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Until recently, the space was the one-car garage of a private home in Cuba’s capital, Havana. Today, it is a well-stocked, if small, grocery store whose big board at the gate entices shoppers with such offerings as cooking oil, tomato sauce, Hershey’s cocoa powder, Nutella, shampoo, cookies and jam — a treasure trove in a country that is short of supplies.

The nameless shop in the residential neighborhood of El Vedado is one of dozens of tiny grocery stores that have sprung up around Cuba in recent months. Locals refer to them as “mipymes” — pronounced MEE-PEE-MEHS. The name derives from the Spanish words for the small- and medium-size enterprises that were first allowed to open in 2021.

By allowing the new businesses, the Cuban government hoped to help an economy in crisis and strengthen local production. The almost 9,000 enterprises approved so far include the likes of sewing workshops, fisheries and construction firms, but it is small retail shops like the one in Vedado that seem to be setting up the fastest.

They also have greater visibility among the population because they offer many products not available elsewhere and usually operate out of private homes or garages.

Yet despite their modest setup, their prices are far from affordable, even for a doctor or a teacher, who make about 7,000 Cuban pesos a month (about $28 in the parallel market).

For example, one kilo (2.2 pounds) of powdered milk from the Czech Republic costs 2,000 Cuban pesos (about $8). A jar of Spanish mayonnaise goes for $4. Two and a half kilos (about 5 pounds) of chicken imported from the United States cost $8. There are also less essential goods: a jar of Nutella for $5, a bottle of bubbly Spanish wine for $6.

The customers able to use these small shops include Cuban families who receive remittances from abroad, tourism workers, diplomats, employees of other small- and medium-size businesses, artists and high-performance athletes.

“This is a luxury,” Ania Espinosa, a state employee, said as she left one store in Havana, where she paid $1.50 (350 Cuban pesos) for a packet of potato chips for her daughter. “There are people who don’t earn enough money to shop at a mipyme, because everything is very expensive.”

In addition to her monthly state salary, Espinosa makes some additional income and receives remittances from her husband, who has lived in the U.S. for a year and a half and previously lived in Uruguay.

A few meters away, Ingracia Virgen Cruzata, a retiree, lamented the high prices at the shop. “I retired with 2,200 (Cuban pesos a month or $8.80) last year, and I can’t even buy a package of chicken,” she said.

Most of the products found in these stores are imported directly by the entrepreneurs through state-run import agencies, a system that has also opened the door to the emergence of bigger, better-stocked stores.

In recent weeks, a private store, accessible only to those who own a car, opened on the outskirts of Havana, featuring giant shelves full of imported products such as Tide detergent, M&M’s candy and Goya brand black beans. Because of its size (it’s at least 10 times larger than the store in Vedado) — and diverse offerings — it has come to be known as the “Cuban Costco.”

Cuba’s retail market has been very limited, and for decades the communist state held a monopoly on most forms of retail sales, import and export, under the argument that it is necessary to distribute products equitably.

The ration books that allow Cubans to buy small quantities of basic goods like rice, beans, eggs and sugar each month for payment equivalent to a few U.S. cents continue to be the basis of the model, allowing families to subsist for about 15 days. The rest of their diet must be acquired through other outlets, including state-owned stores and now the mipymes.

There are also state-run businesses offering a little more variety to complete domestic needs, but they charge in local debit or international credit cards. The novelty is that the small shops like the one in Vedado and bigger bodegas like the “Cuban Costco” are entirely private and accept payments in Cuban pesos.

“For the first time in 60 years, small- and medium-sized private corporations are now authorized by law. Now the challenge is for them to prosper in a very arid landscape for private initiative,” said Pedro Freyre, an analyst with the Florida-based Akerman Consulting and professor at Miami Law School.

“Cuba is a socialist country,” Freyre said. “The fundamental ideology has not changed. That’s still there. But I think that Cuba is in a very difficult economic moment and that has opened a door.”
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Skyrocketing sugar prices left Ishaq Abdulraheem with few choices. Increasing the cost of bread would mean declining sales, so the Nigerian baker decided to cut his production by half.

For scores of other bakers struggling to stay afloat while enduring higher costs for fuel and flour, the stratospheric sugar prices proved to be the last straw, and they closed for good.

Sugar is needed to make bread, which is a staple for Nigeria’s 210 million people, and for many who are struggling to put food on the table, it offers a cheap source of calories. Surging sugar prices — an increase of 55% in two months — means fewer bakers and less bread.

“It is a very serious situation,” Abdulraheem said.

Sugar worldwide is trading at the highest prices since 2011, mainly due to lower global supplies after unusually dry weather damaged harvests in India and Thailand, the world’s second- and third-largest exporters.

