The general election. Mark welcome to countdown. Manus as miliband prepares to unveil his manifest with a pledge to lower the budget deficit, every year we look to this week in politics and the bloomberg debate. Caroline to export engine in the worlds secondlargest economy is suffering. Lets head straight to hong kong. Yvonne has the latest. 14 decline, a big miss. Yvonne it is definitely a nosedive, economists were expecting an eight point gain but those overseas shipments falling close to 15 . That was also a miss. Economists expecting 10 in the fall. That makes the trade surplus at 3 billion. Compare that to february when we saw 60 billion in trade surplus. There is that falling commodity price which is driving down the value of the imports, instead of an actual fall. The currency one thing to take a look at. The stronger yen. Compare that to the chinese goods may be looking relatively more expensive compared to their counterparts and they may start to see that big impact on chinese export numbers. Also, the Global Recovery is a little lackluster. Even with the bright spot, we are seeing some recent week data coming out. That demand from the u. S. Is still not helping china in terms of boosting those export numbers. Policy are seeing quite a big these march export numbers could be the last straw here. Caroline what about the equity market [no audio] yvonne a little bit of a post Party Hangover we are seeing this weekend now. It is pretty natural to see volatility after we have seen some numbers and some oldtime highs here. Is there more potential to see more upside . Analysts say potentially so. We have some new numbers coming from japan. Those machinery orders are flipping a 10th of a percent from february. Slightly better than what economists were expecting. Mark hillary has made official. If successful she will be the first female commander in chief. Hans nichols, what is hillary hoping to do by getting in the race this early . Hans and speculation and formally start a campaign. She really wants to reintroduce herself. When you look at the fanatic structure, or challenge thematic structure, her issue will be to reintroduce herself to the voters. She will say i am in it, to win it. Hillary clinton i am running for president. Americans have fought their way back from tough Economic Times but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Every day americans need a champion, and i want to be that champion. Hans hillary has a number of advantages. One is money. It is expected that she and her affiliates will raise 2. 5 billion to spend. The other is that she is familiar with the issues. She will not get tripped up and will not make many rookie policy mistakes. The other great advantage is she does not have a serious riemer a challenge. No one has primary challenge. Republicans will be cutting up like a knife fight and all of the internal divisions will be exposed. Hillary can coast through that. Now at the same time her challenge is how to she differentiate from the president she served. How do she make herself different george w. Bush did it in 1998 when he did under ronald reagan. It is doable, but challenging. Mark what are the disadvantages if any for not having a serious challenger . Hans one is that she invites one. Everyone likes the idea of a two person race. Senator Elizabeth Warren or Vice President joe biden could get in. The other big disadvantage is that hillary is seeing this as more of a coronation and not a primary process. I am suspect of the idea of not having a challenger. When you look at the democrats who have lost, they have always been challenged by someone from the left. Democrats have not held the white house for more than two terms since 1944. Democrats have always had this problem of how do they keep the left wing at bay and continued to move to the center. If hillary does not have a serious challenge that makes the task a lot easier and she can spend the next 17 months when i say 17 i mean lunar months. It is a Long Campaign and she can spend it defining herself and moving to the center while republicans cut each other up. Manus nothing to fear from labour. That is the message. Ed miliband prepares to unlevel unveil labours manifest. An exclusive interview he doubts it would deter wealthy foreigners from coming to britain. Firstly, i want to clarify that dom non dom rule makes no difference to me or my family. It is all well taken care of. As i mentioned earlier, i like to analyze things when someone issues a statement or someone where the worlds attention is drawn. Firstly i would like to complement emily for coming up with this right idea. Which gives hope to him. Again, i have met him personally he is very sensible and a person with death depth. He has fire in his belly, each and everyone who wants to come to the election and disappointed candidate to become the leader wants to be there. At the time of the election everyone tries to see, what are the points or issues which can make the vote swing. Once he or she is in the chair they start analyzing that london is a beautiful city you have a good Financial Center. It is easy to do business, you have beautiful parks and beautiful restaurants each and everyone in the world whether a taxi driver or barber or rich man or poor man his divine or is come to live here. Do you think that mr. Miliband with all of his wisdom would like this to disappear . You think he doesnt know about it . A statement has come how he is going to implement it is going to be seen. Knowing whatever i know about him, i am sure that the way i am looking at it to see that the importance always remains, he will also think carefully and get it analyzed properly by his experts. Manus you can catch the full interview online from 9 00 a. M. In london. Caroline lets check some of our other top stories. Jordan spieth in the second youngest champion of the masters tournament. His 18 under part total gave him a four shot victory and matched tigers record. Foreign ministers from russia, ukraine, germany