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
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The Koch Brothers’ political network is preparing to spend millions of dollars to ensure their vision for tax reform isn’t lost in the increasing chaos consuming President Donald Trump’s administration.

The network’s leading organizations, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, on Thursday released a set of general preferences for major changes to the tax code. While explicitly stating their opposition to new border-adjustment or value-added taxes, there were few specifics in a document that was designed to inject a new sense of urgency into the stalled tax debate.

“Now is the time. We’ve got to unite around these principles,” network spokesman James Davis said. “The White House hopefully will see this as a jolt to support them in driving this forward.”

Beyond Thursday’s release, Davis said the network backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign through the summer to ensure their conservative tax plan is not forgotten. The campaign will include digital ads and town hall meetings across the country, along with phone banks and direct mail.

The Koch push reflects broader concerns from the nation’s business community that Trump’s promise to overhaul the tax code may fall victim to his mounting political challenges. The stock market on Wednesday suffered its largest single-day loss of the Trump presidency. That was before the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Trump’s campaign collaborated with Russia to sway the 2016 election.

Late last month, Trump released a one-page proposal that included massive tax cuts for businesses and a bigger standard tax deduction for middle-income families, lower investment taxes for the wealthy and an end to the federal estate tax for the superrich. It’s largely in line with the Koch network’s preference, which calls for lower rates, fewer brackets and the elimination of “special loopholes” and deductions.

There were modest signs Wednesday that the Trump administration was trying to spark new momentum for its tax plan.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other administration officials met with Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee in what Democrats described afterward as an opening conversation in the tax debate.

Even under the best of political circumstances, tax reform is difficult. Congress hasn’t overhauled the tax code in more than three decades.

“If we don’t start making the case to the American people and showing them how this improves their lives now, it becomes increasingly more and more difficult, particularly as we move closer to the election,” Davis said.

 
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As China hails the success of its first Belt and Road summit, major powers remain skeptical about the $1 trillion-dollar infrastructure and trade project. Analysts say while the ambitious plan has whet the appetite of developing nations, China missed an opportunity to get developed countries on board.

The fact that China could get the leaders of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, along with 29 heads of state to sign a communique is a triumph for Beijing, said Ethan Cramer-Flood, associate director for the Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business.

By signing the document, they publicly endorsed Beijing’s vision. But that victory was largely symbolic, he said.

“Is it a signal of genuine economic cooperation or is it anything as significant, like a free trade negotiation where new policies are going to emerge because of this document. No, it certainly is not, it is a statement of intent,” Cramer-Flood said.

That intent was borne out by the use of bland phrases such as encouraging, enhancing and promoting, which showed up 16 times in the document. The document is loaded with references to U.N.-related issues, everything from poverty to sustainability and its wording was clearly “strained and stressed to be overwhelmingly inclusive” to get everyone on board, he added.

It also appears to have been prepared beforehand and participants had little opportunity to participate in its wording.

Unmet expectations

“This was an opportunity to create, well, on the one hand, the institutionalization of the initiative, which I think is very important, especially to the Western countries, you know. On the other hand, it was also an opportunity to create greater stakeholder buy-in,” said Jan Gaspers, a China analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies or MERICS.

The communique could have been an opportunity for Belt and Road countries to re-shape the initiate, but it was clear from the wording that did not happen, he said.

China also missed an opportunity when it failed to get support from developed countries to sign a crucial document for reducing trade barriers. Gaspers said those who refused to sign the document saw it as a step backwards.

“Basically, it would fall behind what was agreed within the framework of G-20 Summit last year on trade issues as it regards to transparency, reciprocity and so on,” Gaspers said.

Analysts say participants found common ground on issues such as finance, but the document on free trade was the one that faced the most headwinds.

“Certain western principles and values that some of the European countries wanted to insert were rejected by the Chinese side,” said the Conference Board’s Ethan Cramer-Flood.  “And not just the Chinese side, I am hearing talk of Russia and Turkey as well,” “they weren’t able to get aligned on that wording.”

Wording and principles aside, it is mostly about getting a share of business.

Putting own interests first

Christopher Balding, a professor at Peking University’s HSBC Business School, said Beijing has made it exceedingly clear the Belt and Road will be a China focused project that will openly favor Chinese firms.

“I don’t think anyone [in developed countries] has any real expectations that their businesses will be able to compete for One Belt, One Road business in any real manner,” Balding said.

At the same time, developed countries are keenly aware the initiative is not only about public diplomacy, but also about domestic politics.

Later this year, China hosts a once in five-year leadership reshuffle, and raising the country’s international profile is crucial for President Xi Jinping as he works to consolidate power within the party.

“This is essentially what amounts to be an election year in China. This is something that a lot of people have overlooked, the importance of how this plays domestically in bolstering Xi Jinping and the [Communist] party’s image,” Balding said.

Gaspers said the meeting was also significant because of a political alignment of authoritarian forces that emerged, noting that it was no coincidence that Xi Jinping and the presidents of Russia and Turkey were seen standing so close to each other during the meetings.

“It shows a shift in terms of global and bilateral, and indeed multilateral alliances. That was confirmed at the summit and so optics were quite interesting,” he said.
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U.S. stocks, the dollar, and government bonds were down in Wednesday’s trading amid investor worries about controversial actions and comments from President Donald Trump. The major U.S. stock indexes fell 1.8 percent or more, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 372 points.

The faltering markets follow Trump’s firing of the FBI chief, his reported sharing of secrets with top Russian officials, and allegations that the president may have tried to block an investigation into actions by a top aide who was fired.

Following Trump’s election, the dollar rose and stocks climbed to a series of record highs as investors bet that Trump’s promises to cut taxes and regulations would boost economic growth and corporate profits.

Investors may be having second thoughts, though, after legislative efforts to repeal and replace a health care law stalled, and the tax cut agenda is tangled in political bickering.

Even Trump’s Republican allies say calls for congressional and other investigations of the administration’s actions are a distraction for lawmakers trying to move his agenda forward against determined opposition from Democrats.
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The hacker group behind the leak of cyber spying tools from the U.S. National Security Agency, which were used in last week’s “ransomware” cyberattack, says it has more code that it plans to start selling through a subscription service launching next month.

The group known as Shadow Brokers posted a statement online Tuesday saying the new data dumps could include exploits for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, and for web browsers and cell phones, as well as “compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean nukes and missile programs.”

Shadow Brokers tried unsuccessfully last year to auction off cyber tools it said were stolen from the NSA.

The WannaCry ransomware virus exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft’s older Windows XP operation system. The company had largely stopped offering support such as security updates for Windows XP, but did release a patch to protect users against the attack that demanded people pay to avoid losing their data.

There is no definitive evidence yet of who used the NSA tools to build WannaCry.

Cybersecurity experts say the technical evidence linking North Korea to the cyberattack is somewhat tenuous, but Pyongyang has the advanced cyber capabilities, and the motive to compensate for lost revenue due to economic sanctions, to be considered a likely suspect.

Since Friday, the WannaCry virus has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries, at least temporarily paralyzing factories, banks, government agencies, hospitals and transportation systems.

On Monday, analysts with the cybersecurity firms Symantec and Kaspersky Lab said some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, which has been identified by some industry experts as a North Korea-run hacking operation.

