The U.N. secretary-general and the Singaporean foreign minister voiced concerns about global trade tensions and rising protectionism during back-to-back meetings in Beijing on Sunday.

Following remarks from his Chinese counterpart, Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan vowed to “double-down” on free trade and economic liberalization in tandem with China.

“This is a time in the world where the temptation to embark on unilateralism and protectionism is unfortunately rising,” Balakrishnan said.

In a separate meeting, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called China “absolutely crucial” in the international system.

“You mentioned reform and opening up — it’s so important in a moment when some others have a policy of closing up,” Guterres told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“The solutions for these problems are not to put globalization to question, but to improve globalization. Not isolation or protectionism, but more international cooperation,” Guterres said.

The comments came as China and the U.S. exchanged escalating tariff threats in what is already shaping up to be the biggest trade battle for more than a half century.

Beijing vowed Friday to “counterattack with great strength” if President Donald Trump follows through on threats to impose tariffs on an additional $100 billion in Chinese goods.

Trump’s announcement followed China’s decision to tax $50 billion in American products, including soybeans and small aircraft, in response to a U.S. move this week to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods.

The U.S. bought more than $500 billion in goods from China last year and now is planning or considering penalties on some $150 billion of those imports. The U.S. sold about $130 billion in goods to China in 2017 and faces a potentially devastating hit to its market there if China responds in kind.

In the meetings, Wang attacked what he called “protectionism and unilateralism,” though he didn’t single out the U.S. by name.

“China will safeguard the principles of free trade and oppose protectionism,” Wang said. “We should push forward with economic globalization.”

Wang was welcoming both officials ahead of their planned appearances at the annual Boao Forum for Asia, a Chinese-sponsored annual gathering for political and economic elites on tropical Hainan Island.

Guterres will meet President Xi Jinping later Sunday and also plans to visit the China Peacekeeping Police Training Center.

Balakrishnan is traveling with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on the first of a five-day visit to China.

 
…

Some 30 percent of Air France flights were cancelled Saturday as strikes over pay rises appear to be intensifying.

And that’s just part of France’s travel troubles this month. Most French trains will screech to a halt as a strike over President Emmanuel Macron’s economic reforms resumes Saturday night – a strike that is set to last through Monday.

Screens at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport showed red “cancelled” notes next to multiple flights Saturday, as families around France and Europe headed off on spring vacations.

The one-day Air France walkout is affecting international and domestic travel, notably a quarter of flights at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. Air France is urging passengers to check the status of their flights before coming to the airport and offering to change tickets for free.

It’s the fifth Air France strike since February, and the number of cancelled flights is rising. Unions this week announced more strikes this month to coincide with national rail walkouts.

Air France unions want 6 percent pay raises after years of salary freezes. Air France is offering 1 percent raises, saying anything higher will hurt its turnaround efforts.

The strikes have been costing Air France some 20 million euros ($24.6 million) a day and have hurt its share price.

Meanwhile, the SNCF national railway announced that 80 percent of high speed trains and two-thirds of regional trains will be canceled starting Saturday night as unions stage another two-day walkout.

About a quarter of Eurostar trains to London will be cancelled, and no trains were expected to run at all to Switzerland, Spain or Italy.

It’s part of three months of rolling train strikes seen as the biggest challenge to Macron since he took office last year. Rail unions are angry at plans by Macron’s government to abolish a generous benefits system that gives train workers jobs for life.

Both the government and unions are holding firm despite continuing negotiations. France prides itself on its railways, seen as a pillar of public service.

Macron argues that the special status for train workers is no longer tenable in a globalized and increasingly automated economy. It’s part of his broader plans to overhaul the French economy to make it more competitive.
…

Following the success of West Virginia teachers in securing a pay raise, educators in Oklahoma and Kentucky are walking out of their classrooms, demanding that lawmakers increase education spending in their states. Arizona teachers may soon follow suit. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
…

Federal law enforcement authorities are in the process of seizing Backpage.com and its affiliated websites.

A notice that appeared Friday afternoon at Backpage.com says the websites are being seized as part of an enforcement action by the FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service.

The notice doesn’t characterize or provide any details on the nature of the enforcement action.

It says authorities plan to release information about the enforcement action later Friday.

Backpage.com lets users create posts to sell items, seek a roommate, participate in forums, list upcoming events or post job openings.

But Backpage.com also has listings for adult escorts and other sexual services, and authorities say advertising related to those services has been extremely lucrative.

This story was written by the Associated Press.
…

The Trump administration is considering ways to require imported automobiles to meet stricter environmental standards in order to protect U.S. carmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Responding to the story, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump “will promote free, fair and reciprocal trade practices to grow the U.S. economy and continue to [bring] jobs and manufacturers back to the U.S.”

Citing unnamed senior administration and industry officials, the Journal said Trump had asked several agencies to pursue plans to use existing laws to subject foreign-made cars to stiff emission standards.

It appears such nontariff barriers could have a greater potential effect proportionately on European automakers, which collectively import a greater percentage of cars from plants outside the U.S., according to sales figures from Autodata.

In comparison, Japanese and Korean brands made about 70 percent of the vehicles they sold last year in the United States at North American plants. European brands built only 30 percent in North America.

The White House initiative was still in the planning stage, with officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency working to craft a legal justification for the policy, the paper said. It said there were hurdles to its implementation, including opposition from some in the administration.

The EPA and the Commerce Department, which the newspaper said was also involved in the effort, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Neither did representatives for Ford, General Motors or Fiat Chrysler.

This story was written by Reuters.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration said Friday that the United States was not engaged in a trade war with China, even as Trump threatened to impose tariffs on an additional $100 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing warned it was willing to fight back.

“This is just a proposed idea, which will be vetted by USTR [the U.S. trade representative], and then open for public comment, so nothing has happened, nothing has been executed,” said White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow amid growing concerns about escalating rhetoric between Washington and Beijing.

The economic adviser said Beijing’s theft of intellectual property was “at the root” of U.S. concerns and added “we can’t allow them [China] to steal our technology, because when they steal our technology, they are stealing the guts of the American future.” 

Leaders have good relationship

​The adviser stressed Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have a good relationship, and “ongoing talks may solve a lot of problems, but we are serious. I just really underscore this, we are serious.”  

The White House blamed China for trade practices it said were illegal and unfair. 

“China created this problem, and the president is trying to put pressure on them to fix this, and take back some of the terrible actions that they’ve had in the last several decades,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a briefing on Friday.

The U.S. and China are in routine contact, but “this is a negotiation period, that’s why it doesn’t happen immediately, and there’s a process, and we’re going through that process,” said Sanders. 

China offers warning

Meanwhile, Beijing showed no intention of backing down. 

 “China is already fully prepared. If the United States announces an additional $100 billion list of tariffs, we will not hesitate to immediately make a fierce counterstrike. We are not ruling out any options,” said China’s Commerce Ministry spokesman, Gao Feng.

“Under these conditions, it’s even more impossible for both sides to conduct any negotiations on this issue,” Gao added. 

In a Twitter post Friday morning, Trump continued to protest China’s trade practices and the World Trade Organization:

On Thursday, Trump announced he had instructed the U.S. trade representative to consider whether tariffs on another $100 billion of Chinese goods would be appropriate after China issued a list of U.S. goods, including soybeans and small aircraft, worth $50 billion for possible tariff hikes.  The United States had proposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods earlier this week. 

Last month, after a monthslong investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the U.S. trade representative determined that China had repeatedly engaged in unfair trade practices to obtain America’s intellectual property and pressure technology transfer from U.S. companies to Chinese entities.  

Tariffs a tactic? 

Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, told VOA it was unclear when and whether the threatened tariffs would be imposed.

“It seems likely the tariffs are being used as a negotiating tactic to try to get concessions from the Chinese side in terms of market access for U.S. firms and protection of its intellectual property, so there’s still a possibility that these tariffs will never come into force,” he noted. 

While it was not a surprising the White House pushed back against China’s retaliatory threats, some experts were surprised by how swiftly it did, according to Riley Walters, Asia economy and technology policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Walters cautioned it was a risky move to use tariff threats as a negotiating tactic because it can affect lives and income of Americans.

