Author: CensorBiz

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Beijing/Paris — China imposed temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the EU on Tuesday, hitting French brands including Hennessy and Remy Martin, days after the 27-state bloc voted for tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, or EVs.

China’s commerce ministry said preliminary findings of an investigation had determined that dumping of brandy from the European Union threatens “substantial damage” to its own sector.

France’s trade ministry said the temporary Chinese measures were “incomprehensible” and violated free trade, and that it would work with the European Commission to challenge the move at the World Trade Organization.

In a sign of the rising trade tensions, China’s ministry added in another statement on Tuesday that an ongoing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into EU pork products would make “objective and fair” decisions when it concludes.

It also said that it was considering a hike in tariffs on imports of large-engine vehicles, which would hit German producers hardest. German exports of vehicles with engines of 2.5 liters or larger to China reached $1.2 billion last year.

France was seen as the target of Beijing’s brandy probe due to its support of tariffs on China-made EVs. French brandy shipments to China reached $1.7 billion last year and accounted for 99% of the country’s imports of the spirit.

As of Oct. 11, importers of brandy originating in the EU will have to put down security deposits mostly ranging from 34.8% to 39.0% of the import value, the ministry said.

“This announcement clearly shows that China is determined to tax us in response to European decisions on Chinese electric vehicles,” French cognac producers group BNIC said in an email.

French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that China’s brandy probe was “pure retaliation,” while EV tariffs were needed to preserve a level playing field.

Shares tumble

LVMH-owned Hennessy and Remy Martin were among the brands hardest hit by the measures, with importers having to pay security deposits of 39.0% and 38.1%, respectively.

The deposits would make it more costly upfront to import brandy from the EU. However they could be returned if a deal is eventually reached before definitive tariffs are imposed.

Both the investigation and negotiations remain ongoing, said an executive at a leading cognac company, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Chinese investigators visited producers in France last month and were due to make further site visits, the executive said, while Chinese and EU officials held negotiations on Monday.

The outcome was unclear, however, and doubts around the EU’s willingness to make a deal were emerging, they added.

Shares in Pernod Ricard were down 4.2% at 0839 GMT, while Remy Cointreau’s dropped 8.7% and shares in LVMH fell 4.9%.

Companies that cooperated with China’s investigation were hit with security deposit rates of 34.8%, with that imposed on Martell the lowest at 30.6%.

Pernod Ricard, Remy Cointreau and LVMH did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The measures could mean a 20% price rise for consumers in China, said Jefferies analysts, reducing sales volumes by 20%.

Remy, with the greatest exposure to the Chinese market, could see its sales decline by 6%, with Pernod group sales seeing a 1.6% impact, they said.

China is the second largest export market for cognac after the United States but is the industry’s most profitable territory. Difficult economic conditions in both markets have already prompted a sharp decline in cognac sales.

James Sym, fund manager at Remy investor River Global, said despite this, there was no sign that demand for cognac had fundamentally changed, pointing to an uptick in cognac sales in Japan driven by Chinese tourists when the yen was weak.

“That’s obviously a sign that cognac is not out of fashion,” he said, adding volumes – and the companies’ share prices – should recover long-term, although the tariffs would likely hit volumes and margins while in place.

Talks continue

Luxury goods shares fell by as much as 7% on Tuesday, with one trader attributing this to fears that the sector, which is heavily reliant on China, could be next to see trade measures.

The brandy measures follow a vote by the EU to adopt tariffs on China-made EVs by the end of October.

Before the vote in late August, China had suspended its planned anti-dumping measures on EU brandy, in an apparent goodwill gesture, despite determining it had been sold in China at below-market prices.

At the time, the commerce ministry said its probe would end before Jan. 5, 2025, but that it could be extended.

China’s commerce ministry previously said it had found that European distillers had been selling brandy in its 1.4 billion-strong consumer market at a dumping margin in the range of 30.6% to 39% and that its domestic industry had been damaged.

