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Global Trade to Be Weaker Than Expected, W.T.O. Says

April 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

GENEVA – Global trade will be weaker than expected this year as European economies struggle with their debt crisis, and will recover only slightly in 2014, the World Trade Organization said Wednesday.

The global trade body forecast in its annual report that trade would grow 3.3 percent during 2013, significantly less than the 4.5 percent it had earlier predicted.

That would be only a meager improvement from the 2 percent rise in 2012, a terrible year for global trade. Exports were ravaged then by the financial turmoil in the 17-country euro zone, economic aftershocks from Japan’s earthquake and nuclear crisis, and the impact of political unrest in the oil-rich Middle East.

The trade body had earlier forecast a 3.7 percent rise in trade in 2012, based on what a W.T.O. economist, Coleman Nee, described as assumptions that the European Union was ‘’getting its act together’’ financially.

In fact, the debt crisis continued and remains a source of uncertainty for the bloc, the world’s largest economic region.

Trade growth remains well below the 5.3 percent rate it averaged over the last 20 years, the organization said. The figures represent the total volume of merchandise exported across borders, accounting for changes in prices and exchange rates.

The World Trade Organization’s director-general, Pascal Lamy, said ‘’the final trade numbers for 2012 are quite sobering,’’ with developed economies notching a paltry 1 percent increase in their exports last year while shipments from developing economies grew 3.3 percent.

‘’The revival of the sovereign debt crisis in the middle of the year meant that the deceleration of trade was stronger than anticipated,’’ he said.

The disparity between developed and developing economies was still more dramatic on the import side, the figures show. Among developed economies, imports fell 0.1 percent in 2012, while they rose 4.6 percent among developing economies.

For 2014, Mr. Lamy said, trade was expected to rebound to ‘‘more like 5 percent growth,’’ close to the 5.2 percent rate seen in 2011.

The recent slowdown, he said, shows that ‘‘there is a need for more rules-based trade in order to reduce unemployment and to stimulate growth.’’

‘’The threat of protectionism may be greater now than at any time since the start of the crisis, since other policies to restore growth have been tried and found wanting,’’ Mr. Lamy added.

Measured in dollar terms, the total value of merchandise traded in 2012 was $18.3 trillion, essentially unchanged from the year earlier because of falling prices for traded goods like coffee, cotton, iron ore and coal.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/business/economy/global-trade-to-be-weaker-than-expected-wto-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Unemployment in Euro Zone Reaches a Record 12%

April 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Spending cuts and tax increases aimed at trimming debt and addressing the financial crises in bailed-out euro zone countries, and the rising rate of joblessness in much of the currency bloc, “are feeding off of each other,” said Mark Cliffe, chief economist at ING Group.

“It’s a bit of a vicious circle,” he said. “Europe is pursuing a policy that is self-evidently failing.”

The euro zone jobless rate rose to 12.0 percent in the first two months of the year, the latest in a series of record highs tracing to late 2011, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Tuesday.

The agency revised upward the January jobless rate for the euro zone from the previously reported 11.9 percent, itself a record. For the overall European Union, Eurostat said the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.

Both the jobless rates and the number of unemployed are the highest Eurostat has recorded in data that reach back to 1995, before the creation of the euro.

Europe’s rising unemployment is in increasingly stark contrast to the jobs recovery in the United States, where unemployment in February declined to 7.7 percent, the lowest level since late 2008. The consensus among economists surveyed by Reuters is for the U.S. economy to show a gain of 200,000 jobs in March, after a gain of 236,000 in February. The labor data will be released Friday.

With most European economies either contracting or barely growing, any hiring that is being done by Europe’s companies tends to be taking place elsewhere. Volkswagen, aspiring to become the world’s largest automaker within a few years, is planning to hire 50,000 workers by 2018, raising its total work force to 600,000 employees, according to Bernd Osterloh, the chairman of the German carmaker’s workers council.

But the company wants to add production where the demand is.

