this is boom bust broadcasting around the world and covering the world of business and finance and the impact on all of us i'm bart chilton in washington d.c. and we could not be more happy you are with us there's lots to get to today coming up there are lots of geo political news and in addition to the company news today and we hit it all hard at a marriage should be out of marriage trading group will help us take a look at some key companies and from moscow r.t. correspondent only a shop with a low helps us look at the particulars of a key pipeline from russia to china plus with only thirty days until breakfast what happens with u.k. training agreements if there is no deal or delay the c.e.o. stroll mark for which joins us to discuss and later do you want to leave the c.e.o. of the next change group joins us to talk about the upcoming twenty nineteen hong kong walking confort and why hong kong is a walk chain hub all that directly ahead but first we had some headlines let's go.

conflict in south asia leads our globe report today as the indian air force attacks targets in pakistan two weeks after a suicide bomber hit an indian military convoy and that is two disputed territory of kashmir a longstanding flashpoint between the two nuclear armed nations earlier today pakistani officials said their defense forces had shot down two indian planes in kashmir and captured both pilot pakistan civil aviation authority and their counterparts at the airport authority of india have now halted all flights between the two countries and placed a moratorium on all civil aviation along the border of kashmir pakistani prime minister imran khan warned in a national television address quote all big wars have been due to miscalculation my question to india is that given all the weapons we have can we afford miscalculation with mr khan being a newcomer to politics and indian prime minister narendra modi is my. and likely on

may elections many are concerned the situation could escalate let's hope not. and jumping to southeast asia there is news from vietnam where u.s. president donald trump has signed a set of trade deals with vietnam worth a total of twenty billion dollars for stakeholders including the boeing corporation the big aircraft manufacturer among those deals is the purchase of one hundred boeing made jets and two hundred fifteen aircraft engines by the vietnamese airline the jet president trump in hanoi for his summit with north korean leader kim jong un mr trump tried to get a momentum for the talks from the success in vietnam by citing the deals as examples examples of economic future that if open to north korea they could read if they renounce their nuclear weapons programs and in other big boeing news from neighboring oceana the company announced today that they will begin manufacturing a so-called loyal wing man it's a drone equipped with artificial intelligence ai in australia. and in corporate

governments news boeing has nominated get this former u.n. ambassador to the united nations nikki haley to its board she was a governor in south carolina then with a truck of ministration now go into the airline manufacture her nomination will be confirmed that annual shareholder meeting and april april twenty ninth that is. and speaking of asia and international trade the u.s. trade representative robert litan eiser is laboring to lend a deal to remake u.s. china trade relations we've told you about that before investor light eyes or has been struggling to translate pledges actual pledges from his chinese counterparts into an agreement into real meaningful language as well as a so-called memorandum of understanding or an m o u the issue surfaced in a remarkable on camera exchange between mr light hisor and president trump in which mr trump disparaged the very m.-o. use that mr ly has or was trying to finalize earlier today mr light hisor testified before congress about the status of the trade talks and stressed the need for

provisions that would be measurable enforceable take a listen we have engaged in a very intense extremely serious and very specific negotiation with china on crucial structural issues for several months now we are making real progress if we can complete this effort and again i say if and can reach a satisfactory solution to all to the all important outstanding issue of enforceability. as well as some other concerns we might be able to have an agreement that helps us turn the corner in our economic relationship with giant. gazprom the large russian energy company focused on natural gas has had a strong beginning to the year look at that chart there they've just announced a major pipeline to china and it's nearly complete ninety nine percent they say it's dubbed the power of siberia deliveries are expected begin as early as december

