Author: Busman

The Trump administration is considering payments of $2 per bushel for soybeans, 63 cents per bushel for wheat and 4 cents per bushel for corn as part of a package of up to $20 billion to offset U.S. farmers' losses from the trade war with China, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Caitlin Eannello, spokeswoman for the National Association of Wheat Growers, said that 63 cents per bushel for wheat is the number the organization has been hearing for the next round of U.S. trade aid. "That is the number that we've been hearing, she told Reuters. Those payments would exceed the rates paid last year to farmers in a similar aid package. President Donald Trump earlier this month directed the Department of Agriculture to work on a new aid plan for…

The Portuguese economy is resisting the prevailing gloom in Europe. Activity remained strong, with GDP rising by 0.5% in the first quarter, or 1.8% at an annual rate, compared with 1.2% in the euro zone, forecasts Brussels. Following the trend of 2018, Portugal's good economic health comes mainly from private consumption fueled by rising wages and employment dynamics. The preliminary data, says the national statistics institute, "reflect a significant acceleration in investment." The government deficit has fallen from 7.2% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP since 2014, and the unemployment rate from a peak of 17.9% in early 2013, to about 6% currently. "The tourism sector has been the largest driver of the export recovery in Portugal," Ben Westmore, the head of the Portugal desk in the Economics Department of the…

More than 170 American shoe manufacturers and retailers, including such well-known athletic shoe brands as Nike, Under Armour and Adidas, urged President Donald Trump on Tuesday to exempt footwear from any further tariffs he imposes on imported goods from China. The lobby for the shoe industry, the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, told Trump in a letter that his proposed 25 percent tariff on shoes imported from China "would be catastrophic for our consumers, our companies and the American economy as a whole." The industry imported $11.4 billion worth of shoes from China last year, although some manufacturers have been shifting production elsewhere, especially to Vietnam and Cambodia. It said the proposed tariffs on shoes made in China could cost U.S. consumers more than $7 billion annually on top…

Trump administration sanctions against Huawei have begun to bite even though their dimensions remain unclear. U.S. companies that supply the Chinese tech powerhouse with computer chips saw their stock prices slump Monday, and Huawei faces decimated smartphone sales with the anticipated loss of Google's popular software and services.  The U.S. move escalates trade-war tensions with Beijing, but also risks making China more self-sufficient over time. Here's a look at what's behind the dispute and what it means. What's this about? Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department said it would place Huawei on the so-called Entity List, effectively barring U.S. firms from selling it technology without government approval.  Google said it would continue to support existing Huawei smartphones but future devices will not have its flagship apps and services, including maps,…

The U.S.-China trade war has not spared European companies in China. More than one-third of them are feeling a direct impact on their businesses and fear the situation will worsen in the coming weeks. “They [European companies] are feeling more anxious than they felt last year, rising tensions such as the trade tensions that we are facing currently that don’t seem to be on the point of being sorted out quickly,” European Chamber Vice President Charlotte Roule told VOA. The trade conflict has come on top of several other problems faced by European companies in China. “Macroeconomic challenges such as the Chinese economic slowdown and global economic slowdown are worrying them,” Roule said. In a survey conducted last January and released Monday, the European Chamber of Commerce in China reported…

Ford plans to cut 7,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global workforce, as part of a reorganization as it revamps its vehicle offerings, the company said Monday. The reorganization will involve some layoffs and reassignments and should be complete by the end of August, a Ford spokeswoman said. Ford has been phasing out most sedan models in the United States as more consumers have opted for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. The move, which began last year, will lead to 800 layoffs in North America in total, including about 500 this week, said Ford spokeswoman Marisa Bradley. The company has yet to determine the specifics in other regions, she said. "As we have said, Ford is undergoing an organizational redesign process helping us create a more dynamic, agile…

Vietnam and Europe could be swapping more pomelo fruit and Portuguese cheese soon if a new trade deal comes into effect, linking two regions that have been looking for an alternative to the trade tensions brought on by the United States. The European Parliament is scheduled to discuss the trade deal on May 28, after years of negotiations between Vietnam and the European Union. The deal is significant not only because it facilitates exports, like tropical fruit, but also as it lays out commitments on human rights, labor unions, and protection of the environment. Critics, though, say the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement would not really enforce human rights standards and would continue the offshoring of jobs that has left workers vulnerable. For the EU, the deal is one more way…

