Mexico’s foreign minister says the country is “inevitably” set to review rules of origin when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving a boost to President Donald Trump’s manufacturing push.

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Tuesday at an event in Miami that NAFTA has allowed Mexican industry to enter the U.S. market with lax rules of origin. The rules dictate how much U.S. content a product assembled in Mexico must have in order to escape tariffs when being imported into the United States. Currently set at 62.5 percent for the auto industry, that number could increase.

“One part that must inevitably be reviewed is the chapter on rules of origin,” Videgaray said at the University of Miami. “Over time, the free trade agreement has sometimes been used — not always, of course, but sometimes — as a way to access the U.S. market perhaps with laxity in some ways of rules of origin.”

The Trump administration told Congress this month there would be 90 days of consultations on the renegotiation of the 23-year-old pact before beginning talks with Canada and Mexico. Annual trade of goods between Mexico and the U.S. was worth $525 billion in 2016, with the U.S. running a trade deficit of more than $63 billion.

The foreign minister said Mexico won’t entertain any talks on building a wall along the border. Videgaray maintained it is seen as an unfriendly sign and questioned its efficiency. Trump’s budget seeks $2.6 billion for border security technology, including money to design and build a wall along the southern border. Trump repeatedly promised voters during the campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall.
…

A group of Senate Democrats sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, requesting information about a raft of trademark approvals from China this year that they say may violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on gifts from foreign governments.

“China’s rapid approvals after years of court battles have raised questions as to whether the trademarks will prevent you from standing up to China on behalf of American workers and their businesses,” the eight senators, led by Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, wrote.

China’s most recent nod for a Trump trademark, covering clothing, came on May 6, bringing to 40 the number of marks China has granted or provisionally granted to the president and a related company, DTTM Operations LLC, since his inauguration. If there are no objections, provisional approvals are formally registered after 90 days. China has also rejected or partially rejected nine Trump trademarks since the inauguration.

Trademarks give the holder monopoly rights to a brand in a given market. In many jurisdictions, like China, they can also be filed defensively, to prevent squatters from using a name. Because trademarks are granted at the discretion of foreign governments and can be enormously valuable, they can be problematic for U.S. officials, who are barred by the emoluments clause of the constitution from accepting anything of value from foreign states without congressional approval.

In their letter, the senators were particularly interested in any special efforts Trump, his Chinese lawyers, or the U.S. Embassy in China, which sometimes advocates for U.S. firms, may have made to secure approval for the president’s trademarks. They cited an Associated Press report quoting one of Trump’s lawyers in China, Spring Chang, who said that “government relations are an important part of trademark strategy in China.”

Concern about favoritism is particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party. China has defended its handling of Trump’s intellectual property interests, saying it followed the law in processing his applications, though some trademark lawyers viewed the pace as unusually quick and well-coordinated. In addition, China approved one trademark for Trump-branded construction services after a 10-year legal battle that turned in his favor only after he declared his candidacy.

Alan Garten, chief legal officer of The Trump Organization, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. He has previously said that Trump’s trademark activity in China predates his election and noted that Trump has stepped away from managing his company. However, the president retains an ownership stake in his global branding and real estate empire.

In April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, added “gratuitous Chinese trademarks” to its lawsuit against the president for alleged emoluments violations. Trump has dismissed the suit as without merit.
…

Cross-border fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan has suspended trade worth millions of dollars and stranded hundreds of trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables at the border, where the produce stands to spoil in the rising heat.

Pakistan had temporarily closed the Chaman border crossing, across from Afghanistan’s Spinboldak, after a frontier skirmish earlier this month between Afghan and Pakistani border guards left more than 10 people dead. Global economic institutions say South Asia is one of the world’s least economically connected regions, and the periodic closures of border crossings complicate things further.

Summer is peak time for fruit and vegetable production in the two countries. Under normal circumstances around this time of the year, a significant portion of Afghanistan’s grapes and pomegranates is ferried overland to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s mangoes and vegetables go the opposite direction, along with bilateral trade in many other commodities — some legal and some otherwise.

Part of the Afghan fruit produce is sold in Chaman and nearby villages; the remainder finds its way to markets across Pakistan.

It’s a long-established system that relies heavily on trust: Pakistani fruit traders send advance payments to their Afghan counterparts, who then send the fruit after it’s harvested. But so far this year, the Chaman businessmen say they have not cut the usual deals because the border closure have created the risk of coming up empty-handed.

Amant Khan, a fruit trader in Chaman, said he suffered losses last year as tensions rose between the two countries.

“This season we did not give the grape or melon dealers anything,” he said. “In fact, we decided not to do business with Afghanistan.”

For traders in Waish Mandi, a thriving Afghan market town across from Chaman, these are hard financial times, too. Hundreds of people, who used to benefit from border trade, have lost work. Unable to move their merchandise across the border, goods worth millions of dollars are stranded in truck containers.

Apart from the fruit trade, bilateral trade between Afghanistan and Pakistanonce worth $3 billion a year has dropped to $1.2 billion, said Khan Jan Alkozai, president of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Pakistan’s own fruit exports to Central Asia via Afghanistan, which usually average 2 million pounds, also suffer because of border closures, Alkozai said.

Daro Khan, former vice president for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Chamber of Commerce, said Pakistani farmers and businessman have not recovered from losses due to border closures last year.
…

A new ban imposed by India’s government on the sale of cows and buffaloes for slaughter to protect animals considered holy by many Hindus is drawing widespread protests from state governments and animal-related industries.

Many state governments criticized the ban as a blow to beef and leather exports that will leave hundreds of thousands jobless and deprive millions of Christians, Muslims and poor Hindus of a cheap source of protein.

The rules, which took effect Friday, require that cattle traders pledge that any cows or buffalos sold are not intended for slaughter.

At least one state government is planning a challenge in court. Some have said the ban infringes on states’ commercial autonomy and are calling for a nationwide protest.

Others say the ban will hurt farmers who will be forced to continue feeding aged animals, and that millions of unproductive cattle will be turned out on the streets.

The new rules also propose the setting up of a vast animal monitoring bureaucracy, including animal inspectors and veterinarians, to ensure the rules are followed. Traditionally, cattle fairs and markets allow the sale of animals headed to abattoirs to provide raw materials used in dozens of industries, including leather making, soap and fertilizer.

