U.S. stocks rose on Thursday, as robust earnings reports supported a third day of recovery from a bruising selloff in October, but a drop in Apple’s shares ahead of results kept technology stocks under pressure.

Chemicals producer DowDuPont Inc rose 6.6 percent after quarterly profit topped estimates and the company announced a $3 billion share buyback.

NXP Semiconductors climbed 8.6 percent after the chipmaker topped profit and revenue estimates, while American International Group Inc gained 4.7 percent after the insurer posted a smaller-than-quarterly loss.

Markets also got a lift after U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet he had a “very good” talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade and North Korea and that the two planned to meet at the upcoming G-20 summit.

The rebound comes after the benchmark S&P 500 in October posted its worst monthly performance since September 2011, battered by worries over rising borrowing costs, global trade disputes and a possible slowdown in U.S. corporate profits.

“Over the past few days, we’ve seen the pressure valve taken off the selling which certainly helps from a sentiment perspective,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.

The S&P technology index slipped 0.1 percent after two days of solid gains, with Apple, last among the major technology names to report earnings, falling 0.2 percent ahead of earnings after markets close.

Netflix, Facebook and Alphabet also fell, pushing the communication services index down 0.3 percent.

Shares in Spotify Technology fell about 10 percent after the paid music streaming service reported quarterly revenue and margins in line with expectations and a modest rise in premium subscribers.

S&P 500 companies are on pace to have posted a 26.3 percent rise in third-quarter earnings with more than half of the constituents having reported, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Despite the big overall profit increase, some high-profile companies have issued disappointing reports.

At 10:12 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 147.40 points, or 0.59 percent, at 25,263.16, the S&P 500 was up 12.40 points, or 0.46 percent, at 2,724.14. The Nasdaq Composite was up 23.57 points, or 0.32 percent, at 7,329.47.

Eight of the 11 major S&P sectors were higher, with a 2 percent jump in the materials index leading the gainers after DowDuPont’s results.

Health insurer Cigna Corp rose 3.1 percent after beating quarterly profit estimates and raising its full-year earnings forecast on tight cost controls.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.99-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.28-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded 6 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 12 new highs and 29 new lows.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has not “set in stone” any decisions on escalating tariffs on Chinese goods and may withdraw some duties if there are promising policy discussions with China, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday.

Kudlow said on CNBC that the meeting agenda between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of November in Buenos Aires has not yet been worked out, but “we may have a very good meeting in Argentina with President Xi.”

Asked about whether Trump would proceed with tariffs if the meeting fails to ease trade tensions, Kudlow said: “I would say nothing is set in stone right now. By the way, the president on one of the cable shows, did say – it didn’t get picked up – that if some kind of amicable deal with China were to happen, then a lot of tariffs might be pulled back.”

Kudlow, who heads the White House’s National Economic Council, added that Trump wasn’t making a promise, but giving a “very important hypothetical.”

Bloomberg reported on Monday that the Trump administration was preparing to announce tariffs on the remaining Chinese imports, about $257 billion worth, if the meeting fails to ease the U.S.-China trade war, citing unnamed sources.

Trump has long threatened to impose tariffs on all $500 billion-plus goods imports from China if Beijing fails to meet his demands for sweeping changes to its policies on intellectual property, technology transfers, industrial subsidies and local market access.

Kudlow said there was no specific trigger point for a decision to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods. “The policy talks determine this, not an arbitrary timetable. If the policy talks go well, then we’ll have a much better situation. If the policy talks don’t, it may deteriorate,” Kudlow said.

He said Trump said in a recent interview that if there are “promising policy discussions, I don’t know about a full fledged deal, but if things go well, maybe some tariffs get withdrawn and maybe not.”

Kudlow did not specify the interview to which he was referring.

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” show on Monday, Trump did not specifically mention the potential withdrawal of tariffs, but said he expects “a great deal” with China.
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President Donald Trump’s proposal to replace an Obama-era policy to fight climate change with a weaker plan allowing states to write their own rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants was criticized by coastal states, but applauded by coal interests on Wednesday.

Under the proposed Affordable Clean Energy plan that acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler issued in August, the federal government would set carbon emission guidelines, but states would have the leeway to set less stringent standards on coal plants, taking into account the age and upgrade costs of facilities.

The heads of environmental and energy agencies from 14 mostly coastal states, including California, New York and North Carolina, told the EPA in joint comments on the Trump plan that it would result in minimal reductions of greenhouse gases, and possibly result in increased emissions, relative to having no federal program on the pollution.

“We urge EPA to abandon this proposal and instead to maintain or update the (Obama era) Clean Power Plan,” which the states said would fulfill EPA’s obligations under federal clean air law and support the efforts of states to mitigate the effects of climate change. Some states including New York and Virginia have threatened to sue the EPA if the plan becomes law.

The comment period on the plan ends on Wednesday night and a final rule from the EPA is expected later this year.

Coal and some utility interests lauded the Trump plan.

“The proposed ACE rule is a welcome return to federal restraint after years of punitive overreach,” said Hal Quinn, the president and CEO of the National Mining Association, an industry group.

The coal industry had said President Barack Obama’s climate regulations represented a “war on coal,” but Trump’s promises to reduce regulations have not led to a revival, as the industry struggles with competition from an abundance of cheap natural gas. 

Ongoing closings of coal-fired plants have pushed U.S. coal consumption by utilities this year to the lowest since 1983, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In August, the EPA projected the plan would result in $400 million a year in economic benefits and reduce retail power prices by up to 0.5 percent by 2025. The EPA also forecast that under the rule, coal production would rise by up to 5.8 percent by 2025.

The Obama-era plan, which had been put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court, set overall carbon-reduction goals for each state.
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Cuba’s foreign trade and investment minister said on Wednesday the country had signed nearly 200 investment projects worth $5.5 billion since it slashed taxes and made other adjustments to its investment law in 2014.

Cuba began a major effort to attract foreign investment as socialist ally Venezuela’s economy went into crisis and has ratcheted it up as export revenues decline and the Trump administration backtracks on a detente begun under then-U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Foreign investment in Cuba is growing despite the recent strengthening of the U.S. economic, trade and financial blockade, though it is below what we want,” the minister, Rodrigo Malmierca, said at an investment forum in Havana.

Even as the forum unfolded, debate on an annual resolution condemning U.S. sanctions got under way at the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the Trump administration said that on Thursday it would announce new sanctions aimed at Cuba’s military and security services.

Malmierca said 40 new projects were signed over the last year valued at $1.5 billion.

Many agreements are in the tourism sector and are often simple management and marketing accords. Others are in manufacturing, oil exploration and, to a lesser extent, areas such as pharmaceuticals, agriculture and logistics.

Cuba says it wants a minimum $2.5 billion per year in direct foreign investment to dig its way out of years of crisis and stagnation.

