Month: September 2017

One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas.

Forrest City, located near the Mississippi River, is where the Chinese textile giant Shandong Ruyi plans a $410 million investment to spin yarn at a factory where local workers once built Japanese televisions.

Mayor Larry Bryant says the company is already working on training at the local community college.

“I think everybody is happy,” Bryant said. “Everybody is waiting. If they would tell people tomorrow to come out to fill out applications, they would have thousands.”

Ruyi’s project will consume 200,000 bales of Arkansas cotton annually, nearly all the cotton the state grows each year. So Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Mike Preston expects a surge of new planting.

“That’s going to turn around and put money back in their pockets and the people they employ as well as anyone in between, people who are baling the cotton, transporting and bringing it to facility and anyone transporting out,” he said. “So the supply chain on a company like this, a project like this is exponential.”

Some Chinese investors in the U.S. face challenges from labor unions amid claims of workplace culture clashes.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who has brought nearly $2 billion worth of Chinese investment to his state, says there are always cultural differences to work through.

“There are things we can learn from China entrepreneurship and China workers, how they do things and say, ‘Hey, it’s a great idea that we ought to adopt here.’ And vice versa,” Hutchinson said. “I think you will see that China’s business leaders will see some very good practices that we have that they may want to adopt. I see this as a great win for both sides whenever we have those exchanges.”

The owner of a local barbecue restaurants expects the new Chinese bosses to receive a warm welcome in Forrest City.

“It can’t do anything but help, not only my business, but all the businesses,” said Pierre Evans, owner of Delta Q Barbecue. “That influx of income and influx of money is going to be a big impact to a small community like this.”

Local leaders are especially encouraged by the company’s promise to create 800 jobs and offer wages of more than $15 an hour. That’s nearly double the minimum wage in a community that has been struggling economically for decades.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is making a new push Wednesday for a tax overhaul, visiting the midwestern state of North Dakota to call for lower corporate and individual tax rates.

Trump is pressing Congress to approve tax reforms in the coming months, with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin predicting that changes can be completed by the end of the year.

But tax legislation is one of several complicated issues Congress is facing and Republican and Democratic lawmakers have sharply divergent ideas of how to change the country’s complex tax code.

Trump plans to meet with workers at an oil refinery in North Dakota, a largely rural state along the northern U.S. border with Canada. The White House said Trump would make the case that one of the country’s last major tax overhauls, in 1986, also occurred under a Republican president like Trump, Ronald Reagan, with support from Democratic lawmakers.

North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is traveling with the president on Air Force One to her state, and Trump is hoping she will join at least a handful of other Democrats to support a tax overhaul. With Trump’s national voter approval rates mired in the 30-percent range, Democratic lawmakers in Washington have shunned Trump’s legislative initiatives, mostly notably his efforts to dismantle national health care policies championed by former president Barack Obama.

Specific tax changes

Trump’s tax pitch is the second he has made in a week on trips to states he won in last year’s contentious election against Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State. But like his speech in Missouri last week, Trump is expected to steer clear of specific tax changes he wants.

Trump has continued to call for a national corporate tax rate cut from 35 to 15 percent, a figure most U.S. economists say is unreachable without adding a new tax of some sort to offset the lost revenue the government needs to operate.

As he prepared for the North Dakota trip, Trump again made the inaccurate claim the United States is “the highest taxed nation in the world.” Numerous studies of tax rates around the globe show that by various measures, U.S. taxation is relatively low compared to that in other developed countries.

The World Economic Forum said U.S. business taxes do not rate among the world’s top 27 countries, all of which have total rates above 50 percent. The top U.S. rate, including additional state corporate taxes, totals nearly 39 percent, but corporations often pay far less after deducting their business expenses.

Trump met with top Republican congressional leaders Tuesday about taxes, telling them, “If we’re going to keep momentum going and allow the economy to truly take off as it should, it is vital that we reduce crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers.

“This is more than just tax reform. This is tax cutting,” Trump said. “We’re going to cut taxes, we’re going to reduce taxes, for people, for individuals, for middle income families. We’re going to reduce taxes for companies.”

Trump has feuded with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in recent months over the Senate’s failure to overhaul U.S. health care policies.

But McConnell praised Trump’s commitment to the tax overhaul, saying he was “very engaged on this issue.”