The state governments have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repeal the order, which they say was issued without consultations with them. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has been pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda since it came to power in 2014.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the top elected official in southern Kerala state, wrote to Modi on Sunday describing the restrictions as a “drastic move” that would have “far-reaching consequences and would be detrimental to democracy.”

He said the move amounts to “an intrusion into the rights of the states” in India’s federal structure and violates the principles of the Indian Constitution.

The government of West Bengal state also protested the move, saying the Modi government cannot make such decisions unilaterally.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the state would not accept the imposition of such restrictions on its commercial authority. She described it as a step by the Modi government to “destroy the federal structure of the country.”

“We won’t accept the decision. It is unconstitutional. We will challenge it legally,” Banerjee told reporters Monday.

Hindus, who form 80 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people, consider cows to be sacred, and for many eating beef is taboo. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned. India has the highest number of vegetarians in the world as a result of Hinduism’s predominance, although not all Hindus are vegetarians.

While the eating of beef is not a crime in many states, slaughtering a cow carries a punishment of up to seven years in jail throughout the country. In Gujarat state, lawmakers have approved a bill increasing the punishment for killing a cow to life imprisonment.

Critics say the new rules, ostensibly to protect the way animals are treated and transported, are in keeping with demands of Hindu nationalists, who have long been pressing for a nationwide ban on the sale of beef. The past two years have also seen a rise in vigilante attacks on Muslims and lower caste Hindus involved in the cattle trade. Several deaths have occurred.

On Monday, police arrested seven people on suspicion of assaulting two Muslim men who were transporting meat in western Maharashtra state. The men were beaten and forced to chant Hindu slogans by a vigilante group on Sunday, police said.

Meanwhile, leather and meat industry groups said the ban could push them out of business.

Fauzan Alavi of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association said beef exports, which had been growing rapidly, have already been affected. “Such a drastic move is bound to hit the industry,” Alavi said Sunday.

The government “has handed a death certificate to us,” said Ramesh K. Juneja of the Council of Leather Exports.

 
…

British Airways passengers continue to face delays, cancellations, and overcrowding Sunday at Heathrow Airport as the airline reels from a computer failure.

The airline said that all long-haul flights will continue Sunday, but to avoid further overcrowding, passengers will only be allowed to enter the airport terminal 90 minutes before their scheduled departure.

Passengers should still expect delays and cancelations for shorter flights, British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz said, adding that the airline was at “near-full operation” Sunday.

“I know this has been a horrible time for customers,” Cruz said, apologizing in a video statement posted online.

 
The airline was forced to cancel flights Saturday at Heathrow and Gatwick airports as officials tried to fix a global computer failure.

British Airways has not said what caused the glitch, but did report there is no evidence pointing to a cyber attack.

The failure occurred on a particularly busy weekend in Britain, where a public holiday will be observed on Monday and when many children are starting their mid-term school breaks — prompting some stranded travelers to express their frustration on Twitter.

British Airways has experienced other recent computer glitches. Passengers were hit with severe delays in July and September last year because of problems with the airline’s online check-in systems.

 
…

Saffron has long been one of the world’s most expensive spices. The saffron crocus that produces the spice grows mostly in parts of Europe, Iran and India. Now, a U.S. company seeking to “cultivate peace” is attracting attention to this historic spice and trying to develop new markets for saffron grown in Afghanistan. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Chicago.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has told “confidants,” including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave a landmark international agreement on climate change, the Axios news website reported Saturday, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

On Saturday, Trump said in a Twitter post he would decide whether to support the Paris climate deal next week.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A source who has been in contact with people involved in the decision told Reuters that a couple of meetings were planned with chief executives of energy companies and big corporations and others about the climate agreement ahead of Trump’s expected announcement later in the week. It was unclear whether those meetings would still take place.

“I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!” Trump tweeted on the final day of a Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Italy at which he refused to bow to pressure from allies to back the 2015 agreement.

Six against one

The summit of G-7 wealthy nations pitted Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they had hoped were long settled.

Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, came under concerted pressure from the other leaders to honor the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.

Although he tweeted that he would make a decision next week, his apparent reluctance to embrace the first legally binding global climate deal, signed by 195 countries, clearly annoyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” she told reporters. “There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”
…

Bitcoin, the controversial digital currency, recently made headlines for reaching a record high valuation of more than $2,700, but perhaps the bigger growth potential lies in blockchain. The technology behind bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies is being explored by more conventional companies and businesses. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports from New York.
…

The U.S. economy expanded at a slightly faster pace than first estimated during the first quarter of this year.

The Commerce Department’s Friday report shows expansion at a 1.2 percent annual rate in January, February and March. That is nearly twice as fast as the preliminary estimate, but slower than the end of last year, and much more slowly than the 3 percent rate of expansion that the Trump administration says it will achieve.

Officials routinely revise growth estimates as more complete data becomes available.

Many experts say the economy is growing slowly because aging baby boomers are leaving the work force to retire, and productivity growth has been disappointingly slow.

The chief economist of PNC Bank, Gus Faucher, says growth is “bouncing back” in the second quarter. Faucher says he expects the U.S. economic growth will bounce around somewhat and expand at a 2.3 percent rate this year. Faucher also expects the growth rate to be about the same next year. 

A separate report shows new orders for manufactured goods declined in April. The seven-tenths of a percent decrease followed several months of gains.
…

Africa loses an estimated $50 billion a year to illicit financial flows, leaving governments strapped for cash and dependent on development aid.

The continent is “hemorrhaging” money because of the failure of countries to enact strong legislation to check money flows, says Rose Acha, Cameroon’s supreme state audit minister and secretary general of the African Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.

Instead, uncontrolled transactions are common.

“Whatever the source of your money, we don’t know, but we welcome those who want to deposit money,” said Faison Winifred of Investment Fund, a local financial institution in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde. “Why … do you discourage the person by asking where is your source of income? We encourage everybody who comes to deposit money. … There is no limit. Whatever amount you want to deposit, we like it.”

