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MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that Mexico would retaliate if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump followed through with his proposed 25% across-the-board tariff, a move her government warned could kill 400,000 U.S. jobs and drive up prices for U.S. consumers.

“If there are U.S. tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” Sheinbaum said during a news conference, in her clearest statement yet that the country was preparing possible retaliatory trade measures against its top trade partner.

Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, speaking alongside Sheinbaum, called for more regional cooperation and integration instead of a war of retaliatory import taxes.

“It’s a shot in the foot,” Ebrard said of Trump’s proposed tariffs, which appear to violate the USMCA trade deal between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

Ebrard warned the tariffs would lead to massive U.S. job losses, lower growth, and hit U.S. companies producing in Mexico by effectively doubling the taxes they paid. “The impact on companies is huge,” he said.

The proposed tariffs would hit the automotive sector’s top cross-border exporters especially hard, Ebrard added, namely Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

Mexico’s automotive industry is the country’s most important manufacturing sector, exporting predominantly to the United States. It represents nearly 25% of all North American vehicle production.

Analysts at Barclays said they estimate the proposed tariffs “could wipe out effectively all profits” from the Detroit Three automakers.

Gas prices

Canada is also looking at a coordinated response with the federal government and the premiers of the 10 provinces agreeing to work in a united way against a threat by Trump, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Wednesday.

One area affected by the proposed tariffs is Canada’s oil sector.

Even as record oil output has made the U.S. the world’s largest producer in recent years, more than a fifth of the oil processed by U.S. refiners is imported from Canada.

In the landlocked U.S. Midwest, where refineries process 70% of the more than 4 million barrels per day of Canadian crude imports, consumers could see pump prices jump by 30 cents per gallon or more, or about 10%, based on current prices, GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan said.

Migration and the border

Sheinbaum and Trump spoke by phone later on Wednesday, the Mexican president said on social media platform X, adding the two discussed “strengthening collaboration on security issues” and that the conversation was “excellent.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Sheinbaum “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.” He described the conversation as “very productive.”

Sheinbaum’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Trump has previously said the tariffs would remain in effect until the flow of drugs — particularly fentanyl — and migrants into the U.S. was controlled.

Sheinbaum added migrant caravans are no longer arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border “because they are attended to” in Mexico.

A caravan of several thousand migrants had been heading through southern Mexico but numbers have dwindled in recent days. 
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Protests by French and other European farmers are threatening a long-expected trade deal between the European Union and South American trading bloc Mercosur, comprising Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The EU hopes to clinch it next month — but individual EU countries would still need to ratify the agreement. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power also factors into the equation — sparking a bigger debate about whether Europe’s economy should look inward or outward for answers. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
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New Delhi — Nearly two years after one of India’s biggest conglomerates was hit by allegations of wrongdoing by a U.S. investment firm, it is again in the eye of a storm as it faces charges of fraud, which analysts say are far more serious.

The latest allegations by the United States could dampen investor confidence in Asia’s third largest economy at a time when the country is wooing foreign investment. They have also triggered a political storm in India with opposition parties demanding a probe into the allegations against an influential business tycoon whose $135 billion empire — spanning seaports, airports and energy – has a massive imprint on the Indian economy.

An indictment filed in New York last week charged Gautam Adani, the founder of Adani Group, with duping investors by concealing that a huge solar energy project was being facilitated by an alleged $250 million scheme that involved bribing Indian officials to obtain lucrative contracts.

The company in question, Adani Energy Green, is building a massive solar energy plant in the western state of Gujarat and plans to generate enough energy to light up millions of homes.

Adani Group has strongly denied allegations made by U.S. authorities against Gautam Adani and other top officials.

The charges came after the conglomerate endured accusations of engaging in stock market manipulation and fraud. The allegations were made last year by a U.S. investment firm, Hindenburg Research. Indian regulators, who investigated the charges, said they found no wrongdoing.

Analysts say the new indictment in the U.S. poses a far bigger challenge.

“It’s one thing for allegations to come from a short seller firm or from media outlets,” according to Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington. “But this is a case of the U.S. government coming out with a long and detailed indictment. It’s a whole other order of magnitude.”

Gautam Adani, 62, is a college dropout from a middle-class family who has led a dizzying rise in his conglomerate’s fortunes, especially since he began in the 1990s expanding into infrastructure. He has built power plants, airports, roads and renewable energy projects in India as the country pushes to bridge an infrastructure deficit for its growing economy.

