US President Donald Trump is desperate to reduce his country's trade deficit with China, but according to the International Monetary Fund, the punitive tariffs he has launched on Beijing will not work.

In a new report released on Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that countries looking to reset trade imbalances should address their own macroeconomic issues instead of launching barriers to trade.

"Attempts to target one bilateral trade balance through tariffs or other distortions is likely to be met with offsetting changes in the trade balances with other partners," the IMF report said.

In what could be viewed as a thinly-veiled challenge to Trump's protectionist policies, the Washington institution's World Economic Outlook report concluded the tariffs could make things worse.

Just hours after former Vice President Joe Biden appeared on video to promise he'd be "more mindful" about others' personal space, three more women have gone public claiming he touched them inappropriately -- and all three said Biden's video didn't go far enough.

In an article published late Wednesday in The Washington Post, Vail Kohnert-Yount charged that when she was an intern in the White House in 2013, Biden approached her to introduce herself.

"He then put his hand on the back of my head and pressed his forehead to my forehead while he talked to me," Kohnert-Yount told The Post. "I was so shocked that it was hard to focus on what he was saying. I remember he told me I was a 'pretty girl.'"

Although Kohnert-Yount said she did not consider Biden's behavior to be "sexual assault or harassment," she added that "it was the kind of inappropriate behavior that makes many women feel uncomfortable and unequal in the workplace."

A non-profit partially funded by controversial billionaire activist George Soros paid firms tied to Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele over US$3.8 million in 2017 to provide research and analysis to "government entities", IRS filings have revealed.

The payments - made by The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) - are more than three times the funding Fusion GPS and Steele received from by the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Clinton campaign, paid US$1 million to Fusion GPS in 2016 to investigate Trump - Fusion GPS in turn paid Steele, a former MI6 operative, almost US$170,000 for the project that would eventually produce the infamous 'Trump-Russia' dossier.

The report, alleging a long-running and "well-coordinated conspiracy" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, is now the subject of intense criticism and scrutiny following the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 22-month-long probe into the allegations, which found no evidence of collusion.

Maduro's stay in power has Washington as well as various regional neighbor countries worried about the situation. It seems that Venezuela's neighbors followed a false promise to get rid off the Venezuelan President rather quickly. According to the report, allies of the U.S. are disappointed with the result and are now questioning their decision to recognize Juan Guaido as interim president.

A military invasion seems to be the only method available to accomplish their goal, and such a scenario doesn't sit all too well with countries like Colombia and Brazil, according to the report.

The Venezuelan president said that the authorities continue working for the protection and stabilization of electricity and potable water services.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, denounced on Monday that "an electrical power coup is in full swing", which purpose is to plunge the country into destabilization by taking the electricity and water services from the population.

"When we already had the country connected and we were going to proceed with a cargo management plan, there was a coup via the electromagnetic route to the transmission lines," the president said after explaining the latest attacks on the National Electric System (SEN).

The Venezuelan president said that the experts of the electricity company Corpoelec, the water minister and the armed forces continue to work for the progressive recovery of electricity and drinking water.

Fareed Zakaria puts some of the worst habits of foreign policy punditry on display in these comments on Trump and Venezuela. It comes from a video, so I'm transcribing the full text here:

President Trump faces a crucial test of his foreign policy and his resolve over Venezuela. His administration has made absolutely clear that the U.S. no longer considers Nicolas Maduro to be president, a far stronger declaration than the "red line" that Barack Obama drew around Syria's Assad. So far, Trump's pressure has not worked. Maduro has dug in and the Venezuelan military has not abandoned its support for him. Now Venezuela is a complicated, divided country, and Maduro, as the heir to Hugo Chavez, does have some support in poor and rural areas. But far more significant in bolstering the regime in Caracas has been Russia's open and substantial support.

Moscow now admits that it has sent military personnel to Venezuela. Two Russian military planes arrived in the country last weekend carrying about 100 troops. This is just the latest in a series of moves by Moscow to shore up Maduro. Over the last few years, Russia has provided wheat, arms, credit, and cash to the flailing Caracas government. Estimates of Russia's total investment in Venezuela vary from 20-25 billion dollars. The Venezuelan gambit appears to be personally significant for Russia's President Vladimir Putin. In recent years, as the Venezuelan economy has tanked and political instability has grown, even most Russian companies have abandoned the country, viewing it as too risky. But as Vladimir Rouvinski writes in a Wilson Center Report, Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, which has close ties to Putin, has persisted and even ramped up its support for Maduro.

