France is threatening a “strong European riposte” if the Trump administration follows through on a proposal to hit French cheese, Champagne, handbags and other products with tariffs of up to 100%.
The U.S. Trade Representative proposed the tariffs on $2.4 billion in goods Monday in retaliation for a French tax on global tech giants including Google, Amazon and Facebook.
“I’m not in love with those (tech) companies, but they’re our companies,” Trump said Tuesday ahead of a sure-to-be-tense meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in London.
The move is likely to increase trade tensions between the U.S. and Europe. Trump said the European Union should “shape up, otherwise things are going to get very tough.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the U.S. tariff threat is “simply unacceptable. It’s not the behavior we expect from the United States toward one of its main allies.”
Le Maire said the French tech tax is aimed at “establishing tax justice.” France wants digital companies to pay their fair share of taxes in countries where they make money instead of using tax havens, and is pushing for an international agreement on the issue.
“If (the world) wants solid tax revenue in the 21stcentury, we have to be able to tax the digital economy,” he said. “This French taxation is not directed at any country, or against any company.”
He also noted that France will reimburse the tax if the U.S. agrees to the international tax plan.
Le Maire said France talked this week with the European Commission about EU-wide retaliatory measures if Washington follows through with the tariffs next month.
EU Commission spokesman Daniel Rosario said the EU will seek “immediate discussions with the U.S. on how to solve this issue amicably.”
The U.S tariffs could double the price American consumers pay for French imports and would come on top of a 25% tax on French wine imposed last month over a separate dispute over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing.
French cheese producers expressed concern that the threatened new tariffs would hit small businesses hardest. It would also further squeeze exporters hit by a Russian embargo on European foods.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative charges that France’s new digital services tax discriminates against U.S. companies.
Le Maire disputes that, saying it targets European and Chinese businesses, too. The tax imposes a 3% annual levy on French revenues of any digital company with yearly global sales worth more than 750 million euros ($830 million) and French revenue exceeding 25 million euros.
“What we want is a plan for international tax that is on the table” at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Le Maire said.
The U.S. investigated the French tax under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the same provision the Trump administration used last year to probe China’s technology policies, leading to tariffs on more than $360 billion worth of Chinese imports in the biggest trade war since the 1930s.
Day: December 3, 2019
Starting this month, China has made it mandatory that new mobile phone users will have to have their faces scanned before completing their real-name registration with telecom operators.
But the latest policy has worried many netizens and rights defenders, some of whom complained that China is moving one step closer to tighten its cyberspace controls and bring to life the world British writer George Orwell imagined in his book 1984.
Observers say, until legal regulations and safeguards are in place to protect consumers’ rights to privacy, the aggressive move will no doubt lead to the Communist state’s abuse as a political tool to track dissidents or privacy risks as a result of consumers’ biometric data being leaked or re-sold.
The Big Brother
On Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging site in China, one user wrote “the Big brother is keeping an eye on you – George Orwell’s 1984,” and another described it as “the eye of the hell” while the majority of online comments under an article about the new policy also spoke negatively about it.
The collection of citizens’ facial scans will play an important part to widen China’ video surveillance net, which is already vast nationwide, said Zhou Shuguang, a prominent citizen journalist and blogger from China who currently lives in Taiwan.
China is projected to more than triple its network of surveillance cameras to 600 million by 2022, or one for every two people.
Zhou said that the police are already able to monitor Chinese citizens’ online activities and track them down, using their mobile phone numbers and personal identification.
Now with facial scans, the police can easily locate their whereabouts, along with their personal details, once they walk past any of the state’s surveillance cameras, known as sky eyes, and mounted around public places such as streets or train stations.
Widening Surveillance Net
“It means that China has taken it up a notch on its already massive surveillance [net] and [cyberspace] controls. Hence, Chinese citizens are faced with a more advanced and comprehensive surveillance [system] as described by [British novelist] George Orwell,” the cyber activist, widely known as Zoula, said.
The surveillance network will also have a chilling effect to silence outspoken dissents, said Ou Biaofeng, a rights defender from China’s Hunan province.
“This type of technology is mainly used by the dictators to tighten social controls. With it, they can easily find those who criticize the government or dissidents who hold different political views,” Ou said, expressing concerns that many may choose to shut up as social controls tighten.
The activist added that past cases have shown that the police failed to put the technology into good use such as locating those who went missing, stolen goods or thieves.
No Sufficient Safeguards
Without any safeguards, no telecom operators will deny the state’s request for users’ biometric data including facial scans or even iris scans, the latter of which boasts a higher accuracy rate, both said.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), in a prior notice, argued that the facial scan policy is meant to “safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of citizens online.”
“The ministry will continue to … increase supervision and inspection … and strictly promote the management of real-name registration for phone users,” the notice added.
Since 2013, the Chinese government has pushed for real-name registration for phone users by linking identification cards to phone numbers.
