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U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member economies concluded their virtual APEC Leaders’ Meeting on Friday, agreeing on a series of commitments regarding the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and climate change mitigation.

Following the meeting chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, leaders adopted a declaration under the theme of “Join, Work, Grow. Together,” which highlights policy actions to respond to COVID-19.

According to organizers, the declaration “lays out commitments in accelerating economic recovery and achieving sustainable and inclusive growth, including further actions in tackling climate change, empowering groups with untapped economic potential, supporting the region’s micro, small and medium enterprises and addressing the digital divide.”

The 21 APEC member economies account for nearly 3 billion people and about 60 percent of global GDP, spanning the Pacific Rim from Chile to Russia to Thailand to Australia.

Officials said they made significant progress during some 340 preliminary meetings. APEC members had agreed to reduce or eliminate many tariffs and border holdups on vaccines, masks and other medical products important to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The APEC meeting came on the heels of an unexpected U.S.-China declaration made Wednesday at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where the world’s two biggest CO2 emitters said they would work together to achieve the goal set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) by the end of the century.

While the declaration was thin on details, Washington and Beijing pledged to cooperate on cutting emissions and to create a joint working group that will meet regularly to address the climate crisis over the next decade. Analysts called these small positive signs ahead of the Biden-Xi virtual summit scheduled for Monday.

The Glasgow statement moves the two countries significantly back toward a cooperative relationship in the many areas where Biden and Xi have complementary or similar interests, said Charles Morrison, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, a research group established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations among the peoples of Asia, the Pacific and the United States.

“What I would like to see is a collaborative examination of where they have common ground and next an implementation strategy,” Morrison added.

According to the White House, during his address at the virtual meeting, Biden “underscored his commitment to strengthening our relationship with APEC economies in order to advance fair and open trade and investment, bolster American competitiveness, and ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.” 

Xi’s pledge

Xi made a similar pledge in his address, saying China would “unswervingly” expand its opening up to the outside world and share China’s development opportunities with the world and Asia-Pacific countries, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Jennifer Bouey, Tang chair for China policy studies at the RAND Corporation, an American global policy research group, noted, however, that Beijing recently passed two new privacy and security laws that limit data sharing under the pretext of national security and the public interest.

“They also become a barrier for China’s collaboration not only with the U.S. but with the world at large,” Bouey said.

Issues remain

APEC members failed to reach a consensus on a U.S. proposal to host APEC gatherings in 2023. Russia rejected the bid because of a U.S. blacklist of its diplomats set in April, when Washington sanctioned the Kremlin for interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and hacking federal agency systems.

“The Russians simply did not want to accept the United States’ ability to make persona non grata for the Russian so-called diplomats who are no longer welcome in the United States, and the United States was not going to negotiate over security issue,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, a Washington research group.

There are no other bidders to host the 2023 meetings, though APEC works on a consensus basis so all members must agree.

“One economy is still undergoing consultations and has not yet joined consensus,” a White House official told VOA. “We hope this impasse is resolved quickly to ensure we can continue the positive momentum on economic cooperation through APEC.”

Meanwhile, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen used the APEC meetings to rally support for her bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that Beijing also is seeking to be a part of. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province and has vowed to block Taipei’s bid.

Lengthy process

CPTPP members likely will negotiate with Beijing and settle on the issue of Chinese membership first before Taiwan’s bid — a process likely to take years.

“It needs approval from, among others, Japan, Canada and Australia, none of which are inclined to roll out the red carpet for China right now,” said Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, a global policy group in Washington.

Daly said there’s a chance, however, that more countries gradually will come to accommodate China.

“We know that China is patient, that they are gradualist, and that they will work with the other parties, one by one,” he said. “And China goes into this still as the leading trading nation in the world, and the lodestone of Asian economics.”

The Biden administration has not indicated interest in joining CPTPP, the 11-nation trade pact formed in 2018 after former President Donald Trump in 2017 pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama to deepen U.S. economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific region and counter China’s growing influence there.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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The European Commission lowered its forecast for Spanish growth this year as the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic lagged behind other European nations.

The commission said Thursday it estimates that the rise of Spanish gross domestic product will be 4.6% this year and 5.5% next year, almost two points less than earlier forecasts of 6.5% this year and 7% in 2022.

Spain was the European economy hit hardest by COVID-19, and its recovery has been slower than those of its continental neighbors.

At the end of the third quarter, Italy’s GDP was 1.4% below its level at the end of 2019.

Germany has narrowed the gap to 1.1% compared with pre-pandemic levels, and France has reduced the difference to just 0.1%.

However, in Spain — the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy — GDP is 6.6% below 2019 levels.

Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 14.9%, while youth joblessness, for those under age 24, is the worst in Europe at 30.6%.

Inflation has soared to 5.5% compared to October 2020, the highest figure since 1992 when the peseta was paired with the German deutschmark. Soaring energy costs, as well as the rising cost of summer holidays, pushed up inflation, analysts said. Core inflation stood at 1.4%.

The nation’s budget deficit is expected to hit 8.4% by the end of the year, way above the European Union target of 3%, which has been relaxed until 2022.

Spain’s coalition government is staking its hopes on the arrival of EU recovery funds to revive the economy.

Under the 2022 budget, Spain plans to spend a record $46 billion of state funds on investments that analysts say will boost growth and lower the deficit to a projected 5% in 2022 and 4% in 2023.

Nadia Calviño, Spain’s economy minister, told a meeting of European finance ministers Tuesday the nation was on course to cut its deficit.

“We have adopted a prudent attitude when preparing the budgets for 2021 and also for 2022 so that, in fact, tax revenues allow us, even in a not-so-positive macroeconomic situation, to reduce the public deficit in 2022,” she said.

Macroeconomics aside, on the streets, some are still waiting for the recovery from the pandemic.

Oscar Díaz, managing director of Mundopalet, a company that makes pallets to transport goods, is a worried man. He told VOA on Thursday he had to stop half of his production lines at his company’s factory in Toledo, 55 miles south of Madrid.

