Cartoon

Infestation

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Nick Anderson)

In other news, one of Trump's campaign speeches was reportedly submitted to the United Arab Emirates for edits before he gave it in 2016.

Two weeks before Trump was scheduled to deliver the energy policy speech, Thomas Barrack, a California investment tycoon with extensive contacts in the Middle East and who later helped oversee Trump’s inauguration, provided a former business associate inside the United Arab Emirates with an advance copy of the candidate’s planned remarks. The associate then told Barrack he shared them with UAE and Saudi government officials, after which Barrack arranged for language requested by the UAE officials to be added to the speech with the help of Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort.

“This is the most likely final version of the speech. It has the language you want,” Manafort confirmed in an email to Barrack on the day of the speech, according to the report. Manafort has since gone to prison for financial crimes unrelated to his campaign work.

Meanwhile, French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume says Trump's threat to impose tariffs on French wine is "completely moronic."

Same.

Finally, Trump's sanctions on Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei has evidently had the effect of increasing Huawei's market share in China at the expense of companies like Apple as more Chinese consumers feel like they need to support the company.

Its market share rose more than 10 percentage points to 38% in the quarter, even as all other top vendors lost ground in the world’s biggest smartphone market, the Canalys data showed. [...]

Kitty Fok, who tracks China’s smartphone sector at research firm IDC, said that consumers responded to the spat over Huawei with pro-China sentiment, which helped boost the brand’s already-strong appeal in the country.

“The product itself is already well-recognised, and the trade war helped people feel like they need to support Huawei. The only worry was that they might not get the component supply, but in the end, they did,” said Fok.

Huawei’s second-quarter smartphone shipments surged even as overall Chinese smartphone shipments shrank. Smartphone shipments in China declined by 6% in the quarter to 97.6 million units, the 9th consecutive quarterly fall, according to Canalys.

Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi Corp, and Apple Inc, the top four vendors behind Huawei, saw declines in shipments and market share in the quarter, Canalys said.