of this year are to use only a shop of all over gives us the details from moscow. in mid february gas from c.e.o. alexei miller announced the company would begin gas deliveries to china via the power of siberia pipeline ahead of shadow it should happen as early as december first twenty eight nineteen the pipelines completion is about gas from top priorities this year alone the company is planning to invest two point twenty four billion dollars in the project the power of siberia line is said to deliver thirty eight billion cubic meters of russian natural gas to china annually in may twenty fourth gas form and the china national petroleum corporation c n p c's sealed a session get agreement for gas supplies via the power of siberia pipeline the russian section of the pipeline runs through three russian region from gas production centers in get here as well as in the rural regions to china's border construction and chinese territory started in april twenty seventh and is nearing

completion gas from also plans to conduct tests along the entire one thousand eight hundred sixty five mile pipeline by december the company will also invest four point eight billion dollars into there were gas processing plant which is expected to take gas from the. production centers as part of the eastern gas program gascón intends to become china's biggest supplier making up more than twenty five percent of gas imports by twenty thirty five to satisfy the country's growing demand for natural gas. the world's second largest buyer of natural gas the countries in the middle of months of switch from coal fired to guns front heating and millions of hugs you know. and we now take a look at some companies in the news today to help us out we are pleased to be joined again by the c.e.o.

of the adam mesh trading group himself adam meth hey adam great to see you all we always love having you on the program let's take a look at the home improvement change first both home depot and lowe's have reported earnings for the fourth quarter in both of head overall down year year over year that is last year but let's take them all wanted to time starting with the largest one home depot which is primarily in the u.s. but also like lowe's in canada and mexico home depot didn't meet the expectations and i found it super strange adam that they blamed of all things the weather on their down performance so what are your thoughts. ninety percent of home depot sales are in the u.s. and we did have a historic cold front a polar vortex if you will so it's somewhat credible and the analysts believe them as well across the board we've there saw analysts maintain their ratings or increase their ratings and on the heels of a thirty two percent dividend spike and a fifteen billion dollars stock buyback home depot is looking good. and the only

reason that i was a little incredulous about the the weather is that i get the polar vortex and everything but you know we always talk about how the numbers matter here right and and looking at some of these housing numbers you know looks like housing is slowing people have a lot of equity in their homes but it appears are not taking that equity out of their homes and putting it into home improvement so they're not going to a home depot's. or a lowe's and let's talk a little bit about lowe's they reported earnings today and got a bump in the stock with some better than expected numbers loss' trailed home depot for years but maybe this is a turning point for them what do you think. i think it is a turning point i agree with you halfway through two thousand and eighteen marvin ellison took over as c.e.o. and he said we want to go after home depot lowes this is story known for working with the individual consumer and home depot specializes in contractors lowe's is

going after the contractors they've they've higher number of software programmers and opens a lot of in-store a lot of pop up facilities to help the in-store experience so they're aggressively going after the contractors and it seems to be working so i think lowe's is on the move very interesting that they're going after that same sort of market as opposed to just the consumers but the contractors and there is a big difference when you think about the store's right to mean one really seems geared towards contractor home depot does but very interesting thing i like an aggressive c.e.o. yeah i actually had aggressive c.e.o. that excites me yeah i'm with you let's move to another company that sort of trouble recently that's a global industrial company caterpillar they've also reported they were downgraded by u.b.s. caterpillar that is doc took a hit on the report and are still down about twenty dollars per share

a year over year what do you make of the company generally specially in light of the ongoing trade war with china we just talked about that a little bit before you guys got on what do you think about caterpillar atom. the downgrade by u.b.s. was significant because they didn't go from buy to neutral they went from buy to sell so they skipped over and went all the way down grade write exactly a double downgraded whenever an analyst does that you want to pay attention because that's a strong statement and if you see other analysts start to follow that because that was only one out of eighteen the cover the stock the rest are to follow that could be more bad news for caterpillar and i think in terms of china toffs there's no quick solve i think it's going to be a long played out process which could serve as an anchor for caterpillar stock and some of suggested that caterpillar and i guess or some other like this but i think a john deere for example i love john john deere from moline illinois but some this time you caterpillar because of the little board global than john deere sort of

