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A former researcher at a high-profile cryptocurrency group was sentenced to five years and three months in prison on Tuesday for conspiring to help North Korea evade U.S. sanctions using cryptocurrency, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. 

Virgil Griffith was arrested in 2019 and pleaded guilty last September to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by traveling to North Korea to present on blockchain technology. 

Griffith formerly worked for the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit that works to support the technology behind the cryptocurrency ether. 

The sentence, imposed by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel, was the minimum amount of prison time prosecutors had sought. Griffith had asked for a sentence of two years. Castel also fined Griffith $100,000, less than the $1 million prosecutors suggested. 

Griffith’s attorney, Brian Klein, said in a statement that while the sentence was disappointing, the judge “acknowledged Virgil’s commitment to moving forward with his life productively, and that he is a talented person who has a lot to contribute.” 

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on Tuesday that “justice has been served.” 

Griffith, who has a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, traveled to North Korea via China in April 2019 to deliver a presentation at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, despite being denied permission by the U.S. Department of State to go, according to prosecutors. 

Prosecutors said Griffith understood the information could be used to evade sanctions the U.S. had imposed on North Korea over its development of nuclear weapons technology. 

“The most important feature of blockchains is that they are open. And the DPRK can’t be kept out no matter what the USA or the U.N. says,” Griffith said during the presentation, according to prosecutors, using the initials of North Korea’s official name. 

The Ethereum Foundation said at the time of Griffith’s arrest that it had not approved or supported his travel to North Korea. 
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Germany’s gas reserves would last until at least late summer should Russian supplies stop now, the network regulator said on Tuesday, warning pressure on the European Union to ban Russian energy was building over civilian deaths in Ukraine.

In an interview with weekly Die Zeit, Klaus Mueller, who heads Germany’s Bundesnetzagentur, said current reserves looked slightly better than three or four weeks ago and could even last until early autumn in the event of an immediate supply halt.

With mounting civilian deaths in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, Europe’s largest economy is under pressure to wean itself off Russian gas and oil, as critics say the revenue provides Moscow with vital funds to wage war.

Mueller told Die Zeit reports of atrocities would increase pressure on the EU to ban Russian gas imports, which would force Germany to ration energy — a prospect he said was underestimated by many Germans.

Russia, which says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbor, accuses the United States and Britain of helping Ukraine prepare fake claims about the alleged persecution of civilians in the conflict.

Germany last month triggered an emergency plan to manage gas supplies, the first step in a three-phase plan that could result in energy rationing, with priority given to households and critical infrastructure like hospitals.

Mueller said households should not take the promise of prioritization for granted as they would have to give up some luxuries, such as saunas, if gas is rationed. He also said large apartments with one tenant should not count on uninterrupted gas supply in an emergency.

He said pharmaceutical and food companies would be prioritized under any rationing.

The EU last week approved new sanctions against Moscow, including a ban on coal imports starting in August, and Germany has stepped up efforts to reduce supplies from Russia.

Russian oil now accounts for 25% of German imports, down from 35% before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, and gas imports have been cut to 40% from 55%. Russian hard coal imports have been halved to 25%.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week Germany could end Russian oil imports this year. However, Berlin has also said it could take until the summer 2024 to end its reliance on Russian gas.
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U.S. consumer prices jumped 8.5% in March compared to a year ago, the biggest annual surge in more than 40 years, the government reported Tuesday.  

Price increases hit American consumers in key segments of the world’s biggest economy, with gasoline costs spiraling for motorists, housing prices jumping and the cost of food up at grocery stores, according to the report by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The higher living costs for essential products are hitting consumers where they most feel it — in their wallets — and offsetting or surpassing workers’ bigger paychecks from wage increases. 

The inflation rate is also overshadowing the rapid recovery of the U.S. economy from the coronavirus pandemic that swept into the country two years ago, with the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in recent months and the unemployment rate dipping to 3.6%, near the five-decade-low, pre-pandemic figure. 

The government’s report gave no indication that prices are easing, with inflation jumping 1.2% from February to March, up from eight-tenths of a percentage point from January to February.  

The March inflation figure was the first that reflected the surge in gasoline prices at service stations following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, which roiled world oil markets while also disrupting global shipping and food supplies. 

According to the motorists’ group AAA, the average price of a gallon of gasoline (3.785 liters) reached $4.10, up 43% from a year ago, although it has fallen back somewhat in the past couple of weeks. Tuesday’s government report showed the energy index increasing 11% in March following a 3.5% increase in February. The gasoline index rose sharply in March, increasing 18.3% after rising 6.6% in February.   

Higher fuel prices have in turn boosted transportation costs for the shipment of goods, including food.  

The food index rose 1% in March compared to February. It is up 8.5% compared to the prior 12 months. 

In an effort to curb consumer spending and cut inflation, policy makers at the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, last month approved a quarter percentage point increase in its benchmark interest rate and could raise the rate again at each of its six remaining meetings in 2022. 

Such rate increases have a direct bearing on borrowing costs consumers and businesses pay, which could cut their spending and possibly curb inflation over the coming months. But the effect of the rate increases is uncertain.  

Increasing inflation in the United States also could play a key role in November’s congressional elections.  

Democrats now hold narrow control of both houses of Congress, but polls show voters blaming Democratic President Joe Biden for the increased prices they are paying, which in turn could give Republicans a chance to retake control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. 
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The war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia are causing even more stress in an already strained global supply chain brought on by the pandemic. To see what this means to consumers and their wallets around the world, VOA’s Elizabeth Lee went to the Rocky Point Farm in Frederick, Maryland.

Camera: Mike Burke ,  Produced by: Mike Burke 
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left a sour taste for South Africa’s citrus farmers, who are facing millions of dollars in losses due to sanctions that have closed off the Russian market. South Africa is the world’s second largest citrus exporter and farmers are scrambling to find other markets before the fruit spoils.

South Africa normally sends about 10% of its annual two billion dollars in citrus exports to Russia.

That’s now on hold because of sanctions imposed after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Following two years of export disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, unrest, and cyberattacks on the ports, the loss of the Russian market is another blow to South African farmers.

Citrus farmer Piet Engelbrecht pulls a lemon off a tree in the 5000 hectares he farms in Groblersdal, about a three-hour drive northeast of Johannesburg.

“It’s going to be a tough year … Although demand is growing in the current markets, it’s not going that fast, rapidly that it can absorb this, the 10%,” he said.

Engelbrecht was forced to reroute a shipment of lemons this season that was on a vessel bound for Russia.

But finding new markets isn’t simple, say industry insiders, even for well-established family farms.

Justin Chadwick is the CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa. He spoke to VOA via Zoom.

“Our markets are very susceptible to oversupply. And because the product obviously can’t be stored for any length of time, if there’s too much in the market, it either has to be seriously discounted to move the fruit quicker or it just it just wastes eventually,” he said.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has also pushed up production costs with effects beyond the current season.

“A lot of our fertilizer and a lot of our fuel is also from Russia and Ukraine, so… I think it will have more of an effect in the coming few months,” said Engelbrecht.

And it’s not just exporters having to pay higher costs to get their goods to the warehouse and sent to customers.

Rising fuel costs are hitting all areas of South Africa’s transportation and trade.

Economists warn that will have a long-term effect on the economy, mainly for consumers and the poor, who spend most of their income on food.

Dawie Roodt, chief economist for the South Africa-based Efficient Group, spoke to VOA via Zoom.

“We’re going to see inflation going through the roof. What is really, really going to be bad for South Africa is that the kind of inflation that we’re going to experience will be very high levels of food inflation, because of the Ukraine and Russia being major grain producers and also other soft commodities,” said Roodt.

Back at farmer Engelbrecht’s warehouse, workers sort fruit on conveyor lines before it is packaged for export.

While South Africa’s farmers are hopeful that they can survive the loss of the Russian market, if future growing seasons are disrupted, they may have to cut jobs.

With South Africa’s unemployment rate hitting a record 35%, the citrus industry’s 120,000 workers want to see a recovery soon, so their jobs won’t be at risk.

 
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The ten countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations now comprise China’s largest trading partner, having surpassed the European Union in 2020. That high level of trade between ASEAN and Beijing is about to expand even more, as Ahadian Utama reports from Jakarta, Indonesia.
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Millions of Americans voluntarily left their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the quit rate hitting a record high of 3% — 4.5 million people — in November 2021. So, where did all those workers go?

Chris Decker, an economics professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha, says the pandemic hastened retirement for some older workers.

“A lot of folks were either furloughed or perhaps laid off, and perhaps they were in their mid to late 50s,” Decker says. “Many, from what I’ve been able to glean, chose an early retirement path, and that kind of fueled, I believe, a lot of the spikes that we’ve seen.”

The latest numbers put the quit rate at 2.9%. So, while 4.4 million workers decided to leave their jobs in February 2022, about 6.7 million people were hired during that same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Yes, lots of people are quitting, but they’re going someplace else. They’re not sitting on their couches,” says Jay Zagorsky, a senior lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, who doesn’t embrace the theory that COVID-19 drove more people to retire. “The ‘Great Resignation,’ in some ways, is real. And in other ways, it’s a bit of a fable.”

A fable, in part, because quit-rate data has been collected only since December 2000, meaning there are no official BLS numbers from before 2000 to compare with today’s numbers.

‘Great Job Switch’

Also, the fact that 6.7 million people got hired in February suggests that something else might be going on, according to Zagorsky.

“It’s not so much … about the ‘Great Resignation’ — like everyone’s quitting and going off and, you know, writing the great American novel or connecting with their family,” he says. “Instead, lots of people are quitting, but they’re getting rehired someplace else. They’re switching jobs. I would call it not the ‘Great Resignation’ but the ‘Great Job Switch.'”

