After terse public exchanges this week, each proclaiming the other is not working hard enough on 'solving' the Kim Jong Un 'situation', Chinese state media said on Saturday, reporting the results of high level talks in Washington this week, that China and the United States agreed that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula should be "complete, verifiable and irreversible."
Trump's trade tsar, Robert Lighthizer, aka the US Trade Representative speaking before Congress on Wednesday, fired a warning shot at both Beijing and the World Trade Organization, warning that any decision to label China a “market economy” would have “cataclysmic” consequences for the body which has governed over international trade for decades.
Last February we described some of the "horror stories" of corporate leverage that emerged as a result of China's unprecedented offshore M&A spree that emerged in 2015 and raged through most of 2016: after all, with over $100 billion in foreign acquisitions, the bulk of the funding would inevitably come from debt. These were some of the examples we highlighted:
US equity futures were marginally in the red, while Asian markets rose and European stocks dropped. WTI oil rose 0.6% to $42.79 as some suggest the time to go long has arrived; oil tumbled 2.3% in the previous session. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1 percent.
Here are the main market developments while you were sleeping.
Following President Trump's somewhat ominous 'thanks for nothing in North Korea' tweet last night, somewhat ominously, last night...
While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2017
Perhaps suggesting: first that his 'good friend' Xi was not much help after all; and second, he will act unilaterally.