While $5.5 billion in deals may have been signed since 2014, the government has said only around $500 million has actually been invested annually, including foreign government credits and donations.

Diplomats and business officials report that many projects are hard pressed to obtain financing and the Communist-run country’s bureaucracy also slows deals from getting off the ground.

For example, since 2014 five golf resorts valued at close to $2.5 billion were signed with British, Chinese and Spanish investors, but ground has yet to be broken on any of them, according to foreign business officials and diplomats with knowledge of the projects.

Malmierca said the country was working to overcome numerous obstacles for investors, such as lengthy delays for project approval, lack of experience among Cuban negotiators and Cuba’s dual monetary system with fixed exchange rates.

Under then-leader Fidel Castro, foreign investment was first nationalized, then, after the fall of former benefactor the Soviet Union it was viewed as an unfortunate necessity. Today it is lauded as an integral part of the country’s development strategy.
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Fitch Ratings changed its outlook on Mexico’s long-term foreign-currency debt issues Wednesday from “stable” to “negative,” citing the potential policies of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The leftist Lopez Obrador has tried to smooth anxieties in the business community, but upset many on Monday by cancelling a partly built, $13 billion new airport on the outskirts of Mexico City.

The private sector had strongly backed the airport project, but Lopez Obrador called it wasteful. Instead he plans to upgrade existing commercial and military airports. He made the decision based on a public referendum that was poorly organized and drew only about 1 percent of the country’s voters.

 

Alfredo Coutino, Latin America director at Moody’s Analytics, said the decision to cancel the airport project “added not only volatility but also uncertainty to the economy’s future, because it signals that policymaking in the new administration can be based more on such kind of subjective consultation and less on technical or fundamentals consistent with the country’s needs.”

“The cancellation has certainly introduced an element of uncertainty in markets and investors,” Coutino wrote, “which could start affecting confidence and credibility.”

Fitch confirmed its BBB+ investment-grade rating for Mexican government debt, but said Wednesday “there are risks that the follow-through on previously approved reforms, for example in the energy sector, could stall.”

Lopez Obrador has said he will review private concessionary oil exploration contracts granted under current President Enrique Pena Nieto’s energy reform, but won’t cancel them if they were fairly granted. The fear is that future exploration contracts may be delayed or cancelled.

Lopez Obrador won’t take office until December1, but has already announced major policy decisions.

 

Some of his policy announcements – like fiscal restraint, respect for the independence of the central banks and a pledge to avoid new debt – earned praise from investors.

But Fitch noted the decision to cancel the airport “sends a negative signal to investors.”

Lopez Obrador has also pledged to have the state-owned oil company, Pemex, build more refineries to lower imports of gasoline.

Fitch wrote that this type of proposal will “would entail higher borrowing and larger contingent liabilities to the government.”

 

 
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The future economy minister tapped by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro insisted on Tuesday that he wanted to fast-track an unpopular pension reform to help balance government finances despite mounting resistance to getting it done this year.

Paulo Guedes, whom Bolsonaro selected as a “super minister” with a portfolio combining the current ministries of finance, planning and development, has urged Congress to pass an initial version of pension reform before the Jan. 1 inauguration.

“Our pension funds are an airplane with five bombs on board that will explode at any moment,” Guedes said on Tuesday. “We’re already late on pension reform, so the sooner the better.”

He called the reform essential to controlling surging public debt in Latin America’s largest economy and making space for public investments to jump-start a sluggish economy. Markets surged in the weeks ahead of Bolsonaro’s Sunday victory on the expectation that he could pull off the tough fiscal agenda.

Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index rose 3.7 percent on Tuesday, boosted by strong corporate earnings and the resolve shown by Guedes on pension reform.

Yet the University of Chicago-trained economist, who is getting his first taste of public service, met with skepticism from more seasoned politicians.

Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the lower house of Congress, said on Tuesday that reform is urgent, but cautioned that the conditions to pass it were still far off.

Major Olimpio, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s own party who helped run his campaign, agreed the political climate was not ready for reform.

Even Bolsonaro’s future chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, said in a Monday radio interview that he only expects to introduce a reform plan next year.

After a meeting with Lorenzoni, Guedes said the decision on timing was ultimately a political one that the chief of staff would weigh.

“We can’t go from a victory at the ballot box to chaos in Congress,” Guedes told journalists.

On other issues, Guedes made clear he was the final word on economic matters, laying out plans to give the central bank more institutional independence and clarifying comments made by Lorenzoni about exchange-rate policy.

“You are all scared because he is a politician talking about the economy. That’s like me talking about politics. It’s not going to work,” Guedes said.

Hot Button Issues

While advisers work out the details of his economic program, Bolsonaro revisited some of his most contentious campaign promises on Monday night: looser gun laws, a ban on government advertising for media that “lie,” and urging a high-profile

judge to join his government.

In interviews with TV stations and on social media, Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former Army captain who won 55 percent of Sunday’s vote after running on a law-and-order platform, made clear he would push through his conservative agenda.

Bolsonaro said he wants Sergio Moro, the judge who has overseen the sprawling “Car Wash” corruption trials and convicted former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of graft, to serve as his justice minister.

Barring that, he said he would nominate Moro to the Supreme Court. The next vacancy on the court is expected in 2020.

Bolsonaro had not formally invited Moro as of Tuesday afternoon, and the judge remained noncommittal on the proposal.

“In case I’m indeed offered a post, it will be subject to a balanced discussion and reflection,” Moro said in a statement.

Media Showdown

Late on Monday, Bolsonaro said in an interview with Globo TV that he would cut government advertising funds that flow to any “lying” media outlets.

During his campaign, the right-winger imitated U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy of aggressively confronting the media, taking aim at Globo TV and Brazil’s biggest newspaper, the Folha de S.Paulo.

“I am totally in favor of freedom of the press,” Bolsonaro told Globo TV. “But if it’s up to me, press that shamelessly lies will not have any government support.”

Bolsonaro was referring to the hundreds of millions of reais the Brazilian government spends in advertising each year in local media outlets, mainly for promotions of state-run firms.

The UOL news portal, owned by the Grupo Folha, which also controls the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, used Brazil’s freedom of information act as the basis for a 2015 article that showed Globo received 565 million reais in federal government spending in 2014. Folha got 14.6 million reais that year.

Globo said on Tuesday that federal government advertising represented less than 4 percent of the revenue for its flagship channel, TV Globo, without providing more detailed figures.

Grupo Folha did not reply to requests for comment.
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This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them. 

A lobster tattoo covers Drew Eaton’s left forearm, its pincers snapping at dock lines connecting it to the American flag on his upper arm. The tattoo is about three-quarters done, but the 27-year-old is too busy with his new boat to finish it. 

Eaton knows what people here in Stonington have been saying about how much the boat cost him. 

“I’ve heard rumors all over town. Small town, everyone talks,” he says. “I’ve heard a million, two million.” 