Besides Adani’s huge presence in India, his global ambitions have taken his companies to other countries, including Australia, Indonesia and Israel. After Donald Trump’s recent U.S. presidential election victory, in a post on X, Adani congratulated Trump and announced plans to invest $10 billion in energy and infrastructure projects in the U.S.

The U.S. indictment already is impacting the conglomerate’s push to expand his energy and infrastructure business overseas. A day after the charges became public, Kenya announced it is scrapping airport expansion and electricity deals worth about $2.5 billion with Adani Group.

The indictment also has cast a cloud over planned projects in Sri Lanka, as government officials on Tuesday said the finance and foreign ministries will review infrastructure projects awarded to the Indian conglomerate. Adani has a contract to develop a deep seaport terminal in Colombo.

The controversy will affect the reputation of Adani Group, say analysts.

“Definitely the charges will trigger mistrust in the Adani Group. There will also be an increase in borrowing cost for them, so they will need to work that much harder,” according to Shriram Subramanian, founder of corporate governance advisory firm InGovern Research Services. “But it won’t be debilitating in the long run because they have a good track record in executing projects.”

The U.S. charges will raise questions about business practices and norms in India and could hurt the country’s effort to woo businesses looking to set up factories and facilities in countries outside China.

“In the immediate term, it could give some investors cold feet, as they may not want to risk their reputations investing in a country where Adani’s clout and reach is so expansive across the economy,” according to Kugelman. “This would be especially bad timing for New Delhi, which wants to capitalize on many foreign investors’ desire to relocate production and other business out of China.”

Kugelman pointed out that the setback to the investment climate in India is likely to be temporary because “the key drivers impacting foreign investment in India — multiple growth sectors, large consumer markets, a fast-growing major economy will remain in place.”

The U.S. indictment has also turned the spotlight on accusations made for several years by India’s main opposition Congress Party and by other critics — that the tycoon’s dramatic business expansion has coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule.

Parliament was disrupted for a second day on Wednesday as opposition parties demanded a discussion on the indictment. “He should be in jail and the government is protecting him,” Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters outside parliament.

At a protest on Monday, Congress Party activists held placards reading, “Modi and Adani are one” and “Modi’s friendship is costing the nation.”

The government has not commented on the charges. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has pointed out that the charges involved bribing officials in four states that were not governed by them, but by opposition parties.

Political analysts say the latest controversy over Adani is not likely to hurt Modi.

“This issue has been raised for a long time, but it has not impacted the prime minister in any way. The opposition has not been able to convince the people about their case,” according to political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. “At the moment, people simply look at it as a case of one group being favored over another by the government, which many people feel is not unusual in India.”
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Washington — Consumer price increases accelerated last month, the latest sign that inflation’s steady decline over the past two years has stalled.

According to the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, consumer prices rose 2.3% in October from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is up from just 2.1% in September, though it is still only modestly above the Fed’s 2% target.

Yet excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called “core” prices also picked up, climbing 2.8% last month from a year earlier, up from 2.7% in September. Economists closely watch core prices because they typically provide a better read on where inflation is headed.  

Inflation has fallen sharply since it peaked at 7% in mid-2022, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. Yet yearly core inflation has been stuck at 2.8% since February. Price increases have remained elevated in services, including apartment rents, restaurant meals, and car and home insurance.

Wednesday’s report also underscored that Americans’ incomes and spending remained healthy, a key reason the economy has kept growing this year despite widespread fears of a slowdown. Incomes grew 0.6% from September to October, faster than economists had expected, while consumer spending rose by a solid 0.4% last month. 
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Countries around the world are bracing for economic upheaval as incoming U.S. President Donald Trump threatens massive tariffs, especially on China. The uncertainty has left governments and businesses struggling with how to respond, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul, South Korea. (Contributors: : Paul Ndiho and Supakit Pattaratearanon)
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Farmers in Kenya are using artificial intelligence to help them get better crop yields. An AI-powered tool – called Virtual Agronomist – engages directly with farmers to help them create tailored plans to optimize the quality and quantity of their crops. Mohammed Yusuf has more from Mwea, Kenya.
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Inflation-weary consumers should see the cost of their classic Thanksgiving dinner gobble less of their paychecks this year, largely because Americans are buying less of the meal’s centerpiece dish, turkey. 

