Category: Business

The U.S. economy likely slowed in the first quarter as growth in consumer spending braked sharply, but the setback is expected to be temporary against the backdrop of a tightening labor market and large fiscal stimulus. Gross domestic product probably increased at a 2.0 percent annual rate, according to a Reuters survey of economists, also held back by a moderation in business spending on equipment as well as a widening of the trade deficit and decline in investment in homebuilding. Those factors likely offset an increase in inventories. The economy grew at a 2.9 percent pace in the fourth quarter. The government will publish its snapshot of first-quarter GDP Friday at 8:30 a.m.  Don't lose sleep The anticipated tepid first-quarter growth will, however, probably not be a true reflection of…

Amazon.com Inc. more than doubled its profit Thursday and predicted strong spring results as the world’s biggest online retailer raised the price for U.S. Prime subscribers, added U.S. football games and touted its cloud services for business. The results showed the broad strength of the company, which has been expanding far beyond shipping packages, the business that has drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump. The forecast beat expectations on Wall Street, sending shares up 7 percent to a new record in afterhours trade and adding $8 billion to the net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and largest shareholder. Seattle-based Amazon is winning business from older, big box rivals by delivering virtually any product to customers at a low cost, and at times faster than it takes…

Much remains to be done before a new North American Free Trade Agreement is reached, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Thursday, tempering hopes for a quick deal as ministers met in Washington for a third successive day. Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada have been working constantly for weeks to clinch a deal, but major differences remain on contentious topics such as autos content. Complicating matters, the Trump administration has threatened to impose sanctions on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum on May 1 if not enough progress has been made on NAFTA. President Donald Trump, who came into office in January 2017 decrying NAFTA and other international trade deals as unfair to the United States, has repeatedly threatened to walk away from the agreement with Canada…

Kenya's economy is expected to rebound to 5.8 percent growth in 2018 after electoral uncertainty and drought cut last year's expansion to the lowest level in more than five years, Finance Minister Henry Rotich said Wednesday. The economy will benefit from increased investment in key areas like manufacturing, farming, housing and health care, he said. President Uhuru Kenyatta won re-election in November in a second vote after the first in August was annulled by the Supreme Court citing irregularities. Around 100 people, mainly opposition supporters, were killed mainly by police during the prolonged election season. "Despite the slowdown in 2017 our outlook is bright," Rotich said at the launch of the annual economic survey. "We expect growth to recover to 5.8 percent in 2018, and over the medium term the…

The humble pecan is being rebranded as more than just pie.   Pecan growers and suppliers are hoping to sell U.S. consumers on the virtues of North America's only native nut as a hedge against a potential trade war with China, the pecan's largest export market.   The pecan industry is also trying to crack the fast-growing snack-food industry.   The retail value for packaged nuts, seeds and trail mix in the U.S. alone was $5.7 billion in 2012, and is forecast to rise to $7.5 billion by 2022, according to market researcher Euromonitor.   The Fort Worth, Texas-based American Pecan Council, formed in the wake of a new federal marketing order that allows the industry to band together and assess fees for research and promotion, is a half-century in…

Rice farmers in Kafr Ziada village in the Nile River Delta have ignored planting restrictions aimed at conserving water for years, continuing to grow a medium-grain variety of the crop that is prized around the Arab world. A decision thousands of kilometers to the south is about to change that, however, in another example of how concern about water, one of the world's most valuable commodities, is forcing change in farming, laws and even international diplomacy. Far upstream, close to one of the sources of the Nile, Ethiopia is preparing to fill the reservoir behind its new $4 billion Grand Renaissance Dam, possibly as soon as this year. How fast it does so could have devastating consequences for farmers who have depended on the Nile for millennia to irrigate strategic…

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said Tuesday that it was right that big companies are scrutinized and that his firm would respond to any new regulations by finding new ways to please its customers. Bezos was speaking in Berlin, where he received an award from German media company Axel Springer, and was responding to a question about how seriously he took recent criticism of Amazon by U.S. President Donald Trump. "All large institutions should be scrutinized or examined," Bezos said. "It is not personal." "We have a duty on behalf of society to help educate any regulators without cynicism or skepticism," he added. "We will work with any set of regulations that we are given. ... We will follow those rules and find a new way to delight customers." Trump has…

