China

One month after Trump's ominously tweeted in the aftermath of Otto Warmbier's death, that while he greatly appreciates the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, "it has not worked out", confirming that the post Mar-A-Lago honeymoon period was officially over, moments ago the president blasted out his latest two tweets Saturday tweets, #12 and 13, in which he said he was "very disappointed" in China.

As Foxconn promises to bring 10s of thousands of jobs to Wisconsin amid billions of dollars of investment in new plants, one wonders what is going on in China that makes this economic (aside from the $3 billion 'incentives')...

Perhaps this...

Statista's Isabel von Kessel writes that in 2016, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) in China registered 1.8 million labor disputes – an increase of almost 118 percent compared to the previous year.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Three-player games are easy to model - it’s always two against one. The art of geopolitics and examining hegemony powers in such situations is to be part of a duo that pressures the remaining player, or, at a minimum, keep the other two players separated.

This is basic balance-of-power politics as practiced since the rise of Napoleon (1799), with antecedents in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532).

Copper prices surged to the highest levels since May 2015 in the last few days, prompting the ubiquitous "must mean the economy is doing well" narrative from every hope-fuelled reflationist. There's just one problem, we’ve seen all this before too many times.

Last summer we declared that "China's favorite offshore money laundering hub is officially no longer accepting its money" after the city of Vancouver slapped a 15% tax on foreign real estate buyers.  The tax was intended to curb a massive real estate bubble which had resulted from an influx of Chinese money over the preceding years.  The move seemingly worked as it resulted in a staggering and immediate 96% drop in foreign buyers (see: Foreign Buying Plummets In Vancouver: Sales To Foreigners Crash 96%).