In the EU’s decision to impose tariffs on China-made EVs, the bloc set tariff rates on top of the 10% car import duty ranging from 7.8% for Tesla to 35.3% for SAIC and other producers deemed not to have cooperated with its investigation.

The European Commission has said it is willing to continue negotiating an alternative, even after tariffs are imposed.
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LISBON — Chinese lithium producers are flooding the global market with the critical metal and causing a “predatory” price drop as they seek to eliminate competing projects, a senior U.S. official said on a visit to Portugal that has ample lithium reserves.

Jose Fernandez, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment at the U.S. Department of State, told a briefing late on Monday that China was producing much more lithium “than the world needs today, by far.”

“That is an intentional response by the People’s Republic of China to what we are trying to do” with the Inflation Reduction Act – the largest climate and energy investment package in U.S. history valued at over $400 billion, Fernandez said.

“They engage in predatory pricing… [they] lower the price until competition disappears,’’ Fernandez said. ‘’That is what is happening.”

China accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s lithium chemical output, which is mainly used in battery technologies including for electric cars. Prices of lithium have fallen more than 80% in the past year largely due to overproduction from China and a drop in demand for electric vehicles.

However, the price collapse is also affecting China as it has forced Chinese companies like battery giant CATL to suspend production at certain mines.

Job cuts

Europe aims to reduce its dependence on imports from China and other countries of lithium and other materials essential to the green transition.

Fernandez said the low price “constrains our ability to diversify our supply chains on a broad, global scale” and also hurts countries such as Portugal that need investment to develop these industries.

Falling prices have forced many global lithium producers to scale back production and cut jobs.

Portugal, with some 60,000 tons of known reserves, is already Europe’s biggest producer of lithium, traditionally mined for ceramics.

Along with neighboring Spain, the country wants to take advantage of local lithium deposits, aiming to cover the entire value chain from mining and refining to cell and battery manufacturing to battery recycling.

Several mining companies in Portugal have been looking for financing, customers and suppliers to crank up projects.

“We want to help them, and we think we can… lithium mining companies, everywhere, have to survive this difficult phase that was created by predatory pricing,” Fernandez said.

China’s Premier Li Qiang in June used his address at a World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian to hit back at accusations from the United States and E.U. that Chinese firms benefit from unfair subsidies and are poised to flood their markets with cheap green technologies.

Trade tensions intensified last Friday when the European Union said it would press ahead with hefty tariffs on China-made electric vehicles to counter what it sees as unfair Chinese subsidies, after a year-long anti-subsidy investigation. China on Tuesday imposed temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the E.U.
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Washington — Despite ongoing U.S. sanctions targeting Chinese companies linked to Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang, United States-based footwear and apparel company Skechers opened a new outlet in Urumqi, the region’s capital.

The store opened on September 28, days before Chinese national holiday week, one of the country’s busiest shopping periods.

Its opening has drawn criticism from human rights advocates who question Skechers’ decision to expand its presence in a region under international scrutiny and subject to U.S. import bans on goods tied to forced labor.

Jewher Ilham, forced labor project coordinator at the Worker Rights Consortium, expressed concern over Skechers’ decision.

“By opening a store in the Uyghur region, Skechers is making a shocking statement that it does not care about human rights,” she said.

Skechers did not respond to multiple requests for comment from VOA.

Xinjiang, in northwest China, has been at the center of international controversy over allegations of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities, including forced labor, mass incarceration and repression — claims Chinese authorities have consistently denied. Xinjiang produces one-fifth of the world’s cotton.

In response, the United States passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2022, which bars goods from Xinjiang unless proven to be free of forced labor.

Skechers promoted its Urumqi store opening heavily on Chinese social media, with actor and brand ambassador Donnie Yen encouraging his nearly 130 million followers on Weibo to visit the outlet and explore its “comfortable treasures.”

Yen did not respond to multiple media inquiries from VOA regarding his visit to Xinjiang or his views on the treatment of Uyghurs by Chinese authorities.

