so today let's dive right in. and the biden administration is taking a tough stance on china saying that it is willing to use quote all available tools to fight china and its reported unfair trade practices so what does that mean for trade agreements between the 2 nations moving forward we're talking about the world's 2 largest economies here join me now to discuss this boom bust co-host investigative journalist ben swan ben always a pleasure to have you on bet i want to break this down for us what explain for us the statement by the by the administration that specifically are these tools that they were referring to. yeah the problem with this story is that we don't know that specifically the tools are britain because even though there's very strongly worded statement came out on monday it's very short on specifics in fact what the by the ministration is essentially doing is kind of laying out a general framework saying we're going to use all the tools available to us in order to deal with china and to make sure that they do not continue with unfair

trade practices but then they don't go on the specified number one what exactly those practices are and number 2 how they're going to combat that what tools they will use in order to do so so that is kind of the initial problem with that now they did speak specifically about a couple of issues like carbon emissions and they did speak about the weavers and those kinds of issues but again it's very short on specifics here and i want to go to that we're a point because there was a statement made against quote government sanctioned forced labor camps in this trade agenda. i know you said is short on details but is there any news on what they're planning to do about that and how that will play into the agenda and the cooperation between the 2 nations so there is no specific that i want to share with you a little bit about what was written here it referred to detrimental actions taken by china is restricting market access it also talks specifically about making it a quote top priority of the by the ministration to address human rights abuses of

the chinese government and their forced labor programs against ethnic and religious minority groups so we know they're talking about the waiters here what's fairly interesting about this though brant is that remember there was a town hall on c.n.n. believe it was last week in which president biden spoke to anderson cooper and he was asked about china any any mention about cultural differences that there are some cultural differences between the united states and china and having to respect those and that was attached whether intentionally or unintentionally that became attached to this issue of the week as there was a lot of criticism over the last week of president biden saying oh he's he may or. he sees the treatment of the weaker as being a cultural difference so i think part of what this statement is about is defining clarifying that the by administration does not see this simply as a cultural difference but they do see these human rights abuses as being something very serious that they will make a again in their words a top priority in dealing with it and now bet as you alluded to before the white

house said on monday it would consider carbon border a just carbon border adjustment taxes you help cut greenhouse gas emissions as well what does that entail. yes so again we're not getting a whole lot of details here but a few of the things that we know is that they're they're talking about and i want to read to you here taking the import fees and levene them by carbon tax in countries and goods manufactured in non carbon tax in countries essentially trying to create a carbon tax for import and export as opposed to imposing one here but exactly what that looks like what the rate would be how it would be distributed exactly what countries would be used here or will be subject to this tax i should say those specifics have not been released yet so i think a lot of this kind of sense of a general framework the question will be how does it impact specific businesses and i can almost guarantee you that when you see something come out that is this nonspecific all the lawyers and all the lobbyists are now rushing today to try to

figure out whether or not they're going to be impacted and how to create carve outs for themselves because when you get a very general kind of statement like this everybody is looking for how it might affect them and how to make sure it doesn't affect all right i was going to point out for our global audience you know with the new administration coming in you have all of these cabinet members and other officials in the u.s. trade representative obviously very important as we've been talking about trade so much in recent years and like you said yeah they want to kind of give you a general framework and then they'll start to hammer things doubt later and many of their much of that could be done. at the behest of lobbyists as well as your lead to their last question before we go how if at all to any of this actually differ from the 8 years under the obama administration when joe biden was the vice president. yeah i think it does differ somewhat remember that under the obama administration there wasn't really a hardline stance on china nor was there a hardline stance during the bush administration and i think one thing that trump

did when he was president was he really pushed this idea during the campaign and then during his presidency of being tough on china we are now seen in the administration of kind of a different view of china than what we saw under the obama administration there is something though i think fairly interesting about this question and that is if you go back to november of last year november of 2020 former president obama finished a another book he's written another book and he was interviewed about it and one of the things he commented on is how he wishes he had treated china and according to you know for president obama he says he wasn't hard enough on china and had we not been in a global recession at the time he would have liked to have been much more strict with them he feels that his administration could have been much tougher on china and wasn't and it's one of his big regret so i wonder how much of that is playing into kind of the buy ministration stance which definitely seems to be tougher at least so far in terms of what's being said tougher than the obama administration's stance and i worked on the edge shall show amid the obama administration and that