Acha says smuggling and trafficking during illegal commercial activity constitute 65 percent of Africa’s financial hemorrhage, while criminal activities — which consist of using funds for illegal purposes, like financing organized crime and terrorism — come next with 30 percent. She says corruption and tax evasion account for the remaining 5 percent of the money lost.

According to the United Nations High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows, Africa loses a staggering $50 billion annually. The panel says that is approximately double the amount of official development assistance Africa receives.

African tax and audit experts, meeting this week in Yaounde, said the worst offender is Nigeria, with an illicit outflow of $157 billion from 2003 to 2012. South Africa ranks second with $122 billion lost during that time period, and Egypt third with $37 billion.

Magagi Tanko of the supreme state audit office of Niger says that in Central and West Africa, huge sums of money are transferred illegally and public coffers are impoverished. In addition, illegal financial flows from drug trafficking have spiraled.

Exporters use under-invoicing so they can dodge taxes and bring in less foreign exchange, leaving the rest of their earnings in offshore accounts, he says.

Lagan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration, says a regional approach is key.

“Parts of the defense mechanism that African governments must employ is to build strong tax legislation and tax policy systems, including tax agreements between countries, especially inter-African countries,” Wort said.

The experts resolved to work with the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative — a joint effort by the World Bank and U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime — to recover funds, but said the process is long and cumbersome, since many banks remain secretive about their transactions.

They said many of the illicit financial flows also end up funneled through complex criminal rings, severely limiting the ability of law enforcement and tax authorities to trace offenders and eventually recover the money.
…

A budget proposal by the Trump administration in March outlines a commitment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) effort to send astronauts to Mars. About $3.7 billion is earmarked for development of the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule, crucial parts of NASA’s effort to send humans deeper into space. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh explores the effort of contractors working on the project, united by the commitment to “boldly go” further into the final frontier.
…

Soon there will be no classic beauty salons in the United States. At least that’s what two Alexandria businessmen claim. Don and Jeff DeBolt, father and son, offer stylists an opportunity to become owners of “one man salons” by renting equipped salon studios. The prices start at three hundred dollars per week. Their experiment turned out to be a successful business. Today there are 300 Sola Salon Studios with over seven thousand professionals. Anush Avetisyan visited one of them.
…

While world attention has focused on Kim Jong Un’s recent missile tests, a monthlong surge in gasoline prices in Pyongyang is showing no signs of letting up, a puzzling problem that if allowed to drag on could be bad news for the North Korean economy.

Prices have shot up to about $2.30 per kilogram, or about $6.44 a gallon, since mid-April, when prices were in the $1.25-30 range. That means North Korea now has some of the highest prices in the world for gasoline. For comparison, the price in April last year was about 80 cents per kilogram.

The cause and extent of the surge remains a mystery. 

Traffic unaffected

Officially, there has been no comment. There’s no obvious sign of less traffic on the streets, at least in Pyongyang, which is more affluent and developed than other North Korean cities. Taxis appear to be operating normally and have not raised their fares. 

The North’s by now pervasive market economy, which is tolerated by the ruling regime in exchange for its cut of the profits, has made fuel and the ability to transport goods and people so essential that demand for gasoline is not so sensitive to price. 

But many gas stations around the capital, if they are selling fuel at all, have been limiting who they sell it to and how much each customer can buy. The long queues and mad dashes to fill gas tanks and large plastic storage cans that marked the beginning days of the surge appear to have subsided, though stations’ operations remain irregular and unpredictable.

North Korean gas stations generally belong to chains associated with large government enterprises or sometimes the military. Gas is also sold through more informal channels, including street-side stalls and the black market. It is sold by weight in North Korea, thus the “per kilogram” rates. 

What’s behind this?

Without official confirmation or data, it’s hard to conclusively say what is happening. Prices also tend to fluctuate from station to station. 

Several possible scenarios could be in play. 

It was rumored last month that China had or was about to limit exports. That possibility, hinted at in a tabloid newspaper associated with China’s ruling party, could have set off the surge either because of an actual drop in supply or speculative buying in anticipation of a shortfall. 

The incentive to hoard remains because of rumors Beijing will implement sanctions if Pyongyang conducts a nuclear test. It is unclear how informed North Koreans are about the possibility of another test soon, but satellite imagery widely reported abroad suggests one could come at any time.

The North Korean government itself might have pulled some of supply out of the market.

Pyongyang has been known to divert fuel to higher-priority uses, such as major construction projects or high-profile political events. Gas prices can also rise in tandem with the farming cycle, when more fuel is needed for tractors and pumps. All three could apply right now. North Korea completed construction of a major high-rise residential area in the capital and held a lavish celebration and military parade last month. This is also spring planting season.

The most ominous possibility is that the regime is preparing for some sort of emergency.

But there does not seem to be any strong evidence of that or of Chinese action to cut off supplies. 

William Brown, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and non-resident fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, said rumor-inspired hoarding is the likely culprit. 

Sensitivity to sanctions

It’s unclear if prices are also rising for diesel and kerosene, used to heat and keep the lights on in city apartments and machinery working in the fields. 

An acute sensitivity to even the hint of Chinese sanctions, if that is behind the surge, would be telling. 

The Soviet Union supplied crude oil to North Korea in the 1950s through the 1980s. China joined in early 1970s and now provides virtually all of the North’s supply. Brown said that includes a 50,000-ton delivery monthly via an 18-kilometer (11-mile) cross-border pipeline that is worth about $20 million at current Chinese export prices. 

Beijing doesn’t require the North to pay and hasn’t included those shipments in official trade figures since 2014. 

If Pyongyang had to start paying for that 50,000-ton freebie, the profit from sales of what it refines domestically would drop and it would have less money to spend on other things. The resulting scarcity of dollars would hurt the value of North Korea’s currency, leading to inflation. 

In any case, Brown said, the volatility of gasoline prices underscores the North’s dependence on markets that have expanded dramatically since Kim Jong Un took power more than five years ago. The rise of markets has led to better productivity and use of scarce goods, like gasoline, helping economic growth.

But, he added, it is at the same time “the bane of a socialist government.”

