed before March 2019 so that everybody knows where we are going,” he told ITV.

Reporting by William James; Editing by Mark Heinrich

There's a massive moral vacuum in the country right now - CNN Politics

There's a massive moral vacuum in the country right now

Chris Cillizza

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 1322 GMT (2122 HKT) November 17, 2017

white house trump sexual harassment accusers response_

White House reiterates Trump's claims that his sexual harassment accusers lied 01:26

(CNN)When an "Access Hollywood" tape featuring Donald Trump making comments about how money and power allowed him to grab women in their private parts without penalty -- and he still won the White House -- we knew there would be political and cultural repercussions.

When more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior during the campaign -- and he still won -- we knew the impacts would be long lasting and meaningful.

When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stood in the briefing room and made clear that the formal administration position was that all of these accusers of Trump were liars -- and no one in his base batted an eye -- we knew that something significant had changed.

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And now -- amid sexual harassment allegations directed at Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken, Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and former President George H.W. Bush; accusations by female members of Congress of other inappropriate behavior by unnamed male colleagues; Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark Halperin, Kevin Spacey, and on and on -- we see the fruit of the seeds planted during the campaign: a president of the United States either unwilling or unable to seize the mantle of moral leadership when the country is crying out for it.

That is not to say the blame for men behaving badly lies at the feet of Donald Trump. It is to say he is uniquely ill-equipped to step into the moral vacuum caused by these behaviors and lead.

Trump doesn't answer questions on Moore 03:38

Trump himself, for example, has offered nothing beyond a written statement regarding Moore, who now stands accused of seeking sexually inappropriate relationships with at least eight girls and women who were from age 14 to their early 20s when he was a 30-something assistant district attorney in Alabama.

Asked about the situation on Thursday afternoon, Sanders said this: "The people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be."

Which, translated, means this: President Trump is not going to wade into this mess. He's not going to go as far as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan and urge Moore to withdraw from the race. He's going to throw up his hands -- who can say who is telling the truth! -- and let Alabama figure it out.

Which, if you think about it, is roughly the same approach Trump took to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville over the summer. There were bad people "on both sides," Trump insisted. And, he argued, who was he to litigate who had the right of it? Trump seemed entirely unbothered by the idea of equating neo-Nazis and white supremacists with those gathered to protest against them. In fact, he spent the weeks and months following Charlottesville insisting that time had proven him right. That the violent left was just as responsible for what happened in Charlottesville as the violent right. (There was not then and is not now any actual evidence that backs up Trump's belief.)

This sort of moral relativism -- or, better put, this absence of moral authority -- is, without question, the most profound difference that Trump has ushered into the White House. The 43 men who held the job prior to Trump had a very strong sense that the position, at root, was about leading the country to higher moral ground. That, for all the policy positions and political calculations, the beating heart of being president was about moral authority -- in our lives, in our country and around the world. That no matter what their political opponents said about them, no one could say the president didn't believe in always doing what he believed was the right -- as opposed to the easy -- thing.

Many fell short in that effort. Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern -- and lies about their relationship -- was a failure. So, too, was George W. Bush's insistence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and, therefore, represented a clear and present danger to America. Richard Nixon came the closest to moral abdication with his treatment of the presidency as a perch by which primarily to settle political scores.

But, Trump seems to me to represent something different even than Nixon. Whereas Nixon ignored the inherent moral leadership asked of a president, Trump seems entirely unaware that it exists.

Trump: Does the 'alt-left' have any guilt for Charlottesville? 01:07

Trump's modus operandi in every situation is to take credit if the story is good and to push off blame when the story is bad. His moral compass seems primarily driven by what his political enemies -- as he conceives them to be -- say. If Democrats are pushing for him to answer for allegations by women that he sexually harassed them, the right answer is to deny everything and write it off to politics as usual. If he is being criticized for a slow and insufficient response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, he digs in and insists that he bears no responsibility to say who is right and who is wrong -- and anyone who suggests he does just doesn't like him.