met in berlin to discuss the fragile ceasefire agreement. Both ukraine and russia accuse each other of violating the accord. Experts say easing economic sanctions depends on full compliance. The u. K. Canceler chancellor George Osborne laid out the plan to ease the threshold. Conservative report is basic human instinct to provide for your children and we believe the home that you paid for to belong to you and your family not the taxman. We will take family homes out of the inheritance tax. We will increase the threshold to one Million Pounds so that only millionaires pay inheritance tax. We dont think it is a priority to give tax relief on inheritance tax. We think if your home is worth more than 2 Million Pounds you should start to pay a mansion tax. They would want to give those people inheritance tax relief. It is a polar opposite. It is becoming clearer and they were as we get to the election how the tories are helping a few people and we want everybody to be better off. Caroline and Wolfgang Porsche has thrown his support behind the volkswagen chief executive. After he was publicly criticized by porsches cousin and a vw chairman. He told their spiegel der s piegel that he was keeping distant. He said they were his private opinions and that fax had not been coordinated with the establishment. Greece continues to wrangle with the euro area creditors over the terms that were released. Officials hope to do a deal ahead of the eurogroup meeting and greece is due to roll over 1. 4 billion euros in treasury bills. Mark the dollar broke its three run losing run. Mark lets talk fx markets. The head of the effects strategy at the Canadian Imperial Bank of commerce. The bloomberg dollar index rose. It is below the alltime high. Is the dollar trajectory up once again . Guest weve seen a lot of negative economic surprises and clearly that payroll miss on good friday was an idea of that. We now getting back to the scenario. Where getting back to enter a assumption that the u. S. Economy is performing better as we look at q2 rather than q1. In looking elsewhere there are number of caveats suggesting the other currency will do rather well. Caroline what is that mean for other assets that are more appetizing for u. S. Companies . It looks as though europe and m a looks cheaper. Guess boy guest all of a sudden, he start to get in this scenario we have Interest Rates hitting lows and attraction in certain Asset Classes and that makes m a look that much more appealing. You say we have money on the Balance Sheets not earning a great deal. All of a sudden, it becomes much more interesting and much more dynamic to look at utilization funds. Manus lets talk the consequences of the strong dollar. You are still in the bearish camp. Greece will be back in the spotlight this week. Guest i am not part of the parity cap. We have been bearish on the euro for a considerable time. We have a lot of negativity already priced into the euro. The scenario is once you start to get to that Interest Rate hike it begs the question, how fast and how far are we going to go. You could see rates moving the other way very quickly. On the euro side, the Economic Indicators are looking better how be at from a low base albeit from a low base. Unless you assume we will see some been tremendously wrong, i think the downsides are relatively limited. What chances do you put at qe not running its course as in not being needed . Guest as the data is improved those scenarios will be increasingly discussed. We get toward the end of the year and we are still seeing an improvement and perhaps we can see the ecb taking their foot off the accelerator. One of those points we have been making his we have that diversion of Balance Sheets and that the virgins is going to narrow as we ecb buying bonds. And as we see the virgins divergence, is going to narrow as we see ecb buying bonds. Manus when do 10 year boones go to zero . That must bolster the parity cap discussion. Guess the boy it does increase the magnitude. We are still seeing the legacy of the decisionmaking as we have seen in that is continuing to compress yields in the eurozone particularly in germany as an obvious cap to that. I dont think that implies directly a rush to parity. Manus will take a quick break here. The head of fx strategy at the Canadian Bank of imperial commerce. Stay with us. Caroline still with us is jeremy stretch, head of fx at cibc. Strategize the china move today. We are seeing effects on all the commodity related currencies. Is it downward trajectory . Guest we have been arguing that the Australian Dollar should fall for a considerable period. Most likely next one and another cut to come after that. One thing to be careful of is the impact of the hong kong story because there seems to be a substantial shift which may has to do with the previous over invoicing. We need to be a little bit cautious in terms of looking at the headline stories. But the impact will continue to play out through the commodity space with iron ore and coal prices being integral to the space. The story is still a weaker aussie. Manus we have seen traders reverse their position on oil last week. If oil is beginning to base out, how would that play out in the commodity currency. Guess the boy if oil does guess the boy guest there are ongoing issues on the supply side which can cause rebound on the oil price. If that does come through i think that does provide some support. There are still risks in terms of the growth scenario. We will see how they strategize that grade it is one of the stories when you think when you see the headline, there is a legacy that even what we know about the political risk, the International Investors are slowly getting on board the trend. That were extended and we will see the load get tested. Mark jeremy stretch, head of fx strategy at the cmc. Manus welcome back to countdown. As a retail sales are due out in the United States of america where with the dollar head next . The momentum in the dollar is one of relief. Up over two point 5 2. 