Business

U.S. car maker Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it has no plans currently to hike retail prices of its imported Ford and Lincoln models in China, despite steep additional tariffs on imported U.S. vehicles set to come into play on Friday.

The firm, which has been facing sluggish sales in the world’s largest auto market, said in a statement “it has no current plans to increase the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) on its import line-up in China.”

Ford is the first foreign automaker to address pricing issues ahead of the new tariffs that will affect around $34 billion of U.S. imports from soybeans and cars to lobsters.

China, which just days ago cut tariffs on all imported automobiles, has said that it will slap an additional 25 percent levy on 545 American products, including U.S.-made cars, should the Trump administration go ahead with plans to implement tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports from July 6.

Ford added it encouraged Washington and Beijing to resolve their issues over trade and that it would “continue to monitor the situation as it evolves.”

 
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Trade rhetoric is spilling into the real world of jobs and consumer goods. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6. Beijing is fighting back with its own $34 billion of tariffs on American goods. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, investors are understandably on edge.
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Trade rhetoric is spilling into the real world of jobs and consumer goods. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6. Beijing is fighting back with its own $34 billion of tariffs on American goods. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, investors are understandably on edge.
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United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars.

The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin.

Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said.

The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs on cars could amount to $294 billion.

The EU report, submitted to the U.S. Commerce Department, maintained the tariffs would disrupt cross-border supply chains in the automotive industry. The report said the tariffs could possibly trigger higher U.S. industrial costs, raise consumer prices, hurt exports and cost jobs.  

The World Trade Organization said Wednesday trade barriers being set by world economic powers could jeopardize the global economic recovery.

“This continued escalation poses a serious threat to growth and recovery in all countries, and we are beginning to see this reflected in some forward-looking indicators,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevendo said.

Azevendo did not expound on his remarks, but the WTO’s quarter trade outlook indicator in May suggested trade growth in the second quarter would decelerate.

 
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United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars.

The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin.

Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said.

The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs on cars could amount to $294 billion.

The EU report, submitted to the U.S. Commerce Department, maintained the tariffs would disrupt cross-border supply chains in the automotive industry. The report said the tariffs could possibly trigger higher U.S. industrial costs, raise consumer prices, hurt exports and cost jobs.  

The World Trade Organization said Wednesday trade barriers being set by world economic powers could jeopardize the global economic recovery.

“This continued escalation poses a serious threat to growth and recovery in all countries, and we are beginning to see this reflected in some forward-looking indicators,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevendo said.

Azevendo did not expound on his remarks, but the WTO’s quarter trade outlook indicator in May suggested trade growth in the second quarter would decelerate.

 
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European businesses are unsettled as they watch the U.S. and China collide over trade. And for good reason: the nascent global trade war could represent the biggest single threat to the economic upswing that has helped the region get past its financial crisis.

In theory, some European companies could benefit, jumping into market niches if Chinese businesses are kept out of the U.S. market. But that would only be a few companies or sectors.

When your entire economy is heavily dependent on trade, an overall slowdown in global commerce caused by tit-for-tat import taxes provokes fear and undermines confidence.

And that’s just what’s happening in Europe. By one measure, business confidence has fallen in six of the past seven months in Germany, where exports are almost half of annual economic output.

“It’s worth all our efforts to defuse this conflict, so it doesn’t become a war,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.

The U.S. is due to put tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday. The Chinese will respond with tariffs on an equivalent value of U.S. products such as soybeans, seafood and crude oil.

Amid all this, Europe has its own trade dispute with the U.S. After the U.S. put tariffs on steel and aluminum from many allies, including the European Union, the 28-country bloc responded with import taxes on some $3.25 billion of U.S. goods. The Trump administration is also studying the option of putting tariffs on cars, which would significantly escalate the confrontation.

The head of the EU’s executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, will head to Washington in late July to try to personally persuade Trump against further measures targeting Europe.

The disputes over trade threaten to spoil the good times for Europe’s economy.

Growth last year was the strongest in a decade, since before the global financial crisis. While that has eased in recent quarters, the economy is still strong enough to create jobs. The number of unemployed fell by 125,000 in May, leaving unemployment in the 19 countries that use the euro at 8.4 percent, the lowest since 2008 and down from a high of 12.1 percent in 2013.

“Trade tensions stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump are clouding the economic outlook in Europe,” wrote analysts at Berenberg bank in London. They rated the trade risk ahead of troubles from Italy’s heavy debt load or faster than expected interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Many European companies would suffer because they both produce and sell goods in the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies.

For example, tariffs that China is expected to impose Friday on U.S.-made autos would hit German carmakers Daimler and BMW since they both make vehicles in the United States and export them to China.

Daimler has already lowered its outlook for profits, citing higher than expected costs from the new tariffs. BMW warned in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Friday that tariffs would make it harder for it to sell in China the vehicles it builds at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, “potentially leading to a strongly reduced export volumes and negative effects on investment and employment in the United States.”

Last year, BMW exported 272,000 vehicles from the Spartanburg plant, more than half its total production. Of those, 81,000 — worth $2.37 billion — went to China. BMW says its exports reduced the U.S. trade deficit by around $1 billion.

By themselves, the tariffs that take effect Friday won’t immediately have a dramatic impact on global trade. The fear is that retaliation will spiral, hitting the total amount of global commerce.

Even if the overall effect is to harm growth, there could be benefits for some European companies and sectors. Economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Jianwei Xu at the French bank Natixis say that European makers of cars, aircraft, chemicals, computer chips and factory machinery could in theory snare market share by substituting for Chinese or American products in the two markets. But that’s only if Europe’s own trade dispute with the U.S. does not escalate — a big if.

