Trump’s Approval Rating Among Business Owners Hits All-Time High, Survey Shows

More Bank Runs Worry Chinese Regulators, Investors

News Analysis Warning signs are flashing all over China’s banking sector. Chinese regulators have seized and bailed out lenders at an unprecedented pace amidst a surge in bad debt all the while forcing banks to step up lending at increasingly lower interest spreads. It’s a way to keep banks in business but not a recipe for future longevity. Increasing worries about the health of China’s financial system have hit investor confidence in banks and hurt recent capital raising efforts as well. I wrote in August that after three Chinese bank bailouts in three months, more will follow. After a few months of calm, two local bank runs in November have added fuel to the fire. Yingkou Coastal Bank is the latest to suffer a bank run. Yingkou faced a “flash…

Six out of 10 small business owners approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of his job, according to a recently released survey.

CNBC and Survey Monkey started the quarterly Small Business Survey in 2017. The 60 percent approval rating is the highest in the survey’s nearly three-year history.

The lowest approval rating Trump had in the survey was the third quarter of 2017, when it was at 51 percent. Trump’s approval was below 56 percent just one other time and has stayed at 56 percent or higher since the first quarter of 2018.

The latest survey showed a three percent increase in Trump’s approval from the last quarter. Of the approval, 39 percent said they strongly approve of Trump’s handling his job as president and 21 percent said they somewhat approve. Of the 40 percent who disapprove of Trump’s job, 34 percent strongly disapprove.

The survey was conducted among 2,081 self-identified small business owners from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18. The sample included 1,029 Republicans and those who lean Republican; 751 Democrats or Independents who lean Democrat; and 269 Independents who don’t lean toward either party.

The ratings were split sharply along partisan lines—93 percent of Republican small business owners approve of Trump’s job performance versus 37 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Democrats.

A majority of respondents who indicated support for Trump also said that the president getting impeached would impact their businesses. On the other hand, 70 percent of respondents who disapprove of Trump said him getting impeached would probably not impact their businesses.

“Republicans are more likely than Democrats to anticipate consequences for their businesses as a result of the impeachment,” Laura Wronski, SurveyMonkey senior research scientist, said in a statement. “Whether it’s because they view it as a political distraction that prevents people from working on real policy changes or because they’re taking it a step further and they’re concerned about Trump leaving office, we can’t say that much from these data.”

Thirty percent of respondents said that jobs and the economy matters the most to them right now, followed by 18 percent choosing healthcare and 15 percent choosing immigration.

Most respondents said the current conditions for their business are good, including 68 percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents and 43 percent of Independents with no lean. Fifty-eight percent of all respondents said they expect their business’s revenue to increase in the next 12 months while only eight percent said they expect the revenue to decrease in the next year.

Other questions also bore a split along party lines. Asked if they thought changes in trade policy would have a negative effect, no effect, or a positive effect on their business, most Republican respondents said no effect or positive effect while nearly half of Democrats or Democrat-leaning respondents said “negative effect” and most of the others chose no effect.

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380,000 Hongkongers March to Renew Calls for Freedom and Democracy

Protesters could be heard shouting slogans such as “disband the police force,” and “the heavens will eliminate the Chinese Communist Party, let the entire Party die.” The peaceful march, which was organized by a local netizen who identified himself as Swing, had been granted police approval. But soon after it took off, police interrupted the scene. A sizable force had gathered, with at least nine police vans in the area. At around 4:50 p.m. local time, riot police suddenly charged at protesters at an area near the intersection between Salisbury Road and Nathan Road, which is right before Salisbury Garden. The police fired pepper spray and tear gas, before making at least two arrests. The police then put up a blue flag, declaring that people are engaging in an illegal…