Already threatened by escalating U.S. taxes on its goods, China is about to find it much harder to invest in U.S. companies or to buy American technology in such cutting-edge areas as robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

President Donald Trump is expected as early as this week to sign legislation to tighten the U.S. government’s scrutiny of foreign investments and exports of sensitive technology.

The law, which Congress passed in a rare show of unity among Republicans and Democrats, doesn’t single out China. But there’s no doubt the intended target is Beijing. The Trump administration has accused China of using predatory tactics to steal American technology.

“As a policy signal, it speaks with a very loud voice,” said Harry Clark, head of the international trade practice at the law firm Orrick. “Leading decision makers and Congress are very concerned about technology transfer to China.”

The Trump administration has already imposed tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese exports, is preparing taxes on a further $16 billion and has threatened to target an additional $200 billion of Beijing’s exports and maybe still more.

As part of the same punitive campaign, Trump had initially ordered the Treasury Department to draft investment restrictions aimed specifically at China. But in late June, Trump decided instead to back Congress’ effort to tighten existing investment restrictions and export controls on all countries, rather than China alone.

The new law strengthens reviews of foreign investment by the existing Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The committee can now review any investments that grant foreigners access to a U.S. company’s high-tech trade secrets. Before the change, such reviews were done only when a foreigner gained control of a company.

The new law also gives the committee oversight of real estate deals that are deemed to pose a national security risk by putting foreigners in “close proximity” to government offices and military bases. The legislation will also crack down on deals that appear structured to evade such oversight.

Congress is also directing the committee to go beyond specific cases to identify patterns in foreign investment — if, for example, Chinese companies are acquiring a specific technology — and to work with U.S. allies that share its concerns about Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

“Treasury can now share information,” said Rod Hunter, a partner at the Baker McKenzie law firm and a former White House economic adviser. “They used to have to do all kinds of backflips and workarounds with allied governments to deal with this sort of issue.”

The new law also strengthens the Commerce Department’s oversight of high-tech exports. Government agencies will identify sensitive “emerging and foundational technologies” that will be subject to tougher export controls.

Hunter said he thought the stricter oversight of high-tech exports could potentially impose a bigger impact on China than the tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on Beijing’s exports to the United States.

Still, the new measures could burden U.S. companies that will find it harder to attract Chinese investment or to share with Chinese partners or customers technology that the U.S. government might deem sensitive.

“It could be that we’re pushing American tech firms out of China,” said Derek Scissors, China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The crackdown reflects a sharp reversal in U.S. attitudes toward Chinese investment. From virtually nothing in 2000, Chinese direct investment in the United States (including new plants and offices and acquisitions of American companies) reached a record $46 billion in 2016, according to the Rhodium Group research firm.

Chinese investors sank money into U.S. companies involved in artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchain technology, which is used to do business in cryptocurrencies. U.S. policymakers began to worry about what the Chinese were up to, especially after leaders in Beijing made their ambitions clear: They intend to nurture homegrown Chinese companies that will contend for global dominance in such fields as electric cars, robotics and medical devices.

In March, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reported that Chinese investors were using money provided by Beijing to outbid private companies and pay above-market rates for technology and talent. And last year, a Defense Department report sounded the alarm about China obtaining technology that could have military uses.

“The line demarcating products designed and used for commercial versus military purposes is blurring,” said the report from the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental.

It noted that virtual-reality gaming was becoming as sophisticated as what the armed forces use for battlefield simulations and that facial recognition technology used in social media can track terrorists.

Even before the new law, U.S. reviews of Chinese investments were becoming stricter. In January, the government effectively blocked the acquisition of the Dallas-based money transfer service MoneyGram by the Chinese firm Ant Financial. Its concern was that the deal would give China access to the financial records of millions of Americans, including members of the military.

