Tariff Man Back, Nationalization Debate, Poland’s Pause: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) --

Welcome to Wednesday Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get your day started:

• President Donald Trump reminded financial markets that he’s comfortable heading into an election year using tariffs as his main source of international economic leverage, with a flurry of trade threats across three continents in the span of 24 hours
• ECB officials face increasing push back against their negative interest-rate policy in private engagements with the region’s finance ministers, particularly from northern Europe
• Britain’s upcoming election has revived a political and economic debate that many considered to have been won decades ago -- whether nationalization works.
• Canada’s immigration-driven population boom gets credit for driving employment gains, bolstering housing markets and keeping the nation’s expansion running. But it’s also masking a deeper economic problem: sluggish productivity gains
• Emmanuel Macron began his presidency in 2017 pledging to send shock waves through the French economy by making labor cheaper, more flexible and better skilled.
• Polish central bankers will probably close a fourth straight year without moving interest rates as they convene for a meeting this week. That pause is under increasing scrutiny
• Foreign direct investment into China jumped last year to $139 billion even as trade tensions escalated, bucking a trend that saw global flows sink 13% from 2017 levels
• China is stockpiling U.S. computer chips, a sign that tech companies there are preparing for worsening trade relations that could lead to being cut off from American technology

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Alexandra Veroude in Sydney at averoude4@bloomberg.net;Jeffrey Black in Hong Kong at jblack25@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, ;Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, Michael Heath, Michael S. Arnold

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg