BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Monday that it hoped the United States will not erect barriers and obstacles to cooperation, in response to reports Washington is poised to add Chinese firms SMIC and CNOOC to a defense blacklist.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments at a news briefing.

The Trump administration is poised to add China’s top chipmaker SMIC and national offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies, according to a document and sources, curbing their access to U.S. investors and escalating tensions with Beijing weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is determined to end the Dreamers program that protects immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children within the next six months, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security said on Sunday.

The Trump administration views the programs as unlawful and the U.S. Supreme Court – which last week ruled against the Trump administration’s plan to end it – did not disagree, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

“At no point in that decision did they say that the program was lawful. They simply didn’t like the rationale and the procedures that we used,” Wolf said.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Trump’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy put in place by former President Barack Obama, which protects roughly 649,000 immigrants from deportation.

The decision upheld lower court decisions that found that Trump’s 2017 move to rescind the program was unlawful but does not prevent Trump from trying again to end the program.

Trump on Saturday said his administration would resubmit plans to end the policy but gave no details.

Wolf told CBS’s “Face the Nation” the administration would keep renewing visas for the people covered by the popular program while seeking a way to permanently end it.

Asked if Trump had ruled out ending the program through an executive order, Wolf said the administration would continue to press Congress to find a solution.

But he said the president had also directed DHS to look at carefully at the Supreme Court ruling and the possibility of refiling its proposal with a different rationale.

“I’m not going to get ahead in front of the president. He’s going to make that decision at the right time, but the department will be ready to make that call,” he said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Friday’s surprise decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to replace a top federal prosecutor has thrust one of the Trump administration’s more low-profile, bipartisan officials into the spotlight, shocking people who know and have worked with him.

Over the past day, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton has come under enormous pressure to spurn his nomination to replace U.S. Attorney in Manhattan Geoffrey Berman, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Saturday after refusing to resign in a Friday night statement.

In his post at the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Berman had led the prosecution of high profile corruption and Wall Street crimes, and had been investigating Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani has not formally been accused of any wrongdoing.

Clayton could not be reached for comment on Saturday. His spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

“Clayton can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for SDNY, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin,” the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, tweeted on Saturday.

Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had not been consulted on Clayton’s nomination and that he still planned to seek approvals from New York Senators Schumer and his fellow Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, as is usual practice.

That announcement left Clayton’s nomination for the SDNY role in serious doubt. But the episode has nonetheless stunned current and former SEC officials and lawyers who have worked with Clayton, a former corporate attorney and political independent who until now has steered well clear of partisan controversy.

It also raises questions about the future leadership of the SEC, which could potentially fall to ranking Republican commissioner Hester Peirce, an ultra-conservative who frequently votes against penalizing companies for wrongdoing. Peirce did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday night.

Berman himself had been under consideration for the SEC chair role before his bombshell Friday night statement, according to a public letter Barr sent to Berman on Friday.

“Given the controversy, I think he (Clayton) will bow out,” said J.W. Verret, a securities law professor at George Mason University who said he knows Clayton from his work on the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee. He described Clayton as “mild-mannered” and said he has “played it straight up the middle” at SEC.

While Clayton has been criticized by Democrats and consumer advocates for pushing the Trump administration’s agenda to cut red tape, he is generally respected for his expertise and described by those who deal with him as thoughtful and affable.

“It is not clear to me that he is the right person for the SDNY job if the objective is to do the president’s bidding against his own judgment,” said Scott Bauguess, a University of Texas professor and former SEC official.

One current SEC enforcement division staffer said that within the agency, where Clayton is well liked, people were “stunned” that he had become embroiled in what appeared to be a political firing. “I view that as a betrayal of what he stood for over his three years at the SEC,” this person said.

He also questioned whether Clayton, who does not have a background in criminal prosecutions and can only pursue civil cases at the SEC, had the qualifications for the role.

An hour after Berman issued a statement on Friday saying he would not resign, Clayton sent a note to all SEC staff saying it was “a great honor to be considered for this important position.” He added that he remained “fully committed” to SEC work pending his confirmation, according to the email seen by Reuters.

Three people with knowledge of Clayton’s thinking said he had been on the lookout for a senior government post that would allow him to be based in New York where he was full-time before joining the Washington-based SEC role.

But two of those sources and other attorneys questioned whether he would now want a role that had sparked such a political storm. Verret speculated that Clayton may not have had all the facts when agreeing to be nominated.

“I really think Clayton is going to do the right thing here,” he added.

