A U.S. delegation traveled to Kenya on Thursday to attend the inaugural economic summit of the American Chamber of Commerce, Kenya.

About 500 delegates, including Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Gilbert Kaplan, U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade, other high-ranking government officials from both nations and representatives from nearly 30 major U.S. corporations, gathered at the summit, which was aimed at creating partnerships between the two nations’ public and private sectors in order to foster economic growth. 

The Kenyan agenda was centered on advancing Kenyatta’s “Big Four” priorities — universal health care, manufacturing, food security and affordable housing — that he set out after his re-election to a second term last year.

American companies in attendance were looking for opportunities to expand and to increase trade and investment in Africa.

Kaplan told VOA that increasing business and economic development in Africa would benefit many Americans, which aligns with the promises of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. 

“If we can export more and do more transactions here, do more investment here, that’s going to be incredibly helpful for the United States, for the people back home, because we’ll be making profitable ventures, and that will naturally help,” he said.

But the U.S. delegation also had a strong message for Kenya: Real, meaningful economic growth can’t happen unless Kenya commits to fighting corruption.

‘It’s got to stop’

“Corruption is undermining Kenya’s future,” said Robert Godec, U.S. ambassador to Kenya. “It’s clearly a major problem for the country. We welcome President Kenyatta’s commitment and the push recently to address this problem. Corruption is theft from the people, and it’s got to stop.”

In his speech to the delegation, Kenyatta pledged to “fight this animal called corruption and ensure that it is a beast that shall never infect or inflict future generations” of Kenyans. 

Kaplan told VOA that the U.S. government was providing support and training to the Kenyan government to help tackle corruption.

“We’ve dealt with that — the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, rule of law and international standards,” he said. “I think we can convince Kenya that following those rules is ultimately to their benefit because it brings more businessmen and women into the system and being able to be successful.” 

Part of the objective of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is to make it illegal for companies and their supervisors to influence foreign officials with personal payments or rewards.

C.D. Glin, president and chief executive of the U.S. African Development Foundation, told VOA that the U.S. government’s and private sector’s support of businesses in Africa that had ramped up under the previous administration was being continued by Trump.

For instance, the President’s Advisory Council for Doing Business in Africa, begun under the Barack Obama administration and still in force, “really is looking at Africa from a business standpoint and from an opportunity standpoint so that Africans can benefit from U.S. support, but also can support the U.S.,” Glin said.

Major boost

Nicholas Nesbitt, chairman of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, said the increased U.S. private sector investment had been hugely beneficial for the Kenyan economy.

“We see a lot more tourism coming to Kenya, a lot more trade and a lot more business,” he said. “We’re very excited to see the numbers of American companies — small, midsize and even large corporations — looking at Kenya as a destination. It’s also a gateway to east Africa, where there are 200 million potential consumers. So, the investments, the energy, the excitement is absolutely tremendous today at this summit between American and Kenyan business.”

Six commercial deals between Kenyan and American companies were signed at the summit. Maxwell Okello, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce, Kenya, called that a sign that significant economic change would be driven by private sector innovation.

“I think at the end of the day, with what we’re hearing today here, it’s really down to what the private sector wants to do from a commercial engagement,” he said. “And I believe conversations such as this is really where you spark that interest, where you create those linkages and the sort of engagement that you need. And the opportunities are there for anyone. They’re obvious.

“So, I think that various policies aside, from a commercial business engagement perspective, the sky is wide open.” 
…

Importers of Iranian oil are facing pressure from the United States to find another energy source or be hit with sanctions.

The Trump administration is threatening other countries, including close allies such as South Korea, with the sanctions if they don’t cut off Iranian imports by early November, essentially erecting a global blockade around the world’s sixth-biggest petroleum producer.

South Korea accounted for 14 percent of Iran’s oil exports last year, according to the U.S. Energy Department. China is the largest importer of Iranian oil with 24 percent, followed by India with 18 percent. Turkey stood at 9 percent, and Italy at 7 percent.

A State Department official told reporters this week that the “vast majority” of countries will comply with the U.S. request. A group from the State Department and the National Security Council is delivering the president’s message in Europe. The official added that the group had not yet visited China or India.

President Donald Trump announced in May that he would pull the United States out of a 2015 agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, and would re-impose sanctions on Tehran. Previously, the administration said only that other countries should make a “significant reduction” in imports of Iranian crude to avoid U.S. sanctions.

European allies will reluctantly go along to avoid sanctions on their companies that do business in the U.S., said Jim Krane, an energy and geopolitics expert at Rice University. However, China, India and Turkey might be less likely to fully cut off Iranian imports, he said.

Antoine Halff, a researcher at Columbia University and former chief oil analyst for the International Energy Agency, said it’s not unusual for the U.S. government to seek cooperation from other importers of Iranian oil — President Barack Obama’s administration did it during a previous round of sanctions.

“The difference is that there was broad international support for the sanctions then,” while the move to restore sanctions now over Iran’s nuclear program “is a unilateral decision from the United States alone,” Halff said.

The Trump administration is counting on Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to supply enough oil to offset the lost Iranian exports and prevent oil prices from rising sharply.

The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. will be talking in a week or so “with our Middle Eastern partners to ensure that the global supply of oil is not adversely affected by these sanctions.”

Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed over the weekend to boost oil production by about 600,000 barrels a day. Iran exported about 1.9 million barrels a day during the first quarter of this year, according to OPEC figures. It is the world’s seventh largest oil exporter.

“It would not be a heavy lift for OPEC to replace Iran’s contribution to world oil markets — Saudi Arabia could probably do it on its own,” Krane said. “Saudi spare capacity protects the U.S. motorist from U.S. foreign policy.”
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Leaders in east Africa have agreed to work together to build a single railroad and highway network to enhance integration in the region. Leaders and representatives of eight countries met in Kenya Tuesday for the 14th time to discuss the northern corridor project aimed at improving trade and tightening security.

The representatives stressed the need for better movement of people, goods and services with better joint infrastructure.

Kenya got the go-ahead to continue building its standard gauge railways to the Uganda border. Kenya is about to finish the second phase of the rail line between the cities of Nairobi and Naivasha.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told his counterparts plans are under way to extend the line.

“Preliminary discussions for the funding of Naivasha and Kisumu sections are in progress and we expect to sign the framework agreement to the People’s Republic of China anytime this year,” he said.

Uganda and Rwanda are also planning to extend railway connections to the countries after Kenya completes its part.

The agenda included a way to improve a single customs territory by reducing the number of weigh bridges and police checks to speed up the delivery of goods in landlocked countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan.

Kenyatta said the border post between Kenya and Uganda has been effective.

