Day: August 29, 2018

The U.S. economy expanded at a 4.2 percent annual rate in April, May and June, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The second-quarter growth figure for gross domestic product was one-tenth of a percentage point higher than initial estimates.

“The economy is in good shape,” said PNC Bank Chief Economist Gus Faucher. He wrote that this was the best “year-over-year increase in three years.”

But Faucher also said growth above 4 percent was “unsustainable” and that the economy was “set to slow somewhat in the second half of 2018,” hitting 3.4 percent growth for the whole year. He predicted U.S. economic growth would slow further in 2019 and 2020 as the “stimulus from tax cuts and spending increases fades.”

U.S. President Donald Trump cheered the news:

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, had a different take on the report.

“No amount of President Trump tweets can change the fact that real wages are declining,” he said in a statement, adding that the cost of living — particularly gas and health care costs, “thanks in large part to Republicans and the Trump administration” — is “continuing to climb.”

Wednesday’s report from the Commerce Department was a routine revision; such changes are made as more complete data become available.

Growth figures were boosted by a decline in imports, particularly petroleum, and by some temporary factors.

One of those factors was a surge in soybean exports, which were rushed at a faster-than-usual pace to beat tariffs imposed by China in retaliation for new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese goods.

The new second-quarter figures were nearly double those of the first quarter.
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British officials have been turning to Japan for tips on how to dodge American sanctions on Iran, according to local media.

Britain is already seeking from Washington exemptions from some U.S. sanctions, which are being re-imposed by President Donald Trump because of the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year from a controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. The British are especially keen to maintain banking links with Iran and to import Iranian oil.

According to local media, U.K. officials have been asking their Japanese counterparts how they managed in the past to sidestep some aspects of the pre-2015 sanctions regime, which allowed Tokyo to sign oil deals with Iran as well as insurance contracts without incurring U.S. penalties.

Re-imposed U.S. sanctions penalize any foreign companies that deal with Iran by barring them from doing business in America. That threat has already persuaded more than 50 Western firms to shutter their operations in Iran, including French automakers Renault and Peugeot and the French oil giant Total as well as Germany’s Deutsche Bahn railway company and Deutsche Telekom.

Seeking waivers

British ministers have publicly announced that they are hoping to secure waivers from sanctions for oil imports, tanker insurance and banking. There is particular concern, say British officials, about the position of a gas field 240 miles from Aberdeen which is jointly owned by BP and a subsidiary of Iran’s state-controlled oil company.

According to The Times newspaper, British diplomats and Treasury officials have discussed with their Japanese counterparts what options they may have of evading penalties, if British firms continue to trade with Iran. Britain’s Foreign Office hasn’t commented on the specific claims in report. But in a general statement it says: “We are working with European and other partners, to ensure Iran continues to benefit from sanctions relief through legitimate business, for as long as Iran continues to meet its nuclear commitments under the deal.”

Faltering Iranian economy

On Tuesday, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani was grilled by the country’s lawmakers, who for the first time in his five-year tenure called him before parliament to answer questions about the country’s faltering economy amid the tightening U.S. sanctions.

They asked him about high unemployment, rising food prices and the collapsing value of the Iranian currency. Rouhani, who overcame the opposition of hardliners in the first place to sign the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers, insisted Iran would overcome the “the anti-Iranian officials in the White House.”

He added: “We are not afraid of America or the economic problems. We will overcome the troubles.” His answers didn’t reassure lawmakers, who voted to reject most of them. Earlier this month the parliament impeached the economy and labor ministers amid growing anger about the economy.

In order to try to keep open financial channels with Tehran and facilitate Iran’s oil exports, the European Union has taken steps to counter renewed U.S. sanctions, including forbidding EU citizens and firms from complying with them.

The European Commission updated a blocking statute on August 7, which bans companies from observing the sanctions — unless expressly authorized by Brussels to do so. It would allow EU firms to recover damages arising from the sanctions. But many companies say they are fearful of losing current or potential business in the U.S.

“Under these conditions it is very difficult,” according to the Director for International Relations at BusinessEurope, a lobby group, Luisa Santos. She says even small and medium-sized businesses which don’t trade with U.S. will face significant challenges because they will need financing from Western banks.

The first round of U.S. nuclear sanctions on Iran officially snapped back into place earlier this month but the more biting sanctions will be re-imposed on November 4 as Washington seeks to pummel the Iranian economy. The first phase U.S. sanctions prohibit any transactions with Iran involving dollars, gold, precious metals, aluminum, steel, commercial passenger aircraft, shipping and Iranian seaports.