“Volkswagen is growing, and is therefore continuing to hire in production,” Mr. Osterloh said in an article that appeared Tuesday in the German daily Handelsblatt. More of the new employees will be added in China than in Europe, he told the newspaper.

The European car market, meanwhile, is at its lowest level in nearly two decades — a side effect of the weak regional economy and the growing number of people without paychecks to spend.

After Greece’s staggering debt problems became apparent in 2009, political leaders and the European Central Bank began demanding that member nations cut government spending and raise taxes to bring their budgets in line with European rules. Those efforts, along with a commitment from the E.C.B. to do whatever is necessary to defend the euro, have helped to ease the near-panic that has gripped the euro zone as recently as last year.

But lower government spending also reduces overall demand for goods and services, weakening the overall economy and the labor market.

In the absence of new measures to stimulate growth at the European and national levels, all attention will be focused Thursday on the governing council of the European Central Bank, which meets in Frankfurt to consider whether to maintain interest rates at their current record low or cut even further. Economists said that the data Tuesday would give the E.C.B. greater scope to cut its main interest rate target from the current 0.75 percent, but that the bank would probably hold its fire for now.

The jobless crisis is hitting hardest in the south of Europe. Eurostat said Greece, with its economy in free fall, had the euro zone’s highest unemployment rate ,at 26.4 percent in December, the latest month for which data are available. Among Greek youth, the jobless rate has hit a staggering level, 58.4 percent.

Spain, where the economy has contracted sharply after the collapse of the global credit bubble, posted the second-highest unemployment rate in the euro zone in February, at 26.3 percent.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/global/unemployment-in-euro-zone-reaches-a-record-high-of-12-percent.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Sarkozy Proposes New Tax Measures to Lower Debt

August 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — With sluggish growth and the European debt crisis threatening to deepen France’s budget deficit, the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday announced a wide-ranging series of tax measures intended to generate an extra 11 billion euros, about $15.9 billion, in revenues for 2012, an election year.

This year’s budget is also expected to be bolstered by an additional $1.4 billion, Prime Minister François Fillon said at an evening news conference.

Mindful of the downgrade of American debt this month and the troubles in other European economies, Mr. Sarkozy has said he is committed to hitting lower debt targets for the next three years in order to keep the confidence of the markets and maintain France’s triple-A credit rating. But with French growth forecasts slipping — Mr. Fillon announced newly reduced projections of 1.75 percent for 2011 and 2012 — the government has been obliged to scramble to find alternative revenue sources.

“We have set ourselves on a trajectory,” Mr. Fillon said. “That trajectory commits us.”

The measures largely involve the closing of tax loopholes for larger corporations and the wealthy, some of whom will also face a small tax increase. Mr. Fillon also announced a partial reversal of a much-trumpeted 2007 reform exempting workers and employers from taxes on overtime pay. As one of Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign promises — part of the inspiration for the campaign slogan “Work more to earn more” — the measure was designed to undermine the Socialist-passed 35-hour week.

The measures, which also include taxes on alcohol, tobacco and sugary drinks, were finalized at a last-minute cabinet meeting Wednesday. They will be debated by Parliament next month.

Hard times bring resentment, and even Mr. Sarkozy has felt the need to further tax the richest in France. The higher tax on the wealthy — a 3 percent increase on total annual income and capital gains of more than $720,000, to remain on the books until the deficit dips to just 3 percent of gross domestic product — is expected to bring in about $288 million annually. While that is not a major dent in the $15.9 billion Mr. Sarkozy is seeking to generate for the 2012 budget, it is likely to be welcomed by the public.

After a similar call by the American billionaire Warren E. Buffett, 16 of France’s wealthiest people signed a petition urging the government to tax them more to in a period of austerity. Signatories to the petition, published this week in Le Nouvel Observateur, include the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt (who was questioned by the police last year about suspected tax evasion), the company’s chief executive, Jean-Paul Agon, and the chief executive of Total, the energy company, Christophe de Margerie.

The group called for a “special contribution” in these difficult times but not a tax rate so high as to encourage the rich to quit France for overseas tax havens.

