The Washington Post - 28.08.2019

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE K A

Economy & Business

OIL PRODUCTION

BP to sell its business

in Alaska to Hilcorp

BP has agreed to sell its
business in Alaska to closely held
Hilcorp Energy for $5.6 billion,
ending a six-decade presence in
the state.
The deal includes BP’s
operating stake in Prudhoe Bay,
the largest-producing oil field in
U.S. history, as well as all its
Alaskan pipelines, London-based
BP said Tuesday in a statement.
For Hilcorp, the oil company
founded by Texas billionaire
Jeffery Hildebrand, it’s the
largest acquisition in its history
and adds to Alaskan assets
bought from BP in 2014.
Alaska’s oil output has
slumped from its heyday in the
late 1980s as discoveries dried up
and major producers sought
easier-to-produce crude
elsewhere, most recently from
shale rock in Texas. Hilcorp,
along with ConocoPhillips, is one
of the few Big Oil companies still
interested in investing fresh
capital in the state, which is
home to protected ecosystems.
“We are steadily reshaping BP
and today we have other

opportunities, both in the U.S.

and around the world, that are

more closely aligned with our

long-term strategy and more

competitive for our investment,”

BP chief executive Bob Dudley

said in the statement.

The sale forms the majority of

BP’s two-year, $10 billion

divestment plan. It includes the

stake in the Trans-Alaska

Pipeline System, which has been

running below capacity for years

as oil production in the state has

declined.

— Bloomberg

LAWSUITS

Top N.C. prosecutor

targets 8 vaping firms

North Carolina’s top

prosecutor expanded his efforts

to halt e-cigarette sales to teens

on Tuesday by suing eight more

manufacturers and sellers of

vaping products.

Josh Stein, the Democratic

attorney general in the

traditionally tobacco-friendly

state, said he’s filing lawsuits

against eight companies that

make or sell e-cigarettes and

related products in an

announcement timed to grab

attention during the first week of

school.

He alleges that the companies

market to young people with

candy and dessert flavors on

social media and don’t use proper

age verification for sales. He said

he’s asking courts to shut down

their marketing and sales to

underage people.

“We simply have to do more to

protect kids, and I as attorney

general of North Carolina refuse

to stand by as e-cigarette

companies entice thousands of

children to use their products,”

Stein told reporters.

Stein said the new lawsuits

target the companies Beard Vape,

Direct eLiquid, Electric Lotus,

Electric Tobacconist, Eonsmoke,

Juice Man, Tinted Brew and

VapeCo.

— Associated Press

ALSO IN BUSINESS

U.S. home prices rose more

slowly in June as some of the

country’s most expensive housing

markets saw stagnant or even

falling prices. The S&P CoreLogic

Case-Shiller 20-city home price

index rose 2.1 percent in June

from a year earlier, down from a

2.4 percent gain in May. Prices fell

1.3 percent in Seattle and inched

up 0.7 percent in San Francisco

and 1.1 percent in New York.

Prices rose 5.8 percent in Phoenix

and 5.5 percent in Las Vegas.

Costco’s first outlet in China

opened Tuesday and was soon

overrun with customers willing

to fight over discounted products

and to wait hours to pay for their

purchases. The American retail

giant had to suspend operations

in its Shanghai store in the

afternoon citing “heavy traffic

and customer flows,” according

to a text message sent by the

company to consumers holding

its membership card. The

message was shared on Weibo.

One Weibo user said they gave up

on the shopping plan after seeing

two-hour waits at the checkout

counters. Other Weibo users

shared that they had to wait three

hours to enter the parking lot.

A blind woman who challenged

two Michigan credit unions over

use of their websites can’t sue

them because she’s not eligible to

become a member anyway, a

federal appeals court said

Tuesday. The court said Karla

Brintley has no standing to sue

Aeroquip Credit Union in

Jackson and Belle River

Community Credit Union in St.

Clair County, overturning a

decision by U.S. District Judge

Arthur Tarnow. Brintley in 2017

accused the credit unions of

violating federal law because

their websites weren’t

compatible with a screen reader

used by the blind. The court

noted she doesn’t work for

Aeroquip, which would make her

eligible to join Aeroquip Credit

Union, or live in St. Clair County,

home of Belle River.

— From news reports

DIGEST

LYNN BO BO/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

A laborer carries a basket of fish on his shoulders as he works on

Tuesday at a wholesale fish market in Yangon, Myanmar, also known

as Burma. According to Myanmar’s Ministry of Commerce, the

country’s fishery export earned $660 million as of Aug. 16, which

exceeds the same period of fiscal 2017-2018 by about $34 million.

