Former Chinese language prime chief Hu Jintao was unexpectedly led out of the closing ceremony of a serious assembly of China’s ruling Communist Get together Saturday, in a second of drama throughout what is usually a extremely choreographed occasion.
Hu, 79, was seated in a distinguished place on the entrance desk within the Nice Corridor of the Folks in Beijing, straight subsequent to his successor, present chief Xi Jinping, when he was approached by a employees member, video of the assembly reveals.
Whereas seated, Hu appeared to speak briefly with the male employees member, whereas Politburo Standing Committee member Li Zhanshu, who was seated to his different aspect, had his hand on the chair behind Hu’s again.
Hu then appeared to rise after being lifted up by the employees member, who’d taken the previous chief by the arm, whereas Kong Shaoxun, deputy director of the Normal Workplace of the Communist Get together and head of its secretariat came visiting. Hu spoke with the 2 males briefly and initially appeared reluctant to depart.
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He was then escorted by the 2 males from his seat, with the employees member holding his arm, as different occasion members seated behind the primary desk appeared on. The circumstances surrounding Hu’s exit aren’t clear.
On his approach out, Hu was seen to pause and appeared to say one thing to Xi after which patted Premier Li Keqiang on the shoulder. Each Xi and Li appeared to nod. It was not clear what Xi stated in reply.
At one level, whereas Hu was nonetheless seated, Xi appeared to position his hand over a doc that Hu was making an attempt to achieve for stopping him from doing so.
In one other second, after Hu was standing and discussing with the 2 males earlier than making his exit, Li Zhanshu appeared to attempt to rise from his seat, however was directed again down by a tug on his go well with jacket by fellow Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, seated subsequent to him.
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Hu, who retired in 2013, has been seen in more and more frail well being in public in recent times. CNN was censored on air in China when reporting on Hu’s exit from the assembly Saturday.
Because of the opacity of Chinese language elite politics, the occasion is unlikely to supply a public clarification on Hu’s sudden exit. The dramatic second will not be reported anyplace in Chinese language media, or mentioned on Chinese language social media. However it has set off a firestorm of hypothesis abroad.
Hu’s departure got here after the Congress’s greater than 2,000 delegates had rubber-stamped the brand new members of the occasion’s elite Central Committee throughout a personal session, and earlier than delegates have been referred to as on to endorse the occasion’s work report throughout a session open to journalists.
The newly introduced 205-member Central Committee didn’t embody Li Keqiang and fellow Standing Committee member Wang Yang, who’re each thought of Hu’s proteges. This implies neither will retain their seats within the Standing Committee, the occasion’s top-decision making physique, although each are 67, one 12 months in need of the unofficial retirement age. Xi, who’s 69, is included within the checklist of recent Central Committee members.
The road-up of the Standing Committee will likely be revealed Sunday, at some point after the shut of the Congress. Xi, who’s broadly seen to have cemented energy by eliminating rivals and dampening the lingering affect of occasion elders, is predicted to be re-confirmed as occasion chief in a norm-breaking transfer and encompass himself with allies.
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Macy’s has delayed the release of its third-quarter results after the US retailer revealed that an employee had hidden more than $132mn of delivery expenses since late 2021.
The group said in a securities filing on Monday that an employee had “intentionally made erroneous accounting accrual entries” to hide $132mn to $154mn of cumulative delivery expenses between its fourth quarter of 2021 and the quarter ended November 2 2024.
It said it had launched an independent investigation. There was “no indication” of any adverse effect on its cash management or payments.
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The individual was no longer at the company, Macy’s added.
Macy’s was due to report results on Tuesday, but, owing to the expenses issue, instead released preliminary results on Monday morning. Its third-quarter sales fell slightly more than analysts expected to $7.74bn in the three months ending on November 2.
Macy’s shares were down more than 3 per cent in pre-market trading.
Scott Bessent speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington D.C., Wednesday, July 10, 2024.
Dominic Gwinn | Afp | Getty Images
Financial markets on Monday welcomed President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. Treasury secretary, with currencies across the globe rallying on hopes that hedge fund manager Scott Bessent can take some of the sting out of Trump’s more extreme economic views.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major currencies, fell 0.5% to 107.01 on Monday, paring some of its recent gains after a remarkable rally since late September.
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The euro was a top performer, rising 0.7% to trade at $1.049 at 12:50 p.m. London time. The Japanese yen, pound sterling and Antipodean currencies were also trading higher against the dollar.
