Author: CensorBiz

Hunger and food insecurity across the United States have dropped measurably over the past six months, but the need remains far above pre-pandemic levels. And specialists in hunger issues warn that the situation for millions of families remains extremely fragile. 

An Associated Press review of bulk distribution numbers from hundreds of food banks across the country revealed a clear downward trend in the amount of food handed out across the country, starting in the spring as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout took hold and closed sectors of the economy began to reopen. 

“It’s come down, but it’s still elevated,” said Katie Fitzgerald, CEO of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country and that provided the AP with the national distribution numbers. She warned that despite the recent decreases, the amount of food being distributed by Feeding America’s partner food banks remained more than 55% above pre-pandemic levels. “We’re worried (food insecurity) could increase all over again if too many shoes drop,” she said. 

Those potential setbacks include the advance of the delta variant of the coronavirus, which has already delayed planned returns to the office for millions of employees and which could threaten school closures and other shutdowns as the nation enters the winter flu season. Other obstacles include the gradual expiration of several COVID-19-specific protections such as the eviction moratorium and expanded unemployment benefits. 

All told, families facing food insecurity find themselves still dependent on outside assistance and extremely vulnerable to unforeseen difficulties. 

“There are people going back to work, but it’s slow going and God forbid you should need a car repair or something,” said Carmen Cumberland, president of Community Harvest Food Bank in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

Nationally, the food banks that work with Feeding America saw a 31% increase in the amount of food distributed in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the first quarter of 2020, just before the global pandemic reached America. 

When the nationwide closures of offices and schools began in March 2020, the impact was immediate. Feeding America-affiliated food banks distributed 1.1 billion pounds of food in the first quarter on 2020; in the second quarter, the number jumped 42% to more than 1.6 billion pounds. The third quarter saw a smaller 5% increase up to nearly 1.7 billion pounds of food. While distributions declined from the end of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, recent data suggests that the decline has leveled off. 

The national data is mirrored in the experiences of individual food banks across the country. At the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland, California, the level of community need spiked in winter and early spring of this year. In February 2021, the organization set a record with 5 million pounds of food distributed. That record stood for one month as March 2021 saw 6 million pounds distributed. 

After the March peak, the numbers started dropping steadily — down to 4.6 million pounds in August 2021. But that’s still compared with 2.7 million pounds in June 2019. 

“The recovery is going to be very, very long and steep for families who are typically reliant on food banks,” said Michael Altfest, the food bank’s director of community engagement. Altfest said the coronavirus pandemic was an additional trauma for families already suffering from food insecurity, and it introduced a whole new category of client who had never used food banks before but had been pushed over the financial edge by the pandemic. Both categories are projected to remain in need of assistance well into next year. 

“Things are not getting any easier here for low- and moderate-income households, and we don’t expect it to for a while,” Altfest said. 

Just how long the elevated level of need will last is a matter of debate, with the most conservative estimates projecting it will last well into next summer. Some are predicting that the country’s food banks may never return to normal. 

Parallel government food assistance programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, commonly known as food stamps, also saw a pandemic-fueled spike in usage. The Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, reports that the number of SNAP users increased by 7 million between 2019 and 2021. In August, President Joe Biden instituted a permanent 25% boost in SNAP benefits, starting this month. 

But the SNAP program doesn’t come close to covering every family in need. Many of the clients who depend on food banks for their nutrition are either ineligible for SNAP benefits, intimidated by the bureaucratic paperwork or fearful of applying due to their immigration status. That leaves food banks as the primary source of aid for millions of hungry people. 

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the AP that at the peak of the pandemic, 14% of American adults were receiving SNAP benefits. That number is now down around 8%, but the need remains highly elevated, and nonprofit charitable options like food banks serve a vital role in papering over the remaining holes in millions of family budgets, he said. 

“We just need to understand what this pandemic has done in terms of significant disruption of what was probably a pretty fragile system to begin with,” said Vilsack, who also filled the same Cabinet post under former President Barack Obama. “It has exposed the fragility of the system, which makes programs like SNAP, programs like summer feeding programs, school feeding programs, food bank assistance ever more important.” 

Vilsack said the Biden administration has moved to strengthen the national food bank infrastructure by devoting $1 billion in June to help fund refrigerated trucks and warehouses that will allow food banks to store and provide more fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy products. 

Now the country’s food bank network is busy trying to project the level of need going forward, factoring in multiple influences — positive and negative. Theoretically, the boosted Child Tax Credit payments, which started in July, are meant to alleviate the monthly burden for lower-income and middle-class families by providing money to use as the families see fit. But food bank executives and researchers estimate that it could take six to 12 months to see a real impact on food security as families initially devote those funds to issues like rent or car repairs. 

And the end of the nationwide eviction moratorium looms as a major pressure point that could push vulnerable families back into crisis. 

The Biden administration allowed the federal moratorium to expire in late August, and Congress did not extend it. While the federal government now focuses on pumping money into rental assistance programs, the national moratorium has devolved into a patchwork of localized moratoriums, in places like Washington, D.C., Boston and New York state — all expiring on different schedules. 

At the southeast Washington drive-through food pantry, volunteers there have developed friendships with some of the regulars, including Rob and Devereaux Simms. A retired bus driver and a school aide, both in their 70s, they consider themselves solidly middle class and had never used food stamps. But when the pandemic hit and two of their children were laid off, “things started running short,” Devereaux Simms said. 

Now, with three grandchildren living at home, they’re fixtures at the Wednesday drive-through. They even make a point of taking home extra supply boxes to distribute to needy neighbors and recently took small gifts for the volunteers. 

“God’s been good to us,” Devereaux Simms said, “and you should never be too proud to accept help.” 

 
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The World Bank on Monday warned of a significant 12% rise in the debt burden of the world’s low-income countries to a record $860 billion in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and called for urgent efforts to reduce debt levels. 