was something to add hammered every single day was how the obama administration needed to be tougher on china at least after his term 4 years he was able to come to terms with maybe that was the right thing boom bust co-host ben swan thank you so much for your time. and the united states and the european union made it official announcing sanctions against russia over the case of opposition leader alexina volumnia now this despite weeks of warnings from moscow that it would break ties with the european union if it followed through on plans for a coordinated sanctions with washington now the measures target 7 senior members of the russian government and 14 entities that they say played a role in of all these reported poisoning last year while the u.s. was quick to accuse russian president vladimir putin of attacking the activists moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement and asked for full evidence of the claims to be presented foreign minister sergei lavrov said moscow plans to respond to the latest sanctions. good to see all those who treated no ball in the show to

really hide all the facts which could help to understand what happened when you're in here a little bit when instead of honest collaboration and not hydrogen which would punish us this doesn't bring any credit to those materials decisions and we will surely respond. vali is currently in prison for violating his probation in a separate case and his detainment has sparked outrage and threats from the u.s. and its allies. president joe biden's nominee for the head of the securities and exchange commission faced questions tuesday from the senate committee on banking housing and urban affairs gary gensler who previously served as chairman of the commodity futures trading commission from 2009 to 2014 was asked about a myriad of issues ranging from the recent reddit fueled game stop stocks saga to big oil into the overall health and well being of markets and the economy so let's go over what effect the nominee may have and take

a look at what's moving markets with ahmed riaz go if investment strategist with insignia oh and boom bust co-host christine thank you both for being here christy i want to start with you gary gensler faced questions over whether individual investors are being hurt by extreme trading and heavily shorted stocks driven by social media what did we hear from gensler and what is he expect to do if he is confirmed. so again he is expected to focus on tougher regulation just as he did when he ran the commodities futures trading commission so right now you have the s.c.c. and the a c s t c reviewing whether crane practices are consistent with investor protection and fair and efficient markets so there are many points in question right now firstly you have short selling short selling has come under scrutiny doing in this short seller jim chain has to step up its lobbying efforts in washington in order to preserve his investment vehicle so short selling has long been

a very controversial practice in a market where most investors they hope that their stocks rise in value but then again short sellers also play a very important role as they provide the market with analysis that counters the overwhelming amount of investors touting these penny stocks and other very speculative investments but shorting now has come under fresh to me and their guns are falling as we said robert hooke frenzy so he will have to figure out a way to respond to that while still maintaining their inefficient markets so secondly there will also be an investigation into the practice of the short squeeze and the controversy erupted when robin hood spotted to the squeeze by limiting the buying of stocks for curative time which angered many of its customers who claim that the trade was protecting its hedge fund clients who are losing money. to close a point their guns are said if confirmed he would look into retail trading at robin hood's handling of the game stop situation taking issue with the quote game with the cation of retail trading apps in your opinion how should he handle robin-hood schwab and all the other brokerage apps now that they have made trading accessible

to everyone and basically so easy. sure look i'm not so sure that he should straighten the letter or treat anatomist differently robin hood and these other are done is lowered the cost of training but really no plan for also into retail investors yes i'm sure you're going to get some sort of token legislation or regulations but i really don't think it's going to change the overall industry too much do you believe that there is a problem with the game if occasion when you look at these retail apps in fact we i could just see that there we were showing a promo of confetti flying out from a phone i mean that is the definition of game of acacia right there i mean do you think there's a problem in that regard. oh sure look at their currency be a balanced approach with these investors are sort of new to the market and remember traditionally investors over. disclaimers so i think you're going to see something similar to that research into the market through the robin hood and other apps

saying but again i don't think it's you that you see change because guys are fighting i think about what service they're on the transaction they're earning more to spend some traders into the market and that's always a good thing that's a good thing for our markets when i've said since the beginning of the game stop situation you know that before the beginning of the year if you were to ask people how a short works i think maybe 2 out of 10 might have been able to explain to it explain it to you today i bet it's 5 out of 10 i think that's a little bit of financial literacy we've getting from all of this kristie i want to kind of move on off of that oil prices held steady on tuesday before this week's opec meeting with producers is it time to ease the supply curbs as economies start to recover from the coronavirus crisis. it looks that way and so folk will me on thursday and they will be discussing potentially allowing as much as $1500000.00 barrels per day back into the market so this decision comes kind of at the time where oil prices have sort of rebounded and especially in the u.s.