“Right now we’ve uncovered a couple of what we would call weak indicators or weak links between WannaCry and this group that’s been previously known as Lazarus. Lazarus was behind the attacks on Sony and the Bangladesh banks for example. But these indicators are not enough to definitively say it’s Lazarus at all,” said Symantec Researcher Eric Chien.

Bureau 121

Symantec has linked the Lazarus group to a number of cyberattacks on banks in Asia dating back years, including the digital theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank last year. 

The U.S. government blamed North Korea for the hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that leaked damaging personal information after Pyongyang threatened “merciless countermeasures” if the studio released a dark comedy movie that portrayed the assassination of Kim Jong Un. And South Korea had accused the North of attempting to breach the cybersecurity of its banks, broadcasters and power plants on numerous occasions.

Pyongyang is believed to have thousands of highly trained computer experts working for a cyberwarfare unit called Bureau 121, which is part of the General Bureau of Reconnaissance, an elite spy agency run by the military. There have been reports the Lazarus group is affiliated with Bureau 121. Some alleged North Korean-related cyberattacks have also been traced back to a hotel in Shenyang, China near the Korean border.

“Mostly they hack directly, but they hack other countries first and transfer [the data] so various other countries are found when we trace back, but a specific IP address located in Pyongyang can be found in the end,” said Choi Sang-myung, a senior director of the cybersecurity firm Hauri Inc. in Seoul.

Ransom

It is not clear if the purpose of the WannaCry malware is to extort payments or to cause widespread damage.

The WannaCry hackers have demanded ransoms from users, starting at $300 to end the cyberattack, or they threatened to destroy all data on infected computers. So far the perpetrators have raised less than $70,000 according to Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser for U.S. President Donald Trump.

The countries most affected by WannaCry to date are Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and India, according to Czech security firm Avast.

Suffering under increased economic sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, it would not be surprising for North Korea to attempt to make up for lost revenue through illicit cyber theft and extortion. But the WannaCry ransomware is more advanced than anything North Korean hackers have used in the past.

“Previous ransomwares required people to click an attachment in an email or access a specific website to get infected, but this time [computers] can be infected without getting an email or access to a website, just by connecting an Internet cable,” said Choi.

FireEye Inc., another large cybersecurity firm, said it was also investigating but cautious about drawing a link to North Korea.

In addition to past alleged cyberattacks, North Korea had also been accused of counterfeiting $100 bills which were known as “superdollars” or “supernotes” because the fakes were nearly flawless.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
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Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Tuesday that he expected U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to tell Congress early next week of plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move that would produce talks by late August.

Guajardo said he would have more information after meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Vietnam on Thursday as part of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings.

During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, Trump vowed to scrap the 1994 deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico if he could not adjust it to benefit U.S. interests.

“Probably the notification will be sent to Congress by the U.S. executive at some time early next week,” Guajardo told Mexican reporters, a day after meetings in Washington with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other U.S. officials.

In Washington, Ross declined to predict the timing of the notification, saying that there were more consultations with Congress needed first.

Current format

In a meeting Tuesday, U.S. senators said Ross and Lighthizer expressed their preference to keep the current trilateral format in the NAFTA talks.

Guajardo also said that a dispute over sugar with the United States could be resolved within two weeks, before a June 5 deadline to break the impasse.

The U.S. sugar industry pressed the U.S. Commerce Department late last year to withdraw from a 2014 agreement that sets prices and quotas for U.S. imports of Mexican sugar unless the deal could be renegotiated. The U.S. sugar lobby wants Mexico to export less refined sugar and has become emboldened since Trump took office.

A U.S. Commerce Department spokesman said Ross and Guajardo discussed possible solutions and that they were continuing to work toward a negotiated settlement.

Any deal, however, would need agreement from the U.S. sugar producers who brought an anti-dumping case against Mexican competitors.

On Monday, Mexico’s sugar chamber said no deal had been reached in talks on Monday to resolve the dispute.
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Greek seamen and journalists walked off the job Tuesday, a day before a nationwide general strike to protest new austerity measures the government is legislating for in return for more bailout funds.

The seamen’s union announced Tuesday afternoon they would extend their strike, originally planned to last 48 hours, for a further two days, leaving ferries servicing Greece’s islands tied up in port until midnight Friday night.

The Panhellenic Seamen’s Federation said it was asking “for the understanding and full support of both the traveling public and all Greek workers,” adding that the new measures would lead seamen “to poverty and destitution.”

Journalists were holding a 24-hour strike Tuesday, pulling news broadcasts off the air from 6 a.m. (0300 GMT). News websites were not being updated, and no Wednesday newspapers would be printed. Public bus company employees were also holding work stoppages during the day.

Wednesday’s general strike is expected to affect services across the country, from schools and hospitals to public transport. Air traffic controllers have declared participation with a four-hour work stoppage, leading to the rescheduling of 99 flights and the cancellation of a further nine by Greece’s Aegean and Olympic Air. Another airline, Sky Express, announced the rescheduling of 41 domestic flights between Athens and the Greek islands.

Protest marches have been scheduled for central Athens in the morning.

Workers are protesting a new deal with Greece’s international creditors that impose a raft of new tax hikes and spending cuts beyond the end of the country’s third bailout in 2018. The measures, which are to be voted on in parliament at midnight Thursday, will include additional pension cuts in 2019 and higher income tax in 2020.

Without the agreement with its creditors, Greece faced the prospect of running out of cash to service its debts this summer, which could have seen it have another brush with bankruptcy.

Greece is currently in its third international bailout, which is due to end in mid-2018. It has been dependent on rescue loans from its creditors — mainly other European countries that use the euro, and the International Monetary Fund — since its first bailout in 2010.

In return for the funds, successive governments have had to impose repeated waves of reforms, which have included tax hikes and salary and pension cuts. While the country’s finances have improved under the bailouts and the strict supervision they imposed, the belt-tightening has led to spiraling poverty and unemployment rates.

Although the jobless rate has been falling from a high of above 27 percent, it still hovers at around 23 percent.
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American industry expanded production last month at the fastest pace in more than three years as manufacturers and mines recovered from a March downturn.

The Federal Reserve said Tuesday that industrial production at U.S. factories, mines and utilities shot up 1 percent in April from March, biggest gain since February 2014 and the third straight monthly gain. The increase was more than twice what economists had expected.

Factory production rose 1 percent after declining 0.4 percent in March. Mine production increased 1.2 percent after falling 0.4 percent in March. And utility output rose 0.7 percent after surging 8.2 percent in March.

Factory production has risen three of four months this year. Manufacturing has recovered from a rough patch in late 2015 and early 2016 caused by cutbacks in the energy industry and a strong dollar, which makes U.S. goods costlier in foreign markets.

The overall U.S. economy grew at a lackluster 0.7 percent annual pace from January through March. But economists expect growth to pick up the rest of the year as consumers ramp up spending.

A healthy job market bolsters consumer confidence. Employers last month added 211,000 jobs and unemployment fell to 4.4 percent, lowest in a decade.

 
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Cybersecurity experts warn that hundreds of thousands of computer users across the globe remain vulnerable following a large-scale virus attack in recent days. The so-called ‘ransomware’ virus struck governments and companies around the world, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping says countries participating in the two-day Belt and Road Forum have agreed to an action plan with a list of 270 goals

Speaking at the end of the forum, China’s leader said the 30 heads of state who attended the summit in Beijing and nearby Yanqi Lake signed a communiqué to promote an open global economy, rebalance globalization, and deepen trade liberalization. 