Europe is waiting to see whether the Trump administration will go ahead separately with tariffs on auto imports. European companies like BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi divisions, and Fiat Chrysler send $46.6 billion worth of vehicles every year to the U.S. Some 13.3 million people, or 6.1 percent of the employed population of the EU, work in the automotive sector, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.

“Europe cannot win anything” on an overall basis “for one obvious reason: we are net exporters,” said Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and a senior fellow at European research institute Bruegel. “But we should not understate the view that some sectors could get something out of a U.S.-China trade war.”

Amid the brewing conflict, China has sought to get Europe on its side, putting on a diplomatic charm offensive during visits by Merkel and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The EU and China agreed last month to deepen commercial ties and support trade rules. But the EU remains a close, longtime ally of the U.S. on a range of issues, despite the current tensions with the Trump administration.

One negative outcome for Europe, Herrero said, would be if Trump can push the Chinese into a trade agreement aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit. The additional U.S. goods to China could come at the expense of European competitors.

“If China concedes to the U.S. proposed agreement, the whole situation faced by the EU would be much tougher,” she and Xu wrote in a research note. “For China to massively reduce its trade surplus with the U.S., it has to in some way substitute its imports away from the EU to the U.S., which would have a significant negative impact on the EU producers.”
…

European businesses are unsettled as they watch the U.S. and China collide over trade. And for good reason: the nascent global trade war could represent the biggest single threat to the economic upswing that has helped the region get past its financial crisis.

In theory, some European companies could benefit, jumping into market niches if Chinese businesses are kept out of the U.S. market. But that would only be a few companies or sectors.

When your entire economy is heavily dependent on trade, an overall slowdown in global commerce caused by tit-for-tat import taxes provokes fear and undermines confidence.

And that’s just what’s happening in Europe. By one measure, business confidence has fallen in six of the past seven months in Germany, where exports are almost half of annual economic output.

“It’s worth all our efforts to defuse this conflict, so it doesn’t become a war,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.

The U.S. is due to put tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday. The Chinese will respond with tariffs on an equivalent value of U.S. products such as soybeans, seafood and crude oil.

Amid all this, Europe has its own trade dispute with the U.S. After the U.S. put tariffs on steel and aluminum from many allies, including the European Union, the 28-country bloc responded with import taxes on some $3.25 billion of U.S. goods. The Trump administration is also studying the option of putting tariffs on cars, which would significantly escalate the confrontation.

The head of the EU’s executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, will head to Washington in late July to try to personally persuade Trump against further measures targeting Europe.

The disputes over trade threaten to spoil the good times for Europe’s economy.

Growth last year was the strongest in a decade, since before the global financial crisis. While that has eased in recent quarters, the economy is still strong enough to create jobs. The number of unemployed fell by 125,000 in May, leaving unemployment in the 19 countries that use the euro at 8.4 percent, the lowest since 2008 and down from a high of 12.1 percent in 2013.

“Trade tensions stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump are clouding the economic outlook in Europe,” wrote analysts at Berenberg bank in London. They rated the trade risk ahead of troubles from Italy’s heavy debt load or faster than expected interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Many European companies would suffer because they both produce and sell goods in the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies.

For example, tariffs that China is expected to impose Friday on U.S.-made autos would hit German carmakers Daimler and BMW since they both make vehicles in the United States and export them to China.

Daimler has already lowered its outlook for profits, citing higher than expected costs from the new tariffs. BMW warned in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Friday that tariffs would make it harder for it to sell in China the vehicles it builds at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, “potentially leading to a strongly reduced export volumes and negative effects on investment and employment in the United States.”

Last year, BMW exported 272,000 vehicles from the Spartanburg plant, more than half its total production. Of those, 81,000 — worth $2.37 billion — went to China. BMW says its exports reduced the U.S. trade deficit by around $1 billion.

By themselves, the tariffs that take effect Friday won’t immediately have a dramatic impact on global trade. The fear is that retaliation will spiral, hitting the total amount of global commerce.

Even if the overall effect is to harm growth, there could be benefits for some European companies and sectors. Economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Jianwei Xu at the French bank Natixis say that European makers of cars, aircraft, chemicals, computer chips and factory machinery could in theory snare market share by substituting for Chinese or American products in the two markets. But that’s only if Europe’s own trade dispute with the U.S. does not escalate — a big if.

Europe is waiting to see whether the Trump administration will go ahead separately with tariffs on auto imports. European companies like BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi divisions, and Fiat Chrysler send $46.6 billion worth of vehicles every year to the U.S. Some 13.3 million people, or 6.1 percent of the employed population of the EU, work in the automotive sector, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.

“Europe cannot win anything” on an overall basis “for one obvious reason: we are net exporters,” said Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and a senior fellow at European research institute Bruegel. “But we should not understate the view that some sectors could get something out of a U.S.-China trade war.”

Amid the brewing conflict, China has sought to get Europe on its side, putting on a diplomatic charm offensive during visits by Merkel and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The EU and China agreed last month to deepen commercial ties and support trade rules. But the EU remains a close, longtime ally of the U.S. on a range of issues, despite the current tensions with the Trump administration.

One negative outcome for Europe, Herrero said, would be if Trump can push the Chinese into a trade agreement aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit. The additional U.S. goods to China could come at the expense of European competitors.