“Malaba — one stop border post total time taken at the crossing has now been substantially reduced to less than seven hours for goods traveling under [a] single customs territory,” he said.

Following oil discoveries in Kenya and Uganda, the leaders agreed to come up with a joint refinery model to facilitate the exportation of petroleum products.

“The heads of state are looking at all these corridors and how they can enhance or support each other and ease the movement between their countries, both on road networks as well as railway network and all other means of transport within the region. So the northern corridor has been very important,” said Gerrishon Ikiara, an international economic affairs lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

The southern corridor network, which connects Tanzania to Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi is also under construction.

Countries in the region are focusing on at least 16 infrastructure projects, with the goal of transforming their people socially and economically.

 
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Enslaved on a Thai fishing vessel for 11 years, Tun Lin saw his fellow workers lose their minds one after another, with one fisherman jumping into the sea to end his

life.

Some would start murmuring or laughing to themselves as they worked day and night in Indonesian waters on the cramped boat, often surviving on fish they caught and drinking water leaking from an onboard freezer.

“It was like a floating prison – actually, worse than prison,” the Burmese fisherman, who was sold into slavery, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Samut Sakhon, a Thai fishing hub some 40 km (25 miles) southwest of the capital Bangkok.

The 36-year-old, who was rescued in 2015 after losing four fingers and being stranded on a remote island for years without pay, is now lobbying for fishermen’s rights with the Thai and Migrant Fishers Union Group (TMFG).

Under growing consumer pressure, Thailand has introduced a raft of modern technologies since 2015 – from satellites to optical scanning and electronic payment services – to crack down on abuses in its multibillion-dollar fishing industry.

It is one of a growing number of countries using innovation to deal with modern slavery, from mobile apps in India to blockchain in Moldova, but experts warn against over-reliance on tech as a silver bullet without stronger workers’ rights.

“Technology can be a double-edged sword,” said Patima Tungpuchayakul, co-founder of the Labor Rights Promotion Network Foundation, a Thai advocacy group. “It has become an excuse the government is using to justify they have done something, but in practice they don’t use it to solve the problem.”

More than half the estimated 600,000 industry workers are migrants, often from poor neighboring countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar, United Nations (U.N.) data shows.

Tracking Devices

After the European Union threatened to ban fish exports from Thailand, and the U.S. State Department said it was failing to tackle human trafficking, the Southeast Asian country toughened up its laws and increased fines for violations.

It banned the use of workers aged below 18 and ordered fishermen to be given contracts and be paid through electronic bank transfers.

Authorities ordered Thai vessels operating outside national waters to have satellite communications for workers to contact their families or report problems at sea, plus tracking devices to spot illegal fishing.

“We are serious in law enforcement regarding human trafficking and illegal labor cases,” said Weerachon Sukhontapatipak, a Thai government spokesman. “There might not be abrupt change … it will take time.”

Thailand is also rolling out an ambitious plan, using iris, facial and fingerprint scans to record fishermen’s identities to make sure they are on the boats they are registered with and help inspectors spot trafficking victims.

Rights groups meanwhile have tried to use satellites to pinpoint the location of ships that remain at sea for long periods, potentially indicating enslavement.

But human trafficking expert Benjamin Smith said using satellites to tackle slavery at sea was not easy unless there is a lead on where to track in the vast ocean.

“I think people underestimate the size of the ocean and the ability to pinpoint where something as small as a boat is,” Smith from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said. “If you have good information, intelligence, then satellite images can be good … It has to be a small part of a much bigger effort.”

Smith also highlighted difficulties prosecuting cross-border trafficking cases and maritime police funding shortages, adding that continued consumer pressure on firms to clean up their supply chains could be a potent force to help end slavery.

“That’s probably the best way you can start,” he said.

Good News

Fishermen remain at risk of forced labor and the wages of some continue to be withheld, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in March.

To combat slavery, firms must improve workers’ lives, rather than cutting labor costs and recruiting informally to meet demand for cheaper goods, experts say.

“Smaller owners are getting squeezed, and still rely on brokers and agents, who dupe workers and keep them ignorant of their rights and conditions on the boat,” said Sunai Phasuk, a researcher with lobby group Human Rights Watch in Bangkok.

Workers are set to become more vocal with the May launch of the Fishers’ Rights Network, which aims to combat abuses, backed by the world’s largest canned tuna producer, Thai Union, and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).

“Without enforceable rights at the workplace and the strength that comes from being represented by a union, labor rights violations and the mistreatment will continue,” said Johnny Hansen, chairman of ITF’s fisheries section.

Thailand’s ratification this month of the ILO protocol on forced labor also offers hope. It is the first Asian country to promise to combat all forms of the crime, including trafficking, and to protect and compensate victims.

“We have … committed to changing the law to allow workers to form unions, so we can work together to solve the problems,” said Thanaporn Sriyakul, an advisor to the deputy prime minister. “But the process is long, and it will take time.”

Thailand has also pledged to ratify two other conventions on collective bargaining and the right to organize, which campaigners say would better protect seafood workers.

This would be good news for Lin’s fishermen’s group, which has helped rescue more than 60 people since 2015, but has no legal status as Thai law does not permit fisher unions, leading rights advocates to use other terms, like workers’ groups.

“There are still lots of victims, and I want to help them,” Lin said. “As fishermen who have suffered in a similar manner, we understand each other’s needs and are able to help better.”
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Warming waters have reduced the harvest of Alaska’s prized Copper River salmon to just a small fraction of last year’s harvest, Alaska biologists say.

The runs of Copper River salmon were so low that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down the commercial harvest last month, halting what is usually a three-month season after less than two weeks. Earlier this month, the department also shut down most of the harvest that residents along the river conduct to feed their families.

The total commercial harvest for Alaska’s marquee Copper River salmon this year after it was halted at the end of May was about 32,000 fish, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported. That compares with the department’s pre-season forecast of over 1.2 million and an average annual harvest of over 1.4 million fish in the prior decade.

State biologists blame warming in the Gulf of Alaska for the diminished run of Copper River salmon, prized for its rich flavor, high oil content and deep-red color.

The fish spend most of their lives in the ocean, and those waters were 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal, thanks to a warm and persistent North Pacific water mass that climate scientists have dubbed “the Blob,” along with other factors, said Mark Somerville, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Warmer temperatures caused the metabolism of the fish to speed up, Somerville said. “They need more food for maintenance,” he said. “At the same time, their food source was diminished.”

Other important salmon runs are also struggling, including those in the Kenai River — a world-famous sport fishing site — and along Kodiak Island. Others have had good numbers, though the returning fish are noticeably reduced in size, Somerville said.

In Alaska, where wild salmon is iconic, Copper River fish hold a special status.

