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Africa’s biggest cotton exporter, Benin, has built an industrial park to move the country away from raw exports to finished products.  Environmental activists say local manufacturing will also cut down on emissions from shipping that contribute to climate change.  Henry Wilkins reports from Djigbé, Benin.
Camera: Henry Wilkins  Video Editor: Henry Wilkins 
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Taiwan’s envoy to a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders is the 91-year-old billionaire founder of a computer chip manufacturing giant that operated behind the scenes for decades before being thrust into the center of U.S.-Chinese tension over technology and security.

Morris Chang’s hybrid role highlights the clash between Taiwan’s status as one of China’s top tech suppliers and Beijing’s threats to attack the self-ruled island democracy of 22 million people, which the mainland’s ruling Communist Party says it part of its territory.

Taiwan’s decision to send Chang instead of a political leader to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand reflects the island’s unusual status. The United States and other governments have agreed to Chinese demands not to have official relations with Taiwan or have their leaders meet its president.

Chang transformed the semiconductor industry when he founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. in 1987 as the first foundry to produce chips only for customers without designing its own. That allowed smaller designers to compete with industry giants without spending billions of dollars to build a factory.

TSMC has grown into the biggest chip producer, supplying Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and other customers and turning Taiwan into a global tech center. TSMC-produced chips are in millions of smartphones, automobiles and high-end computers.

Despite that, TSMC ranks high on any list of the biggest companies that are unknown outside their industries.

Chang, a Texas Instruments Inc. veteran who served as TSMC chairman until 2018, represented then-President Chen Shui-bian at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in 2006. He was re-appointed to the same job in 2018, 2019 and 2020 by President Tsai Ing-wen.

“Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, especially TSMC, plays a pivotal role in the domestic and even the world economy,” Tsai told reporters on Oct. 20. “At this important moment, Chang is an irreplaceable candidate to serve as the representative of our country’s APEC leaders.”

Britain’s trade minister, Greg Hands, said London wants closer cooperation with Taiwan on semiconductors during a visit this month. Britain is home to Arm, a leading chip designer.

Taiwan is in a “very challenging environment” and APEC is the “most important international conference venue for Taiwan,” Chang said at the Oct. 20 briefing with Tsai.

“Taiwan needs to build a secure and resilient supply chain with trusted partners, especially in the electronics sector,” he said.

Last year, Chang warned support was eroding for globalization and free markets that helped TSMC prosper.

“Globalization seems to be a bad word and ‘free market economy’ is beginning to carry conditions,” Chang said while accepting an award from the Asia Society.

“Many companies in Asia and America face challenges as to how to operate in the new environment,” Chang said. “Still, I’m confident that solutions will be found.”

TSMC was thrust into geopolitics in 2020 when then U.S. President Donald Trump blocked the company and other vendors from using U.S. technology to make chips for Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Ltd., which produces smartphones and network gear for phone and internet carriers. American officials say Huawei is a security threat and might enable Chinese spying, an accusation the company denies.

Most of the world’s smartphones and other consumer electronics are assembled in Chinese factories. But they need components and technology from the United States, Europe and Asian suppliers — especially Taiwan, the biggest chip exporter.

Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, designs chips but needs TSMC and other contractors to make them. Their foundries need American manufacturing technology, which gives Washington leverage to disrupt Chinese high-tech industry.

Processor chips are China’s biggest import at $300 billion a year, ahead of oil. The ruling Communist Party sees that as a strategic weakness and is spending heavily to create its own chip producers, but they are generations behind TSMC and other global leaders.

Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, left Trump’s curbs in place and imposed more restrictions that extend to other Chinese companies.

TSMC, headquartered in Hsinchu, adjacent to the Taiwan capital, Taipei, says it made 12,302 different products last year for 535 customers. The company reported an $18.7 billion profit last year on $49.8 billion in revenue.

Chang was born in Ningbo, south of Shanghai, and moved to Hong Kong after a civil war on the mainland ended with the Communist Party taking power in 1949.

The mainland’s former ruling Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan. The two sides have been ruled separately since then. They have no official relations but are linked by billions of dollars of trade and investment.

Chang studied at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before receiving a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1964.

Chang spent a quarter-century at Texas Instruments, rising to become a vice president in charge of its semiconductor business, before being invited to Taiwan in the 1980s to lead a technology research institute.

In 1988, TSMC became Taiwan’s first company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Chang’s stake in the company is worth $1.6 billion.
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Nigeria’s plan to replace its naira currency with new designs to reduce excess cash and to fight counterfeiting, inflation and crime has led to a rush on U.S. dollars. Analysts say the timing — just ahead of February’s election and as the economy struggles — could undermine confidence in Africa’s largest economy. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja, Nigeria. Camera: Emeka Gibson
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The world’s population is projected to hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa.

Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than 15 million people in Lagos compete for everything from electricity to light their homes to spots on crowded buses, often for two-hour commutes each way in this sprawling megacity. Some Nigerian children set off for school as early as 5 a.m.