The price tag of the traditional holiday meal, which also includes cranberries, sweet potatoes and stuffing, has dropped for a second consecutive year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual survey released on Wednesday. 

Cooks can thank the bird. Turkey prices dropped 6% on cooling demand as some consumers opted to add beef and pork to the menu, the Farm Bureau and market analysts said.  

Still, the meal’s price tag will cost families about 19% more than pre-pandemic times, the Farm Bureau said.  

Frustration over high prices was seen as a major factor in Donald Trump’s presidential election victory over Kamala Harris, but the Farm Bureau data suggests some of the worst inflation has abated. 

“We are seeing modest improvements in the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for a second year, but America’s families, including farm families, are still being hurt by high inflation,” said Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall. 

Cheaper meal 

The average cost for a 10-person meal came to $58.08, down from $61.17 last year and a record $64.05 in 2022, Farm Bureau data showed. 

The price of a turkey, which represents the bulk of the bill, fell even as supplies dropped 6% in 2024 partly because of a bird-flu outbreak. Turkey demand of 13.9 pounds per person in 2024 is down nearly a pound from 2023, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. 

Like most grocery items, turkey prices rose alongside overall inflation in recent years, which may have spooked consumers in 2024, said Ashley Kohls, the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association’s executive director. 

“We’re working on bringing folks back to purchasing turkey after a number of years of having elevated prices at the grocery store,” Kohls said. 

Indiana turkey farmer Greg Gunthorp said his customers appear to have plenty of supply to meet consumer demand this year. There have been far fewer frantic calls from buyers scrambling to restock, he said. 

“We’ve had those outlier years when there just aren’t enough turkeys to go around and our phones are just ringing off the hook. This is definitely not one of those years,” Gunthorp said. 

“I think lots of people are adding items to the menu in addition to the turkey, things like brisket and ham.” 

The Farm Bureau survey found that the price of other ingredients in the Thanksgiving meal also fell, including the cost of fresh vegetables and whole milk, although the price of processed ingredients, such as dinner rolls and cubed stuffing, increased.
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VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwe and Zambia are holding a summit this week in Victoria Falls to identify ways to attract investors for energy projects and development.

The talks come as the neighbors experience their worst recorded drought, which is drying up the Kariba Dam reservoir and causing hourslong power cuts.

Speaking at the inaugural Zimbabwe-Zambia Energy Projects Summit, officials from both countries said depending so heavily on hydropower leaves them vulnerable to lengthy lapses in electricity. Recently, power outages reached 20 hours.

They say they want to increase investment in wind and solar energy generation.

Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said Zimbabwe and Zambia are well-positioned to benefit from solar and wind power.

“In particular, the potential for solar energy is highly promising,” Chiwenga said. “Both Zimbabwe and Zambia enjoy abundant sunlight throughout the year. This is the only asset on this Earth we do not pay for. So, let’s use it.”

With investments, he said, building large-scale solar farms could generate power not only for local consumption but also to export to neighboring countries.

“These initiatives will not only enhance our national energy security but also position both nations as key players in the regional energy market,” he said.

Zimbabwe and Zambia have started exploring floating solar projects on Lake Kariba. The hydroelectric dam there was built during the colonial era, but an El Nino-induced drought has left the dam with about 2% of its water, resulting in hourslong power cuts in both countries.

Zambian Energy Minister Makozo Chikote said that Zambia hopes to buoy its push into renewable energy with money from increased copper production. He announced a target of 3 million metric tons of copper to be produced annually in Zambia by 2035.

“We are at a critical juncture in our countries: energy and mining sectors,” he said. “The demand for electricity and resources continues to grow, and it is imperative that we adopt strategies to meet the challenges head on.”

Chikote referenced the current drought, which has left the reservoir at a historic low, saying, “Overdependence on hydro has exposed the vulnerability of the energy in … Zambia.”

The countries are looking to the West for potential investors.

Jobst von Kirchmann, European Union ambassador to Zimbabwe, said that investors want predictability in legislation and the courts, but especially in monetary policy.

“Zimbabwe is now running a monetary policy which is a multicurrency policy, but then if someone goes out and says, ‘We should abandon the dollar; we should go back to mono-currency,’ that’s a killer for investment,” he said.

Some elements in Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party have been calling for the abandonment of the dollar, which the country has been using since 2009, together with other currencies.