And then there is this: If a series of politicians -- Republicans and Democrats -- and celebrities are caught up in inappropriate behavior with women, Trump is silent not only because he has no sense of what a president needs to do, morally, in these situations, but because he is concerned how saying anything would impact the still-extant allegations against him.

The events that have cascaded from the Harvey Weinstein revelations until today aren't as obvious a cataclysm as, say, a hurricane or a flood or a terrorist attack or someone with a gun murdering dozens of people. But this avalanche of allegations tears at our collective American soul and spirit in ways not dissimilar from those events. They make us question who we are, what we believe in and where we are headed as a country.

It is in these very moments when you need leaders to step into the void and, well, lead. To say, "I know this is not who we are. This is the worst of us, not the best of us. I know we can and will do better. And it starts now."

We do not have that person in the White House. Elections have consequences. And this is a very big one.

China's Quest For Clean Air Could Hit You in the Wallet - Bloomberg

China's Quest For Clean Air Could Hit You in the Wallet

Bloomberg News

November 20, 2017,

Smokestack corporate consolidation has pushed up metals prices

Impact passing through to consumer goods as cleanup gains pace

The great Chinese environmental cleanup, now in full swing, is shifting the corporate landscape in unexpected ways and even stoking inflationary pressure that may soon be felt in supply chains worldwide.

As President Xi Jinping’s government intensifies the fight against the country’s world-class pollution problem, companies are scrambling to adapt to tighter regulation while investing in cleaner energy. In industries from steel to textiles and consumer goods, the resulting shakeout has left the survivors with far more pricing power. That in turn is reinforcing the already-resurgent factory prices that contribute to global inflation.

These trends are reshaping the business environment, according to Cui Li, Hong Kong-based head of macro research at CCB International Holdings Ltd.

“The environment clean-up is and will be a key driver of the industrial consolidation," said Cui, who expects to see greater concentration in steel, paper-making and pharmaceuticals. “With costs rising from wages, land and pollution curbs, China’s manufacturers will have to invest and upgrade to survive. Those who survive will benefit.”

Take He Wenyong, manager of a mid-sized textile company that has supplied Walt Disney Co. and its license holders. Amid a forced switch to natural gas from coal in his industry, the company, Shenzhen Yabi Textiles Co., is benefiting from past investments and eating up the market share of smaller competitors that couldn’t foot the bill.

Speaking at Guangzhou’s massive trade fair earlier this month, He said his company is now able to raise prices by 8 percent. “Those small, messy factories took up a third of market share," said He, at a booth at the fair filled with merchandise such as beach towels inspired by the "Frozen" film franchise. "Now that they’re gone, everything is much better for us.”

Factory Wages

Bigger companies, like luggage-maker Samsonite International SA, report that cost pressures arising from environmental curbs in China affect all competitors. Scale, though, helps, according to Ramesh Tainwala, the company’s chief executive officer.

"Greater competition for skilled labor and the resultant rise in factory wages are also causing significant cost pressure," he said in an interview. "While we’ve seen a number of factories closing down, the closures generally involve smaller factories that lack the scale and resources to meet the more stringent environmental controls."

The shakeup began in heavy industries in 2016 as the government shuttered outdated or illegal steel mills, coal mines and aluminum smelters in a shock therapy strategy to reduce excessive capacity and curb pollution. Such measures powered a more-than 20 percent jump in global metal prices from the start of the year, and led to consolidation in the nation’s sprawling steel industry.

Amid the changes, even the nation’s top aluminum producer, China Hongqiao Group Ltd. has been considering whether to relocate shuttered plants to other countries, with Indonesia top of the list of possibilities, Bloomberg News reported last week. Hongqiao, also the world’s biggest smelter, has been forced this year to cut capacity as part of Xi’s drive to curb oversupply and reduce pollution.

Now downstream, consumer-facing manufacturers are feeling the pressure. On top of cutting the electricity supply of small and polluting workshops, China’s cabinet announced a ban on the import of waste materials such as plastic, textiles and unsorted waste paper in July, to battle "serious damage to the environment." Prices of plastic and paper surged, as making them from scratch -- by drilling oil and cutting down trees -- is much more expensive than recycling imported refuse materials.

What was seen as a bane of manufacturing is now emerging as an unexpected boon for the fittest that have survived. Investors are taking notice: Shares of China’s top three paper-product manufacturers -- Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd., Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Ltd. and Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings Ltd. -- have made stellar gains in the past year.

Read more on how the environmental crackdown is affecting the paper industry

Factories still left standing are passing on price increases to customers. The changed dynamic was evident at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, which is billed as the world’s largest trade gathering, bringing together more than 25,000 exhibitors and 191,000 buyers. This year, foreign buyers noted significantly higher prices, and suppliers less willing to bargain.

Suitcase manufacturer Anhui Technology Imports and Exports Co. has hiked the price of its colorful hard luggage by almost 10 percent after the type of plastic used to make hard-shell suitcases surged 80 percent in August and September, according to Ren Yuyang, a salesman of the company attending the fair.

"At first, customers couldn’t accept such a jump," Ren said, calling the increase "terrifying" due to the fact that luggage makers like his typically have a 3 percent to 5 percent margin. “But now they have to bear with it because every supplier lifts their prices.”

Argentinian buyer Roxana Fernandez, who works for activity-clothing retailer Montagne Outdoors which has branches across the South American nation, said that she and her colleagues were taken aback by price rises of 20 percent to 30 percent at this year’s fair.

“They all said it’s because of the environmental policy, and there’s nothing they can do,” she said. "For us, we have to re-evaluate how much of our supply comes from China."

The extent of such increases vary among sectors. Low-end makers of socks, shoes and garments at the fair said they’re not powerful enough to pass on the cost increases fully.

What’s clear is that China’s factory-gate inflation will eventually reach consumers around the world through global supply chains. The domestic producer price index leads price changes for export goods, with a lag of a few months. Producer prices rose 6.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2017 over the same period a year earlier.

In the long run, rising supply prices will likely accelerate global buyers’ shift away from China in some categories like apparel, while raising retailers’ buying costs in others such as toys where there’s no quality alternative outside of China, said Lim Lian Hoon, Hong Kong-based managing director of consultancy AlixPartners.

Big buyers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Disney also have sophisticated sourcing operations and have already diversified significantly to other countries for cost savings.

"The closures have only had a very limited impact on Samsonite since we generally work with much bigger, well established suppliers," Samsonite’s Tainwala said. "Besides, Samsonite has already been working over the last handful of years to increase its sourcing outside of China, including major expansion of our own manufacturing facilities in Europe and India."

Yabi Textiles’s He has also considered moving to other countries. Pakistan, with its low costs and geographic closeness to Europe, is attractive.

"There are only two ways for China’s labor-intensive sectors: going up or going out," said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong. "We are going to see fewer producers remain, with higher quality and their own brands."

— With assistance by Xiaoqing Pi, Rachel Chang, Emma Dai, and Martin Ritchie

The anti-regulatory environment that Trump promised just got a big boost - CNBC News

The anti-regulatory environment that Trump promised just got a big boost

President Donald Trump promised a less restrictive regulatory environment, particularly in banking.

Three recent developments — leadership changes at the Comptroller of the Currency Office and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as approved changes to the Dodd-Frank reforms — move that agenda forward.

The Dodd-Frank tweaks "might send a powerful political message to the Fed," according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Jeff Cox

CNBC.com

Morgan Stanley CEO: 'We've hit the peak of bank regulations'

9:14 PM ET Wed, 15 Nov 2017 | 02:34

President Donald Trump promised fewer regulations for business in general, and banks specifically — and events over the past week have pushed that intention closer to reality.

