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Gas stoves are contributing more to global warming than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks while they’re off, a new study found. 

The same study that tested emissions around stoves in homes raised new concerns about indoor air quality and health because of levels of nitrogen oxides measured. 

Even when they are not running, U.S. gas stoves are putting 2.6 million tons (2.4 million metric tons) of methane — in carbon dioxide equivalent units — into the air each year, a team of California researchers found in a study published in Thursday’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. That’s equivalent to the annual amount of greenhouse gases from 500,000 cars or what the United States puts into the air every three-and-a-half hours.

“They’re constantly bleeding a little bit of methane into the atmosphere all the time,” said the study’s co-author Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist. 

That methane is on top of the 6.8 million tons (6.2 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide that gas stoves emit into the air when they are in use and the gas is burned, the study said. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long and isn’t as plentiful in the air. 

The researchers examined 53 home kitchens in California — many in bed and breakfasts they rented. They sealed most of the rooms in plastic tarps and then measured emissions when the stoves were working and when they were not. And what was surprising was that three-quarters of the methane released happened while the stoves were off, Jackson said. Those are emissions releases that the government doesn’t account for, he said. 

“That’s a big deal because we’re trying to really reduce our carbon footprint and we claim that gas is cleaner than coal, which it is,” said study lead author Eric Lebel, a scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an Oakland nonprofit. But he said much of the benefit disappears when leaks are taken into account. 

Many communities have bans on gas stove use in future new construction that will take effect in future years, including New York City and the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Berkeley, Jackson said. 

“People can already choose electric appliances if they want,” said Frank Maisano, a Washington policy and public relations expert who represents gas and appliance interests. “People just like gas appliances because they perform better, especially in colder climates.” 

“Natural gas appliances are generally more energy- and cost-effective than their electric counterparts,” Maisano said. 

Jackson estimated that when all natural gas use and extraction is taken into account, about 100 million tons (91 million metric tons) of gas leaks into the atmosphere. And the couple million tons from gas stoves “is meaningful. That’s a substantial part and it’s a part that we haven’t included accurately in the past.” 

The leakage finding is “a very important takeaway” and fits with other work that found there are often big leaks that account for much of the emissions, said Zachary Merrin, a research engineer with the Illinois Applied Research Institute’s Indoor Climate Research & Training group. 

Merrin, who wasn’t part of the study, said the emission of un-combusted methane is “clearly bad. From an emissions standpoint, cooking directly with gas is better than using a fossil fuel powered electric stove but worse than using a solar powered electric stove.” 

The methane leak isn’t dangerous to human health or as a possible explosive, Jackson said. But when conducting the tests, researchers found high levels of nitrogen oxides, greater than 100 parts per billion. Jackson said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have indoor air quality standards for that gas, but the measurements they took exceed its outdoor air quality standards. While methane doesn’t include nitrogen, the nitrogen oxides are byproducts of the combustion in natural gas ovens, he said. 

Maisano said people should always use hood ranges and make sure they have proper ventilation. Jackson, who has a gas stove that he plans to replace, said he never used ventilation before this study, but that he now does so every time. 
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Kenya’s nomadic herders are among those suffering the most from recurring drought that kills the livestock they depend on. To make them less dependent on rain, aid programs are teaching Kenya’s herders how to farm fish and keep bees. Brenda Mulinya reports from Isiolo, Kenya.

Camera: Amos Wangwa Produced by: Amos Wangwa/Henry Hernandez
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The U.S. economy advanced by 5.7% in 2021, the fastest full-year gain since 1984, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The sharp growth in the world’s biggest economy showed its resiliency, even as the United States struggled to cope with two new coronavirus variants that hobbled some industries, caused supply chain issues for consumer goods that at times left store shelves empty and a 7% year-over-year surge in consumer prices that was the highest in four decades.

But for the year, a record 6.4 million jobs were created and most of the jobs lost at the outset of the pandemic in early 2020 have been recovered.

Analysts say the economic growth may have slowed in January because of the omicron variant, as thousands of workers called in sick, often canceling airline flights, curbing business activity and again limiting in-class instruction at some schools and universities.

But the government said the overall economic growth was still evident in the October-to-December quarter, with a 6.9% annualized advance, three times the 2.3% pace of the July-through-September period.

The country’s robust economy pushed Federal Reserve policymakers on Wednesday to announce they could boost their benchmark interest rate as early as March after keeping it near zero percent since the coronavirus first swept into the United States in March 2020. The Fed could increase the rate, which has a broad effect on consumer and business borrowing costs, several more times this year.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported Thursday that 260,000 unemployed U.S. workers made first-time claims for jobless compensation last week, down 30,000 from the revised figure of the week before.