Expect more rhetoric

​If the tariffs go into effect, “what it could mean is both increasing cost for American consumers, but also an uncompetitive edge for American exporters to China. If you are a soybean producer, and if your goods go up 25 percent in China, then you are less price competitive than other exporters to China of soybeans,”  Walters said.

Walters expects more rhetoric between the White House and China in the coming weeks. Evans-Pritchard predicted that if the USTR published another list of goods worth $100 billion to be subjected to tariffs, China would respond with the same measures.  

“Once we started talking about $150 billion — which would be what’s on the cards, given the $50 billion existing tariffs plus $100 billion proposed — basically that is all of China’s goods imported from the U.S. So it will start looking elsewhere to retaliate,” Evans-Pritchard said.  

This story was written by VOA’s Peggy Chang. Jingxun Li of VOA’s Mandarin service contributed to this report.

 
…

U.S. stocks plunged again Friday over increasing concerns about a trade war between the United States and China.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 572 points by the close, shedding 2.3 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped nearly 2.2 percent, while the NASDAQ fell nearly 2.3 percent at the end of trading.

Earlier Friday, President Donald Trump continued to protest China’s trade practices after threatening China on Thursday with increased tariffs on $100 billion worth of additional goods.

In a twitter post Friday, Trump said, “China, which is a great economic power, is considered a Developing Nation within the World Trade Organization. They therefore get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair. We were badly represented. The WTO is unfair to U.S.”

China’s commerce ministry said in a statement Friday that if Washington persisted in what Beijing described as protectionism, China would “dedicate itself to the end and at any cost and will definitely fight back firmly.”

Since the start of this week, the United States and China have been engaging in a tit-for-tat trade spat.

Early in the week, the United States proposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. China then said it would impose tariff hikes on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods, including soybeans and small aircraft. On Thursday, Trump announced he had instructed the U.S. trade representative to consider whether tariffs on another $100 billion worth of Chinese goods would be appropriate.

‘China created this problem’

The White House blamed China on Friday for trade practices it said were illegal and unfair. 

“China created this problem, and the president is trying to put pressure on them to fix this, and take back some of the terrible actions that they’ve had in the last several decades,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during the daily briefing Friday.

Despite Trump’s threats for more sanctions, he has insisted the U.S. is not engaged in a trade dispute with the Asian nation.

U.S. stocks also were affected this past Monday by Trump’s new verbal attack on giant online retailer Amazon.

Since Trump started his criticism of Amazon, the company has lost more than $37 billion in market value.
…

Did March provide another month of blowout hiring? Was pay growth healthy?

When the government issues its monthly jobs report Friday, those two questions will be the most closely watched barometers.

Economists have forecast that employers added a solid 185,000 jobs in March and that the unemployment rate dipped from 4.1 percent to a fresh 17-year low of 4 percent, according to data provider FactSet.

The government will issue the jobs report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.

In February, employers added a blockbuster 313,000 jobs, the largest monthly gain in 18 months. Over the past six months, the average monthly gain has been 205,000, up from an average of 176,000 in the previous six months. Hiring at that pace could help nudge the unemployment rate below 4 percent in the coming months.

Hiring defies expectations

The surging pace of hiring has defied expectations that the low unemployment rate meant employers would struggle to fill positions, which, in turn, would restrain job growth. Job gains had slowed for most of 2017. But hiring accelerated starting in October, an unusual boost for an economy already in its ninth year of recovery.

In fact, the recovery from the 2008-2009 Great Recession has become the second-longest expansion since the 1850s, when economists began tracking recessions and recoveries. Still, the expansion has been puzzlingly slow, with economic growth averaging just 2.2 percent a year, about a percentage point below the historical average. But its durability has been broadly beneficial.

For example, a rising number of working-age Americans have begun looking for a job and finding one, reversing a trend from the first few years after the recession when many of the unemployed grew discouraged and stopped looking for work.

The proportion of adults in their prime working years, defined as ages 25 to 54, who are either working or looking for work jumped to 82.2 percent in February, up one-half of 1 percentage point from a year earlier. That’s still below the pre-recession level, which suggests that steady economic growth could continue to pull more job-seekers off the sidelines.

Will wages rise, too?

An increasing need to compete for workers may also finally be lifting wages in some sectors. Average hourly earnings rose 2.9 percent in January compared with 12 months earlier, the sharpest such increase in eight years. That unexpected surge triggered a plunge in financial markets, with investors fearing that accelerating wage growth might lead the Federal Reserve to step up its pace of interest rate hikes to control inflation.

But pay growth slipped in February to a year-over-year pace of 2.6 percent, suggesting that employers are still avoiding giving broad pay raises to their workers. The influx of new workers, which gives employers more hiring options than a 4.1 percent unemployment rate might otherwise suggest, may also be holding back wage growth.

Though the economy likely slowed in the first three months of this year, the healthy pace of hiring indicates that employers anticipate solid customer demand for the rest of the year. Macroeconomic Advisers, a consulting firm, forecasts that the economy grew at just a 1.4 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter — less than half the 2.9 percent annual pace of the October-December quarter.

But the firm expects growth to rebound to a decent 3.1 percent annual pace in the current April-June quarter.

Other reports indicate that growing optimism among businesses and consumers should help propel the economy in the months ahead.

Businesses have stepped up their spending on manufactured goods, helping lift factory output.

And last month, factories expanded at a healthy pace after having grown in February at the fastest rate since 2004, according to a private survey. Government data showed that orders for long-lasting factory goods, including industrial machinery, metals and autos, surged in February.

Americans have spent less at retail chains in the past two months, after shopping at a healthy pace during the winter holiday season. With consumer confidence near the highest point in two decades, however, consumer spending is likely to rebound in the coming months.

This story was written by the Associated Press.
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The Trump administration says China is responsible for a trade war with the United States because of its long-term unfair practices. A senior White House economic adviser said Thursday no measures have been enacted, but the situation cannot continue. U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States and China will have a “fantastic relationship” once they straighten out their trade issues. But analysts warn that raising tariffs is not good for the global economy. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
…

Venezuela said on Thursday it was halting commercial relations with Panamanian officials and companies, including regional airline Copa, for alleged involvement in money laundering, prompting Panama to recall its ambassador.

The resolution names Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela and nearly two dozen Cabinet ministers and top-ranking officials, adding that Panama’s financial system had been used by Venezuelan nationals involved in acts of corruption.

Venezuela said the individuals named in the resolution “present an imminent risk to the [Venezuelan] financial system, the stability of commerce in the country, and the sovereignty and economic independence of the Venezuelan people.”

The statement came a week after Panama declared President Nicolas Maduro and about 50 Venezuelan nationals as “high risk” for laundering money and financing terrorism.

Caracas did not detail whether the move would halt the operations of Copa in Venezuela, which is one of the crisis-stricken country’s few providers of international flights following a sharp reduction in airline services.

Copa’s website showed its planned Panama City-Caracas flight later Thursday was canceled. Copa flights Friday between the two cities were listed as scheduled.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Panama’s Varela, in brief comments to reporters Thursday, described the Venezuelan announcement as nonsensical.

“We have not heard anything about breaking relations but rather about a set of supposed sanctions, it’s gibberish,” Varela said.

The South American country has been hit with sanctions by Canada, the United States and a number of other countries over issues ranging from human rights violations to corruption and drug trafficking.

Maduro says the country is victim of an “economic war” led by his adversaries with the help of Washington, and says the sanctions are part of foreign countries’ efforts to undermine his government.

This story was written by Reuters.
…

President Donald Trump said Wednesday the United States is not in a trade war with China, after Beijing announced plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods in response to a similar package announced by the United States.

In a Twitter post Wednesday, Trump contended, “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S.” He added, “Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!”

On the same day, White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg News, “None of the tariffs have been put in place yet, and these are all proposals.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC, “Even shooting wars end with negotiations. … So it wouldn’t be surprising at all if the net outcome of all this is some sort of negotiation.”