Timothy Grose, an associate professor of China studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, pointed out that “from a profit-seeking perspective, of course, Donnie Yen makes sense, especially since nearly 75% of Urumqi’s population is Han Chinese.”

“Unfortunately, few Han are either fully aware or are concerned about state violence against the Uyghurs, so I doubt they will be judging Donnie Yen’s appearance with their moral compasses,” he told VOA.

Corporate responsibility

This isn’t the first time Skechers has faced scrutiny over alleged ties to forced labor in Xinjiang.

In response to a 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute alleging its supplier employed Uyghur workers under coercive conditions, Skechers denied the allegations. The company said audits of its supplier, Dong Guan Lu Zhou Shoes, found no evidence of forced labor, and that Uyghur workers were employed under the same terms as other employees.

Skechers’ recent move comes as the U.S. continues to intensify its efforts to eliminate forced labor from global supply chains. On October 2, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security added two more Chinese companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, bringing the total number of restricted entities to 75.

“Today’s actions reaffirm our commitment to eliminating forced labor from U.S. supply chains and upholding our values of human rights for all,” DHS undersecretary for policy Robert Silvers said in a statement on the DHS website. “No sector is off-limits. We will continue to identify entities across industries and hold accountable those who seek to profit from exploitation and abuse.”

Chinese pushback

In China, Western companies that publicly declared a break from sourcing products from Xinjiang have long faced backlash from Chinese consumers.

In September, PVH, parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, became the first Western firm investigated by Chinese authorities, who accused the company of violating Chinese law by allegedly halting the purchase of cotton and garments from Xinjiang.

Corporate responsibility in Xinjiang has become a contentious issue. Grose pointed out that companies like Skechers may view doing business in Xinjiang and China as a safe financial bet, despite human rights concerns.

The company’s actions are a stark reminder that companies should be held accountable not just by governments but by consumers, as well, said Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow and director in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“[B]rands are simply out for profit, with no regard to human rights,” he said. “Western consumers are not showing much outrage over this. There is little backlash, so they will do it,” Zenz said.
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The European Union is braced for retaliation from China after the bloc voted Friday to impose tariffs on the import of Chinese electric vehicles, which Brussels says receive unfair state subsidies. As Henry Ridgwell reports, there’s speculation that Beijing could target individual European countries that voted for the measures.
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HAMBURG, Germany — The world’s poorest countries are having to prioritize debt service over investments, United Nations Development Program administrator Achim Steiner said on Monday, scuppering progress towards their sustainable development goals.

Speaking at an event in Hamburg, Steiner said the financial crunch meant countries worldwide were struggling to meet the goals — a set of 17 wide-ranging targets such as tackling poverty and hunger, improving access to education and health care, providing clean energy and protecting biodiversity.

“For many, least developed countries, they have literally been priced out of the financial markets. They cannot borrow any more money,” Steiner told the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, adding that they must draw down other spending to avoid debt default. “It’s a very extreme situation.”

Countries like Ghana, Sri Lanka and Zambia have defaulted on their debt in recent years, while others are struggling to make payments after the global interest rate hiking cycle sent borrowing costs higher.

At the same time, the world needs trillions of dollars more per year to meet climate spending goals. Steiner said boosting financing was “absolutely central” to meeting sustainable development goals – something his organization is monitoring closely.

“We have to tackle this issue of our international financial architecture and our international financial system,” Steiner said. “If not, we are going to fall apart in our endeavor to find answers that our citizens are expecting us to find.”

World Bank President Ajay Banga, speaking at the same event, said official and multilateral lenders would not be able to provide the $4 trillion needed to reach the goals without help.

“That gap is going to need the private sector,” Banga said during a panel discussion.

Using public money to de-risk private investment was one way of leveraging multilateral balance sheets, he added, saying the Washington-based lenders had boosted the insurance for investors looking to get involved in renewables in developing world.