John Humphrey, British trade commissioner for Africa, echoed the call for stability.

“When we are in the renewable sector, it’s not just about five or 10 years,” he said. “Actually, you are looking at a much longer period. So, in order to be able to make those sorts of investments, you really have to feel like you are operating in a predictable and stable environment.

“Money is like water,” Humphrey said. “It goes where it is easy, and if you put something in its way, it just flows somewhere else.”

The meeting ends Wednesday.
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Athens, Greece — Greece will make an early repayment of 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in bailout-era debt in 2025, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a banking conference in Athens on Monday, describing the move as a signal of the country’s fiscal recovery.

“This … underscores our confidence in public finances and reflects our commitment to fiscal discipline,” Mitsotakis said.

Finance Ministry officials say they plan to reduce debt through primary surpluses, loan repayments and combating tax evasion.

Greece has rebounded from a 10-year financial crisis that forced it to borrow tens of billions of euros from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund.

But Mitsotakis’ center-right government, elected for a second term in 2023, is struggling to address a cost of living crisis that has sapped Greeks’ spending power. Despite the lack of any substantial challenge from opposition parties, the high cost of living has nibbled away at the government’s approval ratings and triggered union anger.

The country’s two main private and public sector unions have called a general strike for Wednesday that will keep island ferries in port and disrupt other forms of transport and public services. 

A protest march will be held in central Athens on Wednesday morning.

The GSEE main private sector union Monday accused the government of “refusing to take any meaningful measures that would secure workers dignified living conditions.”

“The cost of living is sky-high and our salaries rock-bottom, (while) high housing costs have left young people in a tragic position,” GSEE chairman Yiannis Panagopoulos said.

According to EU forecasts, Greece’s economy is expected to grow 2.1% in 2024 and maintain a broadly similar course over the following two years.

Unemployment, now below 10%, is expected to keep declining, while inflation is projected at 3% this year. 
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Vientiane, Laos — Suffocating under a mountain of debt to China, communist Laos is struggling to tame rampant inflation, with food prices rising so sharply that a growing number of households are resorting to foraging.

At a market in Vientiane, traders told AFP they have never known business to be so slow, as families have seen the value of their money collapse since COVID-19.

While the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent prices around the world spiraling, Laos has found itself incapable of putting the brakes on inflation.

Prices rocketed 23% in 2022 and 31% last year, while they are on course for 25% this year, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Families in particular have been hit hard as the cost of basic staples such as rice, sugar, oil and chicken doubled last year.

A growing number of households are so desperate for food that they are now having to forage to supplement their diets, according to a World Bank household survey earlier this year.

At Vientiane’s morning market, a gold trader said that where customers used to come to buy necklaces, rings and earrings for special occasions, now all anyone wants is to sell their valuables to raise cash.

“I sometimes sit all day and nobody buys my gold,” the 45-year-old told AFP last month, speaking on condition of anonymity because talking to foreign media in authoritarian, one-party Laos is risky.

“My shop used to be busy but now nobody buys gold — they all come to sell it to get money.”

After 15 years running his shop, the trader said he fears for the future of his business.

‘Unsustainable’ debt

Despite three decades of consistent economic growth, Laos remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, with limited transport infrastructure and a low-skilled workforce mostly employed in agriculture.

Life expectancy is just 69 years and the Asian Development Bank says that nearly 1 in 3 children under 5 is stunted because of malnutrition — one of the highest rates globally.

In recent years, the government has borrowed billions of dollars from neighbor China to fund a $6 billion high-speed railway and a series of major hydropower dams — aiming to become the “battery” of Southeast Asia.

The World Bank warned in a report last week that public debt — over $13 billion, or 108% of gross domestic product — was “unsustainable.”

Servicing the debt is fueling inflation by driving down the value of the kip, which lost half its value against the dollar in 2022, and nearly a fifth in the first nine months of 2024.

“Given Laos’ heavy reliance on imports, the kip’s depreciation has driven up domestic consumer prices and inflation, squeezing domestic demand and slowing economic recovery,” Poh Lynn Ng, an economist with the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office, told AFP.

Interest payments totaling $1.7 billion are due in 2024 and an average of $1.3 billion for the next three years, further eroding Laos’ foreign exchange reserves.

AFP contacted the Laotian finance ministry for comment, but did not receive a response.