Tit-for-tat trade spat

Since the start of this week, the United States and China have been engaging in a tit-for-tat trade spat. On Monday, in response to earlier tariffs on steel and aluminum imposed by the Trump administration, China started tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products, including fruits, nuts, pork, wine, steel and aluminum.

Later the same day, the U.S. Trade Representatives (USTR) proposed to increase tariffs on 1,300 imported goods from China, mostly aerospace, medical and information technology products.

Less than 12 hours later, China announced it plans to impose retaliatory duties of 25 percent on 106 politically sensitive American goods, including soybeans, automobiles and aircraft.

The proposed list is now entering a “public notice and comment process, including a hearing,” the USTR said. After this process is completed, the USTR will issue a final determination on the products subject to the additional duties.

China’s commerce ministry said the question of when the measures will go into effect will depend on when the U.S. tariffs become active.

China’s Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told reporters on Wednesday, “Negotiation would still be our preference, but it takes two to tango. We will see what the U.S. will do.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated at Wednesday’s press briefing that this measure is now going through the review process, and “it will be a couple of months before tariffs on either side would go into effect and be implemented.”

“We’re hopeful China will do the right thing. Look, China created the problem, not President Trump. We’re finally having a president who’s willing to stand up and say enough is enough, we’re going to stop the unfair trade practices,” Sanders said.

She also warned if China doesn’t stop the unfair trade practices, the administration will move forward to the next step.

Already in a trade war

Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he believes that the U.S. and China are already in a trade war.

“It started several weeks ago when the United States instituted penalties on Chinese steel and aluminum, and then the Chinese responded with penalties that also went into effect, so we haven’t just put our guns on the table, we’ve actually pulled the trigger. In the last few days, we’ve announced additional tariffs that will come into effect in the coming weeks. If this isn’t a trade war, I don’t know what one is,” Kennedy told VOA.

​Farming first to be hit

At the frontline of this war is America’s farming industry.

China, which buys nearly $20 billion in U.S. agricultural products annually, has become one of the most important export markets for U.S. farmers, but many agricultural products, including soybeans, cotton, frozen beef and sorghum, will be subject to tariffs if it goes into effect.

American Farm Bureau Federation Policy Communications Director Will Rodger told VOA, “Right now, we export about 20 percent of what we produce. We are very, very dependent on exports. We are looking at 25 percent being placed on soybeans into China.

“The actual economic impact will not be good, it will certainly be bad, the question is how large it’s going to be, we don’t know exactly,” Rodger said.

He said farm income is already at a 16-year low, resulting in many farmers in economic distress.

“While we haven’t reached the crisis point, we have one or two more years of declining income, we will be there pretty quickly,” he noted.

Rodger said the current trade dispute is obviously not a good thing. 

“We need it to stop, we need China and the United States to sit down and come up with a reasonable agreement in a reasonable fashion,” he added.

Losses in the short term

If the tariffs go into effect, China trade expert Kennedy pointed out, there will be potential job losses by the reduced export opportunities, but the most important impact in the short term will be on the financial markets.

Kennedy said the trade dispute between the U.S. and China is not about how fast this is resolved, but the way it is resolved.

“The issues the Trump administration has raised are issues American presidents have raised with China for almost two decades now, and not made the progress that they want. We shouldn’t be looking for a quick deal and put this behind us, we should be ready for a sustained level of tension until China relents,” he said.

Kennedy said China won’t do that easily. 

“China has an economic governance system which is distinctive and critical to the way the Communist Party runs the country, so it’s going to take a lot for them to move fundamentally,” he said.

“The two sides may make some type of short term deal to address superficially the challenges, but this is not something that will go away in the next few weeks,” Kennedy added.

State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report.

 
…

Wall Street’s three major indexes staged a comeback to close around 1 percent higher Wednesday as investors turned their focus to earnings and away from a trade conflict between the United States and China that

wreaked havoc in earlier trading.

After investors fled equities in the morning because of proposed retaliatory tariffs from China, their concerns about a potential trade war eased by the afternoon after President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said the administration was in a “negotiation” with China rather than a trade war.

Investors said they were comforted by the fact that any tariffs would not take effect immediately, if at all.

Strategists also cited the Standard & Poor’s bounce above a key technical

support level and said they expected equities to rise further around the first-quarter earnings season, due to start in mid-April.

“We’re starting to feel that while markets hate uncertainty, Trump’s bark is worse than his bite when it comes to trade,” said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas. 

“It’s earnings that’s going to lift us off this bottom. It wouldn’t shock me if we chopped around sideways for a little bit before earnings season. … The trade stuff is really a sideshow. We’re waiting for real economic data, like the jobs report Friday, and for earnings. For now, it’s going to be all about the technicals,” he said.

A rebound

The S&P opened below its 200-day moving average, a key technical level, but inched above it as the session progressed, and by afternoon was in positive territory.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 230.94 points, or 0.96 percent, to close at 24,264.30; the S&P 500 gained 30.24 points, or 1.16 percent, to 2,644.69; and the Nasdaq Composite added 100.83 points, or 1.45 percent, to 7,042.11.

The turnaround marked the first time the S&P had showed gains for two consecutive days since early March.

Despite big swings in stocks, trading activity in U.S. equity options was muted as expectations for strong corporate earnings quelled the urge to load up on contracts that benefit from a surge in market volatility.

The CBOE Volatility Index, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility for the S&P 500, closed down 1.04 points at 20.06.

The technology sector rose 1.4 percent with only two of its stocks ending the day in negative territory, including Facebook Inc., which was pummeled after news its chief executive would testify in Congress over a data privacy scandal.

It too closed well off its session low with a 0.6 percent drop to $155.10.

Boeing was the biggest drag on the Dow because of its exposure to China, and ended the day well off its session lows with a 1 percent decline to $327.44 after falling as low as $311.88.

Farm machinery company Deere & Co ended down 2.9 percent at $148.57 as it could be hurt by China tariffs if its customers’ exports are curbed.

After being a laggard for much of the session, the S&P 500’s industrials sector turned positive late in the day to close 0.4 percent higher.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.19-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.95-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and eight new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 40 new highs and 94 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 7.04 billion shares, compared with the 7.3 billion average for the last 20 trading days.
…

A jury has awarded nearly $17 million to a former Ford engineer who sued the automaker for discrimination because he says two supervisors repeatedly berated and criticized him for his Arab background and accent.

The Detroit Free Press reports that a federal jury in Michigan ruled March 28 that Faisal Khalaf was subjected to workplace discrimination and retaliation after he reported the abuse. Khalaf was born in Lebanon.

The jury awarded Khalaf $15 million in punitive damages, $1.7 million in retirement and pension losses, and $100,000 for emotional distress for the actions of Ford supervisors Bennie Fowler and Jay Zhou.

A Ford representative says the company disagrees with the verdict and is pursuing options to get it “corrected.”

Ford has been criticized for workplace discrimination before, including in a December New York Times investigation into sexual harassment at two Chicago plants.
…

The possible closure of a major coastal tourism magnet in the Philippines for environmental cleanup will hurt business, but for a cause that helps everyone longer term, experts say.

President Rodrigo Duterte said via the presidential website in March he would place Boracay Island under a “state of calamity.” The island may be shut down for two to 12 months, Philippine media reports say, citing other statements from Duterte and cabinet members.

The government is “addressing wastewater issues through an improved sewerage system,” the country’s environment minister Roy Cimatu said in a March 27 statement.

Boracay, a 10.3-square-kilometer feature in the central Philippines, has been compared to Bali and other Asian beach resort hot spots. Its main white sand beach runs four kilometers, paralleled by a strip of at least 100 hotels.

“The Philippines has been very aggressive in its campaign to attract tourists… and Boracay is actually the No. 1 selling point of the tourism business in the Philippines,” said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman.

“So it will really be a big blow to the tourism industry and we don’t know what will happen to these industries depending on Boracay, if they will continue if they can return to operation,” Atienza said.

Fear of closure

Government agencies have not finalized any closure of Boracay Island but dropped enough hints to prompt flight and hotel cancellations, analysts and operators report. Domestic media say arrivals in March were normal but expected a fall for this month.

