Conservative activist groups that generally support Republicans but oppose a pro-export, anti-import Republican tax proposal released a study on Thursday estimating its impact on individual U.S. states, underscoring the party’s division over taxes.

The two activist groups, backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, reported that seven states won by President Donald Trump in November’s election would be among the 10 hardest hit by the proposal.

Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, both based in the Washington area, said the “border adjustment tax,” or BAT, would harm all 50 states, but that those heavily dependent on imports could suffer most.

The report predicted economic harm to Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — all states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. The list of hard-hit states also includes California, New Jersey and Illinois, which Democrat Hillary Clinton carried.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who intends to include the BAT in tax reform legislation this spring, sharply criticized the study.

‘Fantasy figures’

“That so-called study will be easily discredited and probably fits the definition of fake news,” Brady told reporters. “It takes one provision, pretends the economy freezes … applies it in our current tax code and comes up with fantasy figures.”

BAT, billed as a way to boost U.S. manufacturing, would exempt export revenues from federal tax, while ending the deductibility of import costs by corporations, making imports for production or resale costlier.

The plan is part of a tax reform blueprint supported by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump is also working on a tax plan.

The proposal is also opposed by a number of Senate Republicans who could prevent its passage, should the House approve a tax reform bill that contains it.

Koch organizations, including the brothers’ privately held conglomerate, Koch Industries, have warned that BAT could devastate the U.S. economy by raising prices on consumer goods, including gasoline. Refineries owned by Koch Industries rely on oil imports from Canada.

The Koch groups say they support tax reform but oppose BAT.
…

Strong trade ties between the United States and nations in Southeast Asia are under a cloud as a U.S. investigation into trade imbalances gets underway. Regional governments say the apparent policy shift has spurred concern and anxiety.

A 90-day investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department of countries with large trade surpluses with the United States follows President Donald Trump’s call for a crackdown on “foreign importers that cheat.” Trump said the shift will result in a “historic reversal” in U.S. trade policy.

“While we’ve seen an improvement in the trade figures between January and February, we continue to be very focused on eliminating our nation’s trade imbalance,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “This administration is determined to achieve free and fair trade, to protect hard working Americans, and to grow our economy.”

Among the Asian economies singled out by Trump were those of China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Analysts say the review may mark a major change in Asia’s trading relationship with the United States.

Campaign rhetoric

After World War II, Southeast Asia’s emerging economies, beginning with Japan, looked to the U.S. economy to spur export led growth — key to the region’s progress in lifting millions out of poverty.

But charges that some trade policies, particularly China’s, had damaged the U.S. economy were a prominent feature of Trump campaign rallies.

Krystal Tan, an economist with the Singapore-based Capital Economics, said the trade investigation has led to concerns and uncertainties across the region.

“At this stage it’s still quite difficult to see what kind of measures the U.S. might want to take. It does look like countries that are probably most nervous about potentially being named currency manipulators are [South] Korea and Taiwan,” Tan told VOA.

The United States argues that currency manipulators deliberately keep their currency low in value against the U.S. dollar in order to boost their exports.

Taiwan trade officials say the trading relationship with the U.S. is not a hostile one, as over 80 percent of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. are intermediate goods — those sent to the U.S. for final assembly.

David Hsu, deputy director general of Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) told local media the trading relationship with the U.S. was “mutually beneficial.”

Taiwan’s main concern is the potential imposition of sanctions following the review.

Tan says South Korea and Taiwan, to avoid sanctions, will need to open their markets to more U.S. products.

Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Minister, Ong Ka Chuan, told local media Malaysia was neither responsible for, nor taking advantage of, the U.S. trade deficit.

Ong said any sanctions could impact American manufacturers in Malaysia, such as Intel and Western Digital.

“If Trump were to punish us for this [trade surplus] the American firms will be ones dealt a severe blow,” he said.

Kuala Lumpur-based RHB Research chief economist Peck Boon Soon said the U.S. policy revision left Malaysian business cautious on the outlook.