 
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One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas. VOA’s Ping Zhang went to have a look at local expectations and the promise of new jobs.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser expressed optimism on Tuesday about reaching agreement on a revised free trade pact with South Korea, days after Trump suggested scrapping the deal with a key American ally.

Senior U.S. lawmakers and America’s biggest business lobby urged Trump not to pull out of the five-year-old U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), especially at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear missile tests.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, speaking in Mexico City after a second round of NAFTA talks with Canada and Mexico, said negotiations with Seoul were continuing.

“We have a negotiation we’re in,” Lighthizer told reporters when asked whether KORUS would be terminated. “My hope is that we’ll have a successful discussion with the Koreans as things proceed and that the problems with that agreement from our perspective will be worked out.”

Trump said on Saturday he would discuss KORUS’s fate with advisers this week, prompting widespread concern among lawmakers and the business community.

The chairmen and senior Democrats on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee said in a statement on Tuesday that North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear bomb test on Sunday “underscores the vital importance of the strong alliance between the United States and South Korea.”

The statement by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, senior Democrat Richard Neal and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and senior Democrat Ron Wyden said talks to improve South Korea’s implementation and compliance with the trade agreement were welcome. But it said the agreement itself was central to the U.S.-South Korean alliance.

In a separate letter to Trump, Senator Joni Ernest, a Republican from Iowa in the U.S. corn belt, said the South Korean market was especially important for U.S. beef, corn and pork producers.

“Terminating KORUS would leave our farmers at a competitive disadvantage to those in other countries that enjoy preferential trade access to Korea,” Ernst wrote.

In a strongly worded statement the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses, also opposed any “rash and irresponsible” withdrawal.

“We do not believe this move would create a single American job — but it would cost many,” said Tom Donohue, who warned that it would damage relations between the White House and business community.

“Ironically, states across mid-America that voted for the president would take the hit from withdrawal as their agricultural and manufactured goods exports fell in the wake of such a move,” Donohue said.
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New York Fashion Week, the first in a series of global style weeks during September, is gearing up with designers ready to present their visions for Spring 2018.

This season, more than 100 designers will showcase their latest creations in venues across New York on Thursday, although some flagship brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Thom Browne, Proenza Schouler, and Altuzarra have opted to move their shows overseas.

The six-day schedule, which previously ran for a full week, has been streamlined to give buyers and editors more time to fly out to London Fashion Week, which follows directly after New York’s.

“When you look at fashion weeks globally – starting in New York, then London, then Milan, then Paris – it’s basically a month. You have editors and buyers traveling to all those fashion weeks,” said Steven Kolb, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc. (CFDA), describing the “sheer exhaustion” of such a jam-packed schedule.

High-profile fashion houses Calvin Klein and Tom Ford are kicking off the New York shows to “put it on the same playing field” as its European counterparts, Kolb said.

In keeping with the political messaging that often underlies the program, many fashionistas on and off the runway are expected to wear blue ribbons, created in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“The ACLU is an important group that really stands up for people’s rights – the right for people to live their lives as they choose,” Kolb said.

Celebrities have been sporting the ribbon on red carpets already this year, but for fashion week, the ribbon is branded with the NYFW initials.

Last season the CFDA paired up with the Planned Parenthood health group to create pink pins that ended up on the garments of models on the runway, designers such as Marchesa’s Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
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The second round of talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement ended Tuesday amid resistance to discussing Mexico’s low wages and large differences over dispute resolution mechanisms.

The head negotiators for all three countries at the talks in Mexico City said progress had been made, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer said some areas were going to be challenging.

“There’s no secret that the labor provisions will be contentious and that it’s our objective to have provisions that raise wage rates in Mexico,” Lighthizer said. “I think that’s in the interest of Mexicans and in the interest of the United States.”

He also said that while the U.S. had proposed eliminating the current dispute resolution mechanism, “we haven’t had any detailed negotiations” on the system, which is known as Chapter 19.

Text was coming together for most chapters of the treaty, however, including small and medium enterprises, competitiveness, digital trade, services and the environment.

“The strategy is to conclude in the short term those things that can be concluded” and then tackle the thornier issues, Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said.

Regarding energy, Guajardo said “there are no points of difference or controversy.” He said the main question was whether it should have its own chapter or be spread across all chapters.