The latest total is in line with the 256,000 figure recorded in mid-March 2020, just before the coronavirus wreaked havoc on U.S. economic activity and businesses started laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands.

In recent weeks, the U.S. has been recording 600,000 to 750,000 or more new cases of the coronavirus every day, largely because of the highly transmissible omicron variant.

For the most part, however, employers have been retaining their workers and searching for more as the United States continues its rapid economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s unemployment rate dropped in December to 3.9%, not far above the five-decade low of 3.5% recorded before the pandemic took hold.

Many employers are looking for more workers, despite about 6.9 million workers remaining unemployed in the United States.

At the end of November, there were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S., but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.
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Wednesday’s signal from the U.S. Federal Reserve on impending interest rate increases is expected to have ramifications beyond America’s shores.

The Fed’s Open Market Committee announced it was keeping, for now, the target range for a key interest rate at near zero but cautioned that with inflation well above 2% and a strong labor market, it expected “it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.”

The federal funds rate is the interest rate commercial banks charge each other for overnight loans of their excess reserves.

“The committee is of a mind to raise rates at the March meeting,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters Wednesday. “We have our eyes on risks around the world, but the economy should hold up.”

As the dollar serves as the primary international reserve currency, a U.S. interest rate hike would pressure central banks of other countries to also raise their rates for those who want to borrow money.

“The rest of the world has a lot of dollar debt, and even if their debt is in local currencies, their central banks will often have to raise interest rates to offset the U.S. rate increases to try to maintain some currency stability,” said Gerard DiPippo, senior fellow with the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Raising interest rates is aimed at stifling consumer demand to address all of this money that’s sloshing around in our economy, and that’s going to affect consumers here, as well as producers of goods and other countries that rely on the U.S. market,” said Sarah Anderson, global economy project director at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Inflation ‘transmitted through trade’

Inflation in the United States is at a 40-year high amid surging consumer demand for goods, a strengthening domestic job market and pandemic-caused supply chain disruptions, including for critical semiconductors.

“The price of U.S. exports increased by more than the price of U.S. imports last year, so in a sense, the U.S. is exporting inflation because the cost of producing things in the U.S. has increased faster than the imports going into it from overseas. So, the inflation can be transmitted through trade,” DiPippo told VOA.

Some economists and policy analysts see the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden confusing structural and cyclical economic matters as it struggles to tame inflation.

“The cyclical phenomenon — inflation — over the next year or so, really only the Fed has the tools to deal with that,” DiPippo said. “Even if the Biden administration is able to increase subsidies to produce things in the United States or increase competition through regulation, those things take time. And we’re talking about inflation over the next year or two, not over the next five years. So, there’s a mismatch.”

The White House has repeatedly said that it is prioritizing lowering prices to help American households and that the best way to accomplish it is through increased competition.

“Competition results in lower prices for families. Competition results in fair wages for workers. And as you all know, competition encourages companies to innovate,” Biden said on Monday during a meeting of the White House Competition Council.

Prices have been surging in the United States and other countries since last year amid serious shortages of workers and the goods they produce. That has the International Monetary Fund predicting slower growth and faster inflation for the world’s biggest economies.

“People have shifted from spending money on services, like going out to restaurants and theaters, during the pandemic to buying more stuff,” Anderson told VOA. That has put more pressure on manufacturers, especially in countries such as China and Vietnam, which are having difficulty keeping pace with demand because so many workers have been sidelined by the pandemic.

“We can raise interest rates, but I don’t think the problem is going to go away until we end the pandemic,” Anderson added.

China’s “No-COVID policy may cause more lockdowns,” exacerbating the supply chain woes, Powell, the Fed chair, warned on Wednesday. “There’s plenty of risk out there.”
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The United States issued an advisory Wednesday warning of the increased risk of conducting business in Myanmar nearly a year after a military coup in the Southeast Asian country, which is also known as Burma. 

The advisory from the U.S. State Department warned it was especially risky for “individuals, businesses and financial institutions and other persons” to be associated with business activity in Myanmar “that could benefit the Burmese military regime.” 

The advisory cited the possibility of exposure to illegal financial and reputational risks by doing business there, and using supply chains controlled by the military. 

“The coup and subsequent abuses committed by the military have fundamentally changed the direction of the economic and business environment in Burma,” the advisory said. 

