Month: August 2017

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says new measures will be rolled out this week to combat economic speculation in the crisis-ridden country.

In an interview distributed via state-run media Sunday, Maduro said he was working with a “special commission” of the new, pro-government Constituent Assembly to clamp down on price gouging.

The commission is “going to announce a set of actions so that the maximum price of the products is respected,” Maduro said, without providing details. He also warned that “very severe justice” would “shake the society.”

​Venezuelans constantly complain of scarcity of food, medicine and personal hygiene products — and of outrageous prices amid soaring inflation.

The currency has shriveled in value, down from eight bolivars to the dollar in 2010 to more than 8,000 bolivars last month, as CNN Money recently pointed out. A single-serve bottle of water can cost about 1,200 bolivars.

Maduro previously declared a war on speculation in 2013, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. 

Carlos Larrazabal, president of Fedecamaras, a union representing Venezuela’s business sector, accused the socialist administration of trying to smother private enterprise.

“The government has a political agenda. Instead of correcting problems of supply and production,” the Constituent Assembly has “deepened” Venezuela’s crisis, Larrazabal said in an interview Sunday with Caracas television station Televen.

The assembly declared on Friday that it would wrest legislative power from the opposition-led National Assembly, a move denounced by many in Venezuela and beyond. The United States does not recognize the Constituent Assembly as valid.

Larrazabal said Venezuela is suffering “the consequences of bad economic policy, with an exchange mechanism that is not transparent, which does not allow raw materials” into the country. He also complained of price controls.

The archbishop of Caracas, Jorge Urosa Savino, recently reiterated his call to the Maduro government to ease Venezuelans’ suffering. He said the Roman Catholic Church has repeatedly urged the opposition “to defend the rights of the Venezuelan people.”

This article originated with VOA’s Spanish service.

 
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An increasing number of Native American tribes are looking to the marijuana business to break the poverty on reservations, but they are treading quietly over uncertainties in federal policy, which could shift under President Donald Trump.

Cannabis is big business in states that have legalized its medical or recreational use. Arcview, a California cannabis investor network, says the U.S. marijuana market earned $6.7 billion in 2016.

Apart from its medical and euphoric properties, proponents of cannabis cite the industrial potential of hemp, which is derived from the male cannabis plant. It is used globally in more than 25,000 products, from fabrics to food to pharmaceuticals. Because of its association with marijuana, hemp cultivation is strictly controlled in the U.S., and manufacturers must import hemp fiber, seed and oil.

Environmental, financial benefits

“Let’s just look at one small piece of what hemp can do,” said Leslie Bocskor, founder of Electrum Partners, which works with states and tribes looking to enter the cannabis industry. Hemp, Bocskor said, can be used to manufacture plastics that are more environmentally friendly than plastics made from oil and gas, which aren’t biodegradable.

“When you put hemp plastic into landfill, it will break down into things that are not damaging, at worst, and, at best, it can be additive to the soil it’s put into,” he said. “It also causes far less pollution to produce hemp plastics.”

Tribes stand to realize even greater profits than states due to their tax advantage.

State cannabis producers and retailers can’t deduct business expenses on their federal tax bills and end up paying a larger part of their gross earnings to the government.

But recognized tribes and tribal corporations don’t pay federal income tax on earnings gained on reservations.

“This effectively creates a profit margin — versus non-tribally owned cannabis businesses — of what could be up to 85 percent,” said Bocskor.

So why aren’t tribes leaping at the opportunity?

Conflicting laws

The federal government regulates drugs through the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which bans the use of marijuana.

“But states have been going ahead with legal marijuana programs ever since 1996, when California was the first to legalize a medical cannabis program,” said Vincent Sliwoski, a Portland attorney who represents cannabis companies. “States have been defying federal law for a long time, and there have been sporadic enforcement and non-enforcement periods.”

In 2013, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a guidance memo essentially giving states permission to grow and sell marijuana without fear of federal prosecution — with some restrictions: States may not allow it to grow on public land, for example, be sold to minors, distributed in states where it is illegal or channel profits into drug cartels. DOJ issued similar guidance to tribal governments a few months later.

