Many Americans in rural parts of the United States voted to elect Donald Trump as president in 2016, despite his stance against trade agreements. In the wake of the President Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, and now curbing trade with Cuba, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports on how farmers in the Midwest state of Illinois are reacting, and adjusting, to the uncertain road ahead.
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Day: June 29, 2017
Nguyen Kim Lan used to make a decent living shuttling customers around town on his Honda motorbike. But his clientele has dwindled as young and tech-savvy Vietnamese increasingly use ride-hailing apps like Uber and Grab to summon cheaper, safer motorbike taxis.
The expansion of the ride-hailing services across Southeast Asia is shaking up traditional motorcycle taxi services that are a key source of informal work for people like Lan. In some cases, the Xe Om, or motorbike taxi, drivers are venting their anger in attacks on the new competitors.
Lan is just frustrated. He says his income has fallen to 20 percent to 30 percent of what it used to be.
‘Picked up at the door’
“Nowadays, my frequent customers have all booked Grab and Uber, so they don’t come here anymore,” said Lan, 62, as he waited for customers at an intersection in downtown Hanoi.
“Before, office workers would come here after work. Now they just sit in their offices and get picked up at the door,” he said.
As elsewhere in the region, motorbikes are Vietnam’s main form of transportation, especially in the capital Hanoi and the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City. They can maneuver through crowded, narrow city streets more easily than cars and are less expensive to buy and run.
First taxis, now motorbikes
Having invaded the conventional taxi market, ride hailing apps like Uber and Malaysia-based Grab are now elbowing aside the Xe Om with their UberMoto and GrabBike services.
Vietnam, a communist-ruled country of 93 million, has about 45 million motorbikes, the highest rate of motorcycle ownership per capita in Southeast Asia. About 3 million new motorbikes were sold last year.
Practically everyone has mobile phones, and cheap Internet access has enabled most Vietnamese city dwellers to get online.
Nguyen Tuan Anh, chairman of Grab Vietnam, said the number of GrabBike drivers has jumped from 100 when they first launched in late 2014 to more than 50,000, with hundreds joining every day.
The growth of passengers is “explosive,” he said.
Many Vietnamese now prefer to use ride hailing apps, viewing their services as safer and cheaper, Tuan Anh said. “GrabBike brings transparency and that’s why customers love it. They know that they will not be cheated by the drivers.”
Hotspots of conflict
But Tuan Anh said he knows of more than 100 cases where GrabBike drivers were attacked in the past year, often by Xe Om drivers worried about losing business.
Bus stations, hospitals and schools are hotspots for conflict. In one case, a GrabBike driver was stabbed in the lung. In another, police fired warning shots to disperse crowds of Xe Om and GrabBike drivers who were battling near a bus station in Ho Chi Minh City.
Similar problems have been reported in Thailand and Indonesia.
Tuan Anh said GrabBike tells its drivers to be cautious and to seek help from police.
Many Vietnamese seem keen to use such services despite the potential for conflict.
Cheaper, more convenient
Tran Thuc Anh, a 21-year-old video games designer, says she switched to using GrabBike to commute from bus stations to and from her office about six months ago.
It costs her half as much as using Xe Om did, she says.
“I just need to be online to book a bike without going around to look for a traditional Xe Om, so it’s very convenient,” Thuc Anh said.
Many GrabBike drivers originally worked as Xe Om, but not all are willing to sign up. Older motorbike taxi drivers say they don’t know how to use online apps or lack the cash to buy smart phones. Others are put off by the cheaper fares GrabBike charges.
But Nguyen Quang Trung, a 30-year-old salesman who began moonlighting for GrabBike six months ago, said Xe Om drivers who try to overcharge their customers are finished.
“Uber and Grab are safe and their fares are reasonable and customers see this,” Trung said. “Only elder people or those who are in hurry use traditional Xe Om. Young people and people who are not short on time never use Xe Om.”
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Cuba earned more than $3 billion from tourism in 2016 and expects to better that this year despite President Donald Trump’s tightening of restrictions on U.S. travel to the Caribbean island, a government official said on Wednesday.
“In 2016, revenue reached more than $3 billion in all activity linked to tourism in the country,” Jose Alonso, the Tourism Ministry’s business director, told state-run media.
“We think that, given the growth the country is seeing at the moment, we will beat that figure this year,” Alonso said.
Tourism revenue totaled $2.6 billion in 2015.
The number of foreign visitors to Cuba was up 22 percent in the first half of 2017 compared with the same period last year, according to Alonso, who said that put it on track to reach its target for a record 4.2 million visits this year.
Tourism has been one of the few bright spots recently in Cuba’s economy, as it struggles with a decline in exports and subsidized oil shipments from its key ally Venezuela.
A surge in American visitors has helped boost the sector since the 2014 U.S.-Cuban detente under the Obama administration and its easing of U.S. travel restrictions, even as a longtime ban on tourism remained in effect.
But Trump earlier this month ordered a renewed tightening of travel restrictions, saying he was canceling former President Barack Obama’s “terrible and misguided deal” with Havana.
Many details of the policy change are still unknown. But independent travel to Cuba from the United States, by solo travelers and families, will likely be much more restricted.
Alonso said he was confident “an important number of Americans” would still be able to visit the island. But an announcement by Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) on Wednesday that it was reducing its number of flights to Cuba cast shadow over his upbeat comments.
“There is not a clear path to sustainability serving these markets, particularly with the continuing prohibition in U.S. law on tourism to Cuba for American citizens,” Southwest said in a statement.
Southwest joined other U.S. airlines that have cut flights to Cuba over past months or pulled out of the market altogether.
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Beside a quiet stream on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a 19th century brick house that once served as a way station on the Underground Railroad can bring present-day visitors to tears as they gaze at the path where escaped slaves made their way to freedom.
The Jacob and Hannah Leverton house is among 36 sites along the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway. The 125-mile route has been getting fresh attention in recent months as the nation and the world take more notice of Tubman’s heritage as a hero of freedom.
Tubman, who escaped from slavery in antebellum Maryland to become a leading abolitionist, helped other slaves escape by guiding them north on the Underground Railroad and served as a Union spy during the Civil War.
“It’s hard to identify with George Washington, unless you’re an older white male. But when it comes to Tubman, there’s so many ways that people of all backgrounds and races … can find something that they can see in themselves that she has carried forward or she held herself,” says Kate Larson, an author and historian who has written about Tubman and worked as a consultant on the byway.
Fresh Attention
The famed Underground Railroad conductor is drawing admiration from new generations.
Plans to put her on the $20 bill have received prominent attention, stirring debate about the representation of old white historic figures on the nation’s currency and the lack of women and minorities.
This year, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of American History and Culture in Washington acquired a rare photograph of Tubman in her late 40s.
In March, the $21 million Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opened, not far from her Maryland birthplace.
Long Road
The designated sites and nearby landscapes offer a comprehensive look into Tubman’s life and journeys along the Underground Railroad, an informal network that helped escaping slaves evade capture and reach free states such as nearby Pennsylvania.
After about 18 years of planning, the first stops along the byway were designated in 2013 to coincide with the centennial of Tubman’s death.
“This is just an opportunity for the world to know that Harriet has been a major part of our history in the United States of America,” said Victoria Jackson-Stanley, the first black woman elected mayor of Cambridge, the county seat, not far from where Tubman was born and raised a slave. “She’s a local home girl, as I like to say, but she’s an icon for freedom.”
Television Revival
Tubman was featured recently in “Underground,” a WGN television drama about the Underground Railroad.
Actress Aisha Hinds, who played Tubman, attributes the abolitionist’s increasing prominence partly to the divided times of the present.
“I feel like, contextually, what we’re living now is sort of a modern day manifestation and articulation of the times that Harriet Tubman was living and the obstacles that she transcended,” Hinds said at a conference on Tubman in Cambridge, Maryland.
