THE DAILY EDGE: 15 MAY 2020

VIRUS UPDATE

• Spain imposes quarantine and extends restrictions to June 15
• South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control & Prevention says coronavirus cases linked to a nightclub in Itaewon increased to 153 as of noon Friday. Among them, 90 are club visitors and 63 are their family members and co-workers.
• Italy will allow citizens to move freely between its 20 regions starting June 3, according to a draft decree seen by Bloomberg, as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government opens up the country after more than two months of a stringent lockdown. Retail stores and other businesses will reopen on May 18.
• Spanish antibody study suggests 5% of population affected by coronavirus Preliminary results from a nationwide coronavirus antibody study showed on Wednesday that about 5% of the overall Spanish population had contracted the novel virus – about 10 times more than the tally of diagnosed cases suggests. “There is no herd immunity in Spain.”
• Texas cases see record spike 2 weeks into reopening. The Houston Chronicle reports that the state recorded 58 deaths yesterday, breaking the record of 50 deaths set late last month.
• Gilead, the American pharmaceutical firm that created the antiviral remdesivir, licensed its production to five generic manufacturing companies, which will allow the drug to be in 127 countries. The deals are temporarily royalty-free.
• China has a total of five possible vaccines for the coronavirus already in human trials and more will be approved next month, signaling the Asian nation’s rapid progress in the race for immunization. The five vaccines have been tested on more than 2,000 people in phase II trials which are expected to finish in July, said Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission, at a press briefing on Friday in Beijing. Phase II is the second of three phases of human trials that medications must go through before being approved for general use. No serious side effects have been reported yet among phase II patients, said Zeng, adding that more vaccine candidates will be approved to go into human trials in June.
• The New York Stock Exchange will reopen its trading floor later this month, two months after the coronavirus pandemic forced its closure. Only a limited number of traders will return to the floor when it reopens May 26, and they will be required to wear masks and abide by social-distancing rules to limit the spread of Covid-19. People coming to work on the floor won’t be allowed to take New York City public transit to get there .
• A new study by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania found that ordinary speech can emit small respiratory droplets that linger in the air for at least eight minutes and potentially much longer. These droplets are likely infectious, and help explain why the virus is so infectious in enclosed spaces like cruise ships and airplanes.
• New study sheds light on how loud talks can spread virus

PANDENOMICS

• Coronavirus May Cost Global Economy $8.8 Trillion A shorter containment period of three months coupled with strong policy measures could limit the impact to $4.1 trillion, or 4.5% of world output, the ADB said in a report on Friday. The new cost estimates are more than twice the range of $2 trillion to $4.1 trillion the development bank gave April 3.
• Nearly three million workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, bringing total applications in two months to 36.5 million.
• 
• About 84% of Indian households saw their incomes fall last month under the world’s strictest shelter-at-home rules, and many won’t survive much longer without assistance, a study shows.
• German GDP shrank 2.2% in the first quarter. Statistics Netherlands reported on Friday that the Dutch economy contracted 1.7% in the first quarter. Preliminary estimates published two weeks ago showed the Italian economy declined 4.7% during the first quarter, France posted a historic contraction of 5.8% and the Spanish economy plunged a record 5.2%.
• Coronavirus Drives 75% of Small Businesses to Seek Federal Aid
• States Were Prudent; Here’s Why They Need a Bailout Anyway Without federal help, frugal and profligate states alike will have to tighten their belts, deepening the recession and slowing the recovery, which is not in the federal government’s interest
• Lockdowns have turbocharged a shift to e-commerce that will put thousands of stores out of business.
• Swamped bankruptcy courts threaten US recovery
• Foxconn Technology Group’s first-quarter net profit slumped 90% from a year earlier, after Apple Inc.’s biggest supplier was forced to shut down plants for weeks during the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in China. Revenue fell 12% to NT$929.13 billion, the company said in a stock-exchange filing Friday.
• McDonald’s is asking restaurant owners in the U.S. to make dozens of changes to ease coronavirus concerns, including commitments to clean bathrooms every half-hour and digital kiosks after each order.
• Ahold Delhaize Accelerates Automation as Coronavirus Pressures Workforce Grocer Ahold Delhaize says it is accelerating development of a robotic arm because Covid-19 created an urgent need for technology to help workers clean stores and process orders.
• Japan Banks See Bad-Loan Costs at Decade-High $10 Billion One bright sign for investors is the lenders all pledged to maintain dividend payments in the current fiscal year. That confirmed analysts’ expectations even after some overseas rivals were forced to curb or withhold payouts at the behest of regulators.