World Bank President David Malpass told reporters the bank’s International Debt Statistics 2022 report showed a dramatic increase in the debt vulnerabilities facing low- and middle-income countries; he also urged for comprehensive efforts to help countries reach more sustainable debt levels. 

“We need a comprehensive approach to the debt problem, including debt reduction, swifter restructuring and improved transparency,” Malpass said in a statement accompanying the new report. 

He said half of the world’s poorest countries were in external debt distress or at high risk of it. 

Malpass said sustainable debt levels were needed to help countries achieve economic recovery and reduce poverty. 

The report said the external debt stocks of low- and middle-income countries combined rose 5.3% in 2020 to $8.7 trillion, affecting countries in all regions. 

It said the rise in external debt outpaced gross national income (GNI) and export growth, with the external debt-to-GNI ratio, excluding China, rising five percentage points to 42% in 2020, while their debt-to-export ratio surged to 154% in 2020 from 126% in 2019. 

Malpass said debt restructuring efforts were urgently needed given the expiration at the end of this year of the Group of 20 major economies’ Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which has offered temporary deferral of debt payments. 

The G20 and Paris Club of official creditors launched a Common Framework for Debt Treatments last year to restructure unsustainable debt situations and protracted financing gaps in DSSI-eligible countries, but only three countries — Ethiopia, Chad and Zambia — have applied thus far. 

Malpass said further debt payment freezes could be included as part of Common Framework debt restructurings, but more work was also needed to increase the participation of private sector creditors, who have thus far been reluctant to get involved. 

The report showed that net inflows from multilateral creditors to low- and middle-income countries rose to $117 billion in 2020, the highest level in a decade. 

Net lending to low-income countries rose 25% to $71 billion, also the highest level in a decade, with the International Monetary Fund, or the IMF, and other multilateral creditors providing $42 billion and bilateral creditors $10 billion, it said. 

Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist, said the challenges facing highly indebted countries could get worse as interest rates rose. 

The World Bank said it expanded the 2022 report to boost transparency about global debt levels by providing more detailed and disaggregated data on external debt. 

The data now include a breakdown of a borrowing country’s external debt stock to show the amount owed to each official and private creditor, the currency composition of this debt, and the terms on which loans were extended. 

For DSSI-eligible countries the data also show the debt service deferred in 2020 by each bilateral creditor and the projected month-by-month debt-service payments owed to them through 2021.  
…

More than 130 countries have agreed on sweeping changes to how big global companies are taxed, including a 15% minimum corporate rate designed to deter multinationals from stashing profits in low-tax countries. 

The deal announced Friday is an attempt to address the ways globalization and digitalization have changed the world economy. It would allow countries to tax some of the earnings of companies located elsewhere that make money through online retailing, web advertising and other activities. 

U.S. President Joe Biden has been one of the driving forces behind the agreement as governments around the world seek to boost revenue following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The agreement among 136 countries representing 90% of the global economy was announced by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which hosted the talks that led to it. The OECD said that the minimum tax would reap some $150 billion for governments.

“Today’s agreement represents a once-in-a-generation accomplishment for economic diplomacy,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. She said it would end a “race to the bottom” in which countries outbid each other with lower tax rates. 

“Rather than competing on our ability to offer low corporate rates,” she said, “America will now compete on the skills of our workers and our capacity to innovate, which is a race we can win.” 

The deal faces several hurdles before it can take effect. U.S. approval of related tax legislation proposed by Biden will be key, especially since the U.S. is home to many of the biggest multinational companies. A rejection by Congress would cast uncertainty over the entire project. 

Big U.S. tech companies such as Google and Amazon have supported the OECD negotiations. One reason is that countries would agree to withdraw individual digital services taxes they have imposed on the companies in return for the right to tax part of their earnings under the global scheme.

That means the companies would deal with just the one international tax regime, not a multitude of different ones depending on the country.

“This accord opens the way to a true tax revolution for the 21st century,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. “Finally, the digital giants will pay their just share in taxes in the countries — including France — where they produce.” 

On Thursday, Ireland announced that it would join the agreement, ditching a low-tax policy that has led companies such as Google and Facebook to base their European operations there. 

Although the Irish agreement was a step forward for the deal, developing countries have raised objections, and Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have indicated they will not sign up.

Anti-poverty and tax fairness advocates have said the bulk of new revenue would go to wealthier countries and offer less to developing countries that are more dependent on corporate taxes. The Group of 24 developing countries said that without a bigger share of revenue from reallocated profits, the deal would be “suboptimal” and “not sustainable even in the short run.” 

The deal will be taken up by the Group of 20 finance ministers next week and then by G-20 leaders for final approval at a summit in Rome at the end of October.

Countries would sign on to a diplomatic agreement to implement the tax on companies that have no physical presence in a country but earn profits there, such as through digital services. That provision would affect around 100 global firms.

The second part of the deal, the global minimum of at least 15%, would apply to companies with more than 750 million euros ($864 million) in revenue and be passed into domestic law by countries according to model rules developed at the OECD. A top-up provision would mean tax avoided overseas would have to be paid at home. So long as at least the major headquarters countries implement the minimum tax, the deal would have most of its desired effect. 

 
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Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds more flights Monday following thousands of flight cancellations over the weekend but said it expects to resume normal service this week.

For the third straight day, passengers were left stranded amid confusion about what caused the cancellations.

Southwest blamed the weekend cancellations on bad weather and air traffic control issues in Florida. The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged some control issues on Friday; however, it noted that no other airlines suffered large-scale cancellations throughout the weekend. 

The union for Southwest’s pilots has denied holding a sickout in response to the airline’s decision to mandate vaccinations. 

The union asked a federal court on Friday to block the airline’s requirement that all employees get vaccinated against COVID-19. It says it does not oppose vaccinations but has argued that Southwest must negotiate with the union over any vaccine mandates before implementing them. 

Southwest said that the initial wave of flight cancellations left aircraft and crew out of place, which in turn made it difficult for the airline to recover its normal schedules and led to more canceled flights. 