“If China concedes to the U.S. proposed agreement, the whole situation faced by the EU would be much tougher,” she and Xu wrote in a research note. “For China to massively reduce its trade surplus with the U.S., it has to in some way substitute its imports away from the EU to the U.S., which would have a significant negative impact on the EU producers.”
…

China is putting pressure on the European Union to issue a strong joint statement against President Donald Trump’s trade policies at a summit

this month, but it’s facing resistance, European officials said.

In meetings in Brussels, Berlin and Beijing, senior Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, have proposed an alliance between the two economic powers and offered to open more of the Chinese market in a gesture of goodwill.

One proposal has been for China and the European Union to launch joint action against the United States at the World Trade Organization.

But the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, has rejected the idea of allying with Beijing against Washington, five EU officials and diplomats told Reuters, ahead of the Sino-European summit in Beijing on July 16-17.

Instead, the summit is expected to produce a modest communique that affirms the commitment of both sides to the multilateral trading system and promises to set up a working group on modernizing the WTO, EU officials said.

Liu has said privately that China is ready to set out for the first time what sectors it can open to European investment at the annual summit, expected to be attended by President Xi Jinping, China’s Premier Li Keqiang and top EU officials.

Chinese state media have promoted the message that the EU is on China’s side, officials said, putting the bloc in a delicate position. The past two summits, in 2016 and 2017, ended without a statement because of disagreements about the South China Sea and trade.

“China wants the European Union to stand with Beijing against Washington, to take sides,” said one European diplomat. “We won’t do it and we have told them that.”

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Beijing’s summit aims.

In a commentary on Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua news agency said China and Europe “should resist trade protectionism hand in hand.”

“China and European countries are natural partners,” it said. “They firmly believe that free trade is a powerful engine for global economic growth.”

China’s moment?

Despite Trump’s tariffs on European metals exports and threats to hit the EU’s automobile industry, Brussels shares Washington’s concern about China’s closed markets and what Western governments say is Beijing’s manipulation of trade to dominate global markets.

“We agree with almost all the complaints the U.S. has against China. It’s just we don’t agree with how the United States is handling it,” another diplomat said.

Still, China’s stance is striking, given Washington’s deep economic and security ties with European nations. It shows the depth of Chinese concern about a trade war with Washington, as Trump is set to impose tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports on Friday.

It also underscores China’s new boldness in trying to seize leadership amid divisions between the United States and its European, Canadian and Japanese allies over issues including free trade, climate change and foreign policy.

“Trump has split the West, and China is seeking to capitalize on that. It was never comfortable with the West being one bloc,” said a European official involved in EU-China diplomacy.

“China now feels it can try to split off the European Union in so many areas — on trade, on human rights,” the official said.

Another official described the dispute between Trump and Western allies at the Group of Seven summit last month as a gift to Beijing because it showed European leaders losing a longtime ally, at least in trade policy.

European envoys say they already sensed a greater urgency from China in 2017 to find like-minded countries willing to stand up against Trump’s “America First” policies.

No ‘systemic change’

An April report by New York-based Rhodium Group, a research consultancy, showed that Chinese restrictions on foreign investment were higher in every single sector save real estate, compared with the European Union, while many of the big Chinese takeovers in the bloc would not have been possible for EU companies in China.

China has promised to open up. But EU officials expect any moves to be more symbolic than substantive.

They say China’s decision in May to lower tariffs on imported cars will make little difference because imports make up such a small part of the market.

China’s plans to move rapidly to electric vehicles mean that any new benefits it offers traditional European carmakers will be fleeting.

“Whenever the train has left the station, we are allowed to enter the platform,” a Beijing-based European executive said.

However, China’s offer at the upcoming summit to open up reflects Beijing’s concern that it is set to face tighter EU controls, and regulators are also blocking Chinese takeover attempts in the United States.

The European Union is seeking to pass legislation to allow greater scrutiny of foreign investments.

“We don’t know if this offer to open up is genuine yet,” a third EU diplomat said. “It’s unlikely to mark a systemic change.”
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The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday granted a temporary reprieve to ZTE that allows China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker to conduct business needed to maintain existing networks and equipment in the United States as it works toward the lifting of a U.S. sales ban.

The authorization from the department’s Bureau of Industry and Services, dated July 2 and seen by Reuters, runs until August 1.

ZTE and spokespeople for the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

ZTE, which makes smartphones and networking gear, was forced to cease major operations in April after the United States slapped it with a supplier ban saying it broke an agreement to discipline executives who conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

The company had also agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty and put $400 million in an escrow account as part of the deal to resume business with U.S. suppliers — which provide almost a third of the components used in ZTE’s equipment.

The escrow agreement is still pending, according to a source. Until it is executed, ZTE cannot deposit the $400 million in escrow necessary to get the ban lifted.

While the denial order is still in place, the authorization grants a waiver to some companies that do business with ZTE to do so for one month, a source told Reuters.

The waivers allow for a limited type of activity but do not authorize any new business.

The uncertainty about the ban amid intensifying U.S.-China trade tensions has hammered ZTE shares, which have fallen 60 percent since trading resumed last month following a two-month hiatus, wiping out more than $11 billion of the company’s market valuation.

ZTE announced a new board last week in a radical management shakeup as part of a $1.4 billion deal with the United States.
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Eike Batista, the former mining and oil magnate who was once Brazil’s richest man, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for bribing Rio de Janeiro state’s disgraced ex-governor, according to a court document published Tuesday.

