the numbers matter and we'll break them down in that regard the latest counterintuitive consequences of the u.s. china trade deficit conflict lead our global report as china post a record a record trade surplus with the united states even as chinese exports overall fell to their lowest monthly level in two years the latest figures from china's customs authorities show that in twenty eighteen year president donald trump opted to hit china with new tariffs to compel change in terms of trade china's trade surplus with the u.s. increased by seventeen percent reaching a record level of three hundred twenty three billion dollars as dr phil might say here in the u.s. how's that trade stuff working out for you mr president the answer is not to well of course the picture changes though when we pull back the frame for a broader view as the sum of chinese exports to all other nations fell by four percent year over year for the month of december of twenty eighteen that's the

first negative monthly report for china exports since march of last year so time will tell if the trend continues but year over year for chinese exports to the u.s. the trade tariffs have not had a good impact for the united states. and turning to europe there are more signs of a slowdown in a number of nations including the euro zone's biggest economic power germany euro stats latest report list the largest your beer production decline in two years of five point one percent for germany production across the euro zone in november of twenty eight hundred fell by one point seven percent from the october level among the larger pool of twenty eight members of the european union that same measure fell by one point three percent. watching other television networks in the us a viewer would not know it but in france the yellow best movement rally for the ninth weekend in a row with more than eighty thousand protesters entering the streets across france in paris. reacted with water cannons tear gas than one hundred fifty six arrests

french police reportedly still hold more than two hundred protesters behind bars meanwhile french president emanuel mccrone continues to struggle to stimulate a sympathetic human reaction to the protests as he launches what he has billed as a national debate in reply to the movement with an open letter published today but on saturday mr mccrone stoked anger by blaming protestors of sheer laziness mr mccrone told a group of young workers quote the unrest our society is facing is partly due partly linked to the fact that too many of our fellow citizens think they can get something without making any effort we'll continue to follow the story of income inequality. and catching up briefly with the partial government shutdown in the us the longest on record now in its twenty fourth day many of the offices that had remained open here in washington and around the country were closed today after a major weekend snow fall we told you last week about just some numbers that are

not available during that shutdown that matter very much to farmers as part of the u.s. agriculture department global market reports but pulling back the shutdown will deprive market watchers including u.s. federal reserve of a broad range of key official economic figures from agencies including the u.s. commerce department for example core data sets on the retail housing markets that would have been released next week have been put into limbo while the announcement of the most basic national figure the u.s. gross domestic product growth seems almost certain to be delayed by the ongoing debacle and some say if the circumstances are not fixed and soon the fed and others will be acting with only one eye open. and continuing with the shutdown it's now impacting far more than eight hundred thousand government workers or the government contractors now it has the potential to impact us all and jeopardize homeland security and for those of you outside the u.s. you may not be spared here for the details as fred kaufman author of bet the farm

how food stop being food fred welcome back i buy it how are you i couldn't be better although this is a really unfortunate circumstance and i know we're going to talk about stuff that's not so pleasant so let's start fred with the u.s. food and drug administration what's the impact of the folks being shut down there. this is a big problem bart to be blunt about it i mean what we're seeing is a lack of inspections on our food supply let's just think for a second what that means every year in this country we see forty eight million cases of food borne illness one hundred twenty four thousand people end up in the hospital and three thousand people a year die from food borne illnesses so what we're really looking at a scale of one nine eleven style terrorist attack every year killing three thousand americans and now during this shutdown. the food is not being inspected what kind

of food are we looking at specifically we're looking at infant formula we're looking for food fruits and vegetables we're looking at raw fish none of it is being looked at at this point and if it is being looked at what we're seeing is people not being paid routinely about one hundred and sixty inspections per week and they are being cut and they're not being paid for and it's going to be a problem going forward you know that we've got problems with the air traffic controllers to you know they don't know if they're going to be paid and i want the people who are in the air to be thinking about nothing else other than that safety in the same with food inspections fred and that also goes for u.s.d.a. which of course is shut down i don't know if it's the packers and stockyards but how about inspections at u.s.d.a. for a. these guys once again are not being paid and we are not talking about high paid employees and somebody at the u.s.d.a. is typically making about thirty one thousand maybe the high and is fifty thousand as a meat or poultry or a lamb inspector i mean this is

a storied agency in our country bart been around for more than one hundred years and now as we're moving forward with no end in sight perhaps the motto should be let's make america sick again let's make america polluted again because we are no longer being screened for the pathogens and the people who are supposed to be doing this aren't being paid and it's what we're playing with disaster i mean we're talking about a very large numbers of people being affected by pathogens and contamination and possible feces and all sorts of really on the savory stuff we don't want to think about and. you know let's make dinner safe again absolutely and now i'm i'm going to toss out an acronym but i don't want to lose anybody here if this which is the animal plant health inspection service that's at u.s.d.a. and at homeland that they split it and i'm familiar with these things travelers may notice what we call the beagle brigade those cute little dogs at the border

