a watch out we still don't know how easily it is being transmitted we have to have health systems around the world on a on alert and they have so we have to make sure that they have enough of capacity to quickly detector test and treat people who are sick we have seen that france has done that in a very quick way unfortunately many countries in the world do not have that level of preparedness and trying to help those countries to get to that level so de can also deal with any potential exported case. meanwhile more than $300.00 chinese companies are trying to secure bank loans totaling more than $8000000000.00 and the effort to limit the economic impact of the corona virus outbreak according to an exclusive report from reuters since the outbreak started manufacturing in the country has slowed and could severely hurt global supply chains now according to sources cited in the report the company is looking for loans are either involved in fighting the epidemic or have been hit hard by the. loadout ali baba group holdings the now it's monday that their affiliates and financials my bank would offer nearly $3000000000.00 in loans to chinese companies as they deal with the impact of the coronavirus now my bank would offer preferential terms for firms located in the who by province where the outbreak started now according to a statement posted on the company's official we bow account half of the allotment would be made available for companies and who by now the companies who receive the loans will be one year low as they would get 0 percent interest rates for the 1st 3 months and the 2 and a 20 percent discount on rates for the final 9 months of that term for more on all of this were in the overall impact of the coronavirus let's bring in john dean of the university of miami's herbert business school thank you so much for joining us today now we know that you have a depth of understanding of the chinese economy but what do you make of these companies looking for loans with preferential treatment to get them back on the right track if they were affected by the current a virus outbreak yeah i think it's very important signal that many companies especially small businesses in china are severe cash pressure because of course they will not have been collecting receivables in the last 3 weeks over the chinese new year and they're not able to produce anything to sell and so especially when companies are in an expansion mode a growth mode the lack of working capital becomes a very important constraint on their ability to operate and so what we're seeing here now is i think the 1st the 1st leg and what's going to be a significant effort on the part of the chinese semi private sector to work with the chinese government to keep as many of these companies afloat as possible and it's also worth noting that very large chinese companies like d.d. ride share. for instance have been totally out of business during the quarantine shutdown so they're hurting as well construction companies also hurting because many of their loans are denominated in dollars and have short maturities so on a whole range of dimensions we see chinese manufacturing companies chinese production companies fiscal pressure and looking for help yeah well manufacturing obviously has been hit hard following that lunar new year celebration with a lot of factories they still haven't even reopened yet specifically a lot of automotive plants are shuttered with plans to get operation by the end of this week maybe even early next week at the center of this though is foxconn which is mostly known for producing apple i phones which according to reports brought back 10 percent of their workforce to at least one plant on monday so what are your concerns as far as seen a delay in getting manufacturing back on track and we're still talking about possibly a backlog of months to get things back in order. yes i think i would be quite conservative about the speed with which these plants are going to be fully operational even if a plant reopens it doesn't mean that 100 percent of the workforce in that plant can actually be on the job remember the whole thing with the corona virus really came to a head during the chinese new year's celebration when tens of millions of chinese had already moved out of their hometown to celebrate with friends and relatives around the country many of them remain stranded and so the notion that these plants even if they reopen can be fully operational in the short term is perhaps stretching credulity and i mean it is interesting to point out because yeah like ben said we're talking about 10 percent of the workforce at this foxconn plant and what we're hearing is you know they're saying people who are actually located locally those people can return to work where people who any have to do any travel to get back are not actually able to do this i want to move in kind of look at a macro perspective of how this is going to affect the economy here and morgan stanley analysts say the disruption to supply chains to the coronavirus is seen as a major concern for the global economy due to the integrated supply chains especially in asia as clearly would be mentioned some analysts are even saying that the economic we could only see economic growth of 5 percent in the 1st quarter of 2020 now can the country recover and hit those numbers around 6 percent once the outbreak is hopefully and eventually contained. well of course the last phrase so you use is the key when is the peak going to occur and when is the world health organization going to declare that that peak has been reached and even once the peak has been reached that doesn't mean that 5 minutes later all of these plants are going to reopen because some w.h.o. protocol. calls there needs to be a 21 day period where there are no further confirmed cases before a geography can be declared free of the virus and i'm sure what's happening in china at the moment is there's trim tremendous pressure from certain parts of the. government especially the economic ministries the state owned enterprises to get production back up and running in the big danger is that they may relax the tight quarantine too early in order to get back on track with production and that might then lead to a secondary bump in terms of the virus with respect to confirmed cases absolutely well thank you so much for your insight today i will gladly have you back to keep us up to apprise on what's going on john dean of the university of miami herbert business school thank you again. federal prosecutors announced charges monday against 4 chinese intelligence officers for hacking equifax