“Yes, certainly it remains very uncertain until [Trump] really implements those policies and whether those policies would be able to be implemented. We are watching these things quite closely and we would be waiting for more developments before we decide what to do with our forecasts on exports,” Peck told VOA.

In late 2016, export growth boosted Malaysia’s economic growth rate to 4.5 percent — “the strongest in the four quarters.”

The United States is Thailand’s third largest trading partner after China and Japan. Two-way trade reached $36.5 billion in 2016, with $24.49 billion from Thai exports. The trade surplus with the U.S was $12.4 billion.

Major exports to the United States include machinery, electrical appliances, electronics and parts, rubber products and gems and jewelry.

Both Malaysia and Vietnam were key participants to the 12 nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a key component of President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” policy intended to counter China’s growing political and economic influence.

TPP withdrawal

Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP soon after taking office.

This week, Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, criticized the U.S. policy shift, saying the trade policies would have a “huge impact” on Vietnam’s export driven economy.

Carl Thayer, a political scientist with the University of New South Wales, says Phuc’s comments were “guarded”, but with Hanoi looking to build trading ties under China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

“Vietnam had its heart and soul on the TPP. They have a massive surplus with the U.S. It almost equals their massive deficit with China. But there’s not very much they can do, they’re being pragmatic and looking at the RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership,” Thayer said.

Thayer said Vietnam has banked on a strong U.S. presence in Asia as a counterweight to China’s regional influence, especially in the South China Sea.

“The more Trump goes his own way Vietnam has got to do a five power balance with India, Russia, Japan, as well as China and the U.S. weakness; the U.S. side. So Vietnam has a harder time preventing being sucked into China’s orbit — in all of this — it needs a strong U.S. action,” he said.

He says bilateral relations with Vietnam, built up over the past two decades, are a casualty of the trade policy shift.

“Yes, it gets worse for Vietnam because they can’t rely on the U.S. They have no idea what [the U.S.] is going to do,” he said.
…

Struggling U.S. farmers are pressing their luck with soybeans this spring, sowing record acreage even though the world is awash with the oilseed, as demand from China offers a potential lifeline.

Soybean plantings could surpass corn for the first time this year, with rising exports holding up prices and providing a narrow path to profitability for U.S. farmers facing their fourth straight year of declining incomes.

But fierce competition to supply China threatens the bottom line for U.S. growers, and 2017 prices, while seen as up slightly from 2016, are still projected to be 50 cents per bushel lower than three years ago.

Diplomatic concerns also weigh heavily as the market eyes tense relations between the two countries. U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping meet this week in Florida.

Trump has said he wants U.S. companies to stop investing in China and instead create jobs at home. He has also  accused China of manipulating its currency to boost exports.

Mike Jordan, a farmer from Beloit in north-central Kansas, plans to boost soy acreage by 10 percent after success both on the yield and price fronts for his crop in 2016.

“The general sentiment is … even though Kansas is a wheat state, beans look pretty good,” Jordan said. “If you told me five years ago beans were going to produce more than half the total income on my farm, I would have wondered where you were coming from.”

Planting records

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts farmers will sow 89.482 million acres of soybeans this year, up 7.2 percent from the record 83.433 million acres in 2016. Corn acreage was seen falling to 89.996 million acres, just 514,000 greater than soybean intentions.

During the past decade, final soybean acreage has topped the March forecast by more than 500,000 acres five times, with the biggest gain in 2012, when plantings beat initial projections by 3.296 million acres. A year ago, final soybean plantings came in 1.197 million acres above March intentions.

Soybeans also are taking acreage from wheat, which has struggled on the export market. U.S. wheat plantings were seen falling to 46.059 million acres — the lowest since the government started tracking them in 1919.

The soybean crop is planted to be exported, part of its allure to farmers who see demand for wheat and corn declining on both the export and domestic fronts.

