all right that's it you're up to date more from the head of the homefront at the top off the hour of course around the clock on the website that's t w dot com. good to have a good day have a good new year. where i come from we have to fight for a free press i was born and raised in a military dictatorship with just one t.v. channel and if you newspapers when official information as a journalist i have work on the streets of many characters and their problems are always the same forward to the social inequality a lack of the freedom of the press. go up so we can afford to stay silent when it

comes to the fans of the humans and see her might do fools who have decided to put their trust in us. my name is jenny harrison and i work at the. donald trump claims there's been progress in trade talks with china's dziedzic paying the new scaife asian markets a welcome to six but isn't sustainable we go to singapore for. also on the show baltic nations like estonia edu leaders in the digital age we ask how can germany hope to catch up. and welcome to do business i want to get jones and

berlin good to have you with us now if there was one topic dominating the economy in twenty eighteen it was trade swiss u.s. president donald trump attacking partners in the e.u. as well as canada mexico with whom he signed an updated version of nafta called u s m c a and then of course it was china trump went after the country for its trade imbalance with the u.s. and started a trade spat that ended in tariffs on cost electronics agricultural products and other goods worth billions of dollars over the weekend trump said on twitter the. he has been talking to china's paying about a comprehensive trade deal that progress is being made and on the last trading day of the year chinese stocks ended the session in positive territory for more let's cross over to andrea hang in singapore andrea how much of those gains are actually down to those trade talks between the u.s. and china a lot of it has to do with the chinese china us to. provide

a very big boost to the market sentiment over the last few days now is also a rare glimpse of hope in what seems like a very tumultuous year for in twenty eighteen and according to reports trump a good call the chinese premier see jinping so this is possibly hinting at the goes he has been well underway as well as even a truce and a mutual beneficially agreement being mapped out now of course not all asian markets ended on a positive note tokyo's nikkei is not trading today gio bank holiday but it ended some twelve percent down what are the biggest risks for asian markets right now what confidence overall is low for markets in asia and it is expected to remain saw over the next few quarters of course all eyes in deep breaths being held over the chinese and us talks and how those will pan out whether or not there

will be a crisis is going into twenty nineteen what remains to be seen it will be a mix of whether or not it is unexpected it won't be unexpected rather. any any silver lining on the horizon for twenty nineteen or the next two quarters may find asia trying to stabilize as the talks go on but according to a survey conducted recent the. in korea ages most mature markets was seen as the biggest pessimists for two hundred nineteen meanwhile thailand thailand philippines and malaysia one of the biggest optimists for twenty nineteen so will want to look at those three markets over the course of the next two quarters or at andrea hang in single person q so much and happy new year to you. well markets in

europe are not trading on this last day of our financial correspondent in frankfurt only dogs gave us this outlook for what's ahead in twenty nine thousand and twenty ok markets went downhill much deeper and much faster than anyone could have imagined especially in germany where the dark twenty percent and so going into the new year people are still. from the dismal twenty. expectancy for the new year are a little bit down from a lot of analysts are saying further growth for the new markets for the dax for example being a little bit higher share prices at the end of the year but certainly nowhere near the record high of the back than twenty eight also there are better prognosis for economic growth economic growth continuing most of the major economies germany including but also in the united states and the. economic growth is uncertain of

what rates and will grow and people saying the citing for the success of twenty nine will be the major problem areas which may twenty eighth sort of called the trade war interest rate hikes and the bracket any one of the problem areas where i will have a problem with major ones. from the frankfurt stock exchange now one of the major challenges for germany this hour next year to catch up with digitalisation from high speed internet to the digital classroom europe's most powerful economy is struggling to adapt to the digital age unlike estonia the smaller member state in the baltics has developed into a major digital hop it is still only a coding has been part of the national curriculum for years these children are learning how to program their own music software and. highspeed wife eye is you pick wishes in the country in fact the government declared internet