The president didn't have a major direct hand in any of the moves, but each nudges the business climate closer to the environment he envisioned while campaigning. Consider the following:

Richard Cordray announced he is leaving as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, opening up a change in leadership and management for an agency Trump loathes, with the exit of a director many thought Trump would one day fire;

Joseph Otting was confirmed as the new comptroller of the currency, the overseer of the big Wall Street banks, in a move seen as friendly to the financial industry.

A Senate panel has agreed to key modifications to the Dodd-Frank reforms, most specifically raising the asset threshold for more intense regulations and easing rules for smaller banks.

Those three moves come on top of the president's recent nomination of Jerome Powell to head the Federal Reserve. Also, the Fed's newest member, Trump appointee Randal Quarles, advocated in his first public remarks that the central bank take a top-to-bottom look at regulation, supervision and enforcement.

In all, it's been a definite lurch forward for one of the three prongs in Trump economic's plan of lower taxes, less regulation and more infrastructure spending.

"It's hard to know what the effects of many of these things will be," said Doug Landy, a financial services regulation attorney and partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York. However, "they're moving certainly in the direction they said they would."

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Pete Marovich | Getty Images

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

A new face at the CFPB

Trump has long criticized the CFPB for its aggressiveness in going after banks, so Cordray's departure represents a major opportunity. The president and congressional Republicans want to decentralize decision making, taking more of a commission approach rather than the top-down executive structure.

In the immediate future, Trump is said to be interested in putting budget director Mick Mulvaney at the helm, and charging him to put together a committee to run the bureau.

While Democrats and financial industry watchdogs bemoaned Cordray's departure and expressed worry over the future of consumer protection, industry advocates cheered the potential for a new direction.

"The Trump Administration and Congress should use this opportunity to improve the CFPB by adding a bipartisan board so key decisions are made in a bipartisan and transparent manner with more than just one person involved," Tim Pawlenty, head of the Financial Services Roundtable, said in a statement.

Rob Nichols, the American Bankers Association president and CEO, also endorsed a five-member commission, joining numerous other agencies in urging a regulatory balance of "consumer protection against access to credit."

Confirmed by the Senate along party lines Thursday, Joseph Otting is an interesting choice for the new Comptroller as he takes over for Keith Noreika, who was appointed interim head in May.

Otting comes to the job from OneWest Bank, where he worked with current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The bank has been criticized for its aggressiveness in foreclosures.

His primary task as Comptroller will be to work with banks on compliance with the Dodd-Frank reforms instituted following the financial crisis. Banks have long complained about the measures, particularly in regards to transparency and the requirements of annual stress tests.

Otting "will reflect the administration's desire to reduce burdens on banks and deregulate in a certain manner," Landy said. "They will be looking at where they feel the regulatory burden is in excess of the benefit it provides. How one views that depends on where one sits on the political landscape."

While Trump once had threatened a full repeal of Dodd-Frank, that now appears unlikely. Instead, Congress appears set to work with the new regulators, in order to find ways to tailor the omnibus legislation to maintain the banking industry's safety — all while not gumming up the economy's primary growth engine.

One big move down, many more to go

One of the biggest objections the banking industry has had regarding Dodd-Frank is the level at which banks are considered too big to fail — systemically important financial institutions (SIFI), in the legislation's parlance.

A Senate agreement meets suggestions that the level be moved from $50 billion in assets, a level that snares the top 35 banks, to $250 billion, which would cut that list to 10. The move then could reverberate to the Fed and cause it to change its stress tests, or Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, which measures the health of 34 institutions.

"If Congress raises the threshold it might send a powerful political message to the Fed about how non-globally systemically important banks should be treated," analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a note. "It could also could give the Fed political cover to further ease the CCAR for banks with less than $250 billion in assets."

An industry that became the focal point of the excesses that caused the financial crisis now finds itself in position for some relief.

In addition to outright Dodd-Frank changes, regulators are likely to change the way supervision and enforcement is carried out, representing an important change from the screw-tightening atmosphere that has prevailed since the crisis.

"Since the Great Depression, whenever you have a new line of laws coming out, after five to 10 years of people living them there always has been an adjustment," Landy said. "Think of it like a pendulum. There's always a center."

In fact, banks aren't really looking for an overhaul. CEOs of the largest institutions largely have said they've learned to live within the Dodd-Frank framework, but believe adjustments are needed, particularly to provisions like the Volcker Rule that prohibits banks from trading for their own benefit.

"They're comfortable with the basic set of provisions that have been provided," Landy said. "They do want less burden, less conflicting requirements, more transparency and things [removed] that they don't think are achieving the goals they were set out to do."

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern 'regrets Trump story' - BBC News

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern 'regrets Trump story'

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern says she regrets sharing an anecdote about her recent meeting with US President Donald Trump with her friends.

Ms Ardern met Mr Trump at the Apec summit in Vietnam earlier this month.

On Sunday, a local comedian told journalists Ms Ardern said Mr Trump had mistaken her for the wife of Canada's leader, Justin Trudeau.

Ms Ardern denied this, and said she had merely spoken about an outside observer's impression of the meeting.

Tom Sainsbury, a friend of Ms Ardern's, had told local radio: "I don't know if I should be saying this, but she said that Donald Trump was confused for a good amount of time thinking that she was Justin Trudeau's wife."

The interview sparked headlines in New Zealand that Mr Trump had not known who Ms Ardern was.

Ms Ardern later denied this. In a New Zealand TV (NZTV) interview on Monday, she said: "Someone observed that they thought that it happened, but in all my interactions, certainly President Trump didn't seem to have confused me when I interacted with him. But someone else observed this."

She would not specify who observed the meeting, but admitted she had shared the incident with a number of friends afterwards.

Grilled by a NZTV host for several minutes, she said she had told the "full story" to her friends. She said she had given Mr Sainsbury "a shortened version" of events, but believed she had made clear it was an observer's impression of what happened.

"I said there was some confusion over who I was," she said, adding that she could see now how it could have been misinterpreted.

"Tom's a mate of mine. I shared a story with him, he shared it with someone else, I can see how that then spirals ... it is a trifling matter.

It was "a bit of a funny yarn, something that I don't want to cause a diplomatic incident over", she said, adding: "I think I should never have recounted the story."

Ms Ardern, who took office in October, has just returned from her first series of international forums as leader, including the Asean summit in the Philippines and Apec in Vietnam.

Supreme Court upholds Uhuru Kenyatta's victory - al Jazeera

Supreme Court upholds Uhuru Kenyatta's victory - 20/11/17

Kenya's Supreme Court has unanimously upheld President Uhuru Kenyatta's election victory in a rerun vote that was held in October.

Opposition candidate Raila Odinga had said the results of the first election were invalid and challenged the processes of the second vote - eventually pulling out of the second race.

Following Monday's ruling, opposition supporters are expected to hold rallies against the verdict and Kenyatta is expected to be sworn on November 28.

"All six judges sitting on this case said that the petitions filed to the court to cancel the results of the rerun of the presidential election had no merit," Al Jazeera's Fahmida Miller, reporting from the capital Nairobi, said.

"Odinga has not said exactly until now what he will do after the ruling is announced. So far, they have started an economic boycott to protest the results," she added.

Riots and violence

Days of violence and protests against Kenyatta have led to deaths in Nairobi.

The opposition claims that authorities have been using "armed militia and live bullets" to disperse supporters.

October's repeat poll, which was boycotted by Odinga and won by Kenyatta with 98 percent of the votes, was ordered by the Supreme Court after it annulled the results of an August election over irregularities.

Kenyatta called the case against the rerun of the presidential election a waste of time.

Odinga, in return, vowed to embark on a political campaign in Kenya to "restore democracy in the country", and called for a "resistance movement" to protest against the results.