Year: 2018

There is no sign that the United States is distancing itself from the World Trade Organization, and negotiations are underway to avert a global trade war, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a series of tariff-raising moves, upsetting allies and rivals alike. Trump is also vetoing the appointment of WTO judges, causing a backlog in disputes and threatening to paralyze what is effectively the supreme court of trade. Some trade experts have begun asking whether Trump wants to kill the WTO, whose 164 members force each other to play by the rules. "I have absolutely no indication that the United Sates is walking away from the WTO. Zero indication," Azevedo said in an interview on the BBC Hardtalk program,…

U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned against economic agreements he considered unfair to America has his first trade deal. The United States and South Korea have agreed to revise their sweeping six-year-old trade pact which was completed during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. The agreement “will significantly strengthen the economic and national security relationships between the United States and South Korea,” according to a senior administration official in Washington. Trump had threatened to scrap the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), calling it “horrible.” But officials of his administration on Tuesday confirmed key aspects of the agreement which officials in Seoul had announced the previous day. “When this is finalized it will be the first successful renegotiation of a trade agreement in U.S. history,” according to a senior…

For this ancient town on the southern edge of the Sahara, the flow of desperate migrants trying to reach Europe used to be a boon, not a burden. Abdoul Ahmed, a 31-year-old mechanic in Agadez, measured the good years in customers. When arrivals in Europe peaked in 2015, dozens of cars came to his workshop each day to get their tires changed before setting off across the desert. But since the European Union cracked down on migration a year later, his daily clientele has dropped to one or two. That earns him about $4, to be shared with five skinny teenage apprentices. "Times are bad. There's no activity," he said, sitting along one of the few paved roads in Agadez, a mud-brick town where beat-up motorcycles outnumber cars. For years,…

A growing American economy and passage of a Republican tax overhaul appear to be helping President Donald Trump lift his approval ratings from historic lows, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump remains unpopular with the majority of Americans, 58 percent. But 42 percent say they now approve of the job he's doing as president, up seven points from a month ago. That's a welcome change in trajectory for a White House that has been battered by chaos, controversies and internal upheaval. The poll suggests that at least some of the president's improving standing is tied to the economy, which has steadily grown and added jobs, continuing a trajectory that began under President Barack Obama. Nearly half of Americans surveyed — 47…

Uber Technologies has agreed to sell its Southeast Asian business to bigger regional rival Grab, the ride-hailing firms said on Monday, marking the U.S. company's second retreat from an Asian market. The industry's first big consolidation in Southeast Asia, home to about 640 million people, puts pressure on Indonesia's Go-Jek, which is backed by Alphabet's Google and China's Tencent Holdings Ltd. A shake-up in Asia's fiercely competitive ride-hailing industry became likely earlier this year when Japan-based SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund made a multibillion-dollar investment in Uber. SoftBank owns stakes in most major global ride services companies, and executives have indicated they favored consolidation. SoftBank already had investments in Grab and India's Ola, and Vision Fund Chief Executive Rajeev Misra had urged Uber to focus less on Asia and more…

White House officials are looking into whether $500 million in loans that went to Trump administration senior adviser Jared Kushner's family real estate company may have spurred ethics or criminal law violations, according to the head of the federal government's ethics agency. David J. Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter sent late last week to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi that the White House Counsel's office told him that officials were probing the loans to Kushner Cos. and whether "additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future.'' Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, had asked Apol on March 1 about a New York Times report in February that Kushner Cos. accepted $184 million in loans from Apollo Global Management and $325 million from Citigroup last…

Indonesia's strict crackdown on illegal foreign fishing boats is paying off, according to new research. Kicking out interlopers has relieved pressure on the country's overtaxed fisheries at no cost to its domestic industry, the study says, and may point the way for other countries to make their fisheries more sustainable. About a third of the world's commercial fish populations are overfished, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.  One study estimated that restoring depleted fisheries would ultimately generate $53 billion in additional annual profits.  But reducing overfishing usually means putting unpopular restrictions on local fishers to allow populations to recover. "Telling fishers to stop fishing for a few months or years would be something that's not that realistic," said study lead author Ren Cabral at the University of California,…

A delegation of Indian CEOs visiting Myanmar and the launch of a new India-Myanmar business chamber in Yangon have sought to inject life into stagnant economic ties between the two neighboring countries. Since 2011, when the military junta launched political and economic reforms, Myanmar’s future prosperity has been predicated on its strategic location between India and China, two giant economies and population centers. Yet, while China has poured billions into mega infrastructure and energy projects and continues to dominate trade with Myanmar, flagship Indian infrastructure projects in western Myanmar have run behind schedule and over budget. Bilateral trade — topped by beans and pulses from Myanmar and sugar and medicines from India — has hovered around the $2 billion mark since 2011, less than a fifth of the trade volume…

U.S. stocks surged Monday as fears eased about the possibility of an all-out trade war with China over competing tariff increases. The closely watched Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 key stocks jumped by more than 1.5 percentage point in New York in early-day trading and other indexes were also advancing sharply. Earlier, Asian stocks were mixed, while European indexes edged down for the day. Global markets plummeted last week after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs on $60 billion worth of Chinese imports in an effort to trim $100 billion off the $375 billion trade deficit the U.S. recorded last year with China. Beijing immediately vowed to retaliate with higher import duties on U.S. goods. But there were signs Monday of easing of tensions between the world's two biggest…

A senior Chinese official is warning that a trade war would hurt all sides and set off a "greater conflict." "A trade war serves the interests of none. It will only lead to serious consequences and negative impact," Vice Premier Han Zheng said at a development forum in Beijing Sunday. "We believe trade protectionism, against the trend, will lead to nowhere." Han did not mention the United States or President Donald Trump by name, whose announcement of stiff tariffs on imported Chinese steel and aluminum was answered with tariffs and duties on a list of U.S. imports. Han appealed to all global trading partners to "cooperate with each other like passengers in the same boat ... make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all." Fears of a…

In Russia’s far north, the city of Vorkuta is slowly being reclaimed by the Arctic tundra. Its population has plummeted as the local coal mines have closed, and the very future of the city is in doubt. As Henry Ridgwell reports for VOA, Vorkuta’s fate reflects a wider population crisis across Russia’s far north as old Soviet industries have crumbled. ...

Tourist numbers in Indonesia swelled last year on the back of overseas advertising and infrastructure development. President Joko Widodo has said he wants to "create 10 tourist destinations like the island of Bali.” But the pleasing economic numbers also come with a social and environmental cost as rampant development threatens ecosystems and traditional livelihoods. Jack Hewson has this report. ...

German business leaders are expressing concerns that President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel could affect the auto industry in the South.   WABE Radio reports Mercedes-Benz USA this month opened its new North American headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, for 1,000 employees. The luxury car manufacturer is owned by Germany-based Daimler, but Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Dietmar Exler used the grand opening to remind the crowd of the brand’s U.S. presence. German automakers in US  That includes operations in South Carolina and in Alabama.   “We are now in the midst of construction of our own factory here, which will open doors in the fall in Charleston, South Carolina, and we’ll make all of the Sprinter vans for North America right here,” Exler said at the grand opening…

The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported. The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday. The deepening rift has sent a chill through financial markets and the corporate world as investors predicted dire consequences for the global economy should trade barriers start going up. Several U.S. chief executives attending a high-profile forum in Beijing on Saturday, including BlackRock Inc's Larry Fink and Apple Inc's Tim Cook, urged…