Earlier in August, Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, cautioned there would be trade consequences for Britain, which he described as the closest U.S. ally, unless London breaks with the EU and abides by the re-imposed sanctions on Tehran.

The envoy also delivered a clear ultimatum to British businesses, instructing them to stop trading with Iran or face “serious consequences.”

Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to nuclear curbs in return for sanctions relief, paved the way for the restoration of unilateral American economic penalties on Iran.

The U.S. administration blames Iran for fomenting instability in the Middle East and encouraging terrorism. Trump has described the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a “horrible, one sided” agreement.

U.S. officials say Iran has used the money going into the country after the 2015 deal, when sanctions were eased, not to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians but to increase spending on the military and proxy forces in the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and militants in Yemen.
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Negotiators from Canada and the United States are holding detailed trade negotiations in Washington as they seek to work out a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The talks come after the United States and Mexico agreed to a bilateral trade deal this week while leaving the door open for Canada to join and preserve what has been a trilateral trade relationship for more than 20 years.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Tuesday for what she said were “very constructive” initial talks before more specific negotiations between the two sides on Wednesday.

Freeland said some of the details of the U.S.-Mexico agreement, particularly what she called “significant concessions” by Mexico on rules regarding automotive labor and parts origin, have given Canada optimism about the talks in Washington.

“The fact that Mexico was able to do something that I think must have been quite difficult for Mexico and make those concessions does really set the stage for some productive conversations for us here this week.”

It is unclear if the United States and Canada will resolve their long-standing disputes over duties on automobiles and dairy products that have persisted through months of NAFTA negotiations.

Freeland was also due to meet with Mexican trade officials who were still in Washington.

Final details of the U.S.-Mexico deal have yet to be worked out, but Lighthizer said he believes the tentative agreement is a win for both countries that creates more jobs for farmers and other workers.

To escape tariffs, the deal calls for 75 percent of “auto content” – parts and amenities – to be made in either the U.S. or Mexico, up from the current 62.5 percent North American content. In addition, 40 to 45 percent of the auto content must be produced by workers earning $16 or more an hour.

The average hourly pay for U.S. auto workers is more than $22 an hour, but in Mexico it is now less than $3.50 an hour. With the increase in labor costs, it likely will boost the cost of buying a vehicle.

“I think it’s going to modernize the way we do automobile trade, and I think it’s going to set the rules for the future at the highest standards in any agreement yet negotiated by any two nations for things like intellectual property, and digital trade, and financial services trade, and all of the things that we think of as the modernizing, cutting-edge places that our economy is going,” Lighthizer said.

“So this is great for business,” he said. “It’s great for labor. It has terrific labor provisions in it. Stronger and more enforceable labor provisions than have ever been in an agreement by a mile. Not even close.” 

However, lawmakers in both countries still need to approve the pact in the coming months.

Some of the agreement mirrors elements contained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade pact that Mexico and the U.S. both agreed to, before President Donald Trump withdrew the United States. It requires Mexico to allow more collective bargaining for workers and calls for more stringent air quality and marine life protections.

The accord is set to last for six years, at which point the United States and Mexico will review it, and if both sides agree, they would extend it for 16 more years.

But the agreement does not end steel and aluminum tariffs Trump imposed on Mexico earlier this year, leading to Mexican levies on U.S. imports. 

Trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaled an estimated $615.9 billion in 2017, with the U.S. exporting $63.6 billion more in goods and services than it imported.
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his country will negotiate new trade terms with the United States, but will only accept a deal that serves Canada’s interests. Speaking after the United States reached a tentative deal with Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trudeau said negotiators have made some progress. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to increase U.S. tariffs on Canada’s auto imports if a deal is not reached. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Faced with plunging U.S. orders, surgical glove maker Ren Jiding is hunting for new markets amid Chinese government calls to reduce reliance on the United States. But no other market can absorb the 60 percent of his sales that went to American customers last year.

“Other countries import much less than the United States,” said Ren, a co-owner of Hongyeshangqin Medical Science and Technology Co. Ltd. in the eastern city of Zibo.

From medical products to smartphone chips to soybeans, Beijing is responding to President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes by pushing companies to trade more with other countries. But there are few substitutes for the United States as an export market and source of technology for industries including telecom equipment makers that Chinese leaders are eager to develop.