“Now this is just paper; it isn’t a law,” said Sliwoski, who also teaches cannabis law. “It’s the attorney general telling states, ‘Don’t waste federal funds right now, but maybe our minds will change later.’”

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized some form of marijuana use. Several tribes have attempted to enter the market; most have been shut down by the government.

In July 2015, federal agents raided two reservations in northern California, alleging they were producing unlawful quantities of marijuana, which the tribes denied.Three months later, agents seized industrial hemp plants from Wisconsin’s Menominee Nation,charging that non-Natives with ties to the Colorado marijuana industry were managing the operation and that the plants contained higher levels of THC than permitted. The Menominee said they had invited the government to test the plants and had offered to destroy any plants that tested too high.

In the wake of these raids, South Dakota’s Flandreau Santee Sioux tribe burned its crop and shut down operations, fearing a similar crackdown.

But others, such as the Squaxin Island Tribe in Washington state, where marijuana is legal, have successful retail businesses. Still other tribes, including South Dakota’s Oglala Sioux, have banned marijuana altogether.

It’s not clear why authorities have pressured tribal marijuana operations. Sliwoski said it’s possible some police agencies are interpreting the DOJ memo incorrectly. “It’s also possible that certain local U.S. attorneys have been more zealous than their counterparts in other areas, and that enforcement has fallen disproportionately upon tribes for that reason,” he said.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions openly opposes marijuana. And a presidential spokesman said Trump sees a big difference between medical and recreational marijuana. The president understands the use of medical marijuana to ease suffering, the spokesman said, and he suggested that crackdowns on recreational marijuana could be coming.

Bocskor continues to advise tribes and predicts the government will hold back from stricter marijuana enforcement.

“The federal government is in a very difficult position here,” he said, noting that Colorado has received more than $500 million in tax revenue from marijuana sales since it legalized the drug in 2014.

Taking that revenue away from states, he said, “would be a very, very unpopular” move.
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China expressed “strong dissatisfaction” on Monday with the U.S. launch of an investigation into China’s alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property, calling it “irresponsible.”

The U.S. Trade Representative formally announced the investigation on Friday, a widely expected move following a call from President Donald Trump earlier last week to determine whether a probe was needed.

The investigation is the administration’s first direct measure against Chinese trade practices, which the White House and U.S. business groups say are damaging American industry.

China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement that the move sent the wrong signal to the world, and would be condemned by the international community.

“The United States’ disregard of World Trade Organization rules and use of domestic law to initiate a trade investigation against China is irresponsible, and its criticism of China is not objective,” an unnamed ministry spokesman said.

“China expresses strong dissatisfaction with the United States’ unilateral protectionist action. We urge the U.S. side to respect the facts, … respect multilateral principles, and act prudently,” the official said, adding that Beijing would take “all appropriate measures, and resolutely defend China’s lawful interests.”

The United States should instead work with China to find consensus and promote healthy trade relations, the ministry said.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a popular trade tool in the 1980s that has been rarely used in the past decade, allows the U.S. president to unilaterally impose tariffs or

other trade restrictions to protect U.S. industries from “unfair trade practices” of foreign countries.

Beijing would almost certainly challenge any such measures at the WTO.

But China’s policy of forcing foreign companies to turn over technology to Chinese joint venture partners and failure to crack down on intellectual property theft have been longstanding problems for several U.S. administrations.

Administration officials have said that Chinese theft could amount to as much as $600 million, though Chinese officials deny that such forced technology transfers exist. They say the country is continuously improving intellectual property protection.

The probe will likely further complicate the U.S. relationship with China, the country’s largest trading partner.

The Trump administration has been pressing Beijing to take steps to encourage North Korea to curb its nuclear and missile programs.
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The port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon wants the world to know it’s ready for business.

