Month: June 2017

Minnesota’s government and businesses will continue to engage with Cuba in the areas they can, like agricultural trade, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s partial rollback of the detente, Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith said on Thursday.

The first U.S. state representative to make an official visit to Communist-run Cuba since Trump’s announcement on Friday, Smith said authorities there were worried about the setback to bilateral relations.

Leading a bipartisan trade delegation from Minnesota, she said she was therefore glad to carry the message that there was still plenty of support for continuing to normalize relations.

“There is no denying the actions Trump took last Friday are a real setback,” Smith, a Democrat, said in an interview in the gardens of Havana’s iconic Hotel Nacional. “But the important thing to me is that there is bipartisan support at the federal level for normalizing and modernizing our relationship.”

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, in May led a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, to introduce legislation to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

Minnesota is one of the largest U.S. farming states, and Smith’s delegation included its agriculture commissioner and the head of its corn growers association. The delegation hopes to improve ties with and promote exports to Cuba.

U.S. farm groups have been particularly critical of the decision by Trump, a Republican, to retreat from Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s opening toward Cuba, saying it could derail huge growth in agricultural exports that totaled $221 million last year.

U.S. law exempts food from a decades-old embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba, although cumbersome rules on executing transactions have made deals difficult and costly.

While Trump’s new Cuba policy does not directly target agriculture, it damages improved relations, the farm groups say.

Trump ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the island’s military, which manages much of the economy.

The Minnesota delegation met this week with officials of the Cuban ministries of foreign affairs and agriculture, while also visiting a cooperative and local food markets.

But the tour did not include the usual trip to the Mariel port and special development zone, which Cuba hopes will attract foreign investment and become a major shipping hub in the Caribbean. It is controlled by a military-affiliated company.

“In Minnesota we don’t have a lot of cocoa or coffee or pineapples, but we do have a lot of corn and beans,” Smith said. “We need each others’ products.”

Cuba invited the Minnesota delegation to a trade show later in the year, Smith said, while Minnesota invited Cuban officials to visit.

“I am very hopeful all of those things will lead us to a place where we can move forward.”
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JetSmart, a low-cost airline set to launch this year in Chile, said on Thursday it will offer one-way tickets for less than $2, as the nation’s passenger air market becomes increasingly competitive.

“We will have 30,000 tickets for 1,000 pesos ($1.50) per one-way trip plus taxes, to fly within Chile … in 2017,” JetSmart, owned by Indigo Partners, an airline-focused U.S. investment fund Indigo Partners, said on its website.

Indigo Partners has already carved out a niche in ultra-low-cost airlines and owns Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris and part of Denver-based Frontier Airlines.

Indigo is known for unbundled, or a la carte, fares that carry cheap base prices but charge additional fees for extras, such as carry-on bags too big to fit under the seat and advance seat assignments.

In February, Indigo announced that JetSmart would operate three Airbus A320s in Chile in 2017, and another six in 2018.

While the company will focus on domestic routes, it will eye opportunities for regional expansion once established in Chile, Indigo managing partner Bill Franke said at the time.

Chile’s airline market is dominated by LATAM Airlines, Latin America’s largest carrier, with a smaller share taken by established low-cost carrier Sky.

LATAM, which has been facing increasing pressure from low-cost airlines throughout the region, is rolling out a partial low-cost model this year.

Low-cost carrier Viva Air launched in Peru in May, low-cost airline Flybondi is set to launch later this year in Argentina, and Norwegian Air is set to launch long-haul, low-cost routes from Europe to Buenos Aires early next year.
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A booming plastics and packaging industry in Asia – including China – is being driven by rising incomes and consumption, with analysts saying a growing middle class will add to the rise in plastics demand across the region. But it comes along with a rising environmental alarm over plastic pollution in rivers and oceans.

Online plastics industry websites paint a picture of growth and trade and investment worth billions of dollars to Asian economies.

Robust plastics industry

China has been a regional leader in plastics production rising over the past six decades to capture more than a 20 percent share of global plastics production. Southeast Asia accounts for a further 20 percent of global output.

