Amsterdam unveiled far-reaching plans Wednesday to rein in tourism, reflecting the dissatisfaction of many residents who feel the city’s historic center has been overrun.

The leading Green-Left and other parties negotiating a new municipal government after March elections vowed to return “Balance to the City,” in a document of that name seen by Reuters.

“The positive sides of tourism such as employment and city revenues are being more and more overshadowed by the negative consequences,” including trash and noise pollution, the document said.

Changes the document outlines include curtailing “amusement transportation” such as multiperson “beer bikes”; cracking down on alcohol use in boats on the canals; further restricting Airbnb and other home rentals; and a large tax hike.

The plans announced Wednesday also include creating an inventory of all commercial beds in the city to try to cap various sectors, such as those on cruise ships and in hotels.

“I’m very happy that the city is now finally taking action, because residents have been asking for it for a very long time,” said Bert Nap of neighborhood organization d’Oude Binnenstad, in the historic center.

“What I’m worried about is that this package of measures is so drastic that there will be a lot of lawsuits and political resistance, which will cost a lot of time.”

He said the city was suffering from too many visitors in general, which had the effect of changing the character of the center into one big tourist attraction. He also said some unruly, drunken tourists were making the city center an unattractive place for local residents.

Edgy lure

With a population of around 800,000, the city expects 18 million tourists in 2018, an increase of 20 percent from 2016 levels, many drawn by an edgy atmosphere generated by readily available soft drugs and the “red light” sex zone.

Anti-tourist and anti-expatriate sentiment have been steadily on the rise in Amsterdam, as both are blamed in part for helping drive housing prices increasingly out of the reach of ordinary Dutch people.

The average apartment in Amsterdam cost 407,000 euros ($475,000) in 2017, an increase of around 12 percent from 2016 levels, according to national real estate association NVM.

The change of emphasis has already started from national government over the past years, to try to dissuade visitors from the more earthy pastimes the city is famous for.

Advertising campaigns have focused on the city’s canals, the Anne Frank House and the museums packed with the greatest works of Van Gogh and Rembrandt.

Legislators have helped the rebranding, shutting a third of the city’s brothels in 2008 and starting a program in 2011 to close marijuana cafes located near schools.

“Amsterdam is a city to live and work in — it’s only a tourist destination in the second place,” the municipal document said.
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The United States is pushing for a deal in negotiations on a revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the White House said Wednesday, but Canadian and Mexican officials were not due in Washington for talks before a Thursday deadline.

President Donald Trump is committed to getting a better agreement with Canada and Mexico, press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News.

“We still want to see something happen and we’re going to continue in those conversations. They’re ongoing now and we’re pushing forward and hopeful that we can get something done soon,” Sanders said.

On Tuesday, Mexico’s economy minister said he saw diminishing chances for a new NAFTA agreement before a Thursday deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the U.S. Congress.

Neither the Mexican minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, nor Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland had plans to travel to Washington on Wednesday, their representatives said.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Republican-controlled Congress would need to be notified of a new deal by Thursday to give lawmakers a chance to approve it before a newly elected Congress takes over in January.

Sanders did not address the timeline.

“We’ve got to get a deal that works for everybody, but most importantly this president is going to make sure that we get a deal that works for America,” she said. “He’s not going to stop until he gets it.”

Ryan said Congress cannot begin working on the negotiating law known as “fast track” without a trade deal in hand.

“The point is, we can’t work a bill unless we have an agreement that’s in writing that we can work on and that hasn’t occurred yet,” Ryan told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.
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Venezuelan authorities said they were reactivating a Kellogg Co plant under worker control Wednesday, a day after the U.S. multinational food producer pulled out of the crisis-hit country.

Kellogg joined a host of other multinationals in exiting Venezuela and later confirmed President Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government had taken over its manufacturing plant.

On Wednesday, Aragua state Governor Marco Torres slammed Kellogg and guaranteed food production would continue.