British safety managers are training local hires to operate heavy machinery and Chinese technicians are running diagnostics on two new container cranes that tower over the harbor, just 28 kilometers (18 miles) from the Syrian border.

After six years of civil war in Syria, markets across the Middle East are anticipating a mammoth reconstruction boom that could stimulate billions of dollars in economic activity. Lebanon, as Syria’s neighbor, is in prime position to capture a share of that windfall and revive its own sluggish economy.

Battles still rage in Syria’s north and east, and in pockets around the capital, Damascus, but the survival of President Bashar Assad’s government now appears beyond doubt.

That is introducing an element of stability into forecasts not seen since 2011, when the war broke out. The Damascus International Fair, a high-profile annual business event before the war, opened on Thursday evening for the first time since war broke out. The 10-day event kicked off with much fanfare, with participants from 43 countries and hundreds of attendees.

The World Bank estimates the cost to rebuild Syria at $200 billion.

For Lebanon, that could be just the stimulus it needs — the tiny Mediterranean country’s growth rate has hovered around 1.5 percent since 2013. And though the capital, Beirut, has grown visibly richer over the years, Tripoli and the impoverished north have lagged behind.

“Lebanon is in front of an opportunity that it needs to take very seriously,” said Raya al-Hassan, a former finance minister from northern Lebanon who now directs the Tripoli Special Economic Zone project that’s planned to be built adjacent to the port.

Ahmad Tamer, the port manager, estimates Syria’s reconstruction will create a demand for 30 million tons of cargo capacity annually.

Syria’s chief ports, Tartous and Latakia, also on the Mediterranean Sea, have a combined capacity of 10 to 15 million tons, he says. He wants Tripoli port to be ready to step in for a portion of the rest.

“We could provide up to 5 or 6 or 7 million tons,” he says.

The port is nearing the completion of the first phase of an expansion project first drawn up in 2009, then revised with an eye on Syria in 2016. Capital investment has reached around $400 million, according to the port manager.

On a map, Tamer pointed to a vacant quadrant where preparations are underway to build silos to hold grain destined for regional markets.

Syria’s conflict has decimated its food production, which included an average of 4.1 million tons of wheat annually before the war, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

In 2017, it managed to produce just 1.8 million tons.

Lebanon’s businessmen and politicians have always maintained close relations with Syrian counterparts. Syria is among Lebanon’s largest trade partners, and arguably its most reliable supplier of cheap labor. Lebanon, in exchange, is the banker to many of Syria’s enterprises and its wealthy elites.

These ties give Lebanon — and Tripoli in particular — an edge over competitors vying for the Syrian market.

The city’s location is also attracting foreign investment. Tripoli port signed a 25-year lease with the Emirati port operator Gulftainer in 2013, to manage and invest in the terminal.

“Our aim was to invest here in anticipation of Syria’s reconstruction,” said Ibrahim Hermes, the CEO of Lebanon’s subsidiary of Gulftainer.

Lebanon is now a fixture on itineraries of prospective investors. Hermes said he has seen delegations arriving from Europe, Asia and especially China, to scope out trade opportunities.

Before the war in Syria, goods coming through Lebanon’s ports used to transit as far afield as Iraq — saving ships from having to take the sea journey through the Suez Canal and around the Arabian Peninsula.

There is talk now that Tripoli could even be a terminal in China’s trillion-dollar new “Silk Road” project, carving a trade route from east Asia to Europe.

The Chinese firm Qingdao Haixi Heavy-Duty Machinery Co. sold the two 28-story container cranes now at the port. Safety signs inside the structures are posted in English and Mandarin.

“Tripoli can be a main transshipment hub for the eastern Mediterranean,” said Ira Hare, a sunburned British manager working for Gulftainer.

Lebanon has officially sought “dissociation” from the Syrian war so as not to fuel rancor among political parties split between those aligned with Damascus and those against it.

But there is also an air of inevitability about the re-normalization of relations, as Assad looks, for the short-term at least, to stay on in power.

Syria’s chief champion in Lebanon, the militant Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces, evinces little doubt.