The moves come as global investors reacted to news from late Friday that Trump signaled his intention to nominate Bessent to lead one of the most influential roles in U.S. government. The Treasury Department has broad oversight of tax policy, public debt and international finance.
Strategists regard Bessent, the founder of Connecticut-based investment firm Key Square Group, as a “safe pair of hands,” a well-known market participant and a more moderate pick compared to some of his rivals.
It is expected the 62-year-old will push for Trump to consider a softer approach to tariffs, strip back regulation to boost growth and target a reduction in deficit spending.
“Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary has swelled investor sentiment further with stocks on Wall Street looking set for another flurry of gains,” Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said in a research note.
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“Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent’s long career of navigating the twists and turns of markets, has boosted confidence about incoming pro-business policies and lifted hopes that any tariffs would be highly targeted and potentially less inflationary in nature,” she added.
A ‘layered’ approach to tariffs
Trump’s historic election victory earlier this month ratcheted up concerns about the prospect for higher prices, prompting strategists to rethink the outlook for global bond yields and currencies.
It is widely thought that Trump’s pledge to introduce tax cuts and steep tariffs could boost U.S. economic growth — but widen the fiscal deficit and refuel inflation.
An employee sorts navel oranges at a fruit processing factory of Nongfu Spring on November 23, 2024 in Xinfeng County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province of China.
China News Service | China News Service | Getty Images
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In an effort to raise revenues, Trump has suggested he could impose a blanket 20% tariff on all goods imported into the U.S., with a tariff of up to 60% for Chinese products and one as high as 2,000% on vehicles built in Mexico.
While many economists are skeptical about the effectiveness of tariffs, Bessent has defended them as “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives.” He has also, however, called for tariffs to be “layered in” gradually.
“News that Scott Bessent is the top choice for incoming US Treasury Minister has raised the possibility that some ‘Trump trades’ may be watered down,” analysts at Rabobank said in a research note.
“Bessent, a successful macro hedge fund manager, is associated with a preference to reduce the US budget deficit to 3% of GDP, which clearly suggests less appetite for deficit spending,” they added.
Bessent, who once worked for billionaire philanthropist and investor George Soros, has advocated for a so-called “3-3-3” target, which refers to a plan to cut the deficit to 3% by 2028, achieve 3% economic growth and add 3 million new barrels of oil per day.
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Business as usual?
Some strategists expect Trump’s Treasury chief pick to be welcomed as good news for Asian currencies over the coming months.
“The market view that Bessent is a ‘safe hands’ candidate, may see some relief rally in Treasuries from the open on Monday, as the risk of a more unorthodox candidate is priced out,” Scott Spratt, strategist at Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking, said in a research note.
“We suspect his view that tariffs should be ‘layered’ and that initial levels being discussed are ‘maximalist’ positions, should also provide an opening boost to Asia FX and [the Chinese yuan],” he added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepares to exit after viewing the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | Via Reuters
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that nominating Bessent as Treasury chief would be a disappointment. In a social media post via X on Nov. 16, Musk described Bessent as a “business-as-usual choice,” adding that “business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt.”
Bessent has also been an advocate of Trump’s embrace of the crypto industry, which means he could soon become the first Treasury chief openly in favor of crypto assets. Trump has previously pledged to make America “the crypto capital of the planet.”
Bitcoin breached the $99,000 level for the first time last week as investors continue to price in Trump’s return to the White House.
Two months before Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in the US, Robin Zeng, known as China’s “battery king”, had a quick but grim answer as to why European battery makers were struggling to make good products.
“They have a wrong design . . . they have a wrong process . . . and they have the wrong equipment. How can they scale up?” the chief executive of CATL told Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s $1.8tn oil fund. “So almost all mistakes together.”
The bleak assessment from the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery manufacturer captures the scale of the failure for the industries behind the critical technology for Europe’s decarbonisation, leaving governments, companies and investors at a loss as to how to recraft the continent’s strategy to compete with China.
“How are we not taking this more seriously? The European car industry is the heartland of European industry’s supposed prowess,” said one long-standing investor in Northvolt after the collapse into US bankruptcy last week of Europe’s biggest battery hope. “The depth of the crisis for the European car industry is almost unlimited. It’s incredibly grim.”
Brussels took its first steps to establish a battery supply chain across Europe in 2017, with Northvolt at the heart of its ambitions. The bloc has since increased its share of the global battery market from 3 per cent to 17 per cent with annual turnover of €81bn in 2023 after spending more than €6bn of the EU budget to support cross-border battery projects and research and innovation.