Former de factor leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) led Myanmar since its first open democratic election in 2015, but Myanmar’s military contested the November 2020 election results, claiming widespread electoral fraud, largely without evidence.

The military removed the NLD government in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021, detaining Suu Kyi and President Win Myint.

Since then, the military government has used deadly force in clampdowns on protests while escalating efforts to neutralize ethnic minority armies and newly formed militias allied with the NLD government. Wednesday’s advisory said the military “has killed more than 1,400 innocent people” since its takeover. 

The advisory said state-owned enterprises were of greatest concern, as well as the gems and precious metals, real estate, construction and defense industries, noting that they have been identified as providing economic resources for the junta. 

The advisory was issued after oil giants Chevron Corporation and TotalEnergies said last week the worsening humanitarian situation prompted them to withdraw from the country, where they were working together on a major gas project. 

 
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The World Trade Organization on Wednesday handed a fresh victory to China, permitting it to place duties on $645 million worth of U.S. imports per year, in a long-running anti-dumping dispute with Washington.

The United States is unable to appeal the decision.

“The deeply disappointing decision today by the WTO arbitrator reflects erroneous Appellate Body interpretations that damage the ability of WTO members to defend our workers and businesses from China’s trade-distorting subsidies,” said Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

“Today’s decision reinforces the need to reform WTO rules and dispute settlement, which have been used to shield China’s non-market economic practices and undermine fair, market-oriented competition.”

The WTO green light does not mean China will automatically impose the tariffs, in whole or in part, on U.S. imports.

The figure was revealed in an 87-page decision by a WTO arbitrator on the level of countermeasures Beijing could request in its dispute with Washington regarding US countervailing duties (CVD) on certain Chinese products.

The dispute stretches all the way back to 2012, when the WTO set up a panel of experts to try to settle a complaint filed by China over what it said were unfair duties imposed by the United States.

Washington had justified the additional tariffs on products ranging from paper to tires and solar panels, arguing they were being dumped on the market to help Chinese companies grab business.

The WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in China’s favor, and the ruling was upheld by its appeals judges in 2014, paving the way for China to retaliate.

Beijing initially asked to be permitted to place tariffs on $2.4 billion in U.S. products each year, but then scaled back its demand to $788.75 million.  

The United States had argued that the appropriate level should not exceed $106 million per year.

The anti-dumping duties are permitted under international trade rules as long as they adhere to strict conditions, and disputes over their use are often brought before the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body.  

Wednesday’s decision marks the second time the WTO has allowed China to retaliate for U.S. anti-dumping duties deemed to be in violation of international trade rules.

In November 2019, a WTO arbitrator permitted China to add duties on up to $3.6 billion worth of U.S. imports, in a separate case.

So far, China has not notified the WTO that it has implemented the approved retaliatory tariffs from that case.  

Washington has long complained about the WTO dispute settlement system, and especially its appeals court, claiming unfair treatment.

Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump brought the system to a grinding halt in December 2019 by blocking the appointment of new judges to the Appellate Body.
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The International Monetary Fund’s board “urged” El Salvador to do away with its move to make bitcoin a legal tender, while calling for strict regulation of the country’s e-wallet. 

IMF board members “urged the authorities to narrow the scope of the Bitcoin law by removing bitcoin’s legal tender status,” the IMF said in a Tuesday statement following a yearly consultation. 

Salvadoran Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya had no comment. 

In September, El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin a legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar. Its economy has been dollarized for two decades. 

The IMF has since repeatedly called for the move to be reversed, citing financial, economic and legal concerns. 

The IMF board said it was important to boost financial inclusion and that the Chivo e-wallet, the government’s bitcoin exchange, could play this role. 

However, they see “the need for strict regulation and oversight of the new ecosystem.” 

Some board members were also concerned about the risks associated with El Salvador’s expected issuance of bitcoin-linked bonds, the IMF said. 

The country is preparing the issuance of $1 billion in bonds, half of which would be used to purchase bitcoin. The government bets that the exposure to bitcoin gains will entice investors who would receive a dollar yield of 6.5%, much lower that what the market currently prices for similar Salvadoran government debt, closer to 17%. 

In its statement, the IMF also warned that at current debt spending levels El Salvador’s public debt could rise to about 96% of GDP in 2026, calling it an “unsustainable path.”

 
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The International Monetary Fund has lowered its forecast for the global economy’s growth this year, citing the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus as a notable factor.

