Jesus wouldn’t have any issue with gay marriage, former president Jimmy Carter said Sunday.
In an interview with HuffPost Live, Carter, a born-again Christian, was asked about his personal views on homosexual marriage. “That’s no problem with me,” the Democratic former president replied. “I think that everybody should have a right to get married, regardless of their sex.”
Later on in the interview, Carter said he believes Jesus would “approve” of gay marriage, though he doesn’t “have any verse in Scripture” to back that up. “I think Jesus would encourage any…love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” he said.
Though Carter supports gay marriage, he doesn’t think the government should “force” churches that oppose it to perform such ceremonies.
Carter’s faith has led him to disagree with his party on at least one controversial issue. “I have had a problem with abortion,” he said. “I have a hard time believing that Jesus, for instance, would approve abortions unless it was because of rape or incest or if the mother’s life was in danger. So I’ve had that struggle.”
Carter took office in 1977, four years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973) that legalized first-trimester abortion at the federal level. However, his “oath of office was to obey the Constitution and the laws of this country as interpreted by the Supreme Court, so I went along with that,” he said.
Though many presidential scholars don’t look very favorably on Carter’s four years in office, a look at what he actually did reveals it wasn’t all bad. Not only was his record on nonmilitary federal spending better than that of the five president who came before him, but he also worked to deregulate the oil, railroad, trucking, and airline industries. And by ’70s standards, Carter’s record on gay rights wasn’t bad: In 1978, he publicly opposed an amendment to California’s constitution that would have banned gay people from teaching.
A video posted to Facebook shows an unnamed El Paso police officer detaining a young boy. When surrounding children criticize the officer, he pulls out his gun and aims it at the crowd. Moments later, a second officer comes to help. The officer then pulls out his baton and begins shoving spectators away from the scene.
About a minute into the video, the gun-pointing officer sets his sights on the guy filming his behavior. The young cameraman says “I’m just recording” before the officer places him in handcuffs. The camera is handed off to someone else in the crowd to capture the second arrest.
The El Paso Police Department released a statement on Saturday, a day after the video was posted. According to the statement, the officers on video were initially responding to a criminal trespass call. The officer, who was identified only as a four-year veteran stationed at the Central Regional Command Center, was reassigned to desk duties while the department’s Internal Affairs Unit investigates the events captured on video.
Assistant City Manager Dionne Mack told reporters at a press conference that one minor and one adult were taken into custody and “charged with interfering with a police investigation.” Mack said the incident was being investigated based on a process that is “clearly defined in our policies and procedures.”
According to USA Today, the department declined to provide specifics about the policies covering handgun and baton use.
In this video, an El Paso cop:
-Assaults children
-Threatens them
-Lunges at them with a nightstick
-Points his gun at them
-Arrests the kid filming thempic.twitter.com/owyzro36JT
A Lebanese tourist who was arrested last month for posting a video on Facebook complaining of sexual harassment and conditions in Egypt was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Cairo court on Saturday, her lawyer told Reuters.
Mona el-Mazboh was arrested at Cairo airport at the end of her stay in Egypt after a 10-minute video in which she called Egypt a “son of a bitch country” went viral on social media…
The 24-year-old Mazboh complains of being sexually harassed by taxi drivers and young men in the street, as well as poor restaurant service during the holy month of Ramadan and an incident in which money was stolen from her during a previous stay.
“You deserve what Sisi is doing to you, I hope God sends you someone more oppressive than Sisi.”
Ms el-Mazboh posted a second video in which she apologised for her remarks in the first video.
“I definitely didn’t mean to offend all Egyptians,” she said.
A Cairo court found her guilty of deliberately spreading false rumours that would harm society, attacking religion, and public indecency, judicial sources said.
An appeal court will now hear the case on July 29, according to Mazboh’s lawyer, Emad Kamal.
“Of course, God willing, the verdict will change. With all due respect to the judiciary, this is a severe ruling. It is in the context of the law, but the court was applying the maximum penalty,” he said.
Kamal said a surgery Mazboh underwent in 2006 to remove a brain clot has impaired her ability to control anger, a condition documented in a medical report he submitted to the court. She also suffers from depression, he said.