And over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is expected to soar even more: from 216 million this year to 375 million, the U.N. says. That will make Nigeria the fourth-most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.

“We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.

The U.N.’s Day of 8 Billion milestone Tuesday is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.

The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.

Nigeria is among eight countries the U.N says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

“The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the U.N. report said.

It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.

Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where more than 12 million people live, many families struggle to find affordable housing and pay school fees. While elementary pupils attend for free, older children’s chances depend on their parents’ incomes.

“My children took turns” going to school, said Luc Kyungu, a Kinshasa truck driver who has six children. “Two studied while others waited because of money. If I didn’t have so many children, they would have finished their studies on time.”

Rapid population growth also means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly impacts crop production in many parts of the world.

“There is also a greater pressure on the environment, increasing the challenges to food security that is also compounded by climate change,” said Dr. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Reducing inequality while focusing on adapting and mitigating climate change should be where our policy makers’ focus should be.”

Still, experts say the bigger threat to the environment is consumption, which is highest in developed countries not undergoing big population increases.

“Global evidence shows that a small portion of the world’s people use most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “Over the past 25 years, the richest 10% of the global population has been responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.”

According to the U.N., the population in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 2.5% per year — more than three times the global average. Some of that can be attributed to people living longer, but family size remains the driving factor. Women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have 4.6 births, twice the current global average of 2.3.

Families become larger when women start having children early, and 4 out of 10 girls in Africa marry before they turn 18, according to U.N. figures. The rate of teen pregnancy on the continent is the highest in the world — about half of the children born last year to mothers under 20 worldwide were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Still, any effort to reduce family size now would come too late to significantly slow the 2050 growth projections, the U.N. said. About two-thirds of it “will be driven by the momentum of past growth.”

“Such growth would occur even if childbearing in today’s high-fertility countries were to fall immediately to around two births per woman,” the report found.

There are also important cultural reasons for large families. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are seen as a blessing and as a source of support for their elders — the more sons and daughters, the greater comfort in retirement.

Still, some large families “may not have what it takes to actually feed them,” says Eunice Azimi, an insurance broker in Lagos and mother of three.

“In Nigeria, we believe that it is God that gives children,” she said. “They see it as the more children you have, the more benefits. And you are actually overtaking your peers who cannot have as many children. It looks like a competition in villages.”

Politics also have played a role in Tanzania, where former President John Magufuli, who ruled the East African country from 2015 until his death in 2021, discouraged birth control, saying that a large population was good for the economy.

He opposed family planning programs promoted by outside groups, and in a 2019 speech urged women not to “block ovaries.” He even described users of contraceptives as “lazy” in a country he said was awash with cheap food. Under Magufuli, pregnant schoolgirls were even banned from returning to classrooms.

But his successor, Samia Suluhu Hassan, appeared to reverse government policy in comments last month when she said birth control was necessary in order not to overwhelm the country’s public infrastructure.

Even as populations soar in some countries, the U.N. says rates are expected to drop by 1% or more in 61 nations.

The U.S. population is now around 333 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The population growth rate in 2021 was just 0.1%, the lowest since the country was founded.

“Going forward, we’re going to have slower growth — the question is, how slow?” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real wild card for the U.S. and many other developed countries is immigration.”

Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, says environmental concerns surrounding the 8 billion mark should focus on consumption, particularly in developed countries.

“Population is not the problem, the way we consume is the problem — let’s change our consumption patterns,” he said.
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Frontier Airlines and four foreign carriers have agreed to refund more than $600 million combined to travelers whose trips were canceled or significantly delayed since the start of the pandemic, federal officials said Monday. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it also fined the same airlines more than $7 million for delaying refunds so long that they violated consumer-protection rules. 

The largest U.S. airlines, which accounted for the bulk of complaints about refunds, avoided fines, and an official said no other U.S. carriers are being investigated for potential fines. 

Consumers flooded the agency with thousands of complaints about their inability to get refunds when the airlines canceled huge numbers of flights after the pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020. It was by far the leading category of complaints. 

“When Americans buy a ticket on an airline, we expect to get to our destination safely, reliably and affordably, and our job at DOT is to hold airlines accountable for these expectations,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. 

The department said Denver-based Frontier Airlines is refunding $222 million and paying a $2.2 million civil penalty. 

TAP Portugal will refund $126.5 million and pay a $1.1 million fine; Air India will pay $121.5 million in refunds and a $1.4 million penalty; AeroMexico will pay $13.6 million and a $900,000 fine; Israel’s El Al will pay $61.9 million and a $900,000 penalty; and Colombia’s Avianca will pay $76.8 million and a $750,000 fine, the Transportation Department said. 

“We have more enforcement actions and investigations underway and there may be more news to come by way of fines,” Buttigieg said during a call with reporters. 

However, there will be no fines for other U.S. airlines because they responded “shortly after” the Transportation Department reminded them in April 2020 of their obligation to provide quick refunds, said Blane Workie, the assistant general counsel for the Transportation Department’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection. 

