Category: Business

Jonathan Garland's fascination with architecture started early: He spent much of his childhood designing Lego houses and gazing at Boston buildings on rides with his father away from their largely minority neighborhood.  But when Garland looked around at his architectural college, he didn't see many who looked like him. There were few black faces among students, and fewer teaching skills or giving lectures.    "If you do something simple like Google 'architects' and you go to the images tab, you're primarily going to see white males," said Garland, 35, who's worked at Boston and New York architectural firms. "That's the image, that's the brand, that's the look of an architect." And that's not uncommon in other lucrative fields, 50 years after the Reverend Martin Luther King, a leader in the fight…

As the world's population heads toward 10 billion by midcentury, experts are wrestling with how to feed the world without wrecking the planet. It's not easy to find foods with lower environmental impact that still taste as good as the ones they are intended to replace. But chefs and environmentalists are both cheering one new menu item: the mushroom-blended burger. VOA's Steve Baragona has more. ...

Traditional handicrafts from Pakistan are exported to many countries around the world. One item that appears to be gaining in popularity are the country's hand-made bamboo curtains. VOA's Saman Khan has more in this report from Lahore, Pakistan, narrated by Sarah Zaman. ...

A financially distraught yellow cab driver from Romania recently hanged himself in his New York garage, marking the fourth suicide among city taxi drivers in as many months. In the tragedy's aftermath, members of New York's taxicab drivers union are renewing their calls for a cap on the number of app-based for-hire vehicles, such as Uber and Lyft, which they say are driving workers of a once-thriving industry into the ground. VOA's Ramon Taylor reports. ...

The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will roll back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration's plans to combat climate change.  It's not clear whether the announcement will include a specific number, but current regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025. That's about 10 mpg over the existing standard.  Environmental groups, who predict increased greenhouse gas emissions and more gasoline consumption if the standards are relaxed, say the announcement could come Tuesday at a Virginia car dealership. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email Friday that the standards are still being reviewed. Legal showdown Any change is likely to set up a lengthy…

A wider Sino-U.S. trade dispute would help export-reliant Vietnam compete against Chinese companies but put the country at risk of any global fallout, analysts say. The numerous exporters in Vietnam that ship manufactured goods to the United States would save money compared with Chinese peers if not subject to American tariffs, said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate with business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City. The U.S. government said this month it would develop a list of tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports. China has threatened to impose its own in response. “Let’s say (the United States) went the more traditional route, tensions kept escalating and more tariffs are slapped on Chinese products,” Daugherty said. “In that case Vietnam’s export sector definitely benefits. We’re…

Corn has been dethroned as the king of crops as farmers report they intend to plant more soybeans than corn for the first time in 35 years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says in its annual prospective planting report released Thursday that farmers intend to plant 89 million acres (36 million hectares) in soybeans and 88 million acres (35.6 million hectares) in corn. The primary reason is profitability. Corn costs much more to plant because of required demands for pest and disease control and fertilizer. When the profitability of both crops is close, farmers bet on soybeans for a better return. The only year that soybean acres beat corn in recent memory was 1983, when the government pushed farmers to plant fewer acres to boost prices in the midst of…

U.S. President Donald Trump attacked online tech giant Amazon, accusing the company of paying too little taxes and being responsible for putting retailers out of business. In a Twitter post early Thursday, Trump blasted the online retail titan, saying “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election,” adding, “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Trump has a long history blaming Amazon for hurting traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. He tweeted last August, “Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt - many jobs being lost!” For years,…

The world's largest passenger jet landed at Beirut's international airport on Thursday, bringing with it hope for a revival of Lebanon's vital tourism sector. The one-off Emirates Airbus A380 flight from Dubai was an acknowledgement of the substantial passenger traffic between Lebanon and Gulf nations, where many Lebanese nationals work and more pass through to destinations farther afield. Emirates said it scheduled the flight, the first of its kind to carry paying passengers, to see if Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport was ready to handle regular A380 service. Lebanese officials hope the results are positive, as tourist arrivals climb to levels last seen in 2010, before the uprising in neighboring Syria the following year raised fears of violent spillover. Lebanon welcomed 1.85 million tourists in 2017, according to the Tourism…

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…

H. Wayne Huizenga, a college dropout who built a business empire that included Blockbuster Entertainment, AutoNation and three professional sports franchises, has died. He was 80. Huizenga died Thursday night at his home, said Valerie Hinkell, a longtime assistant. The cause was cancer, said Bob Henninger, executive vice president of Huizenga Holdings. Starting with a single garbage truck in 1968, Huizenga built Waste Management Inc. into a Fortune 500 company. He purchased independent sanitation engineering companies, and by the time he took the company public in 1972, he had completed the acquisition of 133 small-time haulers. By 1983, Waste Management was the largest waste disposal company in the United States. The business model worked again with Blockbuster Video, which he started in 1985 and built into the leading movie rental…

New orders for key U.S.-made capital goods rebounded more than expected in February after two straight monthly declines and shipments surged, which could temper expectations of a sharp slowdown in business spending on equipment in the first quarter. The Commerce Department's report on Friday could prompt economists to raise their economic growth estimates for the first three months of the year. They were slashed last week after data showed retail sales fell in February for the third month in a row. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday painted an upbeat picture of the economy when it raised interest rates and forecast at least two more increases for 2018. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, jumped 1.8 percent last month. That was the…

Russia will likely prepare a list of restrictions on imported products from the United States in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, Moscow's trade ministry said on Friday, according to Interfax news agency. The announcement came after China threatened to retaliate to U.S. President Donald Trump's measures, stoking fears of a looming global trade war. "We will prepare our position, submit it to the Economy Ministry and apply to the WTO [the World Trade Organization]," Russia's Deputy Trade Minister, Viktor Yevtukhov, said, according to Interfax. "We will probably prepare proposals on the response measures. Restrictions against the American goods. I think that all countries will follow this path," Yevtukhov added. The United States has said the tariffs are needed to protect its national security and therefore do not…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memo paving the way for major tariffs on Chinese imports. It's part of Trump's plan to crack down on China's theft of intellectual property. But many U.S. farmers are worried the tariffs will prompt China to retaliate against their products. VOA's Kane Farabaugh and Bill Gallo report on what some fear could be just the start of significant trade friction between Washington and Beijing. ...

Just a week after the empire he started announced it is shutting down, Toys R Us founder Charles Lazarus died at 94. "There have been many sad moments for Toys R Us in recent weeks and none more heartbreaking than today's news about the passing of our beloved founder," the company said Thursday. No cause of death was given. Lazarus, a World War II veteran, started Toys R Us in 1948 as a single store in Washington, D.C., selling baby furniture. At customer requests, he soon expanded his line to include toys and began opening large stores the size of supermarkets, devoted to toys and bicycles. Toys R Us and its massive selection became a favorite of suburban American families. Toys R Us opened stores all over the world before…