Tourists who read “negative news” about Boracay are cancelling mid-year reservations, said a manager with Boracay Pito Huts, a 10-year-old group of villas for tourist groups on the island. Villa staff people may be asked to “take a vacation” if bookings don’t pick up, she said.

“As a preparation, of course we have to tighten our belts,” said the manager, who did not want to be named. “We are in the toilet. For June bookings or June tourists it’s nothing. That’s how we got affected.”

The Boracay Foundation, a business association with an environmental focus, declined comment for this report. A Department of Tourism representative said her office could make no statements on the possible closure.

Suspension of business would hurt a network of common Filipinos who sell souvenirs, prepare meals or drive tourists around the island, Atienza added.

Boracay generated $1.076 billion in tourism receipts last year, the local provincial tourism office said, as cited by the Philippine Information Agency, an increase of about 15 percent over 2016. Tourism was 8.6 percent of the Philippine GDP in 2016.

People and waste

Boracay has an ideal capacity of about half a million tourists per year, compared to its 2017 total of 2 million, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said in an online video. More than 300,000 tourists reached the island in January and February this year, it said.

Travelers often visit Boracay during the northern hemisphere winter to escape the cold in spots such as China, Russia and South Korea.

The island should review its “carrying capacity,” said Alicia Lustica, a coastal ecosystems cluster head with a department research Center. “We need also to assist also the volume of waste that has been generated and likewise how people are doing their activities on Boracay Island,” Lustica said in the video.

Sewage became an issue because some resorts treat their own inadequately or dump it into the sea, the domestic news website BusinessMirror.com said in January. It cites overbuilding and inadequate infrastructure as additional problems for Boracay.

The nongovernmental organization Global Coral Reef Alliance said more than 10 years ago sewage “from uncontrolled development” was hurting Boracay’s coral and fisheries.

The environment ministry also plans to do a “massive replanting” of trees on Boracay, the minister said in the March 27 statement.

Boracay renewal

A temporary closure would let Boracay clean itself up to become better for tourists, said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila.

“It’s going to hurt us, but I think moving forward we will probably see a lot of pent-up demand for Boracay — just like in any business a temporary renovation — and I think that’s how you should probably see what’s happening in Boracay,” he said.

Travelers would rather see a cleaner island, he added. Today Boracay-bound tourists must pay an environmental impact fee at a boat pier before stepping onto the island.

A cleaner Boracay would motivate other Philippine beach resort areas to protect their environments before they too face shutdown, Ravelas said. “You need the one example, and everybody will follow,” he said.

Duterte called Boracay a “cesspool” and ordered his government to fix problems in six months, the presidential office website says. The state of calamity, Duterte said, would let the government offer aid to people facing business losses.
…

China announced Wednesday it plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods in response to a similar package announced by the United States.

The Chinese measures would boost tariffs by 25 percent on 106 U.S. products, including soybeans, aircraft and cars.

China’s commerce ministry responded with its own measures less than 11 hours after the U.S. issued a proposed list of Chinese goods. The ministry said the question of when the measures will go into effect will depend on when the U.S. tariffs become active.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to impose $50 billion in increased tariffs on Chinese products last month, and on Tuesday the U.S. Trade Representative released a proposed list of 1,300 goods including aerospace, medical and information technology products.

Subject to public review

That list will be subject to a public review process scheduled to run until late May.

“The total value of imports subject to the tariff increases is commensurate with an economic analysis of the harm caused by China’s unreasonable technology policies to the U.S. economy,” the USTR said.

The United States has accused China of pressuring foreign companies to hand over technology.

China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said Wednesday that accusation is groundless, and that while China wants to resolve the trade dispute through dialogue, if the United States continues the fight then China will too.

Unlike the U.S. list, which includes many obscure industrial goods, China’s list targets cotton, frozen beef, soybeans and other agricultural products that are produced in states from Iowa to Texas that favored Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The U.S.-China dispute has fueled concern it could stymie a global economic recovery if other countries raise their own import barriers.

The prospect of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies also has worried stock market investors. U.S. markets opened sharply lower Wednesday. Shortly after the markets opened, the S&P 500 Index fell 1.4 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8 percent and the NASDAQ Composite Index was 1.6 percent lower.

Trump, however, dismissed the notion of a U.S.-China trade war on Wednesday, tweeting that previous U.S. administrations weakened the country’s ability to defend itself on trade matters.   

“We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!”

In a subsequent tweet Trump seemed to imply the U.S.-China trade imbalance is so wide that there is only room for improvement.

“When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!”

Despite Trump’s claims, U.S. government figures show the U.S. had a $375 billion trade deficit with China at the end of 2017.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also dismissed concerns Wednesday about a burgeoning trade war with China and said recent trade actions between the two countries would probably lead to a negotiated agreement.

“It wouldn’t be surprising at all if the net outcome of all this is some sort of negotiation,” Ross said in an interview with CNBC.

Ross brushed off worries of a trade dispute, saying U.S. tariffs imposed on China amount to only 0.3 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said Wednesday that accusation is groundless, and that while China wants to resolve the trade dispute through dialogue, if the United States continues the fight then China will too.

 
…

The Trump administration on Tuesday raised the stakes in a growing trade showdown with China, announcing 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 industrial technology, transport and medical products to try to force changes in Beijing’s intellectual property practices.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office unveiled a list of mainly non-consumer products representing about $50 billion of annual imports that would nonetheless hit supply chains for many U.S. manufacturers. The list ranges from chemicals to light-emitting diodes, motorcycles and dental devices.

Publication of the tariff list starts a public comment and consultation period expected to last around two months, after which USTR said it would issue a “final determination” on the product list. It has scheduled a May 15 public hearing on the tariffs.

USTR said the tariffs were proposed “in response to China’s policies that coerce American companies into transferring their technology and intellectual property to domestic Chinese enterprises.”

The agency added that such policies “bolster China’s stated intention of seizing economic leadership in advanced technology as set forth in its industrial plans, such as ‘Made in China 2025.'”

China has denied that its laws require technology transfers and has threatened to retaliate against any U.S. tariffs with trade sanctions of its own, with potential targets such as U.S. soybeans, aircraft or heavy equipment. The dispute has raised fears about a possible trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

The U.S. list heavily targets advanced technology products that benefit from Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” program, which aims to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products and build a dominant position in future industries.

The state-led 2025 program targets 10 strategic industries: advanced information technology, robotics, aircraft, new energy vehicles, pharmaceuticals, electric power equipment, advanced materials, agricultural machinery, shipbuilding and marine engineering and advanced rail equipment.
…

Nearly a dozen U.S. states and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday promised to defend federal automobile efficiency standards against a rollback proposed this week by Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“All Americans … deserve to enjoy fuel-efficient, low-emission cars and light trucks that save money on gas, improve our health and support American jobs,” the attorneys general from 11 states said in a statement responding to

Pruitt’s proposal on Monday to ease the Obama-era standards.

The standards called for roughly doubling by 2025 the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles sold in the United States to about 50 miles (80 kilometers) per gallon. Proponents say such standards help spur innovation in clean technologies and cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

California has long been allowed by an EPA waiver to impose stricter standards than Washington does on vehicle emissions of some pollutants. Twelve other states follow California’s lead on cleaner cars.

The attorneys general, from states including New York, Iowa and Massachusetts, said they would challenge a rollback in court. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has already threatened to sue in defense of the standards.

The statement, also signed by more than 50 mayors from around the country, said automakers have been making progress in meeting the national standards and that compliance costs have been lower than projected.

Auto industry executives have not publicly sought specific reductions in the requirements negotiated with the Obama administration in 2011 as part of a bailout deal. But they have urged Pruitt and President Donald Trump to revise the standards so it becomes easier and less costly to meet the targets.

Pruitt defended his decision at EPA headquarters on Tuesday.

“We have nothing to be apologetic about with respect to the progress we’ve made in reducing emissions as a country,” Pruitt said. The EPA will make sure that U.S. consumers would not have to buy more expensive autos as a result of efficiency standards, he said.

