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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has intensified his war on graft by announcing that all public servants will undergo a compulsory lifestyle audit to account for their sources of wealth.

This latest announcement follows financial scandals that have rocked the country with revelations that millions of dollars were lost in various government agencies through corrupt deals that involved government officials.

Kenyatta offered himself to be the first leader to undergo the audit that seeks to identify corrupt public officials, saying the lifestyle audits would control the misuse of public funds. He said public servants would be required to explain their sources of wealth with an aim of weeding out those found to have plundered government funds.

“You have to tell us, this is the house you have, this is your salary, how were you able to afford it? This car that you bought, (don’t try to put it under your wife’s name or son’s name, we will still know it is yours), where did you get it? You must explain and I will be the first person to undergo the lifestyle audit,” he said.

Scandals uncovered

In the past month, various corruption scandals involving tenders and suppliers in government agencies have been unearthed. The corruption scandals as revealed have exposed the theft of hundreds of millions of shillings by state officials from several government bodies.

So far, more than 40 government officials, including businesspeople, have been arrested over the recent  scandals.

Kenyatta has continued to express his frustration about the graft, which seems to have spiraled out of control since he came into office in 2013.

“This issue of people stealing what belongs to Kenyans, I swear to God it has to come to an end in Kenya,” Kenyatta said.

Establishing accountability

The president said the lifestyle audit will be key among other measures also put in place by the government to curb the vice.

Earlier in the week, Kenyatta issued an executive order requiring all government entities and publicly owned institutions to publish full details of tenders and awards beginning July 1, 2018.

“For example, if this road is being built, we want to know: Who won the tender for the construction? How much was the tender? Who came in second and third? Why was the first person awarded instead of these two? All these reasons, we need to know. Kenyans need to know so that it is out there, that this company was awarded this tender, belongs to a certain person, these are the directors, these are the shareholders. There will be no more hiding,” he said.

On June 1, Kenyatta ordered that all heads of procurement and accounting units be vetted again. He said the vetting would include subjecting the officers to polygraph tests to determine integrity.

Kenya scored 28 points out of 100 on the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. The Corruption Index in Kenya averaged 22.62 points from 1996 until 2017.
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After two consecutive years of decline, remittances, the money migrant workers send home, increased in 2017 according to figures released by the World Bank. Remittances are a significant financial contribution to the well-being of families of migrant workers and to the sustainable development of their countries of origin. The U.N. recognizes their importance every year on June 16, designated International Day of Family Remittances. VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit reports on this vital lifeline.
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Seventy percent of Canadians say they will start looking for ways to avoid buying U.S.-made goods in a threat to ratchet up a trade dispute between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, an Ipsos Poll showed Friday.

The poll also found a majority of Americans and Canadians are united in support of Trudeau and opposition to Trump in their countries’ standoff over the renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Amid the spat, Trump pulled out of a joint communique with six other countries last weekend during a Quebec summit meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies and called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.”

Trump was reacting to Trudeau’s having called U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs insulting to Canada. Trudeau has said little about the matter since a Trump Twitter assault. 

Despite the tensions, 85 percent of Canadians and 72 percent of Americans said they support being in NAFTA, and 44 percent of respondents in both countries said renegotiation of the deal would be a good thing for their country.

While the poll showed support for a boycott of U.S. goods in Canada, pulling it off could be difficult in a country that reveres U.S. popular culture and consumer goods over all others.

Canada is the largest market for U.S. goods.

Trudeau over Trump

The poll showed 72 percent of Canadians and 57 percent of Americans approved of the way Trudeau had handled the situation, while 14 percent of Canadians and 37 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s behavior.

More than eight in 10 Canadians and seven in 10 Americans worry the situation has damaged bilateral relations.

Canada has vowed to retaliate against U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum with tariffs against a range of U.S. goods, a move supported by 79 percent of Canadians, according to the poll.

By contrast, Americans opposed escalating the situation.

