It’s still two weeks away, but it seems like it’s tomorrow in terms of the significance of the G20 meeting coming up at the end of the month and the possible meeting between Trump and Xi that may result in a possible truce or not in the trade war.
It’s a risk to place a bet on such an event, given the nature of the participants and the opaqueness of both sides of the process, but our money is still on there being nothing significant that results. Those in Command are not yet in a situation where they have to make serious concessions to the hounds of reciprocity, and the Trump administration’s policy appears to be firmly in the hands of people who believe Kissingerian appeasement was a bad idea from the start. But two weeks is a long time in politics.
This week, China’s roads and housing estates have been dealing with the consequences of Alibaba’s blowing-out Single’s Day, yet another record for online sales in a single second. What the overall impact is in the economy of such a massive discounted sales splurge is not clear, but it’s possible it’s more than a zero-sum game on the negative side for China retail overall.
In other news, the campaign to support private enterprises as a way of offsetting worrying economic trends went up a couple of gears. It’s still not clear how that plays out. Is it creating a third sector between state and private – a State-embraced Private Sector? Does that make any sense?
All worth pondering as we wait for the G20.
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