The result has been a deepfreeze in direct Chinese investment in the United States: It tumbled 36 percent last year to $29 billion. In the first half of this year, such investment dropped to its lowest level in seven years — $1.8 billion — down 90 percent from the first six months of 2017, according to Rhodium Group.
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The baobab tree dots the dry African savannah from Senegal to Madagascar. It yields a fruit that’s been described as a superfood popular in the United States and Europe. With an increasing global appeal, local farmers say business is booming… but some worry that worldwide sales of the crop are not sustainable. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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President Donald Trump has been busy on the congressional campaign trail lately, eager to tout the strong U.S. economy on behalf of Republican candidates leading up to this year’s midterm elections in November. But the president has also repeatedly launched Twitter attacks over the Russia probe, his border wall, and what he believes is unfair media coverage — attacks Republicans fear will distract from his economic message. VOA national correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
…

Chinese state media are reacting to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade actions against China in diverse ways. While denouncing the U.S. leader’s actions, Beijing is also using its media to calm markets and express concern about the impact on the Chinese economy.

An editorial in the Communist Party’s People’s Daily said that by raising tariffs and then offering negotiations, the Trump administration is trying to use “carrot-and-stick diplomacy to bully China into unilateral trade concessions.” The paper went on to say “China will eventually defeat the trade blackmail of the U.S. and it is impossible to force China into surrender to the U.S. coercion.”

However, a Chinese senior official attached to the country’s Supreme Court recently expressed worry that the trade friction with the U.S. would result in bankruptcies for state-owned companies.

“It is hard to predict how this trade war will develop and to what extent,” Du Wanhua, deputy director of an advisory committee to the Supreme People’s Court said in an article also in the People’s Daily.

“But one thing is sure: if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Chinese imports following an order of $60 billion, $200 billion, or even $500 billion, many Chinese companies will go bankrupt,” he said.

Ineffective retaliation

Beijing recently slapped additional duties ranging from five to 25 percent on $60 billion worth of American goods. This was in response to Trump administration’s proposal of a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Experts said China has realized that retaliatory action would not persuade the U.S. President to stop his trade actions.

“They switched gear a bit because, I think, they realized that they have the weaker hand here in terms of their ability to retaliate, partly because they import far less from the U.S. than the U.S. imports from China, but also [because] a portion of [goods] they import from China is, you know, high-tech that are quite difficult to import from elsewhere,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics told VOA.

Washington says its actions are aimed at correcting the level playing field because the U.S. suffers from a severe trade deficit in its business with China.

Reassuring markets

Chinese officials are trying to reassure markets and the local population that the U.S. moves would have little impact. Huang Libin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently said there has not been any significant impact on industrial output.

“We hear complaints from [Chinese] companies that U.S. clients have requested a suspension of orders and deliveries, but so far it has had only a limited impact on the industrial sector,” he said.

The state-run Global Times, responded to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow’s remarks that China should not underestimate Trump’s resolve, saying that China was not afraid of “sacrificing short-term interests”. “China has time to fight to the end. Time will prove that the U.S. eventually makes a fool of itself,” the paper said.

The official China Daily has joined government officials in an effort to reassure the market. “Market participants foresee a relatively stable Chinese currency in the near term, without fear of impacts from the U.S.-China trade dispute. They expect solid economic growth momentum amid policy fine-tuning,” it said.

“Leading China’s economy on a stable and far-reaching path, we have confidence and determination,” another commentary in the main edition of the People’s Daily said.

Another reason China is worried is because Washington’s actions have come when the domestic Chinese economy is going through a bad time. The last three months have seen a series of corporate defaults besmirching China’s reputation for many fewer loan defaults as compared to most developed countries.

“[The] economy is now slowing and balance sheets are coming under strain after they tightened monetary policy last year and pushed up borrowing costs. This is the main reason why we are seeing this uptrend in bankruptcies and uptrend in corporate bond defaults,” Evans-Pritchard said. “I think the main driver is domestic. Obviously, the U.S. tariffs won’t help and they are going to cause some damage,” he said.

In its latest report, Capital Economics said that it would be naive to dismiss the possibility of financial instability given the rapid rise in debt levels in the country over the past decade. Chinese banks face the grave emerging scenario of bad loans and non-performing assets weighing heavily on their balance sheets, it said.

 
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Longtime PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi will step down as the top executive and the world’s second-largest food and beverage company.