This is just the latest hit for developing nations already coping with shortages in staples like rice and bans on food trade that have added to food inflation. All of it contributes to food insecurity because of the combined effects of the naturally occurring climate phenomenon El Nino, the war in Ukraine and weaker currencies. Wealthier Western nations can absorb the higher costs, but poorer nations are struggling.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is predicting a 2% decline in global sugar production in the 2023-24 season, compared with the previous year, translating to a loss of about 3.5 million metric tons, said Fabio Palmeri, an FAO global commodities market researcher. Increasingly, sugar is being used for biofuels like ethanol, so global reserves of sugar are at their lowest since 2009.

Brazil is the biggest sugar exporter, but its harvest will only help plug gaps later in 2024. Until then, import-dependent countries — like most of those in sub-Saharan Africa — remain vulnerable.

Nigeria, for instance, buys 98% of its raw sugar from other countries. In 2021, it banned imports of refined sugar that ran counter to a plan to build up domestic sugar processing and announced a $73 million project to expand sugar infrastructure. But those are longer-term strategies. Abuja traders like Abba Usman are facing problems now.

The same 50-kilogram bag of sugar that Usman bought a week ago for $66 now costs $81. As prices rise, his customers are dwindling.

“The price keeps increasing every day, and we don’t know why,” Usman said.

It’s partly due to the El Nino, a natural phenomenon that shifts global weather patterns and can cause extreme weather conditions ranging from drought to flooding. Scientists believe climate change is making El Nino stronger.

India endured its driest August in over a century, and crops in the western state of Maharashtra, which accounts for over a third of its sugarcane production, were stunted during the crucial growing phase.

India’s sugar production is likely to decline by 8% this year, according to the Indian Sugar Mills Association. The world’s most populated nation is also the biggest consumer of sugar and is now restricting sugar exports.

In Thailand, El Nino effects early in the growing season altered not just the quantity but also the quality of the harvest, said Naradhip Anantasuk, leader of the Thailand Sugar Planters Association. He expects only 76 million metric tons of sugarcane to be milled in the 2024 harvest season, compared with 93 million metric tons this year.

A report by U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted a 15% dip in output in Thailand in October.

Thailand reversed a hike in sugar prices within days, imposing price controls for the first time since 2018. Anantasuk said this would discourage farmers from growing sugar by capping their income.

“It’s like preventing the industry from growing, preventing an open competition,” he said.

Wholesale prices had been allowed to rise to help farmers cope with higher costs — partly due to government demands that they not burn their fields, which makes harvesting cheaper but envelops much of Thailand in heavy smog.

Looking ahead, Brazil’s harvest is forecast to be 20% bigger than last year’s, said Kelly Goughary, a senior research analyst at the agriculture data and analytics firm Gro Intelligence. But since the country is in the Southern Hemisphere, the boost to global supplies won’t come until March.

This is because of favorable weather earlier this year in Brazil along with an increase in areas where sugarcane was planted, according to the USDA.

The next few months are the greatest concern, said the FAO’s Palmeri. Population growth and rising sugar consumption will further strain sugar reserves, he said.

The world now has less than 68 days of sugar in stockpiles to meet its needs, compared with 106 days when they began declining in 2020, according to data from the USDA.

“It’s at the lowest levels since 2010,” said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Indonesia — the biggest sugar importer last year, according to the USDA — has cut back on imports and China, the No. 2 importer, was forced to release sugar from its stocks to offset high prices domestically for the first time in six years, Palmeri said.

For some countries, importing more expensive sugar eats up reserves of foreign currency like dollars and euros that also are needed to pay for oil and other crucial commodities, said El Mamoun Amrouk, an FAO economist.

That includes Kenya. Once self-sufficient in sugar, it now imports 200,000 metric tons a year from a regional trade bloc. In 2021, the government limited imports to protect local farmers from foreign competition, but it reversed that decision as harvests shrank due to insufficient rain and mismanagement.

The amount of sugar milled in Kenya fell steadily from June to August. To compensate, monthly imports doubled from September to October. Meanwhile, a 50-kilogram bag of local sugar doubled in price to $60, shopkeeper Joseph Kuraru said.

Back in Africa’s largest economy, the struggle of Nigerian bakers is a microcosm of the effects of rising food and fuel costs and the outsized impact of high sugar prices because it’s so ubiquitous. Abuja’s many bakeries use sugar both to sweeten cakes and to feed the yeast that makes bread rise.

Bread is often the only food poor households can afford. When bakers raise bread prices, as they did by 15% earlier this year, some people go hungry.