But the “Great Job Switch” isn’t happening everywhere. For example, government employees are, for the most part, staying put. Quit rates are highest in the leisure and hospitality industries, such as hotels, restaurants and bars, as well as in retail.

“We’re also seeing it among the young, and especially geographically, in the South,” Zagorsky says. “Why is that? That, I can’t tell you.”

Decker says younger people might be furthering their education.

“I think a lot of people decided that rather than go right back into the labor force after getting furloughed … or actually getting laid off, chose to go back to school full time,” he says. “I know our university is seeing an increase in enrollment in some of our professional degree programs.”

Quitting trend

Government data suggests that except for a few dips, American quit rates rose steadily in the 20 years leading up to the pandemic.

“The story in my mind is that the U.S. has always had exceptionally high quit rates,” Zagorsky says. “We have a very fluid labor market. The question is, do we have too fluid a labor market?”

A recent Harris/USA Today poll found that 20% of people — 1 in 5 — who quit during the past two years now regret doing so. Twenty-five percent said they miss the job culture at their previous place of employment.

Zagorsky says people need to have a better understanding of what a job entails before they take it, while employers must understand that the appeal of a position involves more than money.

“Is my job important? Am I helping others besides myself? Am I getting positive feedback? All these kinds of things have nothing to do with pay but have a lot to do with why people quit,” Zagorsky says. “People quit because of nonfinancial reasons. People need to feel they’re valued and not being abused and not being disrespected. If people feel valued, if they feel respected, if they feel they’re an important part of an organization, they tend not to quit.”

Decker expects labor demand to continue to be robust in the long term, while the labor supply will be challenging as America deals with an aging population. Labor supply will be an issue particularly in the Midwest, where Decker lives and works, as educated younger workers move to bigger cities. He sees one potential fix, which could be politically controversial.

“Revisit the immigration policies to see if there’s some way to balance the immigration flow, perhaps with a little bit less caustic and difficult political environment, to one that might be a little bit more based on numbers and potential impacts on labor force,” Decker says.
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It’s the classic postcard image of Ghana: brightly colored, narrow wooden fishing boats pulling into the dock of seaside village, bringing in the daily catch. But increasingly this way of life is under threat, with a new investigation showing how Chinese vessels engaged in illegal fishing are depleting stocks, sometimes even selling the fish back to the local communities whose livelihoods and food security have been undermined.

China is the world’s biggest fish producer and has the largest distant-water fleet (CDWF) — officially 2,701 vessels but likely thousands more — many of which engage in high instances of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, according to an NGO, the Environmental Justice Foundation.

The group’s report this week found that some 90% of Ghana’s industrial trawl fleet is actually owned by Chinese corporations using local “front” companies to register as Ghanaian and get around the law.

“EJF has identified continuous instances of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses associated with the CDWF in West Africa, especially Ghana, where Chinese companies use elaborate schemes to hide the ultimate beneficial ownership of their so-called Ghanaian domestic vessels. These schemes include joint ventures, shell companies and subsidiaries,” it said.

While the CDWF also operates in waters off Asia and elsewhere, its activities in Africa account for 78.5% of its approved offshore fishery projects, EJF found when analyzing data from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

CDWF bottom-trawlers catch an estimated 2.35 million tons of fish a year in West Africa, accounting for 50% of China’s total distant water catch and worth some $5 billion.

China’s gain is often to the detriment of countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, EJF says, with the highest number of illegal fishing incidents reported in the West African region between 2015 and 2019.

“Illegal fishing and overcapacity in the Ghanaian trawl sector is having catastrophic impacts on coastal communities across the country,” EJF’s Chief Operating Officer Max Schmid told VOA by phone, with some 80-90 percent of local fishers in Ghana reporting a decline in income over the last five years.

Women — who are usually responsible for processing and selling the local catch — are often hit hardest by the loss of income, turning to transactional sex, according to EJF, a phenomenon locally dubbed “fish for sex.”

Meanwhile, locals working on the Chinese trawlers often experience human rights abuses, with ten Ghanaians interviewed by EJF saying that they had all “experienced or witnessed physical abuse by Chinese captains.”

It’s also becoming more and more common for the Chinese vessels to catch small pelagic fish, which are the main population caught by small-scale fishers, and then sell them back to communities for profit, the organization found.

In Ghana, neither the Navy nor the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development responded to emailed request for comment.

The Chinese Embassy in Accra did not answer phone calls from VOA or respond to emailed requests for comment.

However, China has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, with one article in the state-affiliated Global Times newspaper last year “refuting Western media rumors of “China’s illegal fishing” and saying Beijing had introduced moratoriums on squid fishing and had in fact, “tightened its oversight of deep-sea fishing vessels in recent years.”