Their high oil content is linked to their ultra-long migration route from the ocean to their glacier-fed spawning grounds. They are the first fresh Alaska salmon to hit the market each year. Copper River salmon have sold for $75 a pound.

Chris Bryant, executive chef for WildFin American Grill, a group of Seattle-area seafood restaurants, worries about trends for Alaska salmon beyond the Copper River.

“The fish are smaller, which makes it harder for chefs to get a good yield on it and put it on the plate,” he said.
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International efforts to make it easier for garment workers in India to speak out against sexual harassment, dangerous working conditions and abuses are failing, campaigners said Tuesday.

The U.S.-based certifying agency Social Accountability International (SAI) and Britain’s Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) — an alliance of unions, firms and charities — are not enforcing procedures they set up to protect workers, they said.

“The organizations are violating the rules of the mechanisms they created by not taking time-bound action against complaints that come up,” said S. James Victor, director of Serene Secular Social Service Society, which works to empower garment workers.

“They are far removed from ground reality. The fact is that every day a worker continues to face workplace harassment in the spinning mills and garment factories of Tamil Nadu.”

From clothing stores to supermarkets, major brands are facing rising consumer pressure to improve conditions along their global supply chains, render them slavery-free and ensure fair wages.

Poor regulation

Many of the 1,500 mills in Tamil Nadu state — the largest hub in India’s $40 billion-a-year textile and garment industry — operate informally with poor regulation and few formal grievance mechanisms for workers, most of whom are women, campaigners say.

“Workers are being victimized, harassed, and managements are literally going after them for raising any complaint,” said Sujata Mody of the Garment and Fashion Workers Union, which has about 3,000 active members. “The issue could be about a toilet break, sick leave or sexual harassment. No complaint is tolerated or redressed.”

Following reports that girls as young as 14 were lured from rural areas to work long hours in mills and factories without contracts, and often held in company-run hostels, global rights groups have tried to improve accountability.

Manufacturers who comply with voluntary labor standards introduced by SAI receive certification, with 300 certified factories employing about 64,000 workers in south India, according to SAI senior director Rochelle Zaid.

But forced labor, sexual harassment and repression of unions is not being properly addressed, Dutch advocacy groups India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) and the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) said last week.

After the charities complained about abuses at two SAI-certified mills, one lost its certification after a 20-month procedure but the other continued to operate, they said.

More unannounced audits

SAI is constantly upgrading its program based on feedback, has increased the number of unannounced audits and improved accountability to ensure timely response to complaints, Zaid told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments.

But trade union president Mody said that workers’ committees set up to handle complaints internally do not work.

“It is only on paper,” she said. “We have at least 10 written complaints of sexual harassment pending before the Tamil Nadu government,” she added, referring to cases brought by workers in SAI-certified factories.

ICN and the U.K.-based Homeworkers Worldwide rights group also said their complaints to the ETI about forced labor in British supermarket supply chains were investigated slowly, workers were not consulted and no plan was made to address issues raised.

“When handling complaints, ETI seeks to promote engagement and reach practical collaborative solutions,” an ETI spokesman, who declined to be named, said in emailed comments.
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Historic levels of violent crime in Mexico have sparked a record increase in the country’s car-armoring business, with an industry group predicting a double-digit jump in the number of vehicles bulletproofed this year.

There were more than 25,000 murders across Mexico last year, the highest annual tally since modern records began, government data shows, with 2018 on track to be even worse.

That insecurity will help drive a 10 percent rise in car-armoring services this year to 3,284 cars, above the previous all-time high in 2012, according to the Mexican Automotive Armor Association (AMBA).

That figure is small relative to the 15,145 cars armored in 2017 in Brazil, which expects to see a 25 percent jump this year.

Demand in Mexico has grown so strong that more global automakers have started bulletproofing cars on their own Mexican production lines as opposed to the usual practice of after-market armoring.

Audi began making an armored version of its Q5 light sport utility vehicle exclusively in the central state of Puebla in mid-2017 for local sale and export to Brazil and Argentina. The company declined to give recent sales figures.

Audi’s Mexico arm said its factory-made armored Q5, which cost $87,000 locally, was cheaper for consumers than using an after-market firm, which one industry expert estimated would boost the car’s cost to more than $95,000 and void the factory guarantee.

BMW, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz have made armored cars in Mexico for several years.

After being assaulted and robbed multiple times in recent years, Arturo Avila, who owns a security company, now only travels in armored cars to traverse the streets of Mexico City.

“One of the crimes that hurts us most is kidnapping, that’s what we’re afraid of,” he said, adding he changed his car every two years.

About 1.5 million cars were sold in Mexico in 2017, but just a tiny portion were armored, since the cars remain a luxury for the affluent and for companies that require executives to travel in bulletproof vehicles with bodyguards, said Avila.

Those companies include Mexico’s largest banks and multinationals like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Both companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mexican security companies have also expanded rental and leasing offerings, services that are increasingly popular.

About 80 percent of armored car providers’ business is in the private sector, which seeks to protect executives and their families, with the rest from government.
…

To treat snake bites, bathe in a tea brewed from yellow button-shaped flowers, advises Melissa Espinoza Paez as she describes the medicinal properties of Costa Rica’s jungle plants, pointing out towering vines used to combat kidney problems.

In the lush mountains close to the Panama border that make up the Bribri indigenous territory, Espinoza hopes the country’s first certified indigenous tour agency can deliver a bigger slice of income from ecotourism directly to local women.

“When other agencies brought tourists to our territory, sometimes they’d give a small amount to the people here, but it wasn’t really the value of their work,” said Espinoza, 38, indicating a green dart frog trying to hide in the undergrowth.

“We’re giving a tourism experience that is truly cultural… We are trying to live a more dignified life,” she said at the Siwakabata farm near Bribri town, some 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital San Jose.

Based in Talamanca canton, one of the poorest in Costa Rica, the recently licensed Talamanca Indigenous Bribri Tour Guides Association (AGITUBRIT) wants to ensure the financial benefits start to trickle down to local families, said Espinoza.

Alongside medicinal plant and gastronomy tours, hiking, jungle and river trips are run through a network of indigenous guides who stamp their cultural identity on the expeditions.

Costa Rican tourists, who often have little knowledge of indigenous culture, as well as Europeans, have so far made up the visitors who come to find out more about the relatively isolated Bribri people.

Tourists often stay with local families in thatched wooden houses to absorb Bribri traditions and learn the language, while some make appointments with traditional doctors who prescribe plant-based medicines.

Home to dense jungles and cloud forests teeming with wildlife, Costa Rica has become one of the world’s best-known ecotourism destinations. A quarter of its territory is now national parks or protected reserves.