On average, 45 percent of the soybean crop has been exported during the past 10 years and the USDA projects that will rise above 50 percent in 2017/18. Corn is typically used for domestic feed or ethanol, with only about 14 percent exported.

The rising soy acreage is seeded with China in mind.

“With China, if we can keep them as a good customer … I am hoping that they can soak up the extra supplies and keep the price from collapsing,” said Dave Newby, a farmer in Bondurant, Iowa, who plans to boost his soybean acreage by 50 percent this year.

China’s soybean imports have grown for 13 years in a row and the USDA expects them to hit 87 million tonnes in the year ending Sept. 1. That would soak up one-fourth of the world crop and represent a 130 percent surge in demand in the last decade.

The next-biggest importer is the European Union — set to bring in just 13.80 million tonnes in the 2016/17 crop year.

The United States sold 62 percent of its exports to China in 2016, worth more than $14 billion, according to the American Soybean Association. Soybean exports helped spur the U.S. economy to its biggest gains in two years during the third quarter of 2016.

South America steps up

But growing Chinese demand does not guarantee a profit as stocks should be huge even after China satisfies its needs.

Chicago Board of Trade November soybean futures, which track the crop to be harvested this autumn, have fallen 1.0 percent since the USDA issued its acreage outlook on March 31. CBOT December corn has risen 2.1 percent.

Additionally, massive crops in Brazil and Argentina provide China with purchasing options, and the competition is likely to persist as South American farmers also have the export market at the forefront of planting decisions.

“We plant soy in Brazil because there is global demand for the grain,” said Elso Pozzobon, a farmer in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s largest soy producing state. “This crop gives producers a sense of security.”

In Argentina, soybean acreage looks set to rise as an export tax that held back seedings is expected to decrease.

“Considering that world demand is still strong and prices are better than the alternatives,” said David Hughes, who farms thousands of hectares in Argentina’s bread basket Buenos Aires province. “I would guess we are probably at a low level of acreage limit.”
…

Many companies aim for “Best in Class” status, but some are seeking another “B” — B corporation certification.

Certified B corporations, or “B corps,” address the growing consumer interest in supporting socially and environmentally responsible companies.

B corps are essentially for-profit companies that behave more like nonprofits, tackling global issues such as pollution and income disparity through everyday business practices.

‘Business as a force for good’

“B corporations are companies that are using their business as a force for good,” said Andrew Kassoy, co-founder of B Lab, the nonprofit organization that issues B corp certification. “By having that B corp certification, it makes good easy for the consumer … to know that the company is having a positive impact on society,” he added.

For many companies, doing good may take a back seat to making money. But not for certified B corps.

Multimillion-dollar brands like fashion company Eileen Fisher and ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s are among businesses certified as B corps.

“In some cases, it’s about the company trying to create more value for its workers, to create opportunity for workers to grow in the economy and have a job with dignity,” Kassoy said.

“In other cases, it might be about creating a product that’s more environmentally sustainable or socially responsible,” he said.

Growing around the globe

B corps are a growing global movement. Brands large and small make up the more than 2,000 certified B corporations, representing 130 different industries in 55 countries.

“Our foreign certifications are outpacing our U.S.-based certifications for the last year,” said Jennifer Warden, B Lab’s global partner manager. “We’ve got partners in 13 different regions — a lot in Latin America, Europe, a lot of momentum now in the Asia Pacific regions and Africa.”

To qualify as a B corp, companies must score at least 80 out of 200 points on an assessment that covers four key areas: corporate governance, employee rights, community outreach and environmental impact. Everything from waste reduction efforts to leadership roles for women and minorities are considered.

“You’re able to measure how you rank in terms of taking care of the community, how you rank in taking care of the environment, how you take care of your customer,” said Sean Cullen, project coordinator at Uncommon Goods, a Brooklyn-based online retailer that is a certified B corp.

Assessments are made every two years. In addition to maintaining a minimum score, certified B corps are also required to revise company bylaws to reflect accountability to workers and customers.