prices have taken a hit from the freezing storm so analysts say broadly expect opec to hike output from current levels but questions are main over how much exactly and which countries will be affected so you have opec secretary general mohamed cardo said the outlook for oil demand was looking more positive particularly in asia and in europe you have germany saying that they will start easing some coronavirus restrictions from next week so crude prices have been quite steady and the energy market is now bracing for more supply but this continued vaccination optimism as well as the global opening well likely limit most of the downward pressure with oil prices but analysts are still warning that the recovery remains very very fragile and what matters here on thursday is russia and saudi arabia the break even price for russia is much lower than that of saudi arabia so there will be a huge gap between the 2 countries moscow wants to go back to its normal production as quickly as possible wants to enjoy higher prices a little while longer and rather keep the market on

a tight side and on the side so expectations are that the leave the market slightly short rather than in surplus and on it i got one last question before we go the 2 best performing sectors last month energy and financials are continuing the run into march what's really driving these sectors and is the tech rally over at this point. but i think both sectors have been rationally driven higher and what i mean by fundamentals have changed. actually nation process in the united states and you can't in other parts of proceeding along very quickly so the recovering are starting to price in a strong recovery in the 2nd half of the year and with the market still in that deficit i think you're going to see once it passes sort of consolation face for oil prices right now i think you will continue to see him retire and that will be good for the sector and as far as a financial goes again they're also benefiting from a trend that we think is going to be most of the year which is that yield curve we've seen that obviously sort of have been

a dislocated weight this week i think going forward or be much more orderly boom co-host christiane i'm a bit riyadh's go of insignia thank you both for your time. 'd time now for a quick break but when we return facebook is facing another controversy they will have to fork out a payment over their a i think knology and the u.s. vaccine process is rolling on is 10 percent of the population has now been fully inoculated r.t. correspondent evan perez are here to give us the numbers as we go to break for the numbers of close. during the vietnam war u.s. forces neighboring laos there was a secret war. and for years the american people did not know. about our so my skin

is a. country per capita. human history millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this small agricultural country jordyn wieber. even today kids in laos full victim to bombs dropped decades ago is the us making amends for the tragedy in laos built to the people need in that little land of mine . join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to us from the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then. and say that i've been. living at the pay them as long.

as i think you might be obvious and to let them do so. and so i just. thank god it's not crocs and i just typed years upon the markets i mean the next. moment on king at. least been. when you get in though it. will. be good again it was on the. air welcome back in illinois a federal judge ordered facebook to settle a class action lawsuit over privacy for $650000000.00 now the tech giant was accused of violating a landmark state law aimed at protecting people from invasive privacy practices now the illinois law has proven to be a powerful measure that could be replicated in other states legal journalist molly

barrows contributor with america's lawyer and the following the story and joins us with more molly i want to start right off here what did facebook do that violated this illinois privacy law. well basically illinois says they violated the law by not asking users for their consent when they basically stored their data and they store their data it's part of the facial recognition software that they use in order to be able to recognize people to tag them in photos facebook will is skin of a and then they'll say hey this person might be so 6 and so and they'll suggest to the name may be but that that is stored and so basically the violation came in when they were storing that data from users in illinois and they weren't asking their permission 1st because consent is definitely important part of that illinois biometric privacy law that is so landmark they basically have to show that they have asked for permission to use their data and they did not in this case in the federal judge ruled in favor of this class action settlement which turns out to be about 385 bucks a person 1600000 people were part of this class action suit bret but there were 3

named defendants i mean i'm sorry 3 name plaintiffs in this particular case and they got about 5 grand each but otherwise it's a huge payoff for facebook although you know there are a huge company it may be just a little bit of money for them and $1.00 has largely been so effective not only against facebook but other tech companies. well it's an interesting law it's actually the 1st that actually regulates biometric data and it's the only law that allows individuals to bring a case to the court that says hey my privacy was violated even though no harm was done to me there was a violation under this illinois law and it allows individuals to be able to pursue claims of either negligence or they were deliberate and invading their privacy and it allows basically tech companies to be held accountable and there's some consequences there financially which impact smaller companies more so than bigger companies like facebook but there are some consequences there are some teeth there was another company clearview which also does facial software recognition and they face lawsuits out of illinois to the point where they tried to get it moved out of

state court were unsuccessful so they just quit doing business in illinois altogether but you know that's just one state among many others so these tech companies are still sort of hopping from state to state if you will find in the best laws as to what they do you know as law of the state lawmakers you know try to rein in big tech how concerned should companies like facebook and google be if more states pass laws like this you know it's interesting because i think this is a landmark law illinois is proving the got some teeth that they can make an impact but is it really going to change the business practices of big tech that may take a comprehensive law maybe federally you know we saw some legislators both in states and in federal court trying to move towards antitrust legislation whether it's privacy invasion over a number of reasons facial recognition and gathering data to best sell you things stifling their competition you know you name it they are right in the show and so i think there's a lot of discussion over how how do you keep them from being so big and powerful

and not rein in competition but a big part of it's going to have to be federal laws because right now this patchwork of state laws just isn't cutting it. to trigger with america's laura thank you so much for taking the time out to report on this. thanks friend. and pharma giant merck will assist in the production of johnson and johnson's coppa 19 vaccine the by the ministration notes tuesday though the 2 rivals working together will hopefully bolster production of the one shot vaccine after receiving emergency use authorization from the food and drug administration u.s. officials said they hope to have enough vaccine doses for all americans by mid summer due to the purchase agreements with pfizer and madeira and as we reported monday johnson and johnson says it plans to be able to produce $20000000.00 doses of its vaccine for distribution by the end of this month.