The company, which employs 100 people, is struggling to find enough wood to make its products, as countries such as Brazil, China and Lithuania have raised prices from $1,382 per truckload earlier this year to $10,362.

Major economies such as the United States, China and Germany have also raised their demand for timber as their economies start to recover from the pandemic, further pushing up the prices.

“Yes, I am concerned. Some of our clients’ companies have stopped working. We have halted work on 10 of our 20 production lines. We are in danger,” Díaz told VOA from his factory.

Mundopalet is by far not alone, as Spanish companies grapple with supply chain problems, typical of other sectors, from winemakers to farmers.

To make things worse, Spain’s truck drivers plan to strike for three days the week before Christmas, the National Road Transportation Committee in Spain said Wednesday.

In the run-up to one of the busiest periods of the year, the drivers are threatening to disrupt supply chains if the Spanish government does not meet its demands, which include safer rest areas and a ban on requiring truckers to load and unload goods.

However, analysts say the health of Spain’s labor market shows the effects of the pandemic are fading.

The number of employed workers rose in the third quarter of 2021 by 359,300 workers, according to the National Statistics Institute, bringing the total to over 20 million, the first time this figure has been reached since 2008, when the global financial crisis began.

During the same summer period, the ranks of the jobless decreased by 3.59%, according to data from the institute.

Javier Díaz, an economist at IESE business school in Madrid, said Spain has suffered more from the pandemic than other European countries because of its reliance on tourism and the automotive sector, which is struggling because of a global chip shortage and lower consumer demand.

“What is important to look at is not the unemployment level but the employment. That shows the economy is not in such a bad way,” he told VOA.

Spanish inflation has gone up because of the global rise in fuel and energy prices, and a lack of demand in key sectors such as tourism and the car industry, which are still recovering from the shock of COVID-19, he said.

“Spain is not really struggling. Growth of between 6% and 4% this year is actually better than it was before the pandemic,” Díaz said. 
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German Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the presumptive leader of the next government, presented an updated financial forecast Thursday indicating increased revenues for future government projects.

At a news conference in Berlin, Scholz said that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent “fourth wave” of new infections and the worldwide supply chain problems, Germany’s tax revenue over the next few years would be higher than the estimates made in May.

Scholz said the new revenue forecast showed all levels of government collecting about $205 billion more in revenue through 2025 than the earlier prediction. He credited the higher-than-expected revenue to “a robust labor market.”

Scholz’s Social Democratic Party won the most seats in September’s parliamentary elections, but because it does not control more than 50% of parliament, it is in negotiations with the third- and fourth-place finishing parties, the environmentalist Greens and pro-business Free Democrats, to form a coalition government.

When asked how the power-sharing negotiations were going, Scholz said he was optimistic.

“I see very concrete things going on, and the observations I had are that a lot of things have come together. Everything still left to discuss is not so difficult that it cannot be overcome,” he said.

Scholz said this new forecast meant the next government could “work sensibly,” though he cautioned there were still financial burdens from the pandemic.

He identified investments in mitigating climate change and upgrading Germany’s public sector computer and internet infrastructure as two of his priorities.​

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Afghanistan is “at the brink of economic collapse” and the international community must urgently resume funding and provide humanitarian assistance, Pakistan’s foreign minister warned Thursday as U.S., Chinese, Russian and Taliban diplomats met in Islamabad.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke at the opening of the so-called “troika plus” meeting, which included Thomas West, the new U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan. The delegates also met later Thursday with Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

“Today, Afghanistan stands at the brink of an economic collapse,” Qureshi said, adding that any further downward slide would “severely limit” the new Taliban government’s ability to run the country.

“It is, therefore, imperative for the international community to buttress provision of humanitarian assistance on an urgent basis,” he said.

That included enabling Afghanistan to access funds frozen by Western donors since the Taliban took control of the country in August, he added.

Resuming the flow of funding “will dovetail into our efforts to regenerate economic activities and move the Afghan economy towards stability and sustainability”, Qureshi said.

Doing so would benefit Western countries also, he argued in later comments to state media.

“If you think that you are far, Europe is safe and those areas you imagine will not be affected by terrorism, don’t forget the history,” he said. “We have learned from the history and we don’t want to repeat those mistakes made in the past.”

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan is on the brink of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than half the country facing “acute” food shortages and winter forcing millions to choose between migration and starvation.

The troika plus meeting represents envoy West’s first trip to the region since taking over from Zalmay Khalilzad, the long-serving diplomat who spearheaded talks that led to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan earlier this year.

The State Department said earlier in the week that West also plans to visit Russia and India.

“Together with our partners, he will continue to make clear the expectations that we have of the Taliban and of any future Afghanistan government,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told a briefing this week.

West, who was in Brussels earlier this week to brief NATO on US engagement with the Taliban, told reporters the Islamists have “very clearly” voiced their desire to see aid resumed, normalise international relations and achieve sanctions relief.

He called for unity from allies on those issues, noting that Washington “can deliver none of these things on our own”. 
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China on Thursday held a subdued version of its annual “Single’s Day” shopping spree, shorn of the usual boasting on sales volume as the country’s chastened e-commerce sector reels under a government crackdown on platforms like Alibaba. 

The world’s biggest shopping festival has for years been accompanied by aggressive promotions and breathless hourly updates by Alibaba starting at midnight and detailing ever-rising sales figures that dwarf the annual GDP of many nations. 

But there were no rolling tallies or triumphant comments by executives from major platforms as of Thursday morning, and state media have described a quieter event this year in the wake of Beijing’s campaign to rein in Big Tech. 

11-day shopping event 

“Single’s Day,” so-called for its 11.11 date, began more than a decade ago and for years was a one-day, 24-hour event. 

But Alibaba and its rivals have expanded that out to an 11-day promotion culminating on November 11, while some retailers and platforms have started offering discounts, special offers and pre-sales as early as October.  

Thanks to the Chinese consumer’s predilection for smartphone-enabled bargain-hunting, Single’s Day now dwarfs the pre-Christmas “Black Friday” promotion in the United States. 

Platforms operated by Alibaba and its closest competitor JD.com reported combined sales of $115 billion during last year’s promotion. 