Xi’s Belt and Road development initiative focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries primarily China and the rest of Eurasia.  It includes the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the oceangoing “Maritime Silk Road”. 

The strategy underlines China’s push to take a bigger role in global affairs.  Xi stressed China would not base cooperation on ideology or use the Belt and Road to pursue a political agenda, allaying concerns of critics who have highlighted the massive project’s possible geopolitical impact.

“We have every reason to have full confidence in the prospects for the Belt and Road initiative,” Xi said.  “At the same time, the Belt and Road initiative is an expansive project and the road ahead is very long and cooperation is key.” 

Expansive Belt and Road 

Although many of the more than 100 countries and organizations participating in the summit welcome China’s efforts to boost trade and to play a bigger role in global affairs, participation in the forum was mixed.  Some countries sent representatives, but have yet to officially back the project.

The forum included representatives from the United States and North Korea. 

Countries such as the United States and Germany have emphasized the need for transparency and a level playing field. 

“Germany as a country has not asked to be a part of the initiative, but German companies have asked to be part of it,” said Brigitte Zypries, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, who attended the forum.  “It is obviously relevant to know what is going to be built and the procedures to take part in this building are the same for every company and every country.” 

“The Belt and Road Initiative originates from China, but it belongs to the world,” Xi said, in remarks before the leaders’ summit Monday.  “The Belt and Road construction spans different regions, development phases and civilizations.  It is an open and inclusive cooperation platform.” 

Sunday, Xi outlined his vision for the plan and pledged to use development to fight a wide range of problems from terrorism to poverty.  Xi’s plan involves the creation of six economic corridors that would link China to 65 countries.  The participation of those countries would account for 60 percent of the world’s population and 30 percent of global GDP. 

An estimated $900 billion would be spent on connectivity projects across land and sea, making the Belt and Road initiative the most expensive development plan in history, several times larger than the U.S. Marshall Plan that was used to rebuild Europe after World War II. 

China has offered to shoulder a big slice of the responsibility, pledging $124 billion, which is double of what the World Bank lent in 2016.  Analysts said Beijing can easily bear the burden.  China has foreign exchange reserves exceeding $3 trillion.  Last year, Chinese companies invested $170 billion in overseas projects. 

Empire building 

Xi offered to establish 50 scientific laboratories with participating countries, train 5,000 foreign scientists and invited 500 foreign research groups to visit China.   The plan will also launch 100 “happy home” projects, 100 poverty alleviation projects and 100 health care and rehabilitation projects in countries along the Belt and Road, he said.  

But based on how the project has been outlined, China appears to be trying its hand at a new form of economic colonization, said Mohan Malik, a professor at the Institute of Asian Security in Hawaii. 

“China is in an empire-building mode: an empire of exclusive economic enclaves that would create a Sino-centric unipolar Asia,” Malik said in an emailed response.  “Chinese officials, in jest, talk of buying off smaller countries instead of invading them.” 

Malik adds that with its slowing economy, China risks “imperial overreach” with such a massive venture. 

David Kelly, director of research at the private China Policy consultants said if successful the outcome could be a positive thing, but the Belt and Road is swiftly becoming a measure of China’s global standing. 

“But if it doesn’t work, if it runs into problems, if it’s impractical, if it’s too costly, if it falls over, it will cost China’s standing in the world.  And that is what worries people because it is essentially an educated bet, an educated gamble,” Kelly said.
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China says nearly 30 heads of state who were attending its first Belt and Road forum joined Beijing in signing a communiqué pledging to fight protectionism and ensure free and inclusive trade. China also used the meeting to assure other countries about the scope and aims of the ambitious initiative. VOA’s Bill Ide has more from Beijing.
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Anheuser-Busch is upgrading its U.S. breweries and plans to build two new distribution centers as it adapts to an increasingly fragmented beer market.

The maker of Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois says the upgrades and new distribution centers in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, will allow it to store a greater variety of products and get them to customers faster. The measures are part of the $500 million that the company said Monday it will invest in its U.S. operations this year, marking an increase compared with recent years. It’s a portion of the $3.7 billion in global capital expenditures that the Belgian company had already budgeted for 2017.

Anheuser-Busch has struggled to boost sales volumes as craft beers grow increasingly popular in an already crowded marketplace. In 2016, total volume at Anheuser-Busch declined 2 percent, including a 1.6 percent volume decline in North America.

The same thing is happening with non-alcoholic drinks. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi has said the industry is becoming more “niche,” and that PepsiCo needs to learn how to thrive amid that growing complexity.

The investment announced Monday by Anheuser-Busch includes upgrades to breweries in Fort Collins, Colorado, and St. Louis, Missouri. The company did not say how many new jobs it expects this year’s U.S. investments to create. It has added around 2,500 jobs since 2013, the company said. Anheuser-Busch employs more than 17,000 people in the U.S.

In 2015, Anheuser-Busch had said it expects to invest $1.5 billion from that year to 2018. The Monday announcement was an update, with the company saying it is spending $2 billion from this year through 2020.
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Historic rivals China and Vietnam are working on substantive agreements that could cover trade, investment and maritime resource sharing despite a bitter sovereignty dispute that had snarled relations less than a year ago.

The Communist neighbors are inching toward new trade and investment ties that analysts say would help shore up overall relations. Some believe the two might later approach stickier topics such as joint use of disputed waters or humane treatment of each other’s fishermen. The two countries still contest sovereignty over tracts of the vast, resource-rich South China Sea east of Vietnam and southwest of Hong Kong.

Prospects of some kind of agreement came into focus during Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang’s visit to China, which ends Monday. He suggested the two sides work on complementing each other’s trade and investment advantages with a view toward improving overall relations, state media from Hanoi said.

“President Quang is in China, and China promised a lot,” said Yun Sun, senior associate with the East Asia Program under Washington-based think tank the Stimson Center. “From an economic point of view, it is certainly practical and beneficial for Vietnam to have some sort of deal, but then again I think this still relatively early to tell.”

In a meeting with Quang Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for more cross-border economic cooperation zones and joint infrastructure building, according to  China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. China pledged to “mitigate” its trade deficit with Vietnam and increase direct investment, Sun said.

“Talking probably does help lower tensions and improve the odds of things happening,” said Alaistair Chan, an economist covering China for Moody’s Analytics.

The Vietnamese president suggested China finalize rules on opening the Chinese market for farm products, dairy and seafood, media outlet vietnamnet.vn said. He also called on China to make more “preferential loans” and urged a working group to develop renewable energy investment projects that play on China’s strengths and demand in Vietnam, the Vietnamese news report said.

On Friday companies from both countries signed agreements on milk distribution, tourism and rice processing.

China is the largest trade partner of Vietnam, with imports and exports worth about $72 billion last year. Vietnam also calls China one of the top 10 investors in the country.

But both countries are likely to hedge on letting outsiders invest in infrastructure, a possible source of direct investment, Chan said. “If they can get there purely on trade and stay away from investment, a touchy subject in both countries, I think that’s probably where they can get their quickest gain,” he said.

China and Vietnam stepped up dialogue after July 2016, when a world arbitration court ruled that Beijing lacked a legal basis to claim more than 90 percent of the sea, a boon to rival claimants in Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. China responded to the ruling by seeking one-on-one dialogue with each country. Vietnam was one of the most hostile toward China before the court ruling.

