CNBC Squawk on the Street on Interest Rates, G20 Meetings

Posted on November 15, 2018 by John Rutledge

I joined the Squawk on the Street anchors and Bob Doll today to discuss the likely course of interest rates and stock markets leading up to the G20 meetings.

You can see a video clip of the interview by clicking on this link. I hope you enjoy the discussion. And FYI: I will be on CNBC Power Lunch on Thursday, 11/29, to talk with the anchors about what to expect when the G20 meetings open the following day. Hope you can make it.

JR

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CNBC Squawk Box on Huawei

Posted on November 5, 2018 by John Rutledge
I joined Squawk Box anchors on 11/5/18 to discuss Huawei. You can see a short video clip of our discussion by clicking here.
Last week, an Australian newspaper released a story claiming that Chinese telecom giant Huawei had shared passwords with Chinese intelligence agents, allowing them to hack foreign networks. The story is huge for several reasons.
  1. As the largest provider of telecom infrastructure in the world, Huawei plays an important role in China’s One Belt One Road initiative to reconstruct the land and sea trade routes that will export soft economic and political influence to more than 60 countries. That makes Huawei a tasty target in the trade war between the US and China.
  2. The US government has banned Huawei products used by government contractors or on military bases. Australia has banned Huawei participation in the rollout of its high-speed, low-latency 5G network.
  3. Huawei has strategic partnerships with major global tech companies both inside (Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu,…) and outside (Google, Intel,…) China
  4. Huawei has close ties with Japan’s SoftBank, which puts it right in the middle of SoftBank’s proposed sale of Sprint to T-Mobile; 41% of the resulting company would be owned by Germany’s Deutsche Telecom.
  5. And all of this is happening during after a rout in the Chinese stock market and the recent meltdown of US tech stocks.

We are going to see a lot more of these stories as the US/China trade war continues to intensify. Of all the topics in economics, international trade and finance are, by far, the most complicated. That may be why I have spent so much time in my chair at CNBC of late, helping the anchors interpret events in the unfolding trade war between the US and, well, everybody else. The topic is so complex and so important, however, that it shouldn’t be analyzed one bite at a time. So, I am preparing a monograph on issues in global trade and finance that I will post when available in a few weeks.

JR

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