The Washington Post reports: "Two of President Trump's closest advisers on Tuesday predicted the economy will roar back to life later this year, even as China's sluggish recovery from the coronavirus shows such optimism might be misplaced. With China's months-long outbreak apparently contained, most factories and businesses there have reopened. But fears of a fresh wave of infections led the government last week to reimpose travel restrictions in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, and order the closure of several hundred movie theaters that had just reopened for the first time since January. The halting Chinese recovery offers sobering lessons for U.S. policymakers about what is shaping up to be a more protracted economic convalescence than the White House wants, according to business executives and economists. 'A V-shaped recovery seems to be really difficult to envision,' said James Green, senior adviser at McLarty Associates and a former U.S. diplomat in Beijing. 'The lesson of the Chinese experience is: It's going to be slow going.'"
Reuters reports: "China was the biggest source of applications for international patents in the world last year, pushing the United States out of the top spot it has held since the global system was set up more than 40 years ago, the U.N. patent agency said on Tuesday. The World Intellectual Property Organization, which oversees a system for countries to share recognition of patents, said 58,990 applications were filed from China last year, beating out the United States which filed 57,840. China's figure was a 200-fold increase in just 20 years, it said. The United States had filed the most applications in the world every year since the Patent Cooperation Treaty system was set up in 1978. More than half of patent applications - 52.4 % - now come from Asia, with Japan ranking third, followed by Germany and South Korea. Ownership of patents is widely seen as an important sign of a country's economic strength and industrial know-how."
Reuters reports: "Given the recent, historically thin exports, it might take some extraordinary circumstances for U.S. soybean shipments to approach the government's full-year target. And without an extended turnaround in export demand, U.S. soybean stockpiles could swell to the second-highest levels on record by September, despite last year's short crop. China is likely the only country that could provide the needed lift to U.S. soybeans, but given cheaper, abundant supplies in Brazil and a slower global economy in the wake of the coronavirus, the outlook is not too favorable. The recent Phase 1 trade deal suggests China must buy significantly more U.S. soybeans than it has, but market conditions, not goodwill, would probably govern such a move. The United States exported just 2.76 million tonnes of soybeans in February, the fewest for the month since 2004, according to data published on Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau."