Aurelia Butler

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Deep in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old. It’s a distinctly low-tech phase for China’s Belt and Road drive in Africa to create the trade highways of the future.There’s not enough money left to complete the new 1,000-km super-fast rail link from the port of Mombasa to Uganda. It ends abruptly in the countryside, 468 km short of the border, and now Kenya is resorting to finishing the route by revamping the 19th-century colonial British-built tracks that once passed that way.China has lent African countries hundreds of billions of dollars as part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which envisaged Chinese institutions financing the bulk of the infrastructure in mainly developing nations. Yet the credit has dried up in recent years. On top of the damage wrought to both China and its creditors by COVID-19, analysts and academics attribute the slowdown to factors such as a waning appetite in Beijing for large foreign investments, a commodity price crash that has complicated African debt servicing, plus some borrowers’ reluctance to enter lending deals backed by their natural resources.”We are not in the go-go period anymore,” Adam Tooze, a Columbia University historian, said about China’s overseas investment projects. “There is definitely a rebalancing from the China side,” said Tooze, whose new book Shutdown examines how COVID-19 affected the world economy, adding that Beijing’s current account surplus was “dwindling somewhat”. Chinese investments in the 138 countries targeted by BRI slid 54% from 2019 to $47 billion last year, the lowest amount since the BRI was unveiled in 2013, according to Green BRI, a China-based think-tank that focuses on analysing the initiative.In Africa, home to 40 of those BRI nations, Chinese bank financing for infrastructure projects fell from $11 billion in 2017 to $3.3 billion in 2020, according to a report by international law firm Baker McKenzie.This is a blow for governments who were anticipating securing Chinese loans to build highways and rail lines linking landlocked countries to sea ports and trade routes to Asia and Europe. The continent is facing an estimated annual infrastructure investment deficit of around $100 billion, according to the African Development Bank.”The pandemic has actually made things worse. Those numbers will go up,” said Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the bank, citing the need for additional infrastructure to support health services. Hold-ups have hit some other BRI projects across the continent, such as a $3 billion Nigerian rail project and a $450 million highway in Cameroon.China’s ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to a request for comment.Beijing officials have said that the two sides have a mutually beneficial and cooperative relationship and that lending is done openly and transparently.”When providing interest-free loans and concessional loans, we fully consider the debt situation and repayment capacity of the recipient countries in Africa, and work in accordance with the law,” Zhou Liujun, vice chairman of China International Development Cooperation Agency told reporters in late October.Another Chinese official, who declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media, said Beijing always intended to implement BRI gradually to manage debt default risks by countries or projects. ‘RAILWAY WILL BE BUILT’Officials in Kenya said its rail route were long-term projects that would be seen through over time, without giving any specific timeframe. The COVID-19 has presented the world with unforeseen and unprecedented challenges, they added.”Eventually, this standard gauge railway will still be complete because it is part of what we call the Belt and Road Initiative,” said James Macharia, Kenya’s transport minister.The government has already spent about $5 billion on its new rail link, and can’t currently afford the additional $3.7 billion needed to finish it. The last station hooked up is only accessible by dirt roads.Hence engineers in the Rift Valley are no longer building new infrastructure, but rather shoring up colonial-era viaducts and bridges in an operation that the government estimates will cost about 10 billion shillings ($91 million).There are knock-on effects and, over the border in Uganda, construction on a modern railway line has been delayed because it’s supposed to link to the Kenyan one. That has been one factor in the hold-up in a $2.2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank), David Mugabe, spokesperson for Uganda’s Standard Gauge Railway project, told Reuters.  In Nigeria, the government turned to London-headquartered Standard Chartered (OTC:SCBFF) Bank this year to finance the $3 billion railway project https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-railway-funding-idUKL5N2OE43A initially slated to receive Chinese backing. Standard Chartered declined to comment on the deal, citing confidentiality agreements.In Cameroon, the $450 million highway linking the capital Yaounde and the economic hub of Douala, whose funding was secured from China’s Exim Bank in 2012, stalled in 2019 as the bank stopped disbursing further tranches of the loan. Exim Bank did not respond to a request for comment on its loans to Uganda and Cameroon. MALAYSIA TO BOLIVIAZhou Yuyuan, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said the COVID-19 crisis had strained Chinese lending institutions and African finances alike. In