Category: Business

Enslaved on a Thai fishing vessel for 11 years, Tun Lin saw his fellow workers lose their minds one after another, with one fisherman jumping into the sea to end his life. Some would start murmuring or laughing to themselves as they worked day and night in Indonesian waters on the cramped boat, often surviving on fish they caught and drinking water leaking from an onboard freezer. "It was like a floating prison - actually, worse than prison," the Burmese fisherman, who was sold into slavery, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Samut Sakhon, a Thai fishing hub some 40 km (25 miles) southwest of the capital Bangkok. The 36-year-old, who was rescued in 2015 after losing four fingers and being stranded on a remote island for years without pay,…

Warming waters have reduced the harvest of Alaska's prized Copper River salmon to just a small fraction of last year's harvest, Alaska biologists say. The runs of Copper River salmon were so low that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down the commercial harvest last month, halting what is usually a three-month season after less than two weeks. Earlier this month, the department also shut down most of the harvest that residents along the river conduct to feed their families. The total commercial harvest for Alaska's marquee Copper River salmon this year after it was halted at the end of May was about 32,000 fish, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported. That compares with the department's pre-season forecast of over 1.2 million and an average annual…

International efforts to make it easier for garment workers in India to speak out against sexual harassment, dangerous working conditions and abuses are failing, campaigners said Tuesday. The U.S.-based certifying agency Social Accountability International (SAI) and Britain's Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) — an alliance of unions, firms and charities — are not enforcing procedures they set up to protect workers, they said. "The organizations are violating the rules of the mechanisms they created by not taking time-bound action against complaints that come up," said S. James Victor, director of Serene Secular Social Service Society, which works to empower garment workers. "They are far removed from ground reality. The fact is that every day a worker continues to face workplace harassment in the spinning mills and garment factories of Tamil Nadu."…

President Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's measured approach to restricting Chinese investments in U.S. technology companies, saying a strengthened merger security review committee could protect sensitive American technologies. Trump, in remarks to reporters at the White House, said the approach would target all countries, not just China, echoing comments from Mnuchin on Monday amid a fierce internal debate over the scope of investment restrictions due to be unveiled Friday. "It's not just Chinese" investment, Trump told reporters when asked about the administration's plans. Mnuchin and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro sent mixed signals on Monday about the Chinese investment restrictions, ordered by Trump on May 29. Mnuchin said they would apply to "all countries that are trying to steal our technology," while Navarro said…

Historic levels of violent crime in Mexico have sparked a record increase in the country's car-armoring business, with an industry group predicting a double-digit jump in the number of vehicles bulletproofed this year. There were more than 25,000 murders across Mexico last year, the highest annual tally since modern records began, government data shows, with 2018 on track to be even worse. That insecurity will help drive a 10 percent rise in car-armoring services this year to 3,284 cars, above the previous all-time high in 2012, according to the Mexican Automotive Armor Association (AMBA). That figure is small relative to the 15,145 cars armored in 2017 in Brazil, which expects to see a 25 percent jump this year. Demand in Mexico has grown so strong that more global automakers have…

To treat snake bites, bathe in a tea brewed from yellow button-shaped flowers, advises Melissa Espinoza Paez as she describes the medicinal properties of Costa Rica's jungle plants, pointing out towering vines used to combat kidney problems. In the lush mountains close to the Panama border that make up the Bribri indigenous territory, Espinoza hopes the country's first certified indigenous tour agency can deliver a bigger slice of income from ecotourism directly to local women. "When other agencies brought tourists to our territory, sometimes they'd give a small amount to the people here, but it wasn't really the value of their work," said Espinoza, 38, indicating a green dart frog trying to hide in the undergrowth. "We're giving a tourism experience that is truly cultural... We are trying to live…

The British Parliament has overwhelmingly approved plans to expand Europe's biggest airport after decades of debate over its potential impact. The House of Commons on Monday voted 415-119 to build a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport. Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative government and business groups strongly backed the expansion, saying it would be tantamount to putting out an "open for business" sign as Britain prepares to leave the European Union. But small communities around the airport and environmental groups have vehemently opposed the expansion on environmental, noise and financial grounds. Friends of the Earth described it as a "morally reprehensible" move that would result in Heathrow emitting as much carbon as all of Portugal. Greenpeace UK said it was ready to join London councils and the city's mayor, Sadiq…

President Donald Trump has issued a warning to U.S. trading partners that unless they remove restrictions placed on American goods, they will face "more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A." "The United States is insisting that all countries that have placed artificial Trade Barriers and Tariffs on goods going into their country, remove those Barriers & Tariffs or be met with more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A. Trade must be fair and no longer a one way street!" Trump tweeted Sunday. Trump has already annoyed major U.S. trading partners, including China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and India, by imposing tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products from those countries. On Friday, Trump threatened to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the…

A young, Iraqi man struggled to find work in the oil-rich city of Basra. After extensive online job searches, he had an idea to outfit his small car with a coffee machine and a giant coffee cup on the roof, turning him into a barista with a mobile café. Arash Arabasadi reports. ...