But those close to the talks said relatively few concrete proposals appear to have been made on contentious issues like dispute-resolution mechanisms, seasonal farm tariffs and regional content rules.

The United States wants to eliminate the Chapter 19 private arbitration panels, while Canada wants to keep them. The panels can overrule tariffs, making it harder for the United States to unilaterally block products.

“It is clear that there are differing positions on Chapter 19,” Guajardo said.

Produce growers, many of whom have operations in all three countries, said they like the current dispute resolution system. They said changing it might force them to adjudicate disputes in courts in one of the three countries, a prospect they don’t relish.

“I think industries across all three countries have found Chapter 19 to be an effective, timely method for dealing with disputes,” said the head of the United Fresh Produce Association, Thomas Stenzel. Repealing it “could certainly make it a much more complicated, legalistic process.”

The U.S. also wants to tighten labor standards and local content rules in products like autos. But business groups want to keep wages out of the talks. Lighthizer declined to go into detail on either of those topics.

“I think mandating wages becomes very difficult across multiple countries,” said Stenzel. “Within the trade agreement itself we believe that the workers’ standards of fair treatment, addressing forced labor, child labor, those issues, is appropriate. But when it comes to wages we don’t feel that that is as appropriate in the trade agreement.”

Mexico has drawn plants and investments by capitalizing on low wages and weak union rules, and Mexican business and labor leaders appear to be resistant to any attempt to tighten labor standards or ensure that Mexican wages rise.

Mexican and Canadian auto unions have said in a report that Mexican autoworkers earn about $3.95 an hour, which is about one-ninth of average wages north of the border.

The United States also wants to increase minimum levels of regional content in products like autos, so that fewer parts are imported from Asia or Europe, assembled in Mexico and labelled “made in North America.”

As for seasonal anti-dumping tariffs, Stenzel said growers don’t like the idea though that proposal appears not to have been formalized yet. Such measures seek to protect producers like tomato growers in Florida against surges in Mexican imports. Stenzel and other big producers fear it could be extended to apply to other crops.

The five days of talks in Mexico City were held in around two dozen working groups. The first round of talks took place in Washington in mid-August and the next round will be held Sept. 23-27 in Ottawa, Canada.
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Leaders of BRICS, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa combined, on Monday expressed concerns over Pakistan-based militant groups and cited them as a problem for regional security.

The economic bloc called for the supporters of these groups to be held accountable.

The call for action comes two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump put Pakistan on notice to stop harboring Afghan militant groups that use Pakistani soil to plan and launch attacks against Afghan and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

BRICS members condemned terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and called for an “immediate cessation of violence” in the country.

“We, in this regard, express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir,” read a joint declaration issued by the economic bloc during its annual summit in China’s Xiamen.

“We reaffirm that those responsible for committing, organizing, or supporting terrorist acts must be held accountable,” the declaration added.

While the BRICS statement has not named Islamabad directly, many of the groups cited in the declaration find safe haven in the country.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of turning a blind eye to the issue of safe havens for Afghan militant groups.

Trump last month blamed Pakistan for “housing” terrorist groups that are fighting Afghan and American forces in Afghanistan. He vowed not to be “silent about Pakistan’s safe havens” for the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

New Delhi also has accused Pakistan-based religious groups of supporting militancy in Indian Kashmir.

Analysts say the new charges put additional pressure on Pakistan for its alleged support of regional militant groups that are fighting in Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir.

“The BRICS summit’s decision that Laskar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are a threat to the region will certainly have an impact on Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts,” Rasul Baksh Raees, a political analyst in Pakistan, told VOA.

Possible change in China’s stance

Experts believe the BRICS statement also indicates a change in China’s traditional stance toward militant groups in the region.

“This has now become a necessity, as China and Russia are looking into the matter very seriously and it’s becoming evident that China might not support Pakistan the way it has done in the past,” Pakistani analyst Raza Rumi told VOA.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, believes the BRICS statement is a serious development.

“This is a big deal because China has agreed to single out, on the global stage, terror groups that it typically blocks from getting sanctioned on the global stage,” Kugelman said.

He believes China has economic interests in the region and “needs stability in Pakistan as it builds out its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] in that country.”

“In fact, Beijing has a strong interest in Pakistan cracking down on all terror groups, not just some,” Kugelman underscored.
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As a parade of motorists rolled down their windows on the edges of a Houston Home Depot parking lot offering cash, the crowd of day laborers had slowly thinned to about a dozen by mid-morning.

