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A new study by longtime China experts in the U.S. has concluded that Beijing is engaging in an increasingly aggressive campaign to influence and shape perceptions about China held by American politicians, university scholars and students, as well as executives at major corporations.

“Except for Russia, no other country’s efforts to influence American politics and society is as extensive and well-funded as China’s,” according to the report by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations.

The report, called “Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” details a wide range of Chinese activities in the U.S. to “advance its influence-seeking objectives.” It includes lobbying “influential civil society groups,” but also accessing critical U.S. infrastructure and technology and engaging in “covert, coercive or corrupting” behavior, such as pressuring Chinese students studying on U.S. campuses to spy on other Chinese students at the same schools.

The report said China has, with the assistance of U.S. universities, established so called 110 Confucius Institutes on U.S. campuses, but the institutes are forced to use Communist Party-approved materials “that promote PRC Chinese viewpoints, terminology and simplified characters; the avoidance of discussion on controversial topics such as Tibet, Tiananmen, Xinjiang, the Falun Gong, and human rights in American classrooms and programs.”

Now, however, some U.S. universities, including the University of Chicago and the Texas A&M system, have had second thoughts about the Confucius Institutes and have closed branches at their schools. The report said U.S. institutions should rewrite their contracts with China to eliminate a clause that stipulates Confucius Institutes must operate according to China’s laws.

One of the report’s authors, Orville Schell, said money flowing to U.S. universities “will not come with any explicit prohibitions, but implicit ones,” that if the schools “want to get more [money], don’t say this, don’t say that,” an effort aimed at “modulating and controlling what people say about it and how they view it.”

The report said Hollywood, the film capital of the world, has been influenced by Chinese investment and now routinely makes films that portray China’s government in a favorable light. It said that two decades ago, films such as “Red Corner,” “Seven Years in Tibet,” and “Kundun” addressed topics the Chinese government deemed sensitive. Hollywood studios now are teaming up with Chinese interests to produce such films as “The Martian,” a hit in which the Chinese government saves the American protagonists.

“The rush of Chinese investment into the American film industry,” the report concludes, “has raised legitimate concerns about the industry’s outright loss of independence.”

Schell said that after a year and a half of research, he and others came to the conclusion “that the relationship between the U.S. and China when it comes to influence is not reciprocal.”

He said, “The open society of the United States gets used for Chinese purposes in myriad ways that are not available to Americans in China.”

American universities have not been granted the same access in China as Beijing has received, and U.S. journalists are severely restricted inside China.

The report’s conclusions echo those of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in a speech last month.

“Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach,” Pence said, “using political, economic and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States.”

The Hoover-Asia Society report comes as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President XI Jinping have in recent months imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of exports flowing between the world’s two biggest economies.

The two leaders are meeting Saturday night over dinner in Buenos Aires at the G-20 summit of the world’s leading economies and could possibly reach a new trade agreement. But obstacles remain and agreement on a deal is uncertain.

 
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Several Democratic women, including Senators Kamala Harris (California), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) and possibly even 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, are potential presidential contenders in 2020, but it could be more of an uphill battle for them than for their male counterparts.

That’s because just over half of Americans are totally comfortable with the idea of a woman president, according to a new report by the consulting firm Kantar Public. 

The report finds that while 63 percent of Americans are perfectly fine with the idea of a woman heading a major corporation, just 52 percent are as comfortable with a scenario featuring a female president.

Men are more inclined to judge a person’s leadership suitability based on gender, while women are more likely to think men and women are equally suited to leadership, according to the report, which finds that 60 percent of women would be OK with one of their own as commander-in-chief, compared to just 45 percent of men.

Ten thousand people in seven developed countries – members of the G7 – were surveyed for the study. In addition to the United States, members of the G7 include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. England and Germany currently have a woman leading their governments.
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The Trump administration is considering new background checks and other restrictions on Chinese students in the United States over growing espionage concerns, U.S. officials and congressional sources said.

In June, the U.S. State Department shortened the length of visas for Chinese graduate students studying aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing to one year from five. U.S. officials said the goal was to curb the risk of spying and theft of intellectual property in areas vital to national security. 

