…As U.K. will fine Facebook over Cambridge Analytica data breaches, regulator says***
The US has ramped up its trade war with China, listing $200bn (£150bn) worth of additional products it plans to place tariffs on as soon as September.
The move comes just days after the two countries imposed tit-for-tat tariffs of $34bn on each other’s goods.
President Donald Trump had already threatened to impose additional tariffs against China if it retaliated.
The list names more than 6,000 items including food products, minerals and consumer goods such as handbags.
The public will have until the end of August to comment on the list before the new tariffs – to be imposed at 10% – come into effect.
Asian stock markets fell sharply in early trading amid escalating trade tensions between the two economic giants.
In China, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 2% while the Shanghai Composite fell 1.8%. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index shed 1.7%.
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The White House says the tariffs are a response to unfair trade practices by China.
The US wants China to stop practices that allegedly encourage transfer of intellectual property – design and product ideas – to Chinese companies, such as requirements that foreign firms share ownership with local partners to access the Chinese market.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said there was “no justification” for China’s retaliation.
“As in the past, the United States is willing to engage in efforts that could lead to a resolution of our concerns about China’s unfair trade practices and to China opening its market to US goods and services,” he said.
“In the meantime, we will remain vigilant in defending the ability of our workers and businesses to compete on a fair and reciprocal basis.”
‘Increasingly worried’
Many companies in the US are opposed to the administration’s use of tariffs against China, saying they risk hurting business and the economy without being likely to change behaviour.
On top of the $34bn worth of tariffs that came into effect on Friday, the White House has said it would consult on tariffs on another $16bn of products. President Trump has suggested these could come into effect later this month.
In total, the new import taxes President Trump is threatening to impose are almost equal to the value of China’s entire goods exports to the US, worth more than $500bn last year.
“It’s a difficult situation for a number of our companies. They’re getting increasingly worried about where this is all going,” Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies, told the BBC on Tuesday before the latest measures were announced.
“They can’t figure out what the end game is.”
In the meantime, Britain’s information regulator said on Wednesday she intends to fine Facebook for breaches of data protection law as her office investigates how millions of users’ data was improperly accessed by consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has faced questioning by U.S. and EU lawmakers over how Cambridge Analytica improperly got hold of the personal data of 87 million Facebook users from a researcher.
Updating on her investigation into the use of data analytics by political campaigns, Britain’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she intended to fine Facebook 500,000 pounds ($663,850), a small figure for a company with a market value of $590 billion, but the maximum amount allowed.
Denham said that Facebook had broken the law by failing to safeguard people’s information and had not been transparent about how data was harvested by others on its platform.
“New technologies that use data analytics to micro-target people give campaign groups the ability to connect with individual voters. But this cannot be at the expense of transparency, fairness and compliance with the law,” she said in a statement.
Facebook can respond to the commissioner before a final decision is made, and said it was reviewing the report and would respond soon.
“As we have said before, we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and take action in 2015,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, said in a statement.
“We have been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office in their investigation of Cambridge Analytica, just as we have with authorities in the US and other countries.”
British lawmakers have launched an inquiry into “fake news” and its effect on election campaigns, and have increasingly focused on Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump in 2016, has denied its work on the U.S. president’s successful election campaign made use of data.
It has also said that, while it pitched for work with campaign group Leave.EU ahead of the Brexit referendum in Britain in 2016, it did not end up doing any work on the campaign.
However, the Information Commissioner’s report said other regulatory action would include a criminal prosecution against Cambridge Analytica’s parent firm, SCL Elections, for failing to deal with the regulator’s enforcement notice.
It also said it would send warning letters to 11 political parties to compel them to audit their data protection practices.
BBC with additional report from NBC