“We do not have any pending cases against other U.S. carriers. Our remaining cases are against foreign air carriers,” Workie said on the same call with Buttigieg. 

In 2020, United Airlines had the most refund-related complaints filed with DOT — more than 10,000. Air Canada, El Al and TAP Portugal were next, both over 5,000, followed by American Airlines and Frontier, both topping 4,000. 

Air Canada agreed last year to pay $4.5 million to settle similar U.S. allegations of slow refunds. The Transportation Department initially sought $25.5 million in that case. 
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President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers was handed another legal loss Monday when a federal appeals court panel agreed to a preliminary injunction halting the program while an appeal plays out.

The ruling by the three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis came days after a federal judge in Texas blocked the program, saying it usurped Congress’ power to make laws. The Texas case was appealed, and the administration is likely to appeal the 8th Circuit ruling as well.

The plan would cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, would get an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven. The cancellation applies to federal student loans used to attend undergraduate and graduate school, along with Parent Plus loans.

The Congressional Budget Office has said the program will cost about $400 billion over the next three decades.

A federal judge on Oct. 20 allowed the program to proceed, but the 8th Circuit the next day temporarily put it on hold while it considered an effort by the states of Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas and South Carolina to block the loan forgiveness plan.

The new ruling from the panel made up of three Republican appointees — one was appointed by President George W. Bush and two by President Donald Trump — extends the hold until the issue is resolved in court.

Part of the states’ argument centered around the financial harm the debt cancellation would cause the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority.

“This unanticipated financial downturn will prevent or delay Missouri from funding higher education at its public colleges and universities,” the 8th Circuit ruling stated.

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, a Republican, said in a statement that the ruling “recognizes that this attempt to forgive over $400 billion in student loans threatens serious harm to the economy that cannot be undone. It is important to stop the Biden administration from such unlawful abuse of power.”

A message seeking comment from the White House wasn’t immediately returned.

Both federal cases centered around the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, commonly known as the HEROES Act. It was enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, allowing the secretary of education to waive or modify terms of federal loans in times of war or national emergency.

Lawyers for the administration contend the COVID-19 pandemic created a national emergency and that student loan defaults have skyrocketed over the past 2 1/2 years.

But in the Texas ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman — an appointee of Trump based in Fort Worth — said the HEROES ACT did not provide the authorization that the Biden administration claimed it did.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said that so far, 26 million people had applied for debt relief, and 16 million people had already had their relief approved. The Department of Education would “quickly process their relief once we prevail in court,” she said after the ruling in Texas.

The legal challenges have created confusion about whether borrowers who expected to have debt canceled will have to resume making payments come Jan. 1, when a pause prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic is set to expire.

Economists worry that many people have yet to rebound financially from the pandemic, saying that if borrowers who were expecting debt cancellation are asked to make payments instead, many could fall behind on the bills and default.
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Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.

Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content.

But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.

Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.

“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” she said Sunday.

Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on the data and monitoring arm of Twitter’s civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere.

Ingle said she was “pretty sure I was done for” when she couldn’t access her work email Saturday. The notification from the contracting company she’d been hired by came two hours later.

“I’ll just be putting my resumes out there and talking to people,” she said. “I have two children. And I’m worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just mundane things like that, that are important. I just think it’s particularly heartless to do this at this time.”

Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who worked as a staff researcher at Twitter earlier this year, said she believes at least 3,000 contract workers were fired Saturday night.

Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.

At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and other offices, contract workers wore green badges while full-time workers wore blue badges. Contractors did a number of jobs to help keep Twitter running, including engineering and marketing, Roberts said. But it was the huge force of contracted moderators that was “mission critical” to the platform, said Roberts.

Cutting them will have a “tangible impact on the experience of the platform,” she said.

Musk promised to loosen speech restrictions when he took over Twitter. But in the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate and hate-fueled violence.

That message was reiterated by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”

Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
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The imploding cryptocurrency trading firm FTX is now short billions of dollars after experiencing the crypto equivalent of a bank run.

The exchange, formerly one of the world’s largest, sought bankruptcy protection last week, and its CEO and founder resigned. Hours later, the trading firm said there had been “unauthorized access” and that funds had disappeared. Analysts say hundreds of millions of dollars may have vanished.

The unraveling of the once-giant exchange is sending shockwaves through the industry. Here’s a look at the company’s collapse so far:

Why did FTX go bankrupt?

Customers fled the exchange over fears about whether FTX had sufficient capital, and it agreed to sell itself to rival crypto exchange Binance. But the deal fell through pending Binance’s due diligence on FTX’s balance sheet.

FTX had valued its assets between $10 billion to $50 billion and listed more than 130 affiliated companies around the world, according to its bankruptcy filing.

FTX and dozens of affiliated companies — including CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research — filed the bankruptcy petition in Delaware on Friday.

This week’s developments marked a shocking turn of events for Bankman-Fried, who was hailed as somewhat of a savior earlier this year when he helped shore up a number of cryptocurrency companies that ran into financial trouble. He was recently estimated to be worth $23 billion and has been a prominent political donor to Democrats.

