Category: News

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…

For the first time, the World Health Organization is adding Gaming disorder to the section on Mental and Addictive Disorders in its new International Classification of Diseases. The ICD provides data on the causes of thousands of diseases, injuries and deaths across the globe and information on prevention and treatment. The International Classification of Diseases was last revised 28 years ago. Changes, which have occurred since then are reflected in this edition. Gaming disorder has been added to the section on mental and addictive disorders because demand for services to tackle this condition has been growing. Gaming disorders usually are linked to a system of rewards or incentives, such as accumulating points in competition with others or winning money. These games are commonly played on electronic and video devices. WHO…