a proxy for global growth if you will do you think that's a case or does that not make any sense to you now that makes a lot of sense to me when you think caterpillar you think trucks tractors growth and so when caterpillar slows that's a reflection of overall growth now in the last you started to see that the stock was being hurt by competition that maybe they were competitors that were taking market share that wouldn't measured as well but what we're seeing right now caterpillar is a lead indicator of growth and when the number one company struggles it is a reflection of something on a larger scale you know ok good glad to get your take on that i want to shift to a different sector to electronics best buy has had their best day since twenty seventeen as the electronics retailer reported better than expected q four results they are still off year over year by about eleven bucks eleven dollars but have made up about eight dollars in share price already this year from recent lows

around christmas time what's your take on best buy. best buys an exciting story they had a great day today there boosting their dividend they're increasing their buybacks but there's a bigger story here that we could all learn from and they're benefiting from the fortnight experience people are going in and they're buying sesar ease my son uses the headpieces to speak to his friends when he's playing and they get that at bed at best buy but best buy is competing with amazon it used to be that people go into best buy and then get a better price on amazon now best buy is price matching what people are seeing on amazon and they get the handholding of an in-store customer experience so best buy represents hope in the fight against amazon in that they're able to survive and thrive in an environment where i am isn't usually dominates everyone so i think best buy is painting

a blueprint for success for other companies prasoon than other industries on how to defend against amazon oh what we always love having you or what a great insight that is holding to try to beat amazon compete on price and then try to do the customer experience really fascinating added mash of the ad america training group thanks as always and appreciate it. love being here. and time now for a quick break but hang here because when we return with only thirty days until breakfast what happens if the u.k. trade agreements all go away the c.e.o. of straw mark hill record which joins us to discuss plus a twenty nine thousand hong kong law change conference is next week and will be there it's sponsored by the next change group and today we have with us from on kong the c.e.o. of the next change group jawan lilly will tell us about why hong kong is a chain hub as we go to break here the numbers at the closing bell will be back in a flash.

so we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation

let it be an arms race. spearing dramatic development the only really i'm going to lose is i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. warren buffett. it you know these doing the stock buybacks which is you know used to be illegal so recently that's completely fraudulent and yes no governance or oversight whatsoever you know he's a more the more of the biggest are the biggest shareholder of wells fargo for example during that period when they were engaged in serial criminality when they were engaged in absolute fraud and he's a party to that so here's a guy who given unlimited credit at zero percent and is exempt from the rule of law still can't seem to make money for his shareholders which is.

illegal. you know we're number one movie capital in united states we all slow number one. production here. i mean the money you shall before. us was for most. people you so incredibly wrong you've got to we can jump shot in order to exclude. the job you got to act like a lying in a month's almost like most of them so this is somebody who it is at the rules for. welcome back turning to labor news we noted this briefly last time on the program

as it was breaking news the united auto workers union has sued general motors over the company's decision to close plants in the states of ohio michigan and maryland the suit claims the closures violated the contract the union negotiated with g.m. meanwhile seventeen hundred workers in erie pennsylvania have gone on strike at the former railroad. the vision of general electric after the subsidiary was sold to the web tech corp the united electric union representing the workers say webb tech is exploiting the transition to try and impose a pay cut and mandatory overtime one union rank and file are said workers are ready to strike for as long as it takes to push back on the pay cuts. and turning to the enforcement beat a major federal investigation in the u.s. has been closed closed without any charges being filed investigators that u.s. department of justice scrutinize shipping firms shipping firms including the well known firm maersk of denmark the mediterranean shipping company or m.s.c.