Was it hacked, too?

FTX confirmed Saturday there had been unauthorized access to its accounts, hours after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

A debate formed on social media about whether the exchange was hacked or a company insider had stolen funds — a possibility that cryptocurrency analysts couldn’t rule out.

Exactly how much money is involved is unclear, but analytics firm Elliptic estimated Saturday that $477 million was missing from the exchange. FTX’s new CEO John Ray III said it was switching off the ability to trade or withdraw funds and taking steps to secure customers’ assets.

Is FTX under investigation?

The Royal Bahamas Police Force said Sunday it is investigating FTX, adding to the company’s woes. The police force said in a statement Sunday it was working with Bahamas securities regulators to “investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred” involving the exchange, which had moved its headquarters to the Caribbean country last year.

Is anyone else investigating?

Even before the bankruptcy filing and missing funds, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began examining FTX to determine whether any criminal activity or securities offenses were committed, according to a person familiar with matter who spoke to The Associated Press last week on condition of anonymity because they could not discuss details of the investigations publicly.

What are the repercussions?

Companies that backed FTX are writing down investments, and the prices of bitcoin and other digital currencies have been falling. Politicians and regulators are calling for stricter oversight of the unwieldy industry. FTX said Saturday that it was moving as many digital assets as can be identified to a new “cold wallet custodian,” which is essentially a way of storing assets offline without allowing remote control.

FTX had also entered into a number of sports-related deals, some of which are crumbling. The NBA’s Miami Heat and Miami-Dade County decided Friday to terminate their relationship with FTX and will rename the team’s arena. Earlier Friday, Mercedes said it would immediately remove FTX logos from its Formula One cars.
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The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is the subject of scrutiny from government investigators in the Bahamas, who are looking at whether any “criminal misconduct occurred,” the Royal Bahamas Police said on Sunday.

FTX filed for bankruptcy on Friday, one of the highest-profile crypto blowups, after traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours and rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal.

In a statement on Sunday, the Royal Bahamas Police said: “In light of the collapse of FTX globally and the provisional liquidation of FTX Digital Markets Ltd., a team of financial investigators from the Financial Crimes Investigation Branch are working closely with the Bahamas Securities Commission to investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred.”

FTX did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

FTX’s newly appointed Chief Executive John J. Ray III, a restructuring expert who took over after the bankruptcy filing, said on Saturday that the company was working with law enforcement and regulators to mitigate the problem, and was making “every effort to secure all assets, wherever located.”

The exchange’s dramatic fall from grace has seen its 30-year-old founder Sam Bankman-Fried, known for his shorts and T-shirt attire, morph from being the poster child of crypto’s successes to the protagonist of the industry’s biggest crash. 

Bankman-Fried, who lives in the Bahamas, has also been the subject of speculation about his whereabouts and he denied rumors on Twitter that he had flown to South America. When asked by Reuters on Saturday whether he had flown to Argentina, he responded in a text message: “Nope.” He told Reuters he was in the Bahamas.

The turmoil at FTX has seen at least $1 billion of customer funds vanish from the platform, sources told Reuters on Friday. Bankman-Fried had transferred $10 billion of customer funds to his trading company, Alameda Research, the sources said.

New problems emerged on Saturday when FTX’s U.S. general counsel Ryne Miller said in a Twitter post that the firm’s digital assets were being moved into so-called cold storage “to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.”

Cold storage refers to crypto wallets that are not connected to the internet to guard against hackers.

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen said on Saturday it saw $659 million in outflows from FTX International and FTX U.S. in the preceding 24 hours.

Crypto exchange Kraken said on Twitter on Sunday that it froze the accounts of FTX, Alameda Research and their executives in order “to protect its creditors.”

The exchange did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the holdings of those accounts.

In its bankruptcy petition, FTX Trading said it has $10 billion to $50 billion in assets, $10 billion to $50 billion in liabilities, and more than 100,000 creditors.

A document that Bankman-Fried shared with investors on Thursday and was reviewed by Reuters showed FTX had $13.86 billion in liabilities and $14.6 billion in assets. However, only $900 million of those assets were liquid, leading to the cash crunch that ended with the company filing for bankruptcy.

The collapse shocked investors and prompted fresh calls to regulate the cryptoasset sector, which has seen losses stack up this year as cryptocurrency prices collapsed.

Bitcoin BTC=BTSP fell below $16,000 for the first time since 2020 on Wednesday, after Binance abandoned its rescue deal for FTX.

On Sunday it was trading around $16,400, down by more than 75% from the all-time high of $69,000 it reached in November last year.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed energy and trade ties with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh during a visit to Hanoi on Sunday, the first for a German leader in more than a decade.

Scholz’s stop in Vietnam on his way to the G20 leaders’ summit in Indonesia, highlights Vietnam’s growing role in global supply chains as many German firms consider diversifying their manufacturing operations by expanding their presence beyond China, their main hub in Asia.

