U.S. Customs and Border Protection selected four construction companies Thursday to erect prototypes of the Mexican border wall that President Donald Trump has said he intends to build to deter illegal immigration and smuggling.

The four firms, from four different U.S. states, are to build solid-concrete prototypes of the border wall within 30 days, once they are given a notice to proceed. Those four sample walls will then be tested for strength and “permeability,” according to the agency’s acting deputy commissioner, Ronald Vitiello.

The border protection agency is separately screening applicants for other contracts to build prototype walls made from alternate materials.

Trump has said he thinks the 10-meter-tall wall should have windows, or even be fully transparent, so Border Patrol officers in the United States can observe suspicious activities on the other side of the barrier.

“We’re going to use all the things that we think will work the best,” Vitiello said.

Thursday’s announcement was the latest step forward in a bureaucratic process that has been delayed multiple times. The administration once said construction of the full border wall would begin in June, but it was not until mid-March that the first requests for proposals went out to contractors, seeking conceptual designs for the border barrier, which has been shrouded in political controversy.

Congress has appropriated $20 million to CBP for use in preparing the prototypes, both of concrete and other materials. No funds have yet been budgeted for the full border wall, likely a multibillion-dollar undertaking that would be one of the largest public works projects in U.S. history.

The four companies selected Thursday to build concrete prototypes were Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Alabama; Fisher Industries of Tempe, Arizona; Texas Sterling Construction of Houston; and W.G. Yates & Sons of Philadelphia.
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The French government said on Thursday it would cap unfair dismissal payouts and give companies more flexibility to adapt pay and working hours to market conditions in a labor reform France’s biggest union said was disappointing.

The reform, President Emmanuel Macron’s first major policy step since his election in May, is also the first big test of his plans to reform the euro zone’s second-biggest economy.

For decades governments of the left and right have tried to reform France’s strict labor rules, but have always diluted them in the face of street protests.

The government said in a document presenting the reform that it will make it possible to adapt work time, remuneration and workplace mobility to market conditions based on agreements reached by simplified majority between employers and workers.

Workers compensation for dismissal judged in a labor court to be unfair would be set at three months of wages for two-years in the company with the amount rising progressively depending on how long a worker was with the firm, unions said.

However, normal severance pay would be increased from 20 percent of wages for each year in a company to 25 percent, Liberation reported.

The government consulted with unions for weeks as it drafted the reform, and only the hardline CGT union, the country’s second biggest, said from the start that it would hold a protest, set for Sept. 12.

France’s biggest union, the reformist CFDT, said that it would not call a strike against the reform but described the reform as a missed opportunity to improve labor relations.

“CFDT disappointed,” the union’s leader Laurent Berger told reporters after a meeting with the government, but he added: “Taking to the streets is not the only mode of action for unions.”
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In the coming weeks, as Houston turns its attention to rebuilding areas devastated by Tropical Storm Harvey, people like Jay De Leon are likely to play an outsized role — if they stay around.

De Leon, 47, owns a small construction business in Houston, and he and his 10 employees do exactly the kind of demolition and refurbishing the city will need. But like a large number of construction workers in Texas, De Leon and most of his workers live in the United States illegally, and that could make things complicated.

The Pew Research Center estimated last year that 28 percent of Texas’s construction workforce is undocumented, while other studies have put the number as high as 50 percent. Construction employed 23 percent of working undocumented adults in Texas at the end of 2014, higher than any other sector, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Undocumented immigrants nervous

However, undocumented immigrants are growing increasingly nervous in Texas because of an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration that has cast a wide net.

In addition, a new Texas law that would have taken effect later this week bars cities from embracing so-called sanctuary policies, where they offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants, and allows local police to inquire about a person’s immigration status. A federal judge Wednesday temporarily blocked most of the law from taking effect.

De Leon, who has lived in the country for 20 years and has two citizen children, says the changes have spooked the city’s migrant workforce. In recent weeks, he said, one of his employees left the state and another returned to Mexico. Both feared that if they stayed they risked arrest.

Departing workers, he says, pose a problem for Houston in the wake of Harvey, which has caused flood damage to commercial buildings, houses, roads and bridges expected to run into tens of billions of dollars.

“The situation that Houston is going through now with the hurricane is going to be the trial by fire for the Republicans and the governor that approved these radical laws,” De Leon said. “They will need our migrant labor to rebuild the city. I believe that without us it will be impossible.”

Undocumented workers perform a wide range of construction jobs, from framing and dry-walling to plumbing and wiring.