Batista’s conviction and sentencing by federal judge Marcelo Bretas are the latest in a wave of graft investigations that have sent scores of powerful businessmen and politicians to jail.

The eccentric former billionaire’s meteoric rise and fall mirrored the recent fortunes of Brazil, where the commodities boom faded as his energy, mineral and logistics empire fell apart earlier this decade.

His swashbuckling attitude and confident forecasts of a prolonged golden era for Brazil evaporated just as Latin America’s largest economy suffered its worst recession on record.

Batista, whose legal team said he would appeal, was found guilty of paying a $16.5 million bribe to former Rio governor Sergio Cabral, who also was found guilty in the case.

Batista’s companies won state contracts in exchange for the bribe, including one awarding his consortium the rights to run Brazil’s temple of soccer, the Maracana in Rio, the stadium where the 2014 World Cup final was played and the 2016 Olympic Games’ opening and closing ceremonies were held.

The bribes were also linked to the construction of the $3.7 billion Acu port facility, controlled since 2013 by Prumo Logistica, which is majority owned by U.S.-based EIG Energy Partners.

Prosecutors said Batista paid a quarter of the bribes to Cabral in cash and the rest in shares of state-led oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, miner Vale SA and drinks company Ambev SA, a unit of Anheuser Busch Inbev NV.

Batista was last year fined 21 million reais ($5.4 million) for trading shares based on insider information about shipbuilding company OSX Brasil.

Tuesday’s ruling was the sixth corruption conviction for Cabral, who has been sentenced to over 120 years.

Six years ago, Batista, 61, had a net worth exceeding $30 billion and ranked among the world’s 10 richest people, according to Forbes magazine, and he had declared he would soon top the list. He sat atop EBX, then one of the world’s most expansive industrial conglomerates, with units ranging from oil and shipping to entertainment and beauty care.

However, Batista made massive bets on offshore oil plays that did not pan out and the extension of a commodity boom that fizzled as he inflated investors’ hopes.
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Major U.S. trading partners including the European Union, China and Japan voiced deep concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday about possible U.S. measures imposing additional duties on imported autos and parts.

Japan, which along with Russia had initiated the discussion at the WTO Council on Trade in Goods, warned that such measures could trigger a spiral of countermeasures and result in the collapse of the rules-based multilateral trading system, an official who attended the meeting said.

More than 40 WTO members — including the 28 countries of the European Union — warned that the U.S. action could seriously disrupt the world market and threaten the WTO system, given the importance of cars to world trade.

The United States has imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports and is conducting another national security study that could lead to tariffs on imports of cars and car parts. Both sets of tariffs would be based on concerns about U.S. national security.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 29 that the probe would be completed in 3 to 4 weeks.

But the European Union has warned the United States that imposing import tariffs on cars and car parts would harm its own automotive industry and likely lead to countermeasures by its trading partners on $294 billion of U.S. exports.

A Russian official told the WTO meeting that the issue of U.S. investigations had been raised over the past year in different WTO meetings, only to see things change for the worse.

The United States was losing its reputation as a trusted trade partner, the Russian delegate told the meeting, adding that the United States could soon start an investigation into the case for import tariffs on uranium products.

China, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Singapore, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Qatar, Thailand and India all echoed the same concerns and said they doubted the U.S. tariffs were in line with WTO rules.

The U.S. diplomat at the meeting said the matter was already the subject of formal disputes at the WTO, so it should not be on the committee’s agenda, the official who attended the meeting said.
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Halima Sheikh Ali is the proud owner of one of the few ATMs in Wajir town in northeast Kenya. But rather than doling out shilling notes, it dispenses something tastier: a fresh pint of camel milk.

“For 100 Kenyan shillings ($1), you get one liter of the freshest milk in Wajir County,” she says, opening a vending machine advertising “fresh, hygienic and affordable camel milk” in order to check the liquid’s temperature.

One of the world’s biggest camel producers, East Africa also produces much of the world’s camel milk, almost all of it consumed domestically.

In the northeast Kenyan county of Wajir, demand is booming among local people, who say it is healthier and more nutritious than cow’s milk.

“Camel milk is everything,” said Noor Abdullahi, a project officer for U.S.-based aid agency Mercy Corps. “It is good for diabetes, blood pressure and indigestion.”

But temperatures averaging 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the dry season, combined with the risk of dirty collection containers, mean the liquid can go sour in a matter of hours, he added, making it much harder to sell.

To remedy this, an initiative is equipping about 50 women in Hadado, a village 80km from Wajir, with refrigerators to cool the milk that remote camel herders send them via tuk-tuk taxi, plus a van to transport it daily to Wajir.

There a dozen women milk traders, including Sheikh Ali, sell it through four ATM-like vending machines, after receiving training on business skills such as accounting.

“The (milk) supply and demand are there. We just have to make it easier for the milk to get from one point to another,” said Abdullahi.

The project, which is part of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) program, is funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and led by Mercy Corps.

Fresh and Lucrative

Asha Abdi, a milk trader in Hadado who operates one of the refrigerators with 11 other women, said she used to have to boil camel’s milk — using costly and smoky firewood — to prevent it turning sour.

“I spent 100 shillings ($1) a day on firewood, and the milk would often go bad by the time it got to Wajir as the (public) transport took over three hours,” she said.

Now Abdi and the other women in her group send about 500 liters of fresh milk to Wajir every day — a trip that takes just over an hour by van. They then reinvest the profits in other ventures.

“With the milk money I bought 20 goats,” said Abdi as she rearranged bags of sugar in her crowded kiosk. “But my dream would be to export the camel milk to the United States,” she added. “I hear it’s like gold over there.”

