The ranking of the 50 most powerful women by Fortune magazine is out. The list include such stalwarts as General Motors Mary Barra and PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi. But it also seven newcomers, including the first foreign-born Latina CEO on the Fortune 500, Geisha Williams. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo was at their annual gathering in Washington this week and has this report.
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 Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be 2.4 percent in 2017, the World Bank said on Wednesday, down from the 2.6 percent projected in April.

It said the downgrade was due to a number of reasons, including Nigeria’s failing to meet expectations but also broader conditions.

“Regional per capita output growth is forecast to be negative for the second consecutive year, while investment growth remains low, and productivity growth is falling,” it said.

Growth across the region, however, was seen rising 3.2 percent in 2018 and 3.5 percent in 2019, forecasts unchanged from earlier this year.

In its latest Africa Pulse report, the Bank said the region would be helped by better commodity prices. Sub-Saharan African economies have been hit by lower commodity prices which slowed growth in the last few years, cutting government revenues.

Albert Zeufack, World Bank chief economist for Africa, said the region’s growth recovery would partly be driven by the continent’s two largest economies — Nigeria and South Africa — exiting recession.

He said the two countries need “deeper reforms” to get back to pre-2014 levels of growth and their political uncertainty needs to be reined in. He said they make up about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP growth.

The World Bank said Nigeria’s economy, the largest in the continent, was expected to expand by 1 percent in 2017.

South Africa’s economy, hit by political worries, was expected to grow just 0.6 percent this year.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meet at the White House Wednesday to discuss the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement amid growing animosity over how to reshape the pact.

Trade experts predict the fourth round of the talks will probably stall as the U.S. aggressively pushes for controversial changes to a rule governing how cars are made.

The rule currently requires at least 62-percent of the parts of a car sold in North America come from the region to avoid import taxes. The Trump administration is calling for an 85-percent threshold, with a 50-percent requirement for U.S.-specific content.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday accused the Trump administration of attempting to undermine the negotiations with a “poison pill proposals.”

The Trump administration has imposed duties on Canadian Bombardier airliners and lumber exports in recent months and has criticized Canada’s wine and dairy industries. But Canadian officials deny Trump is targeting Canada, saying the aircraft and softwood differences have continued for years.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Trudeau will try to persuade Trump to focus on Mexico, which is also participating in the talks, as a source of potential problems at the negotiations to update NAFTA.

“We are your biggest client,” is the message Freeland said Canada will bring to the table. Freeman said Canada is not the cause of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs under NAFTA, as it buys more from the U.S. than China, Britain and Japan combined.

Mexico

Many U.S. manufacturing jobs have instead relocated to Mexico, where wages are far lower than those in the U.S. Mexico has lured U.S. auto plants and other manufacturers to the country, resulting in a $64 million trade surplus with the U.S. last year. Trump administration officials have promised to cut the surplus.

Mexico Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray warned that an end to NAFTA would significantly damage U.S.-Mexican relations and adversely impact bilateral cooperation in non-trade areas.

Other contentious U.S. proposals opposed by Canada, Mexico and much of the U.S. business community include a five-year sunset provision on deals, an overhaul of NAFTA’s dispute arbitration systems, revisions to intellectual property requirements and new protections for U.S. seasonal produce growers.
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the country’s surging stock markets would grow even faster if Congress enacts his proposed overhaul of the country’s tax laws.

Trump is heading to a Pennsylvania airport hangar to talk to a group of truckers about the tax plan, contending they would get “a $4,000 pay raise” with the changes he wants, although economists say that benefit would only materialize over eight years, at a rate of about $500 annually.

Trump’s speech to hundreds of truck drivers, the most common job in 29 of the country’s 50 states, is intended to counter the views of independent analysts that the Republican tax blueprint Trump is advancing would mostly benefit the highest income earners. These analysts contend that at least some middle-income taxpayers would pay more, not less, to the government under Trump’s proposal.

So far, Trump has detailed only some of the specifics of the proposal, including trimming the number of tax rates applying to certain levels of income from seven to three categories under the progressive U.S. tax system of levying higher rates on taxpayers who have earned more than others.

But the Republican-controlled Congress has yet to determine at what levels of income the new rates would apply, leaving the analysts to guess what effects the changes would have on any individual taxpayer. Trump also wants to trim corporate taxes to further boost the U.S. economy, already the world’s largest.

In Twitter comments ahead of his speech, Trump said, “Stock Market has increased by 5.2 Trillion dollars since the election on November 8th, a 25% increase. Lowest unemployment in 16 years and if Congress gives us the massive tax cuts (and reform) I am asking for, those numbers will grow by leaps and bounds.”

The Republican president also took another shot at two of his favorite targets, the national mainstream news media and opposition Democratic lawmakers.

“It would be really nice if the Fake News Media would report the virtually unprecedented Stock Market growth since the election,” Trump said. “Need tax cuts. The Democrats want MASSIVE tax increases & soft, crime producing borders. The Republicans want the biggest tax cut in history & the WALL!” built along the southern U.S. border with Mexico to thwart illegal immigration.

The Trump administration, when it took office in January, predicted it would complete a tax overhaul by August, but now has its sights set on completing the reforms by the end of the year. However, congressional tax-writing panels have yet to hold hearings and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have widely divergent views on what changes should be made.

Under some scenarios, the tax cuts could add to the country’s long-term debt of more than $20 trillion, which would be anathema to many conservative Republican lawmakers. Democratic lawmakers are calling for tax changes to mostly benefit the country’s middle class and lowest-income taxpayers, not the wealthiest. 
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