Response ‘too slow’

The Bank of Lao PDR has raised interest rates and in August, the government launched a plan aiming to bring inflation below 20% by December.

But Vivat Kittiphongkosol of the Joint Development Bank Laos said the government had been “too slow” to react as problems unfolded.

“To kill this economic problem, you cannot utilize a single transaction and expect it to solve everything. You need to do a lot of things,” he told AFP.

The World Bank says the government has brought some stability to its finances, but mainly through debt deferrals and limiting spending on health, education and welfare.

Alex Kremer, the World Bank Country Manager for Laos, warned these austerity measures would have damaging long-term consequences.

“Continued underinvestment in human capital will damage the country’s long-term productivity and its future ability to compete in regional markets,” he said.

Instead, the World Bank has urged the government to boost revenue by cutting tax breaks — and also to try to restructure its debt.

Though small, Laos is too important to Beijing to be allowed to fail, JDB’s Vivat said, both politically and as a key leg in the Belt and Road Initiative route that aims to connect southwest China ultimately to Singapore.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP Beijing was doing “all it can to help Laos ease its debt burden.”

But Laotians can expect more pain in the short term, with the ADB predicting inflation will stay above 20% until the end of next year at least. 
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Before the U.S. presidential election, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump opposed a Japanese company’s planned $14 billion purchase of U.S. Steel, a once-iconic pillar of America’s industrial age. With the election over, there are indications that the deal may go through. VOA Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman went to Braddock, Pennsylvania, to gauge local sentiment to the acquisition. Videographer: Adam Greenbaum
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NEW DELHI — Analysts interviewed by VOA expressed skepticism over China’s recent decision to eliminate tariffs for goods from least developed countries with diplomatic relations with Bejing, including 33 in Africa, next month.

The move was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing in early September.

The analysts see it as an effort to expand China’s influence in Africa without bringing much benefit to the LDCs.

“This move has not generated the excitement it should, due to well-known structural difficulties in Africa,” Emmanuel Owusu-Sekyere, director of research, policy and programs at the African Center for Economic Transformation in Accra, Ghana, told VOA.

“Cooperation between China and Africa has benefitted China much more than it has Africa,” he said, adding, “Africa has given China unbridled access to its markets, which has crippled local production capacity in several aspects of the manufacturing sector e.g., textiles.”

Xi described the zero-tariffs plan as making China the first major economy to take such a step to offer Africa a substantial opportunity to do business in the large Chinese market.

Analysts see it as Beijing’s attempt to compete with the United States. The U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act provides duty-free access to the U.S. market for more than 1,800 products from 32 sub-Saharan African countries. It will come up for renewal next year. They say China is also trying to take advantage of resentment of some African countries barred from AGOA on such grounds as human rights or lack of democracy and free markets.

“China’s move to allow African LDCs to export tariff-free is clearly a move to project its power in an alternative world order,” said Samir Bhattacharya, associate fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

“The rigid policies of the U.S. have made some African countries averse towards it. China sees this as an opportunity to undermine the U.S.-led world order and promote its own narrow interests,” Bhattacharya said.

“China has reworked its trade basket to lure African leaders,” he added.

“This scheme would offer additional support to dictators and military leaders in African countries who are not comfortable with the U.S.,” he said. “It would not improve the economy of these countries.”

China’s viewpoint

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yongqian has said that the initiative would boost LDC exports. It will also promote solidarity and cooperation among the countries of the Global South and advance the goal of “inclusive and equitable economic globalization,” she said.

She said China has signed framework agreements on economic partnership for common development with 22 African countries, including Ethiopia, Burundi, Gabon and Zimbabwe.

However, Owusu-Sekyere expressed a different view.

“African countries are not strategically located in Asian production value chains like Bangladesh and Vietnam. Lack of strategic positioning and planning as well as structural bottlenecks will make it difficult for African countries to take advantage of this plan,” Owusu-Sekyere said.

Every time China’s government enters into a trade or investment agreement with another country, Chinese entrepreneurs usually rush to grab the business opportunities created by the deal. This has been the experience of several countries in Africa and Asia that have received Chinese investments.

Owusu-Sekyere said several African countries have enacted laws reserving the retail sector exclusively for locals but it has been taken over in those countries by Chinese entrepreneurs using local partners as fronts.

The bigger challenge for African countries are nontariff barriers related to such things as quality, he said.