Beijing has announced tariff cuts and other changes while rejecting U.S. demands to scale back plans such as “Made in China 2025,” which calls for state-led creation of Chinese champions in robotics, biotech and other fields. American leaders say those violate Beijing’s market-opening promises and might erode U.S. industrial leadership.

The response highlights the cost the ruling Communist Party is willing to pay in lost sales and jobs to stick to plans that are fueling conflict with Washington, Europe and other trading partners.

​’Fundamental’ to growth

“China sees its technology and industrial policies as fundamental to its growth,” Tianjie He of Oxford Economics said in an email. “It is thus hard to see China’s leadership committing to significant changes.”

Trump has raised duties on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, including ultrasound scanners and industrial components that Washington says benefit from improper policies. China retaliated with similar penalties.

The U.S. is poised to raise duties on $200 billion worth of imports, including the gloves made by Ren’s company. Beijing has issued a list of American goods for retaliation.

The impact on China is “small and is containable, at least for the time being,” said Vincent Chan of Credit Suisse. He said the “worst case” outlook if all threatened U.S. tariff hikes go ahead would cut China’s growth by 0.2 percentage point this year and 1.3 percent in 2019.

Chinese leaders have tried to cushion the blow to their own economy by targeting American goods its importers can get from other countries — soybeans from Brazil, gas from Russia, cars from Germany and fish from Vietnam.

Beijing has promised to use revenue from the higher tariffs to help struggling exporters and has ordered banks to lend more freely to them.

The biggest jolt so far came from Beijing’s cancellation of orders for soybeans, the biggest American export to China at $21 billion last year. That hammered farm states that voted for Trump in the 2016 election. It also pushed up prices for Chinese farmers that use soybeans for animal feed and food processors that crush them for cooking oil.

That could be a windfall for Brazil. But China already is its top market and consumes two-thirds of the global supply. Chinese total imports last year of 95 million metric tons were 50 percent more than the South American giant’s entire exports.

​Few sources

“The Chinese can talk all they want about finding other sources of soybeans,” but 80 percent come from the United States, Brazil and Argentina, said Michael Cordonnier, president of Soybean & Corn Advisor Inc., a U.S. research firm.

“If you want to import soybeans, it generally must be from one of those three countries,” Cordonnier wrote in an email.

Regulators also cut import duties on automobiles on July 1 but raised them on vehicles from the United States. That helps luxury brands that import from Germany and Japan.

Replacing markets for Chinese exporters that support tens of millions of jobs will be harder.

The United States bought $430 billion of China’s exports last year, or 20 percent of the $2.2 trillion total. The No. 2 market was the 28-nation European Union at $370 billion.

“We can’t afford to lose the U.S. market,” said David Hu, general manager of Sinohood Bags Factory Ltd. in the southeastern city of Yiwu.

Americans bought 40 percent of Hu’s canvas tote bags last year, including the most profitable customized versions with Christmas and other designs.

“What we export to Europe is lower-end products with lower prices,” said Hu. “We could explore the Indian, Vietnamese or Philippine markets. But the prices they offer would be too low.”

Chinese officials point to potential markets in the Belt and Road Initiative, a multibillion-dollar plan led by President Xi Jinping to boost trade by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across Asia to Europe.

That has brought a flood of contracts to Chinese state-owned builders, but complaints about costs have hurt its appeal. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia announced this month the cancellation of plans for Chinese-built projects, including a $20 billion rail line.

“There is potential for development in areas such as Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America. But their problems are development imbalance and economic instability,” said Li Yong, a senior fellow at the China Association of International Trade, an industry group.

​Focus on diversification

Local officials have met with exporters to exhort them to “diversify markets,” according to the state press.

Authorities in the central city of Jingzhou visited exporters to help with customs forms, financing and other details, the website China Industry and Commerce News said.

Ren, the surgical glove maker, said his 300-employee company was looking at Europe and developing countries, but demand was sluggish.

Some companies are confident of keeping their U.S. market share. That reflects the possible success of official efforts to develop higher-tech goods instead of competing on price alone.

The general manager of Yihua Electronic Equipment Co. in southern China’s Guangdong said the tariffs should not affect sales of its digital soldering guns, one-fifth of which are sold to the United States.

“With the 25 percent tariffs, ours still are cheaper than similar German- or Japanese-made products,” said the manager, who would give only his surname, Gou. “We are not producing something like shoes and clothing that could be easily replaced.”