By the time he was in the third grade, Eaton was already lobstering here on Deer Isle in Downeast Maine. By the time he was in the eighth grade, he’d bought his first boat, a 20-footer, from a family friend. The latest one, a 46-footer built over the winter at a nearby boatyard, is his fourth. 

Standing on the seawall after hauling lobster traps for about 12 hours on a foggy day this August, he says he’s making plenty of money to cover the boat loan. He’s unloaded 17 crates, each carrying 90 pounds of lobster, for a total haul of nearly $5,500. It’s a pretty typical day for him. 

Eaton belongs to a new generation of Maine lobstermen that’s riding high, for now, on a sweet spot of climate change. Two generations ago, the entire New England coast had a thriving lobster industry. Today, lobster catches have collapsed in southern New England, and the only state with a significant harvest is north in Maine, where the seafood practically synonymous with the state has exploded. 

The thriving crustaceans have created a kind of nautical gold rush, with some young lobstermen making well into six figures a year. But it’s a boom with a bust already written in its wake, and the lobstermen of the younger generation may well pay the highest price. Not only have they heavily mortgaged themselves with pricey custom boats in the rush for quick profits, they’ll also bear the brunt of climate change — not to mention the possible collapse of the lobstering industry in Maine as the creatures flourish ever northward. 

Shifts by 85 percent of species

In the U.S. North Atlantic, fisheries data show that at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species have shifted north or deeper, or both, in recent years when compared with the norm over the past half-century. And the most dramatic of species shifts have occurred in the last 10 or 15 years. 

Just in the last decade, for example, black sea bass have migrated up the East Coast into southern New England and are caught in the same traps that once caught lobsters. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, only 50 percent of lobster caught in the United States came from Maine. That started to shift in the 2000s, and this decade, nearly 85 percent of all lobster landings are in Maine. 

Pushed out of their traditional habitats by dramatically rising ocean temperatures and other fallout from climate change, the lobsters are part of a global dislocation of marine species that threatens livelihoods and cultures in the lands where they once thrived. 

On this island where two-lane roads twist around cedar-shingled houses and the rocky shore, lobstermen set the rhythm, often rising hours before dawn and resting not long after sunset. 

Although young guns like Eaton are flush with cash now, old-timers know that lobsters no longer thrive in warming waters to the south, and they’ve heard the talk about how fast the Gulf of Maine is warming. They fret that lobsters will start failing here, too, and Stonington will lose its mantle as lobster capital of the world to somewhere in Canada. And these days, there’s not much to fall back on if it does. 

They remember back when fishermen could catch plenty of cod, pollock and halibut if lobsters weren’t filling their traps. 

Until recently, shrimp was a reasonably reliable catch for local fishermen. But in 2014, regulators closed the shrimp fishery entirely. 

“Here you’ve got these coastal fishing communities that are totally based on what comes out of the water,” says Ted Ames, a commercial fisherman who became a scientist and co-founded the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries. 

He sits in the research center’s main conference room overlooking Stonington harbor, where hundreds of lobster boats bob on their mooring balls and the docks bustle with fishermen and their traps. 

In coastal Maine, he says, there’s little to sustain a community other than lobster and tourism. 

“You eliminate lobsters, and you have an instant Appalachia, right here.” 

 

Lobstering over time 

Unlike kids in most fishing communities around the world, youngsters here in Stonington clamor to get on the water. The gold-rush fever has gotten so bad, the local high school even has a program that encourages students to graduate before heading off to make a living from fishing. 

The skippers program, as it is known, offers the allotment of traps as a reward for staying in school. And when the students graduate, it streamlines the process of getting a full Maine skipper license, gradually increasing the number of traps to the maximum of 800. 

Deer Isle-Stonington High life sciences teacher Seth Laplant sympathizes with the students who chafe at being in school. 

“We have students that, you know, run their own business during the summer and do very well, and then they come back here and they have to ask to go to the bathroom,” he says. “It’s like a completely different world for them, and some of them do struggle with that. They’re used to being their own boss, and they’re respected in the community and in their families as adults.” 

But like many teens, they still play the one-upmanship game. Only with these students, it revolves around the size of their boats or the number of traps they own. 

Colby Schneider tells the class he’s the part-owner of a 30-foot fishing boat. 

Alex Boyce can’t believe it. “Are you serious, you have a 30-foot Novi?” 

“Yes,” Colby shoots back. “Me, my brother and my mom went thirds on it.” 

Alex rolls his eyes. He’s still accumulating traps and owns about a third of the 150 traps that students in the program are permitted to use. And his boat is only 19 feet long. 

Later in the day, Alex gathers with his father and grandfather in his grandparents’ kitchen. 

“Every year he asks: ‘Do I have to go back to school? Can I go fishing?'” says his father, offshore lobsterman Theodore Boyce II. “He went one weekend and made $700 in two days. That’s a tough thing to say no to as a parent. … But if he doesn’t finish school, he doesn’t go fishing.” 

Alex interrupts his father: “I was going to say, you seem to have a pretty easy job saying no.” Theodore’s eyes dart toward his son, and Alex backs down. 

Alex’s grandfather, Theodore “Ted” Boyce, is a fisherman and retired teacher. The 69-year-old, who still fishes part time, hopes his grandson can make a decent living on the water, but he isn’t sure. 

Invasive creature

In the summer of 2017, chatter on the Stonington docks was that lobstering wasn’t going to be as lucrative as it had been in recent years. Lobstermen were pulling fewer lobsters, and the traps often came up coated with layers of slimy sea squirts — an invasive jellyfish-type creature. 

The arrival of the squirts may or may not be related to climate change or the size of the catch, but it seemed to be a harbinger. As autumn moved toward winter, many of the traps piled high near the docks were encrusted with squirt carcasses. 

And when the Maine fisheries released their 2017 landings numbers, the chatter on the docks turned out to be true: Maine lobstermen landed 15 percent less than the record haul in 2016, the lowest catch since the beginning of the decade. 

​Lobster rush 

The waters between the islands of Deer Isle, Isle au Haut and Vinalhaven tell the story of the lobster rush. 

Thousands upon thousands of colorfully painted buoys decorate the surface, marking the point where traps are strung below. Each fisherman has a color pattern: reds and whites, blacks and pinks, and yellows, oranges and greens. Most are striped horizontally, making them easier to identify when floating on their sides. 

Despite Maine’s reputation as a largely undeveloped state, it’s a thoroughly urban world under the water here. At the height of the summer, there are probably traps every 10 to 20 feet in the near-shore waters. 

To describe a lobster pot as a trap, though, is a bit insulting to most other traps. As a practical matter, this is free-range aquaculture. The traps are designed to allow smaller, younger lobsters to come and go as they please, feasting on rotten fish. Even larger lobsters come and go, although with a little more effort. 