Beijing and Hanoi dispute sovereignty over much of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, including two chains of tiny islets. Beijing’s go-ahead for a Chinese oil rig in contested waters set off a clash in 2014. The two countries also still face distrust fanned by centuries of political rivalry as well as a border war in 1979.

Both countries stake their fast-growing economies on export manufacturing. Vietnamese companies resent China for using their larger production scales to sell goods in bulk at relatively low prices.

Relations got a lift in September when the Chinese premier and Vietnamese prime minister agreed to manage maritime differences. Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visited China in January to help smooth relations.

Another boost came as China emerged last year as the top single-country source of tourism for Vietnam. About 2.2 million Chinese visited Vietnam from January to October. Chinese tourists have reshaped the economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan over the past decade.

Agreements on managing disputed tracts of the South China Sea may come later if the two sides keep getting along, experts say.

Vietnam and China have agreed to an “informal” median line in the tract of sea where their claims overlap, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor of politics at The University of New South Wales in Australia. They might eventually work on expanding joint exploration for oil under the seabed and a way to ensure “humane” treatment of fishermen, he said.

“It’s to stop the ramming, boarding, seizing fish catches and radio equipment and in the old days taking them hostages for money,” Thayer said. Under a human treatment agreement, he said, “If you find them, you report them to the other side and return them rather than bash them up and take everything.”
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday after meeting with officials from the world’s other industrialized democracies that he thought they were more at ease with Donald Trump’s economic policies.

“People are more comfortable today, now that they’ve had the opportunity to spend time with me and listen to the president and hear our economic message,” Mnuchin said after a two-day meeting in Bari, Italy, with members of the Group of Seven, industrialized nations commonly known as the G-7.

Officials from the G-7 countries hoped to learn more about the U.S. president’s plans, which they feared would revive protectionist policies and result in a global regression on issues such as banking reform and climate change.

After the meeting, officials from Japan and member European countries remained concerned about the economic shift in Washington, particularly after Mnuchin said the U.S. reserved the right to be protectionist if it thought trade was not free or fair.

“All the six others … said explicitly, and some very directly, to the representatives of the U.S. administration that it is absolutely necessary to continue with the same spirit of international cooperation,” said French Finance Minister Michel Sapin.

Don’t ‘backpedal’ on free trade

Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said continued uncertainty about U.S. policy could dampen optimism within the G-7 about the global economy’s gradual recovery from the financial crisis that began nearly a decade ago.

De Galhau echoed the sentiments of Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso, who said, “We must not backpedal on free trade, as it has contributed to economic prosperity.”

European officials complained that the U.S. meaning of “fair trade” remained unclear and that the only way to establish fairness was to abide by the multilateral framework developed by the World Trade Organization.

A senior Japanese Finance Ministry official said the most significant question pertained to Trump’s U.S. tax cut proposal that could fuel America’s economic recovery.

Trump has proposed slashing the U.S. corporate income tax rate and offer multinational businesses a steep tax break on overseas profits brought back to the U.S.

The G-7 is composed of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S.
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A global cyber attack on Friday affected British hospitals, government agencies and companies in 99 countries, with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets, security software maker Avast said.

Hacking tools widely believed by researchers to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency that were leaked online last month appear to have been leveraged to launch the attacks.

Around 1,000 computers at the Russian Interior Ministry were affected by the cyber attack, a spokeswoman for the ministry told Interfax.

Some of the companies affected:

FedEx Corp

Telefonica SA

Portugal Telecom

Telefonica Argentina
…

From the United States and Canada to small islands in Europe and the Caribbean, Chinese are spending billions on new passports and visas to move their families away from their homeland.

China’s middle and upper classes are demanding better schools, cleaner air and a more secure life for their children. And as China gets wealthier, millions of families have the means to purchase a new life elsewhere.

Their demand has transformed a once obscure market for immigration by investment. To study China’s impact, the Associated Press collected statistics from 13 countries that offer citizenship or permanent residency for a price.

Here’s a look at AP’s analysis of the market, by the numbers.

China’s favorite programs

Consulting firms in China’s biggest cities hawk investor visa programs in weekly sessions at hotels and on social media. The market leader is the United States, as urban Chinese are widely familiar with American schools and culture.

Here are the five countries in the AP’s analysis with the most visas issued to Chinese investors and their families in the last decade:

— 43,448: the United States’ investment visa program, known as EB-5.

— 35,278: Canada’s investment bond programs, including a program offered by the province of Quebec.

— 7,875: Portugal’s “golden visa” program for real estate investors.

— 6,405: Hungary’s residence bond program, recently suspended by the government.

— 4,640: Australia’s program for high-dollar “significant investors.”

What they buy

Depending on the country, Chinese investors looking for a second home can join business projects, invest in bonds or make an outright payment to the government. Currency conversions are as of May 11.

— $250,000: the minimum price of citizenship in Antigua & Barbuda for an investor who donates to the island government’s development fund and pays a $50,000 government fee.

— $380,000 (350,000 euro): the minimum value of real estate investors must purchase in Portugal’s “golden visa” program.

— $500,000: the minimum business investment in the United States’ EB-5 program, with a “green card” given to investors whose money creates or saves 10 jobs.

— $584,000 (800,000 Canadian dollars): the minimum amount of interest-free investment to be made or financed for residence in the Canadian province of Quebec. (Canada closed a similar national program in 2014.)

— $3.7 million (5 million Australian dollars): the required investment in Australia’s Significant Investor Visa program in a mix of developing businesses and funds as defined by the government. Australia’s program is by far the most expensive in the AP survey.

What they spent

To understand how China has changed the global investor migration market, the AP estimated how much Chinese families have invested at a minimum in foreign countries for a visa or passport. The AP multiplied the number of investors, excluding family members, by the minimum investment level for each year, in each program for the last decade. In some cases, the AP estimated the number of investors with the help of government data or experts on investment migration.  

The figures below are an undercount because some investors put in more than what’s required. Investment amounts for each year were converted to U.S. dollars based on the average exchange rate that year. The figures have not been adjusted for inflation.

— $7.7 billion: estimated minimum investment in the United States through the EB-5 program.

— $6 billion: estimated minimum investment in Australia through its Significant Investor Visa program.

— $4.3 billion: estimated minimum investment in Canada, including Quebec, through its immigrant investor programs.

— $1.96 billion: estimated minimum investment in the United Kingdom through its Tier 1 investor program.

— $1.71 billion: estimated minimum investment in New Zealand through its investor and entrepreneur programs.
…

In a move that is likely to give a boost to China’s Belt and Road Forum, the United States has announced that it will participate in meetings on the initiative beginning this weekend in Beijing.

The decision to attend is part of a 100-day plan and new deal between Washington and Beijing that was initially hammered out when President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping met early last month in Florida.

The interagency delegation from Washington will be led by Matthew Pottinger, a top adviser to the Trump administration and National Security Council senior director for East Asia. China is pleased with the decision.

“We welcome all countries to attend. And we welcome the United States’ attendance as the world’s largest economy in the relevant activities of the Belt and Road initiative,” said Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao.

Fact and fiction

China has long been playing up the global benefits of its ambitious trade project, but analysts note that the plan is opaque and vague. Besides, the economic benefits for developed nations such as the United States are still unclear.