At a joint news conference with Chinh, Scholz said Berlin wanted deeper trade relations with Vietnam and would support the country’s transition to a greener economy, including through the expansion of the metro system in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital.

The Hanoi visit follows Scholz’s trip to China last week, the first by a Western leader in three years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He will next visit Singapore before heading to the G20 summit on Nov 15-16.

Vietnam and Singapore are the only countries in Southeast Asia that have a free trade agreement with the European Union. As a result, they are the EU’s biggest trading partners in the region.

Germany is Vietnam’s second-largest trading partner among EU states after the Netherlands, with exchanges worth $7.8 billion last year, according to law firm Dezan Shira — far less however than the United States, China, Japan and South Korea.

About 500 German firms operate in Vietnam, of which around 80 have manufacturing plants in the country, according to the German chamber of commerce in Vietnam, AHK.

Among them are engineering giant Bosch BOSH.NS, energy firm Messer, and several smaller companies involved in the global automotive supply chain.

Many more are looking to diversify some of their activities away from China where about 5,000 German companies operate, AHK head in Vietnam, Marko Walde, told Reuters.

Over 90% of German firms planning such a move look at Southeast Asia as their preferred choice, Walde said, noting that Vietnam and Thailand were favorites in the region.

 
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Britain’s government on Sunday warned of impending tax hikes, especially for the wealthy, as it bids to repair economic havoc wrought by the short-lived tenure of former prime minister Liz Truss.

Truss’s successor Rishi Sunak, who was heading to a G20 economic summit in Indonesia, has vowed to get soaring inflation under control even if it means more pain for hard-pressed consumers and businesses.

His finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, told Sky News that the pain would fall disproportionately on the better off as he prepares to unveil an emergency budget statement on Thursday.

Hunt conceded that the UK economy was already likely in recession, “but we are a resilient country and we’ve faced much bigger challenges, frankly, in our history.

“We’re all going to be paying a bit more tax, I’m afraid,” he said, while refusing to be drawn into detail on the figures, after a tax-cutting budget by Truss caused panic on financial markets.

“We will be asking everyone for sacrifices,” the chancellor of the exchequer stressed.

“But I think in a fair society, as we are in the UK, we need to recognize that there’s only so much you can ask from people on the very lowest incomes, so that will be reflected in the decisions that I take.”

Hunt is reportedly looking at changing income tax brackets, to raise more revenue from high earners, and impose strict curbs on government spending for years to come as inflation hits double digits.

He said the surge in energy prices linked to the war in Ukraine amounted to an economic hit of $166 billion.

“It’s like the economy supporting an entire second NHS [National Health Service],” the minister said.

“This will be a plan to help bring down inflation, help control high energy prices and also get our way back to growing healthily, which is what we need so much.”
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Thailand’s tourist economy appears to be on the rebound as millions of international arrivals flock to the Southeast Asian country following COVID-19 border restrictions and closures. The government says it is highly likely that Thailand will meet its target of 10 million visitors by the end of the year.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand, or TAT, recently announced that more than 7.3 million visitors arrived in the country from January to late October. As of October 1, Thailand dropped all remaining COVID-19 requirements, including proof of vaccination or rapid test results.

TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn said difficult times are past.

“Thailand is seeing its reports across the board — from ongoing tourism marketing and promoting to Amazing Thailand SHA health and safety standards put in place — paying off, with more than 7 million foreign tourists having already returned to our shores so far in 2022,” he said, referring to the Safety and Health Administration.

Tourism

Thailand’s economy relies heavily on tourism. In 2019, tourism accounted for approximately 11% of Thailand’s GDP, and around 20% of Thais were employed in the sector, according to the Bank of Thailand.

Thailand’s GDP declined by 6% in 2020 amid the pandemic-fueled global economic downturn. Since its borders reopened, GDP has risen by 2.4% year on year in the first half of 2022, government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri said, citing a report by the National Economic and Social Development Council, The Nation newspaper reported.

Malaysia-based analyst Gary Bowerman says Thailand is once again leading the way for tourism in Southeast Asia.

“Pre-pandemic Thailand was the most visited country in Southeast Asia,” he said. “It was the first to try and reopen, and the Tourism Authority of Thailand [is] always very bullish; they always forecast quite high. They did everything they could to bring back tourism inbound. For Thailand it was all about inbound.”

Bowerman said 2022 has been an unusual year, so its expected visitor arrivals were forecast to be lower.

He described 2022 as a “very weird, compressed year.”

“Most countries in the region didn’t open for inbound or outbound until April this year, so it’s a kind of three-quarter year,” he said.

In 2019, Thailand’s inbound visitors amounted to over 39 million, the country’s highest number of arrivals to date.

Looking to 2023

Thai tourism officials are now predicting only up to 18 million visitors for 2023, with little hope that the Chinese market, which usually makes up nearly 30% of all Thailand arrivals, will pick up.

Bowerman says achieving those figures will take some time, especially amid uncertainty as to when Chinese tourists will enter the country in large numbers.