5 . Both pimco and other say it is time to sell treasury. Central banks are underway in the market is structurally short dollars. That is what the bloomberg story is saying this morning that the market has room to go. We are. 8 away from record highs in the dollar. Morgan stanley says you will get hikes by the end of this year and sales of mortgagebacked securities. 1. 5 Percentage Points higher in dollar rates next year. That is the dollar story set to trade higher. We are down 1. 25 . Chinese exports fall nearly 15 but the imports are down by 12 . Iron ore at a price of 30. In 2015 they are saying it will trade down to 45. Aussie dollar is under pressure vicariously as a result of the china story. Pimco says it is not a slamdunk it is the path of least resistance and is still one of their conviction trades to short the aussie dollardollar. You have the dollar higher and yen lower. You see these rates out of the bank of japan when they are saying get ready for zero or negative insulation data. With that in mind, what comes next from the bank of japan. You have the ecb with the pedal to the metal so to speak. 120. 45, i am seeing calls for 120. 43. Mark top stories on bloomberg, equities in hong kong continued to gain after sustaining the biggest rally worldwide last week. The spike comes as the chinese mainland investors use the crossborder Exchange Link to hunt for bargains. Stan druckenmiller said there are troubles looming in the u. S. [inaudible] at 9 00 him tonight new york time. Hans keeping himself quote at a distance. Martin winterkorn is the ceo of the volkswagen group. They have had record sales and are close to eclipsing toyota but sales in the u. S. Have been sluggish and that could be why at least some on the board are upset. Writing to the rescue of him is the cousin here is what he had to say in a Statement Released he said porsche is also on the board and when you look at how it is broken down, the porsche side has two seats in the pf side has three seats. There are 20 seats on the board and 10 are held by the workers council. Mr. Winter corn appears vendor corn appears mr. Win tercorn appears to have the backing of the council. They have had remarkable success with their luxury brand but their profitability in 2014 they had a 2. 5 operating profit. Their goal is to get that to 6 . They sold a lot of vehicles and have had a lot of growth, the question is, where is their profitability. It has been a good quarter in terms of Stock Performance but now we have this internal turmoil and we will see how it sorts out him a but it is a remarkable story. Remarkable and a family affair. Lets turn to a competition for power closer to home. The u. K. Election campaign gets serious this week. Up first is the labour party. Anna edwards has all the developments. What is ironic here is it looks as if they will focus on the fiscal deficit. Anna over the weekend and today seeing both of these Historic Party stepping into each others territory. Today we get the launch of the manifesto from the labour party and today they will be talking about fiscal responsibility and pledging to lower the deficit. Every year they want to run a surplus on that measure by 2020 and they will cast doubt on the longterm economic planner and the commitments David Cameron is making. And indeed they continued to say that the funding for these pledges will come from a stronger u. K. Economy so Nothing Specific tapped in terms of where that is coming from. We will also hear from the labour party about a change in the carried interest rules from private equity companies, hedge funds a run stamp doc. All of those things we have heard before but we might get more detail. And it is a busy week. The manifesto launch is due tomorrow and wednesday that liberal democrats and ukip step up. Mark reminds us of the big news flow as we approach this big week. Anna are we closer to working out who will win the election . Doesnt seem so. We are asking whether the polls have finally started to move in favor of labor if i look at the poll of polls they put labor at maybe one point ahead or two points ahead but it is not substantial. I like the comment from populist over the weekend theyre locked in the marginal areas of sampling. It is not as if we can say anything conclusive. The big news is from the conservatives around the inheritance tax. We have some comments from George Osborne and this is how he defended that. Osborne conservative support the basic instinct to provide for your children and we believe that your home that you paid for should belong to you and your family. It will take family homes out of inheritance tax and will increase the rush holt to one Million Pounds so that only millionaires pay the inheritance tax. Anna we have more detail behind the liberal democrat deficit plan. They want to hold that middle ground between what the tories are doing and what labor is doing. They have eight out of the Northern Irish seats in westminster. And they say they could work within the party caroline a busy week and yet still all of the inconclusive polls and what strain this puts on the economy. We saw the british pound starting to feel some weakness. Anna and when we hear from u. K. Businesses they focus on that. Of how long it will take to form a government and that seems to be crucial. A great bloomberg piece by mark gilbert talks about just the start of seeing these tensions expressed in the market, you mentioned the pound against the dollar. Mark gilbert finds evidence in the guilt market and the equity market we are seeing a little bit of underperformance because in part of the u. K. Election it is hard to detach what is going on with quantitative easing on the european continent. It is hard to draw conclusions one way or the other but i thought one thing was really important to remember, as we see the manifestos launch and as we see promise after promise it occurs to me that this year, unlike any other we seem to be heading for some sort of