Nooyi, who was born in India, is a rarity on Wall Street as a woman and a minority leading a Fortune 100 company. She oversaw the company during a turbulent time in the industry that has forced PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Co., Campbell Soup Co. and Mondelez International Inc. to shake up product portfolios that had been the norm for decades as families seek healthier choices.

 

Nooyi, 62, has been with PepsiCo Inc. for 24 years and has held the top job for 12.

 

Ramon Laguarta, who has been with the company for more than two decades, will take over as CEO in October, the company said Monday. Nooyi will remain as chairman until early next year.

 

“Today is a day of mixed emotions for me. This company has been my life for nearly a quarter century and part of my heart will always remain here,” Nooyi said in a prepared statement. “But I am proud of all we’ve done to position PepsiCo for success, confident that Ramon and his senior leadership team will continue prudently balancing short-term and long-term priorities, and excited for all the great things that are in store for this company.”

 

Nooyi took over as CEO in October 2006. Between 2007 and 2017, revenue at Pepsico has risen about 61 percent.

 

The 54-year-old Laguarta has held various positions in his 22 years at PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York. He currently serves as president, overseeing global operations, corporate strategy, public policy and government affairs. He previously served as CEO of the Europe Sub-Saharan Africa region. Prior to joining PepsiCO, Laguarta worked at confectionary company Chupa Chups.

 

Laguarta will be the sixth CEO in PepsiCo’s history, with all of them coming from within the company.

 

 
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Russia engaged in more extensive oil exports to North Korea than had been previously reported, by setting up an illicit trade network that is likely still being used today to evade United Nations sanctions, according a South Korean research organization.

A recent report issued by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul used Russian customs data to document how “one North Korean state enterprise purchased 622,878 tons of Russian oil worth $238 million,” between 2015 and 2017.”

While China is North Korea’s main oil supplier, the ASAN estimate for Russian oil exports to North Korea is significantly higher than the $25 million in sales for the same period that was reported by the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) in Seoul.

“Smuggling has always been an important element in the cross-border trade between North Korea and it’s important allies. What the Chinese government and the Russian government to a lesser extent have been doing is to turn a blind eye to these activities,” said Go Myong-Hyun, a North Korea analyst with the Asan Institute For Policy Studies in Seoul.

Russian evasions

The Asan report comes amid allegations that Russia potentially violated international sanctions imposed on North Korea by granting thousands of new work permits to North Korean laborers. Moscow had denied any such actions.

The Trump administration also imposed targeted U.S sanctions on a Russian bank for allegedly doing business with a person blacklisted for involvement with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called the allegations against Russia, “very troubling.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on “the Russians and all countries to abide by the U.N. Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea,” while attending the ASEAN Regional Forum in Singapore on Saturday.

United Nations sanctions imposed in September of 2017 prohibit member countries from “providing work authorizations” permits to North Korean workers.

In December of 2017 the U.N. Security Council further strengthened the sanctions to cut North Korean oil imports by a third, and to impose a total export ban on North Korea’s $3 billion coal and other mineral industries, its $800 million clothing manufacturing output, and its lucrative seafood industry.

Shell companies

The ASAN report is centered on the activities of the Independent Petroleum Company (IPC), a Russian firm that the U.S. Treasury Department targeted in June 2017 for violating restrictions on selling oil to North Korea. IPC has since changed its name. 

IPC was found to have sold large quantities of oil to Russian affiliated companies, such as the Pro-Gain Group Corporation (PGGC) that was actually operating on behalf of North Korea’s state owned Foreign Trade Bank. The North Korean bank has been under U.S. sanctions since 2013.

“The entities involved tried to cover up the transactions by falsifying destination countries for the purchases,” said the ASAN report entitled The Rise of Phantom Traders.

The report notes that PGGC is owned by Taiwan citizen Tsang Yung Yuan. Tsang was sanctioned earlier this year by the U.S. for facilitating North Korean coal exports using a Russia-based North Korean broker. PGGC has headquarters listed both in Taipei and Samoa.

North Korea has also been accused of conducting illicit ship-to-ship transfers of oil, and to conceal these operations by disabling the Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder of vessels in order to hide their location. There have also been reports of North Korea changing vessel names and identification numbers, even painting over or altering the numbers on the ships’ exteriors.