In a similar incident, former actor and model (and Egyptian woman) Amal Fathy was detained last month after she posted a video on social media criticising the government for failing to protect woman from sexual harassment.
In another high-profile case last week, prominent Egyptian activist Hazem Abdel-Azim was arrested at his Cairo home, accused of disseminating fake news and belonging to an outlawed group.
Egyptian rights activists say they face the worst crackdown in their history under Sisi, accusing him of erasing freedoms won in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
Supporters say such measures are needed to stabilise Egypt after years of turmoil that drove away foreign investors and amid an militant insurgency concentrated in the Sinai Peninsula.
The Washington Post asks ‘Will NATO survive Trump?’ ahead of a summit with NATO leaders this week as bureaucrats in Brussels voice concern over his potentially disruptive ‘America first’ rhetoric, and as the president is set to meet with Vladimir Putin only days later in their first one-on-one meeting.
In a characteristically over-dramatic tone, WaPo answers concerning NATO leaders, “Now they’re worried about something bigger: a full crackup of the alliance, or at least such a weakening of Washington’s security commitments that NATO would emerge deeply damaged.”
“It’s one thing if he goes to the G-7 and is rude to people,” a senior NATO diplomat told the Post while speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s another thing to derail NATO.”
Trump in May 2017 at NATO headquarters. Image via the AP
Among the foremost driving concerns that might “derail NATO” is the possibility that Trump could seek to mend relations with Russia and deescalate tensions when he sits down with Putin for their July 16 meeting in Helsinki, Finland. According to the Post, “European leaders worry that Trump could bargain away their security in the name of better relations with the Kremlin.”
This, after Trump continued his theme in recent remarks of NATO allies “freeloading” for not paying their dues and treating the US like “schmucks” and further that NATO is “as bad as NAFTA”. Lately he’s repeatedly berated other member states for not living up to a 2014 pledge to reach two percent of GDP on defense by 2024 — only three European countries have reached the mark. He’s expected to urge other governments of the alliance to dramatically increase military spending and lower import tariffs.
“I’m going to tell NATO: You’ve got to start paying your bills. The United States is not going to take care of everything,” Trump confidently told a rally in Montana last week. “We are the schmucks that are paying for the whole thing,” and added: “They kill us on trade.”
U.S. officials have long touted that Washington spends 70 percent of its defense budget on NATO; however, European leaders dispute this, with one senior unnamed EU official telling Reuters “the number is more like 15 percent.”
Last month Trump issued formal warnings in letters sent to leaders whose countries are not living up to their NATO defense spending pledges, saying that the US could cut them off while further questioning why Washington should spend money to protect nations it is running a trade deficit with, raising the issue of the potential for using this a bargaining chip in trade talks.
Statista: NATO’s own figures show that the United States remains the defense hegemon within the organization. On the one hand, American defense spending has dropped compared to 2010, but Canada and NATO’s European members taken together have not increased their spending in return until 2017.
The US president — widely acknowledged as the de facto leader of the nearly 70-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has NATO leaders further on edge for his unpredictable off the cuff style way of speaking and unrestrained approach to diplomacy.
In a line that CNN is listing among the “11 most dangerous things Donald Trump said” he explained last week: “Putin’s fine… He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people. Will I be prepared? Totally prepared. I’ve been preparing for this stuff my whole life.”
“Getting along with Russia, and getting along with China and getting along with other countries is a good thing,” he added, “not a bad thing.”
Of course, this has both CNN pundits and NATO diplomats in full panic mode, as Reutersnotes: “Two senior NATO diplomats told Reuters they are prepared for a worst-case scenario that Trump would announce a freeze on U.S. military exercises or withdraw troops from the Baltics in a gesture to Putin.”
Another NATO official told Reuters: “There is a better-than 50-50 chance that the president will disrupt the NATO summit, probably by complaining again that others aren’t carrying their fair share of the burden, and possibly by threatening to withdraw if they don’t step up on his terms.”
And separately, a diplomat from a NATO country told the AFP: “What Trump says will be decisive for the future of the alliance, but we do not know what he will say. It is a shadow that hangs like the sword of Damocles over the summit.”
