In other news, Trump commuted the sentences or pardoned a slew of former public officials and businessmen convicted of fraud and corruption, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik, among others.
Meanwhile, the Macy's department store chain's stock has been downgraded to "junk" status by S&P Global Ratings. The retail apocalypse is coming for this particular fixture of a middle class American life that no longer exists.
Finally, Bloomberg details how there will literally be no legal mechanism for exporting certain prized British goods to the EU in a post-Brexit world unless specific terms are agreed to.
Products of animal origin entering the EU from a non-member country require an export health certificate, but no such certificate exists for goods termed a “meat preparation,” like fresh sausages or mince.
“As it stands, you couldn’t export sausages into the EU,” said Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, speaking to reporters at a roundtable in London. “There simply isn’t a certificate you could match your product to.” [...]
To get around the lack of an export health certificate for fresh sausages, meat processors would have to freeze the product to -18 degrees Celsius, but that would devalue the goods, said Peter Hardwick, trade policy adviser at the British Meat Processors Association. A solution would be agreement on a new bilateral export health certificate, which is unlikely given the tight time-frame for talks and Johnson’s unwillingness to align with EU laws, Hardwick said.
“If the U.K. is looking for a basic FTA, it probably won’t get a deal on this sort of thing,” he said.