based in switzerland and germany's apic lloyd on suspension of an i trust violations in relation to cost cutting industry practices of pooled sailing schedules and ports calls despite concerns that such practices could reduce competition and raise prices the justice department is close the file according m.s.c. which side of the move is exonerating the company and the industry as a whole. and turning to italy there is one more slow down sign to report as the country enters what we've told you about a recession and unfortunately italy's national statistics office released figures that show the business morale index the business the morale index who knew there was such a thing falling in february to its lowest level since two thousand and fifteen italian manufacturing confidence in the survey fell to one hundred one point seven down from one hundred two in january and consumer confidence we knew about that one also followed the downward trend. and without a delay there's only a month to go thirty days only until breakfast today we look at how the u.k.

will continue trading relations post brax it the u.k. is automatically a part of roughly forty such trade agreements as a member of the e.u. once they leave the e.u. will those all simply go poof and be gone here to lend us her expertise as a c.e.o. marco werman porch greetings nice to see you again so what do you make of this. whom the brits or the u.k. are just saying yeah we'll let him go they must be doing something but explain the label in force yes absolutely because you do back part few things and first of all something that hasn't received a lot of headlines all the other agreements that have been made i did mention previously of course that there's been an agreement with the swiss that was that took place last year back in december one thousand billion dollar trade agreement and also the agreement to trade great you know greatly as much further but also the australians have said that look day one of breck's that they're really ready to open up the floodgates with trade importantly the us has just signed an agreement with an ambassador kindo not in terms of regulation in the telecommunications

industry i think that's the beginning of seeing of the opening of the doors here in the u.s. but importantly remember that the u.k. trades to northern e.u. nations across the world and that deficit is lower than that with e.u. nations so it is fortuitous to have fewer i mean to have not have attacked the competition and that's what the e.u. of course is afraid of is so so that to some extent you could say assuming they had all these trading reach agreements with others outside of you that maybe that might help the u.k. to not have to not be in with the e.u. yet because also these external nations are saying look we don't want to have to have something ratified by twenty seven other nations they'd much rather go to one i'm interesting which is just yesterday of learning things by the way and i hadn't heard that one super interesting go out of the room now and then yesterday on the w t o just finalized an agreement with the u.k. in terms of the government procurement. opportunities that the u.k. can now still bid with the w t o including the nations under that agreement so

that's very important that's government procurement which is worth trillions to the u.k. economy. so we talked about you mention that the trade deficit is less outside of the e.u. you know new nations who are their largest trading partners of the us a big one outside of the it is the u.s. and china yes us and china are the top two within the e.u. e.u. it's germany from the netherlands is very high up there too so. we sort of saw this coming earlier this week you know i mean there's been talk about delays and then it was sort of floated from the e.u. we would accept the delay if you have problems over there and i think she was egypt he said no no no and then jeremy corbyn said well you know if you really had to you could do it and then yesterday ms may said well maybe so what do you think's going to happen look into your crystal balls are going to be

a delay or are we really thirty days away it's going to happen i think the majority do want to delay you know what is that cooper is trying to do and they're all the majority wants to go with the hard line breaks it is a holding steady but i think that her main as i getting more and more confident that they're going to be other haven't had a delay yes i would say that looking in the crystal ball i would say a delay is likely and if we're talking about like a two month delay it really talking about like a year i think initially it's going to be two months i think it's going to be like most politicians do across the world it's kicking the can down the road a little bit and what do you think this means for domestic politics with jeremy korb and theresa may i mean boy a while ago you thought the prime minister might be out but maybe not she made it through that no confidence vote yes if there weren't enough of the. blocks it is that there weren't enough hard liners because they theater of the copa nobody wants a socialist government to some extent nobody could go to some extent is there a little bit of a role reversal between theresa may in germany korb and here is of course now we

are now politics away happens right absolutely crazy nutty stuff thank you so much hillary for to let us draw marco super insightful thank you gosh. we've noted a few times in the past couple weeks that we are taking the show to hong kong to the two thousand and nine hundred block trade conference sponsored by the next change group well today we are pleased to be joined by the c.e.o. of the next change group jawan li who comes to us from hong kong and you want thanks for taking the time to be with us i know you are busy planning for the event which takes place march fourth through the eight even though this event is in hong kong people from all over the world come right tell us about it. sure well thanks for having me back on the show part this event will be a global event we have people from all around the world coming fifty plus countries