In a quarterly update of its World Economic Outlook, the IMF predicted the global economy would expand 4.4% in 2022, lower than the 5.9% forecast one year ago and the 4.9% growth rate predicted in October. 

The report also cited higher energy prices, rising inflation and larger than predicted slowdowns in the United States and China, the world’s largest economies, as reasons for lowering its global growth forecast. 

“The global economy enters 2022 in a weaker position than previously expected,” the IMF said in the report. “The emergence of the omicron variant in late November threatens to set back this tentative path to recovery.”

The 190-country lending agency cut its growth forecast for the U.S. to 4% from the 5.2% it predicted in October. The agency said it lowered growth forecast for the U.S. economy because President Joe Biden’s massive Build Back Better social policy bill has stalled in Congress.

The U.S. central bank’s tighter monetary policy and supply chain problems that have plagued U.S. manufacturers and other businesses were also factors in the revised forecast, the IMF said.

The agency slashed China’s growth expectations to 4.8% this year, dramatically lower than the 8.1% forecast last year and nearly 1% lower than what it expected in October. 

China’s zero-tolerance approach to the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns have slowed private consumption while the real estate sector remains in a “period of protracted stress,” the IMF said.

After the global economy expanded nearly 6% last year, Tuesday’s IMF report cut growth projections for nearly every country. India was a notable exception, with the IMF raising its projected growth rate by 0.5% to nine percent.
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With its borders closed and virtually all foreigners gone, North Korea is more inaccessible than ever during the coronavirus pandemic. So to learn about the reclusive country’s economy, some North Korea watchers are picking up whatever scraps they can. In some cases, that means literally examining North Korean trash, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from the inter-Korean border.

Camera: William Gallo                                     Produced by: Rod James   

 
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Following the worst week for U.S. stocks since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, market volatility continued Monday — partly due to worries about Russian military movements near Ukraine.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 100 points after six consecutive days of losses. For most of Monday’s session, it appeared there would be a significant seventh day of losses, with the benchmark index in a free-fall, dropping 1,100 points (3.3%) before staging an extraordinary recovery.  

It was the sharpest one-day comeback for the Dow and the S&P 500 index since October 2008.  

The tech-laden Nasdaq composite closed 0.6% higher earlier in the day, trading more than 4% lower.  

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced Monday it is dispatching ships and jet fighters to eastern Europe following the increase in Russian military forces near Ukraine.  

The U.S. Defense Department also announced Monday it has placed 8,500 troops on standby for possible deployment to central and eastern Europe to bolster NATO defenses. The previous day, the State Department instructed the families of U.S. diplomats in Ukraine to leave the country.  

“The market already had downward momentum. Throwing in some geopolitical headlines was essentially another reason to sell,” according to Tom Essaye, president of Sevens Report Research. 

Investors have been anxiously eyeing anticipated action by the Federal Reserve to stem inflation because interest rate hikes could throttle growth for the U.S. economy.  

A decision on interest rates by the Fed is expected on Wednesday.  

The remarkable afternoon turnaround for the stock market followed a U.S. Treasury auction of two-year notes. 

“There was a lot of demand for that Treasury auction that came out at 1 p.m.,” Essaye told VOA. “People around the market looked and said, ‘Wow, maybe bond investors and traders aren’t quite as nervous about the Fed going crazy on rate hikes as everybody else is.’” 

The White House brushed off concern about the market volatility.  

“We focus on the trends of the economy, not any one day,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a routine briefing Monday.  

“The market is up about 15%” compared to when Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump as U.S. president, noted Psaki, adding that “unlike his predecessor, the president does not look at the stock market as a means by which to judge the economy.” 
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The International Monetary Fund board on Monday approved a three-year $455 million loan for the Republic of Congo to help undergird the small African nation’s economic recovery. 

The global crisis lender will provide $90 million immediately under the Extended Credit Facility to help the oil-dependent country deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The economy “is expected to strengthen in the second half of the year, supported by vaccine rollout, social spending, and domestic arrears, payments,” IMF Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura said in a statement 

“However, the nascent recovery is facing significant risks, including a possible worsening of the pandemic (and) continued volatility in oil prices.” 

But reducing the nation’s “debt vulnerabilities” will be key, Okamura said, noting the government is working on restructuring its debt. 

The Republic of Congo, a land of 5 million people that abuts the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, relies on oil for most of its wealth and has built up debt to China through loans that helped build some of its petroleum infrastructure. 

The IMF estimates the economy will grow 2.4% this year, after a slight contraction in 2021. 