The unlucky ones are snacking when the trap’s owner decides to check it. 

Lobster buoys like the ones off Stonington once punctuated waters along the entire New England coast. Between 1960 and 2000, Connecticut and Rhode Island in southern New England accounted for about 15 percent of the lobster harvest. Since 2010, however, lobster catches have collapsed in both states, with a combined haul of less than 2 percent. 

Dramatic drop

Even Massachusetts Bay, which sits on the southwestern edge of the Gulf of Maine, has seen the catch dip dramatically. In the 1980s and 1990s, when lobster’s popularity with U.S. diners exploded, Massachusetts boats accounted for 20 to 30 percent of the harvest. Today, their share hovers around 10 percent. 

Southern New England lobsters once were protected from the warm water temperatures in Long Island Sound by upwelling from the Labrador current that tucked in along the coast of eastern Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. 

As the waters in the sound became warmer and warmer during the summer months, the cooling current couldn’t keep up, and cold-water species such as lobsters no longer thrived in southern New England. And what remained of the lobster stock was vulnerable to an unsightly shell disease that made them worthless at the market. 

But even as the lobster business boomed in Maine, the waters here were warming faster than almost any other body of water in the world. 

Since 1980, the waters in the Gulf of Maine have steadily heated up, but that warming accelerated in the last decade. In fact, the average sea-surface temperature has been between 1 and 4 degrees Fahrenheit above the norm for most of the 2010s. 

The warming is driven by direct and indirect effects of climate change, says Andrew Pershing, chief science officer of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. 

He says oceans the world over are absorbing heat from the warming atmosphere. The gulf’s warming, however, is compounded by its position in the North Atlantic, which is close to the weakening Labrador current flowing from the north and a strengthening warm Gulf Stream current flowing from the south. 

“You know,” says Ames, the lobsterman turned scientist, “lobster is the best example of global warming we have.” 

‘Go-getters’ 

Perley Frazier has been working these waters for more than 50 years. And at 70 he still hauls the maximum permitted 800 traps. 

His buoys, black on top, white in the middle and red on the bottom, are usually found a mile or so from town, near islands that once were quarried for granite by Italian immigrants. The stone was used in the construction of the George Washington Bridge in New York and the John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. 

No one works in the quarries anymore, he says as he slows his boat, Jericho’s Way. 

The rising sun winks off the peaks of swells and the thousands of buoys ahead of him. Without checking his chart plotter, he picks out a string of his buoys from about 100 yards away. 

Behind Frazier, his daughter, Lindsay Frazier Copeland, and son-in-law, Brad Copeland, prepare to hook a buoy and haul up traps. After a haul of three keepers, Lindsay and Brad shove the traps back into the water. Frazier throttles up and spins the boat a few feet to the next buoy. It’s a well-practiced routine, and not much said is among the crew, called sternmen. 

“It’s hard work, this,” Frazier says during one of their smoke breaks. “It’s hard to find a good sternman who wants to work this hard.” Since this trip, in fact, Brad and Lindsay have moved to Florida, and Frazier has put his boat up for sale. 

On the way to the docks to unload his harvest, Frazier points to a trawler heading into port. It’s one of the few non-lobster boats in the town — a herring trawler that goes offshore to catch the small fish, which are used almost exclusively for bait. 

And they can’t land enough herring to satisfy the local need for lobster bait; it’s trucked in from New Jersey, among other places. There are even stories of frozen fish heads from Asia finding their way into Maine lobster traps. 

These days, Frazier is using cowhide and discarded fish carcasses as bait. Others are using menhaden, or pogies, which migrated north into these waters even as the herring population has dropped off. 

Not much else to catch

The truth is, apart from lobster, there’s not much to catch here. And certainly not in the numbers that fishermen could make a living on. 

Until this century, only about 50 percent of all fishing revenue in Maine came from lobstering, according to U.S. fisheries data. In the 2000s, that started to steadily rise until, in 2016, it topped 82 percent. 

Later, Frazier sits in his armchair at home, after saving the largest five lobsters he caught for dinner. He sips a Canadian whiskey and recalls the days when there were other ways to make a living on the water besides lobster. 

Take shrimp, for instance. “They always said shrimp needs cold water. Well, we haven’t had any cold water,” Frazier says. 

“That’s the biggest thing — my biggest worry is about global warming. I mean, I’ve seen different fish that’s supposed to be down south that’s up here already, right now.  

 

“We got like triggerfish and we’re gettin’ butterfish, and fella told me the other day … that he had a seahorse.” 

He looks at all the new boats being added to the local fishing fleet and isn’t sure lobster can sustain them. 

“These guys, they got three-quarters of a million just in the boat,” he says. “And the gear, another quarter-million dollars. They are a million.” 

Maine’s fishing fleet is the newest in the nation among states with more than 200 U.S. Coast Guard-documented commercial fishing vessels. And it’s not close. Maine’s boats are an average 24 years old. The average age of the next two states, Massachusetts and Louisiana, is 31. Alaskan boats’ average age is 37, Oregon, 45. 

Still, Frazier doesn’t begrudge the money that younger skippers on newer boats are making. 

“I mean, these guys work hard and they go hard and put a lot of time in,” Frazier says. “Young guys, go-getters. And they did it right at the exact right time.” 

Six-figure income 

Back when Drew Eaton was in grade school, it took him two years to buy that first boat, which a family friend’s daughter no longer used. 

“I could buy half the boat and the motor the same year,” he says. He worked for the lobsterman the next summer to pay off the balance. 

Eaton left Stonington after graduating from high school and went to Pennsylvania for a year to study automotive collision repair. He didn’t stay in that field for long. “I worked in a body shop for a year, and I was getting $12 an hour,” he says. 

So he returned to what he knew. 

The young lobsterman’s boat now easily produces a six-figure income before expenses. He doesn’t linger on doubts about the future of lobstering in Maine. He leaves that for others. 

When he bought his last boat, he says, his parents were skeptical. “They thought I was going too quick.”  

Eaton was 22 and it was the same type of boat his father had just bought. 

“And then I started catching more than Dad. And then I wasn’t moving so quick.” 

And besides, he says, “I am young enough that if I fail, I can start over again in something totally different.” 
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A landmark 11-member trade deal aimed at slashing barriers in some of Asia Pacific’s fastest growing economies will come into force at the end of December, the New Zealand government said on Wednesday.

The deal would move forward after Australia informed New Zealand that it had become the sixth nation to formally ratify the deal, alongside Canada, Japan, Mexico and Singapore.

“This triggers the 60 day countdown to entry into force of the Agreement and the first round of tariff cuts,” said New Zealand Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker. His country is responsible for official tasks such as receiving and circulating notifications made by members of the pact.

The original 12-member deal was thrown into limbo early last year when President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement to prioritize protecting U.S. jobs.