China’s Cautious Economic Reboot Is a Warning for the World

China has a lesson for the world: An economy is harder to reboot than it is to shut down.

Fresh data for the month of April, covering a period when the government pushed hard to reopen the economy as the coronavirus came under control, show that retail sales continue to fall as consumers shun restaurants and curb spending on other non-essential items. (…)

Retail sales slid 7.5% though, more than the projected 6% drop, as shoppers preferred to avoid crowds and instead move their purchases online. Restaurant and catering receipts slumped by 31.1% from a year earlier, after a 46.8% collapse in March. (…)

PANDEMONIUM

Trump threatens to cut off relations with China New rhetorical blast comes as US increases criticism of Beijing over the coronavirus

The headline above is from the FT. This is from ZeroHedge:

Adding to the anti-China rhetoric this morning, President Trump allegedly mused to Bartiromo hat he “wonders what would happen if the US cut ties with China.”

Adding about his “good friend” President Xi: “Right now, I don’t want to speak to him…We could cut off the whole relationship, if we did, what would happen?” Trump says of China. “You’d save $500 billion”. In addition to once again hinting at cancelling Treasury debt held by China, Trump also said he would prefer “a stronger dollar” – sending the greenback higher, as it marked an unusual u-turn from Trump’s typical insistence that rates are too high and the dollar is too strong.

China Gives Fresh Details of Virus Response, Denies Cover Up

China said it did not know how infectious the new coronavirus was until Jan. 19, pushing back against accusations that it intentionally withheld information about the severity of the outbreak in Wuhan. While officials knew that there were signs of human-to-human transmission earlier, it was hard to ascertain the new virus’s level of contagiousness, according to Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission. There are diseases like HIV that while infectious, are not easily transmitted from person to person, he said.

It was only on Jan. 19 that Chinese scientists concluded that the virus spreads easily among people and China released that information to the world the next day, Zeng said. The comments come as China faces growing blame for a delay in sounding the alarm about the coronavirus, which allowed people to spread it unwittingly for some time. Zeng was responding to an Associated Press report in April that cited confidential documents showing Chinese officials waited six days before President Xi Jinping warned the public of the dangers of the virus outbreak.

Giving a rundown of events since the crisis began, Zeng said that China concluded on Jan. 9 that it was dealing with a novel coronavirus and began developing test kits the next day. On Jan. 12, it informed the World Health Organization about the outbreak.

On Jan. 14, a national meeting of provincial health officials was held. “Many uncertainties remained. We understood there’s more research needed on human-to-human transmission and we couldn’t rule out the chance of a further spread of the virus,” said Zeng. “But we couldn’t reach conclusions to many questions.” (…)

• Fang Fang’s ‘Wuhan diary’ sparks tussle over virus narrative Chinese author’s account was hailed in China as the unofficial guide to the city’s suffering – before triggering a backlash

The English publication of a Chinese writer’s account of the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan has stoked a fierce debate over what happened in the city where the pandemic began. (…) For many in China, her entries, written in direct yet restrained prose, quickly became the go-to unofficial account of events unfolding in Wuhan, capturing in real time the bungled early response of Wuhan officials and the suffering and despair that followed. On Friday, a collection of Ms Fang’s essays and social media posts will be published in English as an ebook by HarperCollins. The work is expected to be translated into 15 languages. (…)

Virus Revives Worst-Case Scenarios for U.S.-China Relationship

U.S. moves to cut Huawei off from global chip suppliers

(…) The U.S. Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule to “strategically target Huawei’s acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. software and technology.”