 
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The Russian stock market took a dive Monday as war fears triggered a massive sell-off, with tens of billions of dollars wiped from the value of some of the country’s leading businesses.

As concerns mount that President Vladimir Putin is poised to order an invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the ruble also hit a 14-month low, prompting the Central Bank to intervene by halting its regular purchases of foreign currency to help prop up the ruble.

“The Bank of Russia has decided not to purchase foreign currency on the domestic market,” the bank said in a statement. “This decision was made in order to reduce the volatility of financial markets.”

The bank regularly converts the proceeds of the country’s oil and gas exports to avoid the ruble being impacted by swings in the value of global commodities.

The bank offered no details on when it would resume buying foreign currencies. The ruble was down 2.3% in early Monday trading but steadied after the bank’s announcement.

Meanwhile, the Russian stock market plunged more than 10% on Monday but was 7% down when trading concluded. Since the start of the Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine in October, the market has lost more than a quarter of its value.

Anders Aslund is chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research, a policy group in Warsaw, Poland. Aslund predicts the market could fall much further if the geopolitical confrontation between Russia and Western powers over Ukraine worsens.

“So far, the Russian RTS stock index in USD has only fallen 27% from its high point on October 27 before Putin started threatening Ukraine,” Aslund tweeted. “It has far more to fall. In 2008, it fell by 80% from May to October (Georgia war + global financial crisis).”

Meanwhile, the European stock markets have held fairly steady in recent weeks — a blitheness that’s not necessarily reassuring, analysts say, as the European stock markets didn’t miss a beat in the immediate wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, a slaying that triggered World War I. 

The London and Paris bourses were “slow to grasp why Sarajevo was different and unique,” noted Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of The Telegraph.

European investors and traders appeared Monday to take greater note of the geopolitical maneuverings, and markets nudged down lower on the news that Britain was joining the United States in withdrawing some diplomats and their families from the embassies in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. 

The German and French stock markets were down about 2% in early trading, with analysts saying a New York Times report that U.S. President Joe Biden is considering deploying 5,000 troops to bolster the defenses of Ukraine’s NATO neighbors contributed to jitters.

The London stock market also traded lower. Some analysts suggested the dips were as much the result of traders watching what the U.S. Federal Reserve might do about tightening monetary policy than the unfolding Ukraine crisis.

With the crisis deepening, the attention of the markets and Western policy makers is turning to the possible energy implications for Europe, which gets about half of its natural gas supplies from Russia. Fears have been mounting that the Kremlin might retaliate by stopping gas exports in the event the West imposes fresh sanctions on Russia. The result would be an energy shock for a continent that is already mired in an energy crunch and experiencing soaring prices.

“Should tensions between Russia and the Ukraine escalate, the initial uncertainty around its impact on gas flows would likely lead the market to once again add a significant risk premium to European gas prices,” Goldman Sachs analysts told clients.

Last week, the Reuters news agency reported the U.S. State Department has been putting together a global strategy to increase supplies of liquefied natural gas to Europe in the event a Russian invasion of Ukraine leads to gas shortages.

Amos Hochstein, senior adviser for energy security at the State Department, has been holding talks with several Middle East and North African countries, as well as companies in Europe, about how to boost gas supplies if Russia seeks to weaponize energy.

In London Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters that the intelligence about Russian intentions was “gloomy” but added that a Russian invasion was not inevitable.

“The intelligence is very clear that there are 60 Russian battle groups on the borders of Ukraine. The plan for a lightning war that could take out Kyiv is one that everybody can see. We need to make it very clear to the Kremlin, to Russia, that that would be a disastrous step,” Johnson said.

He added, “We also need to get a message (to Moscow) that invading Ukraine, from a Russian perspective, is going to be a painful, violent and bloody business. I think it’s very important that people in Russia understand that this could be a new Chechnya.”

He was referring to the brutal wars fought between Russia and Chechen rebels in the 1990s that left tens of thousands of people dead. Chechnya had waged wars of independence against Russia.

Speaking as Britain started to withdraw some embassy staff from Ukraine, Johnson said, “We do think it prudent to make some changes now.”
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A shortage of truck drivers in the U.S. has led to all kinds of troubles for consumers and businesses. That has led to some trucking companies doing all they can to get new drivers on the road. VOA’s Aunshuman Apte has more from New York City.

Camera: Aunshuman Apte                       Produced by: Aunshuman Apte 
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U.S. President Joe Biden touted a $20 billion investment by American technology company Intel to build a semiconductor factory in Ohio to address a global shortage that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S.-China trade war.