Rajin-Khasan Exemption

A large number of oil shipments were also delivered to the Russian-North Korean border village of Khasan, which is connected by rail to the North Korean port terminal at Rajin.

The Rajin-Khasan rail project was exempted from U.N. sanctions to allow Russia to use the North Korean seaport to export Russian coal.

Trade records show that oil deliveries arriving in Khasan were on their way to China, but the report suggests it is more likely North Korea was the final destination. Since 2015, the ASAN report says, only PGGC and Velmur, two companies with ties to North Korea, listed Khasan as the point of delivery for oil shipments. 

According to the ASAN report, Moscow and Pyongyang are likely exploiting the Rajin-Khasan rail exemption to evade restrictions on North Korean oil imports.

In 2016, South Korea suspended its participation in the Rajin-Khasan rail project to comply with U.S. unilateral sanctions imposed on North Korea trade.

Recently some officials in Seoul have called for these sanctions affecting the Rajin-Khasan Project to be lifted, so that investment can proceed in connecting South Korean rail both to North Korea, and to the intentional railway system beyond that can reach Europe.

Sanctions effectiveness

The sanctions are intended to cut North Korea off from foreign currency and materials needed for weapons production, and to impose economic pain on the leadership to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile development programs.

Despite increased reports of sanctions evasions, Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea analyst with the Sejong Institute in South Korea, says the recent report of an 88 percent decline in North Korean trade in the first quarter of this year indicates the economic situation there is in dire condition.

“If the sanctions from the U.N. Security Council continue, economic breakdown in North Korea will be inevitable,” said Cheong.

Talks between Washington and Pyongyang have made little significant progress toward ending the North’s nuclear program since June, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore.

The U.S. insists that the North completely end it nuclear weapons program before any concessions are granted, while Pyongyang wants early sanctions relief.

On Sunday Pompeo said that North Korean Foreign Minster Ri Yong Ho reiterated a “very clear” commitment to denuclearize when the two met at the ASEAN conference in Singapore.

Lee Yoon-jee contributed to this report.
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Washington is observing the latest escalation in tensions between the United States and its trading partners, with China threatening to slap tariffs on more than 5,000 American-made products totaling $60 billion. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Beijing’s announcement came after the Trump administration proposed raising tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, continuing a tit-for-tat trade battle that is alarming many in the U.S. business community and dividing the Republican Party.
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British Trade Minister Liam Fox said “intransigence” from the European Union was pushing Britain toward a no-deal Brexit, in an interview published on Saturday by the Sunday Times.

With less than eight months until Britain quits the EU, the government has yet to agree a divorce deal with Brussels and has stepped up planning for the possibility of leaving the bloc without any formal agreement.

Fox, a promiment Brexit supporter in Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet, put the odds of Britain leaving the European Union without agreeing upon a deal over their future relationship at 60-40.

“I think the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal,” Fox told the Times after a trade mission in Japan.

“We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen, but if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic well-being of the people of Europe, then it’s a bureaucrats’ Brexit — not a people’s Brexit — [and] then there is only going to be one outcome.”

It was up to the EU whether it wanted to put “ideological purity” ahead of the real economy, Fox said.

If Britain fails to agree the terms of its divorce with the EU and leaves without even a transition agreement to smooth its exit, it would revert to trading under World Trade Organization rules in March 2019.

Most economists think this would cause serious harm to the world’s No. 5 economy as trade with the EU, Britain’s largest market, would become subject to tariffs.

Supporters of Brexit say there may be some short-term pain for Britain’s $2.9 trillion economy, but that in the long term it will prosper when cut free from the EU, which some of them cast as a failing German-dominated experiment in European integration.

On Friday, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the chances of a no-deal Brexit had become “uncomfortably high.”
…

Honeybees are essential to our food supply, but bee colonies around the world are declining. Among the main culprits are insecticides containing chemicals known as neonicotinoids, which are highly toxic to honeybees. In Europe, where about 80 percent of crops rely to some degree on insect pollination, the chemical is banned but exceptions allowed. Poland’s agriculture ministry has temporarily approved it for use in rapeseed crops, worrying the country’s beekeepers. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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China’s targeting of U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports opens a new front in the trade war between the two countries, at a time when the White House is trumpeting growing U.S. energy export  prowess.