one of the country's largest credit reporting agencies officials say that hack which took place in 2017 and affected over 143000000 americans was conducted by members of china's people's liberation army and it's part of beijing's aggressive pattern of stealing private data to improve his intelligence operations and boost the performance of its domestic companies. not only cause significant financial damage to equifax but invaded the privacy of many millions of americans and impose substantial costs and burdens on them as they had to take measures to protect themselves from identity theft so joining us now to break down this story is boom us correspondent sarah meant to say ok so sarah this is actually a story i covered extensively at the time of the breach 140000000 people right had their information stolen equifax at the time was seen as being incompetent a lot of folks may not remember this but incompetent with user data and specifically because they had been warned that there was a possible breach that could occur because of the need for security patching their software was warned about this at least once maybe twice and then opted to do nothing so today the entire focus seems like it was on you know the chinese military hacking which is not to say that that didn't happen but there is more to the story than just that correct that's right so. let me explain that was actually 150000000 people then their social security numbers were taken at least 10000000 driver's license numbers a lot of data one of the largest actually largest theft of sensitive personal identification and from ation that we've seen and history but barra said that this is an exception as well because they they were left with no choice but to die and charge these 4 military people usually they don't charge other countries military or intelligence but this time they did it but this is a. 2nd time in history that they've charged chinese military they did back in 2014 when they indicted the chinese military was charged for cyber espionage this was when the us us companies and the labor organization for commercial advantage so we're seeing this for a 2nd time with some of the largest data so let's say china did do this ok we don't know there's going to be an investigation or there was an investigation or perceive the facts on this but what were they doing with the data that they were still still it i mean you're talking about 100 over 100000000 americans their personal data their social security numbers probably all their accounting information and all that is wrapped up into this report well that's why this investigation took so long because the data was not sold that wasn't posted anywhere else so the f.b.i. along with the d.o.j. and other agencies were helping to find where this was and again the f.b.i. found that it hadn't been sold so they're keeping an eye on the data that they found was somewhere like back start it was really hard for them and it took years for them to find this and they said that they're going to continue to really see where this data goes. and i hope that it doesn't get sold or that it doesn't get exposed in some way or another because of a normal hacker would have done it yes we would have seen this already done before we would have already seen this have been exposed or even sold so william makes the announcement today he says there is these 4 members of the chinese military intelligence officers they've issued arrest warrants for them any indication that china is going to turn these guys over absolutely and i'm sorry i mean we have we have names of the 4 people however they they have they said that it was more of a statement that they would make to indict them knowing they're probably not going to come back to the united states but far to say that again coming back to china is a huge national security threat of i.p.p. of intellectual property being being stolen and take a listen to what he said earlier today. about 80 percent of our economic espionage prosecutions have implicated the chinese government. and about 60 percent of all trade secrets jeff cases in recent years involve some connection with china so still calling china a major national security threat there i.p.p. or property theft going on their ip theft again brings us back to what the whole argument was with the trade war certainly today was as much of a political statement as it was a law enforcement statement again we can't let equifax off the hook for the fact that they knew they had a problem and did they settled for 700000000 just last year or so as you know course one of their own is the thing so much for keeping us up on that. amazon has taken legal action in india to fight back against an anti-trust investigation levied by the competition commission of india in january the c.c.i. ordered an investigation into amazon and wal-mart's flipkart over suspected violations of competition law amazon and flipkart have faced accusations in india that the companies broke the law by taking billions of dollars in losses to sell products at a steep discount and discriminated against smaller retailers now in a court filing issued on monday in the city of mega lulu amazon's attorneys say the investigation order suffers from a non application of mind as it appears to contain no reference to the finding of appreciable adverse effect on competition flipkart has yet to file a similar order but following the announcement of the probe the company said it was fully compliant with indian laws. but stay there because when we come back facebook is headed to court with the i.r.s. over a possible $1000000000.00 tax bill that hasn't been well explained what both sides are saying and why this case will have a huge impact on other tech companies. much more on the other side of the break. in the united states presidential candidates debate the future of the u.s. and the world. to dig into the burning questions of this election cycle. every week. student trade was money. running this sunday exclusively. in 24 you know bloody revolution. the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be increasingly violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it you know lawyer here i mean you know liz put me in the new bill is that i knew pulling needed to the former ukrainian president recalls the events of 2014. those who took. it invested over $5000000000.00 to assist ukraine in these and other ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. it sounded like not just a bad idea but a flat out government takeover of the telecom industry well now the white house is actually backing away from statements made by attorney general bill barr that the u.s. should take controlling stake in other finland's nokia or sweden's ericsson in order to counter while ways dominance in 5 g. technology as we reported last week the attorney general who at one time was legal counsel for verizon communications stated that the u.s. should take controlling interest in one or both of those norwegian companies well now white house economic adviser larry kudlow is walking back the statement saying quote u.s. government is not in the business of buying companies whether they're domestic or foreign but then adding that quote there's nothing to prohibit american tech companies from acquiring them meanwhile vice president icons also walk back those comments saying great respect to attorney general barr but we believe the best way forward is what. over the last several days pence is referring to the f.c.c. is chairman's efforts to free up more spectrum for 5 g. wireless you. he went on to say quote that's the plan the president has a dorst and will be carrying forward he also added that the united states can expand 5 g. by using the power of the free market and american companies which is not discusses the international regulatory attorney miles edwards miles good to have you here last week i got here very critical of this idea when it was floated by the attorney general because not only with the idea of the u.s. government buying stake in private companies like nike or ericsson be completely at odds with free market principles not even sure it's legal is that even legal well maybe i mean you have a certain range here if you remember back in world war one the government actually nationalized industry even in 1952 truman tried to nationalize the steel industry and it was wholly rejected by the supreme court and we actually have 2 cases now the star case that is going on that says primarily that the government can't do this and actually as you said before i agree with you i think it's a terrible idea of the government should help promote private industries but the government shouldn't substitute for private industries absolutely so another question to follow up on that would it be legal though if companies are outside the united states what i thought was interesting here was that the bar didn't just say you know any telecom company he specifically picked 2 that are not u.s. based so just in terms of the law would it be legal for the u.s. to take a stake as a government in a private company that's a foreign company. well there's nothing that would prohibit them from doing it but what you're going to have these are going to trigger litigation right only by the company but by the shareholders and selves and so what the market would say is that intrinsically of value of a company would go down if the government was involved because the government doesn't have experience with it and all sorts of other unintended consequences including additional regulation could really impact their business models so even though there's nothing that would prohibit them from doing it i think it would be a very long road for them to actually accomplish it and accomplish that really successfully and now miles meanwhile in the chinese embassy in paris on sunday urged the french government to not discriminate against the wall way now france is currently selecting suppliers for its 5 g. mobile network and the chinese government says it fears that while way will face greater restrictions than its competitors what do you make of this well it was a really weird and threatening statement by the chinese government because you're right they said you know one thing that we don't want is we don't want to scream a nation we don't want protectionism and they actually mention nokia oh and eric said but on the other hand i think this is in anticipation of the april option. she suspected by the french government but already we have orange i say which is a largest carrier in france saying we don't want wild way we're going to go with no clear and erik's and so i think to a degree it was a political move but with the chinese it was also an economic move as well and now miles looking at the future of what's going on with the 5 g. build out and really the battle between governments when we go to the u.s. versus the u.k. on using while way germany has been involved in this and meanwhile i don't know if you know this but in asia they're building out 5 g. with weiwei and from what i hear works pretty well so what do you see with the problems over implementing this technology are going to. to have this back and forth between you know a chinese telecom giant and governments yeah absolutely you're correct i mean the asian governments have basically refuted trump's pressure for them not to do business with while way and the trumps policy is pretty simple they're a agent of the chinese government they're involved with the chinese military and historically they've been involved in basically espionage and so the trump government is trying to persuade now their european allies not to do business with rodway but the problem is they're so far ahead in building out the 5 g. infrastructure that what they really need to do is encourage the microsoft's and the dells and the varieties and those companies are in a position to really work with them because right now they're going to miss the boat in developing the protocols and the norms that are necessary to have a global 5 g. network so it's either we're part of it and we don't necessarily like it or we're not going to be part of it at all and i think the government should encourage these companies to make some sort of agreement with them in order that we can be part of the process or part of the process then there's a better chance that we can control and influence yeah you mentioned that the chinese mentioned an ericsson in their statement about france and the statement they made was we allow them in china so you should allow us another country which is not really i think a winning argument international regulatory authority miles edwards thank you for your time. thank you. well it is a case that could have far reaching implications for some of the largest tech giants in the world and how they are taxed facebook at the i.r.s. headed to court this week in a case that could cost the social media giant as much as $9000000000.00 and rewrite the way government crackdown on companies that shift profits to low tax countries joining us now to explain is hillary or was board member of the british american business association hilary got to say 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