But now the Trump administration is weighing whether to subject Chinese students to additional vetting before they attend a U.S. school. The ideas under consideration, previously unreported, include checks of student phone records and scouring of personal accounts on Chinese and U.S. social media platforms for anything that might raise concerns about students’ intentions in the United States, including affiliations with Government organizations, a U.S. official and three congressional and university sources told Reuters.

U.S. law enforcement is also expected to provide training to academic officials on how to detect spying and cyber theft that it provides to people in government, a senior U.S. official said.

“Every Chinese student who China sends here has to go through a party and government approval process,” one senior U.S. official told Reuters. “You may not be here for espionage purposes as traditionally defined, but no Chinese student who’s coming here is untethered from the state.”    

The White House declined comment on the new student restrictions under review. Asked what consideration was being given to additional vetting, a State Department official said: “The department helps to ensure that those who receive U.S. visas are eligible and pose no risk to national interests.” 

The Chinese government has repeatedly insisted that Washington has exaggerated the problem for political reasons.

China’s ambassador to the United States told Reuters the accusations were groundless and “very indecent.”

“Why should anybody accuse them as spies? I think that this is extremely unfair for them,” Ambassador Cui Tiankai said.  

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet at a G20 summit in Argentina this week. 

Greater scrutiny of Chinese students would be part of a broader effort to confront Beijing over what Washington sees as the use of sometimes illicit methods for acquiring rapid technological advances that China has made a national priority. The world’s two biggest economies also are in a trade war and increasingly at odds over diplomatic and economic issues.  

Any changes would seek to strike a balance between preventing possible espionage while not scaring away talented students in a way that would harm universities financially or undercut technological innovation, administration officials said.  

But that is exactly what universities – ranging from the Ivy League’s Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities to state-funded schools such as University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – fear most. They have spent much of 2018 lobbying against what they see as a broad effort by the administration to crack down on Chinese students with the change in visas this summer and a fear of more restrictions to come.  

At stake is about $14 billion of economic activity, most of it tuition and other fees generated annually from the 360,000 Chinese nationals who attend U.S. schools that could erode if these students look elsewhere for higher education abroad. 

Many Ivy League schools and other top research universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, have become so alarmed that they regularly share strategies to thwart the effort, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

U.S. authorities see ample reason for closer scrutiny, pointing to recently publicized cases of espionage, or alleged espionage, linked to former students from Louisiana State University and Duke University and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.               

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate hearing this year that his agents across the country are seeing “non-traditional collectors (of intelligence), especially in the academic setting.”

Stop short of a ban

White House adviser Stephen Miller proposed a ban early this year on student visas for all Chinese nationals, according a report to the Financial Times, and confirmed by Reuters. 

But the new measures would stop well short of such a ban, according to multiple sources. Terry Branstad, a former Iowa governor who is now ambassador to China, helped convince Trump to reject the Miller idea during a meeting in the Oval Office in the spring, one administration source said. Branstad argued that a ban would hurt schools across the United States, not just the elite universities many Republicans view as excessively liberal.  

U.S. Representative Judy Chu of California warned the administration was at risk of overreach.  

“Our national security concerns need to be taken seriously, but I am extremely concerned about the stereotyping and scapegoating of Chinese students and professors,” Chu, a Democrat who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said in a telephone interview.  

Already worried about restrictions, universities have mounted a pressure campaign focused on the White House, State Department and Congress and held multiple meetings with the FBI, according to lobbyists, university officials and congressional aides.  

Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, told Reuters that Chinese students risked becoming “pawns” in the U.S.-China rivalry.   

MIT president L. Rafael Reif, and Andrew Hamilton, the president of New York University, are among several top university officials who published opinion columns recently addressing the perceived growing threat to their Chinese students. 

Reif said that academic institutions recognize the threat of espionage, but any new policy needs to “protect the value of openness that has made American universities wellsprings of discovery and powerhouses of innovation.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that new auto tariffs were “being studied now,” asserting they could prevent job cuts such as the U.S. layoffs and plant closures that General Motors Co. announced this week. 

Trump said on Twitter that the 25 percent tariff placed on imported pickup trucks and commercial vans from markets outside North America in the 1960s had long boosted U.S. vehicle production. 

“If we did that with cars coming in, many more cars would be built here,” Trump said, “and G.M. would not be closing their plants in Ohio, Michigan & Maryland.” 