“With no notification, this U.S.-based multinational decided to close its doors, leaving 570 workers hanging,” said Torres at the plant, in Maracay. “Yet, we’re here — in less than 24 hours.”

Millions in Venezuela suffer food and medicine shortages amid hyperinflation. Maduro blames Venezuela’s crisis on an “economic war” that he says is being waged by Washington, greedy businessmen and coup-mongers.

He is expected to win Sunday’s presidential election, described by the opposition as a sham.

Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, General Motors and Harvest Natural Resources are the most recent big names to pull out of Venezuela in the face of economic conditions.

Opposition critics scoffed that the government would quickly plunder the Kellogg plant and ruin its business.
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Malaysia’s new government to scrutinize past economic policies under the now ousted Najib Razak administration is prompting analysts to warn of a slide in investment and growth in one of Southeast Asia’s top economies.

The new leadership has appointed a group of prominent citizens, an eminent persons group, to come up with a new policy agenda within the next 100 days that will, among other things, review mega investment projects that have been key drivers of economic growth.

The new government has also established a special task force as corruption allegations over the abuse of funds in a sovereign wealth fund set up by Najib, and ordered a review of political representation on Malaysia’s largest government investment firms, including the main sovereign and pension funds.

Leading the eminent persons group is a former finance minister, Daim Zainuddin, and it includes a former central bank governor, Zeti Akhtar Aziz, a former president the Malaysian energy giant, Petronas, an economist and a leading businessman.

Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist for Capital Economics, an economic research group in London, says a key issue is whether Malaysia’s new government will remain united in the face of moves toward economic reforms.

“[The coalition] when it was formed was very much a coalition against Najib rather than anything pro-reform. So the first real test they have got is to see if there is enough cohesion within that coalition to push through [economic] reforms,” Leather told VOA.

A key campaign promise by new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s Pakatan Harapan — or Alliance of Hope — was to abolish a value added, goods and services tax.

While the tax, known as GST, was unpopular among voters, analysts say the revenue enabled the government to diversify its tax base from an over-reliance on corporate tax and the oil industry.

Immediately after the vote, financial markets reacted nervously to the scrapping of the tax and questions of the impact the measure would have on the government’s budget. Contributions from the GST have reached $10.6 billion.

Malaysian Finance Ministry officials have not said when the tax would be abolished, and analysts predicted a tough road ahead for the plan.

“To raise as much money as the GST while getting rid of the GST is going to be quite difficult. I don’t think that they can really go ahead and form a U-turn a d decide to keep it — so it’s going to be quite tricky managing it for them,” Leather said.

Analysts say financial markets are also closely watching steps in the new investigations centered on former leader Najib, accused of siphoning off billions of dollars from the 1MDB wealth fund. He firmly denies the charges. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges some $4.5 billion was misappropriated from the 1MDB, originally set up by Najib.

At least six countries, including the U.S., Singapore and Switzerland, are investigating the allegations of corruption. The new government has vowed to undertake fresh investigations into the case. Last weekend Malaysian immigration authorities refused Najib and his family the right to leave the country pending the investigations.

Unlike abolishing the sales tax, Leather predicts the corruption investigations will have a positive effect on the economy.

“Hopefully what it will do is it will bring to light a lot of the problems, institutional problems that have been holding Malaysia’s economy back over the past few years. It would have been shocking had Najib been able to steal this election,” he said.

But observers say a review of the multi-billion dollar mega projects, especially those undertaken by China, may have a major impact. The Chinese have invested more than $3.38 billion in Malaysia — and China is the leading foreign investor ahead of the U.S., Japan and Singapore. Chinese investments include manufacturing, real estate and sovereign wealth fund bonds.

China has also supported rail infrastructure in Malaysia that is linked to the One Belt One Road, a Beijing initiative that envisions building a network extending throughout Asia.

Analysts say there is a risk that investment — a key driver of growth — may fall sharply over the next two years.

Economic growth, with quarterly figures due this week, has been expanding at between 5.5 percent and 6 percent over the past year, aided by exports and foreign investment.