Economists at Australia’s ANZ Bank say global plastics consumption has roughly tripled over the past 20 years.

“In developing markets, population growth, rising disposable incomes, urbanization, and changing lifestyles will drive this demand even further, particularly for plastic packaging, building and construction, automotive and health care industries,” they said in a recent report.

Vietnam has reported an average growth of 18 percent in the plastics industry, with bags a leading export.

Within the 10 member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) plastics and plastic products netted the region almost $40 billion in export revenues in 2013.

Thailand is a regional leader in plastics per capita consumption of plastics at 40 kilograms. Malaysia reports 35 kilograms per person and Indonesia is at 17 kilograms per person.

Bad for environment

But the plastics and food packaging industries have a dark side. Plastic pollution in rivers and oceans has at times creating floating islands, and with floating debris and micro-plastics ingested by marine life.

In February, United Nations Environment “declared war on plastics pollution”, launching an “unprecedented” campaign targeting sources of marine litter, micro-plastics in cosmetics and excessive waste of single-use plastics by 2022.

A research paper published in the Nature Communications journal by the Ocean Cleanup – a Dutch Foundation, said between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the oceans each year. “The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly in Asia, account for 67 percent of the global total,” the journal read.

China’s Yangtze River reported “considerably higher plastic concentrations” than any other sampled river worldwide” dumping 330,000 metric tons of plastic into the East China Sea. India’s Ganges river is also of major concern to environmentalists.

The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently warned unless steps are taken to curb the pollution, plastics could outweigh fish by 2050.

Environmentalists estimate more than eight million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean, impacting ecosystems, killing around one million sea birds, some 100,000 sea mammals and millions of fish.

A U.N. Oceans Conference in early June called on nations to take steps on plastics consumption with China, Thailand, and Indonesia and the Philippines committing to reduce plastics consumption.

Thailand’s difficult task

Penchom Saetang, director of Thai–based Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH), said reducing Thai consumption of plastics will be a challenge.

“In my opinion, it’s very difficult because the Thai people are very familiar with the easy going way, easy to use plastics because in Thailand, Thailand is a country that consumers – we have a lot of food and we need plastic bags in every aspect of consumption. So to decrease the plastic is very, very difficult”, Penchom told VOA.

The government in Bangkok has sent out a 20 year strategy for tackling the problem.

But Greenpeace Thailand director, Tara Buakamsri, said although the Thai government has set out a plastic debris management plan, they should now focus on specific goals.

“On the one hand they are looking at a very holistic approach on how to deal with plastic waste. In the other hand they are missing something that is very important – they don’t have a specific target for reduction. It has to set a very ambitious target for this but they maybe it’s something I see missing from the plan,” Tara said.

 Food industry

New Zealand based environmental activist Anna Dawson spent three months in the Philippines in 2016. She cycled 2,000 kilometers on a bamboo bike scouring and cleaning beaches of plastics and supporting local communities to reduce plastics use.

Dawson says the food industry should be a target to reduce plastics use.

“The change has to start with food and how we go about eating food – that was probably from the beach cleanups the most clear statistic that came through whether it be compostable packaging or just encouraging people to eat more fresh fruit and veggies – market shopping instead of supermarket shopping,” Dawson told VOA.

Dawson said government policies should focus on reducing plastics production.
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Food exporters including the United States and European Union are stepping up pressure on China to scale back plans for intensive inspections of imports that they say would hamper access to its fast-growing market.

The group, which also includes Japan and Australia, sent a joint letter to Chinese regulators asking them to suspend a proposed requirement, due to take effect Oct. 1, for each food shipment to have an inspection certificate from a foreign government. They say that would disrupt trade and ask Beijing to follow global practice by applying the requirement only to higher-risk foods.

The dispute, about which governments have said little in public, adds to complaints Beijing is reducing market access for goods ranging from medical technology to farm-related biotech in violation of its free-trade commitments.