The United States has a 2.5 percent tariff on imported cars and sport utility vehicles from markets outside North America and South Korea. The new North American trade deal exempts the first 2.6 million SUVs and passenger cars built in Mexico and Canada from new tariffs. 

Several automakers said privately on Wednesday that they feared GM’s action could prompt Trump to act faster than expected on new tariffs. 

GM did not directly comment on Trump’s tweets but reiterated that it was committed to investing in the United States. On Monday, the company said it would shutter five North American plants, stop building six low-selling passenger cars in North America and cut up to 15,000 jobs. The company has no plans to shift production of those vehicles to other markets. 

The administration has for months been considering imposing dramatic new tariffs on imported vehicles. 

The U.S. Commerce Department has circulated draft recommendations to the White House on its investigation into whether to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on imported cars and parts on national security grounds, Reuters reported earlier this month. 

“The President has great power on this issue – Because of the G.M. event, it is being studied now!” Trump said. 

Shock to industry

The prospect of tariffs of 25 percent on imported autos and parts has sent shock waves through the auto industry, with both U.S. and foreign-brand producers lobbying against it and warning that national security tariffs on EU and Japanese vehicles could dramatically raise the price of many vehicles. 

Trump has also harshly criticized GM for building cars in China. The United States slapped an additional 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made vehicles earlier this year, prompting China to retaliate. 

China currently imposes a 40 percent tariff on U.S. automobiles, while the United States has a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese vehicles. 

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement on Wednesday that he “will examine all available tools to equalize the tariffs applied to automobiles.” 

Additional tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles and parts would have a limited impact, said Kristin Dziczek, an economist at the Center for Automotive Research. She noted only a small number of vehicles were exported from China to the United States annually. 

The White House previously pledged not to move forward with imposing national security tariffs on the European Union or Japan while it was making constructive progress in trade talks. 

Trump wants the EU and Japan to buy more American-made vehicles. He wants the EU and Japan to make trade concessions, including lowering the EU’s 10 percent tariff on imported vehicles and cutting nontariff barriers. 

The White House in recent weeks has reached out to the chief executives of German automakers, including Daimler AG, MW AG and Volkswagen AG about meeting to discuss the status of auto trade.  
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appealed to G-20 leaders ahead of their meetings this week to cooperate more to address some of the planet’s most pressing issues. 

“Threats to human prosperity are becoming increasingly acute,” Guterres wrote in a five-page letter dated Nov. 16 and released by the U.N. on Wednesday. “More, rather than less, cooperation is needed,” he said.

Guterres detailed threats from global hunger to climate-related disasters to the need for empowering women and harnessing technology for good. He said multilateralism must be “preserved and renewed,” and he urged international support for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which he said “provide us with an agreed blueprint to tackle the most daunting challenges of our times.” 

Watch: What is the G-20?

The U.N. General Assembly adopted the SDGs in 2015. The 17 global goals provide a framework for ending extreme poverty and hunger, improving health and education, and protecting the planet, all by 2030.

“I hope leaders at the G-20 will give it a strong push forward,” Guterres told reporters ahead of his departure for the summit in Argentina.  

The U.N. chief is also grappling with a series of international crises and conflicts. At the top of the list is the nearly four-year-old war in Yemen that has left half that nation —14 million people— on the brink of starvation. 

“We are at a very crucial moment in relation to Yemen,” Guterres said in response to reporters’ questions. “I believe there is a chance to be able to start effective negotiations in Sweden early in December, but we are not yet there.”

His special envoy, Martin Griffiths, has been shuttling around the region talking to key players and trying to get them to the negotiating table in Sweden.Saudi Arabia, which leads the pro-government coalition bombing the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, will be represented at the G20 by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Asked if he would meet with the prince, who has come under international scrutiny for his possible role in the brutal murder of a Saudi dissident journalist, Guterres said he is ready to meet him. 

“I’m ready to discuss it with the crown prince or with any other Saudi officials, because I believe it is a very important objective at the present moment,” Guterres said. “If we are able to stop the Yemeni war, we will be stopping the most tragic humanitarian disaster we are facing in today’s world.”

Climate calls

The U.N. chief also made a big pitch for action on climate change.

“Climate action can no longer wait,” he wrote. “Decisive action to halt the progress of climate change is imperative.”