“We are conscious of having benefited from a French system and a European environment that we are attached to and which we hope to help maintain,” said the petition.

The current French budget was written with optimistic growth forecasts of 2 percent for 2011 and 2.25 percent for 2012. But G.D.P. grew only 0.9 percent in the first quarter this year, and not at all in the second, meaning that tax receipts will be lower and debt will be a higher proportion of the smaller G.D.P.

With a fiscal deficit of 7.1 percent of G.D.P. in 2010, the government has pledged to reduce it to 5.7 percent this year and to 4.6 percent in 2012, before reaching 3 percent in 2013. With the measures announced Wednesday, Mr. Fillon said France might exceed its goal for next year, reaching a deficit level of 4.5 percent.

In recent weeks, Mr. Sarkozy has also pressed France and his European counterparts for a “golden rule,” a constitutional amendment that would require future governments to seek to reach a balanced budget within five years. That stance, along with Wednesday’s tax measures, signal a shift in Mr. Sarkozy’s fiscal policy, political analysts say.

Several of Mr. Sarkozy’s emblematic policy stances have fallen victim to the economic downturn. In June, Mr. Sarkozy gave up on the “fiscal shield” he had championed, a rule ensuring that French taxpayers paid no more than 50 percent of their earnings to the state. Fiscal prudence and a firm and steady hand may prove a winning approach for 2012, Mr. Sarkozy has concluded, and he has already sought to cast his Socialist opponents as irresponsible spendthrifts.

They have countered by noting that Mr. Sarkozy’s calls for sober spending and national belt-tightening are hardly longstanding positions. Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist lawmaker and a candidate in the presidential primaries, has called the French deficit “the bastard child of the right, a mixture of ideological choices and payoffs for its electoral clients.” Such complaints are widespread among the opposition and much of the electorate, where Mr. Sarkozy’s approval ratings have lately hit historic lows.

In an op-ed article Wednesday in Le Monde, Jérôme Cahuzac, the Socialist president of the finance committee at the National Assembly, cast Mr. Sarkozy’s call for a “golden rule” as purely political. Since Mr. Sarkozy became president in 2007, the government has created more than $28 billion in additional tax exemptions, Mr. Cahuzac wrote, saying, “The authorities of the country ought, urgently, to cease playing with our collective destiny in the hopes of saving their own.”

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Markets Assault Spain and Italy Debt

August 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The grand European plan that came together barely two weeks ago, aimed at once again bailing out Greece and preventing its ills from spreading to bigger European economies, no longer seems so reassuring. Suddenly, the wolves are back at Europe’s door.

On Tuesday, traders renewed their attacks on Italy and Spain, the third- and fourth-largest economies in the 17-nation euro zone, pushing their borrowing costs, at least for now, to the tipping point that led Greece, Ireland and Portugal to apply for bailouts. Some people now fear that Italy and Spain could run out of cash to meet their debt obligations in a matter of months if, like the others, they are shut out of international markets.

“The problem is we have not stopped the contagion that is putting pressure on Italy and Spain,” said a senior European finance official involved in the rescue programs, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We would be confronted with enormous problems if things got worse.”

The latest Marshall Plan for Europe was supposed to keep those nations safe from the spreading fire and, by extension, cushion the many European and American banks that hold their debt. While the economies of Greece, Ireland and Portugal are relatively small, European leaders would face challenges of a different magnitude if Italy and Spain were engulfed by the same forces.

With many Europeans off for their summer holidays, thin trading conditions may be exaggerating the market’s movements. Still, the sense of urgency was palpable in Rome, where Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, held an emergency meeting of the country’s financial authorities as interest rates on Italy’s benchmark 10-year bond touched a 14-year high of 6.21 percent Tuesday. Without stronger economic growth, higher rates could make it too costly to service Italy’s heaving debt, which, at 119 percent of gross domestic, is one of the world’s largest.

A leadership vacuum at the highest levels of the Italian government has further unnerved investors. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been silent on the debt crisis for nearly a month as he battles a sex scandal and grapples with court cases. He was scheduled to address the matter Wednesday in a speech on the economy before Parliament.