Pruitt, a former attorney general of Oklahoma, a major oil producer, has been criticized by politicians after reports that he paid well below market rates to live in a condo owned by a lobbyist who deals with issues overseen by his agency. Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly phoned Pruitt this

week to say they supported him, an administration source said Tuesday.
…

The government of Aung San Suu Kyi is opening the economy and growth is rebounding in Myanmar, though the possibility of broader Western sanctions over the Rohingya refugee crisis is nevertheless giving some foreign investors pause, according to a senior IMF official.

Shanaka Jay Peiris, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) mission chief to Myanmar, said in a recent interview that initial data reviewed by the IMF indicated that some foreign investors were delaying final approval of projects until there was clarity about how the situation may unfold.

“The numbers we have for FDI [foreign direct investment] aren’t showing it yet … but foreign investment approvals are slowing down, so there is some indicator that going forward FDI may be weaker,” Peiris told Reuters following the publication last week of the IMF’s latest review of Myanmar’s economy.

“Since August, investors are taking a pause. It isn’t a surprise,” he said. He said it was unclear which projects were being delayed and added that more data was necessary to better understand whether the “pause” was temporary or not.

However, leading indicators such as FDI project amounts approved by Myanmar’s government for the first 10 months of fiscal 2017/18 from April show “a marked slowdown” since September 2017, according to the IMF.

For now, FDI inflows for 2017/18 still look to be a “solid number,” Peiris added.

While it is too soon to know what it could mean for the overall economy, Peiris said: “We have to see whether project approvals were temporarily lower or will be a trend, as well as whether actual FDI inflows will fall by much. The magnitude would also matter.”

“We are not operating under the assumption that there are going to be broad economic sanctions,” he added, downplaying the risk of a decline.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay said that, “Especially in Myanmar, because of the Rakhine issue, tourism has come down, investments and FDI have come down too,” adding that the authorities were working hard to ensure macroeconomic stability.

The report by the IMF, which follows annual consultations with the government, followed a November visit to Myanmar, the first since nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after a military crackdown condemned by the international community.

The World Bank announced on Oct. 13 it was delaying the release of $200 million in budget support for Myanmar in response to the “forced displacement of the Rohingya.”

Both the United States and Canada imposed sanctions against a general in Myanmar’s military for his role in the crackdown against the Muslim Rohingya. The European Union said in February it was preparing sanctions against military leaders to hold them accountable for their role in the crisis.

The Trump administration’s aid chief, Mark Green, said last month he will visit Myanmar soon for talks with the government and to see for himself conditions of the Rohingya refugees.

Targeted sanctions

Peiris said the IMF believed that any more Western sanctions would likely target individuals in the military and not the economy.

“If the sanctions are limited to the military personnel, which has been the case to now, we believe it will be less of an impact” on the economy, Peiris said. “If it is broader, it would be more worrying.”

Overall, the IMF sees economic growth picking up toward an estimated potential rate of about 7 to 7.5 percent after lower-than-expected growth of 5.9 percent in 2016/17.

The United States remains concerned about the plight of the Rohingya, a Treasury official told Reuters, declining to comment on the status of sanctions investigations. Another U.S. official said the Trump administration was reviewing all options on Myanmar.

When asked by Reuters how concerned the government was about more sanctions, the Myanmar spokesman said such actions would affect “the whole country” because Myanmar was no longer a military dictatorship but instead run by “a democratic government elected by the people.”

“They shouldn’t do the economic sanctions,” the government spokesman said. “If the investments are affected, then it affects the people.”

Opening up

The IMF visit came shortly before Myanmar introduced regulations to bring the country’s banks closer to international standards and force them to recover mostly open-ended “overdraft loans” that make up the bulk of their lending.

Myanmar’s central bank deputy governor, Soe Thein, told Reuters in November that private banks had been given more time to clear most of their loan books.

Private banks account for more than half of banking system assets and the largest six private banks hold around 80 percent of private bank assets, according to the IMF.

The new rules compel banks to open their books to the central bank, and Peiris said initial data raised concerns about the need for more bank capital.

“It is more fragile than what has been published, so banks will have to raise capital and recognize losses,” he said.

“The question is whether owners are willing to put up the money, and if they can’t, will they try to find partners? How that will evolve is hard to tell but they will need more capital,” he said. The Fund would have a better perspective of the situation during its next visit later this year, he said.

“We and the central bank do have a sense that it is a significant issue,” he added.

Asked whether the government agreed with the IMF assessment on the banks, the Myanmar government spokesman said reforms were important to build economic stability.

“It is necessary to be careful,” he said, “We cannot afford to make any mistakes.”
…

Stock markets in Asia fell Tuesday, but did not suffer losses as steep as those Monday in U.S. markets where continued fears about a U.S.-China trade war and a verbal attack on an online retailer by President Donald Trump sent stocks lower.

Markets in Japan and Hong Kong fell by more than one percent in early trading, but by midday had rebounded to make back half the losses.

The U.S. Down Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.9 percent Monday, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 2.3 percent and the NASDAQ fell nearly three percent.

Trump has strongly criticized online giant Amazon three times in the last few days. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose revelatory stories on Trump and his administration frequently draw the president’s ire.

The U.S. leader says Amazon’s large-scale operations are detrimental to the business success of small retailers that cannot compete with its high-volume sales. Trump has also complained that the fees Amazon pays to the U.S. Postal Service to deliver merchandise the retailer sells are too low, costing the quasi-governmental agency hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, although the Postal Service says its contract with Amazon is profitable.

“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon,” Trump said in his latest broadside against Amazon. “THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!” 

Since Trump started verbally attacking Amazon, the company has lost more than $37 billion in market value.

China’s announcement that it is increasing duties on 128 categories of U.S. imports worth $3 billion in annual trade also worried investors. They fear Beijing’s response to the Trump tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports could spark an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The importance of tariff announcements by both the U.S. and China lies in what they may portend for overall bilateral trade and investment relations between the two countries,” said Atsi Sheth, an analyst for Moody’s Investors Service.

Late Monday, White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters issued a statement saying, in part, that China needs to stop “its unfair trading practices which are harming U.S. national security and distorting global markets.”
…

First, the United States imposed a tax on Chinese steel and aluminum. Then, China counterpunched Monday with tariffs on a host of U.S. products, including apples, pork and ginseng. 

On Wall Street, the stock market buckled on the prospect of an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. But it hasn’t come to that – not yet, anyway.

“We’re in a trade slap-fight right now,” not a trade war, said Derek Scissors, resident scholar and China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

China is a relatively insignificant supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States. And the $3 billion in U.S. products that Beijing targeted Monday amount to barely 2 percent of American goods exported to China.

But the dispute could escalate, and quickly. Already, in a separate move, the United States is drawing up a list of about $50 billion in Chinese imports to tax in an effort to punish Beijing for stealing American technology or forcing U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets. 

China could respond by targeting American commercial interests uniquely dependent on the Chinese market: the aircraft giant Boeing, for example, and soybean farmers.

The possibility that the U.S. and China will descend into a full-blown trade war knocked the Dow Jones industrial average down as much as 758 points in afternoon trading. The Dow recovered some ground and finished down 458.92 points, or 1.9 percent, at 23,644.19.

For weeks, in fact, President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade actions have depressed the stock market.

But many trade analysts suggested that the Wall Street sell-off may be an overreaction. 

China’s swift but measured retaliation to the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs is meant to show “that it will not be pushed around but that it does not want a trade war,” said Amanda DeBusk, chair of the international trade department at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed. “It is possible for the countries to pull back from the brink.”

“It seems to be pretty measured and proportional,” agreed Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade official who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “They didn’t seem to overreach, and they didn’t hit our big-ticket items like planes and soybeans.”

Even if China’s tariffs don’t have a huge impact on America’s $20 trillion economy, they will bring pain to specific communities. 

Take Marathon County in Wisconsin, where 140 local families grow ginseng, a root that is used in herbal remedies and is popular in Asia. Around $30 million – or 85 percent – of the area’s ginseng production went to China as exports or gifts. The county, which gave Trump nearly 57 percent of its vote in 2016, holds an international ginseng festival in September, crowning a Ginseng Queen and drawing visitors from China and Taiwan.