But while ecotourism offers an incentive to protect the biodiversity that pulls in visitors, there has been less success in channeling benefits to those who provide services and protect the local environment, say some in the industry.

“The tourism sector in general is still learning how to deal with the social factors,” said Saul Blanco Sosa, a sustainable tourism specialist with the Rainforest Alliance conservation group. “Dealing with people is more complicated than dealing with natural reserves.”

Tour companies need to think about ways to become more socially responsible and inclusive, and avoid disrupting communities with their activities, he added.

Culture Crash Course

Ecotourism ranks as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global travel market, and is worth around $100 billion a year, according to a 2017 report by the U.N. World Tourism Organization and United Nations Development Program.

The World Travel & Tourism Council says about 13 percent of Costa Rica’s gross domestic product comes from tourism, which is expected to employ 265,000 people directly and indirectly in 2018 to deal with its 3 million annual visitors.

Tourists have long come inland from Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to explore the mountains, swim in waterfalls or float in long wooden canoes along the rivers lacing the Bribri territory.

But by the time middlemen have taken a hefty slice of their money, little is left for local people offering trips or cultural demonstrations, said Espinoza, who is learning English to help bring in more international tourists.

Guides from outside the area explaining the Bribri’s spirituality and strong connection with nature usually just learn their spiel from a book or the internet, she added.

“We live it, we feel it – but for the others, it’s just about money,” said Nora Paez Mayorga, who helps runs the 15-hectare (37-acre) Siwakabata agro-ecology project with her daughter Melissa.

No Jobs

For many women living in Costa Rica’s remote southeast corner with few formal qualifications, jobs other than raising chickens or growing crops such as plantain are hard to come by.

Younger people often have little choice but to head to San Jose to find work, said Paez, as she served up fried pastries and mugs of bitter chocolate drink.

Alongside its eight guides, the tour organization works with about 40 women from local indigenous communities. Some are employed at Siwakabata to cook for visitors, while others come to sell handicrafts, clothes, fruit and chocolate.

Demonstrating how to remove cacao seeds from their padded pods, dry and toast them on an open stove before grinding them to a paste, Basilia Jackson Jackson said she was looking to attract tourists to her home village of Coruma two hours away.

Growing bananas and cacao, her family’s fortunes depend on the prices set by buyers, she explained, turning the wheel of a metal grinder.

“We’ve never dealt with tourists, we’re just getting involved with it… we could have a little bit more income – it wouldn’t be much, but it would help the family,” said Jackson, who traveled to Siwakabata with her daughter Flor. “In this area, we don’t have much work. Between women, we’ve got to get organized to see how we can help each other.”

Espinoza, who left to work in a factory in San Jose before returning to study and finally helping set up AGITUBRIT, is optimistic the agency will prove invaluable in strengthening the position of local women while protecting their culture.

“As indigenous women from here, we know what we need. We can help each other to develop this project – valuing, maintaining and respecting our world view and our culture,” said Espinoza.
…

The British Parliament has overwhelmingly approved plans to expand Europe’s biggest airport after decades of debate over its potential impact.

The House of Commons on Monday voted 415-119 to build a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government and business groups strongly backed the expansion, saying it would be tantamount to putting out an “open for business” sign as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.

But small communities around the airport and environmental groups have vehemently opposed the expansion on environmental, noise and financial grounds. Friends of the Earth described it as a “morally reprehensible” move that would result in Heathrow emitting as much carbon as all of Portugal.

Greenpeace UK said it was ready to join London councils and the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, in a legal challenge to the third runway. The environmental watchdog said if ministers wouldn’t protect people from toxic air, opponents would ask a court to do so.

May had directed Conservative Party lawmakers to vote for the project. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who once pledged to lie down in front of bulldozers to stop the expansion, avoided a confrontation with the prime minister by visiting Afghanistan on Monday.

His absence did not go unnoticed. Shouts of “Where’s Boris?” could be heard in the Commons, as opposition lawmakers spoke out against the $18.6 billion project.

The government has vowed the airport will be built at no cost to the taxpayer and will create some 100,000 jobs. 

But former Conservative Party transport secretary Justine Greening — who broke with her party to reject the expansion — told lawmakers the story of Heathrow was one of “broken promises, broken politics and broken economics.”
…

President Donald Trump has issued a warning to U.S. trading partners that unless they remove restrictions placed on American goods, they will face “more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A.”

“The United States is insisting that all countries that have placed artificial Trade Barriers and Tariffs on goods going into their country, remove those Barriers & Tariffs or be met with more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A. Trade must be fair and no longer a one way street!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

Trump has already annoyed major U.S. trading partners, including China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and India, by imposing tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products from those countries.

On Friday, Trump threatened to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the United States, in retaliation for European tariffs on American imports.

That threat was in response to EU tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of American goods — including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles, which in turn were in response to trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks.

Like the EU, China has promised to retaliate immediately, putting the world’s two largest economies at odds.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior Vice President John Murphy was cited by the Associated Press as saying he estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of the first week of July.

Separately, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry said, “The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to apply tariffs because he said countries around the world had been exploiting the U.S.

 
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A young, Iraqi man struggled to find work in the oil-rich city of Basra. After extensive online job searches, he had an idea to outfit his small car with a coffee machine and a giant coffee cup on the roof, turning him into a barista with a mobile café. Arash Arabasadi reports.
…

A British minister accused Airbus and other major companies of issuing “completely inappropriate” threats and undermining Prime Minister Theresa May in a sign of growing tensions with businesses leaders over Brexit.

Aircraft manufacturer Airbus last week issued its strongest warning over the impact of Britain’s departure from the European Union, saying a withdrawal without a deal would force it to reconsider its long-term position and put thousands of British jobs at risk.

Other European companies with major operations in Britain have also started to speak out two years on from the Brexit vote, voicing concerns over a lack of clarity on the terms of trade when Britain leaves next March.

“It was completely inappropriate for businesses to be making these kinds of threats for one very simple reason — we are in an absolutely critical moment in the Brexit discussions and what that means is that we need to get behind Theresa May,” Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC.

“The more that we undermine Theresa May the more likely we to end up with a fudge which will be absolute disaster for everyone,” he added.

German carmaker BMW has warned the company would have to make contingency plans within months if the government did not soon clarify its post-Brexit position and German

industrial group Siemens said it urgently needs clarity on how its operations would have to be organized.

The leaders of five major business lobby groups also warned the prime minister over the weekend that the ongoing uncertainty about Brexit could cost the economy billions of pounds.

Hunt, a senior figure in the government who is viewed as a potential future prime minister, dismissed “siren voices” who say Brexit negotiations are not going well and said people should ignore them.

With only nine months until Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, little is clear about how trade will flow as May, who is grappling with a divided party, is still trying to strike a deal with the bloc.