Shortage of U.S. trained workers

Stan Marek, chief executive of Marek Construction in Texas, said his company doesn’t hire undocumented immigrants and has long had difficulty finding enough trained U.S. workers.

“It’s a crisis,” Marek said. “We are looking at several thousand homes that have flood damage. There is no way the existing (legal) workforce can make a dent in it.”

Marek would like to see the federal government grant emergency work authorization for undocumented workers in the rebuilding effort, he said. Otherwise, those immigrants are likely to be hired by firms that do not pay payroll taxes or provide benefits like workers’ compensation and legally mandated overtime.

It isn’t yet possible to estimate how many construction jobs will be added in Texas as it rebuilds, but in the 12 months after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Louisiana added 14,800 jobs in the sector, U.S. government data shows.

About 25 percent of the construction workers involved in the cleanup of New Orleans were undocumented, according to a study by researchers at Tulane and UC Berkeley universities. Those without papers were “especially at risk of exploitation,” the study found.

Worker exodus

The labor shortages are likely to grow worse, many builders warn. Earlier this year, a group of Hispanic contractors sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott warning that the pending ban on sanctuary city policies would make it “difficult to find and retain experienced workers.”

Javier Arrias, chairman of the Hispanic Contractors Association de Tejas and one of the letter’s signers, told Reuters that “many construction workers are already moving to other states.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the role undocumented workers might play in the recovery.

Elizabeth Theiss, president of Houston-based anti-immigration group Stop the Magnet, sees another option besides looking to workers in the country illegally. She says the rebuilding effort should be used to help train U.S. veterans and other citizens who need jobs.

Theiss acknowledged that reconstruction might proceed more slowly, at least initially, if immigrants without work documents are not part of the effort, but she noted that rebuilding would be slow under any scenario.

Personal hardships

Whatever role undocumented people play in rebuilding Houston, they could face hardships rebuilding their own lives.

While the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides emergency food, water and medicine to anyone, regardless of immigration status, cash assistance and other longer term aid is only available to citizens and immigrants in households where at least one family member has legal status.

Immigrant advocates are launching private fundraising drives to help fill the void.

“It is deeply tragic and un-American that so many of those working men and women who will be rebuilding Houston and the rest of the state will be doing so while facing tragedy in their own lives,” said Jose Garza, executive director of the Workers Defense Project.

De Leon said his family was lucky and did not suffer flood damage. He is now busy rounding up supplies for immigrant families stuck at shelters who are afraid to seek out more help from authorities.

In the end, he says, President Donald Trump has to know “it’s going to be impossible to rebuild Houston without the labor force of immigrants. It is illogical, what he says with his words and what really has to happen.”
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Michigan is likely to be the state most hurt by changes to the NAFTA trade agreement, according to a Fitch Ratings report released Wednesday, as U.S. President Donald Trump renewed threats to scrap the deal.

Trump has threatened three times in the past week to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, revisiting his view that the United States would probably have to start the process of exiting the accord to reach a fair deal for his country.

A second round of talks starts Friday in Mexico City to renegotiate the 1994 accord binding the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Business groups have largely praised NAFTA and hope to persuade all three governments to make minimal changes to the pact. U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade has quadrupled since NAFTA took effect in 1994, surpassing $1 trillion in 2015.

Michigan’s auto sector

While several other states export a significant amount of products to Canada and Mexico, Michigan is an outlier in Fitch’s analysis because of the state’s global role in the automotive sector and proximity to Canada, the report said.

Sixty-five percent of the Michigan’s exports went to Canada and Mexico in 2016, totaling 7.4 percent of its gross state product, it said.

“Any state that is particularly export dependent or exposed to trade, if there’s a falloff in trade it’s going to hit income and sales taxes and that’s going to weaken state revenues,” said Michael D’Arcy, a director of U.S. public finance at Fitch. “Cuts would have to be made.”

Anna Heaton, a spokeswoman for Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, said in a statement to Reuters that Canada, Michigan’s No.1 trading partner, has been important to the state’s economic recovery but he understands that sometimes policies need to change.

11 states trade heavily with Canada

According to the report, 11 U.S. states send at least 30 percent of their exports to Canada. By merchandise value, 82 percent of North Dakota’s exports went to Canada in 2016. Forty-three percent of New Mexico’s exports were sent to Mexico.

Several states also import a substantial amount of Canadian goods.

“A unilateral U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA would sharply increase import tariffs overnight, entailing potentially substantial costs for U.S. importers and consumers,” the report said.