China’s new 15 percent tariff on ginseng is “definitely going to hit the growers hard if this happens,” said Jackie Fett, executive director of the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. “It is the livelihood of many people. … We’re still holding on to a little bit of hope” that the tariffs can be reversed.

Jim Schumacher, co-owner of Schumacher Ginseng in Marathon, Wisconsin, said the 15 percent tax will hurt: “You’ve got to be price-competitive, even if you have the top-quality product. We’re definitely concerned. We hope something can be resolved.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to overhaul American trade policy. In his view, what he calls flawed trade agreements and sharp-elbowed practices by China and other trading partners are in part responsible for America’s gaping trade deficit – $566 billion last year. The deficit in the trade of goods with China last year hit a record $375 billion.

In his first year in office, Trump’s talk was tougher than his actions on trade. But he has gradually grown more aggressive. In January, he slapped tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines. Last month, he imposed duties on steel and aluminum imports – but spared most major economies except China and Japan.

Now he is moving toward steep tariffs to pressure Beijing into treating U.S. technology companies more fairly. In the meantime, his administration has lost two voices that cautioned against protectionist trade policies: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn. 

“Given the increasingly hostile rhetoric backed up by tangible trade sanctions already announced by both the U.S. and China, it will take a determined effort on both sides to come up with a mediated compromise that tamps down trade tensions and allows both sides to save face,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

If the dispute escalates, China can pick more vulnerable targets. In the year that ended last Aug. 31, America’s soybean farmers, for instance, sent $12.4 billion worth of soybeans to China. That was 57 percent of total U.S. soybean exports.

Brent Bible, a soybean and corn farmer in Lafayette, Indiana, has appeared in TV ads by the advocacy group Farmers for Free Trade, calling on the Trump administration to avoid a trade war. 

“We’re kind of caught in the crossfire,” he said.
…

For farmers trying to figure out how to heal a sick cow or grow tomatoes commercially in this Himalayan community, help is at hand in the form of a crumbling, earthquake-scarred library.

In a rural area where searching for information online or paying for expert advice is rarely an option, the library is a first stop for female farmers daunted by their new role: running the family farm while their husbands are away looking for work.

“Most of the men have migrated for money now in Nepal. It’s a very huge problem,” said Meera Marahattha, the “human Google” who runs the library.

But there’s an upside. “Because of this male migration, females have the opportunity to lead,” she added – sometimes for the first time.

Migration is growing around the world among families hit by disasters, conflict or shifting weather patterns. In Nepal – and many other places – women are often left behind in rural areas as men seek work in cities or overseas.

Taking on all the work can be exhausting, and being alone is dangerous for some women. But for others, the absence of men can open up opportunities to try out their own ideas, learn new skills and gain confidence.

In Nepal, the Tribeni community library in Bhimdhunga is one of 22 that are part of a “Practical Answers” program jointly run by READ Nepal, a literacy and anti-poverty organization, and Practical Action, a British charity.

Besides providing resource books, the hubs collect queries from across the community, log them and set about providing tailored answers to farming and other technical challenges.

In Bhimdhunga, the library offers a computer suite, a children’s nursery and a women’s health section, attracting about 200 active members from the mountainous neighborhood.

Marahattha, the library head who is a community member herself, often travels house-to-house visiting remote mountain-top farms to field questions and train female farmers.

“We have a lot of inquiries,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, proudly flicking through log books filled with neat rows of curling Nepali scrawl.

During the planting season, she might receive as many as 1,000 questions a month – but on average it is closer to 500, she said. They range from how to treat crop diseases to how to use a computer or market goods in town.

While the library is open to all, Marahattha has found more interest from women – in particular those suddenly put in charge of their households as their husbands or sons migrate abroad in search of work.

That change has offered some women a chance to try out their own farming ideas, becoming more confident and boosting their family’s finances in the process.

But there are “some negatives too”, Marahattha admitted.

Women often complain to her of feeling overwhelmed, as if “all the responsibilities are on their head”, looking after both land and children.

And the shift in family dynamics, together with the disruption to family life that accompanies migration, has led to a rise in the number of divorces, Marahattha said.

Self-Sufficient

Wearing a red shawl draped across her shoulder to match her bright red bindi and lipstick, Urumila Lama, 33, still has a youthful face – though her back bent from toil makes her seem older.

She lives with her 11-year-old son on a remote farm on a steep hillside overlooking the lush Kathmandu Valley. But their living quarters are a tin shack, hastily built after a powerful earthquake in 2015 reduced their home, and many others in the area, to rubble.

The disaster killed nearly 9,000 people and disrupted the lives of more than 8 million.

“After the earthquake, our whole house collapsed. Everything went bad and my husband went to a foreign country to earn,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But then she heard about the agricultural training being offered by Marahattha at the library and went along.

“I immediately took up the practices in my own house and have since been vegetable farming seriously,” said Lama, who has constructed a number of large plastic-covered tunnels and makeshift greenhouses to boost her vegetable production.

“I realized we can have a good income from this,” she said.

Initially, she earned about $60 a month from growing vegetables such as sweet peppers and tomatoes.

Today she makes triple that amount, and can pay for her son’s school fees and the family’s daily expenses without having to ask her husband for money.

“I was here alone. It was not my husband’s decision but my own to construct the greenhouses and start doing vegetable farming,” she said proudly.

“When my husband came back to visit he was surprised at what I was doing and how I’d gained knowledge,” she said. He urged her to “build a bigger greenhouse and grow more!”, she recalled.

The community library – although a simple idea – has proved hugely popular with the community, said Rakesh Khadka, a project officer with the Practical Answers program in Nepal.

Established in 2011, the facility was at first little used, but by 2013 “we were inundated”, he said.

Sometimes the library refers tough questions to Kathmandu, where experts can better advise on technical issues. But answers are often found locally, with women sharing solutions among themselves, Khadka said.

Little by little, women are becoming more self-sufficient and using the library less often or coming mainly to socialize, he added.

‘Cash Cows’

Crossing her sandy yard in bare feet, Chini Khadka, 55, pushes back a loose door to reveal a baby calf, closely guarded by its mother.

Khadka, who is illiterate and was married at just 9 years old, was happy to show off the cattle that have made her a respected businesswoman in her remote Himalayan village.

“After my husband left me, I lived with my mother-in-law, who took pity on me. But she died a few years ago. We had many expenses for my children’s studies, so I had to make an income,” she said.

She heard about the library and started training with the other women. “Then I got interested in dairy farming because I have very limited land,” she said.

Khadka learned to rear cows, build sheds and calculate the correct nutrient requirements for her animals. She now has eight cows, some of which are pregnant, with each fully grown animal worth about $1,000 at market, she said.

She also sells milk in town and manure as fertilizer to other farmers.

“As I grew in confidence, I leased land from a neighbor and have been planting some food crops too,” she said. “I’m very, very happy doing this. It fulfills me.”

Khadka earns about 30,000 Nepalese rupees ($288) a month.

That’s more than her son, who works as a teacher, she boasts – and is even enough for her to hire another female farmhand to help tend the vegetables.

“Before I used to have very low self-esteem,” she said, smiling. “Now I feel like society respects me and treats me better.”

($1 = 104.2200 Nepalese rupees)
…

China raised import duties on a $3 billion list of U.S. pork, fruit and other products Monday in an escalating tariff dispute with President Donald Trump that companies worry might depress global commerce.

The Finance Ministry said it was responding to a U.S. tariff hike on steel and aluminum that took effect March 23. But a bigger clash looms over Trump’s approval of possible higher duties on nearly $50 billion of Chinese goods in a separate argument over technology policy.

The tariff spat is one aspect of wide-ranging tensions between Washington and Beijing over China’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus with the United States and its policies on technology, industry development and access to its state-dominated economy.

Forecasters say the immediate impact should be limited, but investors worry the global recovery might be set back if it prompts other governments to raise import barriers. Those fears temporarily depressed financial markets, though stocks have recovered some of their losses.

On Monday, stock market indexes in Tokyo and Shanghai were up 0.5 percent at midmorning.

