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U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration says it is looking to push ahead with work on a social safety net spending bill after a key Democrat in the Senate said he could not support it. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing Monday that the administration is ready to “work like hell” with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and other members of the Democratic caucus in order to achieve its goal. 

“What’s most on the President’s mind is the risk of inaction,” Psaki said.  “And if we do not act to get this legislation done and the components in it, not only will costs and prices go up for the American people, but also we will see a trajectory in economic growth that is not where we want it to be.” 

Manchin has been a focal point in talks within the Democratic Party as leaders pushed to get the $2 trillion package passed by this week.  The legislation includes plans to expand health care for older Americans, provide universal pre-kindergarten classes, authorize new funding to combat climate change and offer more financial support for low-income Americans. 

Manchin has expressed opposition to the amount of spending, and in a radio interview Monday he reiterated that in his view the bill included too much spending without enough restrictions on incomes or work requirements for recipients. 

Earlier Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate would vote “very early in the new year” on a revised version of the bill already approved by the House of Representatives. 

Manchin’s vote is essential for Democrats in the politically divided Senate as they try to pass one of the key elements of Biden’s legislative agenda.  None of the 50 Republicans in the 100-member chamber supports the plan. 

Democrats had hoped to push through the legislation on a 51-50 vote before Christmas, with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote.   

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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A centrist U.S. Democratic lawmaker, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said Sunday he is definitively opposed to President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion social safety net spending plan, likely dooming its passage without further sharp revisions in its scope and cost. 

Manchin’s vote was essential in the politically divided Senate for passage of one of the key elements of the Democratic president’s legislative agenda. None of the 50 Republicans in the 100-member chamber supports the plan to expand health care for older Americans, provide universal pre-kindergarten classes, authorize new funding to combat climate change and offer more financial support for low-income Americans. 

Democrats had hoped to push through the legislation on a 51-50 vote before Christmas, with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote. The House of Representatives has already approved a version of the bill. 

But Manchin, who discussed the measure at length last week with Biden, told the “Fox News Sunday” show, “If I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.” 

“I just can’t,” Manchin said. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a ‘no’ on this legislation.” 

The White House said the lawmaker last week offered a framework for a compromise on the legislation and “promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground.” 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that if Manchin’s comments “indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.” 

She rebuffed Manchin’s claims that the legislation would add to the surge in consumer prices in the United States, the highest in nearly four decades, or add to the country’s long-term debt, now more than $29 trillion, because the new spending would be paid for with higher taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals.

One of the key Senate architects of the legislation, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, reacted angrily to Manchin’s refusal to support fellow Democratic colleagues and vote for it. Sanders said Manchin “doesn’t have the guts” to take on special business interests who would be impacted most by the legislation.

Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union” show he wants the Senate to vote on the measure anyway, even if it is headed to defeat, to force Manchin to publicly account for his vote. 

“He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do with the people of West Virginia,” Sanders said. “Let him vote ‘no’ and explain it to the world.” 
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In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that’s small comfort to Ken Trzaska.

Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline.

“That first day,” Trzaska said, “I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened.”

Even if the United States isn’t currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the attack on Trzaska’s college was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.

The college’s ordeal reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces in stamping out the threat — and its uneven progress in doing so since ransomware became an urgent national security problem last spring.

Smaller-scale attacks continue

U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests. Spy agencies have launched attacks against ransomware groups and the U.S. has pushed federal, state and local governments, as well as private industries, to boost protections.

Yet six months after Biden’s admonitions to Putin, it’s hard to tell whether hackers have eased up because of U.S. pressure. Smaller-scale attacks continue, with ransomware criminals continuing to operate from Russia with seeming impunity. Administration officials have given conflicting assessments about whether Russia’s behavior has changed since last summer. Further complicating matters, ransomware is no longer at the top of the U.S.-Russia agenda, with Washington focused on dissuading Putin from invading Ukraine.

The White House said it was determined to “fight all ransomware” through its various tools but that the government’s response depends on the severity of the attack.

“There are some that are law enforcement matters and others that are high impact, disruptive ransomware activity posing a direct national security threat that require other measures,” the White House statement said.

Ransomware attacks — in which hackers lock up victims’ data and demand exorbitant sums to return it — surfaced as a national security emergency for the administration after a May attack on Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.

The attack prompted the company to halt operations, causing gas shortages for days, though it resumed service after paying more than $4 million in ransom. Soon after came an attack on meat processor JBS, which paid an $11 million ransom.

Biden met with Putin in June in Geneva, where he suggested critical infrastructure sectors should be “off limits” for ransomware and said the U.S. should know in six months to a year “whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.”

He reiterated the message in July, days after a major attack on a software company, Kaseya, that affected hundreds of businesses, and said he expected Russia to take action on cybercriminals when the U.S. provides enough information to do so.

Since then, there have been some notable attacks from groups believed to be based in Russia, including against Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Rifle Association, but none of the same consequence or impact of those from last spring or summer.

‘Whole-of government’ effort

One reason may be increased U.S. government scrutiny, or fear of it.