China included LNG for the first time in its list of proposed tariffs on Friday, the same day that its biggest U.S. crude oil buyer, Sinopec, suspended U.S. crude oil imports due to the dispute, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

On Friday, China announced retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, and warned of further measures, signaling it will not back down in a protracted trade war with Washington.

That could cast a shadow over U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy dominance ambitions. The administration has repeatedly said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to global allies, while Washington is rolling back domestic regulations to encourage more oil and gas production.

“The juxtaposition here is clear: It is hard to become an energy superpower when one of the biggest energy consumers in the world is raising barriers to consume that energy. It makes it very difficult,” said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and is poised to become one of the largest exporters of LNG by 2019. U.S. LNG exports were worth $3.3 billion in 2017. China is the world’s biggest crude oil importer.

China had curtailed its imports of U.S. LNG over the last two months, even before its formal inclusion in the list of potential tariffs. It had also become the largest buyer of U.S. crude oil outside of Canada, but Kpler, which tracks worldwide oil shipments, shows crude cargoes to China have also dropped

off in recent months.

It comes at a time when the United States has several large-scale LNG export facilities under construction, and after Trump’s late 2017 trip to China that included executives from U.S. LNG companies.

China became the world’s second-biggest LNG importer in 2017, as it buys more gas in order to wean the country off dirty coal to reduce pollution.

“This will not affect the trade but will simply make gas more expensive to Chinese consumers,” said Charif Souki, chairman of Tellurian Inc, one of several companies seeking to build a new LNG export terminal.

China, which purchased almost 14 percent of all U.S. LNG shipped between February 2016 and May 2018, has taken delivery from just one vessel that left the United States in June and none so far in July, compared with 17 in the first five months of the year.

“The U.S. gas industry will be much harder hit by this as China imports only a small volume whereas U.S. suppliers see China as a major future market,” said Lin Boqiang, professor on energy studies at Xiamen University in China.

Crude exports to China

Meanwhile, according to Kpler, crude exports to China dropped to an estimated 226,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, after reaching a record 445,000 bpd in March. Sinopec, through its Unipec trading arm, is the largest buyer of U.S. crude.

China would likely hike purchases from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq if the tariffs slowed U.S. flows, said Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency.

There will be “others who will be offering barrels to China, so it could find itself able to replace lost volumes from the U.S.,” Atkinson said.

With LNG demand expected to skyrocket over the next 12 to 18 months, there are still some two dozen firms seeking to build new LNG export terminals in the United States and tariffs may limit their ability to secure sufficient buyers to finance their proposed projects.

“Cheniere continues to see China as an important growth market and LNG as a “win-win” between the United States and China,” said Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman at Cheniere Energy Inc, which owns one of the two LNG export terminals currently operating in the United States. He added they do not see tariffs as productive.
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George Kamau Githome uses a feather duster to clean off hardware and bootleg movies displayed for sale at his kiosk in Mathare, one of Nairobi, Kenya’s largest slums.

Githome and his family of 10 kids recently lost everything they owned in a fire. But he was able to rebuild because he had purchased micro-insurance, a new product making inroads among small-scale African farmers and business owners.

“When they came, they took photos, and saw how helpless I was. I had nothing,” he said. “Then they paid off my loan and supported me with something small. I started this business you see out here and the result you see inside.”

Most African farmers and small businesses operate with no way to protect themselves if disaster strikes. Insurers have been slow to tailor their products to the African continent, experts say, and their methods of operation, using complex contracts distributed through networks of agents, tends to only reach the urban elite.

But that may be starting to change. A handful of companies are now offering inexpensive, tech-driven micro-insurance and are making it easy for ordinary Africans to sign up.

 

The company Githome used, MicroEnsure, offers micro-insurance to small-business owners, ranging from farmers in the bush to small kiosk owners in downtown Nairobi.

 

The East Africa regional director for MicroEnsure, Kiereini Kirika, says mobile technology makes micro-insurance cheaper and easy to use.

“We enable them to be able to enroll as simple as using their mobile phone just by dialing a particular short code on their phone and then registering their product just by using their first name and their last name,” he said.