“African economies are not diversified enough to supply at the quality and scale required to meet the sophisticated and diverse demands of a huge market as China.” according to Owusu-Sekyere. 
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Sales of personal luxury goods are set to fall 2% this year, making it one of the weakest on record, with price hikes and economic uncertainty shrinking the industry’s customer base, according to consultancy Bain & Company.

In its closely-watched report on the $386 billion global market, Bain estimated a 20-22% sales drop in China, which has turned into a drag after a years-long boom before the pandemic fueled by the wealthy and growing middle-class.

The forecasts include the effect of currency moves.

“This is the first time the personal luxury goods industry has declined since the 2008-09 crisis, with the exception of the pandemic,” Bain partner Federica Levato told Reuters.

The study released on Wednesday will likely heighten concerns among investors that the sector’s current downturn, which has knocked shares in the likes of LVMH and Kering, may be longer and deeper than anticipated.

Global sales of luxury personal goods – spanning clothing, accessories and beauty products – are expected to be flat at constant exchange rates during the holiday season, with China’s performance still negative, Levato said.

A shift by brands to position their products within a higher price band, coupled with weaker consumer confidence amid wars, China’s economic woes and elections across the globe, has led many customers, especially younger ones, to forgo purchases.

“The luxury consumer base has declined by 50 million over the last two years, from a total of approximately 400 million consumers,” Levato said.

Growth prospects for the market hinge partly on the strategies brands choose to pursue, including on pricing, she added.

In a further sign that higher prices are holding back consumers, Bain said the outlet channel was outperforming, driven by shoppers’ quest for value.  

The personal luxury goods sector is expected to grow by between 0% and 4% at constant exchange rates in 2025, supported by sales in Europe and the Americas, with China seen recovering only in the second part of 2025, Bain said.  

Levato said Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election had removed one uncertainty, while possible interest rate and tax cuts could encourage Americans to spend more.  

In contrast to personal goods, luxury spending on experiences, such as hospitality and dining, is expected to increase this year, Bain said. 
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ABBOTS LANGLEY, England — Originally built to store crops from peasant farmers, the Tithe Barn on the edge of the English village of Abbots Langley was converted into homes that preserve its centuries of history. Now, its residents are fighting to stop a development next door that represents the future.

A proposal to build a data center on a field across the road was rejected by local authorities amid fierce opposition from villagers. But it’s getting a second chance from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government, which is pursuing reforms to boost economic growth following his Labour party’s election victory in July.

Residents of Abbots Langley, 30 kilometers northwest of London, worry the facility will strain local resources and create noise and traffic that damages the character of the quiet village, which is home to more than 20,000 people. Off the main street there’s a church with a stone tower built in the 12th century and, further down the road, a picturesque circular courtyard of rustic thatched-roof cottages that used to be a farm modeled on one built for French Queen Marie Antoinette.

“It’s just hideously inappropriate,” said Stewart Lewis, 70, who lives in one of the converted houses in the 600-year-old Tithe Barn. “I think any reasonable person anywhere would say, ‘Hang on, they want a data center? This isn’t the place for it.'”

As the artificial intelligence boom fuels demand for cloud-based computing from server farms around the world, such projects are pitting business considerations, national priorities and local interests against each other.

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has stepped in to review the appeals filed by developers of three data center projects after they were rejected by local authorities, taking the decision out of the hands of town planners. Those proposals include Abbots Langley and two projects in Buckinghamshire, which sits west of London. The first decision is expected by January.

The projects are controversial because the data centers would be built on “greenbelt” land, which has been set aside to prevent urbanization. Rayner wants to tap the greenbelt for development, saying much of it is low quality. One proposed Buckinghamshire project, for example, involves redeveloping an industrial park next to a busy highway.

“Whilst it’s officially greenbelt designated land, there isn’t anything ‘green’ about the site today,” said Stephen Beard, global head of data centers at Knight Frank, a property consultancy that’s working on the project.

“It’s actually an eyesore which is very prominent from the M25” highway, he said.

Greystoke, the company behind the Abbots Langley center and a second Buckinghamshire project to be built on a former landfill, didn’t respond to requests for comment. In an online video for Abbots Langley, a company representative says, “We have carried out a comprehensive search for sites, and this one is the very best.” It doesn’t specify which companies would possibly use the center.