“Real money in private pockets, after all, is power,” he said. 
…

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded China’s credit rating Wednesday – from Aa3 (Double A-3) to A1 – saying it expects China’s economy to erode in coming years as growth slows and its debt burden continues to rise. The downgrade comes as the government faces new financial challenges after years of credit-fueled stimulus.

Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at foreign exchange firm Oanda, said the credit downgrade comes as no surprise. “Because talk of Chinese debt and concerns about the size of Chinese debt has been going on for the last few years.  They seem to be very reliant on these high levels of growth, which has been slowing,” according to Erlam.

China’s economy, the second largest in the world, grew 6.7 percent in 2016, down from 6.9 percent the previous year, the slowest pace since 1990. Erlam says the next few years could be challenging.

“They’ve [the Chinese government] talked about wanting to move away from an investment and export-led economy and focus more on domestic consumption and look at a more sustainable model. But, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, as soon as it runs into any difficulties – it seems to revert back to where it was a couple of years ago and start spending more money on infrastructure.”

Moody’s expects the government’s direct debt burden to rise to 40 percent of GDP by 2018 and closer to 45 percent by the end of the decade. That’s still well below the 60 percent debt to GDP warning line for the European Union.

China’s Finance Ministry said the downgrade overestimates the risks of rising debt and claims it was based on “inappropriate methodology.” The downgrade is likely to increase the cost of borrowing, but analysts say the one-notch downgrade remains comfortably within the investment grade rating range.

Triple A is the highest rating for creditworthiness, followed by Double A, then Single A. C represents the weakest creditworthiness and means default is imminent.  

China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell more than 1 percent after the credit downgrade while the value of the yuan slipped briefly 0.1 percent against the U.S. dollar.
…

According to a recent analysis, in about 15 years, depending on the country, up to 38 percent of jobs performed by humans may be turned over to robots. Experts who gathered last week at a robotic expo in Paris say we have to prepare for the new reality if we want to avoid disruptive social changes. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

The U.S. government has filed a civil lawsuit against automaker Fiat Chrysler, saying the company has used illegal software to fake emission results on its diesel vehicles.

The civil complaint filed Tuesday follows initial accusations from the Environmental Protection Agency released in January.

The software reportedly hid emissions of nitrogen oxide, allowing the vehicles to appear to comply with regulations set forth in the Clean Air Act, while still emitting more of the gas than is allowed.

At issue are the 2014 to 2016 models of Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 pickup trucks with three-liter diesel engines sold in the United States, around 104,000 vehicles in total, the EPA said.

In 2015, Volkswagen was caught using a similar device to cheat emissions standards. Volkwagen, however, admitted to having cheated, while Fiat Chrysler denies wrongdoing. The VW scandal eventually led to approximately $20 billion worth of fines levied against the company and indictments of seven company executives.

Fiat Chrysler did not immediately comment Tuesday, but its shares fell 2.9 percent.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is proposing major changes in the way Washington’s $4.1 trillion budget is spent, with more money for the military, border security, and veterans. The just-published budget for next year also slashes money for programs that benefit the poor.

Trump’s top budget official Mick Mulvaney says for the first time the budget looks at spending from the point of view of the taxpayers, rather than the people who get government help.

The director of the Office of Management and Budget says the budget translates Trump’s campaign promises and priorities into practical plans. Mulvaney says the approach will balance the budget in 10 years, and boost economic growth to three percent.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and World Bank Economist Larry Summers, calls the budget’s economic assumptions “ludicrously optimistic.” In an opinion article in the Washington Post he says the impact on low income Americans will be “dire.”

A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form may be quite different from what the chief executive submits. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.

Cuts in social programs

The Trump budget includes $3.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, with some of the largest reductions in programs that help the poor pay for health care and buy food. A nutrition program known as “food stamps” currently serves more than 40 million people.

The budget proposal also follows Trump’s campaign promises to not to cut Social Security, a government-run old age pension program, or Medicare, which helps the elderly pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine.

Critics of Mr. Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just more than half of government spending during the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming spending on Social Security and Medicare.

Mulvaney explained the cuts in social programs as a desire to get people who are relying on federal programs when they should not be to go back to work.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the Trump plan “guts investment in jobs and hollows out our economy,” and instead should be focused on investments in jobs, education, clean energy and medical research.

 
…

Google already monitors your online shopping – but now it’s also keeping an eye on what you’re buying in real-world stores as part of its latest effort to sell more digital advertising.

The offline tracking scans most credit and debit card transactions to help Google automatically inform merchants when their digital ads translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store.

Google believes the data will show a cause-and-effect relationship between online ads and offline sales. If it works, that could help persuade merchants to boost their digital marketing budgets.

Google windfall

The Mountain View, California, company already runs the world’s biggest online ad network, one that raked in $79 billion in revenue last year. That puts it in the best position to capture any additional marketing dollars spent on computers and mobile devices.

Google plans to unveil the store-sales measurement tool Tuesday in San Francisco at an annual conference it hosts for its advertisers.

The gathering gives Google a prime opportunity to woo advertisers – one that it surely welcomes, given that it’s still trying to overcome a marketing boycott of its YouTube video site . The boycott began two months ago over concerns that Google hadn’t prevented major brand advertising from appearing alongside extremist video clips promoting hate and violence.

Google is also introducing several other features designed to help merchants drive more traffic to their physical stores and to gain a better understanding on how digital ads appearing across a variety of devices are affecting their sales.

Smarter ad tracking

Most of the new analytics twists draw upon Google’s inroads in “machine learning” – a way of “training” computers to behave more like humans – to interpret the data. Google’s search engine and Chrome web browser are a rich source of data about people’s interests and online activities that it can feed into machine-learning systems.

In the case of the store sales measure tool, Google’s computers are connecting the dots between what people look at after clicking on an online ad and then what they purchase with their credit and debit cards.

For instance, if someone searching for a pair of running shoes online clicked on an ad from a sporting goods store but didn’t buy anything, an advertiser might initially conclude that the ad was a waste of money. But Google says its new tool will now be able to tell if the same person bought the shoes a few days later at one of the advertiser’s brick-and-mortar stores.

Digital dossiers

Google says it has access to roughly 70 percent of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with other companies that track that data. That means Google still won’t be able to document every purchase made using plastic – and it still has no way of knowing when people buy something with cash.