This follows last month’s Group of Seven meeting in Canada ending on a contentious note in which Trump according to the Washington Post “fought with leaders of Washington’s closest allies, then withheld his signature from the bromide-filled declaration that comes out of such meetings as a matter of course.”
NATO leaders fear such signs of “disunity” in Brussels would be a disastrous welcome gift to Putin, as one former NATO official and think tank pundit lamented to the Post:
“The biggest of the allies doesn’t just have a disagreement with us, but he actually seems willing to walk away,” said Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak ambassador to NATO who runs Carnegie Europe, a Brussels think tank. “Deterrence has already been broken.”
They are worried Moscow will just sit back and enjoy the show, reaping the spoils of a chaotic NATO summit when Putin negotiates days later with Trump.
But perhaps the best line to come out of all the recent media and diplomatic hand-wringing, which happens to aptly characterize Trump’s approach to diplomacy is the following: “We used to roll our eyes at Trump’s policies but now we are seeing the craziness becoming strategic,” a senior EU diplomat told Reuters. “We now have to seek out all kinds of partners to further our goals.”
If, as we noted previously, this involves NATO bureaucrats’ worst nightmare coming true and peace breaks out between Russia and the West, then let more “craziness becoming strategic” prevail.
This is the biggest drop since March – for the company that was up 93% year-to-date before today.
As Bloomberg notes, Twitter rose 6.8% last week, coinciding with a positive note from Wells Fargo analyst Peter Stabler, touting the company’s success with video content and improved monetization efficiency.
The social platform’s “high valuation is expecting continued momentum in user growth and engagement that they have seen over the past several quarters,” Waral said.
But now, the “volume of fake account deletion, albeit good for longer term, raises uncertainty on near-term user growth expectations,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jitendra Waral.
But Twitter’s stock is still up 83 percent year-to-date, and Waray believes the “risk to daily user growth should be low as the company has underscored low activity on the deleted accounts.“
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan
America’s populace is politically divided in a way that has not been seen in decades. The growing rift is rapidly changing the landscape in Washington D.C. and has major implications for the nation. Amazingly, as voters from different parties espouse views that are worlds apart, they share a strikingly similar message.
This article considers the juxtaposition of colliding worldviews and the unified message that voters across the political spectrum are sending. While many investors are aware of the political change afoot, it seems that very few have considered how said changes might affect the economy and financial markets. In this article, we share some of our thoughts and encourage you to give the topic more consideration going forward.
Given the importance of the subject, this article will likely be the first of several discussing the intersection of politics and markets.
The Changing Faces in Congress
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Congressmen Bob Corker and Jeff Flake are a few of the well-established Republicans not seeking reelection. While each has their reasons, it appears the prospect of losing re-election played a significant role in their decision making. Is this a case of “playing not to lose” as opposed to “playing to win”? Political capital can be delicately converted to monetary capital only if a politician, in or out of office, plays his or her cards wisely.
This is not just a story about Republican discontent. In New York’s Democratic 14th Congressional District primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a totally unknown candidate months ago, recently upset incumbent Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat in Congress and possible successor to Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic House leader. Crowley has represented New York since 1999, most recently as a representative of the Bronx and Queens.
Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year old Latino woman who was tending bar only a year ago. She ran on campaign promises that were decidedly left of the mainstream Democratic agenda represented by Crowley. Her political stance was not surprising given her support for Bernie Sanders during the last Presidential primary and her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.
While there are many messages 14th District voters are sending us; we believe there are two that are representative of voters of both parties throughout the country.
Voters appear to prefer political views that are less centrist and offer a change from the status quo of the existing parties.
Voters are looking to buck established party leaders in favor of someone different.
The Washington Post, in an article about Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, summed up these messages well – “Many of the key Democratic House primaries this year have been competitions over biography,with a premium given to those who break new ground or remove old barriers.”
Economic and Market Implications
Assuming this trend continues, the implications for the economy and the financial markets will become increasingly important to follow. While the topic for another article, simply consider the massive social changes that occurred in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Those changes had profound and lasting effects on culture and society as well as the economy, monetary policy, fiscal policy and the financial markets.