Major metropolitan areas could also be affected by U.S. trade policy changes, with Texas’s El Paso MSA, or metropolitan statistical area, left vulnerable to NAFTA changes, the report said. Exports to Canada and Mexico accounted for 91 percent of the MSA’s exports.
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An abattoir located among herding communities in Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region, known more for droughts and famine than business opportunities, is an unusual stop for a U.S. aid administrator.

But USAID chief Mark Green stopped at the Jijiga Export Slaughter House (JESH) during a visit to the town of Jijiga on Wednesday to see the effects of a crippling drought that has pushed some areas to the south to the brink of famine.

The abattoir buys goats, sheep, cows and camels for slaughter from herders for export to the Middle East, giving families cash to buy food during the drought.

A $1.5-million loan from Feed the Future, a $1 billion-a-year agricultural program launched during U.S. President Barack Obama’s presidency in 2010, helped purchase refrigerators and trucks for the facility, which employs 100 people from local villages.

To Green, the slaughterhouse represents what USAID can do to help attract private-sector money into investments that boost the productivity of small farmers in developing countries.

While at the abattoir, Green announced 12 countries that will benefit from Feed The Future investments in 2017, signaling that the program will survive proposed deep cuts to USAID’s budget this year.

The 12 countries are Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda.

Green said investments like the Jijinga slaughterhouse not only created markets for American businesses but helped communities out of poverty. Herders can earn as much as $80 per goat when they sell to the slaughterhouse.

“I’m under no illusions; the development journey in many places in the world is a long one, but I want us to always be thinking what we can do that nudges something towards a day when people get to take care of themselves,” he said.

“This is a place where we see some of the benefits and the potential for Feed the Future,” Green added.

JESH Chief Executive Faisal Guhad said the abattoir had been open for a year but was forced to close for three months last year because of the drought.

The facility currently processes about 10,000 animals a month. Guhad said he hoped to quadruple that in the second year of operation.

Demand for Ethiopian goat meat was currently high because of the annual haj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, said Guhad.

“We opened at the wrong time. El Nino happened to us and we started again after it rained,” said Guhad. “We’re now in the second month of starting again.”

The facility employs about 108 people from the community and plans to increase hiring to 200, said Guhad.

In the Jijinga area, planting for the March to May rains, known as the belg, is already delayed, and aid workers say they have seen a growing number of women and children at food distribution centers. The hunger crisis is predicted to worsen until the harvest begins in September.

Many parts of the Ethiopian highlands are still recovering from the 2016 drought, which was attributed to the El Niño weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean.
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A flood of Indian business in fast-growing Vietnam has solidified commercial ties to help Hanoi upgrade an alliance with a powerful Asian neighbor and offset dependence on its historic rival, the more massive China.

Indian investment in Vietnam has reached $2 billion and bilateral trade hit $10 billion over the year ending in March on its way to $15 billion by 2020, said Radha Krishnan, vice chairman of the Indian Business Chamber of Vietnam.

“As of now that is very easily achievable,” Krishnan said. “The last three … years exports from Vietnam to India have picked up momentum.”

Vietnam has many trade partners

Last year the two countries agreed to upgrade a “strategic partnership,” giving Vietnam more Indian market access, and they will drop import tariffs in 2022 as part of a trade deal with a bloc of Southeast Asian countries.

Those totals hardly match those of Vietnam’s long-time investment sources such as Taiwan, South Korea and China. But their growth offers Vietnam a line to the world’s second-largest country, helping to reduce dependence on China, which is the world’s second-largest economy and Vietnam’s biggest trading partner.

China-Vietnam set a trade target of $100 billion in 2016, but the pair disputes a swathe of the South China Sea. Their dispute sparked clashes in 1974, 1988 and 2014.

“The Vietnamese government, they don’t want to get an unbalanced investment portfolio where any particular country or region is dominant, because then it just unbalances everything else — foreign policy, domestic politics and everything,” said Frederick Burke, partner with the international law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City.

“As far as people who think about strategic issues are concerned, they would like the Indians to be probably more present in the market, because they’re probably behind mainland China in particular,” he said. “Everybody wants to balance the two out, be friends with both. That’s the ideal situation.”

Robust trade but also continuing disputes with China

Vietnam depends on China for cheap mass market goods, as well as raw materials for export manufacturing. The two Communist countries fought a border war in the 1970s shortly after what was then South Vietnam lost the Paracel Islands to China. That archipelago is part of the South China Sea.

In 2014, the placement of a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea east of Vietnam touched off a boat-ramming incident and deadly anti-China riots on land. In June, a Chinese military official cut short his Vietnam visit as the host drilled for oil offshore.