Henry Jaru, a smallholder farmer in northern Nigeria, is buying micro-insurance from another company, Pula, to protect his family farm from the impacts of poor rainfall, army worm infestations and other threats to their crops.

“Normally by this time the crops would have gone far but you see we’re still planting some of them,” he said. “So I think, we’re hoping that [will protect us if] we experience any shortcoming from the rain or the worms this year.”

 

Pula insures groups of farmers, using publicly available satellite data to track weather patterns, assess the risk and set prices.

 

“When Pula came into the country, they came with the idea of an index insurance, which means that you don’t need to necessarily visit every smallholder farmers,” said Samson Ajibola, Pula’s senior project manager in Nigeria. “You can insure aggregation of farmers under just one policy without necessarily needing to visit each of them.”

Pula also bundles the policies into small loans or purchases of fertilizer so small-hold farmers are automatically insured.

 

But older farmers, like Jaru’s father Thomas, are still skeptical because of bad experiences with insurance companies.

 

“Generally when the time comes for them to pay you, indemnify you, you will not find them,” said Thomas Jaru. “They begin to show you the small print — you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that out of the policy. So, it can ruin the whole thing and people get discouraged.”

 

Micro-insurance providers hope their services can change that perception  and turn a profit while giving Africa’s small farmers and businesses some protection if and when things go wrong.
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The U.S. unemployment rate dropped slightly in July, while job gains were lower than many analysts predicted.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department shows the jobless rate fell one-tenth of a percent to 3.9 percent, one of the lowest figures in years.

The world’s largest economy also had a net gain of 157,000 jobs, which is less than the monthly average so far this year.

Experts blamed some of the change on closing retail stores, but said the labor market remains tight, with more openings than jobs overall.

A jobless rate of under 4 percent usually prompts employers to raise wages to attract and keep good workers; but, the newest figures show wages grew just 2.7 percent over the past year, which is slightly lower than the inflation rate, meaning that real wages are actually falling slightly.

Peter Cramer of Prime Advisors says one reason wages are not growing faster is the large but shrinking pool of part-time workers who are getting longer hours or full-time work. 

In a VOA interview via Skype, Cramer says so far, there is little evidence that Washington’s many trade disputes have hurt employment, but that could change if the bickering goes on for “six or eight months.”

PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says the U.S. unemployment rate will probably fall to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Faucher writes that as that happens, job growth will slow down because businesses will find it more difficult to recruit new hires. 

‘Strong’ economy

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, said the economy was “strong,” an upgrade from its June assessment, which dubbed the economy “solid.”

The Fed also made clear it expects to raise interest rates in the coming months, going against President Donald Trump’s demands for the independent body to keep rates steady. “I think the economy’s in a really good place,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell told NPR in July.

Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Trump likely will tout a strong economy as his Republican Party looks to maintain its grasp on the U.S. legislative chambers, the Senate and House of Representatives. Yet analysts warned this may not be a winning strategy.

“If this was a prez [presidential election] year, these strong jobs reports would matter so much more for the elections,” CNN election analyst Harry Enten said Friday on Twitter. “As is, the economy is not strongly correlated with midterm outcomes.”
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Apple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion.

The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of $20 billion worth of its own shares.

The Silicon Valley company’s stock has skyrocketed more than 50,000 percent since it went public in 1980, greatly exceeding the S&P 500’s impressive 2,000 percent gain during the same period.

Apple’s success was fueled in large part by its iPhone, which transformed it from a niche player in the burgeoning personal computer sector into a global technological powerhouse.

The company was co-founded by the late Steve Jobs, a product innovator who helped prevent the company’s collapse in the late 1990s.

As the company’s market value climbed over the decades, it revolutionized how consumers communicate with each other and how companies conduct business on a daily basis.

 
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The Trump administration has announced plans to freeze fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.

The administration also announced Thursday it wants to rescind the authority of California and other states to set more stringent vehicle mileage standards to address environmental issues like climate change and smog.

New fuel-efficiency requirements, which were set to take effect in 2020, would be frozen through 2026.