“We’ve already doubled where we were a year ago. There is more to come.”

The World Bank announced in July it had started operating a one-stop-shop loan and investment guarantee platform with the aim of tripling the provision of guarantees and risk insurance provided around the world to $20 billion a year.

Reaching the sustainable development goals would require standardizing financing vehicles and making it easier for public private partnerships to get off the ground, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

“Without the expertise and investment of the private sector, the sustainable development goals cannot be reached,” Scholz said during a keynote speech.
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Los Angeles — For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,0000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.

That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.

“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.

Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.

“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.

Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.

Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.

When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.

In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.

“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.

But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.

Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.

Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.

Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”

“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.

Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.

It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.

That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.

There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.

“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.

Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.

In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.

“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.

“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”
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Mozelos, Portugal — Portugal, the world’s leading cork producer, is finding new uses for the material, from footwear to furniture, as demand for wine bottle stoppers wanes.

Producers highlight the environmentally friendly properties of cork, which is lightweight, recyclable, waterproof and fire-resistant, to encourage its use in diverse settings.

Cork is obtained by stripping the bark of cork oak trees every nine years in a careful process that allows the tree to regenerate and grow, making the industry naturally sustainable.

The material has “a negative carbon footprint because it comes from a tree that captures CO2 day and night”, Antonio Rios de Amorim, the CEO of the world’s largest cork producer Corticeira Amorim, told AFP.

The push to diversify comes as global sales of wine decline, reducing demand for cork wine stoppers which have long faced competition from cheaper plastic stoppers and screw tops.

“Periods of slowdown must be used to question what we do,” said Amorim, whose ancestors founded Corticeira Amorim 154 years ago in the northern village of Mozelos, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of second city Porto.

Booster rockets, metro seats

Thanks to cork’s cell-like structure, the material is elastic and highly impermeable, making it suitable to make shoes as well as ties, pants and other clothes.

Furniture designers are also increasingly drawn to the material.

British designer Tom Dixon has called it a “dream material” and put out a range of dark cork furniture that includes tables, stools and shelves using cork from Portugal.

The Lisbon metro in 2020 replaced the fabric lining on all seats of its train fleet with cork, an easier to maintain material.

Builders have been drawn to the material because of its unique thermal insulation and sound absorption properties.

Cork is also finding its way into space. It is used in thermal protection coating on booster rockets because of its resistance “to strong variations in temperature”, said Amorim.

Making wine bottle stoppers, however, remains the main activity for Portugal’s cork industry, which employs around 8,000 people.

Corticeira Amorim makes some six billion cork wine bottle stoppers per year, almost all of them for export mainly to Chile, France and the United States.

It accounts for 70 percent of the global market share for cork stoppers and posted sales of 985 million euros (one billion dollars) in 2023, slightly lower than in the previous year.

Traditional methods

Cork is made from the bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber) found in countries of the Mediterranean basin.

Portugal is home to about a third of the world’s total area dedicated to this tree — more than any other country — and accounts for nearly half the world’s supply of cork.

There are also plantations in France, Spain, Italy. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

In the province of Ribatejo around 80 kilometers east of Lisbon, cork oaks stretch as far as the eye can see.

The bark is removed from the tree in summer using traditional methods handed down from generation to generation.

It is a highly precise technique “that takes several years to learn”, said Nelson Ferreira, a 43-year-old cork bark harvester, adding he takes great care not to damage the tree.

The bark is then taken to Corticeira Amorim’s factories in the north of Portugal where it is steam-treated, cut into smaller pieces and then fed into machines that punch out stoppers.

The preservation of cork oaks is crucial for Portugal, which has made them a protected species since it takes an average of 40 years for a tree to start producing cork that can be used by cork makers.
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detroit — The union representing 45,000 striking U.S. dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports reached a deal Thursday to suspend a three-day strike until January 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract.

The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately. The temporary end to the strike came after the union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, reached a tentative agreement on wages, the union and ports said in a joint statement.