The Biden administration in September sanctioned a Russia-based virtual currency exchange that officials say helped ransomware gangs launder funds. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against a suspected Ukrainian ransomware operator who was arrested in Poland and has recovered millions of dollars in ransom payments. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, told The New York Times his agency has begun offensive operations against ransomware groups. The White House says that “whole-of-government” effort will continue.

“I think the ransomware folks, the ones conducting them, are stepping back like, ‘Hey, if we do that, that’s going to get the United States government coming after us offensively,'” Kevin Powers, security strategy adviser for cyber risk firm CyberSaint, said of attacks against critical infrastructure.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have shared a small number of names of suspected ransomware operators with Russian officials, who have said they have started investigating, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

It’s unclear what Russia will do with those names, though Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted the countries have been having a useful dialogue and said “a working mechanism has been established and is actually functioning.”

It’s also hard to measure the impact of individual arrests on the overall threat. Even as the suspected ransomware hacker awaits extradition to the U.S. following his arrest in Poland, another who was indicted by federal prosecutors was later reported by a British tabloid to be living comfortably in Russia and driving luxury cars.

Some are skeptical about attributing any drop-off in high-profile attacks to U.S. efforts.

“It could have just been a fluke,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. He said asking Russia to crack down on large-scale attacks won’t work because “it’s way too granular of a request to calibrate criminal activity they don’t even fully control.”

Top American officials have given conflicting answers about ransomware trends since Biden’s discussions with Putin. Some FBI and Justice Department officials say they’ve seen no change in Russian behavior. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said there’s been a discernible decrease in attacks but that it was too soon to say why.

It’s hard to quantify the number of attacks given the lack of baseline information and uneven reporting from victims, though the absence of disruptive incidents is an important marker for a White House trying to focus its attention on the most significant national security risks and catastrophic breaches.

Victims of ransomware attacks in the past few months have included hospitals, small businesses, colleges like Howard University — which briefly took many of its systems offline after discovering a September attack — and Virginia’s Legislature.

Not if, but when

The attack at Lewis & Clark, in Godfrey, Illinois, was discovered two days before Thanksgiving when the school’s IT director detected suspicious activity and proactively took systems offline, said Trzaska, the president.

A ransom note from hackers demanded a payment, though Trzaska declined to reveal the sum or identify the culprits. Though many attacks come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe, some originate elsewhere.

With vital education systems affected, including email and the school’s online learning platform, administrators canceled classes for days after the Thanksgiving break and communicated updates to students via social media and through a public alert system.

The college, which had backups on the majority of its servers, resumed operations this month.

The ordeal was daunting enough to inspire Trzaska and another college president who he says endured a similar experience to plan a cybersecurity panel.

“The stock quote from everyone,” Trzaska said, “is, ‘Not if it’s going to happen, but when it’s going to happen.’” 
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The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question.

The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden.

The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.

The presentations indicate the company also marketed systems meant to monitor prisons, like those in which China is currently believed to be holding an untold number of Uyghurs in the Western province of Xinjiang. The system tracked prisoners’ labor productivity, as well as their time spent in reeducation classes and data that might indicate the effectiveness of those classes.

Additionally, the materials appeared to market workplace surveillance tools, meant to monitor employees’ workplace performance and to spot workers who spend time resting or using personal electronics on the clock.

Huawei denial

In a statement provided to VOA, a Huawei spokesperson said, “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report.”

It continued, “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards. Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics. Privacy protection is our top priority and we require that all parts of our business comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate.”

The Post, in its article, noted the company’s official watermark appeared on the pages of the PowerPoint presentation, and that several included a page noting a “Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.” copyright.

Electronic security experts said the revelation of the PowerPoint presentations linking Huawei to state security wasn’t surprising, despite the company’s denials.

“Huawei has been closely linked to the security services from the start,” Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

Lewis said the warnings about the company have been coming from American officials since George W. Bush was president but had not been taken seriously until the past few years, when China became more aggressive about asserting itself on the world stage.

“What’s changed is the audience,” Lewis said. Between China’s and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s behavior, people are willing to hear now about the problems with Huawei in a way they weren’t before.”

Punishing sanctions

The United States has, for several years, been warning that Huawei represents a security risk to the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, U.S. officials say they believe the company has close ties to Chinese state security agencies and that its telecommunications products could be used to gather information on, or disrupt the activities of, China’s rivals.

Officials also point to a law in China that obligates private companies to cooperate with government agencies in the collection of data deemed important to state security.

In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. began aggressively moving against Huawei on a number of fronts.

The Trump administration fought against the company’s effort to market the networking equipment necessary to roll out 5G wireless technology. 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity and is expected to greatly enhance the ability of internet-connected devices to communicate, facilitating everything from self-driving vehicles to remote surgery.

The U.S. declared, among other things, it would cease sharing intelligence with allies who allow Huawei to supply critical pieces of their nations’ telecommunications infrastructure, arguing the company presented too much of a security risk.

As a result, a number of countries have barred the company’s technology from their 5G systems and others, including Britain, have begun the expensive process of removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.