The freeze, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department, would increase projected daily U.S. oil consumption by 500,000 barrels by the 2030’s, the administration said.It also said the freeze would save up to 1,000 lives each year by cutting the price of new and safer vehicles.

Environmental groups are condemning the proposal.

Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp described the proposal as “a massive pileup of bad ideas” that would increase pollution and boost fuel costs. Krupp said the organization would challenge the administration’s action “in the court of public opinion and the court of law.”

The advocacy group Earthjustice said the proposal “is the latest in a long list of gifts from the Trump administration to the oil industry given at the cost of the public health of Americans.”

Seventeen states, including California sued the administration over the freeze in May, in anticipation of the new regulation.

California and 12 other states use more stringent standards than the EPA. Together they account for 40-percent of the American market for cars and light-duty trucks.
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The rolling fields of green soybean plants growing on Fred Grieder’s Illinois farm would be a welcome sign most years … an indicator of a promising harvest in the fall.

But this isn’t most years.

Tariffs are turning away potential customers overseas, and Grieder estimates he could lose around $100 an acre if the trade war continues.

“It’s a squeeze,” he told VOA from his farm outside Bloomington, Illinois.

​Lose $100, get $14 in aid

It’s a squeeze the Trump administration has acknowledged, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to plan a $12 billion aid package to help farmers like Grieder.

“If you take the $12 billion, assuming it will all go to beans, which it won’t, and divide that by our planted acreage, that’s about $14 an acre” in government aid, he said.

Grieder says the aid does not even come close to making up for the $100 loss per acre he expects.

Since May, the price per bushel for soybeans has dropped almost 20 percent over the escalating trade war between the United States and China. Tariffs threaten to cut off important export markets, cutting into profits even as U.S. farmers brace for a fifth year of declining farm income.

It’s not that Grieder isn’t grateful for the aid package, but he says he would just rather have “trade over aid.”

“We appreciate the fact that the USDA is concerned about us, and want to make us whole,” he explained. “But the reality is the numbers, in a large trade war like this, are overwhelming.”

Man-made disaster

“This is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster. It’s not an act of God, some would call it an act of foolishness,” said Mark Albertson, director of strategic market development for the Illinois Soybean Association.

Albertson said he believes the trade dispute with China is a greater threat to farmers than the drought of 2012.

“We had mechanisms in place to deal with that, and we always knew that the very next year we would be able to plant our crops again and hope for the best. In this case, we don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know what the next year brings. We don’t have necessarily hope of the trade war going away very soon, and it looks like Brazil is all too eager to take away our market share with China.

“If they get used to purchasing more and more Brazilian soybeans, that spells bad news for us. That’s the overall concern, and an aid package does nothing to solve that problem,” Albertson said.

​Biggest worry: Competitors

It’s also farmer Grieder’s biggest concern.

“Brazil, one of our largest competitors, they are always expanding,” he said. “So this could affect our markets years down the road, and I’m probably more worried about that than I am the short wash out here.”

Albertson said another major challenge is what to do with the soybeans that can’t be sold.

“It looks like we may end up putting a record amount of soybeans in storage, and when that happens, we know from history the prices will go south,” he added.

As the trade war continues, Grieder’s routine remains the same. He hopes strong global demand for soybeans outside China will make up for decreasing prices. He’s waiting to see if President Donald Trump’s trade tactics will work before permanent damage is done to the reputation — and reliability — of U.S. grain products.

“I support what he’s trying to do. I can’t say that I support his methods,” Grieder said.
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More British businesses should be made to report the difference in how much they pay male and female staff, lawmakers said Thursday, citing “obscene” gender pay gaps in some companies.

Businesses and charities with more than 250 workers must publish figures on their gender pay gap each year under a law introduced last year, but they account for less than half Britain’s workforce.

On Thursday a parliamentary committee said smaller firms tended to be more unequal, urging the government to extend the reporting requirement to all businesses with more than 50 employees.

​Shine a light wider

“Companies are failing to harness fully the talents of half the population,” said Rachel Reeves chairwoman of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

The first round of reporting completed this year helped to shine a light on how men dominate the highest paid jobs in Britain, the committee said in a report. Yet more has to be done to bridge the country’s pay gap — one of the largest in Europe, it said.