The 11 remaining nations, led by Japan, finalized a revised trade pact in January, called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The success of the deal has been touted by officials in Japan and other member countries as an antidote to counter growing U.S. protectionism, and with the hope that Washington would eventually sign back up.

Australia said the agreement will boost agricultural exports, set to be worth more than A$52 billion ($36.91 billion) this year despite a crippling drought across much of the country’s east coast.

“It will give Australian grain farmers a good reason to smile, at a time when drought conditions have played havoc for many, by ensuring improved market access and better grain prices once more favorable seasonal conditions return,” said Luke Mathews, trading and economics manager at industry body, GrainGrowers Australia.

The deal will reduce tariffs in economies that together amount to more than 13 percent of global GDP — a total of $10 trillion. With the United States, it would have represented 40 percent.

The five member countries still to ratify the deal are Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam.
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Facebook is reporting a slight revenue miss but stronger than expected profit in its third-quarter earnings report.

 

Coming three months after the company’s stock suffered its worst one-day drop in history, wiping out $119 billion of its market value, the mixed results were perhaps not the redemption Facebook hoped for.

 

But shares inched a bit higher after-hours, suggesting, at least, that the social media giant didn’t further spook investors. With the myriad problems Facebook has been grappling with lately, this is likely good news for the company.

 

Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly users at the end of the quarter, below the 2.29 billion analysts were expecting. Facebook says it changed the way it calculates users, which reduced the total slightly. The company’s user base was still up 10 percent from 2.07 billion monthly users a year ago.

 

Earnings were $1.76 a share and revenue was $13.73 billion, an increase of 33 percent, for the July-September period.

 

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.46 per share on revenue of $13.77 billion, according to FactSet.

The company warned last quarter that its revenue growth will slow down significantly for at least the rest of this year and that expenses will continue to balloon. The following day the stock plunged 19 percent. It was the biggest one-day plunge in history, and the shares not only haven’t recovered, they’ve since fallen further amid a broader decline in tech stocks .

 

Facebook’s investors, users, employees and executives have been grappling not just with questions over how much money the company makes and how many people use it, but its effects on users’ mental health and worries over what it’s doing to political discourse and elections around the world. Is Facebook killing us? Is it killing democracy?

 

The problems have been relentless for the past two years. Facebook can hardly crawl its way out of one before another comes up. It began with “fake news” and its effects on the 2016 presidential election (a notion CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed) and continued with claims of bias among conservatives that still haven’t relented.

 

Then there’s hate speech, hacks and a massive privacy scandal in which Facebook exposed user data to a data mining firm, along with resulting moves toward government regulation of social media.

 

Amid all this, there have been sophisticated attempts from Russia and Iran to interfere with elections and stir up political discord in the U.S.

 

Facebook’s stock climbed $2.68, or 1.8 percent, to $148.90 in after-hours trading.
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A yellow excavator, forklift and other heavy equipment made by U.S. firm Caterpillar gleam outside Cuba’s annual trade fair, reflecting once-bright hopes for increased U.S.-Cuban commerce fanned by the 2014 detente between the old Cold War foes.

But inside the pavilion where U.S. firms present their wares, only eight have stands this year, according to a Reuters count. That is down from 13 last year and several dozen in 2015-16, underscoring the decline in U.S. business interest since Donald Trump became president.

Last year, the Trump administration tightened the decades-old trade embargo on the Communist-run island once more and sharply reduced staffing at the U.S. embassy in Havana due to a series of health incidents among U.S. diplomats.

“Trump has scared everyone off,” said Eduardo Aparicio, general manager of U.S. logistics company Apacargoexpress, operating under an exemption to the embargo allowing U.S. companies to sell food and medical supplies here.

Aparicio says he is struggling to find U.S. firms keen on doing business with Cuba given fears of reprisals from the Trump administration.

“Not that many things have changed with the Trump administration, but the outlook has. It no longer feels like we are advancing,” said Jay Brickman, vice president of Florida-based shipping company Crowley Maritime Corporation, which has been shipping to Cuba for 17 years.

“If you are a corporate executive who feels like nothing is happening, then eventually you look elsewhere.”

Brickman, Aparicio and others at Cuba’s premier business event said the country’s dire financial situation was another factor in declining U.S. business interest. Cuba is battling a cash crunch amid lower aid from ally Venezuela and weaker exports.

Brickman said Cuban orders via his firm were down 10 percent this year.

U.S. companies had embraced Cuba in the wake of the detente reached by former U.S. and Cuban Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro, jostling for a foothold in an opening market of 11 million consumers.

Lawyers working with U.S. firms interested in doing business with Cuba say the larger ones are taking a long-term view and remain keen.

Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, for example, had lobbied to sell in Cuba for years before one of its dealers, privately held Puerto Rican company Rimco, said last year it was opening a distribution center here.

“This is the beginning of a lot of things to come,” Rimco Vice President Caroline McConnie said of the machinery displayed outside the pavilion.

McConnie said Rimco would look to rent as well as sell machines in Cuba given its cash crunch, and expected to announce its first two deals soon: one to rent equipment for quarries and another to sell marine motors for tugboats.

“We will benefit from the first movers’ advantage,” she said.
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Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa met with business leaders Monday to discuss ways of boosting the country’s troubled economy. He suggested companies are contributing to shortages by holding back essential goods, but one of the businessman said the accusation is not true. Columbus Mavhunga reports for VOA News from Harare.
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When massive gold deposits were discovered about a decade ago in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, the rural district became famous for attracting hundreds of artisanal miners from across the country every year.

Wealthy small-scale prospectors regularly offer residents generous deals for their land, locals say. To many widows selling their unused land, that kind of money can be life-changing and a source of greater autonomy.

But in recent years, widows in Chimanimani have found that taking a deal can have consequences. Many say they have been taken to tribal courts by their husbands’ families for selling portions of their land.

“I feel bruised,” said Mavis, a 63-year-old widow from Haroni village who did not want to disclose her surname.

“I lived in peace as a widow in my home until last year, when I sold an unwanted acre of my late husband’s land to korokoza,” she said, using a colloquial term for an artisanal gold miner.

He paid her $2,000 in cash. “All hell broke loose,” Mavis explained.

When her male relatives found out about the sale, they reported her to the tribal court.

“The accusations were insane. They said I bewitched my husband, even though he died way back in 1979, in the colonial war,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The cultural norms of the Ndau people, who make up the majority of the population in Chimanimani, forbid widows from owning land their husbands leave behind or selling that land unless a male family member controls the transaction.

As her uncles laid claim to her late husband’s property, Mavis joined a growing number of widows whose male family members have denied them the right to sell land they are supposed to legally inherit.

“In our village, I am the fourth widow since 2017 to be brought to (tribal court) for selling land without male approval,” she said.

Her case is still ongoing.

Tribal Justice

According to Zimbabwe’s latest census, which was conducted in 2012, there are more than half a million widows in the country.