The following provides a summary of factors worth considering as this new era of politics takes hold:
Deficit – Despite a Republican-controlled Congress and President, the size of the fiscal deficit is surging. Current forecasts by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate that Treasury debt will increase by over $1 trillion a year for the next four years. While it seems that the Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on much, they currently seem to agree on increased government spending. Given a President that is not averse to debt financing and deficit spending and a slew of politicians concerned about future elections, collectively they may opt for more spending to please their constituents. Given the importance of retaining (or not losing) power, the tendency towards higher fiscal deficits will continue regardless of which party controls the House and Senate. Discipline of any form appears outdated in the halls of Congress and certainly not a popular political platform.
Recession and stock market crash response– During the great financial crisis of 2008/09, extreme fiscal and monetary stimulus were employed to right the economy and stabilize the markets. In just three years from 2009-2011, a timeframe spanning the recession and immediate recovery, the aggregate fiscal deficit was $4.006 trillion. In those three years, the government accumulated a deficit that equaled that of the 22 years immediately prior. The Fed’s monetary policy response was even more brazen. They lowered the Fed Funds rate to zero which helped push longer-term bond yields to historically low levels. Further, they introduced QE and purchased over $4 trillion of U.S. Treasury, Agency and Mortgage-Backed Securities.
Our concerns for the next recession and stock market drawdown are twofold. First, will the Fed acquiesce with unprecedented monetary policy as they did repeatedly during and well after the financial crisis and recession? Second, will the vastly different political views of Congress and the likely infighting make negotiations on fiscal bailouts harder than those that occurred in 2008 and 2009?
Under Jerome Powell’s leadership, the Fed appears less concerned with financial asset prices than did the leadership of his immediate predecessors. Further, inflationary aspects of fiscal deficits may make them more apprehensive about easy policies that can have inflationary impulses. One of the key signals for a change in monetary policy came when outgoing New York Fed President William Dudley gave a speech on January 11 characterizing three to four rate hikes in 2018 as “gradual.” Although there was no immediate market response, within two weeks the stock market convulsed. The market has yet to regain those losses and the Fed thus far has not walked back Dudley’s comments.
The fiscal situation could also become problematic if the political parties continue down the path of discordance. Either party might be willing to push or block emergency fiscal stimulus to affect the President’s reelection chances heading into the 2020 presidential campaign.
Geopolitical – The changes occurring in our political system are closely monitored by other nations. While some nations are experiencing similar changes, especially in Europe and the United Kingdom, we have little doubt that our allies, our enemies, and everyone in between will try to capitalize on the situation. Trade and the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency are the foremost concern. We believe many nations want to unseat the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Trade tariffs and fair trade negotiations are likely fueling the desire even more so. Will political change and the possibility of a stalemate in Congress provide these nations an opportunity to reduce their reliance on the dollar? The implications, as discussed in Triffin Warned Us, are massive.
Public/Corporate confidence and spending habits – Consumers tend to spend when they are most confident about their own financial situation and that of their nation. As the political issues collide and political rhetoric from both sides increase, will consumers’ confidence waver?
Alternatively, what if current consumer spending has less to do with confidence and is largely based not on what they want to spend but what they need to spend? Food, gas, healthcare, housing, and education are all making unreasonable demands on consumer spending habits. These expenditures are being funded by dis-savings and credit as opposed to rising salaries and wages. The evidence for this lies in the concurrent rise in consumer credit data and decline in household savings. The demand for political change is not coming from the elite that profited from corporatism and speculation, but in large part from the majority being left behind. These are the marginal consumers and play a large role in determining the pace and quality of economic activity.
Similarly, what of the confidence of corporate executives? We suspect that as political differences become acuter and the future less predictable, executives will hold back on investments in new projects, plants, equipment or employees.
Summary
Currently, the market seems indifferent to the recent wave of political upheaval. The relative stability in the economy and strong performance of stocks over the last few years is likely mesmerizing many investors. We believe investors should consider that the changes in the political landscape may only be in its infancy. Whether the recent move towards political divergence is a fad or the start of something much larger is anyone’s guess. However, we believe the increasing influence of millennials at the expense of baby boomers will have impacts which we are just starting to see.