Business leaders are increasingly concerned that their concerns are being ignored and are stepping up their contingency plans in case Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.

The foreign minister Boris Johnson was quoted in the Telegraph newspaper by two sources over the weekend as dismissing business leaders’ concerns about the impact of Brexit, using foul language in a meeting with EU diplomats.

A spokesperson for the foreign office disputed whether Johnson had used bad language and said he had been attacking business lobbyists.

Around 100,000 supporters of the EU marched through central London on Saturday to demand that the government hold a final public vote on the terms of Brexit, organizers said.
…

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will meet Russia’s energy minister next week in Washington, a person familiar with the situation said Friday, as the two countries compete to supply global markets with natural gas and crude.

Perry will meet Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak on Tuesday, in the context of the World Gas Conference in Washington, the source said.

Meetings between top energy officials from Russia and the United States, two of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, have been rare in recent years.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have cooled over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and as the Trump administration blames the Russian government for cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid over the last two years.

The two countries are competing to sell natural gas to Europe. Russia’s Gazprom, the European Union’s biggest gas supplier, and several Western energy companies hope to open Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.

The United States, meanwhile, has begun some sales of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Poland and Lithuania, though LNG shipments can be more expensive than gas sent via pipeline.

The United States says the advantage of its LNG is dependability and stable pricing.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as did the administration of former President Barack Obama. Washington believes that the pipeline would give Russia, which has at times frozen deliveries to parts of Europe over pricing disputes, more power over the region.

The meeting comes as U.S. national security adviser John Bolton plans to visit Moscow next week to prepare for a possible meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Perry and Novak will also likely talk about oil markets. On Friday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed in Vienna to raise oil output by a modest amount after consumers had called for producers to curb rising fuel prices.

Russia, which is not an OPEC member, began cooperating last year with the group for the first time, holding back production to support global oil prices. Before the Vienna OPEC meeting, Novak said Moscow would propose a gradual increase in output from oil-producing countries, starting in July.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the United States, in retaliation for European tariffs on American imports.

On Friday, the day new EU tariffs went into effect, Trump tweeted, “…if these Tariffs and Barriers are not soon broken down and removed, we will be placing a 20% Tariff on all of their cars coming into the U.S. Build them here!”

Auto industry experts say such tariffs could negatively impact the U.S. economy, as well as Europe’s.

“It’s really a tangle; it’s not a simple question” of cars being made in one place and sold in another, Kasper Peters, communications manager of ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, said Friday in an interview with VOA.

In March, ACEA Secretary General Erik Jonnaert noted the impact European carmakers with plants in the United States have on local economies. “EU manufacturers do not only import vehicles into the U.S. They also have a major manufacturing footprint there, providing significant local employment and generating tax revenue,” Jonnaert said in a statement.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said earlier this week that his department plans to wrap up by July or August an investigation into whether imported cars and car parts are a threat to national security. But Daniel Price, a former senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush, told The Washington Post that Trump’s threat of new tariffs “short-circuited the … process and conclusively undercut the stated national security rationale of that investigation.”

The new EU tariffs enacted Friday apply to billions of dollars’ worth of American goods — including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles.

The action is the latest response to Trump’s decision to tax imported steel and aluminum.

The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks.

Like the EU, China has promised to retaliate immediately, putting the world’s two largest economies at odds. 

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president, John Murphy, was cited by the Associated Press as saying he estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of the first week of July.

Separately, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry said, “The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world.”

“Clarity [is] still lacking about how far things will ultimately go between [the] U.S. and China and the potential ripple effect for world trade,” said financial analyst Mike van Dulken.

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to apply tariffs, saying countries around the world had been exploiting the U.S.

A former White House trade adviser says Trump “has been so belligerent that it becomes almost impossible for democratically elected leaders — or even a non-democratic leader like [Chinese President] Xi Jinping — to appear to kowtow and give in.”

Phillip Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said, “The president has made it very hard for other countries to give him what he wants.”
…

Retaliating against the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, India has raised duties on 29 U.S. goods worth about $240 million.

New Delhi made the announcement Thursday after Washington ignored its request to be exempted from the tariffs because its exports were tiny compared to others, such as China and the European Union. India accounts for about 2 percent of American imports of steel and aluminum, or $1.5 billion in sales.

India is the latest country to hit back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff increases on steel and aluminum imports.

Among the items on which India will impose higher tariffs are agricultural products such as almonds, apples, walnuts, chickpeas and lentils, as well as some stainless steel products. India is the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. almonds and among the biggest importers of apples. The new tariffs will go into effect August 4.

New Delhi imposed the retaliatory tariffs amid worries that the U.S. might target India’s more significant exports, such as pharmaceuticals.

“It is an appropriate signal,” said Rajiv Kumar of the government’s policy research organization, NITI Aayog. “I am hopeful that all this will die down.”

Although the Indian levies on American products are small compared with those involved in the U.S.-China spat, the trade friction between the two democracies signals discord and uncertainty at a time when they are developing a closer strategic partnership.

India is among the countries named by Trump as following trade practices unfair to the U.S.

Speaking at the Group of Seven summit in Canada earlier this month, he said, “This isn’t just G-7. I mean, we have India, where some of the tariffs are 100 percent. A hundred percent. And we charge nothing. We can’t do that.”

Trump has repeatedly said India imposes a punitive import duty on Harley-Davidson motorcycles whereas the U.S. has much lower duties on motorcycles imported from India. His complaint prompted New Delhi to cut the import duty from 75 percent to 50 percent on high-end bikes earlier this year.

For the time being, India has kept high-end motorcycles off the list of items selected for higher tariffs.

The U.S. tariffs and counter-tariffs are “opening a Pandora’s box whereby countries will impose, retaliate, somebody will act, somebody will react. This is going to be a process that will pull everybody down,” said economist Ram Upendra Das, who heads the Center for Regional Trade in New Delhi, a research organization of India’s Commerce Ministry. He calls it “a race to the bottom.”

A trade deficit in New Delhi’s favor of about $30 billion in their annual bilateral trade of approximately $125 billion has long been an irritant for Washington. India is on the Trump administration list of countries with which it had a large deficit.

Officials from New Delhi and Washington are expected to hold trade talks next week to try to bridge their differences.

But amid growing fears that the rising wave of protectionism signaled by the U.S. tariffs threatens emerging economies like India, economists are confident that the trade disputes will be short-lived. “It has to get corrected. We will have to see how long it takes,” said economist Das.
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The European Union is set to impose tariffs Friday on billions of dollars worth of American goods — including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles.

The action is the latest retaliation against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap import tariffs on steel and aluminum from around the globe.

The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks.