In a speech from the White House on Friday, Biden said the Intel factory, part of the administration’s effort to work with the private sector, would create thousands of jobs. He urged Congress to pass legislation to further expand domestic chip manufacturing, framing it in the context of strategic competition with China.

“Today 75% of the production takes place in East Asia; 90% of the most advanced chips are made in Taiwan,” Biden said. “China is doing everything it can to take over the global market so they can try to outcompete the rest of us.”

Semiconductor chips function as the brains of cars, medical equipment, household appliances and electronic devices.

The $20 billion factory is an initial investment, said Patrick Gelsinger, chief executive officer of Intel, at the White House event.

“This site alone could grow to as much as $100 billion of total investment over the decade,” he said.

The White House pointed to other investments in semiconductor manufacturing in the United States earlier this year by Samsung, Texas Instruments and Micron.

“Congress can accelerate this progress by passing the U.S. Investment and Competition Act, also known as USICA, which the president has long championed and which he called for action on today,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, referring to legislation that aims to strengthen research, development and manufacturing for critical supply chains to address semiconductor shortages.

Driven by Washington’s desire to retain an edge over China’s technological ambitions, USICA was passed with rare bipartisan Senate support in June but still needs to be passed by the House of Representatives. It includes full funding for the CHIPS for America Act, which provides $52 billion to catalyze more private sector investments in the semiconductor industry.

“The Chinese have been really clear. They want an indigenous chip industry. They want to be globally dominant, and that means displacing the U.S. and others,” James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

The U.S. share of global semiconductor production has fallen from 37% to 12% over the past 30 years, according to government data.

Pandemic impact

The COVID-19 pandemic and extreme changes in consumer demand during lockdowns have exacerbated fragility in the global semiconductor supply chain.

“Consumer demand increased rapidly for items such as home computers, while supply could not keep up and many Chinese manufacturers were locked down,” Nada Sanders, professor of supply chain management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University, told VOA.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-China tariff war that began under the Trump administration and geopolitical conflicts between the two global rivals have made the environment even less conducive for cooperation, Sanders said.

The Intel factory will not be operational until 2025, but analysts say the initiative will still be effective to secure the supply of chips in the long run.

“You cannot underestimate demand for this stuff. It grows at about 10% a year,” Lewis said.

As the U.S. expands its domestic chip manufacturing capacity, analysts say a key component is working with international partners, including South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, to fill in the supply gap.

Earlier Friday, Biden discussed semiconductor supply chain resilience in his virtual summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

“The leaders did discuss the importance of cooperation on supply chain security, including semiconductors, and the president described what we are doing at home and underscored the importance of working together on it,” a National Security Council spokesperson told VOA.

The spokesperson added that the two countries have been working closely in this area bilaterally through the Quad, a security dialogue forum involving the U.S., Australia, India and Japan.

“The new ministerial-level Economic Policy Consultative Committee (the Economic ‘2+2’) established by the leaders today will also cover this important issue,” the spokesperson said.

Taiwan, home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and the leading producer of advanced chips in the world, is another key partner.

“If China was to take over Taiwan, and use TSMC as a leverage point, that would be hugely disruptive,” Lewis said. “Taiwan and its proximity to China and China’s hostility drives a lot of the concern.”

The global chip shortage has pushed up inflation rates and hamstrung the administration’s economic recovery efforts. It contributed to the sharp increases in the price of new and used automobiles, which account for one-third of the annual price increases in the consumer price index.

Biden’s approval in the polls has been lagging recently, partly driven by inflation. Consumer prices jumped 7% in December compared with a year earlier, the highest inflation rate in 40 years. It has dampened economic recovery in a year that the administration says has shown the biggest job growth in American history.
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South Africa’s Indigenous Khoi and San people are in court to block construction of the planned African headquarters for online retail giant Amazon. Opponents say the project will ruin a historically significant riverside site in Cape Town and harm the environment. 

Closing arguments are being heard Friday. 

The site is slated to be developed into a 70,000-square-meter complex that will house Amazon, along with other businesses. City authorities approved construction of the nine-story complex last year. 

But some Indigenous Khoi San leaders and community groups are trying to reverse the decision, saying it undermines the city’s own heritage and environmental standards. 

“We’re in a situation where a terrain that is so sacred to the people of our country is not just under threat, but being damaged and destroyed as we speak,” said Tauriq Jenkins, high commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, which is among the groups fighting the project.

Construction has already begun at the site, which is currently occupied by a restaurant and golf course. 