sniffing your packages when you're coming coming in but they're more than just cute they're really important what about a spread. well these are the guys at customs if you're going in or out of the country of course you have to declare your plans you have to declare your animals and again these guys are not being paid they're by they're there they're now just by their own good well so for instance what we're seeing is in our new global economy and everything plants and animals moving around the world with great alacrity and with all sorts of pathogens we see an outbreak of let's say swine flu this happens quite often it happens in poland right now where twenty thousand pigs must be killed so this is a once again we are playing with fire people like scott gottlieb who's the head of f.d.a. now i need to really be called out we have to say mr gottlieb dr gottlieb what is being inspected what is not being inspected what can we be confident about and what

not what can americans eat and what can't we eat his background gottlieb's background is in venture capital so maybe he doesn't really care so much about the average american and what they're eating and he needs to be held accountable to a fred we've just got a little bit of time but obviously when agencies aren't open they're not dealing with business and this is having an economic and business impact a talk about that just briefly would you. look at like an initial public offering if they can't get their paperwork barred what we're seeing now for instance my favorite example is our kids will be here every month about one hundred petitions for new labeling fortissimo beers goes forward and they cannot get approval so really what we're seeing are small businesses being stopped the economy being being slowed and just a general increase of pathogens and possibility for illness and sickness and it's it's got that we've got to have an end to it i don't think people realize what the

ultimate ramifications are of a government shutdown of this size so far the numbers are that it's impacting the g.d.p. in a negative point one percent built one one tenth of a percent but since we don't get the g.d.p. numbers at least we may not get them we may not know that anyway fred we appreciate you being with us even though it's on this dire circumstance fred kaufman author of bet the farm thank you fred. thank you bart. and turning to the global sweat shop sector yes we say there's a sweat shop sector garment workers in bangladesh working to supply familiar clothing stores and brands are on strike and in the streets for a second week of action against low wages you may recall back in twenty twelve one hundred seventeen garment factory workers were killed in a fire and two hundred were injured making it the deadliest fire in the nation's history the current protest has persisted after workers and some labor leaders

rejected a government brokered deal for an increase of as little as twenty five cents per month bangladesh's industrial police a force designated to repress workers in sweat shop zones fatally shot one protester last week. and across the globe the latest teachers' strike in the u.s. has kicked off united teachers los angeles declared a strike on behalf of thirty three thousand educators demanding lower class sizes less standardized testing livable wages and equitable funding pushing their message with the hash tag ultra strong. and sticking in california the drama around troubled california utility pacific gas and electric or p.g. and e. may be about to end and what one reporter and i agree is the first climate change induced bankruptcy p.g. and e. stock price fell by half in early trading today after the company confirmed plans to file for chapter eleven bankruptcy protections p.g. and e.

stock was already low after a long slide following last year's wildfires that campfire now ranks as the deadliest and most costly in california sister with p.g. and e. bracing for an estimated thirty billion dollars in liabilities after the company's concealed it was likely that sparks from p.g. and e. equipment kicked off the mass of the massive fires on hillsides ravaged by drought meanwhile the company's c.e.o. guy show williams has resigned and has been replaced by the former executive vice president john simon. and time now for a quick break but hang here because when we return live voice steve wallace berg and alex mahela bitch join us as u.s. air carriers are about to report earnings will get ahead of those announcements and ask if the companies will take off be in a holding pattern for yelling may day this year plus there's a new survey out about how people feel about their personal economic future this year i'll tell you about that as we go to break here the numbers at the closing

bell will be back in a flash. if like there's someone else living inside of me or controlling my body. the byproduct of that drug is the cause like severe depression. because it will meet him into a zombie is crazy. you know and we don't have to do anything it's not our fault you know since crazy and all that for. six years traumatic takes a long time to get rid of. you

know world of big partners a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to get a hold of all the politics for this less i'm show business i'll see you have an. officer. told you to get up off the ground the officer began to pet him down.

and then place on the sounds of kind of fighting into the grown man like wrestling essentially the officer who. drew his image on. the visual wish to away from the officer pulling the toys out of his crib. the obvious or did they kind of lunge for the weapon once missed and then when it happened on tree swung as i was just hands didn't hit him i never saw any contact between the two any kind went back to where they were so the answers back here they're high again fifteen feet apart at this point and that's when the officer pulled out his gun and he did it on three.