“To expect they will get 12 million Chinese tourists next year, when they only had 11 million in 2019, that’s a high figure,” Bowerman said. “I don’t think anyone expects China to open [until] at least May …. I don’t think we can take the China forecast very seriously.”

China is sticking with its “zero-COVID” policy some three years after the coronavirus was first detected in the city of Wuhan. Lockdowns in Chinese cities are still common, while economic trade has slowed, borders remain closed for international tourists and a quarantine remains in place for Chinese residents returning to the country.

Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport has seen close to 3.9 million arrivals so far this year, according to tourism officials, and queues to pass through Customs have been long in recent weeks.

For Thailand’s business owners, the hordes of arrivals are a welcome sight.

Chan Holland, owner of Bangkok’s Canary Travel Thailand, says her bookings have increased since October, with most of her customers coming from Britain and European Union countries.

“Last year [we] probably had 10% [of our usual] customers. To compare, I think it is 80% better than last year,” she told VOA. “We are really happy and grateful for all the tourists we have right now. Welcome back to Thailand.”

Charlee Keardkumsap, the director of sales and marketing at Bandara Suites in Bangkok, told VOA that business has increased in recent months.

“Our business picked up more than 50% after [the country] reopened [for tourism],” he said, explaining that 2023 saw numerous first-quarter bookings of mixed clientele, and increased numbers of Asian tourists in recent months.

Amid the upbeat outlook, Thailand has been hosting meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, all year. Next week, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, along with leaders from countries including Australia, Canada and China, will be in Bangkok for an APEC summit, its first in-person talks in four years.
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Wall Street surged to its best day since April 2020 as markets cheered a government report that inflation cooled more than expected last month.

The S&P 500 jumped 5.5% Thursday, and the Dow rose nearly 1,200 points as traders took the data as a sign the worst of inflation may have passed.

Treasury yields fell dramatically as bond markets relaxed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set rates for mortgages and other loans, fell to 3.85% from 4.10% late Wednesday, which is a major move for the bond market. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, dropped to 4.32% from 4.58%.

Even bitcoin rose on hopes a slowdown in inflation could mean the Federal Reserve won’t have to be so aggressive about raising interest rates. Such hikes have been the main reason for Wall Street’s troubles this year and are threatening a recession.

All the action stemmed from a U.S. government report showing that inflation slowed in October for a fourth straight month since hitting a peak of 9.1% in June. The reading of 7.7% was better than the 8% economists were expecting.

Perhaps more importantly, inflation also slowed more than expected after ignoring the effects of food and energy prices. That’s the measure the Fed pays closer attention to. So did inflation between September and October.

“The month-on-month rate of inflation is much more informative,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments. “On that measure, inflation is still high, but not scary high.”

Slower inflation could keep the Fed off the most aggressive path in raising interest rates. It’s already raised its key rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%, up from virtually zero in March.

By raising rates, the Fed is intentionally trying to slow the economy and jobs market in hopes of undercutting inflation, which hit a four-decade high in the summer. The risk is that it can create a recession if it goes too far, and higher rates drag on prices for stocks and other investments in the meantime.

Higher interest rates have particularly hit high-growth tech stocks, cryptocurrencies and other investments seen as the riskiest or most expensive.

Big Tech stocks were some of the most buoyant forces on Wall Street following the inflation report. Apple and Microsoft both rose 6.8%, while Amazon soared 11.7%.

Tesla also rose nearly 6%, though it remains down by roughly half since CEO Elon Musk announced in April that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder. Investors fled the electric vehicle maker on fears Musk would be distracted by Twitter, and he has sold more than $19 billion in Tesla stock since then.

Slower inflation could get the Federal Reserve to downshift the size of its rate hikes at its next policy meeting in December, after it pushed through four straight increases of 0.75 percentage points. That could open the way for the Fed to return to the more typical increases of 0.25 percentage points before pausing hikes completely.

While Thursday’s report on inflation was encouraging, analysts cautioned the Fed’s campaign against high inflation is likely still far from over. Inflation data has given false hope before, only to reaccelerate again.

“The Fed was adamant that it won’t hit the brakes on rate hikes until inflation slows, and while the market’s rally indicates investors may see light at the end of the tunnel, it will get one more reading before its decision next month,” said Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley Global Investment Office. “Remember that even as we see a slowdown, prices remain elevated and have a long way to go before normalizing.”

Another potentially market-shaking report will hit Wall Street Friday, when the latest reading arrives on how much inflation U.S. households see coming in future years. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said he’s paying particularly close attention to such expectations. 
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Consumer price increases are beginning to ease in the U.S., not rapidly, but at a slower pace than the four-decade-high inflation boost in June.

The government’s Labor Department said Thursday that consumer prices increased at a 7.7% pace in October from the year before, down from the 8.2% annualized rate in September. On a monthly basis, prices increased four-tenths of a percentage point between September and October, matching the previous month.