Beijing faces complaints by Washington, the European Union and other trading partners that it hampers market access despite its free-trading pledges and is flooding global markets with improperly low-priced steel and aluminum. But the EU, Japan and other governments criticized Trump’s unilateral move as disruptive.

The United States buys little Chinese steel and aluminum following earlier tariff hikes to offset what Washington says is improper subsidies. Still, economists expected Beijing to respond to avoid looking weak in a high-profile dispute.

Effective Monday, Beijing raised tariffs on pork, aluminum scrap and some other products by 25 percent, the Finance Ministry said. A 15 percent tariff was imposed on apples, almonds and some other goods.

The tariff hike has “has seriously damaged our interests,” said a Finance Ministry statement. 

“Our country advocates and supports the multilateral trading system,” said the statement. China’s tariff increase “is a proper measure adopted by our country using World Trade Organization rules to protect our interests.”

The White House didn’t respond to a message from The Associated Press on Sunday seeking comment.

China’s government said earlier its imports of those goods last year totaled $3 billion.

The latest Chinese move targets farm areas, many of which voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

U.S. farmers sent nearly $20 billion of goods to China in 2017. The American pork industry sent $1.1 billion in products, making China the No. 3 market for U.S. pork.

“American politicians better realize sooner rather than later that China would never submit if the U.S. launched a trade war,” said the Global Times, a newspaper published by the ruling Communist Party.

Washington granted EU, South Korea and some other exporters, but not ally Japan, exemptions to the steel and aluminum tariffs on March 22. European governments had threatened to retaliate by raising duties on American bourbon, peanut butter and other goods.

Beijing has yet to say how it might respond to Trump’s March 22 order approving possible tariff hikes in response to complaints China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Trump ordered U.S. trade officials to bring a WTO case challenging Chinese technology licensing. It proposed 25 percent tariffs on Chinese products including aerospace, communications technology and machinery and said Washington will step up restrictions on Chinese investment in key U.S. technology sectors.

Trump administration officials have identified as potential targets 1,300 product lines worth about $48 billion. That list will then be open to a 30-day comment period for businesses.

Beijing reported a trade surplus of $275.8 billion with the United States last year, or two-thirds of its global total. Washington reports different figures that put the gap at a record $375.2 billion.
…

Jonathan Garland’s fascination with architecture started early: He spent much of his childhood designing Lego houses and gazing at Boston buildings on rides with his father away from their largely minority neighborhood. 

But when Garland looked around at his architectural college, he didn’t see many who looked like him. There were few black faces among students, and fewer teaching skills or giving lectures. 

“If you do something simple like Google ‘architects’ and you go to the images tab, you’re primarily going to see white males,” said Garland, 35, who’s worked at Boston and New York architectural firms. “That’s the image, that’s the brand, that’s the look of an architect.”

And that’s not uncommon in other lucrative fields, 50 years after the Reverend Martin Luther King, a leader in the fight for equal employment opportunities, was assassinated.

An Associated Press analysis of government data has found that black workers are chronically underrepresented compared with whites in high-salary jobs in technology, business, life sciences and engineering, among other areas. Instead, many black workers find jobs in low-wage, less prestigious fields where they’re overrepresented, such as food service or preparation, building maintenance and office work, the AP analysis found.

‘Other America’

In one of his final speeches, King described the “Other America,” where unemployment and underemployment created a “fatigue of despair” for African-Americans. Despite economic progress for blacks in areas such as incomes and graduation rates, some experts say many African-Americans remain part of this “Other America,” with little hope of attaining top professional jobs, thanks to systemic yet subtle racism.

The AP analysis found that a white worker had a far better chance than a black one of holding a job in the 11 categories with the highest median annual salaries, as listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of white-to-black workers is about 10-to-1 in management, 8-to-1 in computers and mathematics, 12-to-1 in law and 7-to-1 in education — compared with a ratio of 5.5 white workers for every black one in all jobs nationally. The top five high-salary fields have a median income range of $65,000 to $100,000, compared with $36,000 for all occupations nationwide.

In Boston, a hub for technology and innovation and home to prestigious universities, white workers outnumber black ones by about 27-to-1 in computer- and mathematics-related professions, compared with the overall ratio of 9.5-to-1 for workers in the city. Overall, Boston’s ratio of white-to-black workers is wider than that of the nation in six of the top 10 high-income fields.

Boston, where King had deep ties, earning his doctorate and meeting his wife, has a history of racial discord. Eight years after King’s assassination, at the height of turbulent school desegregation, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from an anti-busing rally at City Hall showed a white man attacking a black bystander with an American flag.

The young victim was Theodore Landsmark. He’s now 71, a lawyer, an architect and director of Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

Why progress lags

He said “structural discrimination” is the overarching cause of disproportionate race representation in high-salary fields. Landsmark and others say gains are elusive for myriad reasons: Substandard schools in low-income neighborhoods. White-dominated office cliques. Boardrooms that prefer familiarity to diversity. Discriminatory hiring practices. Companies that claim a lack of qualified candidates but have no programs to train minority talent.

Some also say investors are more likely to support white startups. When Rica Elysee, a lifelong Boston resident who grew up in predominantly black neighborhoods, brought her idea of an online platform linking beauty professionals with customers for in-home appointments to investors, she was shunned, she said.

“They said I didn’t belong in the program, that they couldn’t identify with it because they weren’t black,” said Elysee, 32, who initially marketed BeautyLynk to black women like herself. “I remember crying pretty harshly. They couldn’t relate to what I was doing.”

Some even advised her to move out of Boston, which had a booming innovation economy but was “not encouraging minorities in the tech space,” she said. Three years later, Elysee said BeautyLynk is slowly growing but still needs capital.

Most American metro areas are like Boston, with AP’s analysis showing that racial disparities in employment are indifferent to geography and politics. California’s Silicon Valley struggles to achieve diversity in computer fields. In Seattle, home to Amazon, whites outnumber blacks nearly 28-to-1 in computer- and math-related fields. Financial powerhouse New York has a 3-to-1 ratio of white-to-black workers in all occupations, but nearly 6-to-1 in business and finance. Hollywood shows inequality in entertainment, with almost nine whites for every black worker.

In Atlanta, King’s hometown, the proportional representation of black-to-white workers is close to even in many fields. Many reasons are cited. Atlanta has historically black colleges and universities such as King’s alma mater, Morehouse; the first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, pressed for policies helping black professionals after his 1973 election; and events like the 1996 Olympics opened doors for entrepreneurs of all races.

Nationally, it’s much different

Atlanta is an exception. For nearly all of the past half-century, black unemployment nationally has hovered at about twice that of whites.

President Donald Trump touted on Twitter that December’s 6.8 percent unemployment rate for blacks was the lowest in 45 years — a number critics say ignores a greater reality. For example, in an economy that increasingly demands advanced degrees, Department of Education data show that black representation among graduates in science, tech, engineering and mathematics peaked at 9.9 percent in 2010 and has been slowly declining.

In Boston, Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh said in a recent speech that the city is addressing the issue and is committed to placing 20,000 low-income residents in “good-paying jobs” by 2022.

Landsmark said stronger role models may be a solution. As Boston Architectural College’s president, he mentored Garland. They discussed race issues in the professional world — as when Garland, trying to land jobs in his neighborhood, realized many people who looked like him were unfamiliar with the very concept of architecture. He once had to explain to a homeowner who wanted his roof reframed: “I’m not a builder, I’m an architect.”

Today, Garland speaks at high schools and works at the DREAM Collaborative, which focuses on projects in low-income neighborhoods.