Huawei Technologies' founder and chief executive said Saturday that the growth of the Chinese tech giant "may slow, but only slightly," because of recent U.S. restrictions.     In remarks to the Japanese press and reported by Nikkei Asian Review, Ren Zhengfei reiterated that the Chinese telecom equipment maker had not violated any law.  "It is expected that Huawei's growth may slow, but only slightly," Ren said in his first official comments after the U.S. restrictions, adding that the company's annual revenue growth might undershoot 20%.     On Thursday, Washington put Huawei, one of China's biggest and most successful companies, on a trade blacklist that could make it extremely difficult for Huawei to do business with U.S. companies. China slammed the decision, saying it would take steps to protect its companies.  Trade, security issues   The developments surrounding…

Senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday that recent U.S. words and actions had harmed the interests of China and its enterprises, and that Washington should show restraint, China's Foreign Ministry said.    Speaking to Pompeo by telephone, Wang said the United States should not go "too far" in the current trade dispute between the two sides, adding that China was still willing to resolve differences through negotiations but that the nations should be on an equal footing.    On Iran, Wang said China hoped all parties would exercise restraint and act with caution to avoid escalating tensions. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that Pompeo spoke with Wang and discussed bilateral issues and U.S. concerns about Iran, but she gave no other details.   …

U.S. diplomats warned Saturday that commercial airliners flying over the wider Persian Gulf faced a risk of being "misidentified" amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The warning relayed by U.S. diplomatic posts from the Federal Aviation Administration underlined the risks the current tensions pose to a region crucial to global air travel. It also came as Lloyd's of London warned of increasing risks to maritime shipping in the region.   Concerns about a possible conflict have flared since the White House ordered warships and bombers to the region to counter an alleged, unexplained threat from Iran that has seen America order nonessential diplomatic staff out of Iraq. President Donald Trump since has sought to soften his tone.   Meanwhile, authorities allege that a sabotage operation targeted four oil…

The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it may soon scale back restrictions on Huawei Technologies after this week’s blacklisting would have made it nearly impossible for the Chinese company to service its existing customers. The Commerce Department, which had effectively halted Huawei’s ability to buy American-made parts and components, is considering issuing a temporary general license to “prevent the interruption of existing network operations and equipment,” a spokeswoman said. Potential beneficiaries of the license could, for example, include internet access and mobile phone service providers in thinly populated places such as Wyoming and eastern Oregon that purchased network equipment from Huawei in recent years. Temporary license In effect, the Commerce Department would allow Huawei to purchase U.S. goods so it can help existing customers maintain the reliability of networks and…

Bogged down in a sprawling trade dispute with U.S. rival China, President Donald Trump took steps Friday to ease tensions with America's allies: lifting import taxes on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum and delaying auto tariffs that would have hurt Japan and Europe.    By removing the metals tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump cleared a key roadblock to a North American trade pact his team negotiated last year. As part of Friday's arrangement, the Canadians and Mexicans agreed to scrap retaliatory tariffs they had imposed on U.S. goods, according to four sources in the U.S. and Canada who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement.    In a joint statement, the U.S. and Canada said they would work to prevent cheap imports of steel and aluminum…

The United States must show sincerity if it is to hold meaningful trade talks, China said on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically raised the stakes with a potentially devastating blow to Chinese tech giant Huawei. China has yet to say whether or how it will retaliate against the latest escalation in trade tension, although state media has taken an increasingly strident tone, with the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily publishing a front-page commentary that evoked the patriotic spirit of past wars. China's currency slid to its weakest in almost five months, although losses were capped after sources told Reuters that the central bank would ensure the yuan did not weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level in the immediate term. The world's two largest economies are locked in an…

A record number of 8.34 million university graduates are set to enter the Chinese job market this summer amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. Observers say that as China’s export-dependent economy braces for more hits from tariff hikes, which U.S. President Donald Trump recently imposed, the country’s job markets will be tighter for everyone including fresh graduates. And the impact of a job mismatch among college graduates has long weighed on their actual employment rate at only 52% this year, according to a recent survey. That means more than 4 million graduates will soon join the ranks of those unemployed, although many of them may opt to pursue higher education, the survey found. Tightening job market “Graduate employment has always been problematic in China. Given the current situation with…