Thirty-one percent of Americans said they favored even stronger tariffs, and 61 percent said other elected U.S. officials should denounce Trump’s statements.

Canadian respondents also signaled approval of the united front their politicians have shown, with 88 percent saying they welcomed the support of politicians from other parties for the Liberal government’s decision to push back on tariffs.

While Canadian consumers appeared ready to boycott U.S. goods, 57 percent of Canadians and 52 percent of Americans said Canada should not overreact to Trump’s comments because it was just political posturing.

The Ipsos Poll of 1,001 Canadians and 1,005 Americans — including 368 Democrats, 305 Republicans and 202 independents — was conducted June 13-14. It has a credibility interval of 3.4 percentage points.
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A set of retaliatory tariffs released by China on Friday includes a plan to tax American lobster exports, potentially jeopardizing one of the biggest markets for the premium seafood. 

Chinese officials announced the planned lobster tariff along with hundreds of other tariffs amid the country’s escalating trade fight with the United States. China said it wants to place new duties on items such as farm products, autos and seafood starting July 6.

The announcement could have major ramifications for the U.S. seafood industry and for the economy of the state of Maine, which is home to most of the country’s lobster fishery. China’s interest in U.S. lobster has grown exponentially in recent years, and selling to China has become a major focus of the lobster industry.

“Hopefully cooler heads can prevail and we can get a solution,” said Matt Jacobson, executive director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. “It’s a year-round customer in China. This isn’t good news at all.”

A Chinese government website on Friday posted a list of seafood products that will be subject to the tariffs, and it included live, fresh and frozen lobster. The website stated that the items would be taxed at 25 percent.

The announcement came in response to President Donald Trump’s own increase in tariffs on Chinese imports in America. The Republican president announced a 25 percent tariff on up to $50 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday.

The news raised alarms around the Maine lobster industry, as China’s an emerging market for U.S. lobster, which has gained popularity with the growing middle class. Maine lobster was worth more than $430 million at the docks last year, and the industry is a critical piece of the state’s economy, history and heritage.

The U.S. isn’t the only country in the lobster trade. Canada also harvests the same species of lobster and is a major trading partner with China.

“Anything that affects the supply chain is obviously not a great thing,” said Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “The lobstermen obviously are concerned with trade and where they go.”

The value of China’s American lobster imports grew from $108.3 million in 2016 to $142.4 million last year. The country barely imported any American lobster a decade ago.

China and the U.S. are major seafood trading partners beyond just lobster, and the new tariffs would apply to dozens of products that China imports from the U.S., including salmon, tuna and crab. The U.S. imported more than $2.7 billion in Chinese seafood last year, and the U.S. exported more than $1.3 billion to China.
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President Donald Trump just imposed tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products — from X-ray tubes to incinerators. And Beijing is striking back by targeting U.S. soybeans, beef, seafood and other products.

The punch-and-counterpunch announced Friday in Washington and Beijing moved the world’s two largest economies perilously near a trade war that would inflate prices for consumers, disrupt the flow of goods and perhaps slow a global economy that has been enjoying its healthiest expansion in a decade.

“Everybody loses in a trade war,” says Philip Levy, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former White House economic adviser. “You get consumers who are worse off. You get producers who are worse off, farmers who are worse off and you don’t even achieve your goal.”

What’s more, the China tariffs come just as the United States is sparring with close allies like the European Union, Canada and Mexico in a separate conflict over trade in steel and aluminum.

What did Trump do?

The White House on Friday announced plans to slap 25 percent tariffs on more than 1,100 Chinese products, worth $50 billion a year in imports. The administration had originally proposed the tariffs in April, starting with a list of 1,333 Chinese products lines. After receiving public feedback, it removed 515 from the blacklist and added 284 others.

Starting July 6, the U.S. will tax the 818 products, worth $34 billion a year in imports, that remained from the original list. It won’t target the 284 additions, worth $16 billion, until after it collects public feedback.