Drought-safe Investment

Amid hundreds of camels roaming stretches of orange dirt outside of Hadado, Gedi Mohammed sits under the shade of a small acacia tree.

“The (tuk-tuk) drivers should be here soon to buy my camel milk,” he said, sipping the precious liquid from a large wooden bowl.

In Kenya’s largely pastoralist Wajir County, prolonged drought is pushing growing numbers of the region’s nomadic herders to see camels — and their milk — as a drought-safe investment.

Mohammed, who used to own over 100 cows, said he exchanged them a decade ago for camels, “which drink a lot of water but can then survive eight days without another drop, when a cow will die after two days.”

But even camels suffer when the weather is really dry, he added.

“Drought is bad for business because with less food and water the camels produce less milk,” he said, impatiently waving at a teenage boy to fetch a straying camel.

“Business would be better if I had a vehicle to transport the milk to buyers myself,” said Mohammed, who said he has to travel ever-longer distances to find pastures for his animals. “Right now I rely on the (tuk-tuk) drivers to find me, and you never know how long they will be.”

Technical Issues

Back in Wajir, Sheikh Ali said her group’s cooled milk ATM allows her to save about 5,000 shillings ($50) per month, as she no longer has to buy firewood to boil milk and can sell the fresh liquid at a higher price.

But although the vending machines are proving popular, they also have been plagued by technical issues, said Amina Abikar, who also works for Mercy Corps in Wajir.

“Sometimes the machines break down, or indicate that there is no milk left when there are still 100 liters” inside, she explained.

“So we have to wait for the machine supplier’s technician to travel all the way from Nairobi. It would be better to train someone locally,” she said.

Also slowing down business growth is the high rate of illiteracy among women involved in the project, Abikar said.

Sheikh Ali, who cannot read or write, relies on her son to operate the machine and check its various indicators.

“I would love to do it myself but I don’t know my ABCs,” she said, adding that she still feels “proud that I am one of the only fresh milk traders in Wajir.”
…

Halima Sheikh Ali is the proud owner of one of the few ATMs in Wajir town in northeast Kenya. But rather than doling out shilling notes, it dispenses something tastier: a fresh pint of camel milk.

“For 100 Kenyan shillings ($1), you get one liter of the freshest milk in Wajir County,” she says, opening a vending machine advertising “fresh, hygienic and affordable camel milk” in order to check the liquid’s temperature.

One of the world’s biggest camel producers, East Africa also produces much of the world’s camel milk, almost all of it consumed domestically.

In the northeast Kenyan county of Wajir, demand is booming among local people, who say it is healthier and more nutritious than cow’s milk.

“Camel milk is everything,” said Noor Abdullahi, a project officer for U.S.-based aid agency Mercy Corps. “It is good for diabetes, blood pressure and indigestion.”

But temperatures averaging 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the dry season, combined with the risk of dirty collection containers, mean the liquid can go sour in a matter of hours, he added, making it much harder to sell.

To remedy this, an initiative is equipping about 50 women in Hadado, a village 80km from Wajir, with refrigerators to cool the milk that remote camel herders send them via tuk-tuk taxi, plus a van to transport it daily to Wajir.

There a dozen women milk traders, including Sheikh Ali, sell it through four ATM-like vending machines, after receiving training on business skills such as accounting.

“The (milk) supply and demand are there. We just have to make it easier for the milk to get from one point to another,” said Abdullahi.

The project, which is part of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) program, is funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and led by Mercy Corps.

Fresh and Lucrative

Asha Abdi, a milk trader in Hadado who operates one of the refrigerators with 11 other women, said she used to have to boil camel’s milk — using costly and smoky firewood — to prevent it turning sour.

“I spent 100 shillings ($1) a day on firewood, and the milk would often go bad by the time it got to Wajir as the (public) transport took over three hours,” she said.

Now Abdi and the other women in her group send about 500 liters of fresh milk to Wajir every day — a trip that takes just over an hour by van. They then reinvest the profits in other ventures.

“With the milk money I bought 20 goats,” said Abdi as she rearranged bags of sugar in her crowded kiosk. “But my dream would be to export the camel milk to the United States,” she added. “I hear it’s like gold over there.”

Drought-safe Investment

Amid hundreds of camels roaming stretches of orange dirt outside of Hadado, Gedi Mohammed sits under the shade of a small acacia tree.

“The (tuk-tuk) drivers should be here soon to buy my camel milk,” he said, sipping the precious liquid from a large wooden bowl.

In Kenya’s largely pastoralist Wajir County, prolonged drought is pushing growing numbers of the region’s nomadic herders to see camels — and their milk — as a drought-safe investment.

Mohammed, who used to own over 100 cows, said he exchanged them a decade ago for camels, “which drink a lot of water but can then survive eight days without another drop, when a cow will die after two days.”

But even camels suffer when the weather is really dry, he added.

“Drought is bad for business because with less food and water the camels produce less milk,” he said, impatiently waving at a teenage boy to fetch a straying camel.

“Business would be better if I had a vehicle to transport the milk to buyers myself,” said Mohammed, who said he has to travel ever-longer distances to find pastures for his animals. “Right now I rely on the (tuk-tuk) drivers to find me, and you never know how long they will be.”

Technical Issues

Back in Wajir, Sheikh Ali said her group’s cooled milk ATM allows her to save about 5,000 shillings ($50) per month, as she no longer has to buy firewood to boil milk and can sell the fresh liquid at a higher price.

