In an extremely rare occurrence, the U.S. government will not try to squander every single nickel given to it by its taxpayers. As Sputnik News reports, Washington has pulled the funding on a deal that (through the foreign military financing fund) would subsidize roughly $429 million of a $699 million deal to send up to eight F-16s to Pakistan.
Iran has warned that it may close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a third of all oil traded by sea passes, if the United States keeps ‘threatening’ Tehran. On Wednesday, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said that Tehran may close the Strait of Hormuz to the United States and its allies, if the US continued “threatening” passages through the strategic choke point. The remarks by the acting commander of the Guard also follow those of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who criticized U.S.
Speaking through its mouthpiece Global Times, China has published its first reaction to "unpredictable" Trump's position as presumptive Republican nominee and their expectations of a Trump vs Clinton fight for The White House...
In a surprising development, the U.S. monthly international trade deficit decreased substantially in March 2016 from $47.0 billion in February (revised) to $40.4 billion in March, below the $41.2 billion expected, as exports declined by a modest $1.5 billion, a 0.9% drop to $176.62BN from $178.16BN in Feb. At the same time imports outright plunged by $8.1 billion, down 3.6% in March to $217.06BN from $225.13BN in Feb. Curiously this happened just as Canada announced a trade deficit of C$3.4 billion, the widest on record.
Despite a very modest beat of expectations US worker productivity fell for the 2nd quarter in a row (down 1.0% vs 1.3% QoQ), the two-quarter-average output per hour isdown 1.4% - the worst slump since 1993. Unit labor costs rose by a better than expected 4.1% (helped by a downwardly revised 2.7% rise in Q4), the highest since Q4 2014.
America’s productivity slump is the biggest in nearly a quarter century...