“I know the barriers exist in other folks’ minds, and I have to disprove that,” he said. “I keep myself focused on the issues.”
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As the world’s population heads toward 10 billion by midcentury, experts are wrestling with how to feed the world without wrecking the planet. It’s not easy to find foods with lower environmental impact that still taste as good as the ones they are intended to replace. But chefs and environmentalists are both cheering one new menu item: the mushroom-blended burger. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Traditional handicrafts from Pakistan are exported to many countries around the world. One item that appears to be gaining in popularity are the country’s hand-made bamboo curtains. VOA’s Saman Khan has more in this report from Lahore, Pakistan, narrated by Sarah Zaman.
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A financially distraught yellow cab driver from Romania recently hanged himself in his New York garage, marking the fourth suicide among city taxi drivers in as many months. In the tragedy’s aftermath, members of New York’s taxicab drivers union are renewing their calls for a cap on the number of app-based for-hire vehicles, such as Uber and Lyft, which they say are driving workers of a once-thriving industry into the ground. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
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The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will roll back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration’s plans to combat climate change. 

It’s not clear whether the announcement will include a specific number, but current regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025. That’s about 10 mpg over the existing standard. 

Environmental groups, who predict increased greenhouse gas emissions and more gasoline consumption if the standards are relaxed, say the announcement could come Tuesday at a Virginia car dealership. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email Friday that the standards are still being reviewed.

Legal showdown

Any change is likely to set up a lengthy legal showdown with California, which currently has the power to set its own pollution and gas mileage standards and doesn’t want them to change. About a dozen other states follow California’s rules, and together they account for more than one-third of the vehicles sold in the US. Currently the federal and California standards are the same. 

Automakers have lobbied to revisit the requirements, saying they’ll have trouble reaching them because people are buying bigger vehicles due to low gas prices. They say the standards will cost the industry billions of dollars and raise vehicle prices due to the cost of developing technology needed to raise mileage. 

When the standards were first proposed, the government predicted that two-thirds of new vehicles sold would be cars, with the rest trucks and SUVs, said Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Now the reverse is true, she said.

Still, environmental groups say the standards save money at the pump, and the technology is available for the industry to comply. 

Health risk

They also say burning more gasoline will put people’s health at risk. 

“The American public overwhelmingly supports strong vehicle standards because they cut the cost of driving, reduce air pollution, and combat climate change,” said Luke Tonachel, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Clean Vehicles and Fuels Project. 

The EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are involved in setting the standards, which would cover the years 2022 through 2025. 

Some conservative groups are pressing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to revoke a waiver that allows California to set its own rules. They say California shouldn’t be allowed to set policy for the rest of the nation. Pruitt has publicly questioned the veracity of evidence complied by climate scientists, including those in his own agency, that global warming is overwhelmingly caused by man-made carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

If the waiver is revoked, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra says the state will resist. “What we’re doing to protect California’s environment isn’t just good for our communities — it’s good for the country,” he said in a statement. “We’re not looking to pick a fight with the Trump administration, but when they threaten our values, we’re ready.” 

Huge dilemma

Getting rid of the waiver or having two gas mileage and pollution requirements presents a huge dilemma for automakers: while they would like to avoid fines for failing to meet the standards, they also want the expense of building two versions of cars and trucks, one for the California-led states and another for the rest of the country.

Mark Reuss, a General Motors’ product development chief, said in a recent interview that he would rather have a single nationwide standard, even if it stays the same. He called two standards “just waste,” because they would require different vehicle equipment and costly additional engineering. “I want one good one,” he said. “I could focus all my engineers on one.”

Automakers agreed to the standards in 2012, but lobbied for and received a midterm review in 2018 to account for changes in market conditions. In the waning days of the Obama presidency, the EPA did the review and proclaimed that the standards have enough flexibility and the technology is available to meet them.

Changes would be years away

Janet McCabe, who was acting assistant EPA administrator under Obama when the review was done, said Friday it will take a couple years for the EPA to propose new rules, gather public comment and finalize any changes. Any rollback would likely bring legal challenges, forcing Pruitt’s EPA to defend the science behind the changes. 

“This would all take a long time,” said McCabe, now a senior fellow at the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

In the meantime, automakers have to proceed with plans for new cars and trucks under the current gas mileage requirements because it takes years to develop vehicles.
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A wider Sino-U.S. trade dispute would help export-reliant Vietnam compete against Chinese companies but put the country at risk of any global fallout, analysts say.

The numerous exporters in Vietnam that ship manufactured goods to the United States would save money compared with Chinese peers if not subject to American tariffs, said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate with business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

The U.S. government said this month it would develop a list of tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports. China has threatened to impose its own in response.

“Let’s say (the United States) went the more traditional route, tensions kept escalating and more tariffs are slapped on Chinese products,” Daugherty said. “In that case Vietnam’s export sector definitely benefits. We’re already seeing the U.S. being very warm to Vietnam and U.S. businesses keen on doing business with Vietnam.”

But Chinese firms hit by tariffs might flood Vietnam with raw materials for local manufacturing, while overall world market volatility caused by a Sino-U.S. trade dispute could hamper the country’s trade, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

​A tariff-free Vietnam scenario

Vietnamese exporters would save money compared to their Chinese peers if the U.S. government placed tariffs on Chinese firms alone without touching their cross-border supply chains, Daugherty said.

The government of U.S. President Donald Trump calls China unfair in its trade practices, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says on its website. China enjoys a $375 billion trade surplus with the United States.

Vietnam counts the United States as its top single-country export destination and it shipped $46.484 billion worth of goods to that market last year.

Vietnamese officials have carved out an investment environment since the 1980s that hinges on low costs for manufacturers. American-invested factories such as a Ford Motor plant and an Intel chip factory are among those active in Vietnam today.

Foreign investment contributed to exports worth $155.24 billion in 2017, financial services firm SSI Research in Hanoi says. Vietnam’s economy grew about 7 percent in the first quarter this year, it says.

Attractive investment

Vietnam would be a more attractive investment compared with China under higher U.S. tariffs, analysts say.

Some new investors might be formerly China-based firms hoping to flee the tariffs, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore.

China itself might offer Vietnam, along with other countries, preferential trade policies or infrastructure help to shore up trade ties, some believe. Stronger trade relations outside the United States would help China offset any tariff damage, Daugherty said.

This week China’s commerce minister pledged to relax trade rules affecting India.

​Specter of a broader trade war

U.S. import tariffs that hit China’s extensive cross-border supply chain would hurt Vietnam as a place that finishes Chinese goods for final export, Thayer said. It’s unclear whether Washington would tax Chinese firms alone or their wider supply networks.

Chinese firms already co-invest with Vietnamese partners, Song said, and supply chains for goods such as consumer electronics can net multiple countries, not just China.

More co-investment might follow if Vietnam can offer shelter from tariffs. But Sino-Vietnamese political tension over a maritime dispute risks giving Vietnamese firms a bad name at home if they work too extensively with Chinese partners.

“I would say there will be all kinds of repercussions and implications just because of the very integrated supply chain in the world these days,” Song said. “Take an Apple phone as an example. Parts from here and there are assembled in China.”

Steel, aluminum tariffs

U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect last week cover much of the world including China and Vietnam. Vietnam exported 380,000 tons of steel, worth $303 million, to the United States in 2017, domestic news website VnExpress International says.

Chinese firms hit by the range of tariffs being mulled now in Washington might boost sales to Vietnam, Thayer said. Chinese sellers of raw materials for Vietnamese exports could dump goods into Vietnam to keep up their own balance sheets as U.S. tariffs hurt them, he added.

Chinese sellers often have an economy of scale that lets them sell for less in Vietnam than local vendors do. Vietnam counts China as its top trading partner.

An escalation of Sino-U.S. trade tensions could also chill global markets or trade as a whole, some analysts fear. That fallout could slow global growth, he said.

“Disruption to trade shouldn’t affect Vietnam overall, but it’s the way the entire globe is reacting to this that I think could affect Vietnam,” he said. “Vietnam is overall heavily committed to global integration with a number of partners, so disruption along that way would have an effect.”
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A recent fatality involving one of Uber’s self-driving cars may have created uncertainty and doubt regarding the future of autonomous vehicles, but it’s not stopping automakers who say autonomous and self-driving vehicles are here to stay. At the New York International Auto Show this week, autonomous vehicles and electric cars were increasingly front and center as VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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A new coalition of tech giants and conservationists is looking to drastically reduce the amount of wild, and often endangered, animals that are trafficked via online services. As Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, they hope to cut 80 percent of the illegal trade by the end of the decade.
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