future, he added, Beijing was likely to encourage more corporate Chinese investment in the continent, to fill the role of state-backed financing. “Once the pandemic is over, Africa’s economy is likely to recover,” he said. “That could drive China’s corporate investment.”The pandemic has added to the obstacles facing President Xi’s self-described “project of the century”. After peaking at $125.25 billion in 2015, Chinese investments into BRI nations have dropped every year, apart from 2018, when they edged up 6.7%, the Green BRI data showed. In 2018, Pakistan https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-silkroad-railway-insight-idUSKCN1MA028 balked at the cost and the financing terms of building a railway. The previous year, there were signs of growing problems for BRI, after China’s push in Sri Lanka https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-insight-idUSKBN15G5UT sparked protests.AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary in the United States, said in a study https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-belt-road-plans-losing-momentum-opposition-debt-mount-study-2021-09-29 at the end of September that $11.58 billion in projects in Malaysia had been cancelled over 2013-2021, with nearly $1.5 billion cancelled in Kazakhstan and more than a $1 billion in Bolivia.”A growing number of policymakers in low and middle-income countries are mothballing high-profile BRI projects because of overpricing, corruption and debt sustainability concerns,” said Brad Parks, one of the study’s authors.China’s foreign ministry said in response to the AidData report that “not all debts are unsustainable”, adding that since its launch the BRI had “consistently upheld principles of shared consultation, shared contributions and shared benefits”. ‘RESOURCES ARE FINITE’A key problem is debt sustainability. Copper producer Zambia became Africa’s first pandemic-era sovereign default last year after failing to keep up with payments on more than $12 billion of international debt, for example. A recent study suggested more than half of that burden is owed to Chinese public and private lenders.In late 2018, Beijing agreed to restructure billions of dollars in debt owed by Ethiopia. Some African governments are also growing more reluctant to take out loans backed commodities such as oil and metals. “We can’t mortgage our oil,” Uganda’s works and transport minister Katumba Wamala told Reuters, confirming the country had refused to pledge untapped oil in fields in the west to secure the railway loan. The finance squeeze means African governments must make more strategic investment decisions in terms of debt sustainability, said Yvette Babb, a Netherlands-based fixed income portfolio manager at William Blair.”There is no infinite amount of capital,” she said. ($1 = 110.2500 Kenyan shillings) More

Merkel told officials from her CDU party Monday that the situation is “highly dramatic” and warned that hospitals would soon be overwhelmed unless the fourth wave of the virus is broken, according to a person familiar with her remarks.©2021 Bloomberg L.P. More

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. Thanksgiving feasters are paying premium prices for turkeys this year, after more farmers were cautious with production, figuring a second pandemic holiday could slash demand. The price of frozen whole uncooked turkeys in the four weeks before Nov. 6 rose 15.6% from the same period in 2020, according to data from research firm NielsenIQ. Fewer turkeys were produced this year, so turkey meat prices have soared at a time consumers are already grappling with rising inflation with the global supply chain stumbling into the holiday shopping season. Last year, food companies and farmers predicted many consumers would downsize Thanksgiving because of the pandemic. This year, vaccinations eased worries for some while the fast-spreading Delta variant kept others cautious. Turkey farmers begin considering the size of their flocks for Thanksgiving up to a year ahead of time. Since then, they have confronted skyrocketing costs of grains and soybeans eaten by the birds. Diestel Family Ranch, which produces turkeys in Sonora, California, raised birds of about the same size for 2021 as it did for 2020, farmer Heidi Diestel said, avoiding guesses on how the pandemic would change demand. The ranch added a few extra petite birds that weigh six to 10 pounds, she said, because they can be eaten year round if not sold for the holidays.”Trying to predict this crazy world seemed like we should leave that to others,” Diestel said. “We didn’t really want to go there.” Butterball, the largest U.S. turkey producer, normally surveys consumers once a year to gauge Thanksgiving plans. This year, however, it peppered customers with questions again, after the Delta variant started spreading. By September, it found consumers turning more cautious about larger gatherings, after showing enthusiasm in June for celebrations with extended family and friends, said Al Jansen, an executive vice president.After about two months of declining infections, the United States has reported daily increases for the past two weeks as temperatures drop and people spend more time indoors. “Everybody still wants to celebrate Thanksgiving,” Jansen said. “What altered was the type of celebration.” Frozen inventories of hen turkeys, female birds that are normally smaller in size, and turkey breasts fell to record lows this year and were down 19% and 51% from last year by the end of