Smartphone setback

Until recently, Huawei was one of the biggest sellers of smartphones in the world and enjoyed near-complete dominance in the Chinese market. Other sanctions levied against the company, however, have severely damaged that business.

The U.S. barred firms from licensing or selling the company technology critical to some of its products. That included Google, which in 2019 said it would no longer license its Android operating system — the world’s most popular — for use in new phones made by the company.

Intel and Qualcomm, two major makers of microchips, were banned from selling their most advanced technology to Huawei. The ban extended to contract chipmakers, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest.

The result has been a drastic decline in the sale of Huawei smartphones, both globally and within China.

“The core of their devices business was smartphones, and their market share has just continued to decline,” Ryan Reith, a vice president with International Data Corporation, told VOA.

Reith said the prospects for recovery do not look good for the company’s smartphone business.

“We don’t see any way that the brand itself turns around,” he said. “So, it’s probably on its way out.”
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Policymakers at the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, moved aggressively Wednesday to fight raging inflation in consumer prices for American shoppers and businesses. 

The policymakers announced they soon would end their stimulus to fight the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic and signaled they could increase their benchmark interest rate three times next year. 

With consumer prices surging at an annualized 6.8% pace in November, the biggest jump in nearly four decades, the Fed said it will move faster to wind down its vast asset purchase program by March, rather than the initial goal of mid-2022, that it had used to boost the world’s biggest economy from the ravages of the pandemic. 

The Fed, in a statement after a two-day policy meeting in Washington, said the bond purchases could be ended faster “in light of inflation developments and the further improvement in the labor market.” 

For the moment, the central bank kept its benchmark interest rate near zero, a widely watched standard that influences the interest rates that consumers pay to borrow money to buy such big-ticket items as cars, and businesses pay to expand their operations or buy machinery. 

But the central bank said as it ends its purchase of billions of dollars of bonds, it could then hike its benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point three times in 2022, to keep inflation from getting out of hand without causing other problems in the American economy. 

“Economic developments and changes in the outlook warrant this evolution of monetary policy,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters during a post-meeting news conference. “The economy has been making rapid progress toward maximum employment.” 

While only a small percentage of consumers need to buy a new or used car, everyone needs to eat, and most American adults drive a vehicle of some sort. So, they have been especially hit in recent months by sharply rising food prices and increasing prices for gasoline, although gas prices are now receding again as world crude oil prices drop. 

One recent poll showed that 80% of Americans think prices at grocery stores especially are too high.

Powell presaged Wednesday’s policy shift two weeks ago when he said the central bank needed to act to keep inflation in check. 

“Almost all forecasters do expect that inflation will be coming down meaningfully in the second half of next year,” Powell said. “But we can’t act as though we’re sure of that. We’re not at all sure of that.” 

The end-of-meeting Fed statement said, “Progress on vaccinations and an easing of supply constraints are expected to support continued gains in economic activity and employment as well as a reduction in inflation.” 

But it said, “Risks to the economic outlook remain, including from new variants of the virus.” 

 
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The U.S. Congress moved one step closer this week to making the United States the first country to ban the import of goods produced by Uyghur slave labor.

After more than a year of negotiations, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act passed the House of Representatives unanimously late Tuesday and is poised to move quickly through the Senate and to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Once it becomes law, the bill will ban all imports from China’s Xinjiang region into the United States unless companies can show the U.S. government “clear and convincing evidence” their supply chains have not used the labor of ethnic Muslims enslaved in Chinese camps.

Beijing describes the camps as “re-education” facilities aimed at combating terrorism.

Democratic Representative Jim McGovern and Republican Senator Marco Rubio reached a compromise agreement on bills they had each passed in their respective chambers over the past year. The White House said Tuesday it would work closely with Congress to implement the measure.

“We agree with Congress that action can and must be taken to hold the People’s Republic of China accountable for genocide and human rights abuses and to address forced labor in Xinjiang,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement ahead of House passage of the bill.

The renewed push to hold China accountable for rights abuses comes ahead of the February 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The U.S. declared Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs genocide earlier this year and announced a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics last week. Earlier this month, an independent tribunal found Chinese senior leadership holds “primary responsibility” for acts of genocide against the Uyghurs.

China condemned House passage of the bill early Wednesday, describing the U.S. as hypocritical for not addressing forced labor within its own borders.  

“China firmly opposes the interference by the U.S. Congress in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of Xinjiang-related issues. By cooking up lies and making troubles on such issues, some U.S. politicians are seeking to contain China and hold back China’s development through political manipulation and economic bullying in the name of human rights,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said in a press conference Wednesday.

Human rights groups praised the legislation and said it marked an important starting point for countries to address Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.  

“It’s a signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. is actually going to take action on this,” Peter Irwin, senior program officer for advocacy and communications at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told VOA.

“It can also set a template for other governments to pick this up and say we’re going to pass our own forced labor bill. For example, if the U.S. stops allowing in forced labor goods, then [Chinese] leaders shift their exports to Europe or to Canada. So having that template for other governments to pick up and actually pass these kinds of bills, that helps the U.S. — similar to the diplomatic boycott. The U.S. was first; other governments followed.”