A person briefed on the agreement said the ports sweetened their wage offer from about 50% over six years to 62%. The person didn’t want to be identified because the agreement is tentative. Any wage increase would have to be approved by union members as part of the ratification of a final contract.

The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at 36 ports stretching from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at the ports, which handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.

The walkout raised the risk of shortages of goods on store shelves if it lasted more than a few weeks. Most retailers, though, had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the dockworkers’ strike.

“With the grace of God, and the goodwill of neighbors, it’s gonna hold,” President Joe Biden told reporters Thursday night after the agreement.

In a statement later, Biden applauded both sides “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.”

Biden said that collective bargaining is “critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

The union’s membership won’t need to vote on the temporary suspension of the strike, meaning that giant cranes should start loading and unloading shipping containers Thursday night. Until January 15, the workers will be covered under the old contract, which expired on September 30.

The union had been demanding a 77% raise over six years, plus a complete ban on the use of automation at the ports, which members see as a threat to their jobs. Both sides also have been apart on the issues of pension contributions and the distribution of royalties paid on containers that are moved by workers.

Thomas Kohler, who teaches labor and employment law at Boston College, said the agreement to halt the strike means that the two sides are close to a final deal. 

“I’m sure that if they weren’t going anywhere they wouldn’t have suspended (the strike),” he said. “They’ve got wages. They’ll work out the language on automation, and I’m sure that what this really means is it gives the parties time to sit down and get exactly the language they can both live with.”

Industry analysts have said that for every day of a port strike it takes four to six days to recover. But they said a short strike of a few days probably wouldn’t gum up the supply chain too badly.

Kohler said the surprise end to the strike may catch railroads with cars, engines and crews out of position. But railroads are likely to work quickly to fix that.

Just before the strike had begun, the Maritime Alliance said both sides had moved off their original wage offers, a tentative sign of progress.

The settlement pushes the strike and any potential shortages past the November presidential election, eliminating a potential liability for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. It’s also a big plus for the Biden-Harris administration, which has billed itself as the most union-friendly in American history. Shortages could have driven up prices and reignited inflation.

Thursday’s deal came after administration officials met with foreign-owned shipping companies before dawn on Zoom, according to a person briefed on the day’s events who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The White House wanted to increase pressure to settle, emphasizing the responsibility to reopen the ports to help with recovery from Hurricane Helene, the person said.

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su told them she could get the union to the bargaining table to extend the contract if the carriers made a higher wage offer. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the carriers they had to make an offer by the end of the day so a manmade strike wouldn’t worsen a natural disaster, the person said.

By midday the Maritime Alliance members agreed to a large increase, bringing about the agreement, according to the person.
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In the American Midwest, a local fight over a Chinese electric vehicle battery factory reflects broader controversy over Chinese investments in the U.S. VOA’s Calla Yu reports on how the issue of U.S.-China competition is playing out in a small city in Michigan during this year’s U.S. presidential election. Videographer: Yu Gang
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PREK TAKEO, Cambodia — The Mekong River is a lifeline for millions in the six countries it traverses on its way from its headwaters to the sea, sustaining the world’s largest inland fishery and abundant rice paddies on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

Cambodia’s plan to build a massive canal linking the Mekong to a port on on its own coast on the Gulf of Thailand is raising alarm that the project could devastate the river’s natural flood systems, worsening droughts and depriving farmers on the delta of the nutrient-rich silt that has made Vietnam the world’s third-largest rice exporter.

Cambodia hopes that the $1.7 billion Funan Techo canal, being built with Chinese help, will support its ambition to export directly from factories along the Mekong without relying on Vietnam, connecting the capital Phnom Penh with Kep province on Cambodia’s southern coast.

At an August 5 groundbreaking ceremony, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said the canal will be built “no matter what the cost.” By reducing costs of shipping to Cambodia’s only deep-sea port, at Sihanoukville, the canal will promote, “national prestige, the territorial integrity and the development of Cambodia,” he said.