Juhyun Lee contributed to this report. SEOUL -- As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his trade battle with China, one of the hardest-hit countries could be South Korea. Asia’s fourth-largest economy, South Korea is especially vulnerable to the tariff war because of its reliance on foreign trade -- in particular, exports to its two biggest trading partners: China and the United States. After U.S.-China trade talks broke down, Trump last week raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and threatened to do so with $300 billion more. China retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods. The trade war escalation, which rattled markets and threatened to hold back global growth, comes at an especially bad time for South Korea, whose economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter.…

Executives from major global retailers played down the threat to employment in stores from artificial intelligence and automation on Thursday and pledged more training to help staff adopt more high-value tasks as machines take over their work. Retail is one of the largest employers in many developed economies and experts have predicted automation puts millions of low-skilled jobs in the sector at risk, particularly as the introduction of self-checkouts makes cashiers redundant. "Technology can liberate people from repetitive tasks," Barbara Martin Coppola, chief digital officer at Swedish furniture giant IKEA, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Retail Congress, an annual industry gathering. "These jobs are not gone. We are believers in the talent we have in our house and we look to repurpose it into more fulfilling tasks."…

U.S. homebuilding increased more than expected in April and activity in the prior month was stronger than initially thought, suggesting declining mortgage rates were starting to provide some support to the struggling housing market. Land and labor shortages, however, continue to constrain builders’ ability to construct more lower priced houses. This segment has experienced an acute shortage of inventory, holding back home sales. Investment homebuilding has contracted for five straight quarters. Housing starts rose 5.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.235 million units last month, driven by gains in the construction of both single- and multi-family housing units, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. Groundbreaking was also likely boosted by drier weather in the Midwest. Data for March was revised up to show homebuilding rising to a pace…

Turkey needs to put a comprehensive and credible economic plan in place if it is to avoid another cut to sovereign credit rating, a senior Moody's sovereign analyst said on Thursday. New analysis from the rating agency shows Turkey's recession, the slump in the lira, upcoming refinancing pressures and dwindling reserves have pushed it to right near the top of its worldwide external vulnerability index. "Failure to put forward a credible broad-based plan to address the structural issues, and in the near-term dampen the market volatility pressure on the lira...that would be a pressure point from a rating perspective," Moody's Managing Director of Sovereign Risk, Yves Lemay, told Reuters. Moody's downgraded Turkey to Ba3 - three rungs into junk territory - last August, but it also kept it on a…

The costs seem to be mounting in the U.S. from President Donald Trump's tit-for-tat trade tariff war with China, both for farmers whose sales of crops to China have been cut and U.S. consumers paying higher prices for imported Chinese products. The government said Wednesday that to date it has paid out more than $8.5 billion to American farmers to offset their loss of sales to China and other trading partners because of foreign tariffs imposed by Beijing and other governments. Trump last year pledged up to $12 billion in aid to farmers — chiefly soybean, wheat and corn growers, and those who raise pigs. Trump says he could ask Congress for another $15 billion if U.S. farmers continue to be hurt by China's tariffs of as much as 25% …

Ford Motor Co plans to start production of new luxury Lincoln models in China for that market as they are launched, starting with the new Corsair later this year, to benefit from lower costs and avoid the risk of tariffs, a top executive said Monday. "It's a huge, huge opportunity for Lincoln because we see China as ground zero for Lincoln given the size of the market and how well the brand has been received," Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks said at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York. Ford has lower levels of localized production than rivals General Motors Co or Volkswagen AG, who make more vehicles in China for Chinese consumers, benefiting from lower labor and material costs, and avoiding tariffs in the burgeoning trade war between the…