During the election campaign, Mahathir rallied against Chinese investment and promised a detailed review of projects involving foreign countries.

Pavida Pananond, a professor of international business at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, also predicts that Malaysia faces key economic challenges, especially after more than 60 years of government led by the monolithic United Malay National Organization coalition.

Pavida, in emailed comments to VOA, said it “remains to be seen how much political power can be remained from [the] economic sphere” after such a length of time.

“While the intention to scrutinize major projects and to investigate corruption should be well received, major changes will not come easily as the Malaysian economy and business have long been dominated by government linked or government supported corporations and entities,” she said.

On a positive note, she added, “the euphoric excitement toward changes, equality and transparency, should be welcome, as they bode well for what is needed in the new era of efficiency — and innovation-driven economy that Malaysia aspired to achieve.”

 
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Most U.S. insurance companies have not adapted their strategies to address the dangers of climate change, making them likely to raise rates or deny coverage in high-risk areas, said a study released Tuesday.

With predictions of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season approaching, thousands of people could be unable to afford insurance protection or lose it altogether, said the Canadian research study published in the British Journal of Management.

Scientific consensus holds that climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather, from hurricanes to flooding. Last year, three record hurricanes struck the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage.

Yet insurance and reinsurance companies overwhelmingly continue to treat storms as “anomalous rather than correlated to climate change,” the study said.

“Insurers that ignore climate change will not put away enough money to cover their claims. To recoup those losses, they’ll have to raise rates or pull coverage from high-risk areas,” said lead author Jason Thistlethwaite, an assistant professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo.

They will face whopping payouts associated with disasters, he said.

So long, coverage

“When this shift happens, thousands of people will lose coverage or it will be unaffordable,” he said.

Insured losses hit an all-time high between 2004 and 2014, according to a 2015 analysis by reinsurer Swiss Re.

Insurance companies use reinsurance to minimize their risk. 

But in 2015, only 3 percent out of a sample of 178 U.S. property insurers and reinsurers were taking into account climate change in corporate governance, underwriting and investment, the study found.

However, the number of companies factoring in climate change in at least one area of operation doubled to about three dozen from 2012 to 2015, it said.

With storm-related payouts soaring, insurance companies may go out of business or lose investors, Thistlethwaite said.

A shrinking insurance market will drive up costs to consumers, he said.

The researchers analyzed insurers in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Washington and New Mexico.

Less than a month away, the Atlantic hurricane season has been predicted to be “above average” by Colorado State University meteorologists. The season runs from June 1 to November 30.
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Mexico’s central bank said Tuesday that it was creating a cybersecurity unit, following a hack on a domestic payments system at the end of April that affected Mexican banks.

The central bank said in a notice in the government’s daily gazette that the new unit would design and issue guidelines on information security for the country’s banks, which are supervised by the central bank.

Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon Carrillo said Monday that the country had seen an unprecedented attack on payment system connections and that he hoped that measures being taken would stop future incidents.

The attack on Mexican banks is similar to one of the biggest-ever known cyber heists, when thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, said Fermin Gonzalez, head of forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mexico.

“Perhaps, some financial institutions perceived the attacks in Bangladesh as something very distant,” he said, adding that some Mexican banks may not have invested in sufficient security measures.

“But criminals look for vulnerability and once they see it they are going to exploit it.”

The central bank has not identified which banks were hit by the cyberattack or detailed how much thieves were able to wire out to bogus accounts in other banks.

A source close to the government’s investigation said more than 300 million had been siphoned out of banks, but it was not clear how much had subsequently been taken out in cash withdrawals.

Bank Grupo Financiero Banorte said Tuesday it does not expect the attack to hit financial results.
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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday rejected any plan by President Donald Trump to ease restrictions on China’s ZTE Corp, calling the telecommunications firm a security threat and vowing not to abandon legislation clamping down on the company.

Trump on Monday had defended his decision to revisit penalties on ZTE for flouting U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, in part by saying it was reflective of the larger trade deal the United States is negotiating with China.

“I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week.