Depending on a company’s size, B corp certification costs $500 to $25,000 annually. For many, the payoff is in being among the best in the business.

Look for the logo

“When you see that certified B Corp logo on different products, you know that you’re getting a good product,” Cullen said.

B Lab maintains a website with a B corporation directory so consumers can look up a company and verify its certification.

“The goal is that one day, all companies will be able to manage and measure their impact with the same rigor as their profits,” Kassoy told VOA.

“And by doing that … all companies will compete to be best for the world, not just best in the world,” he said.
…

America’s infrastructure is crumbling. A report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s roads, bridges and public works a D+, with a large portion of the structures showing significant deterioration. Tuesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his promise to spend one trillion dollars to overhaul the infrastructure. For local communities, that money can’t come fast enough. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Pittsburgh.
…

The future of public transportation in New York City is taking shape on the bayous of Louisiana and Alabama.

Shipyard workers in the two states are scrambling to finish the city’s new ferry fleet in time for a launch this summer, just a little more than a year after it was first proposed.

The city is making a $335 million bet that the service will attract millions of passengers traveling between Manhattan and waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that are now a distant walk from overcrowded subways.

Transportation infrastructure in the city has a tendency to take many years, if not decades, to get built, but in this case workers are under pressure to get the new ferries and docks built in a New York minute.

Horizon Shipbuilding, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, has 100 employees – including 80 hired last summer – working to fill its order of 10 ferries for the 20-boat fleet. The rest are being built at the Metal Shark shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Baton Rouge.

Inside Metal Shark’s huge boat-building shed last week, several of the $4 million catamaran vessels were in various stages of completion. Sparks and smoke flew around workers’ protected heads as they welded one lightweight aluminum ferry frame. Other workers stood between the catamarans’ two pontoons, sanding the rough metal. Electricians were busy wiring the navigation system. Cranes carried pieces of tubing to the ferry-to-be.

“A project like this is unique,” said Junior Volpe, director of special projects for Hornblower Inc., the San Francisco-based company that will operate the ferry system in partnership with New York City.

More than a year ago, when they were still negotiating the construction of the ferries in such a short time period, “a lot of people were, like, ‘Wow, I don’t think this is ever going to happen.’ And to prove that things are possible, here we are. We’re sitting on the first ferry that’s going to be delivered here at Metal Shark – and it’s amazing,” Volpe said.

City transportation officials say the new ferry fleet will speed up travel time in this city of islands by as much as two-thirds and come at a competitive price – $2.75 – the same as a subway fare. That compares to the limited ferry service that currently takes commuters and tourists across the Hudson and East Rivers at $4 to $6 per ride. New York’s fifth borough, Staten Island, is served by its famed free ferry service that offers about 23 million rides a year.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he hoped the new ferry service, along with a new streetcar line he also has proposed, would help lighten the transportation load for a city of 8.5 million that is expected to grow by another half a million people in the coming years.

While de Blasio acknowledged the new ferry service’s initial goal of 4.6 million annual rides per year is modest (the subway system handles 5.7 million rides on weekdays), he was hopeful the growth in ridership would be greater.

“If you build it,” he said, “they will come.”

Travel by water in New York harks back to the city’s maritime glory days in the late 1800s, when there were no subways and the East River, the harbor and the Hudson River were abuzz with industrial production and business activities relying on water-borne modes of transportation.

“But ferries don’t solve New York’s overall transportation problem,” said Nicole Gelinas, a transportation analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

She noted that with commercial activity no longer concentrated on the waterfront and most people living elsewhere, ferries handle only a fraction of the ridership of subways. “That doesn’t mean ferries are not a good idea, because they get at least some people off the trains that are crowded beyond capacity.”

In addition, she said, the financial structure of the new ferry service, in which the city plans to spend $180 million over six years subsidizing fares, could be difficult to sustain.

“The mayor hasn’t addressed these issues at all,” Gelinas said. “But the new ferries are good for him in that he’ll be inaugurating them a few months before the election.”