In Madrid, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was taking no chances either. After agreeing last week to step down early to take responsibility for Spain’s economic crisis, he delayed the start of his vacation Tuesday to cope with Spain’s problems.

The yield for the Spanish 10-year bond rose to 6.45 percent, the highest level since Spain joined the euro club, before retreating a bit. The surge is ill timed because the government needs to raise as much as €3.5 billion, or nearly $5 billion, in a bond auction Thursday.

The governments of Germany and France, the euro zone’s largest economies, can hardly afford a bigger cleanup bill for Europe’s debt crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France hinted as much last month, telling Mr. Berlusconi in separate brief conversations that they felt sure he would do the right thing for the economy, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

Both Italy and Spain still need to tackle a mountain of debt and show they are making real progress toward straightening out their finances. Until that happens, investors are likely to keep driving their borrowing costs higher.

Markets are also unnerved by the prospect that creditors would share additional pain should other countries go the way of Greece. With German and French politicians pressured to show that taxpayers won’t be the only ones footing bailout costs, banks in those countries agreed to take some losses in the most recent bailout of Greece.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/business/global/pressure-builds-on-italy-and-spain-over-finances.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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In Greek Pact, Compromises and Intrigues

July 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The French president arranges a private summit meeting with the German chancellor. Europe’s top central banker resists calls to allow Greece to write off some debt, fearing it could undermine the euro. The Greeks cry out that their sovereignty is infringed.

And only when markets teeter toward panic is a deal finally reached in Brussels to stave off more attacks on the euro zone’s vulnerable southern countries and prevent, for the moment at least, a broader run on financial markets.

The dramatic elements in the latest round of messy European compromise are not in themselves new. The question is whether the deal reached Thursday for another Greek bailout, this time valued at $157 billion, and relief for Portugal and Ireland is a decisive step to calm Europe’s financial storm or simply postpones another reckoning for the weakest southern European economies and the euro itself.

The consensus emerging is that European leaders went farther than ever before, crossing even their own red lines to shelter their decade-old currency. But many also worry that the intensive bargaining necessary to make an agreement possible resulted in a weak accord, saving face for all the key parties.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, an economic research institution in Brussels, said Thursday’s meeting “clarifies the horizon and pushes it forward.” But relief was not the same as solutions, Mr. Pisani-Ferry said, adding that he thought the private sector had not made enough concessions for the long run. Greece is almost sure to need further debt restructuring, he said.

The deal involved delicate compromises from all parties, especially Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the European Central Bank. Each gave something and could claim a prize as well. The Europeans eased the burden on Greece, gave a modest bill to the private financial institutions and empowered a European-wide fund to act more broadly to buy up bad debt. The moves seemed to appease the markets, for now.

Babis Papadimitriou, an analyst for the Kathimerini newspaper in Greece, warned that its government had not shown great skill at putting into effect measures it had approved, including the opening up of closed professions and the privatization of over $70 billion in state assets.

The issues are political as much as economic. European democracy is fraught with the complications of 27 member nations, 17 of which use the euro, plus European institutions with shifting responsibilities. It was all on display in this crisis — internal German politics, the qualms of the European Central Bank, the plight of the Greeks and market anxieties over Italy and Spain, which are too big to bail out.

The biggest sticking point in reaching a broader accord to relieve Greece of some of its crippling burden of debt is Germany, where Mrs. Merkel has steadfastly resisted using European resources — meaning the wealth of Germany and other relatively prosperous members of the union — to write down Greek debt. Past bailouts provided new loans to Greece to help it pay off old ones, but ultimately just added to the country’s overall debt load.

But as markets swooned again this past week, pressure mounted in Germany. Even members of her own party attacked her with a ferocity unseen during the slowly unfolding crisis, saying she was jeopardizing European unity. President Obama called Mrs. Merkel on Tuesday to remind her how fragile the world financial system had become and of Germany’s responsibility.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, was also pressed to consider steps he had previously insisted were impossible. On Wednesday, he called the bank’s 23-member governing council together in the bank’s high-rise headquarters in Frankfurt to discuss allowing the first default by a country that uses the euro.