The original 2020 Senate version of the bill, co-sponsored by Rubio and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, marked the first time a bill addressing Uyghur human rights was passed anywhere in the world.

U.S. companies Nike and Coca-Cola actively lobbied against earlier versions of the legislation. The Biden administration did come out in support of those versions, leading Rubio to claim the White House was holding back on his bill due to concerns from climate change envoy John Kerry. Irwin told VOA more than 40% of the world’s polysilicon supply comes from Xinjiang, a loss that would complicate the manufacture of solar cells and panels.

Rubio praised the compromise legislation in a statement Tuesday, saying, “The United States is so reliant on China that we have turned a blind eye to the slave labor that makes our clothes, our solar panels, and much more. That changes today. Our Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will require businesses importing goods into the United States to prove that their supply chains are not tainted with slave labor. It is time to end our economic addiction to China.”  

The legislation marks a rare point of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also praised the legislation, saying it marked an opportunity for the U.S. Congress to “continue to condemn and confront the CCP’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and in the region and hold it accountable. If America does not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, we lose all moral authority to speak out for human rights any place in the world,” Pelosi said in a statement ahead of the vote.

Lin Yang contributed to this report.
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In Lebanon, a desperate economic situation has led to a rise in illegal logging. Local authorities are in a bind as they try to protect both a valuable ecological heritage and their own vulnerable residents. Jacob Russell reports from northern Lebanon. Producer: Marcus Harton.
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China is financing the construction of four coal-fired power plants in southern Africa, despite its climate pledge in September to quit supporting such infrastructure overseas. But the new facilities taking shape in South Africa and Zimbabwe are just a few of Beijing’s massive investments in airports, railway lines and other national infrastructure on the African continent. 

Many countries have been eager for the investment, but mounting levels of debt over the past five years are raising doubts about the long-term prospects for more expensive infrastructure projects.

China committed to lending African countries $153 billion from 2000-2019, but that pace of lending may be slowing down. Chinese loan commitments dropped by 30% in 2019 when compared with the previous year, according to the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. The research looks at loan commitments which get “disbursed to borrowers as projects are implemented.”

In Zambia for example, Chinese financiers committed $10.3 billion in loans from 2000-2010.Since 2000, Zambia has only repaid some $1.2 billion to Chinese lenders. 

Uganda now owes China $200 million for its only international airport, fanning fears that China could seize it. Both countries have rejected speculation in African media outlets of a Chinese takeover.

Loan repayment measures

Neighboring Kenya had received a $4.5 billion loan to build a railway from Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa, and China indicates it will redo the terms after a committee of the African country’s parliament found that operating losses and debt to Chinese banks were straining taxpayers.

Some analysts have warned that opaque lending terms means China could eventually seize infrastructure should countries struggle to meet repayments

U.S. and British officials say, “debt traps,” where countries cannot raise enough money to repay China’s loans, are structured to give Beijing leverage over time. Last month, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Richard Moore, in an interview with BBC Radio 4 said Beijing can acquire “significant ports which have the potential to become naval facilities etcetera.”

Sri Lanka earlier this year passed legislation that critics say will give China control over a key deep-water port that Beijing financed.

But that has not happened so far in Africa, where Chinese diplomats reject seizures are a part of Beijing’s strategy.

“Not a single project in Africa has ever been “confiscated” by China because of failing to pay Chinese loans. On the contrary, China firmly supports and is willing to continue our efforts to improve Africa’s capacity for home-driven development,” stated the Chinese Embassy in Uganda. 

Instead of seizing assets, Beijing will likely extend deadlines for loan repayment or rework payback terms such as interest rates, analysts told VOA. Those measures would avert takeovers of the infrastructure itself and in turn preserve China’s reputation in Africa where trade and lending have bested its superpower rival in dollar terms.

China will probably “keep kicking the can down the road” until creditors find the means to settle the loans, Bulelani Jili, an African studies Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, told VOA.

To confiscate any assets, including minerals, would “confirm people’s initial biases of China as a neocolonial actor,” Jili said, and risk upsetting diplomatic ties with “some of the few friends that China has on the global stage.”

“From the China side, it’s about getting access to new possible markets and expanding both economic activity — also the diplomatic relation,” he said.

Chinese loan concerns

China encourages lending to Africa in search of high returns on investments and a global reputation as a supporter of poor countries, said Edward Miguel, Oxfam professor in Environmental Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. It is trying to “equal the U.S.” as a donor country, he said.

However, China differs from other international lenders and donors mainly for its relative lack of transparency that raises questions in Africa as well as in the West, Miguel believes.

Unlike loans from western governments or international lending bodies like the World Bank, which require labor and environmental safeguards on financed projects, China’s aid and loans to Africa have been described as “no strings attached,” which has been attractive for many countries.

 But African nations, especially with economies slipping because of the impacts of COVID-19, face increasing trouble paying back loans, said Hannah Ryder, senior associate with the Africa Program at the U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“China and other countries are becoming more sophisticated in bargaining with one another,” wrote Deborah Brautigam of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School’s Meg Rithmire in a joint article. 