China has promised an immediate retaliation, a measure that would put the world’s two largest economies at odds.  

John Murphy, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president, estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of July.

“The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world.” said a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry.

“Clarity (is) still lacking about how far things will ultimately go between (the) U.S. and China and the potential ripple effect for world trade,” said financial analyst Mike van Dulken.

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to apply tariffs because he said countries around the world had been exploiting the U.S.

The European stock market was bracing itself in the face of the new tariffs .  

In early Friday trading London’s FTSE 100 index of major blue-chip firms rose 0.2 percent to 7,571.78 points (compared with Thursday’s closing level.)

In the eurozone, Frankfurt’s DAX 30 was unchanged at 12,507.72, while the Paris CAC 40 gained almost 0.3 percent to 5,330.5 points.

But that could all change after the reality of the tariffs takes hold.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” at least not since the Great Depression, said Syracuse University economist Mary Lovely.

A former White House trade advisor says Trump “has been so belligerent that it becomes almost impossible for democratically elected leaders – or even a non-democratic leader like (Chinese President) Xi Jinping – to appear to kowtow and give in.”  Phillip Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said, “The president has made it very hard for other countries to give him what he wants.”
…

Turkey announced Thursday that it would impose tariffs on $1.8 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The World Trade Organization said the new Turkish tariffs would amount to $266.5 million on products including cars, coal, paper, rice and tobacco.

Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said in a statement that Turkey would not allow itself “to be wrongly blamed for America’s economic challenges.”

He continued, “We are part of the solution, not the problem.”

On Wednesday, the EU announced that it had compiled a list of U.S. products on which it would begin charging import duties of 25 percent, a move that could escalate into a full-blown trade war, especially if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to impose tariffs on European cars.

“We did not want to be in this position. However, the unilateral and unjustified decision of the U.S. to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU means that we are left with no other choice,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement.

The commission, which manages the daily business of the EU, adopted a law that places duties on $3.2 billion worth of U.S. goods, including aluminum and steel products, agricultural products, bourbon and motorcycles.

Malmstrom said that the EU response was consistent with World Trade Organization rules and that the tariffs would be lifted if the U.S. rescinded its metal tariffs, which amount to $7.41 billion.

Trump slapped tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum on the EU, Canada and Mexico, which went into effect at the beginning of June.

Canada said it would impose retaliatory tariffs on $12.5 billion worth of U.S. products on July 1.

Mexico imposed tariffs two weeks ago on a range of U.S. products, including steel, pork and bourbon.
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A report by the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights finds 40 million people in the United States live in poverty, 18.5 million live in extreme poverty and more than 5 million live in conditions of absolute poverty. 

Special Rapporteur Philip Alston called the United States the most unequal society in the developed world. He said U.S. policies benefit the rich and exacerbate the plight of the poor.

He said the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration stigmatize the poor by insisting those receiving government benefits are capable of working and that benefits, such as food stamps, should be cut back significantly. He said the government’s suggestions that people on welfare are lazy and do not want to work misrepresent the facts.

“The statistics that are available show that the great majority of people who, for example, are on Medicaid are either working in full-time work — around half of them — or they are in school or they are giving full-time care to others,” Alston said.

He said 7 percent of people were not working.

Worst of the West

In his report, which will be delivered Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Alston noted the United States had the highest rate of income inequality among Western countries, with the top 1 percent of the population owning more than 38 percent of total wealth. He said the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion in tax cuts would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and would worsen the situation of the poor.

The U.N. investigator told VOA that at the completion of each of his country fact-finding missions, he issues what he calls an end-of mission statement. That, he said, gives some governments the opportunity to immediately respond.

“The U.S. chose not to do that, and since then there has not been any official response to either that end-of-mission statement or to the final report, which has now been out for a couple of weeks,” he said.

As is common practice, after Alston formally presents his report to the Human Rights Council, the concerned country has a right of reply. Though the United States has withdrawn as a member of the council, it still has the right to respond to the report as an observer country.
…

India, the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. almonds, raised import duties on the commodity by 20 percent, a government order said, joining the European Union and China in retaliating against President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes on steel and aluminum.

New Delhi, incensed by Washington’s refusal to exempt it from the new tariffs, also imposed a 120 percent duty on the import of walnuts in the strongest action yet against the United States.

The move to increase tariffs from Aug. 4 will also cover a slew of other farm, steel and iron products.

It came a day after the European Union said it would begin charging 25 percent import duties on a range of U.S. products on Friday, in response to the new U.S. tariffs.

India is by far the largest buyer of U.S. almonds, purchasing over half of all U.S. almond shipments in 2017. A kilogram of shelled almonds will attract duty of as much as 120 rupees ($1.76) instead of the current 100 rupees, the Commerce Ministry said.

Last month, New Delhi sought an exemption from the new U.S. tariffs, saying its steel and aluminum exports were small in relation to other suppliers. But its request was ignored, prompting India to launch a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization.

“India’s tariff retaliation is within the discipline of trade tariffs of the World Trade Organization,” said steel secretary Aruna Sharma.

Trade differences between India and the United States have been rising since U.S. President Donald Trump took office. Bilateral trade rose to $115 billion in 2016, but the Trump administration wants to reduce its $31 billion deficit with India, and is pressing New Delhi to ease trade barriers.

Earlier this year, Trump called out India for its duties on Harley-Davidson motorbikes, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to cut the import duty to 50 percent from 75 percent for the high-end bikes.

But that has not satisfied Trump, who pointed to zero duties for Indian bikes sold in the United States and said he would push for a “reciprocal tax” against countries, including U.S. allies, that levy tariffs on American products.

In the tariff rates issued late on Wednesday, the commerce ministry named some varieties of almonds, apples, chickpeas, lentils, walnuts and artemia that would carry higher import taxes. Most of these are purchased from the United States.

Walnuts have gone from 100 percent duty to 120 percent, the government note said.

India also raised duties on some grades of iron and steel products. In May it had given a list of products to the WTO that it said could incur higher tariffs.

An official from the steel ministry said at the time that the new tariffs were intended to show displeasure at the U.S. action.

“It is an appropriate signal. I am hopeful that all of this (trade war) will die down. In my view this is not in the interest of the global economy,” said Rajiv Kumar, vice chairman of the Indian government’s policy thinktank Niti Aayog.

Rising trade tensions between the United States and some major economies have threatened to derail global growth.

Officials from India and the United States are expected to hold talks on June 26-27 to discuss trade issues, local daily Times of India reported on Thursday citing Press Trust of India.

The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday announced a preliminary finding that imports of large-diameter welded pipe from China, India, South Korea and Turkey were subsidized by those countries, and said it was imposing preliminary duties that could top 500 percent.