For many, the project still seems largely China-centric. It boasts six economic corridors, all of which are to enhance links with China through connectivity and trade infrastructure. Those include connections between China and Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“It’s about making China great again — in Trumpian terms — and making China great on the international stage,” said Tom Miller, author of China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road.

Domestically, China’s leaders present the project as part of their attempt at the grand rejuvenation of the Chinese people. Internationally, Beijing is trying to convince the world that it is a cooperative win-win plan that will equally benefit all participants.

So far the response has been mixed, but Beijing hopes that its forum on Sunday and Monday, which will include heads of state from 29 countries and official delegations from several other countries, will bring more clarity.

For starters, there is no official map of the grand plan, and the scope of the project continues to balloon. Beijing is entirely in the driver’s seat and the direction of the initiative is fuzzy at best, analysts said.

“What actually gets built will depend on what deals Chinese companies make with other countries abroad or on the deals that Chinese government makes with other governments abroad, and no one knows exactly what those are going to be,” Miller said.

Bumps on China road

There are also the geopolitical implications of the project.

Many developing countries along the route will obviously welcome and be eager and open to receive Chinese investment, infrastructure and development, said Paul Haenle, director of the Beijing-based Tsinghua-Carnegie Center for Global Policy.

In addition to communicating with developing countries, China needs to proactively engage with developed nations such as the United States and others as well.

China “should explain fully what the objectives are for the initiatives,” Hanele says. “And if it doesn’t do a very good job, I think then China risks these nations projecting their worst fears onto the Belt and Road initiative.”

While China-backed infrastructure projects could bring many benefits to developing countries, they could also make them reliant on Beijing’s largesse.

“The more power that China gains economically, [the more] it will have a geopolitical impact,” Miller said. “And in that sense, you can say that it does equate to a double win for China.”

Critical eye

Having developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Britain participate in the meeting could help make it more transparent.

Other developed European countries and the United States are right to look at Chinese behavior that is opaque and poorly defined with a critical eye, Haenle said.

He added Washington’s decision to attend and not shun the gathering, as it did during China’s formation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) two years ago, is a better approach.

The United States would do well “to ask about what the rules will be and what the purpose is behind this, but at the end of the day, the U.S. should not have a hostile attitude,” Haenle said.

Friday’s last-minute announcement has raised questions about whether the United States may reverse former President Barack Obama’s decision to stay away from the AIIB and join. The bank is hosting a special press conference on Saturday to announce new members.
…

U.S. consumers bought more cars and hardware, and stepped up online purchases in April, after two months of sluggish sales.

Friday’s report from the Commerce Department says retail sales rose four-tenths of a percentage point in April, and sales were a bit better than first reported the previous month.

The data show even stronger growth for online retailers, while sales at traditional “bricks and mortar” stores sagged half a percentage point.

Investors and economists watch retail sales closely because consumer demand drives more than two-thirds of economic activity in the United States, which is the world’s largest economy.

A separate study by the Labor Department shows U.S. inflation rose 2.2 percent in the year ending in April, with a gain of two-tenths of a percent for the month. Some analysts say that makes it likely that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates slightly at their next scheduled meeting in June.

The Federal Reserve is supposed to promote stable prices and full employment. When inflation threatens to rise a modest level, they may raise interest rates to cool economic activity and keep prices from rising so fast they disrupt economic growth.
…

In an interview with The Economist, President Donald Trump whiffed on a batch of economic facts. He got the Canada-U.S. trade balance wrong, misplaced the U.S. in the world ranks of tax burdens and claimed to have coined an economic phrase that’s been familiar to economists for some 80 years.

A look at some of his assertions to the magazine:

U.S. Taxes

TRUMP: “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.”

THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly made variations on this false claim. The overall U.S. tax burden is one of the lowest among the 32 developed and large emerging-market economies tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Taxes made up 26.4 percent of the total U.S. economy in 2015, according to the OECD. That’s far below Denmark’s tax burden of 46.6 percent, Britain’s 32.5 percent or Germany’s 36.9 percent. Just four OECD countries had a lower tax bite than the U.S.: South Korea, Ireland, Chile and Mexico.

Trump qualified his claim later in the interview by saying the top marginal corporate tax rate, specifically, is higher than in similar industrialized countries. That’s more or less true, although the higher rate is moderated by tax breaks not available in some of those other countries.

Trade deficit with Canada

TRUMP: “Right now the United States has … about a $15 billion trade deficit with Canada.”

THE FACTS: His numbers are upside down. The United States actually ran an $8.1 billion trade surplus with Canada last year, according to the latest numbers available from the Census Bureau. A $24.6 billion U.S. surplus with Canada in the trade of services, including tourism and software, outweighed a $16.5 billion deficit in the trade of goods, including autos and oil.

Trump, who regularly decries the loss of American manufacturing jobs, tends to emphasize trade in goods and ignore trade in services. His comment about Canada came as his administration seeks a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

The U.S. last year ran a deficit of $750 billion in goods with the rest of the world but recorded a $249 billion surplus in services.

‘Prime the pump’

TRUMP: “You understand the expression ‘prime the pump’? … I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do. We have to prime the pump.”

THE FACTS: He didn’t coin that phrase. It’s a well-worn metaphor for generating faster growth, first made popular as an economic analogy more than 80 years ago during the Great Depression.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary people quickly tweeted that the phrase “priming the pump” has been around since the early 1800s. Literally, it’s about pouring water into a pump to allow it to create suction. The phrase was commonly used by mining publications during the 1920s, but it took on new significance after the economy cratered during the Depression.

By 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had promoted the idea of flushing money into the economy to stimulate stronger growth with his New Deal policies. Such policies rankled Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover.

“One of the ideas in these spendings is to prime the economic pump,” Hoover said in a 1935 post-presidential speech. “We might abandon this idea also, for it dries up the well of enterprise.”

China and currency manipulating

TRUMP, on backing away from his campaign promise to label China a currency manipulator: “They’re actually not a currency (manipulator). You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.”

Treasury Secretary STEVE MNUCHIN, pitching in: “Right, as soon as the president got elected, they went the other way.”

THE FACTS: Trump persists in taking credit for something that happened before he even started running for president. China manipulated its currency, the yuan, lower for years before stopping in mid-2014; Trump’s presidential run began a year later.

A weak yuan helps Chinese exports because it makes them cheaper to buy. It disadvantages goods from the U.S. and other countries because they are more expensive to get in China.

Until 2005, China pegged the yuan to the dollar at a specific level. When it loosened the peg, the yuan began to rise steadily against the dollar. Worried that a strong currency would hurt their exporters, Chinese officials bought dollars to prevent the yuan from rising even faster.

The value of the yuan peaked in early 2014, as the Chinese economy slowed after years of torrid growth. The yuan then began to fall relative to the dollar, but not because Chinese officials were once again intervening to push it down. China was actually doing the opposite: selling dollars and buying yuan to prevent its currency from going into a free fall.
…

A sweeping trade agreement, ranging from banking to beef, has been reached between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. Commerce Department announced on Thursday.

“It was pretty much a Herculean accomplishment to get this done,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade.”

The breakthrough results from an agreement U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping made during their meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6.

Trump “was briefed more or less every single day” as negotiations progressed since then, Ross said.