Residents in Dakar, Senegal, where the 500-person Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting took place on November 29-30, want more Chinese-funded infrastructure but without debt levels like those of the 1990s, Ryder noted.

Chinese creditors are expected to lend less money to Africa going forward and more carefully analyze the projects those loans support, experts say. Loans have already “sobered down” [tapered off] from a peak in 2014, Jili said.

Commitments for loans and other investments made at the China-Africa Cooperation meeting came to $40 billion, one-third less than the $60 billion made at the same conference in 2018.

Lenders may calibrate loans based on predictions of a post-pandemic future when African countries have more cash, said Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington. Another option, she said, is to ensure Chinese equity from future projects as repayment for older loans, she said in a VOA interview.

“It’s politically risky, because although it’s not an equity-asset swap, it smells a lot like some sort of swap, and [that] China is exploiting Africa’s weak position, so I don’t think it will happen in the immediate future and in fact this debt restructuring is also taking quite a while,” Sun said.

China is becoming more confident all the while in setting up international public-private partnerships, though many African countries still worry about a repeat of the debt crisis in the 1980s and 1990s when nations could not pay off debt, Ryder says in an African Business commentary. International organizations ultimately wrote off that wave of unaffordable debt with conditions including opening “their economies to international trade, liberalize their currencies and drastically cut costs in exchange for loans,” wrote Peter Fabricius in the Institute for Security Studies.

Fast forward to the present, with loans from China, African countries, Miguel said, often end up asking “what did we agree to do” and “how much do we owe” China.

 
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Nigeria has been recording massive growth in its information technology sector, but only one-fifth of IT workers are women, according to government figures. Aid groups are trying to help women and girls enter the IT world by teaching them about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja. Camera: Emeka Gibson.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday unveiled a White House plan to build 500,000 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, part of President Joe Biden’s goal of making the vehicles more accessible for both local and long-distance trips. 

Harris made the announcement during a ceremony at an EV charging facility in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, Washington.

“There can be no doubt: The future of transportation in our nation and around the world, is electric,” Harris said, adding that the nation’s ability to manufacture, charge and repair electric vehicles will help determine the health of U.S. communities, the strength of the nation’s economy and the sustainability of the planet. 

The EV Charging Plan takes $5 billion from the infrastructure law signed last month and allocates it to states to build a nationwide network of charging stations. The law also provides an additional $2.5 billion for local grants to support charging stations in rural areas and in disadvantaged communities. 

In a statement, the White House also announced it will establish on Tuesday a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, leveraging the resources from each of the departments to implement the EV charging network and other electrification provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

The White House says the goal of the plan is to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles for consumers and commercial fleets. They network as planned would reduce emissions and help meet the goal of net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.

Biden has established another ambitious goal of having electric vehicles account for 50% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030. Last year, industry experts said sales of fully electric vehicles accounted for about 2% of vehicles sold in the U.S. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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South Korea says it will formally apply to join a regional free trade agreement in an effort to boost trade and expand its presence in the global economy.

Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said Monday that Seoul has begun the process to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It was formed in 2018 as a successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated during the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama in an effort to blunt China’s growing economic clout in the region. His successor, Donald Trump, withdrew the U.S. from the TPP shortly after taking office in 2017.

Signatories to the CPTPP include Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore.

South Korea’s change of heart comes three months after Beijing applied to join the 11-nation regional trade pact, with Taiwan following suit just days later. Seoul is also planning to join the 15-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECEP), a Beijing-led free trade agreement that includes Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines. 

South Korea has been reluctant to join multi-nation free trade agreements because of opposition by the country’s agricultural sector due to fear of foreign competition. 
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More U.S. drivers could find themselves stuck on snowy highways or have their travel delayed this winter due to a shortage of snowplow drivers — a reality that could hit home Friday as winter storms start dumping snow from the Intermountain West to the Upper Great Lakes.

States from Washington to Pennsylvania, including Montana and Wyoming in the Rocky Mountains, are having trouble finding enough people willing to take the comparatively low-paying jobs that require a Commercial Driver’s License and often entail working at odd hours in dangerous conditions.

“We want the traveling public to understand why it could take longer this season to clear highways during winter storms,” said Jon Swartz, the maintenance administrator for the Montana Department of Transportation, which is short about 90 drivers. “Knowing this helps motorists to plan ahead and adjust or even delay travel plans.”

The labor shortage and lingering concerns about the pandemic have left employers scrambling to find enough school bus drivers, waiters, cooks and even teachers. The shortage comes as the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in 52 years and some are seeking a better work-life balance.

Several states are either already feeling the crunch or could be soon: Heavy snow is predicted in the coming days in large swaths of the country, including Utah and Colorado, where more than a foot (30 centimeters) is forecast in higher elevations. Over a half a foot could drop in parts of Nebraska and Iowa. Parts of Nevada and New Mexico also expect winter storms.

State transportation departments say there are several reasons for a lack of snowplow drivers: the record low unemployment rate, an aging workforce and an increased demand for diesel mechanics and CDL drivers in other industries. Private companies can also be more nimble — raising salaries and offering bonuses to drivers — than state agencies, which usually have to get legislative approval to change salaries.