In 2015, leaders made ambitious commitments under the Paris Agreement to mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to its effects. China and the United States — the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — both joined the deal, but the U.S. under the Trump administration announced its intention to withdraw.

“The members of the G20 are responsible for more than three-quarters of greenhouse emissions,” Guterres told reporters. “Yet, it is equally true that G20 members have the power to bend the emissions curve. They also have the resources to provide the financing needed for both mitigation and adaptation,” he added. 

The U.N. chief has insisted that greening the global economy will be good for everyone, creating jobs and investment opportunities. 

After the G20, Guterres will travel to Katowice, Poland, for the Conference of the Parties (COP 24) to the Paris accord. 
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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell boosted U.S. stock markets on Wednesday when he said interest rates were “just below” estimates of a level that neither brakes nor boosts a healthy economy. Many took his comments as a signal that the Fed’s three-year tightening cycle is ending. 

The S&P 500 and Dow posted their biggest percentage gains in eight months, while the Nasdaq saw its largest advance in just over a month following Powell’s speech to the Economic Club of New York. 

Powell said that while “there was a great deal to like” about U.S. prospects, “our gradual pace of raising interest rates has been an exercise in balancing risks.” 

Earlier in the day, in its first-ever financial stability report, the Fed cautioned that trade tensions, Brexit and troubled emerging markets could rock a U.S. financial system where asset prices are “elevated.” 

‘Close to neutral’

“[Powell is] now acknowledging he’s close to neutral, which suggests maybe not quite as many rate hikes in the future as investors believed,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors in Chicago. “It’s certainly a change of language and welcome news to investors.” 

The U.S. Commerce Department affirmed that U.S. GDP grew in the third quarter at a 3.5 percent annual rate, but the goods trade deficit widened, consumer spending was revised lower and sales of new homes tumbled, suggesting clouds are gathering over what is now the second-longest economic expansion on record. 

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 617.7 points, or 2.5 percent, to 25,366.43, the S&P 500 gained 61.61 points, or 2.30 percent, to 2,743.78 and the Nasdaq Composite added 208.89 points, or 2.95 percent, to 7,291.59. 

Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, all but utilities were positive. Technology and consumer discretionary were the biggest percentage gainers, each up more than 3 percent. 

The S&P 500 Automobile & Components index was up 1.4 percent after President Donald Trump said he was studying new auto tariffs in the wake of General Motors Co.’s announcement that it would close plants and cut its workforce. 

Humana cuts forecast

Health insurer Humana Inc. cut its 2019 forecast for Medicare drug plan enrollment but upped its estimated enrollment in the company’s Medicare Advantage plan. Its stock ended the session up 6.2 percent. 

Salesforce.com Inc. beat analysts’ earnings estimates and forecast better-than-expected 2020 revenue, sending its shares up 10.3 percent. Other cloud software makers rose on the news, with the ISE Cloud Index gaining 3.5 percent. 

Microsoft Corp briefly surpassed Apple Inc. in market cap but Apple took back its lead by closing. Nevertheless, Microsoft closed 4.0 percent higher as it benefited from optimism regarding demand for cloud computing services. 

Among losers, Tiffany & Co. shares dropped 11.8 percent after the luxury retailer missed quarterly sales estimates on slowing Chinese demand. 

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.95-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 3.58-to-1 ratio favored advancers. 

The S&P 500 posted 17 new 52-week highs and six new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 37 new highs and 129 new lows. 

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 8.04 billion shares, compared with the 7.82 billion-share average over the last 20 trading days. 
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The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation on Tuesday.

A day after prosecutors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence, he adamantly denied a report in the Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange in March 2016. That’s the same month he joined the Trump campaign and that Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates in the campaign that sent the celebrity businessman to the White House.

At the same time, other figures entangled in the investigation, including Trump himself, have been scrambling to escalate attacks and allegations against prosecutors who have spent weeks working quietly behind the scenes.

Besides denying he’d ever met Assange, Manafort, who is currently in jail, said he’d told special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors the truth in weeks of questioning. And WikiLeaks said Manafort had never met with Assange, offering to bet London’s Guardian newspaper “a million dollars and its editor’s head.”

Assange, whose organization published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign in 2016, is in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London under a claim of asylum.

It is unclear what prosecutors contend Manafort lied about, though they’re expected to make a public filing ahead of sentencing that could offer answers.