In a video message to employees seen by CNBC, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said that staffing shortages have also played a role in the service disruption.

The airline “is still not where we need to be on staffing and, in particular, with flight crews,” he said. 

Southwest is one of several airlines that have been struggling with staffing issues for months, leading to flight cancellations and delays throughout the summer.

Southwest said in a tweet Monday, “While we work to stabilize our operations, we anticipate to resume normal service this week.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
…

Three U.S-based economists won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for pioneering research on the labor market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to allow conclusions to be drawn from such studies that can’t use traditional methodology.

Canadian-born David Card of the University of California at Berkeley was awarded one half of the prize, while the other half was shared by Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dutch-born Guido Imbens, 58, from Stanford University.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.”

“Card’s studies of core questions for society and Angrist and Imbens’ methodological contributions have shown that natural experiments are a rich source of knowledge,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Committee. “Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit for society.” 

Card worked on research that used restaurants in New Jersey and in eastern Pennsylvania to measure the effects of increasing the minimum wage. He and his late research partner Alan Krueger found that an increase in the hourly minimum wage did not affect employment, challenging conventional wisdom which held that an increase in minimum wage will lead to less hiring.

Card’s work also challenged another commonly held idea, that immigrants depress wages for native-born workers. He found that incomes of the native-born can benefit from new immigration, while it is earlier immigrants who are at risk of being negatively affected.

Angrist and Imbens won their half of the award for working out the methodological issues that enable economists to draw solid conclusions about cause and effect even where they cannot carry out studies according to strict scientific methods.

Speaking by phone from his home in Massachusetts, Imbens told reporters gathered for the announcement that he had been asleep when the call came.

“The whole house was asleep, we had a busy weekend.” said Imbens. “I was absolutely thrilled to hear the news.”

He said he was especially thrilled for Angrist, who was best man at his wedding. 

Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award wasn’t established in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in 1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize announced each year. 

Last week, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their fight for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and even murder. 

Ressa was the only woman honored this year in any category. 

The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to U.K.-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was recognized for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee.”

 The prize for physiology or medicine went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch. 

Three scientists won the physics prize for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change. 

Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan won the chemistry prize for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides. 
…

A thaw in the Sino-U.S. trade dispute, as hinted in Washington this past week, would help restore global supply chains but thin the outflow of investment capital from China to Southeast Asian countries that are eager to receive it, experts say. 

Reductions in punitive import tariffs between the two powers, which have been locked in a trade dispute since early 2018, should revitalize the business of global parts providers, assemblers and sellers of high-value items such as consumer electronics, the analysts say. 

However, they say that Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, along with smaller Southeast Asian countries, should expect less investment by multinationals trying to sustain U.S.-bound exports without shipping from China. Southeast Asian countries look to that investment to build economies and lift people out of poverty. 

In addition, Taiwan gained from the trade dispute as investors moved production and capital back home from China.

“I think the nature of value chains and supply chains is interdependent, so you might get a bit more in your country as a result of people moving out of another, but at the end of the day you want a system that supports the whole chain and supports it well,” said Jayant Menon, a visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute’s Regional Economic Studies Program in Singapore. “You don’t want this trade war interfering with it.” 

US to consider tariff exclusions 

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said October 5 that the United States would start a “targeted tariff exclusion process” for China.

Her announcement doesn’t end the trade dispute that flared under former President Donald Trump, who said China had committed years of “unfair trade practices,” but it may signal an eventual change under President Joe Biden. 

“The exclusions process is a key part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s deliberative, long-term vision for realigning the U.S.-China trade relationship around our priorities and making trade work for American workers and businesses,” the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said in the October 5 statement. 

China welcomed the move, the official Xinhua news agency said the same day. Xinhua quoted Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying as saying, “We hope the United States will … work with China to strive for healthy and steady development of China-U.S. trade and economic relations.” 

The dispute has hit $550 billion worth of goods, including $350 billion originating in China. 

Tai said the United States had yet to review its January 2020 “phase one agreement” with China over the trade dispute. The United States had agreed to reduce tariffs, while China said it would buy more U.S. agricultural products. 

‘A rising tide raises all boats’

A reduction in Sino-U.S. tariffs would jumpstart the manufacturing of electronics, machinery and transportation equipment, Menon said. 

China’s factories generated $3.7 trillion in “real manufacturing value added” in 2017, before the trade dispute, the Boston Consulting Group reported.  Goods such as machinery and electronics – compared to lower-value items including garments and shoes – represent “most of the action” in global trade, Menon said.  

China does a bit of everything, and the consultancy says its value-added factory output had surpassed every other country in 2017.

Specific value-added imports from China include televisions, smart speakers and consumer drones. Apple, to name just one known brand, has grappled with rising costs during the trade dispute as it contracts final assembly to two Taiwanese firms with factories in China. Apple sources parts to a list of companies in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. 

“Of course, it would be better if things were better between these two countries,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in the Philippines. “A rising tide raises all boats, so if the U.S. and China are doing well, everybody benefits.”  

Limited impact on Southeast Asia, Taiwan 

Manufacturers that have steered investment out of China into Southeast Asia since 2018 are concentrated in footwear, garments and ordinary consumer goods, experts say. Those exporters have “fixed costs” and “divisible technology,” Menon said. Southeast Asian factory-heavy countries offer supportive government policies and infrastructure, as well. 

“If there’s going to be some difficulty in (Sino-U.S.) trade, then definitely peripheral countries like the Philippines would benefit,” Ravelas said. 

American companies favor Vietnam for its cheap labor especially if they lack automation, said Frederick Burke, Ho Chi Minh City-based partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie.

“We still have clients looking at Vietnam, they’re saying this is a long-term plan, the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be over before too long and they want to get in while they can,” Burke said. “Vietnam probably is still going to have some sort of a positive growth rate this year.” 