three thousand delegates and we have about one hundred seventy five speakers so this is definitely a global event everything there we think that generally happens a block chain is very global. i know because you know i've been there with you in hong kong before and at meetings just in my former roles but hong kong really has become quite the block chain and crypto hobb the bit main exchanges there are told the boom busters about that and why you think that's the case in hong kong. well think about what the next generation of blog chain is going to be about it's really about execution it's really about enterprises and a lot of the actual execution is taking place with the banks there's one hundred fifty plus banks in hong kong it's a highly regulated market and as we see what's happening is that the banks are the ones that are actually utilizing and executing block change so this is very important for the next generation we believe that hong kong is well positioned

because hong kong actually has customers that will use block change also what we see is a regulatory change that's taken place we've seen a transition from i.c. . and we see that the regulators are now starting to get warmed up in hong kong looking at it as a regulated. environment and then we'll see a transition to that and we believe hong kong is well positioned for this the last thing i want to ask you about is there are some research labs there to block chain research labs i hadn't known until i was reading some of the stuff that you had written tell us about that. well i mean there's a number of different research labs i think the one that i would highlight the most is the one that sponsored by the government it's called asterix they have been around for many years and they really have embraced block change they have written white papers on this they've been working in collaboration with h. k.m.a. on the next generation of what's going to be implemented and this research lab is

not just about writing white papers they have been working closely with h.k. man now h.k. may has developed a trade finance program that trade finance program is a collaboration with we trade and it's now going to be developed so that we have collaboration amongst all the different participates in the trade finance area and last thing of the last thing was the last thing but this is the last thing really do you want i mean what are you looking forward to at the event you always have some great people and some great events the collateral of that's next to the conference we're looking forward to this year. well you know think about it is we're in a bear market and it's been very difficult for many in the community but what we really need to start to think about is the next transition which is the actual use cases a block chain and people are going to start to see where the actual research and

money that was raised is going to be used i think that's very important the other aspect is about community the block and community is a very important part of how the ecosystem grows we have. sixteen plus events now that are just side events so this is a not just day event that we're throwing it is a community event and i'm looking forward to the various different events that are taking place outside of our own event me too i can't wait to get to hong kong i can't wait to bring it to the boom busters from there and i can't wait to see you my friend you want to leave the c.e.o. of the next change group congratulations i will see you next week john thank you. and we are looking forward to being there what we're going to do by the way is will have interviews from hong kong every day it will be on block chain they'll be on krypto and some other things to refer to the hong kong monetary authority that h k m a will interview with with them it'll be a lot of fun we'll have some of our favorite people that maybe you've seen before too on the program plus we'll have day of headlines of course so you'll get all the

news around the world and that's it for this time you can catch boom bust on direct t.v. channel three twenty one dish network channel two a they are streaming twenty four seven on pluto t.v. of course the t.v. channel one thirty two ers always hit us up at you tube dot com slash boom bust r.t. so long for now. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see if. my seven years doing drugs my nephews was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse started going after the users in the prison

population sewer we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. increasingly became convinced that the war on drugs was a mistake there are countless number of people who are in prison for inconceivable . sins for being a minor minor offenders in the drug trade it's a lot watching your children grow up and miss you in waves and say by daddy as you're walking out of a business it's just it doesn't get easier. the

second trump him so much ends abruptly with no deal reached as neither side could find common ground over sanctions and they denuclearize ation of the crimean peninsula we go live two hundred million will. also come and help facebook is accused of centering conservative voices as a whistleblower reveals how the social network suppresses content and limits exposure. in the course of doing my duties i noticed other things that were going on accounts i would see it appear in several different conservative pages.