Venezuela's hyperinflation has turned the struggling OPEC nation's once-powerful banks into warehouses of useless cash that are worth a total of only $40 million, according to a Reuters analysis of regulatory data. Although banks such as Citigroup Inc and Spain's BBVA are maintaining operations in the hopes of better times, the value of the country's 31 banks in 2017 was equivalent to that of a single mid-sized bank in the Dominican Republic, according to bank regulator data. The combination of annual inflation estimated at 8,000 percent and state-regulated interest rates has left banks with little motivation to lend and little reason to inject capital onto their balance sheets, meaning credit is steadily disappearing. The banks are unlikely to fold, due in large part to the huge potential upside if the…

A cup of coffee is a good way for many to start the day. But it can also do far greater good. Manyang Kher, a former Sudanese child refugee - one of the so-called Lost Boys and now a US citizen - is passionate about helping refugees build a brighter future. And he does it with coffee. VOA’s June Soh talked with the founder of a social enterprise, 734 coffee. VOA's Carol Pearson narrates her report. ...

Manyang Kher was three years old when he arrived at a refugee camp in Ethiopia's Gambella region. During the 13 years, the South Sudanese native lived there, he observed lots of other children die. From hunger. From cholera. From attempting to flee the camp. “You fear every day because you may die, too,” Kher says. Kher is one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, some 20,000 Sudanese children who escaped when their villages were attacked during the 1980’s civil war and made the 1600 kilometer-walk to Ethiopia. Deeply affected by the camp, he has named his coffee company, 734 Coffee, after the geographical coordinates of the Gambella region: 7˚N 34˚E. Part of his larger humanitarian non profit project, Humanity Helping Sudan, 734 helps the 200,000 South Sudanese refugees still…

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he is giving $4.5 million to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to cover a U.S. government funding gap for the international Paris climate accord. Bloomberg's charitable foundation said the money will support work developing countries are doing to achieve their targets under the agreement as well as "promoting climate action" among cities and businesses. The 2015 treaty signed by more than 200 nations and entities vowed to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in order to try to limit global temperature rise. Former President Barack Obama's administration was among the signatories, but President Donald Trump said he would pull out of the agreement. Trump campaigned as a booster of fossil fuels and a skeptic of climate change science,…

The World Bank’s shareholders on Saturday endorsed a $13 billion paid-in capital increase that will boost China’s shareholding but bring lending reforms that will raise borrowing costs for higher-middle-income countries, including China. The multilateral lender said the plan would allow it to lift the group’s overall lending to nearly $80 billion in fiscal 2019 from about $59 billion last year and to an average of about $100 billion annually through 2030. “We have more than doubled the capacity of the World Bank Group,” the institution’s president, Jim Yong Kim, told reporters during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington. “It’s a huge vote of confidence, but the expectations are enormous.” The hard-fought capital hike, initially resisted by the Trump administration, will add $7.5 billion paid-in capital…

The European Union and Mexico reached an agreement Saturday on a new free trade deal, a coup for both parties in the face of increased protectionism from the United States under President Donald Trump. Since its plans for a trade alliance with the United States were frozen after Trump’s election victory, the EU has focused instead on trying to champion open markets and seal accords with other like-minded countries. The agreement in principle with Mexico follows a deal struck last year with Japan and comes ahead of talks next week with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. “With this agreement, Mexico joins Canada, Japan and Singapore in the growing list of partners willing to work with the EU in defending open, fair and rules-based trade,” said European…

The International Monetary Fund's policymaking committee said Saturday that a strong world economy was threatened by increasing tension over trade and countries' heavy debt burden. Longer-term prospects are clouded, it said, by sluggish growth in productivity and aging populations in wealthy nations. In a statement at the end of three days of meetings, the lending agency urged countries to take advantage of the broadest-based economic expansion in a decade to cut government debt and to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient. The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.9 percent this year and next, which would be the strongest since 2011. But an intensifying dispute between the U.S. and China over Beijing's aggressive attempt to challenge U.S. technological dominance has raised the prospect of a trade…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he was contemplating a visit to China for discussions on issues that have global leaders concerned about a potentially damaging trade war. "I am not going to make any comment on timing, nor do I have anything confirmed, but a trip is under consideration," Mnuchin said at a Washington news conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings. Mnuchin said he discussed the possible trip and potential trade opportunities with the new head of China's central bank. Tensions have escalated between the U.S. and China over Beijing's attempts to challenge America's technological prowess, raising the prospects of a trade war that could hinder global economic growth.  Mnuchin said he had spoken with a number of his counterparts who have been…