Not passing along higher costs is not an option, said Mansur Umar, president of the Nigerian Bakers’ Association.

“There is no way you can buy high and you sell low,” he said.
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The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified a new contract with Ford, a pact that, along with similar deals with General Motors and Stellantis, will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles. 

Workers at Ford voted 69.3% in favor of the pact, which passed with nearly a 15,000-vote margin in balloting that ended early Saturday. Earlier this week, GM workers narrowly approved a similar contract. At Stellantis, 68.7% of workers favored ratification, an insurmountable lead with votes at only two small facilities left to be counted. 

The agreements, which run through April 2028, will end contentious talks that began last summer and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers. Shawn Fain, the pugnacious new UAW leader, had branded the companies enemies of the UAW who were led by overpaid CEOs, declaring the days of union cooperation with the automakers were over. 

After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on September 15 at one assembly plant at each company. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October. 

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April 2028. 

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead. 

“I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified,” said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. “It’s lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers.” 

Three nonunion, foreign automakers in the United States — Honda, Toyota and Hyundai — quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla. 

Foreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017. 

But with Fain’s election and the new contracts, the union has “cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric,” Wheaton said. 

While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age. 

Contracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said. 

“The union’s got way more power” because of the deals, said Mark McGill, a 67-year-old worker at Ford’s assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, where employees went on strike for the entire six weeks. “Look at everybody now. People want to unionize.” 
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Two years after Taiwan opened a representative office in Lithuania, officials from both sides stress progress in bilateral relations while analysts cite risks that the deepened engagement could be affected by domestic political shift in Lithuania.

“After two years of engagement with Taiwan, we have some specific agreements with Taiwanese companies and organizations, especially in the field of semiconductors, but we shouldn’t neglect the risk of some changes in Lithuania’s current relationship with Taiwan and China caused by domestic political shifts,” Tomas Janeliunas, an international relations professor at Vilnius University, told VOA by phone.

He said that while the progress in bilateral relations has largely concentrated on deepening economic and trade exchanges, the overall trend is backed by the current Lithuanian government’s desire to expand cooperation with democracies.

“Before the parliamentary elections in 2020, the current government declared that they would like to foster relationships with democracies around the world, including expanding the relationship with Taiwan,” he said. “It included some economic prospects and cooperation in the field of technology, too.”

Over the last two years, Taiwan and Lithuania have opened trade offices in both capitals, Taipei and Vilnius, and trade between the two countries grew 50% from 2021 to 2022. One of Lithuania’s leading tech companies, Teltonika, signed an agreement with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-funded institute, that would help it launch domestic semiconductor production in 2027 using Taiwanese technology.

In addition, Lithuanian companies involved in specialized laser technology agreed to work with the research institute to set up the Ultrafast Laser Technology Research and Innovation Center in Southern Taiwan, focusing on medical and industrial applications.

“So far, the cooperation has been fruitful and brought both sides some economic successes and benefits,” Karolis Zemaitis, Lithuania’s deputy economic minister, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “We are focusing on high-value-added sectors so high-tech is our main focus. This is a very equal bilateral exchange and cooperation where both sides can see some fruits and results.”

Apart from deepening economic ties, Taiwan and Lithuania have also increased bilateral exchanges through delegation visits and agreements to expand cooperation in such areas as scientific research and agriculture.

“The cooperation is based on values,” Eric Huang, Taiwan’s representative to Lithuania, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “For example, since [semiconductors are] such a sensitive area, I don’t think we will be able to implement cooperation without political trust. It is a multilayered cooperation based on values.”

At the European level, one positive development that extends from Lithuania’s efforts to deepen ties with Taiwan is the European Union’s plan to adopt an anti-coercion instrument, a mechanism that could help the EU deal with countries that try to force changes in EU policies by restricting trade. The European Parliament approved the plan in October after China launched economic retaliation against Lithuania over the opening of the Taiwanese representative office.

With Estonia expressing an interest in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Tallinn earlier this month, some analysts say how China responds to Estonia’s decision will test the effectiveness of the EU’s anti-coercion instruments, which allow Brussels to respond to external coercion forcefully.

“We should monitor whether China will respond to the case of Estonia in a belligerent manner,” Marcin Jerzewski, an analyst of EU-Taiwan relations at the European Values Center for Security Policy, told VOA by phone. “The EU’s reaction will be the perfect test of the sustainability of the developments that we have seen in the case of Lithuania.”

Despite some Lithuanian and Taiwanese officials’ positive views on the state of bilateral relations, there is still some skepticism about the prospect and benefits of deepening ties with Taiwan within the Lithuanian government.