Though staunchly opposed to compelling private banks to share the costs on Greece, which would mean at least a partial default in the eyes of bond rating agencies, the members of the bank council recognized that Germany was determined that any new bailout involve some pain for the private sector. But the council would insist on several conditions. European countries must guarantee Greek bonds so they will remain eligible as collateral for central bank lending. The bloc must support Greek banks and step up assistance for Greece’s economy.

Contributing reporting were Landon Thomas Jr. in London, Jack Ewing in Frankfurt, Stephen Castle in Brussels, Rachel Donadio in Rome, Judy Dempsey in Berlin and Niki Kitsantonis in Athens.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7d6708b2b9cda23f818ac67566f951b0

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As Italy Moves to Calm Investors, Europe Delays Meeting on Greece

July 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The sale came just before an informal meeting in Rome by officials from the European Central Bank, the European Commission and private lenders to discuss a second Greek rescue plan that leaders hope to announce next week.

Investor worries about the deadlock among European leaders over a solution for the Greek debt crisis have pushed up borrowing costs in recent days for the much bigger European economies of Italy and Spain.

Earlier doubts about whether the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and his finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, would agree on new austerity measures compounded the uncertainty. The Italian Senate on Thursday approved a 70 billion euro ($99 billion) austerity plan; the lower house of Parliament is scheduled to vote on Friday.

The Italian Treasury said it had priced 1.25 billion euros of five-year bonds, the maximum it had earmarked for the sale, with a gross yield of 4.93 percent, up from 3.9 percent at an auction in June. It also sold a combined 3.7 billion euros of bonds with maturities of up to 15 years.

With Italy able to place the bonds, albeit at a higher cost, some analysts said the focus was shifting back to whether European policy makers would be able to agree on a Greek bailout.

“The Italians got away with what they intended to do and it did initially help to stabilize the markets,” said Eric Wand, a fixed-income strategist at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in London. “But the situation now is reverting back to European politics — and as politicians don’t seem to be in a desperate rush to get something out, the market is starting to really get nervous.”

That message was echoed by the International Monetary Fund, whose mission chief in Ireland, Ajai Chopra, said European leaders needed to act decisively to handle the crisis.

“What is critical now is for Europe to dispel the uncertainty of what is perceived by the markets as an insufficient response,” he said at a news conference in Dublin.

Ireland, whose credit rating was recently lowered to junk status, received a positive report from the I.M.F., the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

“What we need and what is lacking so far,” Mr. Chopra said, “is a European solution to a European problem.”

Mr. Chopra called for a quick end to the debate that has held up the construction of the new package: the extent to which private investors will have to make sacrifices as part of the new bailout of Greece.

With the E.C.B. resisting any solution that involves a selective default, and the German government pressing for private investors to share the pain, policy makers have been unable to construct a second bailout for Greece.

“We need to come to closure on this debate,” Mr. Chopra said, adding that it would be important to avoid the impression that any solution to the Greek case that involved private investors would be the template for other rescue packages.

The Institute of International Finance, which represents financial services companies, said Charles Dallara, its managing director, arrived in Rome on Thursday for discussions with Vittorio Grilli, an Italian Treasury official who is also the chairman of a high-level European committee on economic policy.

An Italian Treasury official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said that the meeting would focus on the involvement of private investors, like banks and insurance companies, in a new Greek package and would give officials the chance to exchange opinions. No statement was expected after the meeting, the official said.

Frank Vogl, a spokesman for the Institute of International Finance, said that the talks represented a chance for the institute to update European governments on the status of recent, intense negotiations among Greece’s main creditors about the scale and method of private sector involvement in the next bailout. The talks would be focused solely on Greece, he added.

European leaders on Wednesday put off a proposed summit meeting until next week to give themselves more time to settle disagreements over how to get private investors to share the pain in any future Greek bailout. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, argued that a package of necessary measures was not yet ready.