Another piece in the paper said “the country has done more than any other to protect the sea’s environment and resources.” Separately, China’s state news agency Xinhua has pointed to Chinese-funded developments, such as a new fishing port complex in Ghanaian capital Accra, saying it will “greatly improve the working and living conditions for local fishermen.”
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International efforts to punish Russia for its war on Ukraine are being felt far from Europe, in the U.S. Gulf state of Louisiana, a hub of America’s energy sector.

Late last month, the European Union announced it was exploring ways to gain independence from Russian energy “well before 2030.” American firms took note.

“You can see most European countries don’t want to be seen as complicit with the barbarism of Russia,” said Brian Lloyd, vice president for communications at Sempra Energy, a U.S.-based energy infrastructure company with investments in natural gas production. “Many see every dollar sent to Russia’s state-owned energy companies as helping to fuel its aggression in Ukraine, so Europe is seeking energy alternatives.”

In late March, the U.S. announced a deal with the EU to begin replacing some of the natural gas Russia had been supplying. By the end of this year, President Joe Biden said, the United States would be able to ship enough gas to Europe to offset at least 10% of what Russia currently provides, or 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas.

LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state. Its volume is approximately 600 times smaller than its gaseous state.

“This makes shipping to Europe economical when building pipelines across an ocean wouldn’t be,” explained Eric Smith, associate director of Tulane University’s Energy Institute in New Orleans.  

 The U.S. plans to meet its new commitments to Europe by increasing domestic production of natural gas. To do so, industry leaders propose building new LNG facilities and expanding and increasing the efficiency of existing ones.

“It will be like the Marshall Plan we supported Europe with after World War II, but this one will have an energy focus,” Lloyd said. “The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the way on this because we have some of the least expensive natural gas in the world.”

Much of the existing and increased LNG production capacity is centered in the states of Louisiana and Texas, along the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico. Many state and industry leaders welcome the production of LNG in the region, while environmentalists and commercial fishers are far less enthusiastic.

“We make our living in the sea,” said Dean Blanchard, a shrimper and the president of Dean Blanchard Seafood. “I don’t know much about natural gas yet, but anything that alters the dynamics of the water really screws us.”

Energy crisis abroad

Approximately 40% of the natural gas used in Europe — as well as 25% of crude oil and refined petroleum products — is produced in Russia.

“Europe is a continent that has been dependent on Russian energy for quite some time,” Smith told VOA. “So Biden’s commitment to help supply the EU with LNG became a key component in convincing some European countries to announce sanctions against Moscow. That’s why this increased production of LNG is so important.”

But Europe’s energy crisis began long before Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Consecutive colder-than-usual winters and a world awakening from coronavirus lockdowns boosted demand for many types of energy.

Europe has moved aggressively to embrace renewable energy sources but found production to be inconsistent because it often depends on the weather.

“Europe is caught in a tough spot — they don’t want to be importing fossil fuels like natural gas as they try to reduce carbon emissions,” Smith said. “But natural gas actually makes for a perfect transition. Nuclear and coal plants take weeks to turn on and off, whereas natural gas can be switched off in minutes. When you’re low on renewables, natural gas can be an easy bridge to get you through another cold winter.”

Smith added, “It’s also, by the way, needed for fertilizer and to produce grain, which might be very important for Europe and the Middle East should this war in Ukraine continue.”

Environmental crisis at home

Much of the LNG exported by the United States will be funneled through the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“We have six or seven LNG export terminals in the United States,” explained Naomi Yoder, staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, an environmental organization focused on protecting the Gulf of Mexico. “Four of those — soon to be five — are located on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas. We have six more that are in the works in the region as well. That’s a massive number for one relatively limited region.”

And it’s a region that is no stranger to energy-related environmental disasters.

“It would take me hours to tell you about the effects of that one BP oil spill from 2010,” seafood entrepreneur Blanchard said. “Our ecosystem is still recovering from that spill — the amount of fish and shrimp and oysters are still down. And the number of humans that got sick down here in Grand Isle (small Louisiana barrier island), those people will never recover.”

Blanchard said the BP oil spill got attention only because of its magnitude. But smaller spills, he said, happen every day.

“These energy companies say they care about us and our livelihood, but they’re destroying us,” he said.

Blanchard’s hometown of Grand Isle could soon gain an LNG facility nearby. While Blanchard admits he’s unsure precisely how expanding the production and transportation of natural gas will affect the ecosystem, Yoder predicts only bad results.

“We’ve seen it many times,” Yoder said. “The production of natural gas produces air pollution through methane leaks and water pollution, too. It harms the ecosystem locally as well as the environment more generally. People like to say natural gas emits less carbon than coal, but the process of building these facilities, and liquifying that gas, and shipping it across the ocean just to turn it back into gas — that all emits a lot of carbon into the air, too. We don’t need to produce more energy from fossil fuels. We need to transition to renewables like solar, wind and water energies.”

Balancing act

Advocates of natural gas don’t oppose renewable energy, said Sempra Energy’s Lloyd. Rather, he sees them as complementing each other.