The festival has gradually become a closely watched gauge of consumer sentiment in the world’s second-largest economy, but it was unclear on Thursday when any sales figures might be released. 

Heads down 

E-commerce platforms are keeping their heads down because of the government scrutiny, which targets alleged abuse of user data and monopolistic business practices, but also appears motivated in part by wider concerns that Big Tech had become too powerful and unregulated.  

Some early indicators, however, had pointed to continued robust spending, with Alibaba saying hundreds of brands had gotten off to a stronger start from November 1 compared with the previous year, while providing no figures. 

The government scrutiny has rattled big players like Alibaba, Tencent, and JD, slicing billions of dollars from their equity values, but experts say the ruling Communist Party is not about to significantly hobble e-commerce. 

The party is waging a long-term campaign to diversify China’s economy away from an over-dependence on manufacturing, exports and government investment, toward a more market-based, consumer-driven model. 

E-commerce has aided greatly in this effort, and Chinese e-commerce executives have said the pandemic has boosted online purchases further, partly by discouraging in-person shopping in crowded stores. 

Less ‘gunpowder’ 

Alibaba fell out of favor late last year after billionaire co-founder Jack Ma issued an unprecedented criticism of Chinese government regulators. 

The company was fined $2.75 billion, authorities postponed a record-breaking IPO by its financial affiliate Ant Group, and other tech giants were hit with fines and business restrictions. 

The government has targeted practices by e-commerce leaders that are seen as abusing their dominant market positions, such as banning merchants from selling their products on rival platforms or using algorithms to bombard consumers with recommendations for further purchases. 

Last weekend, the government issued special “Single’s Day” guidelines reminding platforms that misleading claims on discounts or on the efficacy of products, manipulating sales figures, and selling counterfeit products, were all strictly forbidden. 

Chinese state media have reported less aggressive promotional activity this year. 

“Although the excitement remains, the smell of gunpowder among the e-commerce giants is significantly weakened,” respected financial-news website Jiemian.com said in a recent report. 
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The United States and China surprised the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Wednesday with a joint declaration to take action to limit global warming over the next decade.

The declaration came as delegates entered the final hours of negotiations to agree on a final text at the conference that will outline how the world will limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

China and the United States are the world’s two biggest polluters, and scientists say their future actions are critical in the fight against climate change. The absence of Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the summit last week was strongly criticized by U.S. President Joe Biden.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told reporters in Glasgow on Wednesday that the joint declaration builds on statements made by both countries in April.

“We also expressed a shared desire for success at this COP on mitigation, adaptation, support and, frankly, all of the key issues which will result in the world raising ambition and being able to address this crisis. Now, with this announcement, we’ve arrived at a new step, a road map for our present and future collaboration on this issue,” Kerry said at a press conference.

“The United States and China have no shortage of differences, but on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done. This is not a discretionary thing, frankly. This is science. It’s math and physics that dictate the road that we have to travel,” Kerry added.

China’s chief climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, echoed those sentiments.

“Climate change is a challenge, a common challenge, faced by humanity,” Xie told reporters. “It bears on the well-being of future generations. Now, climate change is becoming increasingly urgent and severe, making it a future challenge into an existential crisis. In the area of climate change, there is more agreement between China and the U.S. than divergence, making it an area with huge potential for our cooperation. We are two days away from the end of the Glasgow COP, so we hope that this joint declaration can make a China-U.S. contribution to the success of COP26.”

Among the joint pledges were cooperation on controlling methane emissions, tackling illegal deforestation, enhancing renewable energy generation and speeding up financial support for poorer nations. But the declaration did not include many specific dates or targets.

Cautious welcome

After the joint declaration, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted, “I welcome today’s agreement between China and the USA to work together to take more ambitious #ClimateAction in this decade. Tackling the climate crisis requires international cooperation and solidarity, and this is an important step in the right direction.”

Climate activists offered a cautious welcome to the declaration.

“This announcement comes at a critical moment at COP26 and offers new hope that with the support and backing of two of the world’s most critical voices, we may be able to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees,” Genevieve Maricle, director of U.S. climate policy action at the World Wildlife Fund, wrote in an email to VOA. “But we must also be clear-eyed about what is still required if the two countries are to deliver the emission reductions necessary in the next nine years. 1.5C-alignment will require a whole-of-economy response.”

Momentum

The joint declaration has given new momentum to the negotiations as delegates try to agree on a final text, officially known as the “cover decision,” by the end of the conference on Friday. The text details how parties to the COP26 summit will limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees C in Earth’s average temperatures above pre-industrial levels — the target agreed on at the Paris climate summit in 2015.

The first draft text of the decision, published Wednesday, urges countries to “revisit and strengthen” their targets on cutting emissions before the end of 2022. It says rich countries should go beyond the pledge to pay poorer nations $100 billion a year. The draft text calls on governments to phase out coal and fossil fuels, but with no fixed dates.

The COP26 host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urged delegates to “grasp the opportunity.”

“We’re now finding things are tough, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It doesn’t mean that we can’t keep 1.5 alive,” Johnson said. “I think with sufficient energy and commitment, and with leaders from around the world now ringing up their negotiators and asking them to move in the ways that they know they can move and should move, I still think we can achieve it. But I’m not going to pretend to you that it is by any means a done deal.”

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, told VOA that the language of the draft text was weak.

“This is not a plan to address the climate emergency. It’s a bit like a pledge and a wink and a hope,” Morgan said. “Countries need to commit to actually come back to increase and strengthen their targets and their actions. That’s clearly one thing. The text does include that coal will be phased out and fossil fuel subsidies will be phased out. I think optimally, you would have dates by which time they would be phased out, but it’s important that they’re there.”

Climate finance

Delegates are also negotiating how much — and quickly — richer nations should pay poorer countries to help them deal with the impact of climate change and de-carbonize their economies. While richer countries are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries tend to suffer greater impacts of climate change. A pledge first made in 2009 by richer nations to pay $100 billion annually — and renewed at the Paris climate summit in 2015 — has still not been fulfilled.