Dissolution of the plea deal could be a devastating outcome for a defendant who suddenly admitted guilt last September after months of maintaining his innocence and who bet on his cooperation getting him a shorter sentence. But it’s also a potentially major setback for investigators given that Manafort steered the campaign during a vital stretch of 2016, including a time when prosecutors say Russian intelligence was working to sway the election in Trump’s favor.

The prosecutors’ terse three-page filing underscored their exasperation not only at Manafort’s alleged deception but also at the loss of an important witness present for key moments under investigation, including a Trump Tower meeting at which Trump’s oldest son expected to receive “dirt” about Democrat Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

“The fact is, they wanted his cooperation. They wanted him to truthfully reveal what he knew, so they’re not getting what they wanted,”said Washington defense lawyer Peter Zeidenberg. “This isn’t like a good development where they’re clapping their hands and saying, ‘Now we get to crush this guy.'”

Manafort’s motivation, if indeed he lied to Mueller’s team, also was unclear.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a telephone interview that Trump and his lawyers agree a presidential pardon should not be considered “now.”

However, he added, “The president could consider it at an appropriate time as Manafort has the same rights as any American.”

The Monday night revelation of the Mueller filing on Manafort came at a delicate time for investigators, who have gone months without any new charges and continue to probe possible links between Trump associates and WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that released tens of thousands of Democratic emails stolen by Russian spies during the 2016 campaign.

As Trump continues raging against the investigation — he tweeted Tuesday that Mueller was doing “TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice system” — others in the crosshairs have filled the vacuum of Mueller’s recent silence by publicly declaring their innocence, accusing prosecutors of coercing testimony or tempting fate by turning aside negotiations.

An associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone is contesting a grand jury subpoena in court. Jerome Corsi said Monday he was rejecting a plea offer and told CNN that being questioned was like being “interrogated as a POW in the Korean War.”

Stone, under investigation himself for connections to WikiLeaks, has repeatedly disparaged Mueller’s investigation and said Monday his friend Corsi was at risk for prosecution “not for lying but for refusing to lie.”

That statement called to mind a Trump tweet from earlier this month in which he stated without evidence that Mueller’s investigators were “screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.”

Manafort, for his part, had been quiet in public since pleading guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy against the United States. He has met repeatedly since then with investigators.

He remained in the spotlight Tuesday when the Guardian newspaper published a report saying he had secretly met Assange within days or weeks of being brought aboard the Trump campaign. The report suggested a direct connection between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

The Guardian, which did not identify the sources for its reporting, said Manafort met with Assange “around March 2016” — the same month that Russian hackers began their all-out effort to steal emails from the Clinton campaign.

Manafort called the story “totally false and deliberately libelous,” saying in a statement that he had never met Assange or anyone close to him.

The Guardian cited unidentified sources as saying Manafort first met Assange at the embassy in 2013, a year after Assange took refuge there to avoid being extradited to Sweden over sex crime allegations.

The newspaper said Manafort returned in 2015 and 2016 and that its sources had “tentatively dated” the final visit to March.

There was no detail on what might have been discussed.

The Trump campaign announced Manafort’s hiring on March 29, 2016, and he served as the convention manager tasked with lining up delegates for the Republican National Convention. He was promoted to chairman that May.

An AP investigation into Russian hacking showed that government-aligned cyberspies began an aggressive effort to penetrate the Clinton campaign’s email accounts on March 10, 2016.

Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed criminal charges against Assange, though it’s unclear what the case involves. Prosecutors were in court Tuesday arguing against unsealing any charge.

Meanwhile, a judge may soon set a sentencing date for Manafort whose hopes for leniency now appear dashed.

“The cooperating defendant usually is very aware of what’s at stake,” said Shanlon Wu, who represented Manafort’s onetime co-defendant Rick Gates. “What I always say to any client of mine who’s contemplating that — there is no going back.”

“It’s like being a little bit pregnant,” he added. “There’s no such thing.”
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Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive Mississippi runoff Tuesday, surviving a video-recorded remark decried as racist and defeating a former federal official who hoped to become the state’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction.

The runoff was rocked by the video, in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” A separate video showed her talking about “liberal folks” and making it “just a little more difficult” for them to vote.