“I think we all have the same goal,” he said. “We want to see an increase in the use of renewable energy over time. But you can’t pretend like if we don’t produce this natural gas now, that Europe won’t just get it from somewhere else. They’ll probably get it from Russia, where the methane leaks are far more numerous and where they aren’t working nearly as hard as we are to further curb carbon emissions.”

Tulane University’s Smith agrees.

“Every serious analyst says we aren’t able to shift our world economy away from fossil fuels between now and 2050,” he said. “So Europe is going to get their natural gas one way or another because they’re not going to just let their people freeze or starve.”

For now, many energy industry leaders and lawmakers say, an opportunity exists to curtail a source of revenue to Russia’s war machine — and to boost jobs and revenues along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But fishermen like Blanchard fret about a potentially costly trade-off.

“Of course I want to help Ukraine, and I’m proud of the way they’re fighting for themselves,” he said. “But how can I be expected to support something that could destroy my livelihood? I can’t do that for Ukraine or anyone else.”
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The United States is trying to be strategic about how it “realigns” its trade relationship with China, but is not interested in a large-scale “decoupling” or a trade “divorce,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in an interview this week.

Tai made the remarks in Singapore, where she had traveled to discuss the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The purpose of the framework, she said, “is to allow for the United States and our most like-minded partners in this region to be able to collaborate on key economic issues and emerging global challenges. And those include working together to promote resilience and sustainability for our own economies, and also through partnership with each other’s economies.”

Tai made her comments in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

New approach

Tai’s trip to Singapore came just days after she told Congress, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, that it is time for the United States to reassess how it deals with China as a trading partner.

Measures undertaken in the past, including the regime of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, have failed to get China to open its markets to U.S. goods and to avoid anti-competitive behavior, she told lawmakers.

In the interview Tuesday, Tai said the United States may need to use “other tools” in order to adjust its relationship with China.

Pressed on what those other tools might look like, she said, “I think that it’s less about what more we can do to China. I think it is more about how we can shape the U.S.-China trade relationship and again, to realign it to create incentives for our economic actors to ensure that this relationship is one that feels balanced, that is fair, and also, importantly, that is contributing to a sense of security and resilience for not just our economies, but for the global economy.”

Recognizing reality

Tai’s explicit ruling out of a trade divorce between the U.S. and China may reflect the simple reality on the ground in the Indo-Pacific region, said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“All these countries have more trade with China than they have with the U.S.,” he told VOA. “And further, the trade with China is growing faster than with the U.S. So, they don’t have any real commercial interest in any kind of decoupling or divorce.”

Leaders in the region have repeatedly expressed concern about being put in a position in which they are forced to choose between partnering with the U.S. and partnering with China. Their concern has been sharpened by rhetoric coming from U.S. lawmakers, some of whom have pressed for trade arrangements that isolate China.

“That notion faded in her rhetoric,” Hufbauer said, placing Tai and the Biden administration closer to what he called the “realist camp.”

“Trade flows, the magnitude of them, and also now, investment flows — they do not favor a division into two camps,” he said. “Because too many countries have very strong interests in maintaining good commercial relations and good diplomatic relations with both China and the U.S.”

End to tariffs

“It’s encouraging that a senior member of the administration is stating that economic decoupling is not a goal of the administration,” Doug Barry, a senior director at the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange.

“Whatever Ambassador Tai has in mind in terms of a new trade policy toward China must include preserving and increasing the benefits of the current relationship,” Barry said. “This would include ditching the Trump-era tariffs, which have not changed China’s behavior and have instead hurt American workers, farmers and families.”

Barry said his organization would like to see more high-level trade discussion between U.S. and Chinese leaders, but said, “due to internal politics in both countries, such talks seem unrealistic until late this year at the earliest.”

Reestablishing a U.S. presence

Tai’s trip to Singapore is, in part, an effort to reestablish a U.S. presence in the region on trade issues.

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive regional trade agreement that had taken years to negotiate. The agreement was resurrected without U.S. participation as the 11-country Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPATPP), one of the largest free trade organizations in the world.

Some of the CPATPP participants have expressed hope that the U.S. would rejoin the trade bloc, but the Biden administration has said it will not, preferring to work within the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. China has said it would be interested in joining CPATPP. However, existing members, including Japan and Australia, have said they believe Beijing’s extensive interference in free markets disqualifies China from membership.

Singapore as key partner

Experts say Tai’s trip to Singapore highlighted the role the city-state might play in the Biden administration’s proposed future.

“Singapore is a natural Southeast Asian partner for developing an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” Brian Harding, a senior expert on Southeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA.

“Singapore welcomes Chinese economic activity in Southeast Asia but is clear-eyed about China’s strategic intentions,” Harding said. “While Singapore can be a staunch defender of the United States’ importance to regional stability, it is also concerned that U.S.-China competition can be destabilizing in and of itself.”

VOA Mandarin Service reporter Jessie Jiang contributed to this story.
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After a sharp plunge in value at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Russian ruble has recovered much of its value against other world currencies, a change made possible by aggressive capital controls put in place by the government in Moscow and a continual stream of payments for the country’s oil and gas exports.

The ruble’s resilience in the face of sanctions may make it easier, at least temporarily, for the regime of President Vladimir Putin to claim a measure of victory over international efforts to turn his government into a pariah. However, the practical effects of the ruble’s recovery may be limited for ordinary Russians, who remain largely cut off from global markets.

Also, as evidence of Russian troops’ brutal treatment of Ukrainian civilians accumulates, and Western governments take further steps to wean themselves off Russian energy, the Kremlin’s ability to protect its currency may weaken.

“I think the natural next step and a big set of questions is around energy revenues,” Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told VOA.

She added, “As the images of atrocities on the ground continue, the pressure to do more is going to increase.”

Surprising recovery

One week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the ruble was worth about 1.3 cents in U.S. currency, meaning that it cost a little over 76 rubles to buy one dollar. By March 7, after governments around the world announced a range of painful sanctions on the Russian economy, the value of the ruble had fallen by nearly half. That day, a ruble was worth 0.7 cent, meaning that it cost almost 143 rubles to buy one dollar.

The expectation among many in the early days of the war was that the ruble’s loss of value was going to be a long-term problem for the Russian economy. Crucially, most of the Russian central bank’s foreign reserves — funds denominated in foreign currencies and held at banks outside Russia — were frozen. This left Moscow without the option of driving up the price of the ruble by buying it on the open market with dollars, euros and other foreign currencies.

In fact, the Russian government and its central bank took several steps that drove up the price of its currency. As of Tuesday, the ruble was worth approximately 1.2 cents, meaning that it now costs about 84 rubles to buy a dollar — a far cry from the 143 rubles required just a month previously.

“The Russian central bank more than doubled domestic interest rates to 20%. And they also put in place capital controls — that is, they limited the ability of Russian individuals to buy foreign exchange,” Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, former deputy director of the research department of the International Monetary Fund, told VOA.

Milesi-Ferretti, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, said another key factor in restoring the ruble’s value has been a new restriction on Russian exporters. 

All Russian businesses still able to sell goods internationally are required to take foreign currency earned from those sales and transfer it to the Russian central bank in exchange for rubles.

This creates a steady demand for rubles, keeping the price high, and gives the Russian central bank a new source of foreign currency.

Dubious future

But the price of the Russian ruble in currency markets does not tell the full story of the impact sanctions have had on the Russian economy in general, and on the lives of ordinary Russians in particular.

“Russia’s economy, by virtue of the sanctions and the coping mechanisms the central bank has employed, has become much more an internal economy, a smaller economy,” Ziemba, of the Center for a New American Security, told VOA.

“It’s important to remember that Russians who used to be able to use their credit cards to purchase goods abroad in the U.S. and Europe, can’t,” she said.

This is in part because banking restrictions have made it impossible for most Russian banks to hold correspondent accounts in banks outside the country, which facilitate international payments. Also, inside Russia, major payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard have stopped processing cross-border transactions.

“So, there is difficulty in actually buying goods, both from a financial perspective, but also because a lot of companies have basically said — even if the trade is legal — they don’t want to do transactions with Russia,” Ziemba added. “The ability to actually use these assets is significantly limited.”

Energy wild card

One thing that remains uncertain is the extent to which Western governments, particularly in Europe, will be willing to stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia. Currently, Russia is running a large current account surplus, meaning it is exporting far more than it is importing.

In recent days, European leaders have proposed a ban on Russian coal imports and have floated the possibility of sanctions on Russian oil as well. Russian natural gas, which makes up a large percentage of the fuels used across Europe, does not appear to be on the chopping block.

Major action against Russian energy exports could significantly damage the Russian economy, but it is unclear that Western governments are prepared to take that step.

“We’re going to have to see how the war evolves, how expectations evolve,” Milesi-Ferretti said. “Everything is shrouded in uncertainty.”
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VOA’s Zubair Dar brings us the story of ‘Pencil Village’ where a factory provides two-thirds of the wood needed to make pencils in India, which exports the old-school writing implement to scores of countries. This report is narrated by Aisha Khalid.
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U.S. government officials warn that many African countries will continue to face shortages and high food prices as long as Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine, from which Africa gets much of its wheat and cooking oil.

Speaking to journalists online Tuesday, the U.S. representative to U.N. agencies in Rome, Cindy McCain, said Ukraine is the world’s breadbasket, and the attack on its land and people is raising hunger around the globe.

“The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that as many as 13 million more people worldwide will be pushed into food insecurity as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The truth of the matter is Putin’s war forces us to take from the hungry to feed the starving. As long as Russia continues its brutal campaign, innocent people are going to pay the price,” she said.