VOA’s calls and fax to the MIIT on Tuesday for responses to address concerns expressed by netizens and observers went unanswered.
China is speeding up its adoption of facial recognition for everything from supermarket checkouts to security or identification checks for its public transportation system, schools or even rental car operators.
Convenience Not Enough
Some find it very convenient.
“This has been a national [policy,] which I think we should have faith as it is also for the sake of our convenience. After all, it is not for any [corporate’s] commercial benefits or the interests of others. So, it really depends on how it is used,” a Beijing commuter told VOA, throwing her support behind the technology’s adoption at the city’s subway system.
But Zhou noted that Chinese citizens should make sure that their rights to privacy and data protection is safeguarded before embracing the technology, which is adopted by the government.
“[One may have to] sacrifice some rights [to privacy] in exchange for convenience. But be aware of this! [Without check and balance], the government will keep expanding its power and self-authorization to an extent that it becomes so powerful and its people so powerless. The people will end up being the slave to the government with their scope of rights being limited,” Zhou said.
In lieu of regulation on privacy risks, it has been a rampant practice for companies to re-sell consumers’ personal data including biometric data to illegitimate channels, according to Zhou.
It is reported that 5,000 facial scans are sold for 10 yuans in China.
The MIIT has long argued that the adoption of facial recognition technology will help stem the resale of sim cards and protect people from unknowingly registering for phone services in the event of their identities being stolen.
VOA’s Allen Ai contributed to this report.
A top European human rights official has demanded immediate closure of a migrant camp in Bosnia where hundreds of people have refused food and water to protest a lack of protection in snowy and cold weather.
The Vucjak camp near the northwestern town of Bihac has almost no facilities. International aid organizations have said it is unfit for migrants because it is located on a former landfill and close to a mine field from the 1992-95 war.
Already poor conditions in the camp have worsened further after snow fell on Monday.
Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, on Tuesday visited Vucjak where migrants had spent the night in tents braving freezing temperatures. Mijatovic says migrants must be moved to a warm and safe location.
In announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination last week, former New York mayor and media tycoon Mike Bloomberg added a new wrinkle to the ongoing debate about President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, and perhaps further, to the entire relationship between Washington and Beijing.
Bloomberg represents something unique in the Democratic primary field — an unreconstructed free-trader who also takes a far less critical view of China’s repressive internal policies than many of his opponents.
Since well before declaring his candidacy, Bloomberg has been a loud critic of Trump on trade policy, saying the president’s sanctions-heavy approach to negotiation with China and other countries “set new benchmarks of incoherence and irresponsibility.”
During the Obama administration, Bloomberg voiced support for multilateral trade agreements that are now criticized not just by Trump, but also by many of the current Democratic presidential candidates.
Bloomberg, whose international media empire has long-established ties to China and regularly hosts high-profile conferences there, is also an outlier in terms of his thinking about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping.
Defends Xi’s government
In an interview for the PBS television show “Firing Line” in September, Bloomberg drew sharp criticism after seeming to defend Xi’s government as responsive to its people and fundamentally democratic.
“The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public,” he said. “Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”
At the time, mass pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were facing a violent response from the Chinese government, and news reports about the brutal repression of the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang Province were widespread.
When the host expressed her incredulity at his position, citing Xi’s repressive policies, Bloomberg dug in deeper.
“No, he has a constituency to answer to,” he said. “No government survives without the will of the majority of its people, OK? The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia, and they look for where the Communist Party is, and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to happen. So, they really are responsive.”
Avoids China human rights issues
Bloomberg seemed to base his belief in the Chinese government’s responsiveness to its citizens on its willingness to try to ameliorate the choking pollution that blankets many of its major cities. But he did not address the bedrock issues of political freedom and basic human rights.
On trade and the issue of China’s treatment of its own citizens, Bloomberg stands apart from most of the front-runners in the Democratic field.
Up to this point in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, candidates’ positions on relations with China have been complicated by the fact that some of the top contenders want to distance themselves from Trump in every respect, even when they seem to agree with his use of tariffs to force Beijing to reform its trade policies.
Differs from Warren and Sanders
Top contenders like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are explicitly open to protectionist trade policies, though they are quick to claim they would implement them differently.
Warren, in an outline of her trade policies, said that in her view “tariffs are an important tool.” But she criticized Trump’s “haphazard” implementation of them. Unlike Trump, she said, she believes tariffs “are not by themselves a long-term solution to our failed trade agenda and must be part of a broader strategy that this administration clearly lacks.”
Sanders has vowed to undertake a “full review” of Trump’s trade policies to determine “which tariffs are working.” He added, “Tariffs may be part of the answer, but the Trump administration lacks a serious strategy for reducing our trade deficit or bringing back U.S. jobs that have been shipped to low-wage countries. Instead of conducting trade policy by tweet, we need a complete overhaul of our trade policies to increase American jobs, end the race to the bottom, raise wages and lift up living standards in this country and throughout the world.”