Meanwhile, an HBO movie with Viola Davis starring as Tubman is in the works, based on Larson’s book, “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero.”
Act of Defiance
The site of Tubman’s first known act of defiance against slavery is one of the most popular stops on the Tubman byway.
The Bucktown Village Store has been restored at a rural crossroads believed to be where Tubman refused a slave owner’s orders to help him detain another slave. When the other slave ran, the owner grabbed a 2-pound weight and threw it at him, hitting Tubman on the head and causing an injury that would trouble her for the rest of her life.
The inside still looks like a 19th century shop. The owners have some Tubman-related items, including a newspaper advertising a reward for Tubman and two of her brothers. Susan Meredith, who owns the site with her husband, says people have been stopping more frequently since the visitors’ center opened nearby.
“We see people from all over the world that come to see and step in the place that she was in,” Meredith says.
Still Developing
Some areas with significant links to Tubman’s early life are neither open to the public nor designated on the byway but could one day be purchased by the state. Some related sites have inconsistent hours, depending on when property owners are home, and are still developing under the added attention.
The Jacob and Hannah Leverton home, which is on the byway, offers mixed signals. A sign with the words “Private Drive” and “No Trespassing” stands at the foot of the drive, next to an interpretive marker that designates it as a byway stop.
Still, Michael McCrea, who bought the house in the mid-1980s, is enthusiastic about the byway and accommodates visitors, even though the sign remains.
“It’s fine,” he says, mentioning that visitors have been undeterred by the sign to get a closer look.
McCrea has shown people around the property. Some have cried, he says, while others solemn rub the bricks of the house.
“They just can’t believe that it’s here,” McCrea says.
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Halle Berry, the only black woman to ever win a best actress Oscar, said her 2002 win turned out to be meaningless, and Fast and Furious star Michelle Rodriguez warned she might quit the action movie franchise unless filmmakers “show some love for women.”
Their comments proved a reality check for women in Hollywood on Wednesday, even as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it invited 298 more women to join its ranks in a bid to improve diversity at the organization behind the Oscars.
Berry in 2002 won the best actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball, becoming the first black woman to do so. Fifteen years on, she remains the only woman of color to get the honor.
“Wow, that moment really meant nothing. It meant nothing. I thought it meant something, but I think it meant nothing,” she told Teen Vogue editor Elaine Welteroth in a video interview at the Cannes Lion festival released late Tuesday.
Berry said she reached that troubling conclusion in 2016 when all 20 of the Oscar acting nominees were white, sparking the #OscarsSoWhite backlash.
“I was profoundly hurt by that, and saddened by that,” Berry said, adding that it had prompted her to want to start directing and producing to make more opportunities for actors of color.
Ready to quit
Elsewhere, Rodriguez, who plays Vin Diesel’s love interest in five of the eight Fast and Furious box office hits, suggested she was prepared to quit her role as tough street racer Letty Ortiz over the portrayal of women.
“F8 [the eighth film] is out digitally today,” she wrote on her Instagram account Tuesday above a montage of photos from the film. “I hope they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one or I just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise.”
It’s not the first time Rodriguez has spoken out.
In an interview in May with Entertainment Weekly, she said women in action films should have “more female camaraderie, [and have] women do things independently outside of what the boys are doing — now that is truly the voice of female independence.”
The Fast and Furious franchise has taken in more than $5 billion at the box office worldwide since 2001, and two more films are planned for release in 2019 and 2021.
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Auto industry trade groups said on Wednesday that tightening the rules of origin in the North American Free Trade Agreement could be disruptive and hurt the competitiveness of U.S., Mexican and Canadian auto plants.
Their testimony at a public hearing ahead of NAFTA renegotiations, expected to start Aug. 17, contrasted sharply with frequent comments from U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that the trade pact’s local content rules are an area that needs strengthening to avoid being used as a “back door” for Chinese auto parts.
‘Strikes the right balance’
Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, said the current NAFTA 62.5 percent local content requirement was working just fine and “strikes the right balance” for encouraging local manufacturing investment and keeping the industry’s costs competitive.