A British minister accused Airbus and other major companies of issuing "completely inappropriate" threats and undermining Prime Minister Theresa May in a sign of growing tensions with businesses leaders over Brexit. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus last week issued its strongest warning over the impact of Britain's departure from the European Union, saying a withdrawal without a deal would force it to reconsider its long-term position and put thousands of British jobs at risk. Other European companies with major operations in Britain have also started to speak out two years on from the Brexit vote, voicing concerns over a lack of clarity on the terms of trade when Britain leaves next March. "It was completely inappropriate for businesses to be making these kinds of threats for one very simple reason — we are…

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will meet Russia’s energy minister next week in Washington, a person familiar with the situation said Friday, as the two countries compete to supply global markets with natural gas and crude. Perry will meet Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak on Tuesday, in the context of the World Gas Conference in Washington, the source said. Meetings between top energy officials from Russia and the United States, two of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, have been rare in recent years. Relations between Moscow and Washington have cooled over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and as the Trump administration blames the Russian government for cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid over the last two years. The two countries are competing to sell natural…

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the United States, in retaliation for European tariffs on American imports. On Friday, the day new EU tariffs went into effect, Trump tweeted, "...if these Tariffs and Barriers are not soon broken down and removed, we will be placing a 20% Tariff on all of their cars coming into the U.S. Build them here!" Auto industry experts say such tariffs could negatively impact the U.S. economy, as well as Europe's. "It's really a tangle; it's not a simple question" of cars being made in one place and sold in another, Kasper Peters, communications manager of ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, said Friday in an interview with VOA.…

Retaliating against the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, India has raised duties on 29 U.S. goods worth about $240 million. New Delhi made the announcement Thursday after Washington ignored its request to be exempted from the tariffs because its exports were tiny compared to others, such as China and the European Union. India accounts for about 2 percent of American imports of steel and aluminum, or $1.5 billion in sales. India is the latest country to hit back against U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff increases on steel and aluminum imports. Among the items on which India will impose higher tariffs are agricultural products such as almonds, apples, walnuts, chickpeas and lentils, as well as some stainless steel products. India is the world's biggest buyer of U.S. almonds…

The European Union is set to impose tariffs Friday on billions of dollars worth of American goods -- including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles. The action is the latest retaliation against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to slap import tariffs on steel and aluminum from around the globe. The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks. China has promised an immediate retaliation, a measure that would put the world's two largest economies at odds.   John Murphy, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president, estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of July. "The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world." said a spokesman…

Turkey announced Thursday that it would impose tariffs on $1.8 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The World Trade Organization said the new Turkish tariffs would amount to $266.5 million on products including cars, coal, paper, rice and tobacco. Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said in a statement that Turkey would not allow itself "to be wrongly blamed for America's economic challenges." He continued, "We are part of the solution, not the problem." On Wednesday, the EU announced that it had compiled a list of U.S. products on which it would begin charging import duties of 25 percent, a move that could escalate into a full-blown trade war, especially if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to…

A report by the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights finds 40 million people in the United States live in poverty, 18.5 million live in extreme poverty and more than 5 million live in conditions of absolute poverty.  Special Rapporteur Philip Alston called the United States the most unequal society in the developed world. He said U.S. policies benefit the rich and exacerbate the plight of the poor. He said the policies of President Donald Trump's administration stigmatize the poor by insisting those receiving government benefits are capable of working and that benefits, such as food stamps, should be cut back significantly. He said the government's suggestions that people on welfare are lazy and do not want to work misrepresent the facts. "The statistics that are available show that…

India, the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. almonds, raised import duties on the commodity by 20 percent, a government order said, joining the European Union and China in retaliating against President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes on steel and aluminum. New Delhi, incensed by Washington’s refusal to exempt it from the new tariffs, also imposed a 120 percent duty on the import of walnuts in the strongest action yet against the United States. The move to increase tariffs from Aug. 4 will also cover a slew of other farm, steel and iron products. It came a day after the European Union said it would begin charging 25 percent import duties on a range of U.S. products on Friday, in response to the new U.S. tariffs. India is by far the largest…

Maize farmers are preparing as the harvest season approaches in Tanzania’s Kondoa District.  The weather has been good and most farmers here expect bumper yields. Amina Hussein, a mother of four in Mnenia village, is testing a new way to store her harvest.   “In the past, we used to store our produce in normal bags, we would buy them three times a year because we faced the risk of losing harvests to pest infestation,” Hussein said.  “But since the introduction of this new technology, using the hermetic storage bags, we are not incurring huge costs anymore to buy chemicals to preserve the maize.”   The bags keep grain dry and fresh, and keep bugs and mold out.   Amina, who is the chairperson of a local farmers’ association, says…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross faced tough questions during a Senate hearing Wednesday on the Trump administration's tariff proposals and actions. Senators on both sides of the aisle criticized the administration's rollout of proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. VOA's Elizabeth Cherneff has more on the fallout from Washington. ...