access to rice as far back as the year two thousand. here in germany on the other hand universal high speed internet still feels like a distant dream especially in rural areas. is the sort of germany is largely covered by forests some twenty percent in fact. so before we start delivering foxes and birds with high speed internet we need to do our homework and locate the villages and rural areas that don't have sufficient coverage that would be the next step. should. next step that critics say has been far too long in coming they say germany's lack of digital infrastructure could prove their major barrier to business in the future and for more i'm joined by professor president of the w. the center for european economic research good to have you with us the business was

data has long since been done by others above all he companies of course dominate the market and we're on our way to becoming a digital colony of the americans that's it's a possibility and we have to really take care that we are not kind of seeing the speed which is americans but also the chinese doing their i'm you know i'm quite optimistic in the sense that you know we have see data protection in europe and that's really something we have and the others don't have it in the same degree so we have some jurors peanut but we have to use. so there's still a lot to be done now with so much catching up to do just the german economy still have a fighting chance. the next big step is the internet of things yes so that you know you can talk to your refrigerator and and but also the machines communicate with each other and just sends us everywhere and germany is quite good in things so our industrial sectors very strong our automobile sector is very strong so if we kind

of combine zs knowledge we have and use the data as much i think we really have a good chance to compete with the other states. there's a lot of talk about the so-called platform economy what exactly is that. you know that's a kid and another big topic so germany is the germany of many small companies small and medium sized enterprises and what we see is a platform economy that companies tend to be very large and you know all the speak american companies who dominates the market these are platform companies and so we see a shift in the kind of in the industry and. also here again we see some platforms emerging in germany in particular b. to be plucked from some platforms between business to business in that area but you know the race is on so we will see how that develops now they say digital prosperity for everyone is possible what will that look like. actually i fully

agree that we have many opportunities and if you want example i went to my my flat to foreigners which i've never seen before and i would have done that ten years ago but nobody sees people you know they have been to other flats and you know they come to me because they realize that i rented my flat the ready to sever people so what we have done is set in a none of us market says trust in anonymous markets so new markets are appearing and many products you know for low price exit cheap products and we see many new products we see new markets appearing so that this is a world where you know there's a lot of opportunities we have to be careful that you know we take the opportunities and so we are prepared against the problems that arise for example markopolos which is a big problem but if we get the right instruments there to deal with the problems and i think we have a good chance to to make use of that opportunities which are there now when you mention the right instruments can you give us an example of what you mean by that.

yeah. so what we see in particular and cattell policy is that we used to have a lot of concentration on military policy so companies shouldn't merge to to get large but what you see now like google or amazon they didn't merge to become these so dominant sages they grew by themselves there so the instance we need now is how to deal with these dominant companies so that they're not misusing their power and one thing which for example was changed in german competition noise that we introduced data as one one one issue which cattle sorties they should take care of as soon as they should when they investigate these cases really consider how do they use a data is it's used in anticompetitive way or is it used to the benefit of the p.l.c. customers and so these kind of issues that they take more care about data for example that's what we have to you know have to take into consideration professor

ambassador thank you very much and happy new him thank you. just enough time for this italy's parliament has approved as revised budget for next year after the european union rejected its original spending plan the move means the country will avoid fines the e.u. threatened to impose as a punishment for breaking the blocks fiscal rules italy's populist government has promised to increase spending on the poor and to know what the retirement age of the usa at that the original budget would have raised the country's public debt beyond acceptable levels. and that's your business update here in the w thanks for keeping us company.

to stop the powerhouse because her head looked at shaking take you along to my mom . just saw. jimmy origins of the legendary school i'm sure in designing. the power house celebrating in seventeen or eighteen to twenty nine.

to. sixteen. how to. discover your concept discover with. a school. budget after one hundred years the ideals of the fathers are

more relevant today than they were. as a missionary comes to come by people as a way of shaping society. with ideas. comes from the part documentary starts january thirteenth on d w. welcome to our special edition of check in where we're celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of powerhouse.