The department added the “announcement cuts off Huawei’s efforts to undermine U.S. export controls.”

The rule change is a blow to Huawei, the world’s no. 2 smartphone maker, as well as to Taiwan’s TSMC (2330.TW), a major producer of chips for Huawei’s HiSilicon unit as well as mobile phone rivals Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O). (…)

The Trump administration has taken a series of steps aimed at Chinese telecom firms in recent weeks. (…)

China’s Clout Loses Punch as Trading Partners Push Back Over Coronavirus Australia and other countries spar with Beijing over its handling of the pandemic

(…) In recent days, Beijing has threatened tariffs on barley—one of Australia’s top agricultural exports to China—escalating a trade dispute that began in 2018. On Tuesday, Chinese authorities banned four Australian slaughterhouses from importing meat into the country, citing inspection and quarantine violations. A Foreign Ministry spokesman denied the move was meant as economic coercion.

Beijing’s diplomatic and propaganda efforts have grown more aggressive in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but so too has the pushback.

About a dozen African countries summoned Chinese ambassadors last month to protest pandemic controls that allegedly discriminated against Africans in China. India recently stepped up scrutiny of Chinese investment, concerned state-backed entities could swoop on local firms weakened by the pandemic.

Japan, which counts China as its biggest trading partner, set aside $2.2 billion of its pandemic support package to help Japanese companies address chokepoints in their supply chains, which could help them diversify in cases where a product is sourced solely in China. (…)

China buys more than a quarter of everything Australia sells to the world. (…) A new poll by Sydney-based policy think tank the Lowy Institute this week found 68% of Australians now feel “less favorable toward China’s system of government” when thinking about China’s handling of the outbreak. (…)

“A lot of the business community has a long record of wanting to ignore Chinese behavior,” said Mr. Shoebridge, a director of defense, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a security think tank. “It is harder to run those arguments with the public because of the pandemic. There is a public expectation that we reduce the leverage that China has over Australia.” (…)

Taiwan Firm to Build Chip Factory in U.S. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of silicon chips, said it would spend $12 billion to build a chip factory in Arizona, as U.S. concerns grow about dependence on Asia for the technology.

(…) Construction will begin next year with production targeted for 2024, the company said in a statement.

TSMC’s new plant would make chips branded as having 5-nanometer transistors, the tiniest, fastest and most power-efficient ones manufactured today. TSMC just started rolling out 5-nanometer chips at a factory in Taiwan in recent months.

TSMC said the plant would make 20,000 wafers a month, making it a relatively small facility for a company that made more than 12 million wafers last year alone. (…) TSMC said the factory would employ more than 1,600 people, the company said. (…)

TSMC had been talking to U.S. officials as well as to Apple Inc., one of its largest customers, about building a chip factory in the U.S. for some time, but the conversations gained momentum recently as concerns mounted about the fragility of the Asian supply chain, according to people familiar with the matter. (…)

Tesla’s secret batteries aim to rework the math for electric cars and the grid

Electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) plans to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in its Model 3 sedan in China later this year or early next that it expects will bring the cost of electric vehicles in line with gasoline models, and allow EV batteries to have second and third lives in the electric power grid. (…)

New, low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles of use and enable electric Teslas to sell profitably for the same price or less than a gasoline vehicle are just part of Musk’s agenda, people familiar with the plans told Reuters.

With a global fleet of more than 1 million electric vehicles that are capable of connecting to and sharing power with the grid, Tesla’s goal is to achieve the status of a power company, competing with such traditional energy providers as Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG_pa.A) and Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T), those sources said.

The new “million mile” battery at the center of Tesla’s strategy was jointly developed with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) (300750.SZ) and deploys technology developed by Tesla in collaboration with a team of academic battery experts recruited by Musk, three people familiar with the effort said. (…)

Power Struggle at Russian Newspaper Shows Kremlin’s Widening Influence One of the country’s last independent voices could soon be stifled as President Putin expands political control.