All that doesn’t ruin the anticipation for longtime Astoria resident Claudia Coger.

After years of spending three, even four, hours a day commuting to work as a train inspector, with long walks to subways and buses, she vows to be among the first on the ferry, boarding at a dock just steps from her apartment.

“Yes, for sure, because I fish over here anyway!”
…

Three years ago, 14-year-old Julius left his family near the lakeside city of Mwanza, Tanzania, to try his luck mining gold.

Today, Julius is in no hurry to leave, despite having one of the riskiest jobs on a chaotic mine site — handling mercury each day with his bare hands.

“It’s good work. I’m paid well,” Julius, who wanted to use only his first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wearing an orange T-shirt and skinny jeans coated with red dirt.

Julius, now 17, said he has been working with mercury for three years, but no one had ever told him it was dangerous.

There are more than 4 million child laborers in Tanzania aged between 5 and 17, according to a government survey released last year in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. That’s roughly a third of the country’s children.

More than 3 million are doing hazardous jobs, including at illegal mines like the one near Nyaligongo in northern Tanzania, where they are exposed to mercury, heavy dust and work long shifts without safety gear.

Many unaware of laws

The Tanzanian government is aware of the problem but has struggled to keep children out of small, unlicensed mines. Its laws do not allow children under 14 to work, and hazardous work is not permitted for children over 14. Tanzania has signed all major international conventions on child labor and introduced its own laws to prevent the worst child labor.

But not everyone knows of the child labor laws, including families and local officials.

Government workers tasked with enforcing the laws lack the staff and funds for inspections, let alone prosecutions.

“In Tanzania we have a good law and strategy to eliminate all kinds of child labor, but the problem here is who is going to implement this at the local level,” said Gerald Ng’ong’a, executive director of Rafiki Social Development Organization (SDO), an NGO that works on child labor in northern Tanzania.

“Local officials don’t have enough information about the law and how to protect children.”

Lure of gold

The problem is especially hard to tackle in the informal sector, said Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which ranks Tanzania as the 55th-most “at risk” country in its 2017 Child Labor Index, due to be published Wednesday.

“The government’s focus is very much centered around large industrial projects, particularly foreign-owned businesses that would be able to pay fines if violations were discovered,” Gordon wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Lake Victoria’s gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy “artisanal” mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania’s cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.

The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines’ workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.

“Pit owners employ children because they’re cheap labor,” said Ng’ong’a.

Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.

Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.

“The work is difficult,” said Mayalamos. “But I can only leave this place once I’ve earned enough.”

Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.

On the village’s main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.

Students leave to work

More than 8,000 people live in Nyaligongo, says Faustine Masasila, the village’s secretary and a mine site owner, and more are still arriving.

“There are people here who used to have very miserable lives,” Masasila said, walking through the buzzing market. “If you work hard, you are guaranteed prosperity.”

At the primary school down the road, teachers are less impressed with mining’s promise of a good future.

A poster on the school office wall is a testament to the number of children who leave to work when they are old enough.

This year, in Class 1, there are 236 students aged 6 and 7, while in Class 7 there are only 40 students aged 13 and 14.

“I feel very frustrated when children leave and go to the mines instead of going on to secondary school,” said Mabula Kafuku, the education officer for the ward. “They don’t even have enough knowledge to mine safely.”

Children dropping out of school is a nationwide problem in Tanzania and a major impediment to the government’s aspiration to become a middle-income nation by 2025. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that in 2016, more than 5 million children aged between 7 and 17 were out of school across the country.

For government workers tasked with inspecting mines for health, safety and labor violations, enforcing the law at the far-flung informal mines sprinkled around the Lake Victoria region is an onerous task.

Masasila, the village secretary, cannot recall ever seeing inspectors at the mining site near Nyaligongo.

“If you have children working in remote areas, you need a budget to visit. We don’t have such things,” said Hadija Hersi, a regional labor officer in Mwanza. “That’s why you have NGOs stepping in to intervene.”