The British government is making data centers a core element of its economic growth plans, deeming them “critical national infrastructure” to give businesses confidence to invest in them. Starmer has announced deals for new centers, including a 10 billion pound ($13 billion) investment from private equity firm Blackstone to build what will be Europe’s biggest AI data center in northeast England.

The land for the Abbots Langley data center is currently used to graze horses. It’s bordered on two other sides by a cluster of affordable housing and a highway.

Greystoke’s plans to construct two large buildings totaling 84,000 square meters and standing up to 20 meters tall have alarmed Lewis and other villagers, who worry that it will dwarf everything else nearby.

They also doubt Greystoke’s promise that it will create up to 260 jobs.

“Everything will be automated, so they wouldn’t need people,” said tech consultant Jennifer Stirrup, 51, who lives in the area.

Not everyone in the village is opposed.

Retiree Bryan Power says he would welcome the data center, believing it would benefit the area in a similar way as another big project on the other side of the village, the Warner Bros.’ Studio Tour featuring a Harry Potter exhibition.

“It’ll bring some jobs, whatever. It’ll be good. Yeah. No problem. Because if it doesn’t come, it’ll go somewhere else,” said Power, 56.

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is their environmental impact, especially the huge amounts of electricity they need. Greystoke says the facility will draw 96 megawatts of “IT load.” But James Felstead, director of a renewable energy company and Lewis’ neighbor, said the area’s power grid wouldn’t be able to handle so much extra demand.

It’s a problem reflected across Europe, where data center power demand is expected to triple by the end of the decade, according to consulting firm McKinsey. While the AI-fueled data boom has prompted Google, Amazon and Microsoft to look to nuclear power as a source of clean energy, worries about their ecological footprint have already sparked tensions over data centers elsewhere.

Google was forced to halt plans in September for a $200 million data center in Chile’s capital, Santiago, after community complaints about its potential water and energy usage.

In Ireland, where many Silicon Valley companies have European headquarters, the grid operator has temporarily halted new data centers around Dublin until 2028 over worries they’re guzzling too much electricity.

A massive data center project in northern Virginia narrowly won county approval last year, amid heavy opposition from residents concerned about its environmental impact. Other places like Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore have imposed various restrictions on data centers.

Public knowledge about the industry is still low but “people are realizing more that these data centers are quite problematic,” said Sebastian Lehuede, a lecturer in ethics, AI and society at King’s College London who studied the Google case in Chile.

As awareness grows about their environmental impact, Lehuede said, “I’m sure we will have more opposition from different communities.”
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Berlin — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold meetings with his top two ministers to try to find common ground after they put forward contradictory plans to fix the nation’s ailing economy, a government source told Reuters on Sunday.  

A document leaked by Christian Lindner’s finance ministry raised eyebrows in Berlin last week, with its push for tax cuts and fiscal discipline widely interpreted as a challenge to the multibillion-euro investment plan put forward by Economy Minister Robert Habeck just days earlier.  

The stand-off is the latest escalation in a row over economic and industrial policy between the FDP, the Greens and Scholz’s Social Democrats that has fueled speculation of the coalition’s potential collapse, less than a year before elections are due.  

But a government source told Reuters that Scholz and the ministers would hold several meetings in the coming days, saying that “now that everyone has submitted their paper, we have to see how they fit with each other.”  

A worsening business outlook in Europe’s largest economy has widened divisions in Scholz’s ideologically disparate coalition over policy measures to drive growth, protect industrial jobs, and reinforce Germany’s position as a global industrial hub.  

While Habeck wants the creation of a fund to stimulate investment and to get around Germany’s strict fiscal spending rules, Lindner advocates tax cuts to spur the economy and an immediate halt on all new regulation.  

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil signaled openness to discussing Lindner’s proposals in a local newspaper interview, but said that some of them were untenable for his party, which released its own economic plan earlier in October.  

“Giving more to the rich, letting employees work longer and sending them into retirement later – it will come as no surprise to anyone that we think this is the wrong approach,” Klingbeil told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. 
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WASHINGTON — America’s employers added 12,000 jobs in October, a total that economists say was held down by the effects of strikes and hurricanes that left many workers temporarily off payrolls. The report provided a somewhat blurry view of the job market at the end of a presidential race that has pivoted heavily on voters’ feelings about the economy.