Given that equity markets are perched at extreme valuations, implying that the risks are significant and future returns well below normal, we believe the political unknowns and the associated risks they carry are among the reasons to maintain a conservative investment stance.
The following video provides a historical perspective of how Congress has become increasingly divided over the last 80 years.
While it stops in the year 2013, the differences have only widened since then.
Over the weekend, when discussing the latest provocative comments by North Korea’s state media following Mike Pompeo’s fruitless visit to Tokyo to push for further denuclearization by Pyongyang, and which Kim envoys slammed saying the country’s “resolve for denuclearization” may falter, we said that “Trump’s denuclearization plan will have to wait even as the risk that all progress achieved so far in bilateral negotiations collapses.”
Why? Because recall that China was the real puppetmaster behind the Trump-Kim summit… and suddenly Beijing is not very happy with Trump (for obvious reasons), which means that China’s response to Trump’s trade war may emerge in the realm of diplomacy as Xi does everything he can to undo any/all progress achieved in talks between Trump and Kim, potentially sending relations between the US and North Korea back to square one.
We followed this up with a tweet saying that ” China was the real puppetmaster behind the Trump-Kim summit, and now China is not very happy with Trump”
remember: China was the real puppetmaster behind the Trump-Kim summit, and now China is not very happy with Trump
Now Trump himself is starting to realize that the culprit behind North Korea’s newly belligerent attitude may be none other than China’s president Xi himself, and in a quote said “I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!“
I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!
Of course, while there is no way to certify that China is indeed the catalyst behind N.Korea’s sudden mood change, if Trump indeed is convinced that Beijing is pulling the strings, it is only a matter of time before he escalates significantly the trade war with Beijing, lobbing even more Tariffs China’s way, as now he realizes that China’s response is not merely economic but also diplomatic, and for Trump, denuclearizing North Korea remains the his crowning foreign policy achievement.
Certainly, the hanging “hope not” at the end of Trump’s tweet makes it all too clear that China will be targeted further if North Korea remains steadfast in rebuffing Trump’s demands.
With California on the cusp of passing a bill that would prohibit restaurant servers from giving customers plastic straws unless requested, Starbucks revealed on Monday that it would become the first major American food-service chain to phase out plastic straws at all US locations, with the transition expected to be completed by 2020, according to CNN. The changes will help Starbucks eliminate more than 1 billion plastic straws per year.
The new Starbucks straw-free cups
The city of Seattle, which fancies itself at the vanguard of progressive environmental causes, has already passed a similar ban on straws and plastic utensils, which took effect earlier this month. Activists have been pressuring businesses to abandon plastic straws because they purportedly contribute to the deaths of 1 million birds and more than 100,000 sea mammals each year, according to the UK government. As it stands, California’s “straws on request” bill would impose a $1,000 fine on servers who violate it – though proponents of the law say the penalties will be removed from the bill at a later date.
Nicholas Mallos, director of Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program, praised Starbucks for its “shining example” of how companies can help fight ocean pollution, according to CNN
“With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the ocean every year, we cannot afford to let industry sit on the sidelines,” he said in a statement.
McDonald’s said it would phase out plastic straws at its restaurants in the UK and Ireland after the UK government proposed banning them. But McDonald’s shareholders voted down a proposal earlier this year asking for a report on plastic straws, NBC reported.
The push for banning straws gained momentum following the release of a viral video that showed rescuers removed a straw from the nose of a sea turtle.
The new “straw free” lid being rolled out by Starbucks, which will replace the flat plastic lids currently in use, have been compared to “adult sippie cups”. Customers who still wish to use a straw will be able to request a new compostable straw (these straws haven’t been widely adopted because they cost roughly 8 times more than plastic).
The UK government crisis that was unleashed on PM Theresa May’s cabinet last night when Brexit minister David Davis resigned, has just escalated following the resignation of foreign minister Boris Johnson. While BoJo was speculated to be unhappy with May’s deal, many suggested that he was willing to fall in line; however events over the past 24 hours changed his mind.
Theresa May promptly accepted Johnson’s resignation with the following brief statement:
“This afternoon, the Prime Minister accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. His replacement will be announced shortly. The Prime Minister thanks Boris for his work'”
Johnson’s resignation increases the chances that May will now face a leadership challenge over her Brexit policy.