September, respectively, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The agency said wholesale hen turkey prices in September reached about $1.44 per pound, the highest level since recordkeeping began in 2005. Supplies of bigger tom turkeys in cold storage facilities are up, according to official data.”Smaller sizes may not be as plentiful as previous years because of all the collateral damage from the pandemic,” Butterball’s Jansen said.U.S. farmers had already been cutting turkey production before the pandemic due to declining profits, economists said. They raised 214 million turkeys in 2021, down 4% from 2020 and down 13% from 2018. Last year, consumers swapped out orders for whole birds for smaller turkey breasts heading into Thanksgiving amid surging COVID-19 cases.This year, higher food prices may also be encouraging a preference for smaller birds, said Spencer Shute, senior consultant for consultancy Proxima in Boston.A Farm Bureau survey from Oct. 26 to Nov. 8 showed Thanksgiving dinner will cost U.S. consumers an average of 14% more this year, the biggest annual increase in 31 years.The item that saw the biggest price increase? Turkey. More

Anyone who hasn’t yet read the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2021 report to Congress released last week, pick it up immediately. It’s hard to describe any 500-plus page report to legislators as punchy, but this one is. As I write in my latest column, it ushers in what very well may be a new era of US-China decoupling, with all sorts of new recommendations for limits on capital flows between the two nations. The commission isn’t a lawmaking body, but it has a very good record for pushing forward recommendations that do become law or administration policy, from limits on US business with Huawei, to rules around the insourcing of crucial pharmaceutical ingredients. The commissioners are chosen by both Republican and Democratic leaders, and there was unusual consensus around this year’s report, which lays out the ways in which the Chinese Communist party (CCP) is building up global economic, political and military power to push forward a “new model for human advancement”. The party is doing so with plenty of help from Wall Street, as FT readers will know. The question is, how long will this divide last? Is it possible to have American financial institutions indefinitely funnelling capital in and out of a country that supports forced labour; has low environmental, social and governance standards; and is the US’s chief strategic adversary?I think the answer is no, but I must say I’m gob smacked that the hypocrisy of American banks and asset managers pouring money into companies that might endanger US security isn’t getting more attention. It’s an issue raised by two of the commissioners, Jeffrey Fiedler and Michael R Wessel, in their additional comments towards the end of the report. While it’s not technically illegal for companies like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab and many others to invest in a firm such as AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Company, a primary producer of Chinese fighter jets, it’s hard to argue that it’s right, particularly in the current moment. As the commissioners put it: “One might be excused for thinking that a basic responsibility of American citizenship ought to be not to do anything to endanger US troops.” The current Biden executive order prohibits investment in only 24 publicly traded Chinese companies. But the report also states that about two-thirds of non-state companies in China today have CCP officials involved in their business decisions. That means that most US companies doing business with such firms are being influenced in some way, even if it’s in a small way, by the party as well. The commissioners speculate that the lax regulation of capital flows at the moment may be down to increased Treasury Department sway and waning US Department of Defense impact in such matters. But I wonder if that will last as Americans become more aware of how deep Wall Street is entrenched in China.As Fiedler and Wessel put it on page 504: “In plain language, US investment banks and institutional investors can still buy, sell and profit off of Chinese military related companies as long as they are not doing so in the United States and only involve non-US citizens. If we are really interested in protecting US national security rather than simply appearing to, this loophole should be closed, as the commission recommends.” I would agree with that — Ed, how about you? What should Wall Street be allowed to do in China today, if anything? Recommended readingI enjoyed this Wall Street Journal review of Look a new book about the golden-era of magazine publishing, which I must say I miss. I only got the tail-end of it in my own career, but it was gracious and grand.The Atlantic did a sobering and rather scary piece on how ubiquitous meth has become; the new alcohol for many.And in the FT, don’t miss Ed’s Lunch with “Tiger mother” Amy Chua.Edward Luce respondsIt is not just about Wall Street. Silicon Valley’s big venture capital funds, such as Sequoia, have stakes in all kinds of Chinese high tech start-ups from quantum computing to advanced semiconductor production. Whether some of these have specific military applications is almost besides the point. Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” plan is to dominate artificial intelligence and advanced tech by 2030. So the Biden administration is facing a sharp dilemma. Does it take far more sweeping measures to decouple the US from China, as this report recommends, or does it continue with Washington’s ad hoc approach to Chinese inward investment? The latter is by far the easier path. I confess to feeling highly conflicted on this subject. You mention that almost two-thirds of Chinese private sector firms have Communist party influence. But that’s almost impossible to avoid. The CCP has a membership of 100m, so I am surprised the number of party-influenced companies isn’t 100 per cent. Setting up a system that would disentangle bona fide Chinese companies that have purely civilian applications from ones with a more dual use potential is almost impossible. So the logic is that the US and China should confine trade and investment to commodities and low value added electronic and white goods — the sectors that generate the bulk of the US-China trade deficit. Make no mistake, an economic divorce between the US and China would make the world a far more dangerous place. Yet continuing down today’s path is also hazardous as the US risks underwriting China’s technological acceleration. As I wrote last week, competition between the US and China is a multi-faceted global challenge. We disagree on whether the US should step up its diplomatic and commercial presence around the world, which I believe it should. Were Washington to follow your preferred path, that would imply America decoupling from other parts of the world too, which I believe is what China wants to see. But this is a complex issue and I have no overarching solutions. Divorce is reckless but so is the status quo. Your feedbackAnd now a word from our Swampians . . . In response to ‘America will never be free of the Middle East’: “The US cannot hope to retain its status as a global power and ignore the Middle East; but it does not need to be anything like as engaged there as it has been for much of the time since 1945 . . . [A] great deal has been written about the geopolitical implications of decarbonising the global economy, and Mohammed bin Salman’s grandiose declarations on hydrogen etc notwithstanding, it is hard to see the Gulf region as anything other than a big net loser both geopolitically and geoeconomically on this count. In this respect, the region becomes less important not only to the US, but also to China over the next couple of decades. However, China appears to be firmly wedded to the principles which underpin Mackinder’s Heartland Theory, in which the Middle East is a key component even putting energy resources to one side. But I doubt that there are many geopolitical thinkers inside the Beltway who share this perspective.The more interesting question than Sino-US rivalry in the Gulf region may, in due course, turn out to be Sino-Indian rivalry bearing in mind not only geographical proximity but also India’s deep and abiding historical ties with Iran in particular.” — Alastair Newton, Livingstone, Zambia“Edward Luce writes that ‘The essence of good diplomacy is to see the world from the other guy’s point of view.’ Then he adds ‘America, at least temporarily, appears to have lost the appetite to do that.’ The first assertion is correct, the second less so. America, unfortunately, has not lost — temporarily — the capacity to see the world from the other guy’s point of view. It has been missing this capability at least since the last three decades, in other words, since the end of the cold war.Today we have a repeated reference to a ‘one world, two systems’ because America has lost a lot of credibility; and this is not due only to the forever wars but also because on too many occasions American diplomacy, hubristically, has offered only a ‘it’s my way or the highway’ policy, alienating many, too many, nations.” — Marco Carnelos, Rome, Italy More

Investing.com — China’s central bank hints at a possible policy easing as the real estate crisis slows the economy. Europe protests violently against the reintroduction of lockdowns and the imposition of vaccine mandates. Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick may be on the way out, and Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM), the pandemic bellwether stock par excellence, releases earnings after the close. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Monday, 22nd November.1. China hints at monetary easingChina’s central bank hinted it will ease monetary policy for the world’s second-largest economy, as it grapples with a slowdown caused by the problems of the real estate sector.The People’s Bank of China left its key prime rate unchanged at 3.85% at its regular policy meeting earlier but dropped some of its more hawkish comments from the statement accompanying the decision. It had previously spoken of the need to control monetary supply tightly and not to overwhelm the economy with stimulus.The yuan, which has been one of the strongest emerging-market currencies all year, edged higher to 6.3794 against the dollar, continuing to test what would be a 3 ½-year high, while benchmark stock indices rose as much as 1.4%.2. Activision Blizzard CEO may be on the way outBobby Kotick, the embattled CEO of videogames publisher Activision Blizzard, has told senior executives at the company he may quit if he isn’t able to quickly resolve the sexual harassment scandal plaguing the company, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.Activision’s stock, which has been hit hard in recent months by a series of allegations suggesting a toxic and discriminatory workplace culture, rose