Over the past two decades, Indian farming, garment and pharmaceutical investment have reached Vietnam because of its eager partners, Krishnan said. Low-cost but advanced Indian technology has helped Vietnam farm in dry weather, produce sugar and process cashews, he said. Tata Power of India runs a $1.8 billion thermal power plant in Vietnam.

For the past three years, the overseas subsidiary of India’s government-run ONGC has worked with PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation to search for oil and gas in the South China Sea.

About 80,000 Indians visit Vietnam every year, often as tourists looking for business opportunities, and 20,000 go the other way, sometimes as travelers to Buddhist landmarks, Krishnan said.

India has its own reasons for strengthening trade with Vietnam

India, for its part, is keen to resist China’s expansion in Asia. The two Asian powers are easing just this week a more than two-month-old military standoff in Bhutan. China claims the area in question, and Bhutan called on India to help when the Chinese came to work on a highway project.

Countries that build trade, investment and economic ties do not always become political allies, but in the India-Vietnam case, that fate is “natural,” said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. China, he added, is unlikely to flinch at India because Vietnam is chasing stronger ties with other powerful countries, as well.

“You don’t need to be a grand strategist to think of diversifying your market,” Huang said. “Of course it will have some kind of impact, but so far I do not see one to the degree that will fundamentally change the Chinese perception over Vietnam, because the United States is improving relationships with Vietnam, Japan is improving relationships with Vietnam.”

A need to resist continued Chinese expansion

Beijing’s “belligerence” and escalation of territorial disputes in the seas to the Bhutan border have “served to bring a coalition of China-wary states closer,” said Mohan Malik,professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

Elsewhere in Asia, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines have also tried to balance foreign policies between China and the West, often through trade and investment.

China is expected to keep a special eye out for India’s maritime ties with Vietnam. The Indian oil company could work again in the waters off Vietnam, Krishnan said. Officials in Hanoi, he said, would try to protect that investment and others.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a big problem per se,” said Krishnan. “We are very, very positive that both governments will be able to handle that very, very positively. I don’t think investments made in Vietnam by a foreign country or company will be at risk.”
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The U.S. economy rebounded sharply in the spring, growing at the fastest pace in more than two years amid brisk consumer spending on autos and other goods.

The gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the April-June quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. It was the best showing since a 3.2 percent gain in the first quarter of 2015.

The result is a healthy upward revision from the government’s initial estimate of 2.6 percent growth in the second quarter. The growth rate in the January-March quarter was a lackluster 1.2 percent.

Improvements in consumer spending, particularly on autos, and business investment powered second-quarter growth. Those revisions offset a bigger drag from spending by state and local governments.

This was the second of three estimates the government will provide for second quarter growth. Even with the upward revision, the weak start to the year means that growth over the past six months has averaged 2.1 percent, the same modest pace seen for the recovery that began in mid-2009.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked the Obama administration’s economic record, pledging to double GDP growth to 4 percent or better. His first budget, sent to Congress earlier this year, projects growth rates will climb to a sustained annual rate of 3 percent, a goal that many private economists believe is still too optimistic.

 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office sees growth averaging 1.9 percent over the next decade, a forecast much closer to estimates made by private economists.

Many economists had been forecasting growth in the current July-September quarter would be around 3 percent. Some are now saying that the devastation from Hurricane Harvey could shave about a half-percentage point off growth this quarter. However, analysts believe the pace of growth will bounce back once the rebuilding begins and oil refineries get back to full production, bringing down prices.

For the entire year, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is forecasting growth of 2.1 percent. That would mark an improvement over last year when the economy grew a meager 1.5 percent, the poorest showing since 2009 when GDP shrank by 2.9 percent.

Zandi is forecasting that growth in 2018 will be an even stronger 2.8 percent. But he said 0.4 percentage point of that forecast reflects an assumption that the Trump administration will win a tax cut package that will take effect in early 2018. The economy will also be boosted by higher spending on the military and infrastructure projects, he said.

“For the first time since the Great Recession ended in mid-2009, the economy is not facing any significant headwinds,” Zandi said.

 
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U.S. sanctions on the finance boss of Venezuela’s oil company PDVSA have led to some exports to the United States being blocked as banks and investment funds refuse to provide letters of credit to potential buyers, three financial sources said.

U.S. businesses are barred from dealing with a sanctioned person or company and one of the sources said the sanctions on PDVSA’s Finance Vice President Simon Zerpa were deterring some businesses from investments with the company as so many of its transactions are linked to the finance department he leads.

A Venezuelan oil shipment to the United States was blocked this month as lenders refused to provide letters of credit to PDVSA customers, the sources said.