“It’s very frustrating to see countries that have spent six years conspicuously patting themselves on the back for signing that promissory note in Paris, quietly edging towards default now that vulnerable nations and future generations are demanding payment here now in Glasgow,” Johnson said Wednesday.
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A coalition of 19 countries including Britain and the United States on Wednesday agreed to create zero emissions shipping trade routes between ports to speed up the decarbonization of the global maritime industry, officials involved said. 

Shipping, which transports about 90% of world trade, accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions.

U.N. shipping agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has said it aims to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from ships by 50% from 2008 levels by 2050. The goal is not aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the sector is under pressure to be more ambitious.

The signatory countries involved in the ‘Clydebank Declaration’, which was launched at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, agreed to support the establishment of at least six green corridors by 2025, which will require developing supplies of zero emissions fuels, the infrastructure required for decarbonization and regulatory frameworks.

“It is our aspiration to see many more corridors in operation by 2030,” their mission statement said.

Britain’s maritime minister Robert Courts said countries alone would not be able to decarbonize shipping routes without the commitment of private and non-governmental sectors.

“The UK and indeed many of the countries, companies and NGOs here today believe zero emissions international shipping is possible by 2050,” Courts said at the launch.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the declaration was “a big step forward for green shipping corridors and collective action”.

Buttigieg added that the United States was “pressing for the IMO to adopt a goal of zero emissions for international shipping by 2050”.

The IMO’s Secretary General Kitack Lim said on Saturday “we must upgrade our ambition, keeping up with the latest developments in the global community”.

Industry needs regulatory help

Jan Dieleman, president of ocean transportation with agri business giant Cargill, one of the world’s biggest ship charterers, said “the real challenge is to turn any statements (at COP26) into something meaningful”.

“The majority of the industry has accepted we need to decarbonize,” he told Reuters.

“Industry leadership needs to be followed up with global regulation and policies to ensure industry-wide transformation. We will not succeed without global regulation.”

Christian Ingerslev, chief executive of Maersk Tankers, which has over 210 oil products tankers under commercial management, said it had spent over $30 million over the last three years to bring their carbon emissions down through digital solutions.

“We need governments to not only back the regulatory push but also to help create the zero emissions fuels at scale,” he said.

“The only way this is going to work is to set a market-based measure through a carbon tax.”

Other signatory countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Republic of Ireland, Japan, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
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U.S.-based drugmaker Pfizer is seeking to make a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all adult Americans 18 years of age and older.

Pfizer filed the request Tuesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, citing a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it developed in collaboration with German-based BioNTech. According to Pfizer, the preliminary results show the third shot boosted a person’s protection against the virus to about 95%.

The request comes just weeks after the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 65 and older, adults at a high risk of severe illness, plus front-line workers such as teachers, health care workers and others whose jobs place them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. The Pfizer booster shot is available for people regardless of whether they initially received the two-shot Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which offers less protection than either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Astra-Zeneca’s separate unit

British-Swedish drugmaker Astra-Zeneca announced Tuesday that it is creating a separate unit entirely devoted to developing and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The company’s two-shot vaccine, developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford, had a troubled rollout due to manufacturing delays and confirmation of a link between the vaccine and rare, possibly fatal blood clots, prompting some governments to limit its use among certain age groups.

But the AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and easier to use because it does not need to be stored at ultra-cold temperatures than either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. The vaccine makes up the bulk of the vaccine supply of COVAX, the international vaccine sharing mechanism for the world’s poorest nations supported by the United Nations and the health organizations Gavi and CEPI.

Meanwhile, the current surge of new COVID-19 infections in Germany prompted Dr. Christian Drosten, the head of virology at Berlin’s Charite Hospital, to issue a warning Wednesday that 100,000 people could die if the vaccination rate does not pick up quickly, and that Germany faces “a very tough winter with new shutdown measures.”

Drosten’s warning coincided with an announcement by the country’s Robert Koch Institute of 39,676 new COVID-19 infections across Germany, a new one-day record. Charite Hospital announced Tuesday that it is postponing all non-critical operations due to the growing rate of new COVID-19 patients.

In a related matter, the country’s vaccine advisory committee Wednesday recommended that people 30 years of age and under be vaccinated only with the Pfizer vaccine. The committee cited a higher risk of younger people developing a rare side effect of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, from the Moderna vaccine than the Pfizer version.

NFL vaccination

In the U.S. sports world, quarterback Aaron Rodgers of the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers franchise acknowledged “misleading” the public about his vaccination status shortly before the start of the current season.

Rodgers has been under intense criticism since last week’s revelation that he had tested positive for COVID-19, contradicting his earlier claims back in August that he had been “immunized.” Rodgers told radio sports host Pat McAfee after his diagnosis that he had not taken any of the approved vaccines because of concerns about adverse side effects, and instead relied on homeopathic treatments as an alternative.

In a follow-up interview with McAfee Tuesday, Rodgers said he took “full responsibility” for his comments back in August, but also said that he continued to stand by his concerns about the vaccines. He also said he expects to be cleared to rejoin the Packers in time for Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks.

The NFL has fined Rodgers and teammate Allen Lazard $14,650 each for violating the league’s COVID-19 protocols for unvaccinated players when they attended a Halloween party despite their status. The Packers were also fined $300,000 for failing to discipline the players and for not reporting the violations to NFL officials.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge — surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.   

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which costs nearly double what it did a year ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won’t have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.   

“What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse,” said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.   

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic won’t be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said. 

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.   

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, it’s like adding “insult to injury” to a family reeling from uncertainty.   

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food bank’s director of community engagement.   

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food. 

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%. 

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charity’s event manager. But he’s still seeing new people every week. 

“And a lot of people are just saying they can’t afford food,” he said. “I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but it’s just not stretching.” 

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes — enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it’s not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.   

“That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money,” she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children. 

It’s unclear to what extent other concurrent government aid, including an expanded free school lunch program in California and an increase in benefits for people in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, will offset rising food prices. An analysis by the Urban Institute think tank in Washington, D.C. found that while most households are expected to receive sufficient maximum benefits for groceries, a gap still exists in 21 percent of U.S. rural and urban counties. 