In a separate trade dispute, Trump threatened on Monday to hit $200 billion of Chinese imports with 10 percent tariffs if Beijing retaliates against his previous announcement to target $50 billion in imports. The United States has accused China of stealing U.S. intellectual property, a charge Beijing denies. ($1 = 68.1700 Indian rupees)

 
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Maize farmers are preparing as the harvest season approaches in Tanzania’s Kondoa District.  The weather has been good and most farmers here expect bumper yields.

Amina Hussein, a mother of four in Mnenia village, is testing a new way to store her harvest.

“In the past, we used to store our produce in normal bags, we would buy them three times a year because we faced the risk of losing harvests to pest infestation,” Hussein said.  “But since the introduction of this new technology, using the hermetic storage bags, we are not incurring huge costs anymore to buy chemicals to preserve the maize.”

The bags keep grain dry and fresh, and keep bugs and mold out.

Amina, who is the chairperson of a local farmers’ association, says she used to spend precious cash on pesticides to preserve her maize.  The new bags cut that cost.

Grain Losses

About 85 percent of Tanzania’s population lives in rural areas and relies on agriculture for a living.  Small-hold farmers constitute the majority of the population.

Here, post-harvest losses are a major concern, especially for grains, which form the base for nutrition and income for Tanzania’s rural communities.

Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture estimates that small farmers lose between 15 percent and 40 percent of their harvests each year to mold, mildew, bugs, rats and other causes, says Eliabu Philemon Ndossi, a senior program officer at the ministry.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.3 billion tons of food go to waste globally every year.  That’s about a third of the food produced for human consumption around the world.

And post-harvest loss reduces the income of small-hold farmers by 15 percent.

Food Security

Researchers from the University of Zurich and their partners are looking to cut those losses.  Their project in Tanzania is looking at ways to help farmers keep more of their grain.

It’s a collaborative effort bringing together government agencies, businesses and international development organizations.

More than 1,000 small-scale farmers in two regions in central Tanzania are involved in the project, which in part uses air-tight and water-tight storage bags instead of normal plastic or cloth bags.

The study is conducted within a larger project that Swiss development agency Helvetas runs to help increase farm income.

But reducing losses is more than an issue of farmers’ income, says Rakesh Munankami, a project manager at Helvetas.

“If we can reduce post-harvest loss, there wouldn’t be any problem with the food security.  This study is important because we would like to see what’s the impact at the broader level, how does it affect the price volatility of the crop as well as how does it affect the food security of the smallholder farmers,” he said.

And the study has proven a success.  Initial findings show that improved on-farm storage sharply cut the number of food insecure households, said Michael Brander, one of the lead researchers from the University of Zurich.

“We are now one year into the study and the most astonishing finding so far is that we see that the number of people that go hungry has reduced by one third,” he said.  “That’s especially astonishing because the intervention has worked very fast.”

Munanakami says he thinks the results can be replicated elsewhere.  And the project’s partners hope that will encourage policy makers and aid organizations focus on preventing harvest losses.

 
…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross faced tough questions during a Senate hearing Wednesday on the Trump administration’s tariff proposals and actions. Senators on both sides of the aisle criticized the administration’s rollout of proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has more on the fallout from Washington.
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A decent rating from Fitch this month has Vietnam riding high on the small victory, despite some of the less favorable economic trends connected to this first-of-its-kind rating.

The state monopoly Vietnam Electricity, or EVN, clinched a “BB” score June 6 from Fitch Ratings, which until then had never officially assessed the credit of a non-financial company owned by the Hanoi government. That prompted a cross-section of officials in the southeast Asian country to gush about the promise in store for one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“This positive rating enables EVN to issue international bonds, diversify our financing sources, and reassure domestic and foreign institutional investors,” said Dinh Quang Tri, the acting CEO of EVN. “We are now on a stronger footing to deliver more reliable electricity to Vietnam.”

The ebullience, however, is tempered by two questions: Will this be enough for investors to trust EVN? And how much should government become involved in business?

Renewable energy

EVN underscores the mixed sentiments that analysts express about Vietnam, a communist country transitioning to capitalism. The fact that the government runs EVN contributed to Fitch’s confidence in its report card.

“We believe the company can secure adequate funding in light of its position as an entity closely linked to the sovereign,” it said in a media release.

Yet businesses want even more promises from the government. Vietnam has spent years courting investment in renewable power, for example, but with limited success. That is in part because businesses that generate wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources can sell it only to EVN, and they are afraid of losing money if the company does not buy their electricity.

For renewables, “there is no provision for any form of government guarantee, assurance, or support to enhance the creditworthiness of EVN as the sole off-taker/purchaser,” corporate law firm Baker McKenzie said in a September report.

State vs. free market

Some would like to see more government involvement in general, especially to bail out companies in trouble. Others would like to see less involvement, as evidenced in the push for Vietnam to privatize further by selling stakes in its many state-owned enterprises. The country has not settled on a balance between the free market and the government.

Hanoi used to give iron-clad pledges that it would pay up in case of default at one of its state firms or public works projects. The government is doing that less often now because it is moving away from a centrally-planned economy, as well as reducing its sovereign debt.

Public anxiety mounted in recent years as Vietnam approached its debt ceiling of 65 percent of gross domestic product, though the country has made progress in reining in the debt.

That means EVN must tread lightly. Now that the power company has a Fitch Rating, it is eyeing international bonds to borrow money from investors around the world.

Going through this financing process is “helping EVN benefit from the discipline that comes with access to capital markets,” said Jordan Schwartz, who is the director of the World Bank group overseeing infrastructure, guarantees, and public-private partnerships.

The World Bank gave EVN funds and technical assistance to prepare for the Fitch assessment. Its credit rating shows how tightly EVN’s fate correlates with that of the government. Electricity prices, for example, will have to increase for the utility to make profits and improve its rating. Big increases, however, require approval from Hanoi, which also wants to keep power affordable for citizens.

The correlation is even blunter in Fitch’s analysis. The overall credit rating for Vietnam’s government itself also is BB. If that improves, so could the score for EVN, Fitch said, “provided EVN’s linkages with the state do not deteriorate significantly.”
…

As the United States and China teeter on the brink of an all out trade war and tit-for-tat tariffs loom, a European businesses lobby is urging Beijing to stop dragging its feet on reforms and using unfair trade policies to pamper Chinese companies.

Each year, foreign trade groups in China roll out a laundry list of concerns about market access, regulatory hurdles and other policies that tilt the playing field in the world’s second largest economy.

This year, for the first time ever, the European Chamber of Commerce’s annual survey of the business climate found that 61 percent of its 532 company members saw their Chinese counterparts as equally or more innovative.