The latest Consumer Price Index figure is still troubling for many U.S. shoppers facing higher prices at grocery and retail stores, as well for businesses needing supplies and raw materials for their operations. But it is lower than June’s 9.1% inflation rate that was the highest since the 1980s.

Nonetheless, inflation increases seem to have plateaued at an abnormally high level since spring 2022, with one month’s increase adding to earlier price hikes.

Policy makers at the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, have rapidly increased their benchmark interest rate this year, which influences consumer borrowing rates, in hopes it will curb consumer spending. But to date the effect of the interest boosts has been minimal.

Further interest rate increases could be in the offing in the coming weeks, but some analysts fear that could push the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, into a recession.

Nearly a third of voters answering exit polls after they cast ballots in Tuesday’s nationwide congressional elections said inflation was their top concern, an issue that topped all others in the campaigns, including worries over abortion rights, crime and immigration.

Republican candidates throughout the country widely blamed Democratic President Joe Biden and his party’s candidates for the price hikes. While the cost of shopping no doubt played a role in the election, control of Congress remained in limbo Thursday, with Republicans edging toward a majority in the House of Representatives, but Senate control in doubt with undecided contests in three states.

In a statement, President Biden said the new inflation report “shows that we are making progress on bringing inflation down, without giving up all of the progress we have made on economic growth and job creation.”

But he acknowledged, “It will take time to get inflation back to normal levels—and we could see setbacks along the way—but we will keep at it and help families with the cost of living.”
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China may be reviving key elements of its 20th-century planned economy to ensure domestic stability as a way to reduce dependence on the West for consumer commodities, particularly foodstuffs affected by the war in Ukraine, experts say.

Beijing is promoting the development of supply and marketing cooperatives for agricultural products and state-run canteens to help the government control the supply of key foodstuffs as relations between China and Western democracies deteriorate. The canteens are similar to college cafeterias with limited offerings and prices deemed affordable by officials in Beijing.

Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview on November 4, “The emergence of supply and marketing cooperatives is often the product of economic scarcity. Today, China is obviously facing a large number of economic crises. If these crises lead to economic scarcity, the country must control the situation, especially these basic supplies, for stability.”

Wen Guanzhong, an emeritus professor of economics at Trinity College, told VOA Mandarin by phone on November 4 that “In general, because (China’s president) Xi Jinping knows that he is actually taking a route that is the opposite of the route of deepening comprehensive marketization, he also knows that China’s relations with countries around the world, especially Western countries, will become increasingly tense. He hopes to reestablish the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party’s) overall control of society including control over supply and sales.”

Xie Tian, a business professor at the University of South Carolina Aiken, said in an interview with VOA Mandarin on November 4 that, “I think the CCP’s ambition and desire to use force against Taiwan may be implemented very soon. Canteens and supply and marketing cooperatives can control social materials and food supply during war times, which is the best way for China.”

In Hubei province alone, local officials have restored and rebuilt 1,373 grassroots supply and marketing cooperatives with 452,000 members, according to a report last month in the official Hubei Daily. Officials told the news outlet that by 2025, the cooperatives will have 1.5 million members.

In 2014, there were 696 co-ops in the province, a decrease of 61% from the peak of 1,800 in 1984, according to a report in the November 2 state-affiliated Beijing Business Daily (BBD). Nationwide, the BBD reported, there are currently 31,000 supply and marketing cooperatives in China, with nearly 400,000 outlets.

At the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which closed on October 22, Liang Huiling, who led the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, was promoted to membership in the CCP’s Central Committee. After the congress, the agency immediately issued a recruitment bulletin, which the experts saw as a sign that China’s future economic development will be led by a government bent on improving self-sufficiency and economic security.

Global food crisis

China is one of the world’s leading food importers. According to a 2018 report by CSIS, a Washington-based think tank, China’s food imports exceed its exports, resulting in a food trade deficit.

Xia said China is looking for alternative grain sources because of tense relations with Western exporters such as the United States, Canada and Australia. Beijing’s fear is that if these exporting countries reduce sales to China for geopolitical reasons or to meet their own domestic demands, prices could rise throughout China and cause domestic dissatisfaction.

According to Reuters, the IMF said in September that disruptions to global grain flows caused by the war in Ukraine have prompted the worst food security crisis since the one following the 2007-2008 global financial meltdown.

Xia said China’s refusal to publicly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine in February has exacerbated Western democracies’ dissatisfaction with China.

“When China wants to team up with Russia and fight against the West, I think it will set itself up for a lot of crises of food and energy security,” he told VOA Mandarin. “So, if it wants to be hostile to Western countries or use wolf warrior diplomacy, I think it has to deal with (the consequences).”

Supply and marketing cooperatives for agricultural products first appeared in China in the 1950s when Beijing planned and controlled the economy. When Deng Xiaoping proposed reform and opening of the economy in 1978, the supply and marketing cooperatives began weakening, but they never disappeared.

Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, the Chinese government has called for the reform of supply and marketing cooperatives as part of his gradual tightening of economic control.