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia— such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges— have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.   

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. “An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000,” he said. 

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter —40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. They’re spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and there’s less to choose from. 

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird. 

“The other thing is that we’re not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So we’re having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad,” said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.   

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens —which translates into more than 60,000 birds— to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost. 

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful. 

“It’s going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was,” said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. “And they’re not giving out turkey. So thank God they’re giving out the chicken.” 
…

The Federal Reserve is warning that spillover effects from a worsening debt crisis in the Chinese real estate sector could roil global financial markets and damage economic growth, including that of the United States. 

The warning Monday came in the Financial Stability Report, issued twice a year by the U.S. central bank. Previous versions of the report have noted concerns about high levels of debt among Chinese companies.    

But the most recent report specifically mentions China Evergrande Group, a heavily indebted real estate conglomerate that late Tuesday appeared to have narrowly avoided what could have been a catastrophic default on bonds issued to international investors. 

Evergrande has become the symbol of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to force large companies to shed heavy debt burdens. The government has created new restrictions that make it difficult or impossible for companies like Evergrande to “roll over” their debts as they come due by simply taking out new loans. As a result, many are trying to sell off assets to pay down their debts. 

Although construction on many of its dozens of projects across China has been halted as laborers and suppliers go unpaid, Evergrande has put a brave face on its predicament. In a note to employees published on WeChat, management said, “All employees of the group swear to ensure the construction of the project with the greatest determination and strength, and complete the delivery of the real estate with the highest quality and quantity.” 

Risk of miscalculation 

Forcing large Chinese firms to deleverage is, on the whole, considered a worthy goal. Many analysts believe that the excessive debt of Chinese businesses, much of which is carried on the books of Chinese banks, has injected far too much risk into the Chinese economy.   

However, experts consulted by the Fed said they were concerned that the Chinese government might miscalculate, cracking down too tightly and precipitating a crisis that Beijing cannot control.   

“Several noted that the Chinese authorities appear willing to countenance more volatility than in the past as they pursue their deleveraging and regulatory goals, while worrying that officials could misjudge the scale of instability and contagion emanating from the campaign,” the report said. 

‘Tip of the iceberg’

“It’s tempting to use metaphors like ‘tip of the iceberg’ to describe what’s going on in China’s real estate sector,” Doug Barry, spokesperson for the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange. “But that we’re even tempted is itself disconcerting, given we’re talking about the world’s second largest economy – one linked to most of the others including the United States’.”   

Barry noted that many Chinese banks are considered “zombies” by most analysts – meaning that they are carrying so much bad debt on their books that they are essentially insolvent and are only being propped up by government support.   

“Time now for China’s leaders to get their macroeconomic policy house in order, which is consistent with the mantra-like message of reforming and opening-up,” Barry added. “Help is available from many quarters including the US government and business community.  How to help should be on the Biden-Xi summit agenda. We all lose if the iceberg finds its mark.” 

Global consequences

According to the Fed report, if the crisis in China were to get out of control, the impact on the rest of the world could be serious. 

“Given the size of China’s economy and financial system as well as its extensive trade linkages with the rest of the world, financial stresses in China could strain global financial markets through a deterioration of risk sentiment, pose risks to global economic growth, and affect the United States,” the report found. 

A narrow escape 

Evergrande has been in the news in recent months because it has been unable to make payments on bonds it has issued. On Wednesday, it was expected to make a late payment of $141.8 million on three different bonds, just as a 30-day grace period was due to expire and plunge the company into default.   

Evergrande came up with the money by orchestrating what appeared to be a last-minute sale of a $144 million portion of its interests in HengTen Networks Group, a Hong Kong-based internet company, according to the South China Morning Post. 

The expected payments do not mean that Evergrande is out of trouble. The company still has more than $300 billion in outstanding debts, with regular payments coming due every few weeks into 2022. 

Signs of spreading contagion 

Evergrande’s share price has already plummeted, and the rates that investors are demanding on existing bonds have skyrocketed. If the effects were limited to Evergrande, that might be manageable. But there is increasing evidence that the “contagion” infecting the company and other large real estate firms is spreading. 

Investors are now selling off bonds issued by other Chinese real estate giants that are considered to be much less risky than Evergrande, such as Country Garden Holdings and Vanke Inc., the largest and second-largest real estate firms in the country, respectively. 

Worse yet, there are signs that investors are getting jittery about companies well outside of the real estate sector. A Bloomberg index tracking investment-grade bonds issued by Chinese firms indicates that the impact is being felt across multiple sectors of the Chinese economy.   

For example, Tencent Holdings, an entertainment conglomerate that owns TikTok and WeChat, among other popular services, saw a sharp decrease in its bond prices over the past two days.  

Restructuring expected 

In general, investment analysts following the developments in China’s property market expect that Beijing will, at some point, step in to prevent a major crisis. But that may not happen in the immediate future. 

In a research note published Monday, economists Ting Lu and Jing Wang of the investment bank Nomura International (Hong Kong) wrote, “We expect most of Beijing’s property curbs will remain in place for a while, with the worst likely yet to come for both China’s property sector and macro-economy.”    

They added, “Beijing’s policy makers may opt to ramp up support to prevent worsening defaults in coming months.” 

It is unclear exactly what a government-led restructuring of Evergrande would look like, but most experts believe it would involve investors in the company’s dollar-denominated bonds facing a significant “haircut.” That is, they would be forced to accept less than they are owed by the company in final payment of its obligations. 
…

Randal Quarles announced Monday that he will resign from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors at the end of the year after completing a four-year term as its top bank regulator, opening up another vacancy on the Fed’s influential board for President Joe Biden to fill.

Quarles has served as the Fed’s first vice chair of supervision, which gave him wide-ranging authority over the banking system. In that role, he oversaw a broad loosening of some of the financial regulations that were put in place after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recession. 

Quarles’ deregulatory approach prompted criticism from some on the Fed and from many progressives. It has also sparked resistance from progressives to the potential re-nomination of Jerome Powell as Fed chair, who has voted in favor of Quarles’ regulatory changes.