Some success

Several nongovernmental organizations, including Terre des Hommes Netherlands, have been trying to get child workers back in school and help families develop alternate income sources to wean them off their wages.

Since 2014, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, working with Rafiki SDO, has managed to help more than 725 children leave the mines. In Geita, another nearby gold-mining area, U.K.-based Plan International has helped 12,000 children withdraw from small-scale mining work and is trying to reach another 11,600.

But as long as people are struggling to find work outside Tanzania’s cities, there is only so much NGOs can do.

At the mine, Nyanjige Mwendesha looks on as her three children, ages 10, 12, and 15, sit on the red, dusty ground, smashing up rocks with small metal hammers in the midday sun.

Mwendesha brought her family to work here after there wasn’t enough rain on her farm this year. The family needed the money.

“When it starts to rain, I’ll go back to the farm,” she said.
…

The first phase of what is expected to be a lengthy and costly process to build additional segments of wall along the southwestern U.S. border ended as the deadline expired Tuesday afternoon for companies to pitch their ideas to the government.

The bidding process was to build 3-by-3-meter (10-by-10-foot) prototypes — some made of concrete, some of any other type of material — in San Diego, that the government will now evaluate for potential use along parts of the border, which stretches from southeast Texas to southwest California.

The government said it will spend two weeks selecting up to 20 competitors for a second round of competition for each type of wall. More than 400 companies showed interest in bidding, and several may win the chance to build the prototypes.

Phase two

If the schedule outlined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not delayed, the second phase will begin in mid-April, with companies submitting cost analyses and more specific design plans.

Construction on the prototypes could begin in June, according to bid documents.

The specifications for the wall indicate new portions could be as low as 5 meters or as high as 9 meters (18 feet and 30 feet) — “physically imposing in height,” and resistant to people chipping away at it, CBP described in a notice to interested contractors.

The process began in mid-March, pushed by President Donald Trump, who campaigned regularly on the idea of building a wall along the border. Fencing, walls, surveillance towers and other barriers — including natural, rugged terrain — already exist.

The overall length of the wall segments to be added to the border remain unclear. But they must be resistant to climbing and take more than 30 minutes to bore through, according to bid documents — enough time for border agents to locate the attempted breach.

They should also be “aesthetically pleasing in color” on the north, U.S.-facing side, the document specifies.

Other solutions

In a Congressional hearing Tuesday, two former CBP officials and a Texas professor testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about border fencing in the Southwest; they agreed with several senators that a wall is not the only solution to illegal migration across the border.

“There is not a one-size-fits-all for the border,” said David Aguilar, former acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He advocated for increased resources for CBP in the area, while Terence Garrett, a professor from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, advocated for improving conditions in the so-called northern “triangle countries” — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — to curb the number of aspiring migrants traveling north.

The ongoing bid process focuses exclusively on the wall, but Ron Colburn, former deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who also worked on the Arizona-Mexico border, told senators Tuesday that border security combines multiple techniques that change depending on what area is in question.

“Without tactical infrastructure, it’s too weak. Without the right amount of manpower, it’s too weak. And without the right mix of technology, it’s too weak,” Colburn said. “The links in the chain have to be equally strong. And it has to be the right mix.”

“It’s not going to be the same in San Diego as in Rio Grande Valley, South Texas,” he added.

Paying for the wall

Trump promised to make Mexico pay for the wall, a proposal that country rebutted. Instead, the administration has requested that Congress approve $1.5 billion this year to start building a wall.

Estimates for the overall cost of adding miles of wall to the border are as high as $21.6 billion, according to a Reuters estimate, and that funding will require congressional approval.

Additionally, the government faces continued legal wrangling along the border to secure the land, often from private owners, to build additional barriers.
…

The Chilean government’s plans to reform the country’s pension system will be in doubt if governing coalition members are unable to reach agreement among themselves on the design of any new legislation, the finance minister said on Tuesday.