Throughout rural areas, widows routinely find themselves harassed and exploited by in-laws claiming the property their husbands left behind, rights activists say.

O’bren Nhachi, an activist and researcher focusing on natural resources and governance, said the problem has gotten worse in Chimanimani over the past few years, as the gold rush has pushed up the value of land.

“Chimanimani was a poor backwater district until gold was discovered. Suddenly, local land prices shot up because artisanal gold diggers are paying huge sums to snap up plots,” he said. “This has brought conflict, with male family members using patriarchy as a tool to dispossess widows of potential land sales income.”

Although Zimbabwe’s constitution gives women and men equal rights to property and land, in many rural communities tradition overrides national legislation, experts say.

Tribal custom dictates that chiefs are the custodians of communal land, and responsible for allocating land to villagers.

“A woman cannot sell land unless she has obtained permission from my Committee of Seven,” said Mutape Moyo, a tribal headman in Chimanimani, referring to the group of elders — all men — who hear cases in the local customary court.

But this makes it unclear who has legal ownership of land, Nhachi said.

“The laws of the country say the state is the owner of all land. Tribal chiefs are merely ‘custodians’. Does custodian mean they are owners?”

In a country where women carry out 70 percent of the agricultural work – according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization – Nhachi said more women need to be made aware of how to legally hold onto their land if their husbands die.

He said he would like to see the government implement legal awareness programs and properly define who owns and distributes land in rural Zimbabwe.

No Recourse

Provincial administrator Edward Seenza, the head civil servant of Manicaland province, where Chimanimani is located, said that if widows lose their land in tribal courts, there are ways for them to appeal and reverse the ruling.

“If anyone is unhappy with a village head’s decision, they can speak to a chief,’ he said. “Where this does not produce the desired result, they can take their complaint to the district administrator and further up to my office.”

But activists say few rural women know they have that option. And those who do are often too poor or too scared to travel to a government office.

Seenza said that so far, not one woman has come to him to appeal a tribal court ruling.

And without legal help, widows denied the right to sell their land can be left devastated.

Rejoice, a 38-year-old widow from Chipinge district, sold her late husband’s mango orchard two years ago to a wealthy gold digger for $4,000. She needed the money to pay for medication to treat a kidney tumor.

Her father-in-law took her to tribal court.

“I was ordered to refund the buyer, in cash, with punitive interest; pay court fines for ‘disrespect’; and surrender the rest of the land to male family custodians,” said Rejoice, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

She paid back the buyer as much as she could, but still owes him some money. And her husband’s family is still fighting for ownership of the land, she added.

The court told her that if she does not honor the ruling, she could be thrown out of her home.

“I will end up a destitute, living on the roadside,” she said. “The thought of this gives me sleepless nights.”
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Far more men than women think their companies offer equal pay and promote the sexes equally, yet younger generations are wising up, a U.S. entertainment industry survey found on Monday.

Only a quarter of women think their employers pay them the same as men, while twice as many men believe their company has no gender pay gap, according to the survey by CNBC, a business news channel, and job-oriented social networking site LinkedIn.

About one third of women said both sexes rise up the ranks at the same rate in their workplaces, while more than half of men think the promotion rates are equal, according to responses from at least 1,000 LinkedIn members who work in entertainment.

“Men, typically we found across industries … they’re not as cognizant as their female counterparts to these issues,” said Caroline Fairchild, managing editor at LinkedIn.

Other surveys in finance and technology have revealed similar findings, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Congress outlawed pay discrimination based on gender in the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963, yet public debate over why wages still lag drastically for women has snowballed in recent years.

Last year in the United States, working women earned 82 percent of what men were paid, the Pew Research Center found.

According to the CNBC-LinkedIn survey, four in five women said the workplace holds more obstacles to advancement for women than for men, but only about half of men held the same opinion.

However the survey found that younger men were more likely than their older peers to say they were aware of the obstacles that stop women from succeeding at work, according to Fairchild.

“Perhaps the old guard of the industry is thinking a certain way, but we are seeing a perception change in what perhaps younger people in the industry are thinking,” she added.

A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco ruled in April that employers cannot use workers’ salary histories to justify gender-based pay disparities, saying that would perpetuate a wage gap that is “an embarrassing reality of our economy.”

A handful of U.S. cities and states ban employers from asking potential hires about their salary histories.

The World Economic Forum reported a global economic gap of 58 percent between the sexes for 2016 and forecast women would have to wait 217 years before they are treated equally at work.

Gender inequality in the workplace could cost the world more than $160.2 trillion in lost earnings, according to the World Bank. The figure compares the difference in lifetime income of everyone of working age and if women earned as much as men.
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Demand for bitcoin could single-handedly derail efforts to limit global warming because the increasingly popular digital currency takes huge amounts of energy to produce, scientists said on Monday.

Producing bitcoin at a pace with growing demand could by 2033 defeat the aim of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to U.S. research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Almost 200 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 on the goal to keep warming to “well below” a rise of 2°C above pre-industrial times.

But mining, the process of producing bitcoins by solving mathematical equations, uses high-powered computers and alto of electricity, the researchers said.

“Currently, the emissions from transportation, housing and food are considered the main contributors to ongoing climate change,” said study co-author Katie Taladay in a statement. “This research illustrates that bitcoin should be added to this list.”

Mining is a lucrative business, with one bitcoin currently selling for about $6,300 (4,900 British pounds).

In 2017, bitcoin production and usage emitted an estimated 69 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the researchers said.

That year, bitcoin was involved in less than half of 1 percent of the world’s cashless transactions, they said.

As the currency becomes more common, researchers said it could use enough electricity to emit about 230 gigatons of carbon within a decade and a half. One gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons of carbon.

“No matter how you slice it, that thing is using a lot of electricity. That means bad business for the environment,” Camilo Mora, another co-author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Bitcoin mining, however, is becoming more energy efficient, said Katrina Kelly-Pitou, research associate at the University of Pittsburgh.

She said bitcoin miners are moving away from sites such as China, with coal-generated electricity, to more environmentally friendly utilities in Iceland and the United States.
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Opening a new front in its trade and technology disputes with China, the Trump administration on Monday took action to cut off a Chinese state-backed semiconductor maker from U.S. exports of components, software and technology goods.

The Commerce Department said it has put Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd on a list of entities that cannot purchase such products from U.S. firms, citing a “significant risk” that the Chinese firm’s new memory chip capacity will threaten the viability of American suppliers of such chips for military systems.

It said in a statement that Fujian Jinhua “poses a significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national interests of the United States.”

The action is similar to a Commerce Department move that nearly put Chinese telecommunications equipment company ZTE out of business earlier this year by cutting it off from U.S. suppliers.

ZTE, which had violated a deal to settle violations of sanctions on Iran and North Korea, was allowed to resume purchases of U.S. products after a revised settlement and payment of a $1 billion fine.