The country’s top retail, property and manufacturing conglomerate, Vingroup, declined to comment on shifts in Sino-U.S. trade, with a spokesperson saying it would “decide target markets later.”  

Manufacturers were exploring outside of China before the trade dispute as Chinese wages rose and environmental laws tightened, Menon noted. The offshoring trend will probably hold after the trade dispute, though with some tapering, he said. 

Taiwan would feel little pinch as a glut in demand for its most prized export, semiconductors, keeps growing, said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of the Taipei-based Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute.

“The demand for chips is still there and moreover there’s a natural growth following changes in the industry,” Liang said. “Perhaps in the end competitiveness will be impacted, but the issue is, it’s still early, so if you ask about next year, I’d say pretty sure Taiwan will still be very strong in semiconductors.”
…

After water levels at a California dam fell to historic lows this summer, the main hydropower plant it feeds was shut down. At the Hoover Dam in Nevada — one of the country’s biggest hydropower generators — production is down by 25%. If extreme drought persists, federal officials say a dam in Arizona could stop producing electricity in coming years. 

Severe drought across the West drained reservoirs this year, slashing hydropower production and further stressing the region’s power grids. And as extreme weather becomes more common with climate change, grid operators are adapting to swings in hydropower generation.

“The challenge is finding the right resource, or mix of resources, that can provide the same energy and power outputs as hydro,” said Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the California Energy Commission. 

U.S. hydropower generation is expected to decline 14% this year compared with 2020, according to a recent federal forecast. The projected drops are concentrated in western states that rely more heavily on hydropower, with California’s production expected to fall by nearly half.

The reductions complicate grid operations since hydropower is a relatively flexible renewable energy source that can be easily turned up or down, experts say, such as in the evenings when the sun goes down and solar energy generation drops.

“Hydro is a big part of the plan for making the whole system work together,” said Severin Borenstein, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley and board member of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s electric grid. 

Borenstein noted that hydropower is important as the state works to build out its electricity storage options, including by installing batteries that can dispatch energy when it is needed.

Ben Kujala of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, which handles power planning for the Columbia River Basin, also noted that grid operators have adapted how they deploy hydropower in recent years to ensure that it complements solar and wind energy. 

Power grids linking western regions also offer some relief. While California can face multi-year stretches of dry weather, the Pacific Northwest usually gets enough precipitation in the winter to recover and produce hydropower to export.

But this year, the Northwest was also hit by extreme heat and less precipitation, according to Crystal Raymond, a climate change researcher at the University of Washington. While energy planners account for drought years, Raymond said climate change over the long term may further reduce the amounts of melting snow in mountains that fill reservoirs in the spring.

In August, California officials shut down the Edward Hyatt hydropower plant for the first time in its 60-year history after water levels at Lake Oroville sank to historic lows. The plant can produce enough power for up to 750,000 homes, but typically operates at lower levels. 

At Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, federal officials recently said there is a 34% chance that the Glen Canyon Dam won’t be able to produce power at some point in 2023, up from a 3% chance for next year, if extreme drought persists.  

Declines in hydropower production in California this summer coincided with heat waves, forcing the state to buy extra power. To prevent outages in late September, state officials said they were deploying temporary emergency generators.

“The drought did compound the difficulty of meeting demand,” said Jordan Kern, an energy and water systems expert at North Carolina State University.

In some northwestern states, hydropower production has reverted closer to normal levels after dipping just below their 10-year ranges earlier this year. California’s hydropower levels remained at the bottom of the state’s 10-year range through June. Federal forecasts say much of the West is likely to continue to see drought conditions through the end of the year.

Declines in hydropower production mean production bumps for other energy sources. Natural gas power is expected to rise 7% in California and 6% in the Northwest this year over last, according to federal forecasts. Coal generation is forecast to rise 12% in the Northwest.

The California Air Resources Board says the state has been able to continue reducing the electricity sector’s greenhouse gas emissions despite swings in hydropower generation in recent years.
…

Beekeepers Mustafa Alti and his son Fehmi were kept busy tending to their hives before wildfires tore through a bucolic region of Turkey that makes most of the world’s prized pine honey.

Now the Altis and generations of other honey farmers in Turkey’s Aegean province of Mugla are scrambling to find additional work and wondering how many decades it might take to get their old lives back on track.

“Our means of existence is from beekeeping, but when the forests burned, our source of income fell,” said Fehmi, 47, next to his mountainside beehives in the fire-ravaged village of Cokek. “I do side jobs, I do some tree felling, that way we manage to make do.”

Nearly 200,000 hectares of forests — more than five times the annual average — were scorched by fires across Turkey this year, turning luscious green coasts popular with tourists into ash.

The summer disaster and an accompanying series of deadly floods made the climate — already weighing heavily on the minds of younger voters — a major issue two years before the next scheduled election.

Signaling a political shift, Turkey’s parliament this week ended a five-year wait and ratified the Paris Agreement on cutting the greenhouse emissions that are blamed for global warming and abnormal weather events.

But the damage has already been done in Mugla, where 80 percent of Turkey’s pine honey is produced.

Turkey as a whole makes 92 percent of the world’s pine honey, meaning supplies of the thick, dark amber may be running low worldwide very soon.

Turkey’s pine honey harvests were already suffering from drought when the wildfires hit, destroying the delicate balance among bees, trees, and the little insects at the heart of the production process.

The honey is made by bees after they collect the sugary secretions of the tiny Basra beetle (Marchalina hellenica), which lives on the sap of pine trees. 

Fehmi hopes the beetles will adapt to younger trees after the fires. But he also accepts that “it will take at least five or 10 years to get our previous income back.”

His father Mustafa agrees, urging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to expand forested areas and plant young trees.

“There’s no fixing a burned house. Can you fix the dead? No. But new trees might come, a new generation,” Mustafa said.

For now, though, the beekeepers are counting their losses and figuring out what comes next.