and welcome back to minor correction on that p.g. and e. story i told you about they conceded it was likely that sparks from their equipment kicked off those massive fires there's no evidence that they actually concealed the information i misspoke and we continue with airline mishap cathay pacific the hong kong based airline is reeling to start the week after the first class blunder of literally this week and cathay mistakenly sold first class seats on a flight from portugal to hong kong for the same price as coach that may not seem like a big deal but here is a little chart to shelby outshot just big deal it was look at that mistake the typical price for a first class seat on this flight is sixteen thousand dollars and they were sold for a typical coach fare of just more than fifteen hundred dollars talk about a deal you know this isn't the first time cathay has had an issue like this as earlier this month the airline accidently sold flight from vietnam to north america for as little as six hundred seventy five dollars while cathay admits these price

labels were their fault they are allowing people to who bought the tickets to keep them at the price they paid. and more strange news from the sky the world's longest aircraft has gotten a green light for commercial production the air lander ten built by hybrid air vehicles in england is prepping to have its commercial model in the skies within the next few years after approval from u.k. regulators the aircraft which measures three hundred feet in length is a hybrid of blimp and plane and is being billed as a form of luxury travel i think kinda burge the crass rollout has seen several setbacks in the past few years including a crash during a test flight back in two thousand and sixteen we'll continue to follow developments on this. and sticking in the air there were more air travelers than ever in twenty eighteen four point five billion passengers that's up two hundred million from two thousand and seventeen one might think air care is should be doing

fine well not so much u.s. airlines like behind the broader market last year as the new york stock exchanges airline index arca dropped twenty one percent year over year as opposed to the standard course by a hundred which dropped just seven percent as u.s. air carriers are about to report earnings we get ahead of those announced and ask the question are they going to take off in a holding pattern or yelling may day this year flyboys steve malzberg announcement join us now a steve first of all explain this arca index a little bit to us yeah well. has fifteen major airlines both the u.s. and international in them in it and as you mentioned down twenty one percent compared to the s. and p. down seven percent i mean that's that's a huge drop last year so far this year it's up just marginally and basically you know it it represents the feeling of investors on a broad scale when it comes to the airline industry and what's spoking a lot of them especially right now as we await the earning season kicking off

tomorrow is the government shutdown which affects to some extent the t.s.a. and the f.a.a. they hear reports of t.s.a. agents calling in sick and cetera and also fuel prices which are have dropped but and you might think that's a good thing but sometimes it's not because the investors fear increased flights more competition leading to lower fares and also companies may purchase the fuel at the wrong time and not be able to capitalize when they deal in the futures market and get get that you know a loss take a loss instead of taking advantage of the lower prices when it comes to fuel so that that that's why the index was down as much as it was there's a lack of confidence right now in the airline. industry yeah let's get to a couple of specifics i'm a big fan of american airlines alex but boy their stock has not looked good for the for the last year what's up with american and how we think they're going to be doing now let's bring up

a chart right away so we can see what those numbers look like in about a year ago this stock was sitting at fifty eight dollars today we're looking at under thirty two dollars and we're sitting around thirty one seventy to seventy five today so we see a big drop happened within the past year i mean that's evident but also just in the past few days last thursday we saw eleven percent drop in the stock it bounced back up close on a four percent drop so this is all happening in one day a lot of it has to do with numbers coming out and predictions etc that we see from from airlines so we're talking airlines we're talking about total revenue per available seat mile forecast and for the fourth quarter what american was saying in the past was like we're looking for fourth quarter between one point five to three point five percent growth in this respect it's sitting by a hair at about one point five that's what they're saying now so that is growth which you think would look good but it's not the type of growth that

a lot of people anticipated now that means the bottom line really a the predictions they're going to the earnings and that's really the whole thing that's why you see the stock up but there is an upside as one thing that steve was saying gas prices or fuel prices for planes when you look at fuel prices well it looks like it could have gone in a favor in this respect low prices so that offsets any type of empty seats that may have happened in the planes that were going up in the air at the same time performance should improve in two thousand and nineteen a lot of good things coming up the pipe for a in the next couple of years but in particular two thousand nine hundred dallas fort worth airport they are going to expand international flights from the from there i should say expand flights not international flights to. wrote the states from that airport so uh that means more business for american airlines and that's always a good thing absolutely let's get to it through a couple others quickly steve how about delta they have been doing too well lately

there have they yeah delta is going to be the first to report tomorrow morning before the bell so they're going to see it kick it all off for the airlines and you're right they've been talking about lowering expectations as a result today delta was downgraded by bank of america merrill lynch the stock just just under two percent drop today as a result of that news downgraded from buy to neutral and there's several reasons for it they also cut the target price from sixty two dollars a share to fifty one dollars a share there's predicting between two dollars twenty five and a dollar thirty profit earnings per share when they announce tomorrow and that's going to be a disappointment on the third quarter you had income which was up thirteen percent revenues were up eight percent but they didn't do they had a disappointing month of december especially and one of the things they point to are those fuel prices they say they got burned no pun intended there they got