The action against Fujian Jinhua is likely to ignite new tensions between Beijing and Washington since the company is at the heart of the “Made in China 2025” program to develop new high-technology industries.

The world’s top two economies are already waging a major tariff war over their trade disputes, with U.S. duties in place on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Chinese duties on $110 billion of U.S. goods.

Fujian Jinhua, which is starting up a new $5.7 billion chip factory in Fujian province, is linked to the Trump administration’s accusations that China has systematically stolen and forced the transfer of American technology.

Fujian Jinhua and Taiwanese partner United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) were accused last December by U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc of stealing Micron chip designs through poached employees, a case still under way in a California court.

UMC countersued in a Chinese court, accusing Micron of infringing its patents, leading to a temporary ban in July on sales of Micron’s main products in China.

It was not immediately clear what effect the Commerce Department action will have on Fujian Jinhua’s operations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the Chinese firm’s new plant likely was the beneficiary of “U.S.-origin technology” and its additional production would threaten the long-term viability of U.S. chipmakers.

“When a foreign company engages in activity contrary to our national security interests, we will take strong action to protect our national security,” he said. “Placing Jinhua on the Entity List will limit its ability to threaten the supply chain for essential components in our military systems.”
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South Korean conglomerate Hyundai’s cancellation of a major Iran construction project due to problems related to U.S. economic sanctions has been met with silence in Iranian media.

In a brief regulatory filing published Monday, Hyundai Engineering & Construction said it canceled a $521 million contract a day earlier for building a petrochemicals complex in Iran.

“The contract was canceled because financing is not complete, which was a prerequisite for the validity of the contract, as external factors worsened, such as economic sanctions against Iran,” Hyundai said.

Twelve hours after Hyundai made the announcement, there were no mentions of it in Iranian state-controlled media. There also was little Farsi-language discussion of the move on Twitter.

The United States is set to reimpose sanctions on Iran’s key energy exports on Nov. 4 to try to pressure Tehran into agreeing to a new deal to curb its nuclear and other perceived malign activities. Energy exports are the main sources of revenue for the Iranian government. 

For months, international companies in sectors such as energy, aviation, autos and shipping have been withdrawing from or scaling back business with Iran to avoid being hit by secondary U.S. sanctions for continuing such business as the primary U.S. sanctions take effect. 

Speaking to the Monday edition of VOA Persian’s News at Nine program, Johns Hopkins University applied economics professor Steve Hanke said cancellations of Iranian construction contracts by Hyundai and other foreign companies cause significant delays in the construction process.

“Now, the Iranians have to more or less start over and find somebody new. All of this takes time. As it takes time, the Iranian economy sinks,” Hanke said. 

Facing growing domestic discontent with Iran’s faltering economy, President Hassan Rouhani won parliamentary approval Saturday for a reshuffle of economic posts in his cabinet. He also said Iran can withstand U.S. sanctions by turning to other nations for business.

“Russia, China, India, the European Union and some African and Latin American countries are our friends,” he told parliament. “We have to work with them and attract investments.”

Hanke said it is more likely that Iran will finance the petrochemical project abandoned by Hyundai with Chinese and Russian partners than with the EU. Washington has put particular pressure on its European allies in recent months not to undermine U.S. sanctions against Iran. 

The EU has said it will try to circumvent U.S. sanctions by setting up a “special purpose vehicle” to facilitate transactions between European businesses and Iran. The 28-nation bloc has said it will abide by a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers, curbing Iranian nuclear activities in return for relief from international sanctions. U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from that deal in May, saying it was not tough enough on Iran. Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons. 

South Korea, a key U.S. ally in East Asia, has not vowed to defy U.S. sanctions, but it does appear to want to salvage its remaining commercial contracts with Iran. South Korean media said Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha spoke by phone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday and asked Washington to be flexible in exempting South Korean companies from U.S. penalties for Iran-related business. There was no immediate readout of the phone call from the U.S. State Department. 

Hyundai had signed a contract to build a petrochemical complex on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast near the southern town of Tonbak in March 2017. South Korean and Iranian media said the contract was for the construction of the second phase of the Kangan Petro Refining Complex in the South Pars Gas Field. The reports valued Hyundai’s contract with Iran’s Ahdaf Investment Company, an affiliate of a state-run oil firm, at $3 billion. 

Hyundai, in its Monday statement, did not explain the discrepancy between the initially reported $3 billion valuation of the contract and its latest $512 million valuation. 

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. 
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The United States urged European Union governments on Monday to reflect on whether it was really in their interest to go ahead with a trade dispute over U.S. metals tariffs, and said it was hopeful of settling the issue with Mexico and Canada.

The U.S. tariffs attracted an unprecedented seven requests for WTO adjudication, as well as a slew of criticism, at a fractious WTO dispute settlement meeting, while the United States hit back with legal actions against its critics.

Shea not surprised

U.S. Ambassador Dennis Shea said he was not surprised by China’s opposition, since it had massive overcapacity in metals production and was a non-market economy, but that Washington was “deeply disappointed” with the EU’s stance.

“We would encourage the European countries to consider carefully their broader economic, political, and security interests,” Shea told the meeting.

“We will not allow China’s party-state to fatally undermine the U.S. steel and aluminum industries, on which the U.S. military, and by extension global security, rely.”

China’s representative responded by saying the United States was shifting its arguments to disguise its protectionism.

Canada and Mexico have also challenged the tariffs — 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium — but a U.S. trade official told the meeting that, after constructive discussions, Washington was hopeful of reaching an agreement with both.

Adam Austen, a spokesman for Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland, told Reuters the best outcome would be for Washington to rescind the tariffs.

Taboo no longer

Norway, Russia and Turkey also asked the WTO to judge the legality of the U.S. tariffs, despite Washington’s assertion that they are based on national security and therefore outside WTO jurisdiction.

National security claims were taboo for most of the WTO’s 23-year history, because trade diplomats feared a domino effect as countries cited national security to get out of a wide range of obligations. But Shea suggested it would be even worse to try to challenge the U.S. national security claim.

“The United States wishes to be clear: if the WTO were to undertake to review an invocation of (the national security exemption), this would undermine the legitimacy of the WTO’s dispute settlement system and even the viability of the WTO as a whole,” he said.

Trachtman turns to Twitter

On Twitter, Joel Trachtman, professor of International Law at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Jennifer Hillman, an American former WTO judge, said Shea’s position was not supported by WTO law.

Canada’s representative at the WTO meeting said fear of a national security threat was “inconceivable”, while Norway said it was “evidently divorced from real-world security concerns.”

Canada, China, the EU, Mexico and Japan argued that the U.S. tariffs were “safeguard” measures that could be addressed with sanctions under WTO rules. Washington for its part requested WTO adjudication of their retaliatory measures taken by Canada, China, the EU and Mexico.

