China purchases could undercut Donald Trump's larger trade goal

International News

At the heart of President Trump’s negotiations with China is a troubling contradiction: The United States wants to use the trade talks to encourage the country to adopt a more market-oriented economy. But a key element of a prospective deal may end up reinforcing the economic power of the Chinese state.

Negotiators are still working out deal terms, but any agreement seems certain to involve China’s promise to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods. For Mr. Trump, this is an essential element that will help reduce the United States’ record trade deficit with China and bolster farmers and other constituencies hurt by his trade war.

But those purchases will be ordered by the Chinese state, and most will be carried out by state-controlled Chinese businesses, further cementing Beijing’s role in managing its economy and potentially making United States industries even more beholden to the Chinese.

“It seems like those types of really simplistic purchasing commitment type of arrangements would actually reinforce state ownership rather than discourage it,” said Rufus Yerxa, the head of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents the United States’ largest exporters.

After months of talks, the two sides are inching closer to an agreement. Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s top trade negotiator, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, discussed the remaining sticking points with their Chinese counterparts on Thursday evening and Friday in Beijing. Mr. Mnuchin, in a tweet on Friday, said the talks had been “constructive.”


 Both sides are trying to iron out an agreement by this week, to coincide with a visit to Washington by Liu He, the Chinese special envoy charged with negotiating the deal...Read More

Mark Zuckerberg's call to regulate Facebook, explained

International News

Facebook has faced months of scrutiny for a litany of ills, from spreading misinformation to not properly protecting its users’ data to allowing foreign meddling in elections.
Many at the Silicon Valley company now expect lawmakers and regulators to act to contain it — so the social network is trying to set its own terms for what any regulations should look like.
That helps explain why Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Saturday laying out a case for how he believes his company should be treated.

In his post, Mr. Zuckerberg discussed four policy areas — harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability — which he said the government should focus attention on.
Here’s an annotated analysis of Mr. Zuckerberg’s post and what he is seeking to do with each area.

Harmful content

First, harmful content. Facebook gives everyone a way to use their voice, and that creates real benefits — from sharing experiences to growing movements. As part of this, we have a responsibility to keep people safe on our services. That means deciding what counts as terrorist propaganda, hate speech and more. We continually review our policies with experts, but at our scale we'll always make mistakes and decisions that people disagree with.


 So-called harmful content across Facebook is an enormous category, spanning abuse and bullying to the recent live-streamed shootings at two mosques in New Zealand...Read More