The letter, dated June 12 and seen by The Associated Press, was sent by an unusually broad group including the 28-nation European Union, the United States, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Israel and four other countries. It is addressed to the director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, known as AQSIQ, and the Chinese commerce minister. A foreign official who asked not to be identified further due to the sensitivity of the issue confirmed the letter was sent to Chinese regulators.

The letter says the rules would affect billions of dollars’ worth of meat, fruit, dairy and other products and thousands of suppliers who look to China as a growing export market. Foreign suppliers complain Beijing already uses safety rules in ways that hamper access for beef and other goods in violation of its market-opening commitments.

AQSIQ did not reply to a request for comment or questions sent by fax about how regulations might be changed in response to foreign appeals.

The depth of U.S. concern about the impact on American farmers and food processors is reflected in Washington’s decision to take part in the group at a time when President Donald Trump has downplayed trade disputes with Beijing to gain Chinese support in dealing with North Korea.

The EU role highlights the broad scope of foreign anxiety. Action by the EU requires unanimous agreement by its members, which means nations including Greece and Hungary that want to attract Chinese investment consider the threat serious enough to risk a possible backlash. Eastern European countries with little manufacturing pay for Chinese goods by selling ham, apples and other food to China.

Chinese food imports in the first four months of this year rose 17 percent over a year earlier to $39.4 billion.

Foreign governments have been lobbying Beijing since last year to scale back the proposed regulations. European officials complained they appeared to be intended to shield Chinese suppliers from competition and allow Beijing to block imports from individual countries if it chose.

China submitted its proposed regulations to the World Trade Organization as an official notice to other governments, which have 60 days to comment on them. They were posted this week on a WTO website.

In a possible concession to foreign appeals, the regulations on the WTO website say inspection certificates would be required to say food items were made by a supplier supervised by government regulators and were fit for human consumption. That appeared to be a significant change from an earlier proposal to require inspectors to confirm that food complies with China’s quality standards, a provision to which foreign governments objected.

The latest version still says each “batch of food” would require a certificate, a step foreign officials previously complained would waste resources that should be focused on high-risk products such as dairy.

The June 12 letter appeals to Chinese regulators to alter the proposed rules to allow imports from foreign suppliers that are approved by government inspectors without requiring a separate certificate for each shipment.

The rules would apply to items from meat and dried fruit to cocoa and spices, according to the document.

Foreign officials earlier expressed concern they might extend to such products as coffee, wine, pasta and chocolate, but it was unclear whether the list submitted to the WTO included such processed foods.

China contends the inspection requirement is supported by the Codex Alimentarius, the “Food Code” of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization. The Codex sets quality standards but other nations say it recommends certificates only for risky products.

The EU and other governments arranged for the president of the Codex council, Awilo Ochieng Pernet, a Swiss lawyer, to attend an April 6 seminar with Chinese officials in Beijing to explain its standards.

The proposed rules follow an avalanche of scandals over Chinese suppliers caught selling tainted milk and other shoddy or counterfeit food products.

Western officials say the proposed food rules appear meant to shift responsibility away from AQSIQ, which Chinese consumers often blame for safety failures.

Beijing already is at odds with the U.S. and Europe over low-priced exports of steel and aluminum they say are hurting foreign competitors.

In the Trump administration’s first trade complaint, a group for American aluminum producers asked March 9 for higher import duties on Chinese-made aluminum foil to counter what it said were improper subsidies.

 
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European Union leaders open a two-day summit in Brussels Thursday to address everything from Britain’s planned exit from the regional economic bloc to the resurging economy.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s remarks at the two-day meeting are expected to include reassurances about the futures of the three million citizens of other EU countries currently living in Britain.

Together with the future of more than 1 million British citizens living elsewhere in the EU, the issue is one of the major topics the two sides must agree on as part of negotiations that began earlier this week.

After May speaks Thursday night, the rest of the leaders will meet without her to discuss their side of the Brexit process that was triggered by a British referendum one year ago and is set to finish by the end of March 2019.

The EU summit will also tackle migration, renewing sanctions against Russia and efforts to combat online extremism.
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