BY GREG BENSINGER

Former Google executive An-
thony Levandowski, whose move
to Uber prompted a bitter multi-
million-dollar lawsuit more than
two years ago, was charged Tues-
day by federal officials for his al-
leged theft of self-driving-car
trade secrets.
The U.S. attorney’s office indict-
ed Levandowski, 39, in federal
court in San Jose over claims he
stole or attempted to steal confi-
dential files from Google subsid-
iary Waymo that helped him form
an autonomous big-rig company
he later sold to Uber for about
$680 million. The 33 charges
against Levandowski carry a max-
imum penalty of 10 years and
$250,000 each.
Google sued Uber in February

2017 over the acquisition, hinging

much of its case on allegations

that Levandowski conspired with

Uber to steal 14,000 sensitive self-

driving-car files that served as the

foundation of Otto and later

Uber’s robot car unit.

Levandowski was alleged to

have taken from Google schemat-

ics and designs for light-sensing

technology known as lidar that is

essential to autonomous-vehicle

operation. Uber said during the

civil case that it never implement-

ed any of Google’s proprietary

technology into its own designs.

“All of us have the right to

change jobs,” U.S. Attorney David

L. Anderson said in a statement.

“None of us has the right to fill our

pockets on the way out the door.

Theft is not innovation.”

Attorneys for Levandowski de-

nied any wrongdoing: “He didn’t

steal anything, from anyone,” the

firm Ramsey & Ehrlich said in a

statement. “The downloads at is-

sue occurred while Anthony was

still working at Google — when he

and his team were authorized to

use the information. None of these

supposedly secret files ever went

to Uber or to any other company.”

“Anthony is innocent, and we

look forward to proving it at trial,”

the statement said.

Levandowski couldn’t immedi-

ately be reached for comment.

Waymo spokeswoman Suzanne

Philion on Tuesday said the com-

pany has “always believed compe-

tition should be fueled by innova-

tion.” Uber said it cooperated with

the government throughout the

investigation into Levandowski

and “will continue to do so,” said

spokesman Matt Kallman.

Google’s lawsuit against Uber

riveted Silicon Valley for nearly a

year, culminating in the testimony

of Uber’s bad-boy co-founder and

former chief executive, Travis Ka-

lanick. With its tale of corporate

espionage, treachery and bound-

less ambition, Google had sought

to derail Uber’s self-driving-car

unit, which is central to its plan to

one day turn a profit by, in part,

eliminating payments to human

drivers.

Uber and Levandowski denied

wrongdoing throughout the civil

proceeding.

Ultimately the two sides settled

after just four days of testimony,

netting Google a less than 1 per-

cent stake in Uber, valued in Feb-

ruary 2018 at around $250 mil-

lion. But the legal battle cost Le-

vandowski his job at Uber and cast

a shadow over the ride-hailing

firm’s autonomous-car division,

well before one of the robot cars

killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz.

Levandowski became known

for a hard-charging style and

knack for quickly spinning up

start-ups that attracted interest

from tech firms and netting him

millions from their sale.

He sold two self-driving cars to

Google, while an employee there,

that helped form the foundation

of Waymo. As the head of Uber’s

autonomous-car unit, he started

testing the vehicles on San Fran-

cisco streets without proper per-

mitting from the state, forcing offi-

cials to revoke the cars’ registra-

tions. He pushed engineers

toward a goal of a fully autono-

mous vehicle in San Francisco in

2016, years before most technolo-

gists believed it could be ready,

according to people familiar with

the matter.

Undeterred, Levandowski has

since founded a self-driving-truck

company, Pronto, and claimed last

year to have traversed the country

using technology that required al-

most no human intervention.

Levandowski has relinquished

his role as Pronto chief executive

and will be replaced by the compa-

ny’s chief safety officer. The crimi-

nal charges “do not in any way”

relate to Pronto’s technology, said

a spokesman, Alan Dunton. “We

are fully supportive of Anthony

and his family during this period.”

[email protected]

 More at washingtonpost.com/

technology

Former Google executive who moved to Uber hit with 33 criminal charges

BY ANNA FIFIELD

AND DAVID J. LYNCH

beijing — President Trump may
think he’s keeping Chinese negoti-
ators guessing with his whiplash-
inducing remarks about the
U.S.-China trade war.
But he’s not fooling anyone
here.
More than a year into the
deepening commercial conflict,
Chinese officials and analysts say
they’ve got a handle on the
tweeter-in-chief and are no longer
fazed by his unpredictable initia-
tives.
“There is a lot of fatigue with
President Trump’s ‘art of the
deal,’ ” said Wang Huiyao, presi-
dent of the Center for China and
Globalization and an adviser to
China’s cabinet.
“It’s like a roller coaster. Buenos
Aires, Osaka, Shanghai. He says
one thing one day, then hits the
world with a surprise the next
day,” Wang said, referring to the
sites of high-level, if ill-fated, ne-
gotiating sessions. “The more they
deal with him, the more they fig-
ure him out.”
At the Group of Seven leaders’
summit in Biarritz, France, this
weekend, Trump brushed aside
complaints that his habit of swerv-
ing between tough talk and a
salesman’s hype was damaging
the global economy.
“Sorry! It’s the way I negotiate,”
he told reporters Monday. “It’s
done very well for me over the
years. It’s doing very well for the
country.”
It hasn’t, however, produced a
deal that would commit China to

make the structural changes in its

state-led economy that the admin-

istration has been seeking for

more than a year.

