Author Archives: Kevin

Trade talks lift stocks, sterling rises on May bets

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A gauge of global stock markets rallied along with U.S. Treasury yields on Wednesday as optimism abounded for a trade thaw between the U.S. and China while sterling bounced on bets that UK Prime Minister Theresa May would keep her job.

U.S. Treasury yields advanced in tandem with Wall Street’s gains after U.S. President Donald Trump said trade talks with China were progressing with discussions under way by telephone and more meetings likely among officials of both countries.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Trump also said he would intervene in the Justice Department’s case against a top executive at China’s Huawei Technologies if it served national security interests or helped to close a trade deal.

China made its first major U.S. soybean purchases in more than six months on Wednesday, two U.S. traders said, and its first since Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping struck a trade war truce in early December.

But after a spate of dizzying volatility in the past few days, there was some wariness about whether gains would hold.

“You had the tax stimulus was very big this year and next year there is still some stimulus to come,” said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta, Georgia.

“Then the headwind is tariffs … next year, depending on which scenario that plays out, we either have continued stimulus or it overwhelms that stimulus.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 265.64 points, or 1.09 percent, to 24,635.88, the S&P 500 gained 26.66 points, or 1.01 percent, to 2,663.44 and the Nasdaq Composite added 98.96 points, or 1.41 percent, to 7,130.79.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1.69 percent to give the index its best two-day performance in two-and-1/2 years and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 1.39 percent.

The British pound sterling jumped off 20-month lows as Prime Minister May vowed to fight a challenge to her leadership, saying a change could jeopardize Britain’s divorce from the European Union.

May has secured indications of support from nearly 200 of her lawmakers, which would be enough to ensure she wins a no confidence vote on Wednesday, based on statements made to the media and on social media.

The currency had tumbled on concerns about the vote of no confidence in the prime minister but traders bet she would survive after a number of colleagues backed her, isolating rivals who want a clean, sudden break from the EU.

Sterling was last trading at $1.2645, up 1.29 percent on the day.

The dollar index fell 0.37 percent, with the euro up 0.48 percent to $1.1368.

Investors were also digesting U.S. consumer price data that showed unchanged headline inflation, causing U.S. Treasuries to initially pare gains.

Benchmark 10-year notes fell 8/32 in price to yield 2.9078 percent, from 2.881 percent late on Tuesday.

While markets still expect the Fed to tighten at its policy meeting next week, Trump said in a Reuters interview on Tuesday that the central bank would be “foolish” to do so.

U.S. crude rose 1.24 percent to $52.29 per barrel as oil was supported by a drop in U.S. crude inventories, a cut in Libyan exports and an OPEC-led deal to trim output.

(Additional reporting by Sinéad Carew; Editing by Frances Kerry and Phil Berlowitz)

TransCanada asks Montana court to allow preliminary work on Keystone XL

VANCOUVER (Reuters) – TransCanada Corp has asked a Montana court to allow it to resume pre-construction activities on its Keystone XL oil pipeline after a U.S. judge blocked construction on the $8 billion project earlier this month.

The Calgary, Alberta-based company has temporarily halted all pre-construction work in the United States on the pipeline project as a result of the ruling, TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said on Tuesday.

He added that the company does not expect to start full construction on the 1,180 mile (1,900 km) pipeline until “at least the second half of the first quarter of 2019,” but declined to provide further details on timing.

“It is too soon to say what the injunction will mean to the timeline and cost of the Keystone XL pipeline but we remain confident the project will be built,” Cunha said.

A U.S. judge in Montana issued an injunction on Nov. 8 blocking construction of the heavy crude pipeline from Canada to the United States, drawing praise from environmental groups and a rebuke from President Donald Trump.

TransCanada has filed an amendment with the Montana District Court to narrow the scope of the injunction to allow it to continue pre-construction work like meetings with stakeholders, the movement of pipe and equipment, and early right-of-way work.

Canada is the No.1 source of oil imported to the United States, but congested pipelines in Alberta, where heavy bitumen is extracted from the oil sands, have forced shippers to use costlier rail and trucks.

Shares of TransCanada closed up 0.72 percent at C$53.50 on Tuesday in Toronto.

(Reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Former Facebook worker says firm not doing enough to deal with racial discrimination

(Reuters) – A former Facebook Inc <FB.O> employee who worked closely with racial minority groups said in a blog post https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-s-luckie/facebook-is-failing-its-black-employees-and-its-black-users/1931075116975013 on Tuesday that he left this month over frustration with the social network’s “systematic disenfranchisement of underrepresented voices” and other diversity issues.

“Black people are one of the most engaged demographics on Facebook, but their experiences are sometimes far from positive,” wrote Mark Luckie, former Strategic Partner Manager for Global Influencers at Facebook.

In an email response to Reuters, a Facebook spokesman said the company has been working to increase employee diversity.

“We want to fully support all employees when there are issues reported and when there may be micro-behaviors that add up. We are going to keep doing all we can to be a truly inclusive company,” the spokesman said.

In a detailed Facebook post, Luckie said he saw Facebook moderators remove potentially offensive posts by black users, while the same posts by white people were left up despite user complaints.

He also said he experienced discrimination in the office, as coworkers sometimes clutched their wallets when he walked by, a reactionary behavior he attributed to the color of his skin.

Racial discrimination at the company “is real,” Luckie said.

He added black employees who turn to the company’s HR for resolutions are made to believe such “disheartening patterns are a figment of our imagination.”

Shares of Facebook have had a rocky year, under pressure from revelations about privacy and operational issues as well as concerns over slowing revenue growth.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Dow, S&P 500 end up after White House adviser’s trade comments

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 and Dow edged higher on Tuesday after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said a meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart on Saturday was an opportunity to “turn the page” on a trade war.

Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> rose 108.49 points, or 0.44 percent, to 24,748.73, the S&P 500 <.SPX> gained 8.67 points, or 0.32 percent, to 2,682.12 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 0.85 points, or 0.01 percent, to 7,082.70.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Fed official frets over risks to Apple Pay, other mobile payments

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mobile payment services such as Apple Pay could run into reimbursement problems in some instances, and fintech firms in general must be more sensitive to risks, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said on Tuesday.

Unlike when a credit card is defrauded and a customer is refunded, “if there is a problem with Apple Pay it is not clear under some arrangements what’s going to happen there,” said the U.S. central banker.

“With all these innovations, consumers have no idea what risks they are exposed to,” Bostic said, noting his partner regularly uses the smartphone-based Apple Pay. “But I’m not doing it,” he added, to some laughter, on a payments and technology panel at a Clearing House conference in New York.

The Fed is taking a lead reviewing the U.S. payments system for speed, security and durability, and itself runs payments for the government across the United States.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Exclusive: China envoy warns of dire consequences if U.S. hardliners hold sway

By David Brunnstrom, David Lawder and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China is going to this week’s G-20 summit hoping for a deal to ease a damaging trade war with the United States, Beijing’s ambassador to Washington said on Tuesday while warning of dire consequences if U.S. hardliners try to separate the world’s two largest economies.

Speaking to Reuters before heading to join Chinese President Xi Jinping’s delegation at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Cui Tiankai said China and the United States had a shared responsibility to cooperate in the interests of the global economy.

Asked whether he though hardliners in the White House were seeking to separate the closely linked U.S. and Chinese economies, Cui said he did not think it was possible or helpful to do so, adding “I don’t know if people really realize the possible consequences – the impact, the negative impact – if there is such a decoupling.”

“The lessons of history are still there. In the last century, we had two world wars, And in between them, the Great Depression. I don’t think anybody should really try to have a repetition of history. These things should never happen again, so people have to act in a responsible way.”

Asked whether he thought the current tensions, which have seen the two sides impose hundreds of billions of dollars of tit-for-tat tariffs on each other, could degenerate into all-out conflict, Cui called the outcome “unimaginable” and that the two countries should do everything to prevent it.

Cui said China did not want to have a trade war and sought a negotiated solution to the current impasse stemming from President Donald Trump’s demands for far-reaching Chinese concessions to correct a massive trade imbalance.

“But the key to this solution is a balanced approach to concerns of both sides,” Cui said. “We cannot accept that one side would put forward a number of demands and the other side just has to satisfy all these things.”

He said the two leaders had “a very good working relationship and personal friendship” formed in three previous face-to-face meetings, including two formal summits, and this had been shown by a long phone conversation in early November.

White House insiders say there remain substantial differences within the Trump administration over how far to push China.