“Everyone’s sort of competing for the same group of workers and private companies can often offer higher salaries than the state government,” said Barbara LaBoe, spokesperson for Washington state’s Department of Transportation.

Along with the competitive market, LaBoe said Washington also lost 151 winter operations workers who did not want to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

One of the main competitors for states seeking workers with a Commercial Driver’s License are private trucking companies that have been raising driver pay, in some cases several times this year, to fill their own shortages and meet the increasing demand to move freight and clear supply chain bottlenecks.

The American Trucking Associations estimates there will be a record shortage of just over 80,000 drivers this year, and that doesn’t include the shortfall in drivers for school buses, public transportation or snowplows.

The ATA says the shortage has many roots, including many drivers nearing retirement age, the pandemic causing some to leave the industry and training schools churning out fewer new drivers in 2020. Others may leave the industry because they don’t like being away from home while an increase in the number of states legalizing marijuana leads to more drivers being unable to pass a drug test, the ATA says.

Some states are willing to hire snowplow drivers and pay for their CDL training, but it’s not likely those hires will be ready to work this winter, officials said.

Some snowplow drivers work year-round in highway maintenance jobs, while seasonal workers are hired to fill the additional shifts in the winter.

The shortage is leading states to make plans to shift mechanics and other full-time employees who have Commercial Driver’s Licenses into plows, which can cause problems if a plow needs maintenance work and the mechanic is out driving.

Wyoming has priorities for which roads will be plowed first and for how many hours per day plows will operate on each roadway. Interstate 80, the major east-west corridor across the southern part of the state, can be plowed around the clock while plowing stops on other roads, such as Interstates 90 and 25, between midnight at 4 a.m. Those guidelines may come into play more this year, said Luke Reiner, director of Wyoming’s Department of Transportation.

In Washington, LaBoe said some roads and mountain passes will be closed longer than usual during and after significant storms and some roads may not receive the same level of service.

Brief or isolated storms won’t cause problems in most states, in part because departments can move drivers and equipment around based on the weather forecast.

“If we have a series of storms over several days or if it hits the whole state at once, (the shortage) is going to become more evident because we don’t have as deep a bench,” LaBoe said.

Washington is still short about 150 seasonal and full-time workers, but things have improved since October when it was short 300 workers.

Even if states are able to hire drivers with commercial licenses, they still have to train them to run a snowplow and load the truck with salt and sand before learning a route.

“When you’re plowing the road you need to know where the bridge abutment is and where the expansion joints are so you don’t hook that with a plow,” LaBoe said.

Pennsylvania is short 270 permanent positions and 560 temporary ones, but the Department of Transportation said that doesn’t mean the roads will be treacherous this winter.

“Our goal is to keep roads safe and passable rather than completely free of ice and snow,” said Alexis Campbell, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The roads will be cleared once the snow stops, she said.

Ease of travel is important to businesses. Capitol Courier has contracts with deadlines to deliver electronic replacement parts from their warehouse in Helena, Montana, to about 30 businesses around the state as soon as they call.

“The roads are critical to what we do,” said Shawn White Wolf, co-manager of Capitol Courier.

Snowplow drivers are devoted to their jobs, understanding their work is critical to the safety of the traveling public and to emergency responders, said Rick Nelson director of the winter maintenance technical service program for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Still, he understands that convincing newcomers “to be out there in the worst conditions” can be difficult.

Nelson said the shortage means states will be shifting resources when they can and making sure roads are clear during times of peak demand while “you try to recruit, get out there and beat the bushes and convince folks that jumping in a plow in the middle of the night at Christmastime is a good career choice.”
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The price of U.S. consumer goods, such as food, fuel and rent, rose at the fastest pace since 1982 in November, according to a Department of Labor report Friday.

The 6.8% increase was the highest since June of 1982. The November rate follows a 6.2% increase in October.

Even with more volatile items such as food and energy stripped out, core inflation was up 4.9%, the biggest increase since 1991.

Energy prices in the United States surged by 3.5% in November and are up more than 33% for the year. Gasoline, for example, is 58% higher than it was a year ago.

The price of food has risen by 6.1% over the past year, and the price of used cars and trucks is up 31% for the year.

The steep surge in the cost of everyday goods has hurt lower income workers the most and is negating wage gains seen as employers try to lure Americans back into the workforce with higher wages.

The Biden administration blames COVID-19 pandemic-related economic disruptions for the inflation surge, while Republicans say price increases are being caused by massive government spending in response to the pandemic.

Inflation threatens Biden’s signature “Build Back Better” $1.7 trillion spending bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives and is being considered by the Senate.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin this week warned against flooding the market with more money while speaking at a CEO summit sponsored by The Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Many economists think persistent inflation could also influence the U.S. central bank’s future actions. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell once called inflation “transitory,” but two weeks ago signaled the Fed may have to act quickly to raise interest rates to restrain rising costs.