A decent rating from Fitch this month has Vietnam riding high on the small victory, despite some of the less favorable economic trends connected to this first-of-its-kind rating. The state monopoly Vietnam Electricity, or EVN, clinched a "BB" score June 6 from Fitch Ratings, which until then had never officially assessed the credit of a non-financial company owned by the Hanoi government. That prompted a cross-section of officials in the southeast Asian country to gush about the promise in store for one of the world's fastest-growing economies. "This positive rating enables EVN to issue international bonds, diversify our financing sources, and reassure domestic and foreign institutional investors," said Dinh Quang Tri, the acting CEO of EVN. "We are now on a stronger footing to deliver more reliable electricity to Vietnam."…

As the United States and China teeter on the brink of an all out trade war and tit-for-tat tariffs loom, a European businesses lobby is urging Beijing to stop dragging its feet on reforms and using unfair trade policies to pamper Chinese companies.   Each year, foreign trade groups in China roll out a laundry list of concerns about market access, regulatory hurdles and other policies that tilt the playing field in the world’s second largest economy.   This year, for the first time ever, the European Chamber of Commerce’s annual survey of the business climate found that 61 percent of its 532 company members saw their Chinese counterparts as equally or more innovative. Increased spending on research and development, targeted acquisitions of foreign high-tech firms and growing demand for innovative…

Sameera Al Salam folds a discarded piece of newspaper into a long strip then loops it round her finger to form a tight circle, the first stage of making the upcycled handbags, trays and bowls the Syrian refugee hopes will help her earn a living. Al Salam, 55, was a hairdresser with a passion for "art and making things" before she fled her war-torn homeland for Irbid in northern Jordan with her family in 2012. Now she has two teenagers and a husband left paralyzed by a stroke to support in a country where she has no automatic legal right to work, and they are three months behind on their rent. "We were living a really happy life. I had a garden where I grew everything," Al Salam told the…

China calls President Donald Trump’s threat to slap more tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. “extreme pressure and blackmail” and threatens to retaliate. Beijing reacted Tuesday to Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods “if China refuses to change its practices.” “China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology,” a presidential statement said late Monday. “Rather than altering those practices, it is now threatening United States companies, workers, and farmers who have done nothing wrong.” The president has ordered Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to identify a list of $200 billion in additional Chinese goods subject to a 10 percent tariff — a move that would bring on another round of Chinese penalties…

Is this what a trade war looks like? The Trump administration and China's leadership have threatened to impose tariffs on $50 billion of each other's goods. Trump has proposed imposing duties on $400 billion more if China doesn't further open its markets to U.S. companies and reduce its trade surplus with the United States. China, in turn, says it will retaliate. In recent years, tariffs had been losing favor as a tool of national trade policy. They were largely a relic of 19th and early 20th centuries that most experts viewed as mutually harmful to all nations involved. But President Donald Trump has restored tariffs to a prominent place in his self-described America First approach. Trump enraged U.S. allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union earlier this month by slapping…

The World Cup in Russia is the most expensive ever – with the official price tag around $15 billion. The result: several huge new stadiums, railroads and upgraded airports, plus the chance to reboot Russia’s global image. So, will the tournament represent a good value for Russians? As Henry Ridgwell reports from Moscow, the government appears to have used the World Cup to bury some bad economic news. ...

China says it will take appropriate countermeasures if the United States follows through with additional tariffs on Chinese goods.  U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he had asked the U.S. trade representative to identify a list of products to subject to 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods. The president said the move was in retaliation to Beijing's decision to impose tariffs on $50 billion in U.S. goods, matching the first set of tariffs imposed by Trump. In a statement issued Tuesday, China's commerce ministry criticized Trump's latest move as nothing more than "extreme pressure and blackmail" that "deviates from the consensus reached by both sides" during multiple talks.  "China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property…

President Donald Trump's tariff battle with key buyers of U.S. apples, soybeans and corn threatens the support of some of his biggest backers - U.S. farmers now seeing their livelihoods in jeopardy. Farmers overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2016 election, welcoming how he championed rural economies and vowed to repeal estate taxes that often hit family farms hard. Now those same farmers are seeing crop prices fall and export markets shrink after Trump's tariffs triggered a wave of retaliation from buyers of U.S. apples, cheese, potatoes, bourbon and soybeans. "A lot of people in the ag community were willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt," said Brian Kuehl, executive director of Farmers for Free Trade. "The reason you are seeing people increase the pressure now is because…

A pop-up "Corruption Park" has opened in Ukraine to highlight the scale of the problem with interactive exhibits and displays of ill-gotten gains including a $46,000 crystal falcon. One of the first things visitors see in the EU-funded show is a tent shaped like the gold loaf of bread found in the house of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych after he fled Ukraine in 2014. Elsewhere, they can inspect a $300,000, limited-edition BMW seized from a corrupt official, and a copy of a 8-million-euro chandelier that, the display says, could have paid for a family's electricity bill for 64,000 years. In another tent, visitors lie back in a four-poster bed and watch a multimedia film of the imagined nightmares of a guilty government functionary. The EU Anti-Corruption Initiative, which staged the show…