Ukraine annually exports 40% of its wheat and corn to Africa. The World Food Program feeds 138 million people in 80 countries, including Ethiopia and Nigeria, with the grain it gets from the European country.

With Ukrainian supplies cut off, food prices are on the rise across Africa. Meanwhile, increasing energy costs have driven up prices for fertilizers such as phosphate used in food production.

Jim Barnhart, assistant to the administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, says the high cost of living will make life difficult for more families in Africa.

“Reduced food supplies and subsequent price increases in these commodities make it harder for farmers in Zambia to access inputs they need to plant their crops, for families in Malawi to buy nutritious food for their children. So, if that is not mitigated, these price increases could result in significant increases in global poverty, hunger and malnutrition, particularly in regions like sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

The International Committee for the Red Cross says more than 346 million Africans face a food security crisis, making families skip meals every day.

The ICRC says it will ramp up its operations in 10 countries to combat the food shortages.

The head of ICRC’s global operations, Dominik Stillhart, says the war in Ukraine has impacted their humanitarian work.

“The other impact, which is more indirect, is that the rise in food and fuel prices, as well as supply chains that are seriously affected by the situation in Ukraine, they have an effect on our own capacity to scale up. Lead times are going to be longer, for instance, (and) food imports, and that’s also why we are increasingly resorting to cash transfers to support people in various countries in which we are operating,” he said.

Persistent drought, poor rains in some parts of Africa and conflicts have also exacerbated Africa’s food situation.
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An announcement by the U.S. Commerce Department last week that it would investigate allegations that solar panel manufacturers in Southeast Asia are using Chinese-made parts and evading U.S. tariffs has raised alarms concerning both trade and environmental policy. 

The department announced March 28 that it would investigate claims by California-based solar panel manufacturer Auxin Solar that solar energy equipment manufacturers in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have close business ties to companies in China that produce the raw materials and some components of solar panel assemblies. 

In 2011, the Commerce Department ruled that China was “dumping” solar panels in the U.S. market, or pricing the panels below the cost of manufacturing them. This forced U.S. firms out of the business because they could not operate at a profit while matching Chinese prices. 

In response, the Commerce Department imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels of as much as 250% of their sales price. The result was a rapid decline in U.S. imports of Chinese solar equipment, from $2.8 billion in 2011 to less than $400 million in 2020. 

In its complaint, however, Auxin points out that as imports of solar panels from China fell by 86% over that period, imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam surged by 868%. The company also produced evidence suggesting that during that period, exports of raw materials and solar panel parts from China to the four named countries also surged.  

Investigation timeline 

In a statement emailed to VOA, a Commerce Department spokesperson confirmed that the investigation had been initiated, saying that “Commerce will conduct an open and transparent investigation to determine whether circumvention is occurring. This inquiry is just a first step — there has been no determination one way or the other on the merits, and no additional duties will be imposed at this time.” 

The Commerce Department said it would complete its preliminary investigation within 150 days and make a final determination within 300 days.  

So far, the response of the four affected countries to the department’s announcement has been limited. The government of Thailand announced that it had filed a formal letter of complaint with the agency. 

VOA reached out to U.S.-based representatives of the governments of Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for comment on this story. None had replied by the time of publication. 

US solar firms divided 

Auxin’s complaint and the Commerce Department’s decision to pursue it have laid bare a major rift within the solar energy industry in the U.S. Many of Auxin’s competitors, who would seem to suffer from the same disadvantages the company describes, have come out against the Commerce Department’s actions, as have industry trade groups.  

In a joint op-ed, Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute; Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association; and Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said the future for solar energy in the United States would be bleak if tariffs were applied to solar panels coming from the four named countries. 

“Make no mistake — if the complainant is successful, solar energy will become as much as two to three times more expensive than it was just one year ago, setting back our efforts to achieve independence, putting hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs at risk along with the Biden administration’s renewable energy goals,” they wrote.  

“If these tariffs are applied, we expect that far less solar generation will be installed in the U.S. during the four years of the Biden administration as compared to previous administrations,” they added. 

In a statement, Auxin CEO Mamun Rashid called the warnings of the trade groups “classic fearmongering tactics” and said, “We are grateful Commerce officials recognized the need to investigate this pervasive backdoor dumping and how it continues to injure American solar producers.” 

Dilemma for Biden administration 

The solar panel case presents a dilemma for the Biden administration because it puts two of the president’s priorities in conflict: assuring a level playing field for U.S. manufacturers, and leading the country to a carbon-neutral energy future. 

The relationship between solar panel manufacturers in the United States and those in China is a complicated one. On the one hand, foreign-made solar panels made with Chinese parts are in direct competition with U.S.-made panels. However, U.S. solar firms rely on some of those same Chinese firms for raw materials and components. 

Industry officials warned that even the possibility of sanctions being placed on panels imported from the four named countries would cause the rollout of solar energy products in the U.S. to slow dramatically because of uncertainty about costs. This in turn would make it more difficult for the Biden administration to meet its climate goals. 

Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen said the Biden administration should look to other ways of supporting U.S. solar energy companies.  

“I’m disappointed that the administration is initiating this investigation, because we should be repealing existing solar tariffs, not exploring adding new tariffs,” she told The Hill newspaper March 28. “Direct assistance to American solar manufacturers would be much more meaningful to our domestic solar industry than a trade investigation or tariffs that will only increase consumer costs, threaten good-paying jobs, and set us even further back from our climate goals.” 

 
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Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat. Sanctions against Russia and the war in Ukraine are driving up global wheat prices. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns reports from the Western U.S. state of Wyoming on what those higher prices mean for U.S. farmers.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter, purchasing approximately 73.5 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

Musk’s stake in Twitter is considered a passive investment, which means Musk is a long-term investor that’s looking to minimize his buying and selling of the shares.

Yet in recent weeks Musk has raised questions about free speech on Twitter and if failing to adhere to its basic principles undermines democracy.

He has also pondered starting up a rival social media network and industry analysts are skeptical about whether the mercurial CEO would remain on the sidelines for long.

“We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter,” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a client note early Monday.

Twitter’s stock surged 25% before the opening bell Monday.

Musk told is more than 80 million followers on Twitter that he was ” giving serious thought ” to creating a rival social media platform and has clashed repeatedly with financial regulators about his use of Twitter.

Early last month, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which Musk had to have someone pre-approve his posts on Twitter. U.S. securities regulators said they had legal authority to subpoena Tesla and Musk about his tweets, and that Musk’s move to throw out a 2018 court agreement that his tweets be pre-approved is not valid.

Musk’s revelation about his stake in Twitter shares comes two days after Tesla Inc. posted first-quarter delivery numbers. While the company delivered 310,000 vehicles in the period, the figure was slightly below expectations.
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Armed troops in Sri Lanka blocked a Sunday opposition protest march staged in defiance of an emergency curfew to protest the island nation’s worsening economic crisis, after authorities imposed a social media blackout to contain public dissent.

The South Asian island nation is facing severe shortages of food, fuel and other essentials, along with sharp price rises and crippling power cuts, in its most painful downturn since independence from Britain in 1948.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa imposed a state of emergency on Friday, the day after a crowd attempted to storm his home in the capital Colombo, and a nationwide curfew is in effect until Monday morning.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Sri Lanka’s main opposition alliance, denounced a social media blockade imposed Sunday to quell intensifying public demonstrations, and said it was time for the government to tender its resignation.

Armed troops moved to stop a protest by more than 100 opposition lawmakers and supporters attempting to march to the capital’s Independence Square from the home of opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

“President Rajapaksa better realize that the tide has already turned on his autocratic rule,” SJB lawmaker Harsha de Silva told AFP.

Fellow SJB legislator Eran Wickramaratne said the spiraling situation raised the prospects of martial law.

“We can’t allow a military takeover,” he said. “They should know we are still a democracy.”

Anonymous activists had called for mass protests Sunday on social media before the ban order went into effect.

There was a heavy presence of troops elsewhere in the capital as the curfew was strictly enforced.

News photographers were denied access to Independence Square, a popular venue for demonstrations in Colombo.

Overnight, however, hundreds defied the curfew and staged small demonstrations in various Colombo neighborhoods and dispersed peacefully, police and residents said.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp were among the platforms shut down Sunday on the orders of defense authorities, internet service providers told their subscribers.

Private media outlets reported that the chief of Sri Lanka’s internet regulator resigned after the order went into effect.

Demonstrations trending

Cracks in the government have emerged, with the president’s nephew Namal Rajapaksa publicly announcing he had urged the government to reconsider the partial internet blackout.

“I will never condone the blocking of social media,” said Namal, also the country’s sports minister.

“The availability of VPN, just like I’m using now, makes such bans completely useless.”

The anti-government hashtags “#GoHomeRajapaksas” and “#GotaGoHome” have been trending locally for days on Twitter and Facebook.

A social media activist was arrested Friday for allegedly posting material that could cause public unrest. He has since been bailed.

Hundreds of lawyers have volunteered to represent any anti-government protesters arrested by the authorities. Sri Lanka’s influential Bar Association has also urged the government to rescind the state of emergency.

Western diplomats in Colombo expressed concern over the use of emergency laws to stifle democratic dissent and said they were closely monitoring developments.

A critical lack of foreign currency has left Sri Lanka struggling to service its ballooning $51 billion public debt, with the pandemic torpedoing vital revenue from tourism and remittances.

The crisis has also left the import-dependent country unable to pay for sorely needed goods.

Diesel shortages have sparked outrage across Sri Lanka in recent days, causing protests at empty pumps, and electricity utilities have imposed 13-hour blackouts to conserve fuel.

Many economists also say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement, years of accumulated borrowing, and ill-advised tax cuts.

Sri Lanka is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout.
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