Blunt, whose group represents Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler urged a “very cautions and careful” approach for any origin rule changes and discussed the affects of stricter enforcement.
“It could make us less competitive as compared to our international peers and affect our ability to export,” Blunt said.
“It could deny us access to supply chains which would drive up costs and could affect sales and ultimately employment within the industry.”
Don’t want outsiders to benefit
Ross has said that NAFTA’s rules of origin need tightening to avoid producers from outside the region to benefit from tariff-free access to the U.S. market. He also has noted that vehicles now have many new electronic components that were not contemplated when the pact was negotiated in the early 1990s.
But Blunt disputed that the origin rules were allowing China to benefit from NAFTA in a major way, arguing that Chinese components make up less than six percent of the value of North American-built vehicles.
His comments were seconded by representatives of other groups, including the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA), representing parts makers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes Detroit and foreign automakers building vehicles in the United States, and the Association Global Automakers, a group that represents international automakers that sell into the U.S. market.
Not opposed to review
Leigh Merino, senior director of regulatory affairs for MEMA, said auto components and subsystems in particular depend on complex “ecosystem” of diverse parts suppliers and small changes to this “can be extremely disruptive.”
Nonetheless, the trade groups said that they were not opposed to examining ways to improve the rules.
The NAFTA hearings, which allow industry groups and companies to express views on the U.S. negotiating objectives for the talks are expected to conclude on Thursday.
Three videos from a mobile phone that described the beatings of an Indonesian crewman aboard a Taiwan-flagged vessel led Allison Lee to find her role as an advocate for those afflicted: migrant fishermen.
Lee, the co-founder of the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union, was recognized by the United States for safeguarding the rights of foreign fishermen working in Taiwan.
In accepting her award in Washington on Tuesday, she made one appeal: to end slavery on the open sea.
To know the path from ocean to consumers’ dinner plates is to know the story of floating sweatshops, Lee told VOA on Tuesday.
“Migrant fishermen are vulnerable to exploitation,” she said.
State Department award
Flanked by President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, Lee was one of the eight men and women to receive “Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery Award” at the State Department, where the 2017 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released.
Lee is the first Taiwan citizen to receive the honor.
Migrant workers aboard Taiwan-flagged fishing vessels that operate in international waters are not covered by the so-called Labor Standards Act, the laws governing employer and employee rights. Therefore, they do not benefit from Taiwan’s minimum-wage regulations regarding overtime pay, Lee said.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen reaffirmed her government’s pledge to battle against human trafficking.
“Taiwan is committed to working with all stakeholders to fight human trafficking,” Tsai tweeted.
For eight consecutive years, Taiwan has been ranked in the “Tier 1” category, the best ranking in the human-trafficking report.
While acknowledging Taiwan’s “serious and sustained efforts,” Washington urged Taipei to increase efforts to prosecute and convict traffickers under the anti-trafficking law.
‘Vigorously investigate’ infractions
The State Department also urged Taiwan to “vigorously investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute the owners of Taiwan-owned or -flagged fishing vessels that allegedly commit abuse and labor trafficking on board long-haul fishing vessels.”
The TIP Report is a symbol of the U.S. moral and legal obligation to combat tragic human rights abuses and as well as to advance human dignity around the world, said Susan Coppedge, the U.S. Ambassador-at-large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
“Tier 1 countries meet the minimum standards to combat trafficking, but that’s just the minimum. They don’t rest on their laurels, so to speak,” Coppedge told VOA on Tuesday.
“They need to continue their efforts to combat trafficking, and one of the areas where Taiwan can make additional progress is in labor trafficking,” she added.
On January 15, 2017, the Act for Distant Water Fisheries took effect in Taiwan amid growing pressure on Taiwan’s seafood industry to crack down on modern-day slavery and abuses for migrants working on the island’s fishing vessels.
Lee told reporters that being a Christian gave her strength to withstand the pressure from government officials and the industry.
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