The president of the Mugla Beekeepers’ Association, Veli Turk, expects his region’s honey production to plunge by up to 95 percent this year.

“There is pretty much no Marmaris honey left,” he said.

“This honey won’t come for another 60 years,” he predicted. “It’s not just Turkey. This honey would go everywhere in the world. It was a blessing. This is really a huge loss.”

Beekeeper Yasar Karayigit, 45, is thinking of switching to a different type of honey to keep his passion — and sole source of income — alive.

“I love beekeeping, but to continue, I’ll have to pursue alternatives,” Karayigit said, mentioning royal jelly (or “bee milk”) and sunflower honey, which involves additional costs.

“But if we love the bees, we have to do this,” the father of three said.

Ismail Atici, head of the Milas district Chamber of Agriculture in Mugla, said the price of pine honey has doubled from last year, threatening to make the popular breakfast food unaffordable for many Turks.

He expects price rises to continue and supplies to become ever scarcer.

“We will get to a point where even if you have money, you won’t be able to find those medicinal plants and medicinal honey,” Atici said.

“It’s going to be very hard to find 100 percent pine honey,” beekeeper Karayigit agreed. “We have had so much loss.”

Looking ahead, the president of the Turkey Beekeepers’ Association, Ziya Sahin, suggests selectively introducing the Basra beetle to new areas of Mugla, expanding coverage from the current 7% to 25% of local pine forests.

“If we conduct transplantation of the beetle from one area to another and continue this for two successive years, we can protect the region’s dominance in the sector,” Sahin said.

“There will be a serious drop in honey production if we don’t do this,” he added, calling this year the “worst” of his 50-year career.

Yet despite the pain and the troubled road ahead, the younger Alti has no plans to quit.

“This is my father’s trade. Because this is passed down from the family, we must continue it,” Fehmi said.
…

Low rainfall plagues one of the world’s major agricultural producers. Brazil now faces a crisis of drying dams, forcing farmers to look to more expensive and less-eco-friendly sources of power. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, the climate change-driven issue threatens to make worse the effects of climate change
…

U.S. Treasury chief Janet Yellen warned Sunday that it was “absolutely imperative” that Congress increase the country’s borrowing authority even as the immediate threat of a first-ever default on paying the government’s bills has been alleviated through early December.

“It would be a catastrophe” if the United States does not increase the ceiling on its current national debt of nearly $29 trillion, Yellen told ABC’s “This Week” show.

Yellen had said that the U.S. would run out of money to pay its bills on October 18, but Senate Republican and Democratic leaders agreed last week on an emergency $480 billion increase in the debt ceiling to pay the government’s bills through December 3, at which time the contentious political debate in Washington over an extension of the government’s borrowing authority could play out again.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and 10 other Republicans voted to clear the path for Democratic senators to increase the government’s borrowing authority on a 50-48 party-line vote last week, with the House of Representatives expected this week to assent to the temporary increase.

McConnell also said he would not cooperate with opposition Democrats in a further debt ceiling increase in December. He called on Democrats to raise it on their own through a legislative procedure known as reconciliation, in which Democrats could vote for a debt ceiling increase without the threat of Republicans blocking it with a filibuster.

Democrats so far have been reluctant to use the reconciliation process because they say it is cumbersome and time-consuming. They also say Republicans should join them in raising the debt ceiling because the country’s long-term debt has occurred under both Republican and Democratic control of the White House and Congress.

The U.S., virtually alone among the world’s countries, imposes a lid on its government spending. Yellen, however, said the figure has been increased about 70 times since 1965, either to a specific amount or suspended altogether for a year or two, since the U.S. government chronically spends more than it collects in taxes.

She has called for doing away with the debt ceiling, but that is unlikely since both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, thinking it is a winning political tactic in the U.S., repeatedly blame each other for what they contend is wasteful and unneeded spending by their opponents.

“It should be a shared responsibility (to increase the debt ceiling), not any one party,” Yellen said. “It is Congress’ responsibility.”

“We have to reassure the world that the United States is fiscally responsible,” she said, adding that if the borrowing authority is not increased before December 3, it would amount to “a self-inflicted crisis.” 

She said that if the debt ceiling is not increased, 50 million older Americans might not receive government pension benefits and that “our troops won’t know when or if they would be paid. The 30 million families that receive a child tax credit, those payments would be in jeopardy.”
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Australia’s Reserve Bank, the country’s central bank, has warned that the collapse of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group could cause chaos in China’s financial system.

In its semiannual “Financial Stability Review,” the Reserve Bank of Australia acknowledged that Evergrande Group, the heavily indebted Chinese real estate developer, faced a liquidity crisis, or a lack of cash or assets that can be converted easily to cash.

The reserve bank warned that if Evergrande, China’s second-biggest property developer, collapses, it could trigger broader problems in China’s financial and real estate sectors.

Evergrande is facing one of China’s largest-ever defaults, with billions of dollars in debt. Its businesses interests are vast, from wealth management and the manufacture of electric cars to the ownership of one of the country’s biggest soccer teams — Guangzhou FC.

Chinese authorities last year started to restrict the debts of big real estate companies.

Yun Jiang is the managing editor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. 

“The Chinese government does realize that [the] real estate sector is important to the economy, and, on top of that, it is important for the social stability of China because in China a lot of people’s savings, assets are tied up in real estate, more so than in many other countries,” she said.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and experts warn of serious implications for Australia should Evergrande default on its massive loans. 

The crisis has already hit the price of Australia’s main export, iron ore, a key ingredient in steelmaking. Analysts warn that China could cut steel production, which would further depress iron ore prices. Commodities have underpinned Australia’s recent prosperity. 

Analysts have also warned that Australia’s stock market, and skittish investors, would easily be unsettled if Evergrande went bust.