The digital dossiers that Google has compiled on the more than one billion people who use its search engine and other services, including Gmail, YouTube and Android, worry privacy watchdogs. Google gives its users the option to limit the company’s tracking and control what types of ads they are shown.

Google says its computers can collect identifying data triggered by online clicks and match it with other identifying information compiled by merchants and the issuers of credit and debit cards to figure out when a digital ad contributes to an offline purchase.

Shoppers remain anonymous, meaning they aren’t identified by their names, according to Google. And the company says it doesn’t share any of its anonymized information with its advertisers; instead, it targets ads at individuals who fit demographic profiles sought by advertisers.

 
…

President Donald Trump is proposing to balance the federal budget within 10 years by slashing many social programs, including some that help the poor pay for food and medical care, called food stamps and Medicaid.

Officials have outlined some new details of the president’s first spending plan. A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form is often quite different from what the chief executive proposes. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.  

In his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, a government-run old-age pension program, or Medicare, which helps elderly people pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine. That means deeper cuts to some other programs.  

Critics of Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just over half of government spending over the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming this spending. They also say administration officials have based the budget on “unrealistic and rosy economic growth projections.”
…

Gambia’s government used a court order Monday to seize assets belonging to exiled former President Yahya Jammeh.

They include nearly 90 bank accounts and 14 companies linked to Jammeh.

Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou says Jammeh stole $50 million in public funds before fleeing Gambia for Equatorial Guinea in January.

Jammeh and his associates have been unavailable for comment since he left the country.

Jammeh ruled Gambia for 22 years before losing December’s presidential election to Adama Barrow. He contested the results for several weeks before giving up and fleeing the country.

His long-ruling political party lost April’s parliamentary elections to the opposition United Democratic Party.

Along with allegations of looting public funds, investigators in Gambia are also probing a number of disappearances under the Jammeh government.

 
…

Several hundred middle school and high school students from Senegal and surrounding countries spent last week in Dakar building robots. Organizers of the annual robotics competition say the goal is to encourage African governments and private donors to invest more in science and math education throughout the continent.

The hum of tiny machines fills a fenced-off obstacle course, as small robots compete to gather mock natural resources such as diamonds and gold.

The robots were built by teams of young people gathered in Dakar for the annual Pan-African Robotics Competition.

‘Made in Africa’

The event’s founder, Sidy Ndao, says this year’s theme is “Made in Africa,” and focuses on how robotics developed in Africa could help local economies.

“We have noticed that most countries that have developed in the likes of the United States have based their development on manufacturing and industrialization, and African countries on the other hand are left behind in this race,” Ndao said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to inspire the kids to tell them about the importance of manufacturing, the importance of industry, and the importance of creation and product development.”

During the week, the students were split into three groups.

The first group worked on robots that could automate warehouses. The second created machines that could mine natural resources, and the third group was tasked to come up with a new African product and describe how to build it.

Building a robot a team effort

Seventeen-year-old Rokyaha Cisse from Senegal helped her team develop a robot that sends sound waves into the ground to detect the presence of metals and then start digging.

Cisse says it is very interesting and fun, and they are learning new things, as well as having their first opportunity to handle robots.

As part of a younger team, Aboubacar Savage from Gambia said their robot communicates with computers.

“It is a robot that whatever you draw into the computer, it translates it and draws it in real life,” Savage said. “It is kind of hard. And there is so much competition, but we are trying. I have learned how to assemble a robot. I have learned how to program into a computer.”

The event’s founder, Ndao, is originally from Senegal, but is now a professor at the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln College of Engineering in the United States.

“I have realized how much the kids love robotics and how much they love science,” Ndao said “You can tell because when it is time for lunch, we have to convince them to actually leave, and then [when] it is time to go home, nobody wants to leave.”

Outsourced jobs cost Africa billions

A winning team was named in each category, but Ndao hopes the real winners will be science and technology in Africa.

The organizers of the Next Einstein Forum, which held its annual global gathering last year in Senegal, said Africa is currently missing out on $4 billion a year by having to outsource jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to expatriates.

Ndao said African governments and private investors need to urgently invest more on education in those fields, in particular at the university level.
…

The European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, said on Sunday he was confident an agreement between Athens and its creditors could be found at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday in Brussels.

Athens needs funds to repay 7.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) of debt maturing in July.

“We are very close to an overall agreement,” Moscovici told France Inter radio.

“Greece has assumed its responsibilities,” he said, referring to measures on pension cuts, tax hikes and reforms adopted on Thursday by the Greek Parliament.

“I now wish that we, the partners of Greece, also take our responsibilities,” he said.

Moscovici said his optimism over a deal was partly linked to the fact Germany was now aware of the need to find a structural solution to Greece’s problems.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed during a call on Wednesday that a deal was “feasible” by Monday.
…

The world’s largest private equity fund, backed by Japan’s Softbank Group and Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund, said Saturday that it had raised over $93 billion to invest in technology sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

“The next stage of the Information Revolution is under way, and building the businesses that will make this possible will require unprecedented large-scale, long-term investment,” the Softbank Vision Fund said in a statement.

Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, chairman of Softbank, a telecommunications and tech investment group, revealed plans for the fund last October, and since then it has obtained commitments from some of the world’s most deep-pocketed investors.

In addition to Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the new fund’s investors include Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment, which has committed $15 billion, Apple Inc., Qualcomm, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology and Japan’s Sharp Corp.

The new fund made its announcement during the visit of President Donald Trump to Riyadh and the signing of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of business deals between U.S. and Saudi companies. Son was also in Riyadh on Saturday.

After meeting with Trump last December, Son pledged $50 billion of investment in the United States that would create 50,000 jobs, a promise Trump claimed was a direct result of his election win.

Saudi tech access

The fund may also serve the interests of Saudi Arabia by helping Riyadh obtain access to foreign technology. Low oil prices have severely damaged the Saudi economy, and policymakers are trying to diversify into new industries.

The PIF signaled an interest in the tech sector last year by investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-hailing firm Uber.

Saturday’s statement did not say how much the PIF had committed to the fund, but previously it had said it would invest up to $45 billion over five years. Softbank is investing $28 billion.