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But in terms of EV batteries, Asian participants including CATL, BYD, and LG Energy Solution and SK On of South Korea, control about 70 per cent of the global market. Many of the 30 gigafactory projects in Europe have also been designed and built with the help of Chinese and Korean companies.
As the EU’s ambitions have faltered, the struggles of Northvolt have come to embody the challenge the continent faces. The bloc wants to continue encouraging costly investments in the clean technologies needed to meet its ambitious climate goals, while at the same time stemming the wave of plant closures and job cuts that are already spreading across the automotive sector and heavy industries.
“It’s fair to say we’re at a pivotal moment right now,” said Wouter IJzermans, executive director at the Batteries European Partnership Association.
People involved in the Northvolt saga said options were narrowing for Europe to address its dependence on China and other parts of Asia for the technology and materials that will be critical as the automotive industry transitions to electric vehicles.
Efforts are still being made by other start-ups such as France’s Verkor and Volkswagen’s battery business PowerCo, but they are facing either diminished ambitions or tougher financing prospects.
PowerCo is considering building just one out of the two production lines previously planned for its plant in Salzgitter in Germany due to slowing market demand.
“There was a whole fresh round of audit work and validation of the set-up, our chemistry, the machines and all the equipment,” Lemaignan said. “It’s not something automatic, to find financing today. It’s an issue that goes well beyond Verkor, and affects the financing of all of the energy and climate transition industries.”
In France, there is also Automotive Cells Company, a venture backed by carmakers Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz, and oil major TotalEnergies, which started producing batteries in 2023. But this year ACC paused plans to expand further with plants in Germany and Italy as it considered switching to a lower-cost form of battery technology and adjusted to a slower EV adoption rate.
“There are expansion phases and crisis phases, if you draw a parallel with other industries. Perhaps we’re living through the first big challenges for Europe’s battery industry. But there will be factories and there will be clients, we’re seeing that more and more,” Lemaignan said.
Consequences from Northvolt’s US bankruptcy filing are already being felt, with carmakers being forced once again to turn to their Asian suppliers to reduce their exposure to its collapse.
Germany’s Porsche has never confirmed its relationship with Northvolt, but a person familiar with the agreement between the two companies said the Swedish start-up was contracted to make the batteries for the all-electric Porsche 718, scheduled for launch next year.
Northvolt’s demise means the battle for dominance of the European market is likely to play out between Asian battery makers.
LGES and SK On both have European plants, in Poland and Hungary respectively, while CATL has a factory in Germany and a second site in Hungary due to begin production next year.
But Tim Bush, a Seoul-based battery analyst at UBS, said there was little prospect at present that the Asian battery makers would be able to help the EU to meet its target for 90 per cent of the continent’s EV batteries to be produced locally by 2030.
Bush noted that Korean battery makers were already paring back their investments in Europe, having invested billions of dollars in plants in North America that have been running at low utilisation rates because of lower than expected consumer demand for EVs.
Potential Chinese battery investments on the continent were also likely to be complicated by the ongoing trade dispute between Brussels and Beijing over EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, he added.
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“The Koreans are not expanding, the Chinese have suspended construction and Europe’s new entrants are dropping like flies,” said Bush.
Against such obstacles, the European Commission is weighing plans to require Chinese developers to have plants and bring their intellectual property to Europe in order to access EU subsidies, the FT has previously reported.
With European start-ups still behind in their ability to manufacture batteries at scale, industry executives say the only solution may be to continue their reliance on Asian participants until homegrown companies can absorb technology knowhow on battery chemistry, mass production and equipment manufacturing.
“We need to find a deal with China because we won’t be able to compete . . . without the support of the Chinese companies that control the mining industry, chemicals, refining and their capacity and competence,” Luca De Meo, Renault’s chief executive, told reporters last month.
But the dilemma is how long Europe needs to wait for the technology transfers to complete, and whether it would already have lost the race by then.
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“If you really zoom out, what does Europe want to be? I really question whether Europe wants to give up yet another industry like it did with solar panels. Europe is not a leader in AI. I want my kids to grow up somewhere where there are a lot of jobs,” said a Northvolt executive.
Reporting by Kana Inagaki and Harriet Agnew in London, Patricia Nilsson in Frankfurt, Sarah White in Paris, Alice Hancock in Brussels, Christian Davies in Seoul, and Richard Milne in Oslo
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