However, financial observers hope the Chinese government, which governs the world’s second-largest economy, will try to restructure Evergrande’s debt to prevent its collapse. They have stressed that China’s ability to contain a financial meltdown is about to be severely tested, and its success — or failure — would have global implications.
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Congress appears poised to pass a bipartisan, $1 trillion plan that would be the largest federal investment in infrastructure in more than a decade. History shows that investing in infrastructure can transform the United States, changing how Americans move, bolstering economic prosperity, and significantly improving the health and quality of life for many. 

“When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, we changed the way we moved forever, opening up the entire country and from the way humans had moved previously for thousands of years by animal to machine,” Greg DiLoreto, past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), told VOA via email. “[And] I think we all would agree that construction of the interstate highway system changed America in ways that greatly contributed to our economic prosperity.” 

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which authorized the building of 65,000 kilometers (41,000 miles) of interstate highways — the largest American public works program in history at the time. Another earlier transformation occurred in 1936, when Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act, extending electricity into rural areas for the first time.

And the wave of projects that created modern sewage and water systems in urban areas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a lasting mark, providing reliable, clean water in cities and extracting pollution from sewage.

“American cities in the late 19th, early 20th century were incredibly unhealthy places,” says Richard White, professor emeritus of American history at Stanford University in California. “High child death rates, repeated epidemics, and much of that was waterborne disease that came from both ineffective sewage and impure water. And infrastructure projects changed that dramatically. Probably it’s been the most effective public health effort ever in the history of the United States.”

Dark consequences 

DiLoreto also names the construction of dams across the western United States, which increased America’s ability to farm and feed the world, as infrastructure successes. But he points out that the projects created problems for migrating fish. In fact, many of the so-called successful infrastructure projects, like interstate highways, had dark consequences. 

“They increased racial stratification in the cities. They were built in such a way that they went through poorer neighborhoods, very often minority neighborhoods, walling them off from the city as a whole,” White says. “They set them apart and set in motion a set of social changes which we suffer from still. So, they hurt poorer areas, minority areas, even if they helped middle-class areas.” 

White, who wrote the book “Railroaded,” about the building of the transcontinental railroads, contends the federal government funded too many railroads into areas without the traffic to sustain them. 

“The railroads took government money and then went bankrupt,” White says. “They were very often utterly corrupt. The money was taken off into the private pockets behind some of the great fortunes in American history, and they never really delivered the economic and social benefits that they promised.” 

And Native Americans ended up paying the price, White adds. 

“Many of these railroads ended up costing Indian peoples huge amounts of land for no particular benefit,” he says. “It’s not like white settlement was particularly successful in the land the Indians lost. So, even though it was intended to raise the standard of living for everybody in the West, it didn’t necessarily do so, and the great cost was paid very often by Indian people.” 

Bold enough?

The stripped-down bipartisan version of President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan (AJP) pours money into transportation, utilities — including high-speed internet for rural communities — and pollution cleanup. What the bill does not appear to contain is a single transformative project. 

“From the information I have, funds will be used to help us repair, replace and make our infrastructure more robust to withstand climate change and seismic risks,” DiLoreto says. “One might consider that transformative in the sense that our quality of life and economic prosperity depend on a functioning infrastructure.” 

White views the bill as backward-looking rather than forward-thinking at a time when the United States needs to transform itself to adjust to a changing world, doing things differently in the future than it has in the past. 

“We have our first great infrastructure bill, which is mostly intended to protect things we built in the past, which, I think, in the long run, that’s going to be seen as a failing,” White says. “And again, I’m not saying that you should allow bridges to fall into rivers, or that the roads don’t need repair. But it’s not transformative.” 

There is one potentially sweeping project that could help revolutionize life in the United States. 

“Broadband has had a tremendous impact on our lives,” DiLoreto says. “Without a broadband system, our ability to economically survive COVID would have been difficult.” 

The current bipartisan plan provides $65 billion for broadband infrastructure. 

“If broadband in this bill works as they intend it … and they bring it into poor areas which now lack broadband, that would be a good thing, that could be transformative,” White says. “That could have the same kind of consequences that rural electrification had in terms of education and lightening people’s workload and allowing them to do the kinds of work they otherwise couldn’t do. … But if they simply make it more effective for those who have it already, it’s not going to be transformative.”
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A global deal to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation has been agreed upon by 136 countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Friday.

The OECD said four countries — Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — had not yet joined the agreement, but that the countries behind the accord together accounted for over 90% of the global economy.

Here are the main points of the accord:

Why a global minimum tax?

With budgets strained after the COVID-19 crisis, many governments want more than ever to discourage multinationals from shifting profits — and tax revenues — to low-tax countries regardless of where their sales are made.

Increasingly, income from intangible sources such as drug patents, software and royalties on intellectual property has migrated to these jurisdictions, allowing companies to avoid paying higher taxes in their traditional home countries.

The minimum tax and other provisions aim to end decades of tax competition between governments to attract foreign investment.

How would a deal work?

The global minimum tax rate would apply to overseas profits of multinational firms with 750 million euros ($868 million) in sales globally.

Governments could still set whatever local corporate tax rate they want, but if companies pay lower rates in a particular country, their home governments could “top up” their taxes to the 15% minimum, eliminating the advantage of shifting profits.

A second track of the overhaul would allow countries where revenues are earned to tax 25% of the largest multinationals’ so-called excess profit — defined as profit in excess of 10% of revenue.

What happens next?

Following Friday’s agreement on the technical details, the next step is for finance ministers from the Group of 20 economic powers to formally endorse the deal, paving the way for adoption by G-20 leaders at a summit at the end of this month.

Nonetheless, questions remain about the U.S. position, which hangs in part on a domestic tax reform the Biden administration wants to push through the U.S. Congress.

The agreement calls for countries to bring it into law in 2022 so that it can take effect by 2023, an extremely tight timeframe given that previous international tax deals took years to implement.

Countries that have in recent years created national digital services taxes will have to repeal them.

What will be the economic impact?

The OECD, which has steered the negotiations, estimates the minimum tax will generate $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually.