In other words, Putin is all in with his support for Maduro. He is doing this in part to prop up an old ally and because it adds to Russia's clout in global oil markets, but above all because it furthers Putin's central foreign policy objective: the formation of a global anti-American coalition of countries that can frustrate Washington's purposes and usher in a more multipolar world. Putin's efforts seem designed to taunt the United States, which announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, warning foreign powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere. The big question for Washington is: will it allow Moscow to make a mockery of another American "red line"? The U.S. and Russia have taken opposing, incompatible stands on this issue, and as with Syria there is a danger that, if Washington does not back its words with deeds, a year from now we will be watching the consolidation of the Maduro regime supported by Russian arms and money. The administration has been tough on Russian involvement in Venezuela. Trump himself has even declared that "Russia has to get out," but that is an unusual sentiment from Trump, who has almost never criticized Vladimir Putin and often sided with Russia on matters big and small. As former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has written, Trump has a remarkably consistent pattern of supporting Putin's foreign policy goals. Trump has threatened to withdraw from NATO and has announced the removal of American troops from Syria. He has publicly disagreed with his own intelligence community's conclusion that Moscow meddled with the 2016 election. Now I have never alleged collusion or conspiracy between Russia and Trump, writing merely that we should wait to see what evidence Robert Mueller presented. But the real puzzle remains: why has Trump been unwilling to confront Putin in any way on any issue? And will Venezuela finally be the moment when Trump ends his appeasement?

It's not okay that Harvey Weinstein did it. It's not okay that Charlie Rose did it. But when we learned in 2014 that then-Vice President Joe Biden exposed his naked body to women in the Secret Service, the media didn't care. And the media still don't care because Orange Man Bad.

In his New York Times best-seller, The First Family Detail, award-winning investigative reporter Ronald Kessler revealed that "Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude. Female Secret Service agents find that offensive."

He added, "Because of Biden's lack of consideration as evidenced by that habit and his refusal to give agents advance notice of his trips back home, being assigned to his detail is considered the second worst assignment in the Secret Service after being assigned to protect Hillary Clinton."

U.S. senators from both parties on Tuesday asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry for details about recent approvals for companies to share nuclear energy information with Saudi Arabia, with the lawmakers expressing concern about possible development of atomic weapons.

Saudi Arabia has engaged in "many deeply troubling actions and statements that have provoked alarm in Congress," Senators Bob Menendez, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, told Perry in a letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

The senators said Congress was beginning to reevaluate the U.S.-Saudi relationship, and they believe Washington should not be providing nuclear technology or information to Saudi Arabia now.

Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard
cross posted with https://www.stalkerzone.org/the-new-master-of-ukraine/
Source: https://ukraina.ru/exclusive/20190403/1023202774.html

Ukraine received a new master, irrespective of who will take the presidency.

The master is named Igor Valeryevich Kolomoisky. It is he who detailed and implemented the scenario of the first round of voting in such a way that Poroshenko - who progressed to the second round, Tymoshenko - who didn't progress, Boyko - who took fourth place, and also the oligarchical groups that place a stake on each of them, found themselves being completely dependent on Kolomoisky.

We don't know how he managed to establish control over territorial election commissions, which had to provide the counting of votes for the benefit of Yuliya Tymoshenko. But we can assume that Yuliya Tymoshenko and her headquarters gave him this control within the framework of an agreement on a joint fight against Poroshenko. Yuliya Tymoshenko's mentality and her environment did not allow either of them to assume that Kolomoisky will agree with the president (even if it is temporary). After all, it is precisely Poroshenko who took away "Ukrneft" and "Privatbank" from Kolomoisky, drove him out of the country, and seriously nibbled on his business assets. Therefore, they did not see any problem in tasking Kolomoisky with working with commissions. After all, Zelensky (who was propelled forward by Kolomoisky) succeeded to progress to the second round anyway. Kolomoisky, (according to Tymoshenko) could not come to an arrangement with Poroshenko, and nobody else could compete with Yuliya Tymoshenko in the fight for a place in the second round. Tymoshenko's HQ considered that it will only be profitable for Kolomoisky to build a derby of his candidates in the second round. Besides this, buying off commissions cost a lot, and Kolomoisky is known for paying without bargaining, while Tymoshenko got used to not spending, but earning money during political campaigns. So why not allow Kolomoisky to pay for the loyalty of the commissions? After all, he is an ally, and it's not seen that he has options for changing his partner.

An ad campaign launched by the French government to encourage people to register to vote has hit an embarrassing snag: Twitter won't run the ads, as the company fears they may violate the new French law targeting fake news.

The Elysee hoped to inspire citizens to register to vote in the European elections ahead of the upcoming deadline by paying for sponsored tweets promoting the hashtag #OuiJeVote (Yes, I Vote). But the seemingly innocuous ad campaign faced an unexpected hurdle: France's recently-passed anti-fake-news legislation, which places strict rules on online political campaigns. The law states that all political ads must indicate who paid for them and how much was spent.

Fearing that the ad may violate the law passed by President Emmanuel Macron's own government, Twitter refused to run the ad.

The decision stunned French lawmakers and officials.