Chile’s privatized pension system was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The so-called ‘Chilean model’ has been much copied and adopted worldwide.

But opposition to it is rising in Chile, with regular noisy street protests demanding changes. Opponents claim it forces workers to give their earnings to for-profit funds, called AFPs, and that the payouts are meager.

Center-left President Michelle Bachelet, now entering the last year of her four-year term, has pledged reform and set up a commission to look into the current system.

But differences of opinion among her increasingly divided coalition may make a new law impossible, Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdes said.

“[Bachelet] has not yet decided on the contents, or even if the bill will go ahead, because that will depend on what kind of consensus we can get,” he said in an interview with Radio Cooperativa.

Possible changes could include raising the contribution minimum to 15 percent from the current 10 percent. But there has been disagreement on whether that extra should go direct to workers who pay it or to a shared “solidarity fund.”

Lawmakers are also in disagreement on whether the extra cash should be administrated by the AFPs or a new state-run fund.

As Bachelet’s popularity has slid and differences emerged over other reforms such as abortion and labor, she has increasingly struggled to keep her coalition, ranging from centrist Christian Democrats to Communists, on the same page.

“If in doing something we are going to fight between ourselves, there is not much point,” Valdes said.
…

Large numbers of job seekers from around the world are filing applications at U.S. federal offices as the season opened Monday for H1-B visas for foreign workers.

H1-Bs allow employers – mostly high-tech firms – to hire skilled foreign workers for jobs in the United States for three years. Eighty-five thousand slots are available – 65,000 for applicants with bachelor’s degrees and 20,000 for those with master’s or more advanced degrees.

In recent years, there have been so many applications that the U.S. government stopped accepting them within a week. Visa winners are chosen by a computer-generated lottery.

This year, there is additional pressure because the program’s future is not clear.

President Donald Trump has vowed that he will not allow American workers to be displaced by foreigners holding H1-B visas.

On Monday, as the application process opened, the Department of Justice warned U.S. companies not to discriminate against American workers.

“U.S. workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Civil Rights Division.

At the same time, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) warned it will take a “more targeted approach” as it makes site inspections across the country.  What it will be targeting includes an inability to find an employer’s basic business information through commercially available data, employers who have a high ratio of H1-B employees to U.S. workers, and employers who petition for H1-B workers to work off-site.

Outsourcing

Overwhelmingly, India has been the biggest recipient of H1-B visas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports that 71 percent of H1-Bs went to Indians in 2015. China was a distant second with 10 percent of the visas.

India’s success is attributed to its huge outsourcing firms that submit thousands of applications every year, increasing their chances of winning the lottery. Outsourcing firms, which supply services to other companies, are controversial because they are not subject to a federal requirement that they not displace American workers if they pay the H1-Bs at least $60,000 a year.

The H1-B visa program has proponents who argue that there are not enough Americans to fill all the slots for which skilled workers are needed. A research brief filed Monday by the bipartisan group New American Economy said that there are “persistent and dramatic” worker shortages in science, technology, engineering and math.

The group of mayors and business leaders who support immigration reform said that in 2016, there were more than a dozen jobs posted in those fields for every one unemployed eligible U.S. worker.

Competing bills in the U.S. Congress both expand and curtail the H1-B visa program.

H1-B spouses

In the meantime, spouses of H1-B holders, who are allowed to work under a 2015 rule, are still in limbo regarding their eventual employment status.  

The Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, has asked for additional time to review the rule that allows spouses of H1-B visa holders to work.

Implemented under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, the rule has been challenged in court by Save Jobs USA, an organization of information technology workers who claim to have lost their jobs to H1-B visa holders. The group maintains that the rule threatens American jobs.

Before the rule, spouses, who hold H-4 visas, were not allowed to work.

In February, the DHS had asked for 60 days to review the rule. On Monday, that 60-day period closed and the Department of Justice requested a 180-day extension, promising to update the federal appeals court at 60 days.

Save Jobs USA filed a cross motion Monday asking that the additional time be denied.
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