Along with those promises comes peril. Here is a closer look.

The threat to the Mekong

The Mekong River flows from China through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It supports a fishery that accounts for 15% of the global inland catch, worth more than $11 billion annually, according to the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. Flooding during the wet season makes the Mekong Delta one of the world’s most productive farm regions.

The river already has been disrupted by dams built upstream in Laos and China that restrict the amount of water flowing downstream, while rising seas are gnawing away at the southern edges of the climate-vulnerable Mekong Delta.

Brian Eyler, director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program, warns that high embankments along the 100-meter-wide, 5.4-meter-deep canal will prevent silt-laden floodwater from flowing downstream to Vietnam. That could worsen drought in Vietnam’s rice bowl and Cambodia’s floodplains, an area stretching over roughly 1,300-square kilometers.

The view from Vietnam’s rice bowl

A drier Mekong Delta is a concern for Vietnam’s agricultural sector, which powers 12% of its economy. The southwestern provinces of An Giang and Kien Giang would likely be most impacted. The delta’s latticework of rivers crisscrossing green fields is vital for Vietnam’s own plans of growing “high quality, low emission rice” on 1 million hectares of farmland by 2030. The aim is to cut earth-warming greenhouse gases, lower production costs and increase farmers’ profits.

Water from the river is “essential” not just for Vietnam’s more than 100 million people but also for global food security, said Nguyen Van Nhut, director of rice export company Hoang Minh Nhat.

Vietnam’s exports of 8.3 million metric tons of rice in 2023 accounted for 15% of global exports. Most was grown in the Mekong Delta. The amount of silt being deposited by the river has already dropped and further disruptions will worsen salinity in the area, hurting farming, Nhat said.

“This will be a major concern for the agriculture sector of the Mekong delta,” he said.

Cambodia’s view

Cambodia says the canal is a “tributary project” that will connect to the Bassac River near Phnom Penh. President Hun Sen claimed on social media platform X that this means there would be “no impact on the flow of the Mekong River.”

But blueprints show the canal will connect to the Mekong’s mainstream and in any case the Bassac consists entirely of water from the Mekong, Eyler said.

Cambodian authorities are downplaying the potential environmental impacts of the project. “This is their logic-defying basis for justifying no impact to the Mekong River,” he said.

A document submitted in August 2023 to the Mekong River Commission — an organization formed for cooperation on issues regarding the Mekong — does not mention using water from the canal for irrigation, though Cambodia has since said it plans to do so. The Stimson Center added it was “logical” that irrigation would be needed during dry months, but that would require negotiating an agreement with the other Mekong countries.

The Mekong River Commission told The Associated Press all major projects on the Mekong River “should be assessed for their potential transboundary impacts.” It said it was providing technical support to “increase transparency and cooperation among concerned countries.”

Sun Chanthol, the Cambodian deputy prime minister who oversees the project, didn’t respond to a request for comments.

Nationalistic rhetoric and tense neighbors

Cambodia has rejected criticism of the canal, which is widely seen as an effort by the country’s ruling elite to curry support for Prime Minister Hun Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, who led Cambodia for 38 years.

The canal is to be built jointly by Chinese state-owned construction giant China Road and Bridge Corporation and Cambodian companies. But it is enveloped in nationalistic rhetoric. The canal would provide Cambodia a “nose to breathe through” by reducing its dependence on Vietnam, Hun Sen has said.

Vietnam has avoided openly criticizing its neighbor, instead communicating its concerns quietly. Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said at a press conference in May that Hanoi had asked Cambodia to share information and assess the environmental impacts of the project to “ensure the harmony of interests” of Mekong countries.

Many Cambodians remain suspicious of Vietnam’s intentions, believing it may want to annex Cambodian territory. Given the contentious past between the two countries, bigger and richer Vietnam is taking care not to appear to be impinging on Cambodian sovereignty, said Nguyen Khac Giang, an analyst at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Although in Vietnam, there are big concerns,” he said.