“Our analysis found that some companies have obscene and entirely unacceptable gender pay gaps of more than 40 percent,” Reeves said.

The committee said the government should require companies to publish a blueprint to address discrepancies in salary and report annually on their progress. This year only 5 percent set themselves a target, it said.

“We have to move on from simply reporting the pay gap, to taking action to close it,” said Sam Smethers, the head of women’s rights group, the Fawcett Society.

Persistent problem

As in many other countries, gender pay inequality has been a persistent problem in Britain despite sex discrimination being outlawed in the 1970s, and has sparked a public debate in recent years over why wages are still so different for men and women.

The overall gender pay gap in Britain stands at 18.4 percent, according to government data published last year.

But for more than 1 in 10 large businesses the gap is higher than 30 percent, the report said.

“Employers have to adjust to the increasing need for flexible working and champion policies that enable caring responsibilities to be shared equality between women and men,” said Niki Kandirikirira of campaign group Equality Now.
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U.S. President Donald Trump sought to ratchet up pressure on China for trade concessions by proposing a higher 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, his administration said Wednesday.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Trump directed the increase from a previously proposed 10 percent duty because China has refused to meet U.S. demands and has imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.

“The increase in the possible rate of the additional duty is intended to provide the administration with additional options to encourage China to change its harmful policies and behavior and adopt policies that will lead to fairer markets and prosperity for all of our citizens,” Lighthizer said in a statement.

There have been no formal talks between Washington and Beijing for weeks over Trump’s demands that China make fundamental changes to its policies on intellectual property protection, technology transfers and subsidies for high

technology industries.

Two trump administration officials told reporters on a conference call that Trump remains open to communications with Beijing and that through informal conversations the two countries are discussing whether a “fruitful negotiation” is possible.

“We don’t have anything to announce today about a specific event, or a specific round of discussions, but communication remains open and we are trying to figure out whether the conditions present themselves for a specific engagement between the two sides,” one of the officials said.

Derek Scissors, a China scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said a 25 percent tariff rate is more likely to shut out Chinese products and shift American supply chains to other countries, as a 10 percent duty could be offset by government subsidies and weakness in China’s yuan currency.

“If we’re going to use tariffs, this gives us more flexibility and it’s a more meaningful threat,” he said, adding that Trump’s pressure strategy will not work if he does not resolve trade disputes with U.S. allies such as the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

Public comment period extended

The higher tariff rate, if implemented, would apply to a list of goods valued at $200 billion identified by the USTR last month as a response to China’s retaliatory tariffs on an initial round of U.S. tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese electronic components, machinery, autos and industrial goods.

Trump has ultimately threatened tariffs on over $500 billion in Chinese goods, covering virtually all U.S. imports from China.

The USTR said it would extend a public comment period for the $200 billion list to September 5 from August 30 because of the possible tariff rate rise.

The list, unveiled on July 10, hits American consumers harder than previous rounds, with targeted goods including such items as tilapia, dog food, furniture, lighting products, printed circuit boards and building materials.

China said Wednesday that “blackmail” would not work and that it would hit back if the United States took further steps hindering trade, including applying the higher tariff rate.

“U.S. pressure and blackmail won’t have an effect. If the United States takes further escalatory steps, China will inevitably take countermeasures and we will resolutely protect our legitimate rights,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing.

Investors fear an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing could hit global economic growth, and prominent U.S. business groups, while weary of what they see as China’s mercantilist trade practices, have condemned Trump’s aggressive tariffs.
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The Federal Reserve is leaving its benchmark interest rate unchanged while signaling further gradual rate hikes in the months ahead as long as the economy stays healthy.

The Fed’s decision left the central bank’s key short-term rate at 1.75 percent to 2 percent – the level hit in June when the Fed boosted the rate for a second time this year.

 

The Fed projected in June four rate hikes this year, up from three in 2017. Private economists expect the next hike to occur at the September meeting.

 

In a brief policy statement, the Fed notes a strengthening labor market, economic activity growing at “a strong rate,” and inflation that’s reached the central bank’s target of 2 percent annual gains. Officials see economic risks as roughly balanced.
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