How is China responding?

Beijing immediately said it would retaliate with penalties of the same scale on American goods — and it spelled out details to impose tariffs on 545 U.S. exports, including farm products, autos and seafood.

“The Chinese side doesn’t want to fight a trade war, but facing the shortsightedness of the U.S. side, China has to fight back strongly,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement. “We will immediately introduce the same scale and equal taxation measures, and all economic and trade achievements reached by the two sides will be invalidated.”

American soybean farmers, who send about 60 percent of their exports China, are especially worried about Beijing’s retaliation. Soybean prices were already falling before Friday’s announcement.

“Prices will likely drop further should the tariffs be imposed,” says Bill Shipley, president of the Iowa Soybean Association. “This will further pressure agricultural families and businesses already struggling with below break-even commodity prices.”

How will consumers and businesses be affected?

Tariffs are a tax. So they drive up the price of targeted imports. The reduced foreign competition means that domestic producers can raise their prices, too.

The Trump administration has sought to protect consumers from a direct impact from the tariffs. The tariffs target mainly Chinese industrial machinery, aerospace parts and communications technology; they spare such consumer goods as smartphones, toys and clothes that Americans purchase by the truckload from China. Televisions and pharmaceuticals were removed from the original tariff list.

Still, these tariffs will impose higher costs on U.S. companies that use the equipment. And over time, those costs could be passed on to consumers. The impact won’t be as visible as it would be if consumer products were taxed directly. 

By contrast, the Trump administration earlier this year imposed steep tariffs on imported washing machines. By May, the cost of laundry equipment had jumped 17 percent from two months earlier, according to government data.

What’s the dispute about?

The United States accuses China of using predatory tactics in a breakneck effort to supplant American technological supremacy. Among these are outright cyber-theft. Beijing forces U.S. and other foreign companies to hand over technology as a price of admission to the vast Chinese market. And it uses Chinese government money to outbid private companies for U.S. technology at above-market prices.

U.S. officials say they fear that Beijing’s long-range development strategy, dubbed “Made in China 2025,” will hamper competition and hurt American competitors. It calls for creating Chinese global competitors in such areas as information technology, robotics, aerospace equipment, maritime engineering equipment, electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. 

Foreign business groups have complained for a decade that Beijing is squeezing them out of promising economic fields. They say “Made in China 2025” appears to leave them little or no place in those industries.

But it isn’t always clear whether the United States is seeking to curb China’s sharp-elbowed practices or to keep it from emerging as a legitimate rival.

Haven’t the two nations tried to work things out?

Yes. And for a time last month it looked as if they’d reached a truce. After a meeting in Washington, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared the trade war “on hold” and the tariffs suspended. Mnuchin said so after China pledged to buy more from the U.S., especially energy and agricultural products and to shrink America’s gaping trade gap with China — $336 billion last year. But critics dismissed that agreement as vague. And Trump backed away and returned to the tariff threat.

Erin Ennis of the U.S.-China Business Council says she suspects Beijing will wait to see whether the United States actually puts the U.S. tariffs into effect July 6 before it starts taxing U.S. goods. That could buy time for last-ditch negotiations.

Isn’t the US tied up in other trade disputes?

Oh, yes. Trump just enraged the EU, Canada and Mexico by imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Worse, he argued that the imported metals posed a threat to U.S. national security — an insult to the longstanding American allies that they roundly rejected. He has also threatened to tax auto imports, also on national security grounds. 

Critics say Trump’s decision to pick fights with America’s friends weakens his hand against China. 

Trade analysts say it would be wiser for the United States to enlist its allies to challenge China’s drive to grab technology, rather than go it alone with unilateral tariffs. After all, companies from the advanced economies of the U.S., Europe and Japan share the same gripes.

China is adept at playing countries and companies off against one another, Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University law professor, testified last week before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission. If one complains, China can lock it out of the market and do business with a more compliant competitor. Better to present a united front. 
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