Trump’s pressure could encourage Beijing to throw even more resources at nurturing its own technology creators.

China’s search for non-U.S. suppliers could help companies such as Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek Inc. But redesigning a phone or network gear and then gaining regulatory and customer approval can take a minimum of three to five years.

“For now,” said He of Oxford Economics, “China remains technologically dependent on the U.S.”
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More than a week after the floodwater began subsiding, animal carcasses are  still floating in Kerala’s backwaters, and in places a nauseating stench rises like a wall when the wake from a passing boat breaks the surface.

These inland lagoons running parallel to the coast are one of the biggest tourist draws in India’s most southwesterly state, but the stain of death and devastation wrought by Kerala’s worst flood in a century will take longer than a season to wash away.

The quaint towns and villages scattered between the lush forests and paddy fields bordering the backwaters are now communities in despair.

Houses in low-lying areas are still submerged, roads are waterlogged and the sewage from drains have washed into channels that are too slow-moving to effectively flush out the effluent.

Sudarsanan T.K., a houseboat owner in the town of Alappuzha,  had been looking forward to the peak tourist season, but as his home disappeared under 2.5 meters (8 feet) of water his family now have to live aboard the boat he would otherwise be renting to tourists from Europe, China, Malaysia and India.

“I’ve nothing left, but this houseboat. I don’t know how I can repay my bank loan in this condition. The bank may take back my boat. I will have nothing at all then,”  Sudarsanan, a 64-year-old father of two, told Reuters.

​Some 1,500 houseboats are tied up at Alappuzha, going nowhere, with many of the owners still paying off loans taken to buy the boats.

Sudarsanan owes about $8,600 on the loan taken eight years ago to buy the boat, and he could have earned up to $7,000 by December if the deluge hadn’t washed away his hopes.

Hundreds of people perished in the flood and more than one million of Kerala’s 35 million people were forced to abandon their homes and take shelter in relief camps.

Blessed with natural beauty, fertile land and bountiful seas, Kerala has been dubbed “God’s own country” by its people, but the Marxists running the state government reckon it will need $3.57 billion to rebuild over the next two years.

“Kerala’s GDP growth may fall by 2 percent,” state Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac told Reuters, forecasting growth of 6 percent for the financial year ending next March.

Crops have been lost, the construction industry was dead for a month, and tourism, which contributes 10 percent of the state’s economy but accounts for about 25 percent of jobs creation, has been badly hit.

Festival washout

For discerning tourists looking for a more laid back Indian experience, Kerala has it all — long sandy beaches, lazy waterways, charming, historic towns like Kochi and the cool, forested hills of the Western Ghats.

Kerala doesn’t draw numbers like the northern tourist circuit, the so-called “Golden Triangle” running from New Delhi to the Taj Mahal in Agra, and Jaipur’s palaces in the desert state of Rajasthan, but it has carved out a sizable niche.

Last year, one million foreigners visited Kerala, along with 15 million domestic tourists, but state government and industry officials reckon the flood will result in losses for the tourism sector of $357 million.

The floods struck just as Kerala was gearing up for Onam,

the harvest festival which is one of the highlights of the state’s cultural calendar.

Festivities, including the spectacular Vallam Kali races involving traditional war canoes, some manned by more than 100 paddlers, were postponed.

“Kerala has lost out on one of the best seasons, as the calamity struck during the 10-day run up to Onam,” said Ranjini Nambiar, who heads a travel consultancy.

Thousands of volunteers have joined a clean-up campaign mounted by the state, and Shilendran M., an executive with the CGH Earth luxury hotel chain, expected some kind of order to be restored within the next few weeks.

“The state administration is working on a war footing,” said Shilendran, whose group has more than a dozen properties in Kerala. “We are limping back to normal.”

Hardly anywhere in the state escaped the calamity.

Ernakulam district, the biggest industrial and tourism contributor to Kerala’s economy and home to the historic city of Kochi, suffered major damage, and its busy international airport was shut for nearly two weeks.

Munnar, a hill resort overlooking the tea and cardamom plantations high in the Ghats was cut off, as bridges were washed away and landslides blocked roads.

Once every dozen years a bright purplish-blue bell-shaped flower called the Neelakurinji, blossoms on the slopes around Munnar — and this was one of those years.

The state tourism had marketed 2018 as the Kurunji year, but people in Kerala are more likely to remember the mud.
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