Letters of credit, issued by banks, guarantee to a seller that a buyer will pay a specified amount on time when a shipment is accepted. Without a letter of credit, shipments cannot be delivered and the shipper does not get paid. Blocking letters of credit for PDVSA oil chokes off cash that is desperately needed in the OPEC nation.

Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, is the financial motor of President Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government, and it is operating within one of the deepest economic recessions Venezuela has ever experienced and widespread political unrest.

In one instance, U.S. refiner PBF Energy was unable to get a letter of credit for a Venezuelan crude cargo to be received at a U.S. port.

The Suezmax tanker Karvounis has been anchored in the U.S. Gulf for more than a month. It partially discharged its cargo on Aug. 23 in New Orleans, according to Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data. A trader close to the deal said PBF Energy ultimately agreed to a prepayment, removing the need for a credit letter. It was unclear what would happen with the rest of the cargo.

Some U.S. customers can import without a letter of credit if they pay up front.

In July, the United States imposed sanctions on 13 senior Venezuelan officials, including the head of Venezuela’s army, the national police chief, the director of elections, and Zerpa.

At the time, a U.S. official warned that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was readying tougher measures that could be part of a “steady drumbeat” of responses to the Venezuelan crisis.

The most serious potential future step would be financial sanctions that would halt dollar payments for the country’ oil, starving the government of hard currency, or a total ban on oil imports to the United States, Venezuela’s biggest customer.

This month the United States imposed its first economic sanctions on Venezuela, banning debt trades for government-issued bonds and bonds issued by PDVSA. 

The problem could spread to more cargoes if banks refuse to extend credit to companies that have a commercial relationship with PDVSA, the sources said.

The sources said foreign oil companies funding projects in Venezuela and financial entities negotiating with PDVSA were avoiding signing agreements that could involve Zerpa.

Major oil company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has pulled back from funding some operations at its joint venture in Venezuela, a source at PDVSA said.

Neither PDVSA nor the Information Ministry responded to requests for comment. Zerpa was not immediately available to comment.

“PDVSA will face additional trouble just by keeping a sanctioned individual as CFO,” said Jorge Piedrahita, chief executive of broker-dealer Gear Capital Partners, who has been involved with Venezuelan debt for many years.

“Even the Russians and China’s Development Bank should be worried about signing something with him as they can be subject to collateral damage from sanctions just by association.”

A close Maduro ally, Zerpa, 34, rose to prominence by leading the bilateral Venezuela-China fund through which Caracas borrows from Beijing and repays loans in oil and fuel. Venezuela has borrowed over $60 billion from China, earning Zerpa the nickname “Zerpa the Chinese.”

Two additional financial sources said having Zerpa as the company’s head of finance had made it impossible for U.S. entities to assist PDVSA in debt refinancing, even before the U.S. economic sanctions.

Even basic activities, such as a conference call with bondholders, are now essentially unthinkable, the sources said.

Sanctions against Zerpa are having a knock-on effect on Wall Street, affecting imports of food and medicine to Venezuela made through funds headed by Zerpa, according to Delcy Rodriguez, president of Maduro’s new legislative assembly.

“This wasn’t done to affect Venezuelan officials but rather the entire population,” Rodriguez said on Monday.

Zerpa has held several high-profile posts including heading Venezuela’s state economic development bank Bandes and off-budget investment fund Fonden.

Opposition lawmakers have said he is an example of how the late Hugo Chavez’s “21st century socialism” has allowed unprepared political figures to wield power over financial deals.

“I have a negative opinion of him because of the way he handled the Chinese fund,” said opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado, describing Zerpa as Maduro’s “finance tsar.”

U.S. pressure could force PDVSA to remove Zerpa from his post, at least on paper. However, PDVSA has had issues in the past that have led investors to tread cautiously with Venezuela.

“In part, the sanctions codify an already existing situation in which PDVSA and the Republic have little to no access to international financial markets due to the combination of political risk, unsustainable policies, concerns about legality

of new issues and reputational risk from providing funds to the Venezuelan government,” investment firm Torino Capital wrote in a report to clients after Friday’s sanctions.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is traveling to the state of Missouri to try to build support for his goal of reforming the country’s tax code.

Administration officials say the president will focus on explaining the need for tax reform, but not the specifics of a plan to do so, during a speech Wednesday in the city of Springfield.  They say he will promote tax cuts as a way to help American workers.

Trump has in the past proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

The U.S. tax code has not undergone a significant overhaul since 1986.

Trump’s Republican Party controls both houses of the U.S. Congress, but failed in its earlier efforts to overhaul another major program as leaders were unable to get enough votes to change the health care system.
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