With Powell’s term as chair ending in February, an announcement is expected sometime this month on whether Biden will offer him a second four-year term. The president is considered likely to renominate Powell, although he could decide instead to elevate Lael Brainard, who is the lone Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, to the position of chair.

Besides Quarles’ soon-to-be vacated position on the board, a second slot is vacant and a third will open up in January, when Vice Chair Richard Clarida’s term will expire. Counting the seat held by the Fed chair, that gives Biden a total of four potential slots to fill.

The president may decide to renominate Powell while also promoting Brainard to replace Quarles as vice chair for supervision. That move could potentially mollify at least some of Powell’s critics. Brainard cast some dissenting votes against Quarles’ deregulatory efforts.

With several vacancies to fill, Biden has an opportunity to shift the Fed’s board toward a more Democratic-dominated one. That would undercut one key argument against Powell: That even if Biden elevated Brainard to the Fed’s top bank supervisory post, Powell could ignore or override efforts she might take to toughen financial rules. If Biden were to successfully appoint three new governors to the Fed’s board, Democratic appointees would outnumber Republican ones. 

Late last month, in an appearance on CNN, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended Powell against any notion that he has weakened bank rules. Yellen asserted that financial regulations were “markedly strengthened” under Ben Bernanke’s Fed leadership, during her own subsequent term as chair and under Powell, as well.

Members of the Board of Governors have permanent votes at each Fed meeting on interest-rate policy, a powerful tool that affects hiring and the economy. The 12 regional Fed bank presidents also attend policymaking meetings, though only five of them are able to vote on the Fed’s decisions. The New York Fed president holds a permanent vote, and the regional bank presidents hold four votes that rotate among them each year.

The Fed governors also vote on financial regulations, and they could take steps to regulate some cryptocurrencies, known as stablecoins. Some of the officials, including Brainard and Powell, have discussed incorporating climate change considerations into the Fed’s bank oversight, a possibility that has met with opposition from congressional Republicans.

With four slots open, the Biden administration could nominate several candidates as a package. Potential nominees for the three vacancies on the Fed’s board include Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State University who would be the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, who previously served as a Fed governor and as a financial regulator in Maryland. 

Another potential nominee is William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and an economics professor at Howard University. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, declined to say how Quarles’ departure might influence Biden’s selections for the board. 

“All I can say is this is incredibly important to the president, and he’s taking this seriously,” Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s briefing. 

At a Senate hearing in September, Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees Fed nominations, said, “It’s time we had a Black woman on the Board of Governors.” 
…

Renting an apartment can be a challenge for new college graduates who are facing the hottest U.S. rental market in a decade, along with some unexpected competition from millennials — people aged 24 to 40 — and even baby boomers — the over-57 club.

“You have aging millennials who are creating families who should be moving from rental situations into ownership but, because of the lack of housing supply, that has been stopped in a lot of instances. And so, what you see is the aging millennial population continues to rent,” says Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi-Matrix, a commercial real estate data and research firm.

“It’s not just about millennials, it’s not just about [Gen] Z [people under 24], we also see that boomers are making a transition, he added. “Their percentage of moving into rental properties is growing in the last five years.” 

There are a variety of reasons older people are opting for rentals, according to Ressler. 

“They’ve lived in a home for so long and they want to be able to reduce their expenses on a fixed income,” he says. “They want to live in a social cohort, like a retirement community, and things like that where it’s much more socially amenable to them.” 

The asking price of apartment rentals was up 10.7% in September 2021 compared to last year at the same time, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). 

“It’s a hot market. We have never seen this market so hot in the last decade,” says Gay Cororaton, NAR’s senior economist and director of housing and commercial research. “The average rent growth, year-over-year, is about 3-to-5%. We’re seeing 11% rent growth now, so, clearly, way above trends we’ve had in the past.” 

Renters are feeling the squeeze because the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply chain issues, slowing down home building in the United States. Instead of the usual 5-to-6 month supply of available single-family homes, supply dropped below two months in January 2021. The lack of housing supply means millennials are having a harder time buying a single-family home, which has been the traditional trajectory in the past. 

“The whole building industry was beset by supply chain issues,” Cororaton says. “Shipments couldn’t come in, the price of lumber was rising, manufacturing slowed, workers could not come in [to work], so you have shortages of frames, appliances. So, essentially, just a short supply.” 

The housing supply got even tighter during the pandemic as more investors put their money into housing, according to Cororaton, while existing homeowners looked for second homes. 

“With the pandemic, there was also a big demand for second homes, for vacation homes. Typically, vacation homes accounted for just about 5% [of the market],” she says. “Early this summer they rose to about 8%. So again, strong demand and strong imbalance of demand and supply caused home prices to rise, made them less affordable.” 

The hottest rental markets right now are in the West and South. More renters are moving to Dallas and Houston in Texas, followed by Atlanta, Georgia; New York; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; and Washington, D.C., according to NAR. 

Cororaton expects the coming year to be a little better but says the housing shortage is likely to continue for the next few years. 

 “You know, the old adage of moving from rentals into homeownership, that whole polemic may be changing,” says Ressler. “The sweet spot was always the millennials, and now the millennials are being replaced by the [Gen] Z’s, but the millennials are staying longer and the Z’s are coming on board, and now you’ve got the demographic of the boomers … What it means is a very profitable and dynamic [rental] market that’s going to continue to grow.”
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When a rotten egg smell rises from the mangrove swamps of southeast Mexico, something is going well. It means that this key coastal habitat for blunting hurricane impacts has recovered and is capturing carbon dioxide — the main ingredient of global warming.

While world leaders seek ways to stop the climate crisis at a United Nations conference in Scotland this month, one front in the battle to save the planet’s mangroves is thousands of kilometers away on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Decades ago, mangroves lined these shores, but today there are only thin green bands of trees beside the sea, interrupted by urbanized areas and reddish segments killed by too much salt and by dead branches poking from the water.

A few dozen fishermen and women villagers have made building on what’s left of the mangroves part of their lives. Their work is supported by academics and donations to environmental groups, and government funds help train villagers to organize their efforts. 