Beef imports

Following one more round of “technical consultations,” China has agreed to allow U.S. beef imports no later than July 16, consistent with international food and animal safety standards, Ross told reporters at the White House.

The United States Cattlemen’s Association applauded the agreement, saying market access to China is crucial for its members.

“Success in this arena will drive the U.S. cattle market and increase demand for U.S. beef” in China, association president Kenny Graner told VOA.

In exchange, Washington and Beijing are to resolve outstanding issues that would allow imports to the U.S. of cooked poultry from China “as soon as possible,” according to the Commerce Department.

Another significant breakthrough will see American liquefied natural gas (LNG) going to China. Under the agreement Chinese companies will be permitted “at any time to negotiate all types of contractual arrangement with U.S. LNG exporters, including long term contracts,” according to the Commerce Department.

This is “a very big change,” said Ross, noting China is trying to wean itself off coal at a time “it doesn’t produce enough natural gas to meet its needs.”

Financial, other business services

Among other action listed in the 100-Day Action Plan:

* China is to allow, by July 16, “wholly foreign-owned financial services firms” to provide credit ratings services and to begin licensing procedures for credit investigation.

* U.S.-owned suppliers of electronic payment services (EPS) will be able to apply for licensing in China under new guidelines.

* China is to issue bond underwriting and settlement licenses to two qualified U.S. financial institutions by July 16.

* China’s National Biosafety Committee is to meet by the end of this month to conduct science-based evaluations of all eight pending U.S. biotechnology product applications “to assess the safety of the products for their intended use.” Those that pass the tests are to get certificates within 20 working days.

The outcome of the joint dialogue will also see a United States delegation attending China’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next week.

A U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue will be held this summer, according to the Commerce Department, to deepen engagement on these and other issues.

“There are probably 500 items you could potentially discuss” in the wider one-year plan for bilateral trade, Ross added.
…

As farmers fret over President Donald Trump’s criticism of international trade agreements, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is trying to reassure them by creating a top post to oversee trade and foreign agricultural affairs.

The new undersecretary position is a sign of Perdue’s efforts to promote the U.S. agricultural industry as Trump has sought to undo trade pacts that benefit it. Perdue made the announcement Thursday in Cincinnati while standing near barges that carry grain on the Ohio River.

“This nation has a great story to tell and we’ve got producers here that produce more than we can consume,” the former Georgia governor said. He said the new position “fits right in line with my goal to be American agriculture’s unapologetic advocate and chief salesman around the world.”

On his second day in office last month, Perdue helped persuade Trump not to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, arguing that doing so would hurt U.S. farmers. Trump has said he will work to renegotiate the pact instead.

The 2014 farm bill had directed USDA to make a plan for the new position, but the Obama administration never created the post. Perdue said the new undersecretary will work with incoming U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to “ensure that American producers are well equipped to sell their products and feed the world.”

The Senate confirmed Lighthizer on Thursday. Though he had broad support from both parties, Republican senators John McCain and Ben Sasse said they wouldn’t vote for him because they doubted he would champion agriculture and negotiate trade deals to the benefit of American consumers and the economy.

The departmental reorganization announced by Perdue would also combine farm production and conservation agencies under one undersecretary and move rural development programs to report directly to the secretary. Perdue said that will put more focus on those programs and USDA efforts to revitalize small towns.

While the creation of the trade secretary won widespread praise in farm country, at least one Democrat is criticizing the rural development move. Democratic senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio called it a “downgrade” because there will no longer be an undersecretary for that area.

Brown says his state depends on the program for help with combating opioid abuse, building hospitals and securing loans for businesses.

“Ohio’s rural communities are too often overlooked by Washington as it is, and downgrading USDA Rural Development sends a message that rural Ohio is not a priority for this administration,” Brown said.
…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sees the U.S. semiconductor industry as still dominant globally but said he is worried that it will be threatened by China’s planned investment binge to build up its own chipmaking industry.

Ross told Reuters in an interview this week that his agency is considering a national security review of semiconductors under a 1962 trade law because of their “huge defense implications” — including their use in military hardware and proliferation in devices throughout the economy. He has launched similar Section 232 reviews of the U.S. steel and aluminum sectors, where a flood of imports especially from China has depressed prices, threatening the industries’ long-term health.

The probes could lead to broad import restrictions on the metals, and the Trump administration could potentially take similar actions based on the findings of a semiconductor investigation.

“Semiconductors are one of our shining industries, but they have gone from substantial surplus to the beginnings of a deficit,” Ross told Reuters. “China has a $150 billion program to take that much further between now and 2025. That is scary.”

The 79-year-old billionaire investor was referring to China’s plans for massive state-directed investments in semiconductor manufacturing capacity under its Made in China 2025 program, which aims to replace mostly imported semiconductors with domestic products.

Ross’ predecessor at Commerce, Penny Pritzker, warned last November about looming market distortions if China builds too much semiconductor capacity.

Ross added that while he understands Beijing’s logic in developing its domestic chip industry, “that’s going to be a struggle” from a U.S. trade standpoint.

Industry view

U.S. semiconductor makers, meanwhile, have other ideas about how to secure their future. Their major trade group, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), advocates open trade and increased access to international markets, which now buy 80 percent of U.S.-made semiconductors. U.S. chipmakers also depend on a complex global supply chain and have nearly half their production capacity located overseas.

“So while we fully support efforts to ensure trade in semiconductors is fair and market-based, we do not believe a Section 232 investigation is the right tool to be applied to our industry” SIA President John Neuffer told Reuters.

One area where there appear to be some differences is how to define the industry’s trade balance.

Commerce Department trade data showed that “semiconductors and related device manufacturing” had a trade deficit of $2.4 billion in 2016, with exports of $43.1 billion and imports of $45.6 billion.

But that category includes rapidly growing imports of non-semiconductor devices including solar cells and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), as well as some raw materials.

In a new submission late on Wednesday to Commerce for a study on trade deficits, SIA said that excluding the non-semiconductor products shows the sector had a $6.4 billion trade surplus last year, with exports of $41.3 billion and imports of $34.9 billion.

Neuffer said the industry was ready to work with the Trump administration to find ways to persuade China to allow its semiconductor industry to develop in a market-driven way and not discriminate against foreign firms.

He added the government could make the United States a more competitive environment for semiconductor output through tax reform that does not penalize overseas earnings, immigration reform that allows the industry to attract new talent, improvements to U.S. education and more spending on basic research.

“The Chinese are determined to build a semiconductor industry,” Neuffer said. “I think the strongest pillar of any strategy going forward has to be our government helping to create an environment where we can pedal faster and stay as far ahead as possible.”
…

Uber is launching its private ride-hailing service in the Myanmar commercial capital of Yangon on Thursday, aiming to tap into one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing online markets.

The launch follows Singapore-based GrabTaxi’s debut by about two months.

Uber is one of the world’s largest on-demand transportation platforms. It is seeking an alliance with the government to smooth acceptance of the use of private vehicles for commercial transport.

A taxi ride in Myanmar usually involves negotiating prices, no use of meters and a lack of air conditioning or seat belts. Using a ride-hailing app is still a relatively new concept, though the practice has been gaining in popularity.

Local travel services start-up Oway and Hello Cabs, a rival service run by a construction and auto dealership tycoon, also provide ride-hailing services. 