and for more on the state of the vaccine are a lot of where members stand globally let's bring in our t. correspondent side tabular so let's start with cases where are we to is that you never actually after a 7 week decline a global cover in 1000 cases are on the rise again there's multiple factors of course that could be contributing to this new rise like relaxing of public health measures a big one has been the circulation of all different variants which appear to be a lot more contagious and just plain old people letting down their guards but number of european countries are taking this very seriously in order to curb there are there are cases which are rising very quickly now for example norway said they're going to tighten a lockdown going to put a lockout in oslo which is experiencing a rising cases linked to a new variant and then there is a finland which is also dealing with a fresh surge they just announced a state of emergency and a brand new 3 week lockdown that's going to start on march 8th now if you want to

just take a look at the u.s. after weeks of decline over here cases have now hit a plateau but in some states including right here in washington d.c. cases are actually going. and a little over 10 percent of the new cases have been found to be linked to the new very end which was 1st identified in the u.k. and it's said to be about 50 percent more contagious now although a plateau you know might seem like a good thing it's actually not because would we need as cases to go down and not just plateau plus the country is also averaging about 2000 deaths per day all the deaths are actually a lagging indicator because it actually takes weeks for patients to die once the hospital ised plus health officials are also really worried that a 4th surge could be approaching still across much of the contrie this month march brought a wave of reopening and lifting of pandemic restrictions even though not everyone

agrees schools to reopen 5 days a week but he has been vague about what that's actually going to look like and right now less than half of students in the u.s. are attending public that are attending public schools for a full time schedule which is really really frustrating report parents and teachers and if you want to take a look at vaccinations and where we are in the u.s. the u.s. is currently administering over 1800000 doses of the killed in 1000 vaccines a day now a combination of them in dern and pfizer frags seen which is likely going to increase soon now about johnson and johnson is approved for distribution right now at least 50000000 people have released have received one or both phyllis's of the vaccine in the u.s. bridge counts for 15 percent of the population plus 7.7 percent are now fully vaccinated millions of other americans though they're still waiting to be

vaccinated brant. there's talk of maybe moving to. approach what can you tell us about that well 1st i want to mention that what they're not referring to is the johnson and johnson a single do. vaccine what they're referring to is just to receive one dose of the other to doss vaccines like the pfizer only duren are and right now there has been about a half of a dozen small studies which have all been very consistent with whether another but they have not been yet published that all suggest that this strategy could actually work now the theory behind it is to reconsider whether millions of doses intended as a 2nd shot in the pfizer modernize to dos could be distributed as a 1st stoesz instead to offer at least some sort of protection to a greater number of people but not all doctor and that if our 2 of course serves as a cover $1000.00 advisor to the white house has said it's an idea worth further

study he also things that right now the science doesn't really support delaying a 2nd those for the vaccine since a single shot could leave americans at risk from all the more aggressive variants like the ones attack that in brazil and south africa now a great example of that is what's happening brazil right now where some brazilians who had immunity from previous bouts of the virus got it again as the p. one very and they're more aggressive varian is said to be more aggressive and deadly spread there again so that's what they're dealing with right now brand r.t. correspondent sorry tablature thank you so much for keeping us up to date and that's it for this time because boom bust on the ban on the brand new portable t.v. you have available smartphones or tablets or google play in the up web store by searching portable t.v. what's the next thing. i.

during the vietnam war u.s. forces also bomb to neighboring laos it was a secret war. and for years the american people did not know. how much it is officially a mouse can rebound country per capita in all human history millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this small agricultural country jordyn wieber went on to another topic that even today kids in laos full victims of bombs dropped decades ago is the u.s. making amends for that tragedy and what help to the people need in that little land of mines. i.

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motion. in the early ninety's. just proposed to the. experiment. would help with the boy's socialization over 30 years many children. to raise. new. tactics that can be used to get innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't

commit i don't even think people in the us really get that the police are allowed to lie to the person who falsely. came to believe the lie that they were told about their own behavior. the case is closed nobody really can tell the difference between a good confession. and .

breaking ranks with the block the czech republic because they lead this country to go its own way over cope with vaccines turning to russia for help. also this hour an explosion hits a covert testing center in the netherlands well police say it was an intentional attack comes amid increasing hostility and recently over lingering walked out and. brackets with famine and now starved of aid as well the u. one warns aid routes to call in donations to be given is a death sentence for the country. entire generation of children will now have nothing. to see.