In 2021, Beijing proposed a pilot project of “three-in-one” comprehensive cooperation in production, supply and marketing of foodstuffs that included loans to farmers and distributors. Some 49,000 state employees oversee the entire system of supply and marketing cooperatives starting at the county level, according to the official website.

According to data for the first half of 2022 from the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, the sales of the supply and marketing cooperatives in the whole system exceeded $435 billion (2.9 trillion yuan) – a year-on-year increase of 19.1%. In 2021, sales totaled about $926.9 billion (6.26 trillion yuan), according to official figures.

Concerned consumers

Consumers are worried that Beijing’s new focus on supply and marketing cooperatives and canteens may sound a death knell for current market-oriented shops and restaurants, both contributors to growth of the private economy.

According to Chinese media reports, Chinese officials last week attempted to assuage those concerns, saying that restarting the supply and marketing cooperatives will allow them “to take advantage of their many outlets, enhance the function of the county’s circulation service network, and promote rural revitalization.”

The officials added that community pilot projects, including the construction of canteens, “are not mandatory, not everything on the file must be tried.”

Wen said that difference between the cooperatives of old and today “depends on how private enterprises are treated in the future, whether they are restricted or whether state-run supply and marketing cooperatives are given privileges such as the power of monopoly.”

Xie believes that the state-led economy lacks the vitality of the market economy, which will ultimately affect the living standards of Chinese residents.

He said, “Just like the canteens and supply and marketing cooperatives in the old days, it is impossible to have the vitality of the market economy after returning to the planned economy. … Only the most basic meals, or the most basic food and services can be provided, which will definitely affect the living standards of the Chinese people.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. 
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Traders in the Cameroon town of Kiossi, on the border with Equatorial Guinea, say business is suffering after the land border was closed last week ahead of November 20 elections. Equatorial Guinea says it closed the border to prevent what it calls “infiltration of mercenaries who want to destabilize the elections.” Political analysts say President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who came to power in a 1979 coup and is Africa’s longest still-serving leader, is sure to win.

Several hundred citizens from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, most of them merchants, say they have not been able to cross the border from Kiossi, a Cameroonian border town, to Equatorial Guinea since November 3.

Dozens of heavily armed Equatorial Guinea government troops can be seen on the central African state’s side of the border.

Building material importer Dominique Essono says the troops are preventing him and many other Equatorial Guinea citizens from returning to their country to vote on November 20.

Essono said scores of businesspersons are stranded and cannot move to Cameroon from Ebebiyin, a town in Equatorial Guinea. Cameroon imports vegetable oil, wine, canned food and body lotions from Equatorial Guinea and exports building material, vegetables, tomatoes, rice and potato to Equatorial Guinea.

On October 25, Equatorial Guinea’s Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue said the border was sealed to prevent from the “infiltration” of groups that may want to destabilize Equatorial Guinea’s elections.

Obiang, 80, is Africa’s longest serving leader. The former military officer serving as the 2nd president of Equatorial Guinea took power in an August 1979 coup.

He will be facing two candidates in the November 20 elections.

Esono Ondo is running for the first time while Monsuy Asumu is running for the third time. Obiang told the Pan African TV Channel Afrique Media on Monday that he will continue to develop his country and reduce poverty in rural communities if reelected.

Obiang says it is by no error that continuity is the slogan of his election campaign. He says his exceptional program is to open Equatorial Guinea businesses to the rest of the world so that by 2035, the central African state can become an economically independent emerging economy.

Owona Wolfgang, a political analyst at the University of Yaounde’s political science research center in Cameroon, says Obiang is poised for another victory, as in the past six elections when he never got less than 90% of the vote.

Wolfgang says it will not be surprising if after the elections, the aging Obiang hands over leadership of Equatorial Guinea to his son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. He says Obiang’s son is Equatorial Guinea’s vice president and a very influential member of the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea, the country’s ruling party.

The opposition says Obiang’s rule is marked by persecution and torture of political opponents, corruption and sham elections, charges Obiang’s party denies.

The ruling party holds 99 of the 100 seats in the outgoing National Assembly and all 55 seats in the Senate.

Equatorial Guinea’s presidential poll was initially scheduled for April 2023. President Obiang brought it forward to November 20 to coincide with legislative, senate, and local elections.

Equatorial Guinea has an annual oil revenue of more than $3 billion, but most of its 1.5 million people live in poverty according to the United Nations.
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Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week that will affect thousands of employees, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter, with an announcement planned as early as Wednesday.

Meta declined to comment on the WSJ report.

Facebook parent Meta in October forecasted a weak holiday quarter and significantly more costs next year wiping about $67 billion off Meta’s stock market value, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.

The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the metaverse investments to take about a decade to bear fruit. In the meantime, he has had to freeze hiring, shutter projects and reorganize teams to trim costs.

“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today” Zuckerberg said on the last earnings call in late October.

The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.

Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.

Several technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Twitter and Snap have cut jobs and scaled back hiring in recent months as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.
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