Property owners Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust, or LLPT, said it did consult Indigenous groups while planning the site’s redevelopment. 

In a statement, company spokesperson James Tannenberger said the opposing community group and Indigenous council led by Jenkins “have been driving a misinformation campaign …after their concerns were validly dismissed by the competent authorities during the comprehensive three-year development approval process.” 

Other Indigenous leaders have given their approval to the project, Tannenberger added. 

He said the new site will also pay tribute to their history by including a museum and memorial site, along with creating low-income housing and jobs. 

The current divide within the Indigenous community is complex. 

The Khoi Khoi and San were some of the country’s first inhabitants and their presence in the southern tip of Africa dates back thousands of years. 

Their lands were lost to colonial settlements in the 1600s. 

“They’re enslaved, they’re oppressed, they’re exploited,” said June Bam-Hutchison, a researcher with the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. “Their language was also taken away, their culture was taken away, their knowledge systems that sort of helped us in so many ways to build a more peaceful and healthier society, that has also taken away.” 

She said their unique cultural identity was only acknowledged by South Africa in more recent decades. 

“Today, they are now being recognized. That took some time. The land question remains very much unresolved, highly disputed,” she added. 

The riverside development is contentious because of the site’s history. 

The Khoi San say it lies on a battlefield where they defended their territory from Portuguese colonizers in 1510. 

Jenkins said losing the case would set a dangerous precedent for giving up historic sites to corporate interests. 

Amazon, which does not own the site but will be leasing the space once constructed,declined to comment. 

 
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French oil giant TotalEnergies on Friday said it would withdraw from Myanmar over “worsening” human rights abuses committed since the country’s military took power in a February 2021 coup.

“The situation, in terms of human rights and more generally the rule of law, which have kept worsening in Myanmar… has led us to reassess the situation and no longer allows TotalEnergies to make a sufficiently positive contribution in the country,” the company said.

Total will withdraw from its Yadana gas field in the Andaman Sea, which provides electricity to the local Burmese and Thai population, six months at the latest after the expiry of its contractual period.

The company said it had not identified any means to sanction the military junta without avoiding stopping gas production and ensuing payments to the military-controlled Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

Around 30% of the gas produced at Yadana is sold to the MOGE for domestic use, providing about half of the largest city Yangon’s electricity supply, according to Total.

International diplomatic pressure and sanctions have been building against Myanmar’s military junta since last year’s coup ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The European Union has imposed targeted sanctions on the Myanmar military, its leaders and entities, while Norwegian telecoms operator Telenor this week sold its stake in a Burmese digital payments service over the coup.

More than 1,400 civilians have been killed as the military cracks down on dissent, according to a local monitoring group, and numerous anti-junta militias have sprung up around the country.

Suu Kyi this month was convicted of three criminal charges and sentenced to four years in prison and now faces five new corruption charges. 

 
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For Sammy Abdella, the new year has brought bad tidings: the prospect of a steep drop in sales of scarves, rugs, baskets and other textile goods produced by Sammy Handmade in Ethiopia.

“The U.S. market is our main destination,” said Abdella, who estimates it accounts for nearly two-thirds of sales for his Addis Ababa-based home decor and fashion company. “So, losing that put us in a very, you know, bad situation.”

The source of Abdella’s stress? Effective January 1, Ethiopia was one of three countries — including Guinea and Mali — dropped from a U.S. trade program authorized by the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000.  AGOA gives sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to U.S. markets for 6,500 products — if those countries meet eligibility requirements such as promoting a market-based economy and good governance and eliminating barriers to U.S. trade and investment.

Ethiopia lost its AGOA trade benefits for alleged “gross violations” of human rights in the conflict spreading beyond the northern Tigray region, and the West African nations of Guinea and Mali were disqualified for “unconstitutional change” in their respective governments, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.  Guinea experienced a coup d’etat in September. Mali has had two coups since 2020, and its military-led transitional government recently delayed elections. Mali also had been suspended from AGOA for all of 2013 after an earlier coup

A second AGOA delisting will have “serious consequences on the trade in Mali,” Mamadou Fofana, a Mali Chamber of Commerce and Industry spokesman, told VOA.

Mohamed Kaloko, head of Guinea’s Export Promotion Agency, said losing AGOA status raises the duty fee from zero to “at least 35%” for Guinean textiles, which he said were “well sought after on the American market.”

Gracelin Baskaran, a development economist at Cambridge University, predicted the suspensions would have limited impact on Guinea and Mali. Each sends relatively little to U.S. markets — less than 1% of their total exports, based on 2019 trade data.