“Our national interest is for the border between Lebanon and Syria to be open … because, tomorrow the routes will open to Iraq and to Jordan and we want to be able to transport Lebanese goods,” Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech this week.

A Hezbollah minister, Hussein Hajj Hussein, is one of two Cabinet ministers headed to Syria this week in a highly controversial visit, the first since the start of the war. Prime Minister Saad Hariri, an Assad critic, said the visit did not have government backing.

Damascus also knows it will be brought back in from the cold.

The Damascus International Fair, which promises to attract investors from Russia, China, Iran, and other places, is a telling indicator of the mood in the Syrian capital.

Europe and the United States are hesitant to finance the reconstruction projects so long as Assad, a pariah to the West, remains in power. But Russia, China, and Iran, as well as investors in Lebanon and the Middle East, are showing no signs of hesitation.

“As soon as there is a political agreement to end the war, we will be among the first countries to play a role in reconstruction,” said al-Hassan, the former finance minister.
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The United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up their first round of talks on Sunday to revamp the NAFTA trade pact, vowing to keep up a blistering pace of negotiations that some involved in the process said may be too fast to bridge deep differences.

In a joint statement issued at the end of five days of negotiations in Washington, the top trade officials from the three countries said Mexico would host the next round of talks from Sept. 1 to 5.

The talks will move to Canada later in September, then return to the United States in October, with additional rounds planned for later this year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

“While a great deal of effort and negotiation will be required in the coming months, Canada, Mexico and the United States are committed to an accelerated and comprehensive negotiation process that will upgrade our agreement,” the officials said.

One person directly involved in the talks described the schedule as exceedingly fast, given that past trade deals took years to negotiate.

The three countries are trying to complete a full modernization of the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement by early 2018, before Mexico’s national election campaign starts.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap NAFTA without major changes to reduce U.S. goods trade deficits with its North American neighbors, describing it as a disaster that cost Americans hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

The joint statement said the three countries made “detailed conceptual presentations” across the scope of NAFTA issues and began work to negotiate some of the agreement’s texts, although it did not provide details on the topics.

Negotiating teams “agreed to provide additional text, comments or alternate proposals during the next two weeks,” ahead of the Mexico round.

Not All Cards on the Table

The source involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there had been no drama as the three countries exchanged proposals.

Not all cards were put on the table, the source added, saying that during four four-hour sessions on rules of origin, the United States did not reveal its proposed targets for boosting North American and U.S. content for the automotive sector.

Lighthizer had made clear that strengthening rules of origin was one of his top priorities.

“The instructions that the groups received are clear: Work and work fast,” said a second person participating in the talks.

“This is not a negotiation like others we’ve been in. “We will not sacrifice the substance of a negotiation to meet a schedule,” added the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. Trade experts have consistently said that the schedule is

far too ambitious, given the amount of work and differences on key issues.

“It’s hard to imagine how they can do something very substantive and do it very quickly. It’s almost as if you can have one or the other. You can have it quick, or you can have it meaningful,” said John Masswohl, director of government relations at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
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Add next week’s total eclipse of the sun to the list of worker distractions that cost U.S. companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

American employers will see at least $694 million in missing output for the roughly 20 minutes that outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates workers will take out of their workday on Monday, Aug. 21 to stretch their legs, head outside the office and gaze at the nearly two-and-a-half minute eclipse.

And 20 minutes is a conservative estimate, said Andy Challenger, vice president at the Chicago-based firm. Many people may take even longer to set up their telescopes or special viewing glasses, or simply take off for the day.

“There’s very few people who are not going to walk outside when there’s a celestial wonder happening above their heads to go out and view it,” Challenger said, estimating that 87 million employees will be at work during the eclipse.

To get the overall figure of nearly $700 million, Challenger multiplied that by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest estimate for average hourly wages for all workers 16 and over.

Just as the Earth is a mere speck in the universe, however, Challenger said this is still a small sum.