China has strongly refuted suggestions its multibillion-dollar economic corridor now under construction with Pakistan has "hidden" military designs as well.   Beijing has pledged to invest about $63 billion in Pakistan by 2030 to develop ports, highways, motorways, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure in the neighboring country, traditionally a strong ally.   The Chinese have also expanded and operationalized the Pakistani deep water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, which is at the heart of the massive bilateral cooperation, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The strategically located port is currently being operated by a Chinese state-run company . China has positioned CPEC as the flagship project of its $1-trillion global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, championed by President Xi Jinping. "I want to…

The European Union needs to be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the United States in order to work with Washington on trade with China, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday. “We are close allies between the EU and the United States. We cannot live with full confidence with the risk of being hit by those measures and by those new tariffs. We cannot live with a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” Le Maire told a press conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.  “If we want to move forward ... if we want to address the issue of trade, an issue of the new relationship with China, because we both want to engage China in a new…

The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into whether AT&T, Verizon and a standards-setting group worked together to stop consumers from easily switching wireless carriers.   The companies confirmed the inquiry in separate statements late Friday in response to a report in The New York Times.    The U.S. government is looking into whether AT&T, Verizon and telecommunications standards organization GSMA worked together to suppress a technology that lets people remotely switch wireless companies without having to insert a new SIM card into their phones.    The Times, citing six anonymous people familiar with the inquiry, reported that the investigation was opened after at least one device maker and one other wireless company filed complaints. Verizon, AT&T respond  Verizon, which is based in New York, derided the accusations on…

Russian companies hit by U.S. sanctions, including aluminum giant Rusal, have asked for 100 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in liquidity support from the government, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Friday. The United States on April 6 imposed sanctions against several Russian entities and individuals, including Rusal and its major shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, to punish Moscow for its suspected meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other alleged "malign activity." Rusal, the world's second-biggest aluminum producer, has been particularly hard hit as the sanctions have caused concern among some customers, suppliers and creditors that they could be blacklisted, too, through association with the company. "Temporary nationalization" is an option for some sanctions-hit companies, but not Rusal, Siluanov was quoted as saying. He did not name the companies he was referring to. A Kremlin spokesman…

U.S. news reports say Wells Fargo will be fined as much as $1 billion for illegally selling customers car insurance policies they did not want or need, and for charging unnecessary fees in connection with mortgages. This would be the largest fine ever imposed by federal bank regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The fine is part of a settlement regulators negotiated with the bank. Wells Fargo and federal officials have not commented on the reports. The San Francisco-based lender admitted selling the unwanted insurance policies to hundreds of thousands of car loan customers. In many cases, the borrowers could not afford both the insurance and car payments and their cars were repossessed. Many U.S. banks have enjoyed looser federal regulations under President Donald Trump's pro-business administration. But Trump denied…

The biggest danger from the U.S.-China trade dispute is the threat to global confidence and investment, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday. The IMF chief said the tariffs threatened by the world’s two largest economies would have a modest direct impact on the global economy but could produce uncertainty that choked off investment, one of the key drivers of rising global growth. “The actual impact on growth is not very substantial, when you measure in terms of GDP,” Lagarde said of the tariffs, adding that the “erosion of confidence” would be worse. “When investors do not know under what terms they will be trading, when they don’t know how to organize their supply chain, they are reluctant to invest,” she told a news conference in Washington…

