| | | | One Promise Facebook Should Make | | | The best way for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reassure US lawmakers in Congressional testimony over the next couple of days? Promise to make America look more like Europe, at least on privacy, suggests Rick Noack for the Washington Post. "European Union regulators have long been tougher on tech companies than their US counterparts, forcing these companies to give users more control, imposing fines for noncompliance, and requiring platforms to spot and delete illegal content. With such concerns now being widely discussed in the United States and other countries, including India, Europe's skeptical stance toward Big Tech suddenly appears not to be that old-school anymore," Noack says. "In Europe, recent revelations about data misuse mostly resulted in calls to speed up work on privacy regulations that was already underway. "In the United States, however, they may lead to much tougher questions: Would American Facebook users become de facto second-class members when it comes to privacy issues, if US lawmakers continue to avoid regulations as foreign governments push ahead?" | | Xi Throws Team Trump a Bone | | | President Trump was happy about Chinese President Xi Jinping's trade speech Tuesday at the Boao Forum – dubbed Asia's Davos – after Xi pledged more market opening. So were the markets, with the Dow soaring more than 400 points. But Christopher Beddor suggests for Reuters that while Xi's address might have temporarily averted a trade war by giving Trump a reason to keep negotiating, the truth is that China just low-balled America.
"The speech lent little support to those arguing Xi is becoming a true leader on free trade. It also risks engendering more 'promise fatigue,'" Beddor says. "For example, Xi suggested China would shorten the so-called 'negative list' of sectors off-limits to foreign investment, an oft-repeated commitment that has become a symbol of Chinese legerdemain within the foreign business community."
"There was no mention of addressing the industrial policies that aim to substitute foreign imports with local brands or curbing broader state intervention in the economy."
"Taking Xi's conciliatory gesture for what it is – a low baseline for more negotiations – would allow Trump to claim a victory on Chinese auto tariffs while continuing to haggle for better concessions and clear implementation deadlines. The administration would be right to be skeptical of promised Chinese reforms coming 'soon.'" - China's image as the world's "bootleg hub" is looking increasingly out of date, the South China Morning Post says. Per the paper: "China has been leading the world in filing for patents and trademarks, with 42.8 percent of all filings last year, an increase of 4.8 percentage points from the previous year according to data by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland. The US was second place last year, with 19.4 percent of global filings, the data showed."
| | What Trump Doesn't Get About Trade… | | The United States and China might have stepped back from the brink of a trade war, for now, at least. But President Trump's recent comments – and fixation on the US trade deficit with China – suggest he doesn't really understand how trade works at all, writes Veronique de Rugy in The New York Times. And he's not alone.
"Think about your own experience. Without ever worrying about it, we run up trade deficits on a daily basis with many merchants. When you shop at the grocery store, enjoy a drink at your favorite bar or get your hair cut, you run up a personal trade deficit with your grocer, bar and hair stylist. Do they ever buy anything from you in return? When you get paid by your employer, he runs up his trade deficit with you. Do you buy as much from your employer as he buys from you?" de Rugy writes.
"These examples illustrate how trade deficits with other economic entities are almost always nothing to fret about. They're unavoidable consequences of the specialization and trade on which our modern prosperity depends. To be sure, on rare occasions trade deficits are symptoms of underlying dysfunctions, but they are never themselves a cause of these dysfunctions." "In measured prose and great detail, it lays out the many ways that China has failed to enact promised economic reforms, backtracked on others, and uses formal and informal means to block foreign firms from competing in China's market -- all of which directly contradicts Beijing's commitments when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001," Fareed says.
Watch the full Take here.
| | Why Macron Needs to Flex France's Muscles | | Barack Obama wasn't the only one to issue a red-line warning to Syria over the use of chemical weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron, did, too, notes Benjamin Haddad in Foreign Policy. Now that line looks to have been crossed again, it's time for France to follow through on the threat.
"Unilateral French strikes won't change the balance of power in Syria; the impact of such strikes would necessarily be smaller, both militarily and politically, than US action," Haddad says. "But the French army chief of staff stated last month France had the capacity to strike 'autonomously.' And punitive strikes against facilities and institutions responsible for this latest massacre would not only honor Macron commitment to act upon the use of chemical weapons, but would strengthen credibility for France's existing commitments in Syria."
"On Syria, France needs the United States to stay committed to post-Islamic State stabilization: French troops on the ground won't accomplish much without US backing. As Macron attempts to make these arguments to a reluctant US president, he needs to prove Europeans are no free riders."
| | Equal Pay Day? Latinas Wish…And Black Women…And Mothers | | | Tuesday marks Equal Pay Day. But per Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner on CNN Opinion: "Despite the fact that women make up nearly half of the workforce and receive more college degrees than men, they earn significantly less. Today, on average, women earn just 80 cents to a man's dollar, with Latinas earning only 54 cents, black women only 63 cents and mothers only 71 cents." | | | | | | |
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