Buttigieg far more critical of tariffs
Pete Buttigieg, the outgoing mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is more critical of tariffs in principle, but does not close the door on their use as a tool of trade policy. He has said he would use tariffs as “leverage” in trade talks. However, he told The Washington Post, “Because tariffs can be de facto domestic taxes, imposing real costs on American workers and farmers, they should be employed only with a clear strategy and endgame, and in coordination with our allies.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads the Democratic field in national polls, has been inconsistent in his public statements about China. Shortly after announcing his candidacy last spring, he seemed to challenge the idea that the world’s most populous country was even a real economic competitor for the United States.
Biden sanguine about China threat
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden said at an appearance in Iowa. Arguing that Beijing is too busy with its internal problems to mount a serious economic threat to the U.S., he added, “They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”
The statement earned Biden immediate blowback from all sides, and forced him to acknowledge that China is “a serious challenge to us, and in some areas a real threat.”
Since then, Biden has maintained the position that the U.S. has to stand up to China on trade, but he has done so with vague statements such as, “My administration will bring our allies together to challenge China’s abusive behavior and rally more than half the world’s economy to hold China to account for their cheating. We also need to tighten up our economic defenses so that American companies don’t have to keep giving away technology to China, or having it stolen.”
On the question of China’s treatment of its own people, most of the Democrats in the field are far more willing to criticize Beijing than Bloomberg appears to be. All four of the top candidates have loudly condemned the treatment of the Uighurs and the repression of Hong Kong’s pro-Democracy movement.
Bloomberg’s reticence
Bloomberg’s restraint when it comes to criticizing China is not a new thing. In 2013, Bloomberg LP, the company that controls his global media empire, was found to have killed news stories revealing corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, prompting the resignation of a number of editors and reporters.
With U.S.-Chinese relations growing in importance, a Bloomberg candidacy will give Democratic primary voters a very different option than those currently on offer. What remains to be seen is if there will be many takers.
After two weeks of public hearings on U.S. President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are moving closer to formally impeaching the president on yet-to-be determined charges.
While a vote to impeach by the full House is not expected until before Christmas, the pace of the impeachment inquiry under way since late September picks up this week with the presentation of a Democratic report on their findings and recommendations.
Committee report
The report, prepared by the House Intelligence Committee which conducted the recent hearings, will outline the Democrats’ allegations that Trump abused his office by pressing Ukraine to investigate Trump’s Democratic political rival, Joe Biden, and a debunked theory about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report will allege Trump used hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid and a coveted White House meeting between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders as leverage. The report will also recommend specific articles of impeachment.
The exact charges remain unknown. Under the U.S. Constitution, a president can be impeached for bribery, extortion and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Members of the intelligence committee will review a draft of the report late Monday. They are scheduled to meet behind closed doors Tuesday to adopt the report and incorporate the Republican response before forwarding it to the House Judiciary Committee, which votes on articles of impeachment. The report will then be made public.
A 110-page report prepared by Republicans on the Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees accuses Democrats of carrying out “an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system.”
“House Democrats have been trying to undo the results of President Trump’s historic election since before he was sworn in,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said, adding that Democrats have not found “a single legitimate reason” for impeachment.
“Instead, Democrats have relied on smears, hearsay, and presumption to build their false narrative,” he said.
The Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, reacted to the Republican report by saying the impeachment probe “will not serve as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 … or to facilitate the president’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm.”
Wednesday hearing
The Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public hearing for 10 a.m. Wednesday. It will focus on the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment. Four legal scholars will appear as witnesses. They are law professors Noah Feldman of Harvard University; Pamela Karlan of Stanford University; Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina; and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.
Last week, Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to Trump, inviting him and his lawyer to attend the Wednesday hearing and to ask questions of witnesses.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone said late Sunday the White House will not participate in the hearing “while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings.”
Moreover, Cipollone criticized Democrats for scheduling the hearing while Trump is attending a NATO summit in London.
Monday, Nadler called the White House’s decision not to attend the Wednesday hearing “unfortunate,” saying “allowing the president to participate has been a priority for the House from the outset.”
White House opportunity to participate
Nadler has also given the White House until Friday to indicate whether the administration will participate in additional impeachment hearings and what rights Trump wants to exercise at those hearings.
Cipollone said the White House will respond by the Friday deadline, but indicated the administration will not participate short of major concessions by the Democrats, including allowing witnesses invited by Republicans.
Republican leaders want testimony from Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden, and the unidentified intelligence community whistleblower who alerted the inspector general about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Democrats have dismissed the demand.
“It is too late to cure the profound procedural deficiencies that have tainted this entire inquiry,” Cipollone wrote.
VOA’s Kenneth Schwartz contributed to this report.