over 2% in premarket trading in response.The report follows allegations last week that Kotick had been aware of problems at the company for much longer than he has so far admitted. The allegations prompted widespread staff discontent and concern among major gaming partners such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Sony (NYSE:SONY).3. Stocks set to open higher after Clarida blow; KKR, Zoom Video eyedU.S. stocks are set to start the week clearly higher, after closing last week on a mixed note, torn between a generally positive economic outlook and the fear of an accelerated tightening of monetary policy. Federal Reserve vice-chairman Richard Clarida had acknowledged that Fed policymakers may discuss a faster phase-out of its bond purchases than currently planned when they meet again next month.By 6:20 AM ET (1120 GMT), Dow Jones futures were up 167 points, or 0.5%, while S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were both up 0.4%.The day is devoid of major economic indicators. Zoom Video heads a thin earnings slate, but only after the close. Other stocks in focus include Vonage, which Ericsson (BS:ERICAs) wants to buy for $6.2 billion, and KKR (NYSE:KKR), which has lit a fire under European telecom stocks with a bid for Telecom Italia (MI:TLIT).4. Europe riots against Covid-19 measures as Bundesbank sounds inflation alarmGermany’s inflation rate will hit 6% this month while the economy will slow, the Deutsche Bundesbank warned in a monthly report that puts the recent surge in Covid-19 cases across Europe into an even more gloomy context.There were riots against the reintroduction of mobility restrictions in the Netherlands and Belgium at the weekend, and smaller-scale protests in Italy, Croatia and Austria, the last of which imposed a full nationwide lockdown at the end of last week.Karl Lauterbach, a leading health expert with Germany’s center-left SPD that will most likely head the next coalition government, said at the weekend that the country could no longer afford to rule out mandating vaccination for everyone. The euro continued to struggle below $1.1300, meanwhile.5. Oil struggles after Japan warms to reserve release plansThe news out of Europe also weakened crude oil, which has fostered expectations of widespread mobility curbs over the next couple of months. Institutes such as the IEA and OPEC have already warned that the market could tip from shortage to surplus as a result of this and other trends.By 6:30 AM ET (1130 GMT), U.S. crude futures were up 0.3% at $76.14 a barrel, while Brent futures were up 0.2% at $79.05 a barrel, close to their intraday lows.On Friday, CFTC data had showed that speculative long positions had fallen again in the week through Tuesday, suggesting that financial players have lost faith in oil’s momentum amid rising talk of a coordinated release of strategic reserves by major consumers. Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida indicated earlier Japan would be open to such a move. More

Hello from Brussels, where a demonstration yesterday against Covid-19 restrictions got a bit nasty and kicked off some actual rioting, or at least a bit of looting, part of a wave of protests in Europe opposing renewed constraints. Given Belgium has actually dealt with the pandemic reasonably well and has relatively high vaccination rates, this is a bit of a worry. Today’s main piece is on how world trade in goods and supply chains are performing, taking the analysis of two of the big institutions in the area, the World Trade Organization and the Asian Development Bank. The answer, as we have been banging on about for some time, is better than you might expect given the panicked tone in many quarters. The trade cataclysm that’s yet to arriveAs we head towards year-end, it already seems pretty certain to us that the summary of 2021 for goods trade will run as follows. Trade recovered very sharply from the pandemic shock, more or less recouping its losses from last year, and then appeared to slow towards trend growth. The speed of the recovery put intense strain on supply chains and created bottlenecks in certain goods and certain ports. Trade tensions between the US and China remained elevated. But — and here’s the interesting bit — the idea that companies were going to undertake radical restructuring of value chains in response to the transport crunch or geopolitical risk remained theoretical.We’ve always been sceptical that Covid would cause a big shift in the post-cold war pattern of globalisation. Obviously, as we’ve said more recently, the bottlenecks and shortages of the past few quarters have given us pause for thought. There’s certainly been an uncomfortable degree of turbulence. But, call us reckless if you like, today’s Trade Secrets author’s view remains that there’s been nothing to justify engineering a major government-led restructuring of globalisation. So, let’s look at the numbers. The WTO’s annual World Trade Report points out that merchandise (goods) trade is back to its pre-pandemic trend, with a notably smaller shock than that caused by the financial crisis. It also notes that trade recovered faster than gross domestic product, and that economies which suffered a lot from Covid benefited from exporting to countries that were relatively unscathed. You can play around with reverse causation a bit here if you feel like it (perhaps economies traded more because they were growing for other reasons) but it’s emphatically not the case that countries that turned inwards did better.