“I definitely want to try Uber,” said Nyan Zay Htet, 26, a company worker who was haggling with a driver over a fare on a downtown street in Yangon. “I welcome having international companies come in because it can be more convenient for us if we don’t have to bargain over prices and can just hop in and go.”

More than two-thirds of Southeast Asians are younger than 40 and the number going online to buy goods and services is soaring. A recent research report by Google and the Singaporean investment arm Temasek put the potential ride-sharing market in six larger regional markets at $13 billion by 2025, up from $2.5 billion in 2015.

With more than 50 million people, Myanmar is growing fast and its public transport networks are not keeping up. Taxis are plentiful in Yangon, with local media reporting authorities estimate there are more than 50,000 on the city’s jammed roads. The industry is something of a free-for-all, with non-licensed drivers turning their cars into taxis as they please. But the government has said it intends to crack down on that.

Incomes for most people are still low, so price competition may be key.

An online Uber fare estimator put the base fare in Yangon at 1,500 kyats (pronounced chuts) ($1.09) with a minimum charge of 1,800 kyats ($1.31).

Uber has faced trouble from regulators in various markets, including China, France, Spain and Mexico. But generally they target services transporting paying customers using private vehicles that are not registered for public transport, not ride-hailing that uses smartphone apps to call licensed taxis.
…

Housing foreclosure activity in the United States dropped to the lowest level since 2005 last month, according to a business research group.

ATTOM Data Solutions tracks default notices, auctions and bank repossessions across the nation and says the number of actions dropped 23 percent from a year ago. That means more than 77,000 homeowners missed payments, and banks took some kind of action to encourage the repayment of their loans.

Severe problems in the U.S. housing market, and sales of securities backed by sometimes-faulty mortgages, played a key role in the financial crisis, which is one reason that investors and economists watch the housing market closely.

Seattle, a city in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, did the best in this study, with the number of foreclosure notices dropping 38 percent from the same time a year ago. Atlantic City, New Jersey, had the worst foreclosure problem in this study, with one out of every 237 housing units getting a notice of some kind.
…

China’s President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious Belt and Road development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative.

The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi’s plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China’s biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years.

Judging by recent precedent in China’s political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term.

Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi’s second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries’ hopes for development and not in the idea of “who proposed it or what term in office there is later.”

“The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone,” Qian said.

China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity.

Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies.

Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes.

Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry’s cooperation department, played down such concerns.

“Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will … actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform,” Zhang said.
…

In August, 2014, planners in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun argued in state media that it should be included in the “One Belt, One Road” project, Beijing’s vision laid out the previous year of a new Silk Road across Asia to Europe.

In 2015, the official Xinhua news agency ran stories about how Hunchun was accelerating its “OBOR” plans, and early in 2016, China’s cabinet released a list of Chinese cities included in “OBOR:” Hunchun was on the map.

The fact that the list came about slowly, and that some cities felt moved to lobby to be included, underlines how the pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping is as amorphous as it is ambitious.

The challenge of defining exactly what OBOR means will come to the fore later this month, when heads of state and senior officials from around the world gather in Beijing for the first major summit dedicated to the project.

“Frankly, I don’t really know what the belt and the road are. The reason being that I think Beijing doesn’t know either,” said Tom Miller of Gavekal Dragonomics, who recently wrote a book on the New Silk Road.

Reality is complicated

In theory, incentives for cities, companies and countries to be involved are strong: hundreds of billions of dollars are expected to be spent on roads, railways, pipelines, ports and industrial zones stretching from Sri Lanka to Djibouti.

But as Hunchun shows, the reality of OBOR can be complicated and requires buy-in from other countries.

The city’s position at the apex of Russia, North Korea and China is a blessing and a curse. While Russia is gradually opening up to more trade, North Korea has stalled.

Tantalizingly close to the sea but without a sea port after Russia’s annexation in 1860, local businesses said they wanted to ship more goods via Rason, a nearby North Korean port earmarked as an export hub to China, Japan, South Korea and beyond.

That would open a shipping route to southern China, but with sanctions in place against Pyongyang, global tensions rising over its arms programme and Rason developing slowly, expectations of progress are low.

“We currently transport goods by rail to southern China. We’d like to ship from Rason, but at present that’s not happening,” said Wang Hai, general manager of Guanghai Import and Export Trading Company in Hunchun, a small firm with 12 staff, both Chinese and Russian. “Hunchun is a hub for northeast Asia, so in theory it should play a big role in ‘One Belt, One Road,’ but for now it hasn’t been able to get its act together.”

Russia more promising?

North Korea remains largely shut to the outside world, and China, while remaining its main economic and diplomatic backer, has signed up for tough U.N. sanctions against it.

But China said on Tuesday that North Korea would be sending a delegation to the upcoming OBOR summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend, reflecting his country’s importance in China’s OBOR strategy; in Hunchun, some enterprises are already seeing benefits from mutual trade.

Xingyang Seafood, for example, imports 90 percent of its seafood from Russia and 10 percent from North Korea, said chairman Zhao Yang.

“The main advantage of being in Hunchun is that we are close to Russia,” Yang told Reuters. The company is headquartered in northern China’s Shandong province, but in 2015 it opened a branch in Hunchun to exploit its proximity to Russia.

“How does North Korea help us? It doesn’t help us at all, they have hardly any seafood left there.”

Trade with Russia

Hunchun’s spokesman Hao Qiang declined to comment about the city’s relationship with North Korea, because of the “current political situation,” and would not say how many North Koreans were working in the city. “But we can talk about Hunchun’s trade with Russia, the city’s clean air and successful tree-planting initiatives,” he said.

In addition to oil and gas export opportunities between Russia and China, Putin has spoken of roads and bridges being built to strengthen links.

Russia has struggled, however, to lure enough people to sparsely populated regions bordering China’s northeast, and there are concerns among Russians of creeping colonization if too much land is leased to the Chinese.

“They [Chinese] will live there, their relatives will come, they will deepen their roots there, they will take Russian women as wives,” firebrand opposition politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in 2015, when proposals to lease Russian land to Chinese farmers were put forward. “We will only have problems. I see no advantages.”

For Hunchun, OBOR is the latest in a series of development programs aimed at revitalizing Jilin province and China’s northeast.

Benefits of investments are clear

In the 1990s, the United Nations backed the Tumen River Area Development Project, which became the Greater Tumen Initiative linking China, Mongolia, South Korea and Russia.

The benefits of large-scale state investment are clear. From 25th place among smaller cities in Jilin in terms of economic growth, Hunchun now stands third. Foreign trade has doubled since 2011, according to city statistics.

Whether OBOR can add value over the longer term is uncertain, Peter Cai wrote in a report for the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank.

“If the Chinese government fails to connect its domestic projects with overseas components, OBOR will be little different from other domestic infrastructure programs, greatly diminishing its economic and strategic value.”
…

Mexico is embarking on a strategy to combat illegal pipeline thefts that includes going after those who purchase and deal in stolen fuel as well as the thieves, the country’s treasury secretary said Tuesday.

Jose Antonio Meade said it’s a problem that costs Mexico somewhere between 15 billion and 20 billion pesos a year, or $780 million to $1 billion, and one that requires a holistic approach to solve.

Mexico’s government wants to reduce the siphoning of gasoline and diesel from illegal pipeline taps by attacking “not only the supply but also the demand,” Meade said, according to a transcript of remarks during a Q&A session released by the Treasury Department.