But although the vending machines are proving popular, they also have been plagued by technical issues, said Amina Abikar, who also works for Mercy Corps in Wajir.

“Sometimes the machines break down, or indicate that there is no milk left when there are still 100 liters” inside, she explained.

“So we have to wait for the machine supplier’s technician to travel all the way from Nairobi. It would be better to train someone locally,” she said.

Also slowing down business growth is the high rate of illiteracy among women involved in the project, Abikar said.

Sheikh Ali, who cannot read or write, relies on her son to operate the machine and check its various indicators.

“I would love to do it myself but I don’t know my ABCs,” she said, adding that she still feels “proud that I am one of the only fresh milk traders in Wajir.”
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A Portuguese tech firm is uncorking an Android smartphone whose case is made from cork, a natural and renewable material native to the Iberian country.

The Ikimobile phone is one of the first to use materials other than plastic, metal and glass and represents a boost for the country’s technology sector, which has made strides in software development but less in hardware manufacturing.

A Made in Portugal version of the phone is set to launch this year as Ikimobile completes a plant to transfer most of its production from China.

“Ikimobile wants to put Portugal on the path to the future and technologies by emphasizing this Portuguese product,” chief executive Tito Cardoso told Reuters at Ikimobile’s plant in the cork-growing area of Coruche, 80 km (50 miles) west of Lisbon.

“We believe the product offers something different, something that people can feel good about using,” he said. Cork is harvested only every nine years without hurting the oak trees and is fully recyclable.

Portugal is the world’s largest cork producer and the phone also marks the latest effort to diversify its use beyond wine bottle stoppers.

Portuguese cork exports have lately regained their peaks of 15 years ago as cork stoppers clawed back market share from plastic and metal. Portugal also exports other cork products such as flooring, clothing and wind turbine blades.

A layer of cork covers the phone’s back providing thermal, acoustic and anti-shock insulation. The cork comes in colors ranging from black to light brown and has certified antibacterial properties and protects against battery radiation.

Cardoso said Ikimobile is working with north Portugal’s Minho University to make the phone even “greener” and hopes to replace a plastic body base with natural materials soon.The material, agglomerated using only natural resins, required years of research and testing for the use in phones.

The plant should churn out 1.2 million phones a year — a drop in the ocean compared to last year’s worldwide smartphone market shipments of almost 1.5 billion.

Most cell phones are produced in Asia but local manufacture helps take advantage of the availability of cork and the “Made in Portugal” brand appeals to consumers in Europe, Angola, Brazil and Canada, Cardoso said.

In 2017, it sold 400,000 phones assembled in China in 2017, including simple feature phones. It hopes to surpass that amount with local production this year. Top-of-the-line cork models, costing 160-360 euros ($187-$420), make up 40 percent of sales.
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A Portuguese tech firm is uncorking an Android smartphone whose case is made from cork, a natural and renewable material native to the Iberian country.

The Ikimobile phone is one of the first to use materials other than plastic, metal and glass and represents a boost for the country’s technology sector, which has made strides in software development but less in hardware manufacturing.

A Made in Portugal version of the phone is set to launch this year as Ikimobile completes a plant to transfer most of its production from China.

“Ikimobile wants to put Portugal on the path to the future and technologies by emphasizing this Portuguese product,” chief executive Tito Cardoso told Reuters at Ikimobile’s plant in the cork-growing area of Coruche, 80 km (50 miles) west of Lisbon.

“We believe the product offers something different, something that people can feel good about using,” he said. Cork is harvested only every nine years without hurting the oak trees and is fully recyclable.

Portugal is the world’s largest cork producer and the phone also marks the latest effort to diversify its use beyond wine bottle stoppers.

Portuguese cork exports have lately regained their peaks of 15 years ago as cork stoppers clawed back market share from plastic and metal. Portugal also exports other cork products such as flooring, clothing and wind turbine blades.

A layer of cork covers the phone’s back providing thermal, acoustic and anti-shock insulation. The cork comes in colors ranging from black to light brown and has certified antibacterial properties and protects against battery radiation.

Cardoso said Ikimobile is working with north Portugal’s Minho University to make the phone even “greener” and hopes to replace a plastic body base with natural materials soon.The material, agglomerated using only natural resins, required years of research and testing for the use in phones.

The plant should churn out 1.2 million phones a year — a drop in the ocean compared to last year’s worldwide smartphone market shipments of almost 1.5 billion.

Most cell phones are produced in Asia but local manufacture helps take advantage of the availability of cork and the “Made in Portugal” brand appeals to consumers in Europe, Angola, Brazil and Canada, Cardoso said.

In 2017, it sold 400,000 phones assembled in China in 2017, including simple feature phones. It hopes to surpass that amount with local production this year. Top-of-the-line cork models, costing 160-360 euros ($187-$420), make up 40 percent of sales.
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday denounced President Donald Trump’s handling of global trade disputes, issuing a report that argued tariffs imposed by Washington and retaliation by its partners would boomerang badly on the American economy.

The Chamber, the nation’s largest business lobbying group and a traditional ally of Trump’s Republican Party, said the White House is risking a global trade war with its push to protect U.S. industry and workers with tariffs.

The group’s analysis of the harm each U.S. state could suffer from retaliation by U.S. trading partners painted a gloomy picture that could bring pressure on the White House from Republicans ahead of congressional elections in November.

For example, nearly $4 billion worth of exports from Texas could be targeted by retaliatory tariffs, the Chamber said, including $321 million in meat the state sends to Mexico each year and $494 million in grain sorghum it exports to China.