The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange for easing the ban on selling components to ZTE.

“They are basically conducting an all-out assault to steal what we’ve already developed and use it as the baseline for their development so they can supplant us as the leader in the most important technologies of the 21st century,” Rubio said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Asia policy.

Trump had taken to Twitter on Sunday with a pledge to help the company, which has suspended its main operations, because the penalties had cost too many jobs in China. It was a departure for a president who often touts “America First” policies.

The Commerce Department in April found ZTE had violated a 2017 settlement created after the company violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and banned U.S. companies from providing exports to ZTE for seven years.

U.S. companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.

Cybersnooping?

The suggestion outraged members of Congress who have been pressing for more restrictions on ZTE. Some U.S. lawmakers have alleged equipment made by ZTE and other Chinese companies could pose a cyber security threat.

​”Who makes unilateral concessions on the eve of talks after you’ve spent all this time trying to say, correctly in my view, that the Chinese have ripped off our technology?” Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, told Reuters.

Wyden, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, was one of 32 Senate Democrats who signed a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump of putting China’s interests ahead of U.S. jobs and national security.

The company has denied wrongdoing.

Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday he did not expect lawmakers would seek to remove a ban on ZTE technology from a must-pass annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress.

“I confess I don’t fully understand the administration’s take on this at this point,” Thornberry said. “It is not a question to me of economics, it is a question of security.”

Another Republican, Senator John Kennedy, defended Trump, saying the president’s approach is part of a larger set of negotiations with China.

“He didn’t get up one day and go, ‘I think I’ll change my mind on ZTE.’ I think it’s part of a larger issue, and part of a larger set of negotiations,” Kennedy told reporters.
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Mexico’s economy minister said that he saw diminishing chances for a new North American Free Trade Agreement ahead of a Thursday deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the current U.S. Congress.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Republican-controlled Congress would need to be notified of a new NAFTA deal by Thursday to give lawmakers a chance of approving it before a newly elected Congress takes over in January.

“It is not easy. We do not think we will have it by Thursday,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told broadcaster Televisa on Tuesday.

But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a more upbeat tone, telling reporters in Calgary a few hours later, “There is very much an eminently achievable outcome … and we are very close.”

“We are going to continue to remain optimistic,” said Trudeau. He met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday and discussed the possibility of bringing NAFTA talks to a “prompt conclusion.”

Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada have been in intense talks since last month to try to reach a deal before U.S. congressional elections in November. Mexico’s presidential vote on July 1 also complicates the process.

“We will keep negotiating, and in the moment that we have a good negotiation, we can close the deal … independent of which Congress (the current or new) that will vote on it,” said Guajardo.

Mexico’s peso sank to its weakest level in over a year on Tuesday, and the country’s benchmark stock index fell about 1 percent to its lowest since early April.

Guajardo said the talks could be concluded before or just after the July 1 vote.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is leading polls to win the presidential race, and his pick for economy minister, Graciela Marquez, said last month his administration would be willing to accept a deal struck before the election.

If that is not possible, she said it would be better to complete the negotiation after the next government takes office at the start of December. Guajardo said the next government’s team would need to be involved in any talks after July 1.

Guajardo said negotiators were getting close to reaching a deal on rules for the auto  sector under NAFTA.

However, talks still faced the hurdles of U.S. demands for a sunset clause that would allow NAFTA to expire if it is not renegotiated every five years, and the elimination of settlement panels for trade disputes.

More flexibility was needed for a deal, Guajardo said. Kenneth Smith, the chief Mexican negotiator at the talks, said that for Mexico there were no deadlines.

Irrespective of the Thursday deadline mentioned by Ryan,there was still time to ratify anew NAFTA this year, Smith told broadcaster Enfoque Noticias.

Hanging over the talks is Trump’s threat to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on its trade partners. Mexico and Canada have been spared so far, although the latest exemption for them will run out at the end of May.

Smith said his government would retaliate with equivalent measures “immediately” if tariffs or quotas were imposed.
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