Trends and forecasts for world merchandise trade volume, first quarter of 2015 to fourth quarter of 2022 © Source: WTO

Taking a look specifically at supply chains, the ADB is good on the historical context. The growth of global value chains slowed after 2008 and has remained anaemic since, the “slowbalisation” after the early 2000s “hyperglobalisation”. (Don’t blame us for the neologisms.) While the events of last year did put severe strain on value chains, the Asian bank concludes that the 2020 number was largely in line with the post-2010 trend. This is in line with other data on trade and investment intentions cited by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Megan Greene, in a Financial Times op-ed last week. There just isn’t a lot of evidence that supply chains are being shortened, or even radically restructured. Maybe there will be: these things take time. But it’s not happening yet.

Global value chain participation rates, world, 1995-2020 © Source: Asian Development Bank

Back to the WTO report. There’s an interesting cameo by the Peterson Institute’s Chad Bown, who has emerged as the trade world’s oracle about global commerce in chips, the sage of semiconductors if you will. Bown points out (page 93 of the report) that, contrary to the general sense that the world economy has had to navigate perilously narrow and treacherous mountain passes controlled by semiconductor bandits, chip production has held up pretty well during the coronavirus crisis.It’s now facing a lot of strain, mainly in the technologically less sophisticated chips that go into cars and so on, but that’s because of a massive and probably unsustainable surge in demand. Things look nasty right now, but in the longer term a more serious risk than the world economy hitting a brick wall because of a generalised chip shortage is governments’ possible reaction to it. A subsidy spiral, together with trade restrictions, could lead to a glut-ridden global semiconductor industry inefficiently segmented by country and indefinitely dependent on state handouts.As Bown says: “Governments have been known to show chips too much love . . . Interdependence may in fact have helped keep the peace during a period of escalating geopolitical tension. Changing supply chain geography to reduce that interdependence could provoke new vulnerabilities.”At this point — and here they are obviously talking their book — the WTO wants a big festival of global co-operation on maintaining open trade in strategic products. Without that, of course there are risks to individual countries, particularly small ones, in assuming that trade will always deliver. There’s a co-ordination problem if you’re the mug who opens up their market in medical goods and promptly ends up with domestic shortages because everyone else is importing and hoarding. We get that. The point is just that there’s not much in the performance of trade and supply chains as a result of the pandemic to justify calling the free-trade model for globalisation broken. Perhaps because of the WTO ministerial meeting coming up next week, the decade before the global financial crisis is on our minds at the moment. There was endless hand-wringing about the failures of trade policy, rending of garments over the collapse of the WTO Doha round of negotiations in 2008 and all that. But trade itself? Trade itself was just fine. As we said back in September, the saviours right now are business folk, not bureaucrats. A lot of things have disappointed over the past year, but given what it’s been faced with, the actually buying and selling of stuff across borders itself isn’t high among them.Trade linksThe “big box” US retailers are coping with the supply chain crunch better than their smaller rivals, according to earnings announcements and survey data.The head of one of the UK’s biggest logistics companies says a combination of Brexit and Covid will create driver shortages well into next year.The New York Times explores ($) how global demand for cobalt to feed the global electric vehicle revolution has fed exploitation and US-China rivalry in Congo.Apple will not be able to (Nikkei, $) deliver new iPads to consumers in key Asian markets in time for Christmas, according to delivery estimates, as the supply crunch hits holiday sales. Japanese apparel suppliers are following (Nikkei, $) sportswear maker Mizuno and other international brands in shunning cotton from China’s Xinjiang province “until the human rights issues are resolved.” Alan Beattie and Francesca Regalado More