Donald Trump proposes a new ‘merit-based’ immigration policy
US President Donald Trump has a proposed a new immigration policy to favour younger, better educated, and highly skilled immigrants, reported BBC.
In an address to the White House Thursday, Trump talked about his new proposal and called it a break from the past policy, which favours immigrants with family ties to the US.
“We cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill… The biggest change we make is to increase the proportion of highly skilled immigration from 12% to 57% and we would like to even see if we can go higher,” said Trump.
The Democrats criticised the proposal, favouring English-speaking workers, calling it “dead on arrival”.
Trump indicates to aides he doesn’t want a war with Iran
Ever since the US moved an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East, talks about America and Iran heading towards a military confrontation have gained steam. But several reports over the past two days indicate US President Donald Trump’s discomfort with getting into a war with Iran.
“He doesn’t want to go to war. It’s not who he is,” an official told Reuters.
US officials also told Reuters that Trump has communicated to his national security team that he does not want tensions with Iran “boiling over into an armed conflict”.
The US’s Iranian policy has of late been driven by National Security Advisor John Bolton who has traditionally been a self-proclaimed hawk on Iran.
The US policy against Iran over the last year has led to the latter partially leaving the nuclear deal.
France, Netherlands, Germany propose integrating capital markets
France, Germany and Netherlands Thursday signed a statement in Brussels, calling for the integration of capital markets of all EU countries, reported The Financial Times.
The countries expressed their desire to establish a ‘capital markets union’, which would lower the barriers on cross-border investments and boost financing options for various firms.
The ministers from the three countries who signed the statement, talked about an urgent need to integrate, given London, the financial capital of the EU, was set to leave the group.
Here are the worst-case scenarios if US-China trade war continues
An intriguing podcast by Bloomberg looks at the worst-case scenarios, if the US-China trade war continues to escalate and the two countries fail to strike a trade deal.
Three major financial institutions, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and the UBS Group say that if the current trade scenario prolongs, then China is likely see a sub-six per cent growth.
Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Securities Ltd, said during the podcast,“The potential long-term cost is huge. They must know that Japan fell into the lost decade partly because the Bank of Japan overstimulated the Japanese economy after the Plaza Accord.”