Trump has announced tariffs

that by Dec. 15 will cover almost

97 percent of the Chinese mer-

chandise that American compa-

nies import, according to econo-

mist Chad Bown of the Peterson

Institute for International Eco-

nomics.

By depressing demand for Chi-

nese goods, U.S. tariffs have cost

3 million Chinese factory workers

their jobs, according to Trump,

and put pressure on Chinese Presi-

dent Xi Jinping to make a deal.

Trump’s claim to have the upper

hand at the negotiating table does

not appear to have convinced the

Chinese.

“They’ve decided Trump is a

vacillating guy who can’t figure

out what he wants and gets

spooked every time the stock mar-

ket goes down or someone accuses

him of not being tough,” said Ar-

thur Kroeber, managing director

of Gavekal Dragonomics, a consul-

tancy in Beijing. “Although there

are problems in China, they be-

lieve they have their economy un-

der control, more so than Trump.

They think he is more vulnerable

to a slowdown and that they can

afford to wait him out.”

By early May, the two sides had

completed 90 percent of a deal

involving major Chinese purchas-

es of American farm, industrial

and energy products as well as

enhanced protections for foreign

companies’ technology and trade

secrets, Treasury Secretary Steven

Mnuchin said this summer.

But the trade war between the

world’s economic superpowers

appears to have entered a danger-

ous new phase this month, with

new rounds of retaliatory tariffs

and a demand from Trump that

U.S. companies stop doing busi-

ness with China.

That has caused alarm across

the globe, with fears that the war

could help tip leading economies

such as Japan and Germany into

recession and create new head

winds for the U.S. economy.

China’s growth has, meanwhile,

slowed to its lowest rate in three

decades.

Chinese officials were initially

mystified by Trump’s unconven-

tional style, and Xi is said to have

faced criticism for underestimat-

ing Trump’s resolve to tackle Chi-

na’s trading practices.

But emerging last week from

this year’s Communist Party con-

fab at the beach resort of Beidaihe,

China’s leadership appears to have

decided to hunker down.

“What’s the point of calling Xi

Jinping ‘a good friend’ and ‘a great

leader’ but still increasing tariffs?”

asked Yao Xinchao, a trade profes-

sor at the University of Interna-

tional Business and Economics.

“He’s a 70-ish-year-old man but

speaks like a 7-year-old kid. We

just can’t listen to what he says

now. I think Chinese leaders have

realized this, too.”

Wang Yiwei, a professor of in-

ternational relations at Renmin

University of China, shares a simi-

larly disdainful view. “He is a real

estate developer; he is a profiteer

in the eyes of the Chinese people,”

he said.

But the bottom line remains

that China, which is experiencing

a marked economic slowdown,

wants a deal.

“The trade dispute between

China and the U.S. should be re-

solved through dialogue and con-

sultations,” Foreign Ministry

spokesman Geng Shuang said

Tuesday, adding that the United

States’ “maximum-pressure ap-

proach hurts both sides and is not

in the least constructive.”

“We hope that the U.S. can exer-

cise restraint, return to reason,

and demonstrate sincerity in or-

der to facilitate further consulta-

tions on the basis of mutual re-

spect and mutual benefits,” Geng

said.

The question now is how the

two sides find a way out of the

standoff.

Wei Jianguo, a former vice min-

ister of commerce, said Trump’s

strategy of browbeating countries

such as Canada, Mexico and Japan

into making a deal will not work

with China. “We have seen and

understand Trump’s style,” Wei

said. “If he thinks he can secure an

advantage for the U.S. and wear

China down by exerting various

kinds of extreme pressure, he’s

dreaming. It’s impossible.”

The longer this pattern contin-

ues, the more China becomes con-

cerned that any deal won’t stick.

“Now China understands him

thoroughly and knows that incon-

sistency is his nature,” said Wang,

of Renmin University. “Even if an

agreement is signed, he may not

implement it well. But, without an

agreement, he does this over and

over again, which is also very an-

noying.”

Many analysts expect the dis-

pute to continue to at least No-

vember, when the two leaders are

likely to meet at a summit of Pa-

cific Rim nations in Chile.

Xi, meanwhile, confronts do-

mestic political challenges that

are likely to reduce his willingness

to make concessions under for-

eign pressure. Authorities in Bei-

jing face a growing crisis in Hong

Kong, where protests aimed at

preserving the city’s special status

continue, and are preoccupied by

preparations to celebrate in early

October the politically charged

70th anniversary of the Commu-

nist Party’s takeover of China.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Liu Yang, Wang Yuan and Lyric Li

contributed to this report.

China has learned

how to respond to

Trump’s volatility

AHN YOUNG-JOON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chinese President Xi Jinping initially faced criticism for his dealings with President Trump, but he’s adjusted to the tweeter-in-chief.



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A year into trade war,

president’s about-faces

aren’t fazing Beijing