This division groups on one side anti-China hardliner and trade adviser Peter Navarro, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and those who favor a complete reevaluation of the relationship. On the other side are pragmatists led by White House chief economist Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, concerned about the harm deepening friction could do to the U.S. economy and markets.

Kudlow said on Tuesday that Trump is open to a trade deal with China but is prepared to hike tariffs on Chinese imports if there is no breakthrough on longstanding trade irritants during a planned dinner on Saturday in Buenos Aires with Xi.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalncik and David Lawder; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Trump warns U.S. may cut off GM subsidies after job cuts

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said the White House was looking at cutting subsidies for General Motors Co <GM.N> after the largest U.S. automaker said it would halt production at five plants in North America and layoff thousands of workers.

“The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including … for electric cars,” Trump said on Twitter.

GM electric vehicles are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit under federal law, but it is not clear how the administration could restrict those credits or if he had other subsidies in mind. GM shares fell on Trump’s tweets and were recently down 2.4 percent.

GM declined to immediately comment.

Trump criticized GM for not closing facilities in Mexico or China on Twitter.

White House spokesman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Tuesday that the president is looking into options.

“The president wants to see American companies build cars here in America not build them overseas and he is hopeful that GM will continue to do that here,” she said.

The company announced Monday it will halt production at one Canadian plant and four U.S. factories, including the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant that builds the plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt. GM is ending production of six vehicles, including the Volt, as it cuts more than 6,500 factory jobs.

GM confirmed on Tuesday that 2,250 salaried workers had applied for buyouts. The company said Monday it plans to cut about 8,000 of its 54,000 salaried workers in North America. The company plans to layoff thousands of salaried workers in January.

Trump told GM on Monday it “better” find a new product for Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio that will halt production in March. GM has said sagging demand for small cars largely prompted the cuts.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Lisa Shumaker)

Trump selects Kavanaugh for U.S. Supreme Court pick

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Monday announced Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, picking a conservative federal appeals court judge who survived a previous tough Senate confirmation battle and helped investigate Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

In picking the 53-year-old Kavanaugh, Trump aimed to entrench conservative control of the court for years to come with his second lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest judicial body in his first 18 months as president.

Kavanaugh now faces what appears to be another fierce fight for confirmation in the Senate, where Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a slim majority. If confirmed, Kavanaugh would replace long-serving conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement on June 27 at age 81.

“Throughout legal circles he’s considered a judge’s judge, a true thought leader among his peers,” Trump, who named conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch to the court last year, told an applauding audience in the White House East Room.

“He’s a brilliant jurist with a clear and effective writing style, universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time. And just like Justice Gorsuch, he excelled as a legal clerk for Justice Kennedy,” Trump added, saying his nominee “deserves a swift confirmation and robust bipartisan support.”

Kavanaugh has amassed a solidly conservative judicial record since 2006 on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the same court where three current justices including Chief Justice John Roberts previously served. Some conservative activists have questioned whether he would rule sufficiently aggressively as a justice.

Kavanaugh potentially could serve on the high court for decades. Trump’s other leading candidates for the post were fellow federal appellate judges Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge and Amy Coney Barrett.

“My judicial philosophy is straightforward: a judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history, and tradition and precedent,” Kavanaugh said during the ceremony in which he underscored his ties to his family and his Roman Catholic faith.

Kavanaugh served as a senior White House official under Republican former President George W. Bush before Bush picked nominated him to the appeals court in 2003. But some Democrats accused him of excessive partisanship and it took three years before the Senate eventually voted to confirm him.

Kavanaugh worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office. Kavanaugh in 2009 changed his tune on the Starr probe, arguing that presidents should be free from civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

Trump defeated Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election and has disparaged both Clintons.

Democrats in the past also have pointed to Kavanaugh’s work for Bush during the recount fight in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, a controversy that was resolved only after the conservative-majority Supreme Court sided with Bush over Democratic candidate Al Gore, settling the election outcome.

Kavanaugh once served as a Supreme Court clerk under Kennedy.

The appointment will not change the ideological breakdown of a court that already has a 5-4 conservative majority, but nevertheless could move the court to the right. Kennedy sometimes joined the liberal justices on key rulings on divisive social issues like abortion and gay rights, a practice his replacement may not duplicate.

Kennedy, 81, announced on June 27 plans to retire after three decades on the court, effective on July 31.

Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, though with ailing Senator John McCain battling cancer in his home state of Arizona they currently can muster only 50 votes. Without Republican defections, however, Senate rules leave Democrats with scant options to block confirmation of Trump’s nominee.

‘SUPERB CHOICE’

“President Trump has made a superb choice. Judge Brett Kavanaugh is an impressive nominee who is extremely well qualified to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who earlier in the day accused the “far left” of “scare tactics” to try to thwart the nomination.

A group of Democratic senators from Republican-leaning states – lawmakers who could be pivotal in the confirmation fight – declined Trump’s invitation to attend the White House announcement.

Trump last year appointed Gorsuch, who has already become one of the most conservative justices, after Senate Republicans in 2016 refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. As a result, Democrats have accused Republicans of stealing a Supreme Court seat. Gorsuch restored the court’s conservative majority.

Democrats are certain to press Trump’s latest nominee on the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, a decision some conservatives – particularly conservative Christians – have long wanted to overturn.

Trump has previously said he wanted “pro-life” justices opposed to abortion rights. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer earlier on Monday said Trump’s nominee should be obligated to make his or her views clear on matters like the Roe ruling.

The new justice can be expected to cast crucial votes on other matters of national importance including gay rights, gun control, the death penalty and voting rights. The court could also be called upon to render judgment on issues of personal significance to Trump and his administration including matters arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia-related investigation and several civil lawsuits pending against Trump.

The timing of the nomination means that Kennedy’s replacement could be confirmed before the start of the Supreme Court’s next term on the first Monday in October.

Parents sue North Korea, saying Warmbier ‘tortured and murdered’

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The parents of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier sued North Korea on Thursday over their son’s death in 2017 following his release from captivity there, according to the lawsuit which said their son was “brutally tortured and murdered.”

The wrongful-death suit was filed in U.S. District Court at a diplomatically delicate time, weeks ahead of an expected meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump. Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in also are set to meet on Friday.

“Otto was taken hostage, kept as a prisoner for political purposes, used as a pawn and singled out for exceptionally harsh and brutal treatment by Kim Jong Un,” his father Fred Warmbier said in a statement.

Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, died at age 22 after being imprisoned in North Korea from January 2016 until he was returned to the United States in June 2017 in a coma. He died a few days later, and an Ohio coroner said the cause was lack of oxygen and blood to the brain.

North Korea blamed botulism and ingestion of a sleeping pill and dismissed torture claims. The coroner who examined Warmbier said he found no sign of botulism.

The suit by Fred Warmbier and his wife, Cindy, seeks unspecified damages for personal injury.

“North Korea, which is a rogue regime, took Otto hostage for its own wrongful ends and brutally tortured and murdered him,” the lawsuit said.

A representative of the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York was not immediately available to comment.

Richard Cullen, a family attorney, declined to comment about the suit beyond Fred Warmbier’s statement.

Otto Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was traveling in North Korea with a tour group, and was arrested at Pyongyang airport as he was about to leave. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korea state media said.

The filing says Warmbier falsely confessed to invented charges that he was acting as a spy connected to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary of homeland security, said North Korea had immunity from lawsuits as a sovereign nation but still might be sued because of its U.S. designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“But it’s almost impossible to collect any judgment that might be awarded. So it’s doubtful NK will feel sufficiently threatened by the lawsuit to upset the talks. And after all, he (Kim) can settle claims against NK in any US-NK agreement,” Baker said by email.

Kim is set on Friday to cross the heavily militarized border for the first summit with South Korea, setting the stage for the North Korean leader to meet with Trump in late May or early June.

Just months ago, Trump and Kim traded threats and insults during North Korea’s rapid advances in pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting the United States.

(Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)

NFL extends Amazon streaming deal for Thursday Night Football

(Reuters) – The National Football League said on Thursday it has extended its deal with Amazon.com Inc to stream Thursday night games during the 2018 and 2019 seasons on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“The Thursday Night Football games will be made available to the over 100 million Amazon Prime members worldwide in over 200 countries and territories,” the NFL said in a statement.

Amazon and NFL had previously partnered for the broadcast of Thursday Night Football for the 2017 season.

Nearly two million people had logged onto Amazon.com last year for the online retailer’s first livestream of Thursday Night Football.

(Reporting by Anirban Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)