burned with fuel and they purchased at the wrong time and that that hurt them and hurt their overall of the bottom line so you're right delta downgraded and by the way when they downgraded them the bank of america merrill lynch said the catalyst for economic growth is not really the same as some of the other airlines are right now although they praise them as an industry leader but right now they're going through some problems when you say they got burned what the what you're talking about is hedging their risk in futures on things like a jet fuel and one of those companies that famously did that back in two thousand and thirteen alex was southwest and last week we spoke about the death of herb kelleher and the founder of southwest airlines and i read some interesting his. about how he did it which began all the way back in one nine hundred sixty seven you know a cocktail napkin and he wanted folks to fly inexpensively in texas he was held off for four years in the courts by the big airlines at the time but in one thousand

nine hundred seventy one with just four boeing seven thirty seven's they took off and then and after deregulation in seventy eight they expanded and his monetarism bring sort of top notch air service to the masses and he did so well they went public we may have this chart back in seventy nine and after years of flat earnings they started to make some progress in the ninety's and then a twenty fourteen boy look at that they really ramped up earnings and alex how them being doing these last few years and especially in light of all these variables we've been talking about that are impacting airlines impacting airlines it looks like southwest is the good guys in the skies or on immune either sixty six bucks if we look at a time about that this time last year that was a share now we're looking at around forty nine dollars but it seems like they're holding on to one thing that's principal look they're doing a good job at said doing what they set out to do and those are you know healthy work environment for their workers playing fair the customer service i mean these

are one of those few airlines that are up in the air right now where you can still have two bags and without getting charged for them and they've been playing this really good game but they've been doing for a long time look there's just a week ago at the beginning of this year they were getting tickets for as low as sixty seven dollars one way so that's a huge thing also. comes you know as i mentioned all the perks what we call bringing a bag on board it is a perk bottom line but also that for them a good thing is that they're opening up a new line possibly very soon within the next month or so maybe even sooner to hawaii and again more business is good for business thank you we're out of time we'll have to get to united a other time they did they did better than expected we hope they will come back when they have. those earnings reports coming out r.t. correspondent alex mahela veteran conservative t.v. and radio commentator and flyboys steve malzberg thank you guys. and as we prepare for landing ourselves there's

a new survey out today which finds that most americans are now pessimistic about their economic futures in fact according to bank note dot com roughly fifty five percent don't see any personal economic improvement this year as compared to last year take a look at these numbers forty four percent say they won't improve and twelve percent say things will get worse another forty four percent say they expect things to get better and by the by the way those who think things will get worse forty nine percent nearly half blame wait for it politicians the survey also found that amongst the lenni goals their top priority is finding a higher paying job and gen x. ers and baby boomers want to increase their retirement savings. and that's it for this time thanks for joining us you can catch boombox on directv channel three twenty one dish network gentle way they are streaming twenty four seven on pluto t.v. the free t.v. app show one thirty two or as always you can hit us up at youtube dot com slash

boom bust r.t. so long for now. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line they did accept the reject. so when you want to be president and she. want to be honest. it's a going to be press this is what the four three of them can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters about how. they sit.

when they came back from iraq oh marijuana her was cocaine methamphetamine say anything that's altering trying to get us out of. that bad mindset using the chemical that would be self medicating. i want to be dream kenyan dream keno new nope just killing myself by drinking alcohol links drink to get drunk alcoholics drink to feel normal. that's why it's this way drug addicts do what they do shop while still going in their. star cool under which these guys are going through to do it it just needs to. tuesday to be hoped and pushed on by the v.a.'s r.'s drugs for those in need to be built. they've really shouldn't be looked at like numbers they should be looked at like people if they go to a veteran center for health issues be considered as someone who really needs attention

. which. is your health care executive or a bank your costs like getting a gift from a fellow governor millions hundreds of millions trillions of dollars if you're not part of that cobol you are the one paying for it yes and that's why there's

a lot of social unrest that's the best movement in france and around the world it's the global insurrection against banker occupation is coming to america twenty nineteen so get your yellow vests and your torch and let's party on to it because it's all about the rebel the. serbian. namesakes on the sounds of the new group mainly mislead us into. the arms we did they could. a lunge for the weapon once missed and then what happened on tree swung. didn't hit him i never saw any contact with. any kind went back to where they were back here there again fifteen feet apart at this point.

the. the. the british prime minister.