Taxing rights on more than $125 billion of profit will be additionally shifted to the countries were they are earned from the low tax countries where they are currently booked.

Economists expect that the deal will encourage multinationals to repatriate capital to their country of headquarters, giving a boost to those economies.

However, various deductions and exceptions baked into the deal are at the same time designed to limit the impact on low tax countries like Ireland, where many U.S. groups base their European operations.
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China said on Saturday that it had pressed the United States to eliminate tariffs in talks between the countries’ top trade officials that Washington saw as a test of bilateral engagement between the world’s biggest economies.

The virtual talks between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and China’s Vice Premier Liu He followed Tai’s announcement on Monday that she would seek “frank” talks and hold China to its commitments under a “Phase 1” trade deal negotiated by former President Donald Trump.

“The Chinese side negotiated over the cancellation of tariffs and sanctions, and clarified its position on China’s economic development model and industrial policies,” China’s Xinhua state news agency said after the talks, held Friday Washington time.

Tai intended to use the call, the second between the two, to test whether bilateral engagement can address U.S. complaints about Beijing’s trade and subsidy practices, a USTR official said.

Resolution through consultation

“Ambassador Tai and Vice Premier Liu reviewed implementation of the U.S.-China Economic and Trade Agreement and agreed that the two sides would consult on certain outstanding issues,” USTR said in a statement.

Xinhua said the two sides “expressed their core concerns and agreed to resolve each other’s reasonable concerns through consultation.”

“Both sides agree to continue communicating with an equal approach and mutual respect, and to create the conditions for the healthy development of economic and trade relations between the two countries and the recovery of the world economy,” it said.

US cites China’s ‘authoritarian’ approach

In a briefing ahead of the call, a senior USTR official said Tai would give Liu an assessment of China’s performance in implementing the Phase 1 deal, including promised purchases of U.S. goods that are falling short of targets.

Asked about the shortfalls, China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, told China’s Phoenix TV in an interview on Friday that Beijing had always kept its promises in state-to-state relations, the embassy said in a summary released Saturday.

He said Beijing had sincerely and steadily implemented the agreement, despite serious challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, including what he called “tangible steps” on intellectual property protections and opening the financial sector.

He faulted Washington for acting at the same time to impose barriers and restrictions on Chinese firms in the United States.

Limits on ‘harmful practices’

Tai would raise concerns about China’s “non-market” economic practices, the U.S. official said.

“We recognize that Beijing is increasingly explicit that it is doubling down on its authoritarian state-centric approach and is resistant to addressing our structural concerns,” the official said, adding that, consequently, Washington would focus on improving U.S. competitiveness, diversifying markets and “limiting the impact of Beijing’s harmful practices.”

The Phase 1 deal in January eased a long-running tariff war between the world’s two largest economies. It focused largely on China’s promise to boost purchases of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion over two years, along with increased protections for copyright, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property.

The Trump administration envisioned a Phase 2 negotiation to tackle more difficult issues such as subsidies to state enterprises and China’s strategic industrial policies.

The official said Tai’s future engagement with China would depend on “how China responds to tonight’s call” and declined to discuss possible next steps, but added that Tai would not seek Phase 2 negotiations.
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Running out of time to get its products on store shelves ahead of the holidays, the Basic Fun toy company made an unprecedented decision: It’s leaving one-third of its iconic Tonka Mighty Dump Trucks destined for the U.S. in China.

Why? Given surging prices for shipping containers and clogs in the supply network, transportation costs to get the bulky yellow toy to U.S. soil is now 40% of the retail price, which is roughly $26. That’s dramatically up from 7% a year ago. And it doesn’t even include the cost of getting the product from U.S. ports to retailers.

“We’ve never left product behind in this way,” says Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun. “We really had no choice.”

Toy companies are racing to get their products to retailers as they grapple with a severe supply-network crunch that could mean sparse shelves for the holidays. They’re trying to find containers to ship their goods while searching for alternative ports. Some are flying in some of the toys instead of shipping by boat to ensure delivery before Dec. 25. And in cases like Basic Fun, they are leaving toys behind in China and waiting for costs to come down.

Like all manufacturers, toy companies have been facing supply chain woes since the pandemic started and temporarily closed factories in China in early 2020. Then, U.S. stores temporarily cut back or halted production amid lockdowns. The situation has only worsened since the spring, with companies having a hard time meeting surging demand for all sorts of goods from shoppers re-entering the world.

Manufacturers are wrestling with bottlenecks at factories and key ports like Long Beach, California — and all points in between. Furthermore, labor shortages in the U.S. have made it difficult to get stuff unloaded from ships and onto trucks.

But for toymakers that heavily rely on holiday sales, there’s a lot at stake for the nearly $33 billion U.S. industry. The fourth quarter accounts for 70% of its annual sales. On average, holiday sales account for 20% of the overall retail industry. And 85% of the toys are made in China, estimates Steve Pasierb, CEO of The Toy Association.

The snarls are so severe that some retailers are telling companies they don’t want products if they’re shipped after mid-October. That’s because products that typically took four to six weeks from when they left a factory in China to landing at a U.S. distribution center now take 12 to 16 weeks, says Marc Rosenberg, a toy consultant.

The struggles are happening as the U.S. toy industry enjoyed a nearly 17% increase in sales last year and a 40% increase in the first half of this year as parents looked to entertain their kids at home, according to NPD Group, a market research firm.

But while analysts expect strong growth in 2021, many toy companies said they’ll see their sales reduced because they won’t be able to fulfill orders on hot items, particularly surprise hits. They are also incurring big costs that will force some toy companies to shutter.

Toy executives say they can’t raise prices any more than 10% — even though it won’t completely cover the higher costs — because they’re worried about shopper reaction. Mattel Inc., the nation’s largest toy company, warned this summer it’s raising prices in time for the holiday season to offset higher shipping costs, though it didn’t say by how much.