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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The U.S. Senate took a step toward raising the federal government’s $28.9 trillion debt limit on Thursday when it voted to limit debate on the first of two necessary measures, as the Treasury Department urged action by next week. 

Fourteen Republican senators joined the Senate’s 48 Democrats and two independents in voting to advance the first of two bills needed to increase the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority under a deal crafted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. 

The Senate voted 64-36 to clear the way for passage of the bill setting up the fast-track procedure. 

The chamber could vote on the bill itself, which sets the fast-track rules to raise the debt limit, as early as Friday. If that bill passes, both chambers of Congress would need to vote next week on a second bill actually raising the debt limit. 

President Joe Biden is expected to sign both bills into law once they pass. 

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved this first bill to sidestep the Senate’s “filibuster ” rule and ultimately raise federal borrowing authority by a simple majority vote. 

“I’m optimistic that after today’s vote we will be on a glide-path to avoid a catastrophic default,” Schumer said in a speech to the Senate. 

The Schumer-McConnell deal on the debt ceiling is contained in legislation that would avoid funding cuts for Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly, which has wide bipartisan support. 

The deal comes just two months after Congress agreed on a short-term lift to the debt ceiling, to avert an unprecedented default by the federal government on its obligations, which would have catastrophic implications for the world economy. 

Republicans have been trying to withhold their votes for more borrowing authority, contending the increase would smooth the way for passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better” domestic investment bill, which they oppose. 

Democrats note that the legislation is needed to finance debt largely incurred during Donald Trump’s administration, when Republicans willingly jacked up Washington’s credit card bill by about $7.85 trillion, partly through sweeping tax cuts and spending to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But most Senate Republicans, looking to score political points by blaming Democrats for spending, opposed the deal. Republicans contend that “irresponsible,” “socialist” spending pushed by Biden is fueling the need for the debt limit increase. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged Congress to act by Dec. 15, and the Bipartisan Policy Center think thank warned last week that the government could risk default by late this month if Congress does not act. 

Democrats noted that they had voted in the past to authorize debt ceiling hikes to cover Republican measures, such as the Trump tax cuts. 

The draft bill still must plug in a dollar amount for the new statutory debt limit, which likely is being calibrated to give the government enough borrowing authority to extend beyond next November’s congressional elections. 

“Every single Senate Democrat will have to put their name to the gigantic dollar amount of debt they’re prepared to pile on the American people,” McConnell said in a speech on Wednesday.
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The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plunged last week to the lowest level in 52 years, more evidence that the U.S. job market is recovering from last year’s coronavirus recession.

Unemployment claims dropped by 43,000 to 184,000 last week, the lowest since September 1969, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week moving average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell to below 219,000, lowest since the pandemic hit the United States hard in March 2020.

Overall, just under 2 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits the week that ended Nov. 27.

Weekly claims, which are a proxy for layoffs, have fallen steadily most of the year since topping 900,000 one week in early January. They are now below to the 220,000-a-week level typical before the coronavirus pandemic slammed the U.S. economy in March 2020; COVID-19 forced consumers to stay home as health precaution and businesses to close or reduce hours and to lay off staff. In March and April last year, employers shed a staggering 22.4 million jobs.

Massive government aid and the rollout of vaccines helped revive the economy and the job market by giving Americans the confidence and financial wherewithal to go on a shopping spree, often online, for goods such as lawn furniture and coffee makers. Since April last year, the United States has regained nearly 18.5 million jobs. But the economy is still 3.9 million jobs short of where it stood in February 2020 and the prospects for the economy remain vulnerable to COVID variants such as omicron.

The Labor Department reported last week that employers added a disappointing 210,000 jobs last month. But the report also showed that the unemployment rate dropped to a pandemic low of 4.2% from 4.6% in October.  

And the department reported Wednesday that employers posted a near-record 11 million job openings in October. It also said that 4.2 million people quit their jobs — just off the September record of 4.4 million — a sign that they are confident enough in their prospects to look for something better.

Until Sept. 6, the federal government had supplemented state unemployment insurance programs by paying an extra payment of $300 a week and extending benefits to gig workers and to those who were out of work for six months or more. Including the federal programs, the number of Americans receiving some form of jobless aid peaked at more than 33 million in June 2020.
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India has posted the fastest pace of growth among major economies, raising hopes of a revival in its pandemic-hit economy. But fears of the omicron variant have triggered concerns of whether the pace can be sustained even as economists warn that unemployment levels are still high in a country where millions lost jobs during the pandemic. 

India’s gross domestic product grew 8.4% from July to September this year compared to the same period last year, according to a government report.

While economies worldwide were hit hard due to the pandemic, India slipped into its worst recession in four decades last year with its economy shrinking by 7.3% after the Indian government imposed one of the toughest lockdowns in the world.

But there has been a significant turnaround in recent months with growth returning to levels before the pandemic, according to officials. “Data clearly shows that corporate income and profit are above the pre-pandemic level,” K.V. Subramanian, chief economist at the Finance Ministry said as he released the latest economic data. 

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has forecast growth of 9.5% for India in 2021 — if the growth stays on track, it would be fastest among major economies in the world, surpassing its projections of about 8% for China. 