Lost in Cambodia’s nationalistic rhetoric are the concerns of people like Sok Koeun, 57, who may lose her home.

The tin-roofed cottage where she has lived with her family since 1980 is right where the canal is due to be built. The river provides her with fish to feed her family when she struggles to get by selling sugarcane juice and recycling plastic cans.

No one has been in touch, she says, to answer her mounting questions: Will she get compensated? Will she get land? Or cash? Where will they go?

“I only learned about it (the canal) just now,” she said.
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Harare, Zimbabwe — The value of Zimbabwe’s gold-backed currency plunged 44% Friday on the official market.

The sudden drop of the gold backed currency, known as ZiG, began Friday shortly after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s monetary committee met and bank governor John Mushayavanhu said that after looking at “the recent macroeconomic and financial developments and economic outlook,” the bank was ready to “allow greater exchange rate flexibility, in line with the increased demand for foreign currency in the economy.”

Immediately after, the ZiG started trading at 25 to 1 U.S. dollar, down from 14, where it had been since it was introduced in April.

Tapiwa Mupandawana, a Zimbabwean independent economist and doctoral student at Africa Research University in Zambia, said allowing the ZiG to plunge is an adjustment toward its real value and a reflection of the actual state of Zimbabwe’s economy.

“The value of a currency is the derivative of the productive capacity of the country,” Mupandawana said. “So, in any case, you cannot have a stable currency if you do not have a stable economy.”

Prosper Chitambara, senior economist with the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, said the decision to allow the ZiG to drop could be positive for the economy and a sign the central bank is allowing market forces to play more of a role in determining the value of the country’s currency.

“[It] should have some stabilizing effect on the exchange rate,” Chitambara said. “I don’t think it is going to have a major impact in terms of pricing on the economy, given that most businesses were already indexing their … ZiG pricing based on the parallel market or based on the black-market premium.”

The gold-backed ZiG is the sixth type of currency Zimbabwe has tried to use since the Zimbabwean dollar collapsed amid hyperinflation in 2009. After Friday’s official devaluation, the ZiG was trading at around 50 on the black market. Before Friday it was trading at 35 ZiG to 1 U.S. dollar.
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London — As world leaders gather for the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, the charity Oxfam says they are being undermined by what it calls a “global oligarchy” of the super-rich who exert considerable control over the global economy – and who it blames for exacerbating problems like extreme inequality and climate change.  

“Today, the world’s richest 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity. The immense concentration of wealth, driven significantly by increased monopolistic corporate power, has allowed large corporations and the ultrarich who exercise control over them to use their vast resources to shape global rules in their favor, often at the expense of everyone else,” the Oxfam report says.

The charity says international cooperation on issues like climate change and poverty is failing due to extreme economic inequality.

“The wealth of the world’s five richest men has doubled since the start of this decade. And nearly five billion people have got poorer,” said Nabil Ahmed, the director of economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, in an interview with VOA.

Fair taxes

The report urges fairer taxation of large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

“We live in a world in which mega-corporations… are paying next to or little to no tax basically. Not like the small businesses, not like the rest of us,” Ahmed said.

“It’s such a phenomenal lost opportunity because we know governments, rich and poor, across the world need to claw back these revenues to be able to invest in their people, to be able to meet their rights,” he added.

Oxfam praises a campaign led by Brazil, which currently holds the presidency of the G20, to impose a 2% minimum tax on the world’s richest billionaires. Brazil’s government claims it would raise up to $250 billion from about 3,000 individuals, to pay for healthcare, education and tackling climate change.  

A report by the French economist Gabriel Zucman, commissioned by Brazil, suggests billionaires currently pay the equivalent of 0.3% of their wealth in taxes.

The plan is backed by other members including South Africa, Spain and France. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke against the move at a G20 meeting in July.  

“Tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally and we don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that. We think that all countries should make sure that their taxation systems are fair and progressive,” Yellen told reporters.

Private debt

Oxfam says tax revenues in the global south meanwhile are increasingly spent on servicing debt to private creditors like banks and hedge funds.

“This shift has exacerbated the debt crisis, further entrenching “debtocracy.” Compared with official creditors, private entities issue debt with shorter maturities and higher, more volatile interest rates,” the Oxfam report says.

Vaccines

The charity also accuses large pharmaceutical companies of shaping rules over intellectual property rights to benefit their shareholders. Oxfam says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, this meant poorer nations struggled to access coronavirus vaccines, such as the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer.

“Its negative impacts are most harshly felt by countries in the Global South, which bear the brunt of “artificial rationing,” where pharmaceutical corporations keep drug costs — and thus profits — high by limiting generic manufacturing, while simultaneously failing to invest in research and development for priority diseases in the Global South deemed less profitable,” Oxfam said.

Responding to VOA, Pfizer highlighted an open letter written by the company’s chairman Albert Bourla in 2021, in which he said the company had created a tiered pricing structure and had offered its mRNA coronavirus vaccine at cost price or for free to poorer nations. However, Bourla said that many richer countries moved faster to purchase the available doses.

“When we developed our tiered pricing policy, we reached out to all nations asking them to place orders so we could allocate doses for them. In reality, the high-income countries reserved most of the doses,” Bourla wrote.

Pfizer’s chairman also warned that losing intellectual property rights could “disincentivize” anyone else from taking a big financial risk in developing such vaccines, a view echoed by other large pharmaceutical giants.
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PITTSBURGH — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday she would offer tax credits to domestic manufacturers and invest in sectors that will “define the next century,” as she detailed her economic plan to boost the U.S. middle class.

Speaking at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate in the November 5 presidential election said she would give tax credits to U.S. manufacturers for retooling or rebuilding existing factories and expanding “good union jobs,” and double the number of registered apprenticeships during her first term.

Harris also promised new investments in industries like bio-manufacturing, aerospace, artificial intelligence and clean energy.

Harris’ speech, which lasted just under 40 minutes, did not detail how these policies would work. She highlighted her upbringing by a single mother, in contrast with former President Donald Trump, the wealthy son of a New York real estate developer.

“I have pledged that building a strong middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said, adding that she sees the election as a moment of choice between two “fundamentally different” visions of the U.S. economy held by her and her Republican opponent, Trump.

The vice president and Trump are focusing their campaign messaging on the economy, which Reuters/Ipsos polling shows is voters’ top concern, as the election approaches.

The divide between rich and poor has grown in recent decades. The share of American households in the middle class, defined as those with two-thirds to double that of median household income, has dropped from around 62% in 1970 to 51% in 2023, Pew Research shows. These households’ income has also not grown as fast as those in the top tier.

Harris said she was committed to working with the private sector and entrepreneurs to help grow the middle class. She told the audience that she is “a capitalist” who believes in “free and fair markets,” and described her policies as pragmatic rather than rooted in ideology.

Harris in recent months has blunted Trump’s advantage on the economy, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday showing the Republican candidate with a marginal advantage of 2 percentage points on “the economy, unemployment and jobs,” down from an 11-point lead in late July.

Trump discussed his economic plan in North Carolina on Wednesday and said Harris’ role as vice president gave her the chance now to improve the economic record of the Biden administration.

“Families are suffering now. So if she has a plan, she should stop grandstanding and do it,” he said. While Trump has proposed across-the-board tariffs on foreign-made goods — a proposal backed by a slim majority of voters — Harris is focusing on providing incentives for businesses to keep their operations in the U.S.

Boosting American manufacturing in industries such as semiconductors and bringing back jobs that have moved overseas in recent decades have also been major goals for Biden. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — all passed in 2021 and 2022 — fund a range of subsidies and tax incentives that encourage companies to place projects in disadvantaged regions.
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