The typical routines of life on a family farm carry a heavier burden these days for Pam Johnson. “First thing I do is make a pot of coffee,” she told VOA in an interview in one of the cavernous sheds that contain her green and yellow John Deere farming equipment. Once she has that coffee, she “(goes) to the computer and look at what grain prices have done overnight and usually do a gut clutch, because they’ve been going down. They’re at five-month lows.” Driven there in part by retaliatory tariffs imposed by one of the largest importers of U.S. soybeans – China. Johnson and her husband are proud sixth-generation farmers but say they are dealing with some of the harshest economic conditions of their lives. “We’re all tightening our…

For sale: waterfront property with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean. Waves erode beach regularly. Flooding gets worse every year. Saltwater damage to lawn. Asking price: anyone’s guess. Some research suggests rising sea levels and flooding brought by global warming are harming coastal property values. But other climate scientists note shortcomings in the studies, and real estate experts say they simply haven’t seen any ebb in demand for coastal homes. So how much homeowners and communities should worry, and how much they should invest in remedies, remains an open question. Nancy Meehan, 71, is considering putting her coastal condo in Salisbury up for sale this year, but she worries buyers will be turned off by the winter storms that churn the seas beside the summer resort town. Her home has…

Stocks climbed on Tuesday and clawed back a chunk of their losses from Monday's rout, the latest whipsaw move as investors weigh just how badly the escalating U.S.-China trade war will hurt the economy.  The day's rally was nearly a mirror image of Monday's plunge, when the S&P 500 had its worst day since early January, just not as severe: Technology companies led the way higher after bearing the brunt of the selling on Monday, Treasury yields rose modestly and gold gave back a bit of its gains.  The S&P 500 rose 22.54 points, or 0.8%, to 2,834.41. It recovered nearly a third of its loss from Monday, and would now need to rise 3.9% to regain the record it set a couple weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average…

A U.S. labor agency has concluded that ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc's drivers are independent contractors and not its employees, which could prevent them from joining unions. The National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, in a memo released on Tuesday, said Uber drivers set their hours, own their cars and are free to work for the company's competitors, so they cannot be considered employees under federal labor law. San Francisco-based Uber in a statement said it is "focused on improving the quality and security of independent work, while preserving the flexibility drivers and couriers tell us they value." Uber shares were up 6.4 percent at $39.46 in late trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The memo dated April 16 came in an NLRB case against Uber that has yet…

The future of Bulgaria's vast number of low-wage truck drivers has become a top campaign issue in the country heading into European Parliament elections, with debates raging on how new EU rules could threaten the workers and deepen divisions between rich and poor nations in the bloc. The European Commission wants to put restrictions on cargo transport to ensure adequate rest for truck drivers and limit driving distances. Bulgaria, where the transport sector accounts for 15 percent of GDP and employs some 200,000 people, fears it will erode its workforce's low-cost advantage. It says it could cost jobs and force Bulgarian truckers to move to Western Europe, worsening a wealth gap within the EU.   "This package would directly deprive more than 150,000 Bulgarian families of bread and livelihood," says…

Capitol Hill correspondent Michael Bowman and reporter Ira Mellman contributed to this report President Donald Trump said the United States "can make a deal with China tomorrow" to resolve the trade dispute between the world's two largest economies, adding the accusation that China prevented the two sides from completing an agreement. In a series of tweets Tuesday, Trump portrayed the United States as being "in a much better position now than any deal we could have made," and restated his frequent refrain that under his administration other countries will not "take advantage" of the United States when it comes to trade. His latest remarks came after he boosted taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods sent to the United States and moved to impose duties on another $300 billion…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said U.S. tariffs on China bring billions of dollars into U.S. coffers. He said China's retaliatory tariffs can have no effect on the U.S. economy. The escalation of the U.S.-China trade war sent stock markets tumbling on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling more than 600 points. Earlier, China announced new tariffs of up to 25 percent on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, starting June 1. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more. ...

The Supreme Court is allowing consumers to pursue an antitrust lawsuit that claims Apple has unfairly monopolized the market for the sale of iPhone apps. New Justice Brett Kavanaugh is joining the court's four liberals Monday in rejecting a plea from Cupertino, California-based Apple to end the lawsuit over the 30 percent commission the company charges software developers whose apps are sold through the App Store.   The lawsuit was filed by iPhone users who must purchase software for their smartphones exclusively through Apple's App Store.   Four conservative justices dissented.     ...