“Compared to the amount of wages being paid to an employee over a course of a year, it is very small,” Challenger said. “It’s not going to show up in any type of macroeconomic data.”

It also pales when compared with the myriad other distractions in the modern workplace, such as the U.S. college basketball championship known as March Madness, the recent U.S. shopping phenomenon called Cyber Monday and the Monday after the Super Bowl.

During the opening week of March Madness, the firm estimated employers experienced $615 million per hour in lost productivity as people watched games and highlights, set up pool brackets and avidly tracked their standings rather than performed actual work.

The Monday after the Super Bowl, meanwhile, resulted in an estimated $290 million in lost output for every 10 minutes of the workday spent by workers discussing the game or watching game highlights and re-runs of their favorite Super Bowl commercials.

And Cyber Monday on the heels of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday at the start of the annual holiday shopping season resulted in $450 million in lost productivity for every 14 minutes spent shopping, not working.

Events like this are likely to have an outsized effect on smaller companies, Challenger said. When their workers are absent, small firms may not have sufficient coverage from coworkers, especially in the current tight labor market where it is hard to find skilled workers.

“When three or four people are missing from an office of 15, it’s a lot more disruptive,” Challenger said.

EVENT AMOUNT IN LOST PRODUCTIVITY

Total Eclipse:   $694 million for the 20 minutes it takes to go outside and watch the eclipse

Cyber Monday:   $450 million for every 14 minutes spent

shopping

March Madness:   $615 million for each hour spent on March Madness activities

Super Bowl:   $290 million for every 10 minutes lost

discussing the game

Fantasy Football:   $990 million for each hour of work time

spent on Fantasy Football

 
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Brexit minister David Davis called on the European Union on Sunday to relax its position that the two sides must first make progress on a divorce settlement before moving on to discussing future relations.

After a slow start to negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain is pressing for talks to move beyond the divorce to offer companies some assurance of what to expect after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

This week, the government will issue five new papers to outline proposals for future ties, including how to resolve any future disputes without “the direct jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ)”, Davis said.

“I firmly believe the early round of the negotiations have already demonstrated that many questions around our withdrawal are inextricably linked to our future relationship,” Davis wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

“Both sides need to move swiftly on to discussing our future partnership, and we want that to happen after the European Council in October,” he wrote, saying the clock was ticking.

EU officials have said there must be “sufficient progress” in the first stage of talks on the rights of expatriates, Britain’s border with EU member Ireland and a financial settlement before they can consider a future relationship.

That has frustrated British officials, who say that until there has been discussion of future ties, including a new customs arrangement and some way of resolving any future

disputes, they cannot solve the Irish border issue or financial settlement, two of the more difficult issues in the talks.

“There are financial obligations on both sides that will not be made void by our exit from the EU,” Davis wrote. “We are working to determine what these are – and interrogating the basis for the EU’s position, line by line, as taxpayers would expect us to do.”

He said the Brexit ministry would “advance our thinking further” with the new papers next week.

On the role of the ECJ, Davis said Britain’s proposals would be based on “precedents” which do not involve the “direct jurisdiction” of the court, which is hated by many pro-Brexit ministers in the governing Conservative Party.

EU officials say the court should guarantee the rights of EU citizens living or working in Britain after Brexit.

“Ultimately, the key question here is how we fairly consider and solve disputes for both sides,” Davis wrote.

 
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Sometimes, it just doesn’t pay to manufacture in the United States. Labor and land are expensive. It is why most consumer products sold here come from overseas. But a multinational electric guitar manufacturer still produces one-third of its instruments near where it started decades ago. Arash Arabasadi names that tune from Maryland.
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Danelle Johnson started designing her own clothes when she was a teenager. Not just because sewing was her hobby. She wanted to stand out among her classmates with a personal, distinctive look. Johnson’s vision of fashion motivated her to start her own design company … on wheels. As Faiza Elmasry reports, the fashion entrepreneur attracts customers who prefer her rolling retail boutique to big malls and online shopping. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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