As Bloomberg adds, “resignations traditionally unleash leadership challenges in the U.K. Davis’s prompted pro-Brexit lawmakers to demand May rip up her proposals, but they didn’t call for her to go. That’s partly because they can’t be sure they have the numbers needed to be sure of defeating her. But Johnson’s exit could embolden others.”
As a reminder, late on Friday, May pushed her Cabinet late on Friday into a Brexit plan that many had misgivings about.
Initially, it looked like she had managed to get away with pushing for the Brexit that buinesses wanted – as soft as possible with close ties to the bloc. Then everything changes when Brexit minister David Davis resigned and took his deputy with him. Now Boris has joined them.
As Bloomberg ‘s Tim Ross notes, “Johnson has been worried for months that May is taking too long to negotiate Brexit. She told him to trust her, but the direction of her policy — towards an ever softer split — meant that he always wanted proof that he could.”
It looks like the plan she unveiled last week at Chequers eventually proved too much. And perhaps he was encouraged to jump by the fact that his colleague David Davis did so first.
More importantly, now that the most prominent pro-Brexit names have fled, May’s support appears to be crumbling among the conservatives.
As a result of the ongoing chaos, pound has slid, erasing all overnight gains amid fears that Theresa May will now see a vote of no confidence, one which could result in a new government.
With a China-US trade war now under way, China’s natural impulse was to lash out against Trump, not only in the state-controlled media, but also in statements by top ranking officials, such as an angry diatribe by the Sinochem chairman, who quoted Michelle Obama, saying “when they go low, we go high.” However, in what appears to be an attempt to tone down the rhetoric, the SCMP reports that Beijing has directed state media to watch how they report on US President Donald Trump, mainland media sources said.
“It’s been said that we should not use aggressive language for Trump,” said a SCMP source, who added that the edict called on media outlets not to make vulgar attacks on Trump to avoid “making this a war of insults”, similar to angry back and forth between Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un last summer.
In an oddly demure move for China, even though local officials and state media have attacked the trade policies of the Trump administration, so far they have not laid blame on the US president or his officials, “a move seen as an attempt to avoid antagonising Trump and further complicating negotiations.”
While the Beijing directive may not have been issued across the board – two other state media sources said they were not instructed how to write about Trump with regards to trade – it mirrored one of the guidelines on an official propaganda instruction widely circulated on social media.
The decree echoes a similar move last month, when the South China Morning Post reported that state media agencies were instructed to play down mentions of Made in China 2025, China’s strategic industrial policy aimed at transforming China into a high-tech powerhouse and one which Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro has explicitly targeted, in their reports.
Reporting at state-controlled outlets in China is strictly overseen by government censors, who often issue instructions to ensure the coverage toes the party line. Meanwhile, Trump has so far also avoided flinging insults directly at President Xi Jinping, instead reiterating in person and via Twitter that the two “will always be friends, no matter what happens with our dispute on trade”.
Very thankful for President Xi of China’s kind words on tariffs and automobile barriers…also, his enlightenment on intellectual property and technology transfers. We will make great progress together!
In a tweet in April, Trump even said he was “very thankful for President Xi of China’s kind words on tariffs and automobile barriers” and exclaimed that the two leaders “will make great progress together!”
Commenting on the decree, Sow Keat Tok, a University of Melbourne lecturer on China’s foreign relations, said that since Trump’s rhetoric has focused on the trade war instead of Xi, the Chinese leader has in turn refrained from making statements about Trump.
“[Xi] allowed the Ministry of Commerce to send out messages instead, again framing the trade as a state-to-state interaction,” he said.
“Restraining the state media is important, lest some enthusiastic reporters mention Trump in their pieces. The message is not to antagonise Trump personally, but [to] keep the affair in the realm of state policy.”
The civil approach is a marked contrast from the name-calling in which Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un engaged during frostier times in the relationship between Washington and Pyongyang, which culminated with Kim calling Trump a “dotard” while the US president referred to the North Korean leader as “little rocket man”.
“Xi would not allow that to happen to himself,” Tok said. “It’s not just about face, but also preempting possible responses from the Chinese society, in case such personal animosity gets out of hand.”
A 