Russian aluminum giant Rusal is stockpiling large quantities of aluminum at one of its plants in Siberia because U.S. sanctions imposed this month have prevented it from selling the metal to customers, five sources close to the company said. With the firm's own storage space filling up with unsold aluminum, Rusal executives in Sayanogorsk, in southern Siberia, have had to rent out additional space to accommodate the surplus stock, one of the sources told Reuters. "Aluminum sales have broken down. And now the surplus aluminum is being warehoused in production areas of the factory itself," said someone who works on the grounds of one of Rusal's two plants in Sayanogorsk. Several people connected to Rusal said that Oleg Deripaska, the company's main shareholder who along with the company was included…

Russia demanded compensation from the U.S. for its worldwide tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel Thursday, becoming the third influential member of the World Trade Organization to do so. China, the European Union and India have also objected, arguing the tariffs are a "safeguard" measure to protect U.S. domestic products from imports, which require compensation for major exporting countries. The Trump administration has rejected that argument and says the tariffs are for national security reasons and are therefore allowed under international law. The U.S. has agreed to negotiate with China and has informed the EU and India it is willing to discuss any other issue, while maintaining their compensation claims are unwarranted. It is unclear what Moscow's demand means in practice because it did not challenge the tariffs through a…

SunPower Corp. on Wednesday said it would buy U.S. solar panel maker SolarWorld Americas, expanding its domestic manufacturing as it seeks to stem the impact of Trump administration tariffs on panel imports. The White House cheered the deal, saying it was proof that Trump's trade policies were stimulating U.S. investment. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The news sent SunPower's shares up 12 percent on the Nasdaq to their highest level since before President Donald Trump imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported solar panels in January. "The time is right for SunPower to invest in U.S. manufacturing," chief executive Tom Werner said in a statement. SunPower is based in San Jose, California, but most of its manufacturing is in the Philippines and Mexico. The company had lobbied heavily against the solar trade case brought last year by U.S.…

President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported aluminum and steel are disrupting business for hundreds of American companies that buy those metals, and many are pressing for relief. Nearly 2,200 companies are asking the Commerce Department to exempt them from the 25 percent steel tariff, and more than 200 other companies are asking to be spared the 10 percent aluminum tariff. Other companies are weighing their options. Jody Fledderman, chief executive of Batesville Tool & Die in Indiana, said American steelmakers have already raised their prices since Trump's tariffs were announced last month. Fledderman said he might have to shift production to a plant in Mexico, where he can buy cheaper steel. A group of small- and medium-size manufacturers are gathering in Washington to announce a coalition to fight the steel tariff.…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backs the idea of a European Monetary Fund, provided national governments have sufficient oversight, sources close to her said before a visit by the French president. President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, is pushing hard for bold euro zone reforms to defend the 19-member currency bloc against any repeat of the financial crisis that took hold in 2009 and threatened to tear it apart. His vision includes turning Europe’s existing ESM bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund (EMF). At one point, Macron also suggested the zone should have its own budget worth hundreds of billions of euros, an idea that does not sit well with Germany. Merkel told lawmakers from her conservative bloc on Tuesday that she favored the EMF…

The European Commission will put forward a proposed free-trade agreement with Japan for fast-track approval Wednesday, hoping to avoid a repeat of the public protests that nearly derailed a trade pact with Canada two years ago. The European Union and Japan concluded negotiations to create the world’s largest economic area in December, signaling their rejection of the protectionist stance of U.S. President Donald Trump. Now they want to see it go into force. The agreement would remove EU tariffs of 10 percent on Japanese cars and the 3 percent rate for most car parts. It would also scrap Japanese duties of some 30 percent on EU cheese and 15 percent on wines, and secure access to large public tenders in Japan. Canada deal memories The commission, which negotiates trade agreements…

The city of Yanan, a major wind power base in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, has introduced a lottery system to decide which wind projects will go ahead this year, a sign that grid constraints are forcing local governments to restrict capacity. China has been aggressively developing alternative power as part of its efforts to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Grid-connected wind power reached 163.7 gigawatts (GW) last year, up 10.1 percent on the year and amounting to 9.2 percent of total generating capacity. But capacity expansion has outpaced grid construction, and large numbers of wind, solar and hydropower plants are unable to deliver all their power to consumers as a result of transmission deficiencies, a problem known as curtailment. Grid constraints According to a Yanan planning agency notice seen…