The new fund said it would seek to buy minority and majority interests in both private and public companies, from emerging businesses to established, multibillion-dollar firms. It expects to obtain preferred access to long-term investment opportunities worth $100 million or more.

Other sectors in which the fund may invest include mobile computing, communications infrastructure, computational biology, consumer internet businesses and financial technology. The fund aims for $100 billion of committed capital and expects to complete its money-raising in six months, it added.
…

About 3 million Americans will enter the job pool this year as graduation ceremonies get underway at various colleges and universities across the United States. With unemployment at a 10-year low, 2017 is shaping up to be a good year for new grads. But as Mil Arcega reports, success for many will depend on a desire to keep learning and a willingness to go where the jobs are.
…

About three million American university graduates will enter the job market this year. And with unemployment currently at a 10-year low, it’s a good time to be graduating, says Nicole Smith, chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW).

“We are at one of the lowest unemployment rates we’ve had since May of 2007, so what that means for the graduating class of 2017 is that the likelihood of getting a job is really, really good,” she said.

The U.S. Labor Department says unemployment for those with a four-year bachelor’s degree or higher is 2.5 percent, compared to the overall jobless rate of 4.5 percent. For those with a high school diploma or less, the average unemployment rate is 6.8 percent.

Watch: Job Prospects for 2017 College Grads, Best in More Than a Decade

Demand for graduates with associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees is particularly strong in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

However, Smith says, a four-year degree is not necessary to compete in today’s economy.

“There are about 28 million jobs or so in the U.S. economy that are good-paying jobs; that are high-skilled jobs for people without a B.A,” she said.

While higher learning can give new workers the upper hand, Smith says almost a third of students with bachelor’s degrees are under-unemployed.

“So we have to do this cakewalk, this tightrope walk, to understand exactly what the market demands,” she said.

Options without college degree

A survey of the hottest employment sectors in 2017 shows some of the fastest-growing fields don’t require a four-year degree, according to Bankrate.com senior analyst Mark Hamrick.

“You don’t have to have a college degree for some of those technical jobs, where, let’s say, a kind of therapy might be involved — physical or occupational therapy,” he said.

Health care and service-oriented jobs aimed at the needs of a graying population are bound to remain strong as baby boomers — those born between 1946 to 1964 — continue to retire. But, Hamrick says, some skills are harder to learn in school.

“One of the skills which has been in strong demand really involves people skills — closing the deal, sales … business strategy; charting the course for a viable enterprise, that’s something that’s needed,” he said.

What is clear is that jobs that fueled the economy three or four decades ago are not the same jobs driving the economy today. In the 1970s, manufacturing accounted for nearly two of every five jobs; today, those manufacturing jobs account for fewer than one in 10.   

“The types of manufacturing jobs that remain are jobs that are really high-skill, high-tech, high-demand manufacturing jobs. So those jobs require a lot more skills than their predecessors did,” Smith said.

Life-long learning key

Today’s job market also differs from the past because rapid technological and societal change demands a commitment to life-long learning, which means that getting a degree is just the beginning, according to Smith.  

“Each year, there’s a new … version of technology that we must use,” she said. “So what the students need to be aware of is that they will need to come back to re-up their certification, to re-up their skills.”

Participating in today’s economy also means older and newer workers must be willing to move where the jobs are. Demand for workers is greatest where local economies are dynamic and where populations are growing, says Bankrate.com’s Hamrick. That means the exodus toward bigger cities on the East and West coasts will continue. 

“That’s a process that’s accelerating,” Hamrick said. “It’s not slowing down, and so having the right skills, going where the jobs are located — those are the keys to obtaining and maintaining employment.”

The most recent jobs report shows the U.S. economy added 211,000 jobs in April, and unemployment fell to 4.4 percent. That’s a sharp contrast to the dark days that followed the 2008 financial crisis, when the U.S. economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month and unemployment peaked at 10 percent. 
…

A sizable majority of rural Americans backed Donald Trump’s presidential bid, drawn to his calls to slash environmental rules, strengthen law enforcement and replace the federal health care law.

But last month, many of them struck a sour note after White House aides signaled that Trump would deliver on another signature vow by edging toward abandoning the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Farm Country suddenly went on red alert.

Trump’s message that NAFTA was a job-killing disaster had never resonated much in rural America. NAFTA had widened access to Mexican and Canadian markets, boosting U.S. farm exports and benefiting many farmers.

“Mr. President, America’s corn farmers helped elect you,” Wesley Spurlock of the National Corn Growers Association warned in a statement. “Withdrawing from NAFTA would be disastrous for American agriculture.”

Within hours, Trump softened his stance. He wouldn’t actually dump NAFTA, he said. He’d first try to forge a more advantageous deal with Mexico and Canada – a move that formally began Thursday when his top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, announced the administration’s intent to renegotiate NAFTA.

Farmers have been relieved that NAFTA has survived so far. Yet many remain nervous about where Trump’s trade policy will lead.

As a candidate, Trump defined his “America First” stance as a means to fight unfair foreign competition. He blamed unjust deals for swelling U.S. trade gaps and stealing factory jobs.

But NAFTA and other deals have been good for American farmers, who stand to lose if Trump ditches the pact or ignites a trade war. The United States has enjoyed a trade surplus in farm products since at least 1967, government data show. Last year, farm exports exceeded imports by $20.5 billion.

“You don’t start off trade negotiations … by picking fights with your trade partners that are completely unnecessary,” says Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation Iowa farmer who produces corn, soybeans, oats and hay.

Many farmers worry that Trump’s policies will jeopardize their exports just as they face weaker crop and livestock prices.

“It comes up pretty quickly in conversation,” says Blake Hurst, a corn and soybean farmer in northwestern Missouri’s Atchison County.

That county’s voters backed Trump more than 3-to-1 in the election but now feel “it would be better if the rhetoric (on trade) was a little less strident,” says Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau.

Trump’s main argument against NAFTA and other pacts was that they exposed American workers to unequal competition with low-wage workers in countries like Mexico and China.

NAFTA did lead some American manufacturers to move factories and jobs to Mexico. But since it took effect in 1994 and eased tariffs, annual farm exports to Mexico have jumped nearly five-fold to about $18 billion. Mexico is the No. 3 market for U.S. agriculture, notably corn, soybeans and pork.