The first time they came to the swamp for seasonal restoration work was more than a decade ago with Jorge Alfredo Herrera, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute in Yucatan. He told them the mangroves needed a network of interlaced canals where fresh and salt water would mingle.

To dig them was a hard work and paid only $4 a day. Men from Chelem, a fishing village of Progreso, turned down the job but a group of women took it on, believing they could accomplish a lot with little money.

Recently, after an intense rainy season, the women worked to finish the second part of the restoration process: planting young mangroves in a swamp near this port city. Under the sun, they chuckled, remembering the time they encountered a crocodile and barely managed to run away.

Then they placed 20-inch mangrove seedlings into mounds of mud held together by mesh, creating tiny islands about a yard (meter) square.

“The happiest day is when our plants take,” said 41-year-old Keila Vázquez, leader of the women who now are paid $15 a day and take pride in putting their “grain of sand” into the planet’s well-being. “They are like our children.”

GLOBAL THREAT TO MANGROVES

This mangrove restoration effort is similar to others around the globe, as scientists and community groups increasingly recognize the need to protect and bring back the forests to store carbon and buffer coastlines from climate-driven extreme weather, including more intense hurricanes and storm surges. Other restorations are underway in Indonesia, which contains the world’s largest tracts of mangrove habitat, Colombia and elsewhere.

“Mangroves represent a very important ecosystem to fight climate change,” said Octavio Aburto, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

While the tropical trees only grow on less than 1% of the Earth’s land, he said, “on a per-hectare basis, mangroves are the ecosystem that sequesters the most carbon … They can bury around five times more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rain forest.”

Yet around the globe, mangroves are threatened.

From 1980 to 2005, 20% to 35% of the world’s mangrove forests were lost, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

From 2000 to 2016, the rate of loss declined as governments and environmental groups spotlighted the problem, but destruction continued — and about 2% of the world’s remaining mangrove forests disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery.

In Mexico, as in much of the world, the largest threat to mangroves is development. The region near Cancun lost most of its historic mangroves to highways and hotels starting in the 1980s.

Tracts of mangroves on the country’s southern Pacific coast also have been cleared to make room for shrimp farming, while oil exploration and drilling in shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico threatens mangroves there, said Aburto.

Mexico began to protect some of its mangroves only after the excessive tourism development of the 1980s. And although Mexico took steps to establish a climate action plan in 1998 and was one of the first developing countries to make voluntary commitments under the Paris Climate Accord, its commitment to the environment began to backslide in 2015, said Julia Carabias, a professor on the science faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In the past six years, Mexico has cut resources for environmental conservation by 60%, according to Carabias.

And that, combined with increasing government support of fossil fuel energy and ongoing infrastructure and tourist projects in the region, is sounding alarms.

Despite the country’s monitoring system, local researchers say that for every hectare (2.5 acres) of mangrove restored in southeast Mexico, 10 hectares are degraded or lost.

EFFORTS TO SAVE SWAMPS

The halting efforts in Mexico to protect and restore mangroves, even as more are lost, mirror situations elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency estimated in 2007 that 40% of Indonesia’s mangroves had been cut down for aquaculture projects and coastal development in the previous three decades.

But there have been restoration efforts as well.

In 2020, the Indonesia government set an ambitious target of planting mangroves on 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of degrading coastline by 2024. Key ministries are involved in restoration efforts that include community outreach and education.

Yet there have been some setbacks. Precise mapping and data on mangroves is hard to come by, making it difficult for agencies to know where to concentrate. Newly planted mangroves have been swept out to sea by strong tides and waves. Community outreach and education have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Mexico, successes exist, even if they are slow in coming.

Manuel González, a 57-year-old fisherman known as Bechá, proudly shows off recovering mangroves in the seaside community of Dzilam de Bravo, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Progreso. He walks through mud, avoiding the interlaced mangrove roots that burrow into it. Some trees are already 30 feet (9 meters) tall.

In 2002, Hurricane Isidoro devastated this area, but after a decade of work, 297 acres have been restored. The fisherman says that now storms don’t hit the community as hard. And the fish, migratory birds, deer, crocodiles and even jaguars have returned. 

But the mangroves face a new risk, as stumps scattered among the trees attest.

“In 10 years, you have a very nice mangrove for someone with a chainsaw to come and take it,” González said. “That’s something that hurts me a lot.”

Cutting mangroves has been a crime since 2005, but González says authorities shut down and fine projects, only to have them later reopen.

The Yucatan state government said it is aware of complaints of illegal logging yet the harvest has only grown.

While more funds are needed for protection and restoration, some communities prefer to think about how to make conservation a profitable activity.

José Inés Loría, head of operations at San Crisanto, an old salt harvesting community of about 500 between Progreso and Dzilam, thinks the way to make the local mangrove part “of the community’s business model” is using the new financial tools such as blue carbon credits.

Those instruments, already in use in Colombia and other countries, allow polluting businesses to compensate for emissions by paying others to store or sequester greenhouse gases.

Some in Mexico say credits are still not well regulated in the country and could invite fraud and scams. But Loria defends them. “If conservation doesn’t mean improving the quality of life of a community, it doesn’t work.”
…

The U.S. economy created 531,000 jobs in October, more than the 450,000 economists had forecast, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The unemployment rate also dropped slightly from 4.8% to 4.6%, the lowest since the pandemic hit. The unemployment rate in February of 2020 was 3.5%, an historic low.

Jobs numbers for August and September were also revised upward.

Celebrating the better-than-expected report, President Joe Biden called it “another great day for our economic recovery,” during comments Friday at the White House on the jobs report. 

Most of the employment gains were in the leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing sectors.

“Overall, it was a really positive jobs report but leaves some questions about the structure of the labor market for the Fed,” Megan Greene, the global chief economist at the advisory firm Kroll Institute and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, told ABC News.

However, the jobs report was not all good news.

Labor participation, the number of people working or actively seeking a job, remained at a low 61.6%, and only 104,000 new people joined the workforce in October.