Besides quick-response actions against thieves, authorities must work to make the illicit business less profitable and make those who buy it face consequences, he said.

Armed gangs add to problem

The topic is front-and-center in Mexico these days after gun battles between the army and suspected thieves killed four soldiers and six gunmen last week in the central state of Puebla. Armed gangs have gotten involved in the business of fuel thefts, and gunmen were said to have used civilians as human shields in one of the clashes.

Fuel thieves are also suspected of being behind a shocking crime in Puebla on May 2, when eight assailants raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter, killed her toddler son, beat her husband, stole the family’s pickup truck and left on them on a highway at night. In March, three state detectives were abducted and killed by a fuel theft gang allegedly with the help of the local mayor and police officers.

Meade said those who “tear at the social fabric, who in a very cowardly fashion hide behind … women and children,” cause problems for communities and are “terribly dangerous.”

Corrupt workers a concern

Meade acknowledged it’s “very likely” that corrupt workers at state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, are involved in facilitating pipeline thefts. He said officials are working with the company to identify them.

Officials are also looking at gas stations that may be selling stolen fuel, as well as the mass transportation sector. To that end, authorities raided 13 gas stations last month after detecting irregular fuel-buying patterns, Meade said.

“There was even a gas station that had been shut down (by authorities) for a year but was continuing to sell gasoline, which of course was stolen,” he said.

Looking for help from Senate

The secretary said authorities are looking into technology that would allow them to better track illegal pipeline taps and “mark” gasoline to help identify fuel that has been stolen.

Meade also noted legislation passed in the Chamber of Deputies and pending in the Senate would make it easier to prosecute fuel theft.

“The theft is illegal, but possession of stolen gasoline … since we don’t catch them physically and flagrantly stealing, we often find it impossible to take legal action,” he said.

Stolen fuel part of local economy

The Puebla state Public Security Department reported Tuesday that in a series of raids it seized over 21,000 liters (5,600 gallons) of fuel and 12 vehicles apparently involved in thefts.

Some communities in Puebla and elsewhere have come to base much of their economies on selling fuel stolen from the thousands of taps that are drilled into state-owned pipelines each year. It can also be dangerous — on Sunday one such illegal tap exploded into flames.

Meade said Puebla is the state with the highest incidence of fuel theft, followed by Guanajuato and Veracruz.
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Four U.S. states filed a lawsuit Tuesday over President Donald Trump’s decision to restart the sale of coal leases on federal lands, saying the Obama-era block of the leasing program was reversed without studying what’s best for the environment and for taxpayers.

The attorneys general of California, New Mexico, New York and Washington, all Democrats, said bringing back the federal coal lease program without an environmental review risks worsening the effects of climate change on those states while shortchanging them for the coal taken from public lands.

“Climate change has to be considered when we are talking about compensating states and New Mexico citizens for their resources,” said Cholla Khoury, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas’ director of consumer and environmental protection.

The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management administers 306 coal leases in 10 states, producing more than 4 billion tons of coal over the past decade. Most of that coal — 85 percent — comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

Production and combustion of coal from federal lands accounted for about 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014.

The Obama administration blocked the sale of new leases in 2016 to conduct an environmental study and a review of the royalties that mining companies pay the U.S. government for coal that’s extracted. Federal officials and members of Congress said the current royalty rates were shortchanging taxpayers.

In January, Interior officials said they were considering raising those royalty rates to offset the effects of climate change from burning the coal.

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to amend or withdraw the coal leasing program moratorium.

The next day, Zinke did so, saying the Obama administration’s environmental review would cost “many millions of dollars” and that improvements to the program can be made without a full-scale environmental review.

The lawsuit by the four attorneys general, which was filed in Great Falls, Montana, says the reversal was made “with no justification other than an objection to the time and cost of complying with the law.”

Lifting the moratorium without properly considering the environmental effects or ensuring that the program is providing fair market value for the publicly owned coal violates federal laws, they allege.

“They didn’t follow the law,” Khoury said. “You can’t make piecemeal changes without doing this assessment to fully understand all parts of this program.”

Interior Department officials did not return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
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Indian airline IndiGo said it plans to start flying smaller planes to second-tier towns and cities later this year, in a shift in strategy for the carrier that has prided itself on the simplicity of running only one type of jet.

IndiGo, which has a fleet of 131 Airbus A320 aircraft, said on Tuesday it has placed a provisional order for 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft from European turboprop maker ATR, worth over $1.3 billion at list price.

IndiGo joins national carrier Air India and SpiceJet which have finalized plans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheme to make it cheaper for people to fly within India. The scheme subsidizes part of the cost for airlines to fly to smaller towns.

“We should see increased business activity in small towns and cities which will increase demand for air travel in these regions,” IndiGo’s President Aditya Ghosh said after the company reported a 25 percent fall in quarterly net profit.

InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, owner of IndiGo, said net profit fell to 4.4 billion rupees ($68 million) in the quarter ended March 31, from 5.84 billion rupees a year ago, as fuel costs jumped 71 percent over the same period.

The company said it expects available seat kilometer, a key measure of an airline’s capacity, to increase by 22 percent in the April-June quarter.

IndiGo, which has maintained its efficiency by operating only one type of aircraft, said it plans to set up a separate unit to manage the ATR fleet to reduce the complexity of flying two different types of aircraft.

Functions such as flight operations, in-flight services, route planning and revenue management will be managed by a separate team, whereas administrative functions like human resources, finance and legal would be controlled by IndiGo.

“It would avoid adding complexity to mainline operations,” Ghosh said during an analyst call, adding that it would also result in synergies in corporate overheads and ground handling.

The company said it expects to have up to seven ATR aircraft by March 2018 if it reaches an agreement to buy the planes.

IndiGo also expects to add 39 new aircraft in the current fiscal year that started on April 1, of which 28 will be A320neos, taking the total to 170 A320 aircraft.

The carrier has faced operational issues with some A320neo aircraft due to problems with engines built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

Ghosh said IndiGo expects Pratt & Whitney to provide a solution to one part of the problem by the fourth quarter of 2018 and the engine maker is working on a new design solution that will be retro-fitted later.

Pratt & Whitney has also carried out hardware and software changes on all of IndiGo’s A320neos which should address part of the issue, he said.

IndiGo has ordered a total of 430 A320neo aircraft in the past two years, making it one of Airbus’s biggest customers.
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Move over Ellen DeGeneres, there’s a new most-tweeted tweet.

And it’s not from another celebrity, famous athlete or politician, but rather a 16-year-old kid from Reno, Nevada named Carter Wilkerson who has a deep love for chicken nuggets from U.S. fast food chain Wendy’s.

It all started in April when Wilkerson tweeted at Wendy’s asking them how many retweets he would need to get free nuggets for a year.

Wendy’s reply was simple “18 million.”

To that, Wilkerson said “consider it done” and tweeted screenshots of his conversation with Wendy’s.

It went viral, and on Tuesday his tweet had been retweeted 3.441 million times, surpassing DeGeneres’ famous, and former world-record holding Oscars tweet, which had 3.430 million retweets.

While not 18 million, Wendy’s gave Wilkerson his free nuggets and $100,000 for him to give to charity.

“We didn’t expect Carter’s response, and we couldn’t anticipate the overwhelming support he has received,” said a spokesman for Wendy’s.
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