Increased spending on research and development, targeted acquisitions of foreign high-tech firms and growing demand for innovative products from consumers were helping driving that shift, the chamber said.

The high response is significant. Policies linked to innovation and competition are a key part of the intensifying US — China trade debate and concerns of foreign companies operating here.

European Chamber President Mats Harborn said that as Chinese companies become stronger and more competitive, it is time for Beijing to “remove the training wheels.”

“It’s time for China to lift or reduce the pampering of its own enterprises and expose them to even more open and fair competition for them to develop into the champions that China wants them to be,” Harborn said.

Currently, Chinese companies account for 115 of the Fortune 500 list of global enterprises. The Chinese government claims that of the world’s 260 “unicorns” — start up companies valued at more than a billion dollars — more than 160 are from China.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos early last year, China has repeatedly pledged to further open up the country’s economy.

According to the group’s survey of its members 52 % said that the government’s promises of opening up had yet to be realized. And looking forward, 46 percent said they thought the number of regulatory obstacles would increase over the next five years.

Harborn said that time is running out for China and 2018 has to be the year that it delivers on its promises.

“Dragging the feet on delivering on promises that have been made in China will cause reactions around the world,” Harborn said.

The United States response to that has led to reactions such as the $50 billion, and more recently $200 billion, in possible tariffs that Washington could levy on Chinese goods.

“We don’t agree with that action but it is the result of what we have warned about earlier,” he said.

Washington and European companies alike have long voiced concern about trade policies in China that protect domestic companies and State Owned Enterprises through subsidies, regulatory barriers and unequal treatment.

The Trump administration has alleged that Beijing is stealing American intellectual property and forcing technology transfers. Beijing denies that is the case.

Still, the European chamber’s survey found that about one in five of its companies “felt compelled to hand over technology in exchange for market access,” despite Chinese government assurances to the contrary.

According to the survey, 19 percent said they felt compelled to transfer technology.

Harborn said that while the percentage may seem small, the value it represents is much larger. Numbers were even higher among companies in the aerospace and aviation sector (36 percent), civil engineering and construction (33 percent) and automakers (27 percent).

“And no foreign company going to Europe has to even consider the issue of giving up technology for market access,” Harborn said.

Reciprocal treatment is a key concern from companies in China, regardless of whether they are from Europe and America. It is also a key aim of Washington’s trade dispute with Beijing and effort to make trade fairer.

But as the rhetoric in the U.S.-China trade dispute has heated up, some analysts argue that the focus has shifted too heavily to reciprocal and damaging tariffs. Actions that risk hurting not only the United States and China, but the global economy as well.

Harborn said confrontation through tariffs is not the most efficient way to get reforms and opening up that companies have been asking China to deliver.

“We are afraid that when you are exerting pressure this way [through threats of tariffs] that China keeps its aces up its sleeve and is presenting what is needed to defuse the tension at the time and is not addressing the fundamental and broader issues,” Harborn said.

Besides, he add, reforms are not only important for foreign companies but China’s own economic development as well.
…

Sameera Al Salam folds a discarded piece of newspaper into a long strip then loops it round her finger to form a tight circle, the first stage of making the upcycled handbags, trays and bowls the Syrian refugee hopes will help her earn a living.

Al Salam, 55, was a hairdresser with a passion for “art and making things” before she fled her war-torn homeland for Irbid in northern Jordan with her family in 2012.

Now she has two teenagers and a husband left paralyzed by a stroke to support in a country where she has no automatic legal right to work, and they are three months behind on their rent.

“We were living a really happy life. I had a garden where I grew everything,” Al Salam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We had to leave because of the airstrikes. We were always trying to put things in front of the door to protect the children. Whenever I remember, it breaks my heart.”

Like most of the more than 655,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan — and many Jordanians — poverty, debt and unemployment dominate the family’s existence.

Al Salam hopes her involvement in a new rubbish collection and recycling plan that aims to alleviate the poverty of both refugees and locals and bring the two communities closer will help turn things around.

The project, managed by charity Action Against Hunger, employs 1,200 people to collect and sort waste from the streets and provides temporary work permits to refugees who take part.

Nearly half the participants are female in a country where women can face cultural and family obstacles to employment, including a culture of shame around going out to work.

One in three Syrian refugee households in Jordan is headed by women and more and more are now seeking jobs in an already crowded market.

More than 80 percent of the Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line, according to Care International.

Awsaf Qaddah, a 39-year-old Syrian widow, said working as a rubbish collector initially felt like “a kind of shame,” but she now feels only pride.

“The job took me out of this atmosphere I was living in at home. Women can and should go out and work, especially with the circumstances we’re facing,” she said. “I have no husband or father or brother to help — I’m proud to do it.”

Fellow worker Berwen Misterihi, who is Jordanian, was forced to earn after her husband left her and their four children.

“Women and men would make comments about me picking up waste,” she said.

“I said to one man, ‘I’d rather work than come to you for the money’ and he apologized.”

‘Like Siblings’

The project workers were given 50-day contracts paying 12 Jordanian Dinar ($16.90) a day, plus training and social security provisions. Some of the waste was sold to scrap dealers for extra cash.

Al Salam was among a group of women who started an upcycling project, turning the waste paper and plastic they collected into objects to sell.

Action Against Hunger, which has managed the waste project since 2017 with German government funding, is now setting up a second phase focusing on equipping cooperatives and workers to continue waste processing and upcycling unaided.

“First there was a focus on breaking the culture of shame for women. Then we wanted ideas of how they could benefit from waste,” said Sajeda Saqallah, programme manager with Action Against Hunger. “Upcycling is a new concept here, so we took them to Amman to learn about it.”

Al Salam said her husband did not object to her taking part in the project. She now hopes she will get training on marketing and trademarking and win one of a number of new contracts Action Against Hunger is providing to carry on upcycling for wages.

The women in her upcycling group meet regularly and share ideas and news in a WhatsApp group.

At a workshop filled with their creations – from handbags to light shades to side tables, all made from recycled newspaper and cardboard – Sahira Zoubi, a Syrian refugee and mother of five excitedly points to the gold handbag she made.

Zoubi, who has not seen her husband since the Syrian army captured him in 2012, has made close friends through the project from both Syria and Jordan who she says are “like siblings.”

“Doing this project is so joyful because you come here and forget about your problems,” she said.

Al Salam breaks down as she tells how the project has allowed her to overcome her fears of being a refugee in a strange country.

“I never really mixed with people before this. I was afraid to go outside, I wasn’t involved in the community,” she said. “I was from a different country. I didn’t know what people were going to do to me or what they would say. Now I like to mingle.”

($1 = 0.7100 Jordanian dinars)

Travel for this story was covered by Action Against Hunger.
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