“The trade agreements that we’ve had have been very beneficial,” says Stephen Censky, CEO of the American Soybean Association. “We need to take care not to blow the significant gains that agriculture has won.”

The U.S. has run a surplus in farm trade with Mexico for 20 of the 23 years since NAFTA took effect. Still, the surpluses with Mexico became deficits in 2015 and 2016 as global livestock and grain prices plummeted and shrank the value of American exports, notes Joseph Glauber of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Mexico has begun to seek alternatives to U.S. food because, as its agriculture secretary, Jose Calzada Rovirosa, said in March, Trump’s remarks on trade “have injected uncertainty” into the agriculture business.

Once word had surfaced that Trump was considering pulling out of NAFTA, Sonny Perdue, two days into his job as the president’s agriculture secretary, hastened to the White House with a map showing areas that would be hurt most by a pullout, overlapped with many that voted for Trump.

“I tried to demonstrate to him that in the agricultural market, sometimes words like ‘withdraw’ or ‘terminate’ can have a major impact on markets,” Perdue said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I think the president made a very wise decision for the benefit of many agricultural producers across the country” by choosing to remain in NAFTA.

Trump delivered another disappointment for U.S. farm groups in January by fulfilling a pledge to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration negotiated with 11 Asia-Pacific countries. Trump argued that the pact would cost Americans jobs by pitting them against low-wage Asian labor.

But the deal would have given U.S. farmers broader access to Japan’s notoriously impregnable market and easier entry into fast-growing Vietnam. Philip Seng of the U.S. Meat Export Federation notes that the U.S. withdrawal from TPP left Australia with a competitive advantage because it had already negotiated lower tariffs in Japan.

Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports, thereby raising fears that those trading partners would retaliate with their own sanctions.

Farmers know they’re frequently the first casualties of trade wars. Many recall a 2009 trade rift in which China responded to U.S. tire tariffs by imposing tariffs on U.S. chicken parts. And Mexico slapped tariffs on U.S. goods ranging from ham to onions to Christmas trees in 2009 to protest a ban on Mexican trucks crossing the border.

The White House declined to comment on farmers’ fears that Trump’s trade policy stands to hurt them. But officials say they’ve sought to ease concerns, by, for example, having Agriculture Secretary Perdue announce a new undersecretary to oversee trade and foreign agricultural affairs.

Many farmers are still hopeful about the Trump administration. Some, for example, applaud his plans to slash environmental rules that they say inflate the cost of running a farm. Some also hold out hope that the author of “The Art of the Deal” will negotiate ways to improve NAFTA.

One such way might involve Canada. NAFTA let Canada shield its dairy farmers from foreign competition behind tariffs and regulations but left at least one exception – an American ultra-filtered milk used in cheese. When Canadian farmers complained about the cheaper imports, Canada changed its policy and effectively priced ultra-filtered American milk out of the market.

“Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult,” Trump tweeted last month. “We will not stand for this. Watch!”

Some U.S. cattle producers would also like a renegotiated NAFTA to give them something the current version doesn’t: The right to label their product “Made in America.” In 2015, the World Trade Organization struck down the United States’ country-of-origin labeling rules as unfair to Mexico and Canada.

Many still worry that Trump’s planned overhaul of American trade policy is built to revive manufacturing and that farming remains an afterthought.

“So much of the conversation in the campaign had been in Detroit or in Indiana” and focused on manufacturing jobs,” said Kathy Baylis, an economist at the University of Illinois. The importance of American farm exports “never made it into the rhetoric.”

 
…

An OPEC panel reviewing scenarios for next week’s policy-setting meeting is looking at the option of deepening and extending an OPEC-led deal to reduce oil output, OPEC sources said Friday.

OPEC’s national representatives — officials representing the 13 member countries, plus officials from OPEC’s Vienna secretariat — met Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the market.

The two-day meeting, called the Economic Commission Board, was scheduled to finish Thursday but will conclude later Friday, two OPEC sources said.

“We have not agreed on final scenarios,” said one of the sources.

A second source said a deeper supply cut was an option depending on estimated growth in supply from non-OPEC and U.S. shale oil.

The meeting precedes a policy-setting gathering of OPEC and non-OPEC oil ministers May 25 to decide whether to extend their deal to reduce output beyond June 30.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers originally agreed to cut production by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) for six months from Jan. 1 to support the market.

Oil prices, trading around $53 a barrel, have gained support from reduced output, but high inventories and rising supply from producers outside the deal have limited the rally, pressing the case for extending the deal.
…

A couple of things about the WannaCry cyberattack are certain. It was the biggest in history and it’s a scary preview of things to come. But one thing is a lot less clear: whether North Korea had anything to do with it.

Despite bits and pieces of evidence that suggest a possible North Korea link, experts warn there is nothing conclusive yet, and a lot of reasons to be dubious.

Within days of the attack, respected cybersecurity firms Symantec and Kaspersky Labs hinted at a North Korea link. Google researcher Neel Mehta identified coding similarities between WannaCry and malware from 2015 that was tied to the North. And the media have since spun out stories on Pyongyang’s league of hackers, its past involvement in cyberattacks and its perennial search for new revenue streams, legal or shady.

Meet Lazarus

But identifying hackers behind sophisticated attacks is a notoriously difficult task. Proving they are acting under the explicit orders of a nation state is even trickier.

When experts say North Korea is behind an attack, what they often mean is that Pyongyang is suspected of working with or through a group known as Lazarus. The exact nature of Lazarus is cloudy, but it is thought by some to be a mixture of North Korean hackers operating in cahoots with Chinese “cyber-mercenaries” willing to at times do Pyongyang’s bidding. 

Lazarus is a serious player in the cybercrime world.

It is referred to as an “advanced persistent threat” and has been fingered in some very sophisticated operations, including an attempt to breach the security of dozens of banks this year, an attack on the Bangladesh central bank that netted $81 million last year, the 2014 Sony wiper hack and DarkSeoul, which targeted the South Korean government and businesses.