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LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) – Global regulators published a blueprint on Wednesday to give a “sense of direction” to proliferating initiatives for tackling climate-related financial risks before they fragment markets.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which coordinates financial rules for the G20 group of nations, said its “roadmap” seeks to coordinate approaches to disclosures by companies and plug gaps in the data needed to spot financial stability “vulnerabilities” and develop tools to address them.

The roadmap attempts to align rules still in the planning stage between now and 2023 to avoid more divergences between various measures for the same activity.

A patchwork of disclosure methods have prompted a global regulatory initiative to set up an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) to give cross-border investors consistent information.

“The time has come to take this to the next level and ensure that we avoid harmful market fragmentation,” said Randal Quarles, the U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair who also chairs the FSB.

It was important to guard against inconsistent requirements that later on will be very hard to correct, he said.

Differences in company disclosure approaches are likely to remain, despite pleas from international investors.

The EU, an FSB member, is requiring companies to say not only how climate change will affect their performance but also how companies themselves impact the environment, a step too far for many countries.

The bloc set out further measures this week that could break new ground in measuring risks from climate change. read more

“This will ensure the European Union remains the global leader in sustainable finance and this will help bring the rest of the world with us,” the EU’s financial services chief Mairead McGuinness said.

The FSB is asking G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Italy this week to back the roadmap so that all financial risk decisions appropriately take account of climate change. It will report to the G20 each year on progress in coordinating climate-related risks.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats on Monday urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to step back from an expected vote on Republican police reform legislation, saying lawmakers should instead try to hammer out a bipartisan package through negotiation.

In comments suggesting they could block a key procedural vote expected on Wednesday, Democrats said the bill put forward by Senator Tim Scott, the chamber’s only black Republican, was too limited to drive the reforms needed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death while in police custody.

“If we really want to do serious work on a serious matter, we ought to be having discussions, right now. That’s not what Mitch wants,” Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono told reporters.

Added Democratic Senator Joe Manchin: “First, step back. Step back.”

The House of Representatives is due to vote on more sweeping Democratic legislation on Thursday.

Nearly a month after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, neither the Republican nor Democratic measures appeared to have enough bipartisan support to win approval from both chambers and be signed into law by Republican President Donald Trump.

Floyd’s death, after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, sparked weeks of protests worldwide.

With strong public sentiment for stopping excessive force by police, especially against African-Americans, many are urging Congress to seize the opportunity to quickly pass legislation.

Last week Trump signed an executive order aimed at guiding police reforms here.

McConnell strongly endorsed the Republican bill on Monday, before filing papers for a vote to limit debate that would require 60 votes in a chamber where Republican control only 53 seats. Democrats could prevent the Senate from moving to the bill by voting against the motion.

“For anyone who actually wants to legislate, it will not be a difficult call to vote to begin considering Senator Scott’s legislation,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

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(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he opposed removing the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.

The move was announced by the museum on Sunday and comes amid anti-racism protests across the United States and the world after the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody on May 25 in the United States.

The statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side. It stands prominently on a plinth outside the museum’s main entrance, overlooking Central Park.

Roosevelt, a Republican like Trump, was U.S. president from 1901-1909. Known for his exuberant and daring manner, he carried out antitrust, conservationist and “Square Deal” reforms, and, critics said, took an interventionist approach to foreign policy, including projecting U.S. naval power around the world.

Many critics have said the Roosevelt statue symbolizes racial discrimination and colonial expansion.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city was in favor of the request from the museum to remove the statue because it “depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.”

“Ridiculous, don’t do it,” Trump said in a tweet on Monday bit.ly/3ez5QmU.

In the ongoing ant-racism demonstrations, protesters across the United States and around the world have demanded that authorities take down monuments honoring pro-slavery Confederate figures and the architects of Europe’s colonies.

“Simply put, the time has come to move it,” the museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times nyti.ms/2YZncTo.

She said the museum’s decision was based on the statue itself, along with its “hierarchical composition”, and not on Roosevelt. Futter said the museum continues to honor Roosevelt as “a pioneering conservationist”.

Roosevelt’s face is also one of the four presidents – along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln – whose faces are cast in 60-foot-high granite sculptures at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

Trump has blasted the anti-racism protests, saying demonstrators have behaved badly.

“The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments – our beautiful monuments – tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We’re not conforming”, the U.S. president told supporters at a rally last week.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday he will be leaving U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration soon, ending a brief return to government to help respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hassett, who served as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers for about two years before stepping down in the middle of 2019, returned to the administration for a temporary stint earlier this year.