Trump has slapped tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of steel and aluminum imports from China, the European Union, Canada and others, prompting retaliation against U.S. products.

He is considering extending the levies to the auto sector.

The Chamber, which says it represents the interests of three million companies, had praised Trump for slashing business taxes in December, but mounting trade tensions have opened a rift with the White House.

“The administration is threatening to undermine the economic progress it worked so hard to achieve,” Chamber President Tom Donohue said in a statement. “We should seek free and fair trade, but this is just not the way to do it.”

Asked at a briefing about the Chamber’s report, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters: “The president is focused on helping protect American workers and American industries and create a fair playing field.”

The Chamber is expected to spend millions of dollars ahead of the November elections to help candidates who back free trade, immigration and lower taxes. It has already backed candidates who share those goals in Republican primaries.

Retaliation

Perhaps most unsettling to businesses and investors, Washington and Beijing have engaged in tit-for-tat tariffs and threatened retaliation that has raised the prospect of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of additional goods from China on July 6. China has threatened to retaliate in kind with its own tariffs on U.S. agricultural products and other goods.

Although Trump has previously been persuaded to back off trade threats based on the fact that they would hurt states that supported him in the 2016 presidential election, he has taken a more aggressive tack in recent months.

On Monday, he threatened to take action against the World Trade Organization after media reports said he wanted to withdraw from the global trade regulator. Trump says the WTO has allowed the United States to be taken advantage of in global trade.

Trump initially granted Canada, EU members and other nations exemptions on the metal tariffs — 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. But he lifted the exemptions the same week he met with Group of Seven leaders in Quebec last month.

Trump railed against his trading partners during the meeting, according to sources, and withdrew his support for a joint communique after leaving the summit, angering and bewildering some of Washington’s closest allies.

Retaliation for his tariffs came swiftly.

Early last month, Mexico imposed tariffs on U.S. products ranging from steel to pork and bourbon, while the EU levied duties of 25 percent on 2.8 billion euros of U.S. imports, including jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson, which dominates the heavyweight U.S. motorcycle market, subsequently announced it would shift some U.S. production overseas to avoid higher costs for EU customers.

Trump slammed the company’s move, saying it was tantamount to surrender, and threatened punitive taxes.

Canada, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Mexico, on July 1 imposed retaliatory measures on C$16.6 billion ($12.63 billion) of American goods, including coffee, ketchup and whiskey.

Global equities fell Monday as investors worried about an escalation of the trade disputes.

The Chamber based its state-by-state analysis on data from the U.S. Department of Commerce and government agencies in China, the EU, Mexico and Canada.
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The European Union has warned the United States that placing tariffs on automobiles would end up hurting the U.S. economy and would probably result in retaliatory measures from its trading partners.

In a letter sent to U.S. Commerce Department Friday, the European Union said tariffs on European cars and car parts were unjustifiable.

U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed imposing a 20 percent duty on EU car imports, citing security concerns. It was not immediately clear what those concerns are.

The EU letter said, “In 2017, U.S.-based EU companies, produced close to 2.9 million automobiles, which accounted for 26 percent of total U.S. production.” The submission said European car companies are “well established” in the United States.

The European car industry in the United States supports some 120,000 jobs in its factories that are mainly in the southern region of the country. A tariffs war could adversely affect those jobs in a region known for its support of the U.S. president.

 

 
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Tesla Inc nearly produced 5,000 Model 3 electric sedans in the last week of its second quarter, with the final car rolling off the assembly line on Sunday morning, several hours after the midnight goal set by Chief Executive Elon Musk, two workers at the factory told Reuters.

The 5,000th car finished final quality checks at the Fremont, California, factory around 5 a.m. PDT (1200 GMT), one person said. It was not clear if Tesla could maintain that level of production for a longer period.

Musk said the company hit its target of 5,000 Model 3s in a week, according to an email sent to employees on Sunday afternoon and seen by Reuters. Tesla also expects to produce 6,000 Model 3 sedans a week “next month.”

“I think we just became a real car company,” Musk wrote. The company hit the Model 3 mark while also achieving its production goal of 7,000 Model S and Model X vehicles in a week, Musk said in the email.

Tesla confirmed the contents of the email.

After repeatedly pushing back internal targets, Tesla vowed in January to build 5,000 Model 3s per week before the close of the second quarter on Saturday to demonstrate it could mass produce the battery-powered sedan.

Money-losing Tesla has been burning through cash to produce the Model 3, and delays have also potentially compromised Tesla’s first-to-market position for a mid-priced, long-range battery electric car as a host of competitors prepare to launch rival vehicles.

Production of the Model 3, which began last July, has been plagued by a number of issues, including problems from an over-reliance on automation on its assembly lines, battery issues and other bottlenecks.

As the end of the quarter neared, Musk spurred on workers, built a new assembly line in a huge tent outside the main factory, and fanned expectations that Tesla could hit its target, including tweeting pictures of rows of auto parts and robots over the final days of the quarter.

“It was pretty hectic,” said one worker who described the atmosphere as “all hands on deck.”

Another worker speaking after the 5,000th car was made described the factory as a “mass celebration.”

Tesla is likely to announce production and delivery numbers for the quarter later this week, and investors will watch to see whether the company can keep up its end-of-quarter production speed and increase efficiency to produce the cars at a profit.

Repeatable?

Tesla will have to prove to investors that it can sustain and increase its production pace, and some skeptics have bet against the company.