In September, Asta Skaisgirytė, the chief foreign policy adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, told Lithuanian National Television and Radio that the large amount of investment that Taiwan promised when it opened the representative office in Vilnius has not materialized at the scale that Lithuania may have anticipated.

Some analysts think Taiwan has not “done a very good job” of delivering the investment promises. “The appetite for investment in Lithuania is much bigger, but so far the only big deal that has been realized is the one with Teltonika,” Jerzewski told VOA. “Taiwan has to do proper expectation management.”

Apart from domestic skepticism about the economic benefit of the relationship with Taiwan, some analysts highlight the risk of progress in the bilateral relationship between Taiwan and Lithuania being stalled by potential regime changes in Lithuania.

“If we look at opinion polls, the current government is not performing really well, and the Social Democrats and Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Association are becoming the parties of choice in the presidential election scheduled for May 2024,” Jerzewski told VOA. “These are the two parties that have shown the greatest hesitation toward deepening ties with Taiwan.”

Janeliūnas said while some members of opposition parties have declared that they would consider changing the current direction of Lithuania’s relationship with China and Taiwan, he thinks it is unlikely they would make drastic changes to Vilnius’ ties with Taipei if they won the presidential election next year.

“I don’t believe they would go for a radical move like changing the name of Taiwan’s representative office, because the political costs of such a move would be quite high,” he told VOA. “When you are in opposition, you can be bold in your expressions. But when you are in office, you have to calculate all kinds of consequences.”

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said last week officials from Lithuania and China had been talking about potentially normalizing diplomatic relations after Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius in 2021 following the opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania.

While some observers view Lithuania’s move as the government’s response to domestic political pressure, Jerzewski said China could make recalibration of Lithuania’s relationship with Taiwan as a condition for both sides to normalize diplomatic ties. “China might say they would only be willing to restore full diplomatic relations with Lithuania if the name of the Taiwanese representative office is amended,” he told VOA. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday hailed a new economic agreement among 14 Asia Pacific countries aimed at countering China’s regional economic dominance, saying the deal leaders signed at a summit of regional economies – which is not a formal trade agreement – will address key issues such as future semiconductor shortages by improving supply chain resilience.

The goal of the new pact, said the 14 leaders in a joint statement, is to “promote workers’ rights, increase our capacity to prevent and respond to supply chain disruptions, strengthen our collaboration on the transition to clean economies, and combat corruption and improve the efficiency of tax administration.”

Biden, speaking Thursday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, acknowledged that negotiators failed to reach consensus on a key pillar of last year’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

“We still have more work to do, but we’ve made substantial progress,” he said. “In record time we’ve reached consensus on three of the pillars of the IPEF.” The IPEF has four pillars, summarized as trade, supply chains, clean energy and infrastructure, and tax and anti-corruption.

Biden also announced a program to work with startup businesses to raise capital. That effort is based on the U.S. Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which is seen as the U.S. answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In highlighting the plan, Biden also emphasized the importance of the U.S. private sector.

“You’ve heard every one of my colleagues say one time or another that this can’t be done without trillions of dollars of private sector investment to get hold of this and get hold of it quickly to give them confidence to make those investments,” Biden said. “That’s going to create a pipeline of projects in partner countries and then match private sector financing with these projects, and it’s going to give those private sector investors confidence that their investment will be made according to the highest standards. Government investment is not enough. We need to mobilize private investment.”

Critics say the new economic agreement lacks market access provisions.

“For a country like us, we have to have at least market access,” Indonesian CEO Anindya Bakrie told VOA on the sidelines of the summit.

Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, said most Southeast Asian states are “tepid” about the deal.

The bottom line, he said, is, “It’s not a trade deal, and the U.S. is not offering any market access in IPEF. And the Southeast Asian states can contrast that with actual trade deals that have been passed in Asia over the last seven years, including major, major trade deals that involve China, South Korea, Japan, and other big economies, as well as ASEAN being in the middle of that.”

However, he said, “they’re not going to say to the United States coming in with IPEF over the last couple of years, we reject this. They’re cordial and they do want a greater U.S. security presence.”

Siobhan Das, executive director of the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce, took a rosier view.

“I actually believe it’s been successful already,” she said. “You’ve had 14 nations talking to each other for the last 18 months – how can that not be a success?”

Zack Cooper, a specialist in U.S. strategy in Asia at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA on Thursday, as the 14 leaders smiled and posed for a photo, that “everyone agrees that the Indo Pacific economic framework is probably the best the Biden administration is going to do for now.”

“But it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re happy with IPEF or that they’re going to be satisfied with the version of IPEF they’re getting at APEC, which does not include trade,” he said. “And so it’s probably better than nothing.”
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