“What happens in India has a big impact, both in the region and in the world,” Luis Breuer, the IMF’s senior resident representative to India, said last month. “You’re talking about a large slice of humanity and the global economy.”

Normalcy returning 

Experts say the opening of the economy as the pandemic waned after a deadly second wave in April and May and significant progress in the country’s vaccination program have helped the revival.

India has lifted all restrictions in recent months as cases decline to their lowest in a year and a half — the country has been reporting less than 10,000 new infections a day in recent weeks. 

After spending a year indoors, people keen to get a sense of normalcy have crowded markets, hotels are booked as vacationers head out for holidays and streets in mega cities like Delhi and Mumbai are choked with traffic. That is helping a country whose economy is driven largely by millions of middle-class consumers. 

India’s recent festive season saw shops and malls do brisk business. “We did no business at all for nearly a year, but customers have started ordering clothes from us since August this year,” Geeta Mehra, a boutique clothes retailer, told VOA. “Weddings that had been on hold for the last year and a half are now taking place which has resulted in good sales for us.”

However, she is cautious about increasing stocks and employing more people as fears of the new Omicron variant raise fresh concerns about the pandemic. India is now among nearly 30 countries where it has been found. Health authorities had reported 23 cases by Tuesday. 

Uneven recovery 

Some businesses, however, have still to recover. “Our business is only 20% of the pre-pandemic levels,” said Sanjay Kapur, a stationery retailer since the last 22 years. “Stationery requirement has become minimal as offices and schools are still closed and most work is done online. We can only wait and watch.

The threat of the Omicron variant looms large over people like Kapur — they worry it may keep offices and schools shut for longer than expected. And although the government has said it is not imposing any additional restrictions, curbs on international travel have been imposed. 

Experts have described the recovery as uneven and fractured. 

“The organized sector is looking up whereas the unorganized sector is not doing so well. Even within the organized sector some economic activities are performing better than others,” said Santosh Mehrotra, professor and chairperson of the Centre for Informal Sector and Labor Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He points out that while sectors like manufacturing and technology have recovered, hospitality and retail that are among the biggest job creators, are still struggling. 

Chavi Kasaudhan got a job at a retail store at Delhi airport recently. “I was lucky to get a break but many of those who did a six-month course in hospitality and retail with me are still waiting,” the 20-year-old said. 

While jobs have been returning, millions are still struggling to find work, especially in the country’s vast informal sector that includes farm workers, street vendors, laborers, and rickshaw pullers. 

Economists say official numbers do not reflect how this sector, where an estimated 90% of people work, is faring.

“What is not being captured by data is the fact that unemployment levels are very high,” Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Mehrotra said. Mehrotra estimates that the pandemic has added an additional 15 million to the number of poor people in the country, which represents a reversal of gains made in recent decades in alleviating poverty. 

Still, there is optimism that Asia’s third largest economy is turning a corner, and the stress of the pandemic could be subsiding.

Suhasini Sood contributed to this story.
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Lebanon’s dire economic crisis is threatening to cancel Christmas for many people. The Lebanese currency has lost more than 93 percent of its value against the dollar over the past two years and soaring inflation is making it difficult for ordinary people to buy food and medicine, let alone Christmas trees and gifts.

With Christmas trees now costing between $80 to $120 dollars, almost double a Lebanese worker’s monthly salary, some are resorting to telling their children that Santa Claus is sick this year and won’t be able to bring them presents simply because parents are unable to buy the gifts. Most are struggling just to purchase food and medicine.

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, reports that 77 percent of Lebanese families say they lack sufficient food and 60 percent of them only buy food by running up unpaid bills or borrowing money.

Political analyst Dania Koleilat Khatib, with the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, said to VOA, “…although you may see some people shopping and think things are well, that’s not the situation for most Lebanese.”

“People who live from paycheck to paycheck, they are suffering big time. These people will not see Santa, will not see Christmas, will not see anything. You get shocked when you go to restaurants. The people in restaurants, they represent how much of the Lebanese society? They’re not 1 or 2 percent. The majority are very poor,” said Khatib.

But in the upscale northern seaside resort of Batroun, it’s hard to see Lebanon’s financial woes. It has just opened its first Christmas market which organizer Francois Baraket said he hopes will rival those in Europe in years to come. It has drawn Lebanese with money to spend, he told Dubai’s The National newspaper.

Dania Koleilat Khatib said those Lebanese who have money now receive help with hard currency from family abroad or are those who work with international agencies. Others may have been lucky enough to withdraw U.S. currency from the bank before the government froze dollar accounts. Christmas will also witness a number of Lebanese expats return home to celebrate with family.

“At Christmas you will see celebration because a lot of people are coming from outside. But that doesn’t mean that people are better off. This is always the issue with Lebanon because you have a lot of expats coming in and out. If we didn’t have this influx of hard currency from outside into Lebanon, people would be ‘dog eat dog.’ It would be much worse,” said Khatib.

The U.N’s World Food Program estimates that poverty in Lebanon has almost doubled this past March, affecting three million people compared with 1.7 million in 2020.
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