But Ethiopia likely will feel “much larger effects,” Baskaran said. While the country ranks 88th among U.S. trade partners, its export-driven economic growth model has the American market as a key destination.

“China is the biggest destination,” accounting for 16.6% of Ethiopian exports, “but the U.S. is only one percentage point behind,” at 15.6%, she said, citing data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

‘Transformative’ program

Through AGOA, African businesses overall exported $8.4 billion worth of goods to U.S. markets in 2019, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. 

“AGOA has been transformative for the continent,” Baskaran said, noting that textile and apparel imports from Africa to the U.S. “skyrocketed” through the program, “increasing from $356 million in 2001 to $1.6 billion within three years.”

But when a country gets suspended from AGOA, it loses its competitive edge and increases the chance that investors and businesses will seek other, more stable markets. 

“What we’ve seen over and over is that they [countries] don’t necessarily recover,” Baskaran said, “even years after benefits have been reinstated.”

She cited the experience of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). In 2015, the U.S. government cut AGOA access to the tiny, landlocked southern African nation over labor and human rights violations. Many of the 30 textile and apparel factories established to produce for the American market closed down or moved to nearby Lesotho, and the value of Eswatini textile and apparel exports to the U.S. fell from $73 million in 2011 to just $319,000 in 2017, Baskaran said.

“Uncertainty around AGOA benefits creates long-term effects that undermine growth,” Baskaran said.

Kassahun Follo, president of the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions, estimated that more than 200,000 jobs will be directly affected and more than 1 million indirectly, mostly in textiles, apparel and leather, by the loss of Ethiopia’s AGOA benefits.

Abdella expressed concern for Sammy Handmade and its 57 full-time workers.

“We also outsource to about 135 people,” he said, including weavers and others who produce handicrafts such as ponchos, baskets and leather purses.

The loss will also be felt in the United States, Abdella said. Along with his company’s direct sales to high-end department stores and boutiques, “we’ve had many wholesalers that actually buy from us, and then they in turn sell to retailers. Our wholesale clients are worried. … The market has become so competitive.”

‘People will be scared’

The Ethiopian Economic Association’s executive chairman, Mengistu Ketema, suggested the loss might prompt the Horn of Africa country to turn more to China, already Ethiopia’s top source of direct foreign investment. 

China pays little heed to a trading partner’s internal affairs, in contrast with the U.S. government, Mengistu told VOA.

“They don’t have any conditions attached when they support or do business with you,” he said of Chinese officials. “So, if you see where Ethiopia is now, when the U.S. and so many countries are turning their backs on her, considering China as an alternative is a good move. At least that would help her during her difficult time.”

In an emailed response to VOA, the U.S. State Department called China “a global strategic competitor. We offer alternatives in collaboration with our African and other partners consistent with our shared values.”

The email also said, in part: “The United States promotes democratic governance, respect for human rights, and transparency. Our focus is on strengthening local capacity, creating African jobs, and working with our allies and partners to promote economic growth that is beneficial, sustainable, and inclusive over the long term.”

Trade and statecraft

Trade is a tool of economic statecraft, “one of the best ways of promoting democracy,” said economist Baskaran, noting how economic sanctions effectively pressured South Africa to end apartheid in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, Baskaran said, “there are trade-offs” with sanctions. Businesses and individuals can “fall victim to the drive for large-scale change.”

In Mali’s capital, Bamako, Moussa Bagayoko weaves and dyes cotton fabric for a living. He sees the AGOA delisting as another blow on top of the pandemic, one that will land heavily on tradespeople like him.

“There is no more work for America,” Bagayoko said. “The coronavirus had completely shut us out of everything. … The U.S. government suspends us based on the fact that we do not have a good model of democracy at home. This suspension affects us craftsmen, not authorities.”

Bagayoko has participated in the trade program since 2013. “I earn my living through AGOA,” he said, “but not if it is taken away from me.”

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office has said it would help the governments of each delisted country work toward “clear benchmarks for a pathway to [AGOA] reinstatement.” Each country’s status could be reviewed as soon as it meets the program’s statutory requirements.

The overall AGOA trade program is up for renewal in 2025.

Contributors to this VOA report were Moctar Barry in Bamako, Mali, and Kadiatou Traore for the Bambara Service; and Zakaria Camara in Conakry, Guinea, for the French Service. Dereje Desta of the Horn of Africa Service and Carol Guensburg also reported from Washington.
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