Costs of containers on ships have increased more than six-fold from last year with some brand executives saying they’ve gone up to $20,000 from roughly $3,000 a year ago. That has forced big retailers like Walmart and Target among others to charter their own ships.

Foreman calculates 1,800 Tonka trucks fit on each 40-foot container. So at $20,000 per container, that’s costing him $11 each. That’s up from an average of $1.75 each in a typical year. He says he’s focusing on shipping smaller items like Mash’ems — soft, squishy, water-filled collectibles — onto containers as he looks to maximize the total dollar value of the container and profit margins. He estimates he can fit $150,000 worth of Mash-ems in a container versus $40,000 worth of Tonka trucks.

Some like MGA Entertainment, the maker of L.O.L dolls, are expediting the flying of its toys because it now costs roughly the same shipping.

Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of TTPM, a toy review site, says big discounters like Target and Walmart should have a healthier supply of toys compared with smaller ones because of their clout. Target says it has been teaming up closely with its vendors and transportation partners to keep stores well-stocked and ready for its customers.

But Melissa McCollum, owner of Learning Express Toys in Birmingham, Alabama, says she’s received only 25% of the holiday toys as of mid-September; typically, that figure is 50%. And The Toy Book, the leading trade magazine serving the toy industry, is promoting a curated list of in-stock products that retailers can get fast from U.S. warehouses.

Many toy companies like Basic Fun and PlayMonster have reduced advertising.

“We would be advertising to empty shelves,” said Tim Kilpin, president of PlayMonster, who says 15% to 20% of its holiday goods are snarled in the supply chain. Koosh, a toy ball made of rubber filaments, was completely sold out in August, and he didn’t think there would be a chance of it being replenished by Christmas, he says. But on Wednesday, Kilpin said he received word that some of the containers including shipments of Koosh are flowing from the West Coast.

The bottlenecks are expected to have lingering consequences. Toymakers are facing pressure from retailers to ship the first flow of holiday 2022 goods in early March instead of late April and the second cycle in June instead of by late July, says Andrew Yanofsky, head of marketing and operations at WowWee.

That will force companies to make decisions about how much to make and reorder without having a full picture of the sales data, he says.

Yanofsky said he placed a big bet initially on Got2Glow Fairy Finder, a light show in a jar that allows children to find virtual fairies, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to replenish the production given the snarls.

“We took a risk on excess material beyond the scope of what we thought we could sell, ” he said.

Even the few toy companies that make goods in the U.S. have struggled because of labor shortages.

John Gessert is CEO and president of American Plastic Toys, based in Walled Lake, Michigan, with another plant in Mississippi. He says the company is missing 35% to 40% of its front-line workers. Now, it’s shifting away its focus on play kitchens that require six workers toward less labor-intensive toys like basketball sets, which require just three workers to put together.

“I have never had such a complicated puzzle to fix,” he said.
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The U.S. economy added just 194,000 jobs in September after forecasters had predicted 500,000 new jobs would be added, according to the Labor Department.

It was the second month of tepid job numbers, as some economists blamed impacts from the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus.

Unemployment fell from 5.2% in August to 4.8% in September, but that only measures people who are actively looking for jobs.

The September jobs report found that those in the labor force who have a job or are looking for one fell from 61.7% to 61.%. Before the pandemic, the labor participation rate was 63.3%.

Job gains in August were revised up from 235,000 to 366,000.

Some sectors, including hospitality, professional business services, retail and transportation and warehousing did see jobs gains last month.

Forecasters had predicted a more robust jobs number in non-farm sectors because of schools reopening, the end of many federal unemployment benefits and an uptick in the number of Americans getting vaccines.

“This is quite a deflating report,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at job placement site Indeed in an interview with CNBC. “This year has been one of false dawns for the labor market. Demand for workers is strong and millions of people want to return to work, but employment growth has yet to find its footing.”

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.

 
…

India’s coal-burning power plants, which supply much of the country’s electricity, are running perilously low on stocks, raising fears of power shortages just as the country’s pandemic-hit economy is on a recovery path.   

The coal shortage is being attributed to surging demand as industries rev up production lines and consumers begin shopping ahead of the main festival season.

India is the second Asian country, after China, facing a crunch in coal supplies.   

The average stock of coal in thermal power plants was about four days on October 3, the Power Ministry said earlier this month.  

“If the coal stocks are not ramped up to the level to which plants need to run, there could be challenges going ahead,” Vivek Jain, director at India Ratings Research, said, “But the problem is, you cannot ramp up output at will.”

Despite efforts to increase use of cleaner energy sources such as solar, wind and water, India’s 135 coal-burning plants remain the backbone of the country’s power sector, supplying nearly two-thirds of its electricity.

Power demand rose by almost 18% in the last two months compared to the same period last year.

However, India had cut back on coal imports in recent months due to slowing demand.  Now a massive surge in international coal prices poses a challenge to stepping up imports while domestic production struggles to keep pace with the country’s needs.

Heavy monsoon rains in September in the country’s coal-mining areas hit both production and delivery of coal, according to the Power Ministry.

The dwindling coal supplies are a dampener in Asia’s third-largest economy where COVID-19 cases have come down dramatically and most curbs have been lifted, allowing most sectors of the economy to reopen. Public transport is operating in cities, markets are buzzing and holiday destinations have seen domestic tourists return in droves.

That had raised hopes of an economic recovery. The World Bank has said that India’s economy will grow by 8.3% in the current financial year after plummeting by more than 7% last year.

Experts say if demand for power continues to rise, India will have to consider ramping up alternative power sources or increasing imports, say experts.

“India could be looking at a huge rise in its import bill unless it turns to increasing power output in its nuclear power plants or increasing production of natural gas. But if these are not ramped up in time, we could face disruptions,” according to Jain.

Power Minister R.K. Singh told The Indian Express newspaper this week that the impact could be felt for months. “I don’t know whether I will be comfortable in the next five-six, four-five months,” he said, “But it’s going to be touch and go.” 
…