Short sellers lost over $2 billion in June due to Tesla’s rising share price and this latest achievement could buoy the company’s shares at market open on Monday.

Shares of Tesla, which closed on Friday at $342.95, are up 40 percent since a year low in April.

In recent months, the company has engaged in so-called “burst builds,” temporary periods of fast-as-possible production, which it uses to estimate how many cars it is capable of building over longer periods of time.

Analyst Brian Johnson of Barclays warned investors in March to be wary of brief “burst rates” of Model 3 production that were not sustainable.

One worker told Reuters that, to meet the goal, employees from other departments were dispatched to parts of the Model 3 assembly line to keep it running constantly, and breaks were staggered “so the line didn’t stop moving.”

The worker also said some areas within the factory were shut down to divert their workers to help out on the Model 3, such as the Model S line.

That suggests that Tesla was able to generally meet its production target through manual labor, rather than the automation Musk originally promised would make Tesla a competitive force in manufacturing. Earlier this year, Musk – who has described his vision for the Fremont factory as an “alien dreadnought” – acknowledged error in adding too much automation, too fast, to the Model 3 assembly line.

In May, Tesla sent a new battery assembly line via cargo planes to its Gigafactory battery plant outside Reno, Nevada, in order to speed production, as first reported by Reuters.

When first unveiled in March 2016, the Model 3 generated thousands of reservations from consumers in an unprecedented show of support for the new vehicle. Most recently in May, Tesla said that despite the delivery delays, its net Model 3 reservations – accounting for new orders and cancellations – exceeded 450,000 at the end of the first quarter.

Despite touting the Model 3 as a $35,000 vehicle, Tesla has yet to begin building that basic version and instead is currently building a higher-priced version. It is not clear how many of the orders are for the more premium version.

Steady progress has enthused others, however, and Tesla’s market value is close to that of General Motors Co.

The company has said it will not need to raise cash this year.

 
…

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods take effect Sunday following the Trump administration’s new tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office said in a statement that the prime minister “had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the United States imposed on June 1, 2018.”

Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke late Friday to discuss trade and other economic issues, the White House said Saturday.

“The two leaders agreed to stay in close touch on a way forward,” according to the prime minister’s office.

The telephone conversation between the two leaders was their first encounter since the G-7 summit in Quebec in June. After that meeting, Trump tweeted that Trudeau was “weak” and “dishonest.”

Trudeau also spoke Friday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to keep him up-to-date on Canada’s response to the U.S. tariffs.

The American goods that Canada has placed tariffs on include ketchup, lawn mowers and motorboats.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said the tariffs are regrettable. She said, however, Canada “will not escalate and we will not back down.”

Some of Canadian tariffs on U.S. items are politically targeted.

For example, Canada imports $3 million in yogurt, most of it coming from a plant in Wisconsin, the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan. U.S. yogurt will now be hit with a 10 percent duty.

Whiskey is also on Canada’s list of tariffs for the U.S. Whiskey comes largely from Tennessee and Kentucky.

Kentucky is the home state of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
…

Iran is studying ways to keep exporting oil and other measures to counter U.S. economic sanctions, state news agency IRNA reported Saturday.

Since last month, when U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal that lifted most sanctions in 2015, the rial currency has dropped up to 40 percent in value, prompting protests by bazaar traders usually loyal to the Islamist rulers.

Speaking after three days of those protests, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. sanctions were aimed at turning Iranians against their government.

Other protesters clashed with police late Saturday during a demonstration against shortages of drinking water.

“They bring to bear economic pressure to separate the nation from the system … but six U.S. presidents before him [Trump] tried this and had to give up,” Khamenei said on his website Khamenei.ir.

With the return of U.S. sanctions likely to make it increasingly difficult to access the global financial system, President Hassan Rouhani has met with the head of parliament and the judiciary to discuss countermeasures.

“Various scenarios of threats to the Iranian economy by the U.S. government were examined and appropriate measures were taken to prepare for any probable U.S. sanctions, and to prevent their negative impact,” IRNA said.

One such measure was seeking self-sufficiency in gasoline production, the report added.

Looking for buyers

The government and parliament have also set up a committee to study potential buyers of oil and ways of repatriating the income after U.S. sanctions take effect, Fereydoun Hassanvand, head of the parliament’s energy committee, was quoted as saying by IRNA.

“Due to the possibility of U.S. sanctions against Iran, the committee will study the competence of buyers and how to obtain proceeds from the sale of oil, safe sale alternatives which are consistent with international law and do not lead to corruption and profiteering,” Hassanvand said.

The United States has told allies to cut all imports of Iranian oil by November, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.

In the separate unrest, demonstrators protesting against shortages of drinking water in oil-rich southwestern Iran clashed with police late Saturday after officers ordered about 500 protesters to disperse, IRNA reported.

Shots could be heard on videos circulated on social media from protests in Khorramshahr, which has been the scene of demonstrations for the past three days, along with the nearby city of Abadan. The videos could not be authenticated by Reuters.

A number of protests have broken out in Iran since the beginning of the year over water, a growing political concern because of a drought that residents of parched areas and analysts say has been exacerbated by mismanagement.

Speaking before the IRNA report on the clash, Khamenei said the United States was acting with Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states, which regard Shiite Muslim Iran as their main regional foe, to try to destabilize the government in Tehran.

“If America was able to act against Iran, it would not need to form coalitions with notorious and reactionary states in the region and ask their help in fomenting unrest and instability,” Khamenei told graduating Revolutionary Guards officers, in remarks carried by state TV.
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