Last month’s hiring gain was down significantly from the 223,000 jobs that were added in September. But economists have estimated that hurricanes Helene and Milton, combined with strikes at Boeing and elsewhere, had the effect of pushing down net job growth by tens of thousands of jobs in October.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% last month. The low jobless rate suggests that the labor market is still fundamentally healthy, if not as robust as it was early this year. Combined with an inflation rate that has tumbled from its 2022 peak to near prepandemic levels, the overall economy appears to be on solid footing on the eve of Election Day.

The government did not estimate how many jobs were likely removed temporarily from payrolls last month. But economists have said they think the storms and strikes caused up to 100,000 jobs to be dropped. Reflecting the impact of the strikes, factories shed 46,000 positions in October.

Health care companies added 52,000 jobs in October, and state and local governments tacked on 39,000.

The employment report for October also revised down the government’s estimate of the job gains in August and September by a combined 112,000, indicating that the labor market wasn’t quite as robust then as initially thought.

“The big one-off shocks that struck the economy in October make it impossible to know whether the job market was changing direction in the month,’’ Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, wrote in a commentary. “But the downward revisions to job growth through September show it was cooling before these shocks struck.’’

Still, economists have noted that the United States has the strongest of the world’s most advanced economies, one that has proved surprisingly durable despite the pressure of high interest rates. This week, for example, the government estimated that the economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual rate last quarter, with consumer spending — the heart of the economy — helping drive growth.

Yet as voters choose between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, large numbers of Americans have said they are unhappy with the state of the economy. Despite the plummeting of inflation, many people are exasperated by high prices, which surged during the recovery from the pandemic recession and remain about 20% higher on average than they were before inflation began accelerating in early 2021.

With inflation having significantly cooled, the Fed is set to cut its benchmark interest rate next week for a second time and likely again in December. The Fed’s 11 rate hikes in 2022 and 2023 managed to help slow inflation without tipping the economy into a recession. A series of Fed rate cuts should lead, over time, to lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.

In the meantime, there have been signs of a slowdown in the job market. This week, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 7.4 million job openings in September. Although that is still more than employers posted on the eve of the 2020 pandemic, it amounted to the fewest openings since January 2021.

And 3.1 million Americans quit their jobs in September, the fewest in more than four years. A drop in quits tends to indicate that more workers are losing confidence in their ability to land a better job elsewhere.
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LONDON — The European Union is investigating Chinese online retailer Temu over suspicions it’s failing to prevent the sale of illegal products, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said on Thursday.

The European Commission opened its investigation five months after adding Temu to the list of “very large online platforms” needing the strictest level of scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook designed to clean up online platforms and keep internet users safe, with the threat of hefty fines.

Temu started entering Western markets only in the past two years and has grown in popularity by offering cheap goods — from clothing to home products — that are shipped from sellers in China. The company, owned by Pinduoduo Incorporated, a popular e-commerce site in China, now has 92 million users in the EU.

Temu said it “takes its obligations under the DSA seriously, continuously investing to strengthen our compliance system and safeguard consumer interests on our platform.”

“We will cooperate fully with regulators to support our shared goal of a safe, trusted marketplace for consumers,” the company said in a statement.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said in a press release that Brussels wants to make sure products sold on Temu’s platform “meet EU standards and do not harm consumers.”

EU enforcement will “guarantee a level playing field and that every platform, including Temu, fully respects the laws that keep our European market safe and fair for all,” she said.

The commission’s investigation will look into whether Temu’s systems are doing enough to crack down on “rogue traders” selling “noncompliant goods” amid concerns that they are able to swiftly reappear after being suspended. The commission didn’t single out specific illegal products that were being sold on the platform.

Regulators are also examining the risks from Temu’s “addictive design,” including “game-like” reward programs, and what the company is doing to mitigate those risks.

Also under investigation is Temu’s compliance with two other DSA requirements: giving researchers access to data and transparency on recommender systems. Companies must detail how they recommend content and products and give users at least one option to see recommendations that are not based on their personal profile and preferences.

Temu now has the chance to respond to the commission, which can decide to impose a fine or drop the case if the company makes changes or can prove that the suspicions aren’t valid.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year. It has also opened an investigation into another e-commerce platform, AliExpress, as well as social media sites such as X and Tiktok, which bowed to pressure after the commission demanded answers about a new rewards feature.

Temu has also faced scrutiny in the United States, where a congressional report last year accused the company of failing to prevent goods made by forced labor from being sold on its platform.
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