The workers who were already gone were off to tear out soggy carpeting, carry ruined sofas to the curb and saw apart mold-infested drywall. Those who still remained knew they were hot commodities and weren’t going to settle for low offers.

The owner of a car dealership shook his head and drove off after his $10-an-hour proposal to clean flooded vehicles drew no takers. A pickup driver who promised $50 for two hours to rip out wet carpeting and move furniture was told the job was too short to be worthwhile.

Day laborers — many of them immigrants and many of them in the country illegally — will continue to be in high demand as workers who clear debris make way for plumbers, electricians, drywall installers and carpenters. Employers are generally small, unregulated contractors or individual homeowners, resulting in a lack of oversight that creates potential for workers to be unpaid or work in dangerous conditions.

Houston’s day laborers are generally settling for $120 to $150 to clear homes of Harvey’s debris for eight hours. As noon struck Friday, three workers took a job for $100 for up to five hours rather than let the whole day slip. It didn’t hurt that the contractor provided tools, distributed bottles of cold water and dangled the prospect of more steady work clearing other houses.

“Now we’ll be busy for the rest of the year,” said the contractor, Nicolas Garcia, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who has had his own business for 15 years. “Now that this disaster happened, we have to step it up.”

Garcia, 55, is working about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston in the Southbelt/Ellington area, a middle-class residential neighborhood whose main streets are lined with fast-food restaurants, strip malls and churches. Waters reached 5 feet in some streets on Aug. 27, forcing families with young children to escape on neighbors’ boats and inflatable swimming pool toys.

The contractor led a caravan of workers to a four-bedroom house that was in better shape than others. Sharon Eldridge, a 63-year-old renter who lives alone, landed in about a foot of water when she stepped out of bed Sunday. Her furniture and clothes were ruined, but she didn’t have to evacuate.

Armando Rivera, a 36-year-old Honduran who is living in the country illegally and raising four children with his wife, said it was painful to see so many people die and lose their home, but the storm would jolt the local construction economy.

“When there is work, you can live a good life,” he said as he took a break from knifing Eldridge’s water-logged beige carpeting into pieces small enough to carry outside.

Construction workers were scarce even before Harvey struck. The Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group, said Tuesday that a survey of 1,608 members showed 58 percent struggled to fill carpentry jobs and 53 percent were having trouble finding electricians and bricklayers. Texas’ shortages were more acute.

Nationwide unemployment in construction was 4.7 percent in August, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier. Ken Simonson, chief economist for the contractor trade group, said the latest indicator was the lowest for any August since the government began keeping track in 2000.

“From what I’m reading, we’ve never seen so many homes either destroyed or at least rendered uninhabitable at once,” Simonson said. “I doubt there is enough labor with the skills.”

A sharp increase in immigration arrests under President Donald Trump may further limit the labor pool. The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made about 10,000 arrests this year, second-highest in the country after Dallas. The region has about 600,000 immigrants in the country illegally, third-largest behind New York and Los Angeles.

Laborers who gathered at Home Depot stores for Harvey work — some on their fourth of fifth major storm — swapped stories about exploitation that either they or someone they knew had suffered. Jose Pineda, a Nicaraguan who entered the country illegally in 2005 through the Arizona desert, said he had injured his arm with a saw and was shorted $380 but decided not to complain. Arturo Garcia, a legal resident from Mexico, knows three people who got hernias on the job and had to pay for surgery out of pocket because they were uninsured.

Storm recoveries pose heightened danger. A 2009 study by researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network found that day laborers working on storm recovery during Hurricane Katrina were commonly exposed to mold, worked on roofs without safeguards against falling and were exposed to chemicals and asbestos.

Pineda, 40, joined three other laborers at a three-bedroom house with soaked red carpet, moldy leather chairs, a television and other furniture strewn about as if a tornado hit. The owner balked in the Home Deport parking lot when workers asked for $120 each to clear the house and bargained them down to $100.

When Pineda saw the home and experienced its overwhelming stench, he realized it would take much longer than the owner promised and insisted on $150. The workers left when the owner refused.

“They didn’t realize that everything in the house was ruined,” said the owner, who identified himself only by his first name, Guy. “We just don’t have the money to pay them.”

 
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