“I came in unpaid for 90 days. Time is about up,” Hassett told Reuters in an email. He said Monday may be his final day.

Hassett had come for a “temporary gig as a special government employee. No other reason for departure,” another White House official said.

In the early days of the outbreak, Hassett brought attention to the massive economic fallout expected from the coronavirus, painting a more dire picture of the likely repercussions than other White House aides were doing at the time.

Hassett’s leaving, which comes after the recent departure of Andrew Olmem, deputy director of the National Economic Council, could curb the influence of economic adviser Larry Kudlow, one analyst said.

“Kudlow is now very much understaffed. His role in policy-making is unavoidably going to decline further,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses largely on U.S.-China policy.

This could influence whether Trump decides to stick with his Phase 1 China trade deal or embark on a policy of further decoupling the U.S. and Chinese economies, Scissors said.

Kudlow has been a strong advocate for the Phase 1 deal, which calls for major increases of Chinese purchases of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services.

William Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Hassett had advocated for additional stimulus to dig the economy out of a deep recession, but his departure could give fiscal hawks the upper hand in shaping any future coronavirus aid bills.

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(Reuters) – Lion Electric Co said on Monday it would go public through a merger with blank-check company Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp, as it aims to ramp up production capacity to tap growing demand for electric vehicles.

Quebec-based Lion Electric, mainly known for its yellow electric school buses, expects to receive about $500 million of net cash proceeds from the deal.

The company, founded in 2008 as Lion Bus, said proceeds from the deal would be used to expand its U.S. manufacturing capacity, develop advanced battery systems and construct a battery-system assembly factory.

The deal, likely to close in the first quarter of 2021, is expected to create a company with a market value of about $1.9 billion.

Lion Electric, which also makes electric commercial trucks, said the combined company is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “LEV”.

Lion Electric’s shareholders are expected to hold about 70% of the combined company’s common equity after the deal is closed, assuming no redemptions from Northern Genesis’ shareholders.

A blank-check firm, also known as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), uses proceeds from an initial public offering to buy a private company, typically within two years. The private company is then taken public.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has not directed any slowdown in coronavirus testing and does not regret using the term “kung flu,” which many consider to be offensive, to describe the virus, the White House said on Monday.

The Republican president said at a political rally in Oklahoma on Saturday that he had directed his people to slow down testing for the virus because the process had led to an increased number of known COVID-19 cases.

The White House said at the time that he was kidding and made clear on Monday that no such request was made.

“It was a comment that he made in jest,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a news briefing. She said Trump had not told officials to slow the rate of testing. “He has not directed that,” she said. “Any suggestion that testing has been curtailed is not rooted in fact.”

Trump sees numerical measures as signs of victory or failure. He has repeatedly lamented the fact that better U.S. testing has led to a higher known number of identified coronavirus cases across the country.

Trump has also sought to reinforce that the virus originated in China.

But he has faced criticism for referring to the virus as Chinese. He refrained from that characterization for a time but at the rally on Saturday used “kung flu” to describe it, despite criticism that the use of such terms had led to acts of discrimination against Asian Americans.

Asked by a reporter why the president was using racist language, McEnany said he was not.

“He is linking it to its place of origin,” she said. “I think the media is trying to play games with the terminology of this virus where the focus should be on the fact that China let this out of their country.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump, trailing in opinion polls at a time of anti-racism protests and a surge in coronavirus cases, lashed out at the administration of Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, with a baseless accusation of treason.

The accusation, offered without evidence in an interview on Monday, was the Republican president’s latest effort to tarnish Obama, a popular Democrat whom Trump has targeted for years, including falsely suggesting he was not U.S.-born.

Trump trails the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, by 13 percentage points ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Under Trump, the U.S. Justice Department is reviewing a probe that found foreign interference in the 2016 election he won. He previously accused Obama of spying on his campaign but not treason.

Asked what crime might have been committed by spying, Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network: “It’s treason. Look, when I came out a long time ago, I said they’ve been spying on our campaign … Let’s see what happens to them now.”

“(William) Barr is doing a great job as attorney general, let’s see what they come up with,” he said. Barr has said he does not expect Obama or Biden to be charged.

Representatives for Obama, who was scheduled to appear at a virtual fundraiser with Biden on Tuesday, said he had no comment on Trump’s accusation.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s candidacy. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 21-month investigation documented a Russian campaign of propaganda and hacking to harm Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Mueller also documented numerous contacts between Trump campaign figures and Russians.

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