The comments by Hyde-Smith, who is white, made Mississippi’s history of racist lynchings a theme of the runoff and spurred many black voters to return to the polls Tuesday.

In the aftermath of the video, Republicans worried they could face a repeat of last year’s special election in Alabama, in which a flawed Republican candidate handed Democrats a reliable GOP Senate seat in the Deep South. The GOP pumped resources into Mississippi, and President Donald Trump made a strong effort on behalf of Hyde-Smith, holding last-minute rallies in Mississippi on Monday.

The contest caps a campaign season that exposed persistent racial divisions in America — and the willingness of some political candidates to exploit them to win elections. With Hyde-Smith’s victory, Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats. The GOP lost control of the House, where Democrats will assume the majority in January.

In the final weeks of the runoff, Hyde-Smith’s campaign said the remark about making voting difficult was a joke. She said the “public hanging” comment was “an exaggerated expression of regard” for a fellow cattle rancher. During a televised debate nine days after the video was publicized, she apologized to “anyone that was offended by my comments,” but also said the remark was used as a “weapon” against her.

Democratic opponent Mike Espy, 64, a former U.S. agriculture secretary, replied: “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but I know what came out of your mouth.”

Addressing his supporters Tuesday night, Espy said: “While this is not the result we were hoping for, I am proud of the historic campaign we ran and grateful for the support we received across Mississippi. We built the largest grassroots organization our state has seen in a generation.”

The “public hanging” comment also resonated with his supporters.

Some corporate donors, including Walmart, requested refunds on their campaign contributions to Hyde-Smith after the videos surfaced.

Hyde-Smith was in her second term as Mississippi agriculture commissioner when Republican Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to temporarily succeed GOP Sen. Thad Cochran. The longtime lawmaker retired in April amid health concerns.

The win makes Hyde-Smith, 59, the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi.

Hyde-Smith and Espy emerged from a field of four candidates Nov. 6 to advance to Tuesday’s runoff. Her win allows her to complete the final two years of Cochran’s six-year term.
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To hear President Donald Trump tell it, he was made for a moment like this: A high-stakes face-off. A ticking clock. A cagey adversary.

The man who calls himself a supreme dealmaker will have the opportunity this week to put himself to the test. The question is whether he can defuse a trade war with China that is shaking financial markets and threatening the global economy — and perhaps achieve something approximating a breakthrough.

Trump is to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Friday and Saturday. Unless the two leaders can achieve a truce of sorts, their conflicts will likely escalate: On Jan. 1, the tariffs Trump has imposed on many Chinese goods are set to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent, and Beijing would likely retaliate.

Most analysts have said they doubt Trump and Xi will reach any overarching deal that would settle the dispute for good. The optimistic view is that the two sides may agree to a cease-fire that would buy time for more substantive talks and postpone the scheduled escalation in U.S import taxes.

Yet no one really knows. Each side seems prepared to wait out the other in a conflict that could persist indefinitely.

In advance of the meeting, Trump has sounded his usual note of boastful confidence. Speaking to reporters on Thanksgiving Day, he said:

“I’m very prepared. You know, it’s not like, ‘Oh, gee, I’m going to sit down and study.’ I know every stat. I know it better than anybody knows it. And my gut has always been right.”

Most trade analysts are skeptical that any significant agreement is likely this week.

“Expectations should be very low,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Institute and a former U.S. trade official who negotiated with China. “We need to be very clear-eyed. It’s going to be a very difficult negotiation. The issues at hand don’t lend themselves to quick solutions.”

The trade war erupted last fall after Trump imposed import taxes on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and Beijing retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports. The justification for the U.S. move, according to Trump, is that Beijing has long deployed predatory tactics in its drive to supplant America’s technological dominance. The administration alleges — and many trade experts agree — that Beijing hacks into U.S. companies’ networks to steal trade secrets and forces American and other foreign companies to hand over sensitive technology as the price of access to China’s market.

Beijing disputes those allegations and asserts that Trump’s sanctions are merely an effort to hinder an ambitious rival.

Besides the scheduled escalation in U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods — an additional $50 billion in Chinese imports already face the higher tax — another threat looms: Trump has threatened to tax $267 billion more in Chinese imports. At that point, just about everything Beijing ships to the United States would face a higher import tax.