“The Lazarus Group’s activity spans multiple years, going back as far as 2009,” Kaspersky Labs said in a report last year. “Their focus, victimology, and guerrilla-style tactics indicate a dynamic, agile and highly malicious entity, open to data destruction in addition to conventional cyberespionage operations.”

WannaCry doesn’t fit

But some experts see the latest attack as an anomaly.

WannaCry infected more than 200,000 systems in more than 150 countries with demands for payments of $300 in Bitcoin per victim in exchange for the decryption of the files it had taken hostage. Victims received warnings on their computer screens that if they did not pay the ransom within three days, the demand would double. If no ransom was paid, the victim’s data would be deleted. 

As ransomware attacks go, that’s a pretty typical setup.

But that’s not — or at least hasn’t been — the way North Korean hackers are believed to work. 

“This is not part of the previously observed behavior of DPRK cyberwar units and hacking groups,” Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and founder of North Korea Leadership Watch, said in an email to The Associated Press. “It would represent an entirely new type of cyberattack by the DPRK.” 

Madden said the North, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, if it had a role at all, could have instead been involved by giving or providing parts of the packet used in the attack to another state-sponsored hacking group with whom it is in contact. 

“This type of ransomware/jailbreak attack is not at all part of the M.O. of the DPRK’s cyberwar units,” he said. “It requires a certain level of social interaction and file storage, outside of those with other hacking groups, that DPRK hackers and cyberwar units would not engage. Basically they’d have to wait on Bitcoin transactions, store the hacked files and maintain contact with the targets of the attack.”

Attack not strategic

Other cybersecurity experts question the Pyongyang angle on different grounds. 

James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think tank, argues that the evidence remains “circumstantial at best,” and believes WannaCry spread because of luck and negligence, not sophistication.

“While it is possible that the Lazarus group is behind the WannaCry malware, the likelihood of that attribution proving correct is dubious,” he wrote in a recent blog post laying out his case. “It remains more probable that the authors of WannaCry borrowed code from Lazarus or a similar source.”

Scott said he believes North Korea would likely have attacked more strategic targets — two of the hardest-hit countries, China and Russia, are the North’s closest strategic allies — or tried to capture more significant profits. 

Very few victims of the WannaCry attack appear to have paid up. As of Friday, only $91,000 had been deposited in the three Bitcoin accounts associated with the ransom demands, according to London-based Elliptic Enterprises, which tracks illicit Bitcoin activity.
…

After years of stagnation and high unemployment, the eurozone countries appear to be bouncing back with growth in the shared currency bloc, soaring higher than in the United States and Britain.

The eurozone grew at an annual rate of 1.7 percent during the first three months of 2017, while the bloc’s trade surplus doubled in March from the previous month. Unemployment is falling, albeit still stubbornly high at 9.6 percent.

“For a change, Europe is leading this upswing. It’s partly because of the connection between Europe and China, demand from China. But at the same time, we have also some domestic factors which are positive: there is a genuine improvement in domestic demand, particularly consumption. So the recovery is broad-based, and is more sustainable than in the past,” said analyst Lorenzo Codogno of LC Macro Advisors, also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Some of the economies that suffered most in the 2008 debt crisis are bouncing back strongest — the so-called PIGS. Portugal hit a 10-year high with 2.8 percent year-on-year growth. Spain’s economy is forecast to grow 2.7 percent in 2017, and passed a crucial milestone last month as its GDP exceeded pre-2008 crisis levels.

“We’re seeing a cyclical recovery because we finally had the European Central Bank operating like a normal central bank and doing quantitative easing,” says analyst John Springford of the Center for European Reform.

With inflation in the eurozone hitting the central bank’s target of 1.9 percent, many economists expect the quantitative easing program to keep interest rates low to be wound down later this year. There are fears, however, that turning off the money could hurt the eurozone’s poorest performers.

Italy’s economy is still in the slow lane with annualized growth of just .8 percent.

“It’s growing very slowly, its banks still haven’t been sorted out and there’s a lot of political instability,” says Springford.

Meanwhile, Greece is back in recession and the familiar public sector strikes have paralyzed transport systems this week. Police joined the protesters over proposed cuts to in-work benefits and pensions. The government plans further cuts in return for the next tranche of EU bailout money. A decision by EU finance ministers is due Monday.

Economist Codogno says the structural problems underpinning the eurozone have not gone away.

“The eurozone cannot survive without additional major reforms, which means more integration, in terms of fiscal and eventually even political.”

Overshadowing the bounce-back is Brexit. Britain’s decision to leave the EU is weighing on its economy as growth slows and wages fall, says Springford.

“The pain is going to be largely borne on the UK side because it’s a smaller economy. The big question is whether the EU and the UK can negotiate a deal which minimizes the economic costs. And we’ve had a very bad start to negotiations with a lot of bad blood.”

Europe’s politicians hope economic growth can help stop the march of anti-EU populism that saw Britain vote to leave the bloc.

The election of pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron as French president has reinvigorated the French-German axis that has long been the eurozone’s driving force. Macron’s political honeymoon could be short, with French unions already voicing objections to his proposed reforms.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration says it has notified Congress it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

In a letter sent Thursday to congressional leaders, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the administration plans 90 days of consultations with lawmakers over how to rewrite the agreement followed by negotiations with Canada and Mexico that could begin after August 16.

Renegotiation of NAFTA was a key promise of Trump’s during his presidential campaign, when he frequently called the treaty a “disaster.”

Lighthizer told reporters NAFTA has helped strengthen the U.S. agriculture, investment services and energy sectors, but it has hurt U.S. factories and resulted in well-paying manufacturing jobs being sent to Mexico.

Lighthizer said in the letter that NAFTA needs to be updated to more effectively address matters involving digital trade, intellectual property rights and labor and environmental standards.

At a news conference Thursday at the State Department with Mexican officials and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other U.S. officials, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Mexico “welcomes” the renegotiation of NAFTA.

“We understand that this is a 25-year-old agreement when it was negotiated,” Videgaray said. “The world has changed. We’ve learned a lot and we can make it better.”

Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement, “Since the signing of NAFTA, we have seen our manufacturing industry decimated, factories shuttered, and countless workers left jobless.  President Trump is going to change that.”

VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report
…