The disappointing labor participation rate has been fairly steady over the past year at the lowest levels seen since the early 1970s.

Businesses have tried to get workers back by raising wages or offering bonuses, but most of those gains have been offset by rising prices for food, gas and rent. 
…

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has reported its Food Price Index, which tracks the international prices of a basket of food, found that in October, the cost of a basket of food was up 3% from September.

The FAO Cereal Price Index increased 3.2% in October from the previous month, while the price of wheat rose by 5% amid reduced harvests from major exporters of wheat that include Canada, Russia and the United States. The FAO also recorded the international prices of other major cereals have increased.

Meanwhile, the U.N. agency said the price of vegetable oil hit an “all-time high” increase of 9.6% in October, marking a fourth consecutive month of price hikes. The FAO said the rising vegetable oil price was “largely underpinned by persisting concerns over subdued output in Malaysia due to ongoing migrant labor shortages.”

Dairy prices rose by 2.5%, while the price of meat fell by 0.7%, “marking the third monthly decline.”

Some information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
…

Congressional Democrats this week proposed an addition to U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate and social spending legislation that would allow Medicare, the federal government’s health care program for older Americans, to negotiate with drugmakers over the cost of certain prescription medications.

U.S. consumers pay higher prices for prescription medications than almost any of their peers in the developed world, a fact that generations of politicians and advocates have struggled in vain to change. If passed, the proposal working its way through Congress would make a dent, though a relatively small one, in that long-standing problem.

The plan being discussed would give Medicare officials the ability to negotiate pricing on a sliver of the thousands of prescription medications on the market in the United States, beginning with about 10 drugs and capped at 20. Liberal members of Congress at first had hoped to grant Medicare authority to negotiate the prices of up to 250 costly drugs every year.

Though small, the number of drugs that would be covered by the proposal represents a disproportionate amount of the annual “spend” on drugs by Medicare patients.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation released this year determined that the 10 top-selling drugs covered under Medicare Part D accounted for 16% of net total spending in 2019. The top 50 drugs — representing just 8.5% of all drugs covered under the program — accounted for 80% of spending.

The top 10 drugs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation include “three cancer medications, four diabetes medications, two anticoagulants and one rheumatoid arthritis treatment.”

Confusing system 

Unlike many countries outside the U.S., where the government is able to negotiate drug prices and bring down the cost for a single national health care system, the landscape in the U.S. is highly fragmented. Most Americans with health insurance are covered by policies issued by for-profit companies in the private sector.

Americans 65 years and older are eligible for Medicare, which takes the place of a private insurer, but with some critical differences. For many years, Medicare did not offer prescription drug coverage, forcing Medicare patients to pay for medications out of pocket or seek third-party insurance coverage for their medications.

In 2003, Congress created Medicare Part D, under which private insurers offered medication coverage that met minimum requirements established by the federal government. While that program reduced costs for many seniors, cost-sharing provisions and design flaws mean that many recipients continue to face financially crippling bills for medication. A key reason is that each insurance provider must negotiate prices with drug companies individually, rather than using the bargaining power of the entire Medicare population to insist on lower costs.

‘Subsidizing R&D for the world’ 

For years, advocates for change have pointed out that drug companies set prices in the U.S. far above those in other countries in which they sell the same drugs. A study by the Rand Corporation this year comparing the U.S. with 32 other countries found that drugs cost on average 256% more in the U.S.

“American consumers are subsidizing the R&D for the world,” said Lovisa Gustafsson, vice president of the Controlling Health Care Costs program at the Commonwealth Fund, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Compounding the problem is that Americans also shoulder a much greater share of the cost for their prescription medications.

“Patients in the U.S. face far higher cost-sharing than in a lot of other countries. So, just because they have insurance doesn’t mean that patients can actually afford the drugs that they need currently,” Gustafsson said. “There’s survey after survey showing that 20% to 25% of Americans can’t afford the drugs they’re prescribed by their physician, or split pills, or don’t get the prescription filled, because they just can’t afford it. And that’s even when they have insurance.”

Putting a lid on costs

An important element of the proposal before Congress is that it would place an annual cap of $2,000 on the co-payments that Medicare patients can be charged for their medications.

The prospect of a cap on out-of-pocket costs was well-received by many calling for reforms, such as AARP, a large advocacy group for older Americans.

“There’s no greater issue affecting the pocketbooks of seniors on Medicare than the ever-increasing costs of prescription drugs,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said in a statement. “For decades, seniors have been at the mercy of Big Pharma. Allowing Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices is a big win for seniors. Preventing prices from rising faster than inflation and adding a hard out-of-pocket cap to Part D will provide real relief for seniors with the highest drug costs.”

Drug firms unhappy

PhRMA, a powerful trade group representing the pharmaceuticals industry, reacted unhappily to news of the proposal.

“If passed, it will upend the same innovative ecosystem that brought us lifesaving vaccines and therapies to combat COVID-19,” PhRMA President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl said in a statement. “Under the guise of ‘negotiation,’ it gives the government the power to dictate how much a medicine is worth and leaves many patients facing a future with less access to medicines and fewer new treatments.”

“While we’re pleased to see changes to Medicare that cap what seniors pay out of pocket for prescription drugs, the proposal lets insurers and middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers off the hook when it comes to lowering costs for patients at the pharmacy counter,” Ubl continued. “It threatens innovation and makes a broken health care system even worse.”

Industry claims exaggerated?

Numerous supporters of allowing the government to negotiate on drug prices claim that the industry’s insistence that it will stymie innovation is exaggerated.

One piece of evidence they point to is a study released by the Congressional Budget Office in August. The CBO created a model in which pharmaceutical companies were faced with the following scenario: A policy is put in place that reduces the return on their most profitable drugs by 15% to 25%.

The agency estimated that the impact would be a reduction of the number of new drugs coming onto the market by only one-half of 1% over the first 10 years of the new policy. That would increase to as much as an 8% reduction in the first three decades of the program.
…

An Earth-flight giant contributes to NASA’s upcoming moon missions. Plus, words from the next crew to visit the International Space Station and grim news from NASA about the future of food on Earth. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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