市场消息

LONDON (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth has sent a delicately coded message to Britain’s factious political class over Brexit, urging lawmakers to seek common ground and grasp the big picture to resolve the crisis.

With the clock ticking down to March 29, the date set in law for Britain to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom is in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project it joined in 1973.

While Elizabeth, 92, did not mention Brexit explicitly in an annual speech to her local Women’s Institute in Norfolk, the monarch said every generation faced “fresh challenges and opportunities.”

“As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture,” the queen said.

Though steeped in the conventional language the queen has made her hallmark, the remarks in the context of Britain’s crisis are a signal to politicians to sort out the turmoil that has pushed the world’s fifth largest economy to the brink.

As head of state, the queen remains neutral on politics in public and is unable to vote, though ahead of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence she made a delicately crafted plea for Scots to think carefully about their future.

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Friday the economy and business are facing headwinds from the U.S.-China trade dispute as well as his country’s own diplomatic tensions with China.

Morneau, speaking to Reuters TV on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that Canada wanted to ensure that both its central bank and finance ministry have tools to deal with any economic challenges.

MEXICO CITY/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. government will return the first group of migrants seeking asylum in the United States to the Mexican border city of Tijuana on Friday, U.S. and Mexican officials said, marking the start of a major policy shift by the Trump administration.

The policy dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) and first announced on Dec. 20 will return non-Mexican migrants who cross the U.S. southern border back to wait in Mexico while their asylum requests are processed in U.S. immigration courts.

The plan is aimed at curbing the increasing number of families arriving mostly from Central America who say they fear returning to their home countries due to threats of violence. The Trump administration says many of the claims are not valid.

The program will apply to arriving migrants who ask for asylum at ports of entry or who are caught crossing illegally and say they are afraid to return home.

Children traveling on their own and some migrants from “vulnerable populations” could be excluded on a case-by-case basis, the Department of Homeland Security said in a fact sheet.

“The MPP will provide a safer and more orderly process that will discourage individuals from attempting illegal entry and making false claims to stay in the U.S., and allow more resources to be dedicated to individuals who legitimately qualify for asylum,” the DHS said.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European Central Bank left its policy stance unchanged as expected on Thursday, keeping a rate hike later this year on the table even as the euro zone economy suffers its biggest slowdown in half a decade.

Having ended a landmark 2.6 trillion euro ($3 trillion) bond purchase scheme just weeks ago, the ECB said it still expected to keep interest rates at record lows ‘through’ the summer, sticking with its long-standing guidance even though markets now see a much later move.

But ECB President Mario Draghi may still acknowledge a sharp slowdown in economic growth, raising the prospect that any further policy normalization could be delayed and suggesting that the bank’s next move might even be an easing of policy rather than a tightening.

Germany, France and Italy, the euro zone’s biggest economies, barely grew in the fourth quarter of 2018 and survey data showed on Thursday business activity across the euro zone expanded at the slowest pace since 2013 at the start of this year.

Investors now see a hike only in mid-2020, keeping borrowing costs low, even without explicit commentary from the ECB.

With Thursday’s decision, the ECB’s deposit rate, now its main benchmark, remains at -0.40 percent while the main refinancing rate, its key rate during normal times, stands at 0.00 percent.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Top U.S. universities are ditching telecom equipment made by Huawei Technologies and other Chinese companies to avoid losing federal funding under a new national security law backed by the Trump administration.

U.S. officials allege Chinese telecom manufacturers are producing equipment that allows their government to spy on users abroad, including Western researchers working on leading-edge technologies. Beijing and the Chinese companies have repeatedly denied such claims.

The University of California at Berkeley has removed a Huawei video-conferencing system, a university official said, while the UC campus in Irvine is working to replace five pieces of Chinese-made audio-video equipment. Other schools, such as the University of Wisconsin, are in the process of reviewing their suppliers.

UC San Diego, meanwhile, has gone a step further. The university in August said that, for at least six months, it would not accept funding from or enter into agreements with Huawei, ZTE Corporation (000063.SZ) and other Chinese audio-video equipment providers, according to an internal memo. The document, reviewed by Reuters, said the moratorium would last through February 12, when the university would revisit its options.

These actions, not previously reported, signal universities’ efforts to distance themselves from Chinese companies that for years have supplied them with technical equipment and sponsored academic research, but which are now in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

The moves are a response to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Donald Trump signed into law in August. A provision of that legislation bans recipients of federal funding from using telecommunications equipment, video recording services and networking components made by Huawei or ZTE. Also on the blacklist are Chinese audio-video equipment providers Hikvision, Hytera, Dahua Technology and their affiliates.

U.S. authorities fear the equipment makers will leave a back door open to Chinese military and government agents seeking information. U.S. universities that fail to comply with the NDAA by August 2020 risk losing federal research grants and other government funding.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Midwestern states hit hardest by job automation in recent decades, places that were pivotal to U.S. President Donald Trump’s election, will be under the most pressure again as advances in artificial intelligence reshape the workplace, according to a new study by Brookings Institution researchers.

The spread of computer-driven technology into middle-wage jobs like trucking, construction, and office work, and some lower-skilled occupations like food preparation and service, will also further divide the fast-growing cities where skilled workers are moving and other areas, and separate the high- skilled workers whose jobs are less prone to automation from everyone else regardless of location, the study found.

States with more manufacturing and more low-wage, lower-skilled jobs may see more positions displaced as automation and artificial intelligence spread.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said that the “backstop” provision in the agreement for Britain’s withdrawal from the bloc could not be time-limited, since that would defeat its purpose of guaranteeing no hard Irish border.

Interviewed on German public radio on Thursday, Barnier added that it would be impossible for London to reach a separate deal with Dublin on the border, since Ireland’s border would also become the border to the EU and the internal market.

“A backstop agreement is about reassuring the Irish that there will be no hard border,” Barnier said. “Remember, it’s not just about Ireland, every good crossing is entering the single market: it affects Germany, France, Poland.”

The deal he and British officials had negotiated was the best one available given Britain’s “famous red lines”, he said, adding that other options would become available if those changed.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will step up fiscal spending this year to support its economy, focusing on further cuts in taxes and fees for small firms, finance ministry officials said on Wednesday.

Mounting pressure on the world’s second-biggest economy pushed growth last year to its lowest since 1990 even as Beijing stepped up stimulus measures and spurred banks to lend more.

The government may unveil more fiscal stimulus during the annual parliamentary meeting in March, including bigger tax cuts and more spending on infrastructure projects, economists say.

DAVOS (Reuters) – As businessman and bankers sip their morning coffee in a hotel lobby, admiring the Swiss Alps, a disturbing scene is unfolding in the car park below: men with guns are ordering people onto their knees and stealing their watches.

“A Day in the Life of a Refugee”, an hour-long simulation that aims to give people a taste of being an asylum-seeker, has been held for the past 11 years at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Its organizers say it has never been needed more than now.

With anti-immigration policies gaining major support across Western countries, the aid group that runs the simulation wants politicians, officials and chief executives attending Davos to understand the issue from the frightening perspective of a refugee.

“It’s more effective now, the message,” said Sally Begbie, director of Hong Kong-based Crossroads Foundation. “We bring it to Davos because there are people making policy here. We want to give them a brief opportunity to step in a refugee’s shoes.”

Summit organizers have also included refugees in the main program — a long-term resident of a Kenyan refugee camp is a co-chair this year. But beyond Davos, refugee groups say doors are closing, especially in Europe.