Growing concerns that the trade war will increasingly hurt corporate earnings and the U.S. economy are a key reason why U.S. stock prices have been sinking. As of Friday’s close, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has shed roughly 10 of its value since setting a record high Sept. 20.

Joining other forecasters, economists at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development last week downgraded their outlook for global economic growth next year to 3.5 percent from a previous 3.7 percent. In doing so, they cited the trade conflict as well as political uncertainty.

Some big U.S. companies, in reporting quarterly earnings in October, warned that they were absorbing higher costs from Trump’s increased tariffs, which have been imposed not only on Chinese goods but also on imported steel and other goods from other countries.

“We need some certainty,” said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council and a former American diplomat. “The U.S. and China cannot go into a trade war and not affect global markets … We need to resolve our differences.”

Yet as Trump and Xi prepare to meet, the backdrop is hardly encouraging. Acrimony between the two sides disrupted this month’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea. The 21 APEC countries, torn by differences between Beijing and Washington, failed to agree on a declaration on world trade for the first time in nearly three decades. Vice President Mike Pence and Xi sniped at each other in speeches.

Then last week, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer issued a report charging China’s efforts to steal U.S. trade secrets have “increased in frequency and sophistication” this year despite American sanctions.

“China fundamentally has not altered its acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation, and indeed appears to have taken further unreasonable actions in recent months,” the report concluded.

The tenor of the report suggested that the United States would take a hard line into this week’s talks. In the meantime, “the amount of uncertainty is unprecedented and very disquieting to the markets,” said Allen of the U.S.-China Business Council.

Trump himself sought Monday to increase the pressure on China. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said it was “highly unlikely” that he would agree to Beijing’s request to suspend the tariff hikes that are set to take effect Jan. 1. And he repeated his threat to target an additional $267 billion in Chinese imports with tariffs of 10 percent or 25 percent.

Clouding the outlook are mixed messages from the Trump administration. The White House appears divided between hawks like Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, and free traders like the top White House economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. On Nov. 9, Navarro delivered a combative speech suggesting that Trump didn’t care what Wall Street thought of his confrontational China policy.

Four days later, Kudlow went on CNBC and dismissed Navarro’s remarks as “way off base.”‘

“They were not authorized by anybody,” Kudlow said. “I actually think he did the president a great disservice.”

Regardless of which approach Trump takes to Buenos Aires, Trump and Xi don’t have to resolve their differences this week. A cease-fire that suspends any further escalation of the U.S. tariffs wouldn’t be unprecedented. The administration and the European Union, for instance, reached a truce last summer that suspended threatened U.S. tariffs on European auto imports.

“My personal guess — and I’m sticking my neck out here — is that there will be some kind of cease-fire agreed to,” said Matthew Goodman, a senior adviser on Asian economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Goodman noted that Trump appears concerned about tumbling stock prices, and Xi is contending with a decelerating Chinese economy. A truce would bring at least a temporary calm.

“No one is expecting they will come out with a solid agreement,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “What the market wants — what the market needs — is a sense that they are negotiating and that the negotiations will continue.”
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The U.S. military in Afghanistan says three of its service members were killed and three others wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded near the troubled central eastern city of Ghazni.

An American contractor was also wounded in the blast.

A brief statement issued in Kabul said, “The wounded service members and contractor were evacuated and are receiving medical care.”

It did not share further details.

Tuesday’s fatalities bring to 11 the number of American soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan this year.

Hours earlier, NATO’s Resolute Support mission clarified its investigation into Saturday’s killing of a U.S. soldier, saying Sgt. Leandro Jasso was “likely accidentally shot” by an Afghan partner.

There are no indications he was shot intentionally,” the mission said in a statement. It added the U.S. casualty occurred during an operation to eliminate al-Qaida militants in the southwestern Afghan province of Nimroz, next to the border with Iran.

“Early interviews indicate the tragic accident occurred when the partnered force became engaged in a close-quarter battle during an assault on one of multiple barricaded al Qaida shooters,” the statement noted.

It quoted General Scott Miller, U.S. commander of the international military coalition, as saying that “the loss of Sgt. Jasso is felt by his family and loved ones, by all who served with him and by all on this mission to protect our country and our allies.”

There are around 14,000 American soldiers fighting terrorist groups and advising and training Afghan forces battling the Taliban insurgency.
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