Greece’s credit rating was cut three levels to CCC by Fitch Ratings late Wednesday. The ratings agency cited uncertainties about a Greek rescue and the role of private lenders in such a rescue.

Italy is expected to push through a four-year austerity plan and win support for the measures from opposition parties this week.

The Italian deficit as a share of gross domestic product was less than half of that of Greece’s share last year. But as investors become increasingly nervous about the possibility of containing Greece’s debt problems, borrowing costs for Italy have increased.

Mrs. Merkel said Thursday that she also wanted a quick solution to the Greek crisis, but that a special summit meeting of euro zone leaders could not be called before a plan was put together.

“The condition is that we are able to decide on a completed new program for Greece,” she told reporters during a visit to Nigeria, Reuters reported.

Matthew Saltmarsh and Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c6417b6906c13ce35aee0e0fc566e2e5

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Chinese Prime Minister’s Visit to Europe Shows Concern Over Euro

June 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

BERLIN — Before Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China began a four-day official tour on Friday of Hungary, Britain and Germany, his trip had received little coverage by the Chinese media.

One reason for the weak interest is that China’s consuming interest in the United States as a superpower has historically taken precedence over its ties with Europe, despite the fact that China does more trade with the European Union than with the United States.

Over 12 percent of Chinese imports come from the European Union, compared with 7.3 percent from the United States, according to Eurostat, the Union’s statistical information service. The Union imports nearly a fifth of Chinese goods, compared with the United States’ 18 percent. And last year, trade between the Union and China amounted to €363.2 billion, or $515.4 billion, while that between the United States and China amounted to €292 billion.

But this importance of Europe as a trading partner is not lost on the Chinese leadership, particularly because China is increasingly concerned about the euro crisis.

“The E.U. is China’s most important trading partner; therefore China has an interest in supporting the stability of the euro,” said Thomas Paulsen, a China expert at the independent Körber Foundation in Berlin. “To support the euro, China has invested substantially in government bonds of E.U. member states, such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.”

When Mr. Wen recently visited France, Portugal and Spain, he offered to help European economies overcome their debt-driven crises by investing in euro-denominated assets. He had made the same offer to Greece, which he visited last year.

Of China’s $3 trillion or more in foreign exchange reserves, bankers estimate that a quarter is invested in euro-denominated assets.

In Hungary, much of the focus will be on strengthening China’s foothold in Eastern Europe. Over the years, Chinese companies backed by state-owned Chinese banks have been investing, buying real estate and winning government construction contracts, according to the Hungarian Economy Ministry.

Trade and investment opportunities will dominate Mr. Wen’s talks during the weekend with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain.

And in Germany, China’s most important trading partner in Europe but also its competitor as the world’s leading export-driven economy, Mr. Wen will lead a delegation of 10 ministers and dozens of business executives.

Last week, the Chinese central bank showed its concern for the euro as it urged European governments to contain debt levels.

Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said this week that China held euro-denominated debt to promote cooperation with the Union and to help euro zone countries overcome the current crisis. “China is willing to continue cooperation with the countries concerned, to help European countries to achieve steady economic growth,” he added.

The burgeoning trade between the Union and China, and China’s eagerness to buy debt, however, has not led the Union, or the individual member states, to develop a long-term political strategy for dealing with China, analysts say.

“Here is China, an emerging superpower. On every global issue, the role of China is critical,” said Eberhard Sandschneider, Asia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“But the E.U. has no long-term strategy toward China,” Mr. Sandschneider said. “It has 27 different policies,” a reference to the 27 member states of the Union.

Feng Zhongping, the director of the Center of European Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said during a recent seminar organized by the European Council on Foreign Relations that the E.U. member states had their own interests. Even though Europe was important to China, Europe has no common foreign policy strategy.

Yet other analysts say that China does want Europe to have a common foreign policy, not just for China but for strategic reasons.

“China does not want a bipolar world dominated by China and the U.S.” Mr. Paulsen said. “It supports a multipolar world, which would give China more flexibility. China would like to see Europe as one pole in this multipolar world.”

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