All the requests for WTO adjudication will need to be confirmed at another meeting next month before going ahead.
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U.S. stocks fell on Monday in a volatile session, with the S&P 500 ending just shy of confirming its second correction of 2018, hurt by fresh worries of an escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions and a sharp drop in big tech and Internet names.

Following a morning rally, major U.S. indexes pulled back steeply after a Bloomberg report that the United States is preparing to announce tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports by early December if talks next month between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping falter.

“Obviously this trade skirmish is metastasizing potentially into something worse than it already is,” said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia.

After the S&P 500 dropped more than 10 percent from its Sept. 20 record closing high during the session, the benchmark index pared its losses late to close down 9.9 percent from its peak. The Dow industrials also fell more than 10 percent from its Oct. 3 record close during the session, before ending down 8.9 percent from the mark.

On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 245.39 points, or 0.99 percent, to 24,442.92, the S&P 500 lost 17.44 points, or 0.66 percent, to 2,641.25 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 116.92 points, or 1.63 percent, to 7,050.29.

Major tech and growth stocks, such as Amazon.com, Google parent Alphabet and Netflix, posted sharp declines. The S&P 500 technology sector fell 1.8 percent.

The so-called FANG growth stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet – have lost more than $200 billion in market value in the past two sessions.

The industrials sector, which is seen as sensitive to trade issues, dropped 1.7 percent, with Boeing tumbling 6.6 percent.

“The concern about global growth and global trade … continues to create an overhang for U.S. corporations and global equities,” said Chad Morganlander, senior portfolio manager at Washington Crossing Advisors in Florham Park, New Jersey.

“Growth stocks typically do poorly in situations of global growth decelerating,” he said. “You set yourself up for a more defensive market until there’s a clear sign that investors can grab hold of.”

Market volatility has spiked in recent weeks, stemming from higher interest rates and worries about the economy and trade tensions. Investors also may be increasingly nervous about uncertainty surrounding U.S. congressional elections, now just a week away.

“Probably the most pervasive headwind is concern about midterm elections,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. “That is weighing down stocks, particularly technology as there is greater concern about regulation.”

Internet stocks also may have been wounded by Britain’s plan to tax the revenue from online platforms.

In corporate news, shares of software maker Red Hat surged 45.4 percent after the company agreed to be bought by IBM Corp for $34 billion. But IBM shares fell 4.1 percent, weighing on the Dow and S&P.

Investors who are bullish about stocks point to strong corporate profits this year and economic strength. But there are also concerns about the extent of a slowdown in earnings growth next year, while weak housing data has raised some worries about the economy.

Data on Monday showed U.S. consumer spending rose for a seventh consecutive month in September. But income recorded its smallest gain in more than a year amid moderate wage growth, suggesting the current pace of spending was unlikely to be sustained.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.45-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.45-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted three new 52-week highs and 65 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 23 new highs and 260 new lows.

About 9.3 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, above the 8.5 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions.
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Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former Army captain who won Brazil’s presidential election in convincing fashion, rode a wave of enthusiasm on Monday from giddy supporters, bullish investors and budding ally U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bolsonaro, who early in his legislative career declared he was “in favor” of dictatorships and demanded that Congress be disbanded, vowed on Sunday to adhere to democratic principles while holding up a copy of the country’s Constitution.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he had an “excellent call” congratulating Bolsonaro and tweeted about their plans to “work closely together on Trade, Military and everything else!”

Markets also cheered Bolsonaro’s victory, sending Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index to an all-time high on his pledges to balance the federal budget and privatize state firms.

Bolsonaro’s win alarmed critics around the globe, given his defense of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, vows to sweep away leftist political opponents and a track record of denigrating comments about gays, women and minorities.

His victory brings Brazil’s military back into the political limelight after it spent three decades in the barracks following the country’s return to civilian rule. Several retired generals will serve as ministers and close advisers.

“You are all my witnesses that this government will defend the constitution, of liberty and of God,” Bolsonaro said in a Facebook live video in his first comments after his victory.

The president-elect’s future chief of staff told Reuters his first international trip would be to Chile — one of the South American neighbors that swung to the right in recent elections.

An outspoken Trump admirer, Bolsonaro also vowed to realign Brazil with more advanced economies such as the United States, overhauling diplomatic priorities after nearly a decade and a half of leftist rule.

The 63-year-old former paratrooper joins a list of populist, right-wing figures to win elections in recent years such as Trump, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Trump’s friendly call augurs closer political ties between the two largest economies in the Americas – both now led by conservative populists promising to overturn the political establishment.

Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist with Rio de Janeiro State University, said he was concerned that the tense and violent atmosphere that enveloped Brazil’s election campaign may continue.

“It’s a worrying scenario. It’s possible that even with his win, we could see a further wave of violence among Bolsonaro’s supporters against those who backed his opponent,” Santoro said.

Bolsonaro supporters carried out several attacks in the run-up to Sunday’s vote, in particular targeting Brazilian journalists, according to a tally kept by Abraji, an investigative journalism group.

Bolsonaro himself was stabbed at a rally last month and will need to undergo surgery in mid-December.

Easy Win

Bolsonaro won 55.2 percent of votes in a run-off election against left-wing hopeful Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), who garnered 44.8 percent, according to electoral authority TSE.

The fiery lawmaker’s rise has been propelled by rejection of the leftist PT that ran Brazil for 13 of the last 15 years and was ousted two years ago in the midst of a deep recession and political graft scandal.

Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters cheered and set off fireworks outside his home in Rio de Janeiro’s beachfront Barra de Tijuca neighborhood as his victory was announced.

“I don’t idolize Bolsonaro and I don’t know if he will govern well, but we are hopeful. People want the PT out, they can’t take any more corruption,” said Tatiana Cunha, a 39-year-old systems analyst in the midst of the noisy celebrations.

Investors cheered Bolsonaro’s ascent, relieved that he could keep the PT out of power and hopeful that he would carry out fiscal reforms proposed by his orthodox economic guru.

Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index rose as much as 3 percent to an all-time high in opening trade, led higher by shares of state-owned firms and blue-chips.

State lender Banco do Brasil SA rose nearly 5 percent and state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA opened 4 percent higher at an 8.5-year high.

Brazil’s currency, the real, gained around 10 percent against the dollar this month and interest rate futures have tightened dramatically as Bolsonaro’s prospects improved.

Investors are particularly heartened by his choice of Paulo Guedes, a Chicago University-trained economist and  investment banker, as future economy minister.

Guedes, who wants to privatize an array of state firms, said on Sunday the new government will try to erase Brazil’s budget within deficit in a year, simplify and reduce taxes, and create 10 million jobs by cutting payroll taxes. New rules will boost investment in infrastructure, he told reporters.

Big Challenges

Still, Fitch Ratings on Monday highlighted the “deep fiscal challenges” confronting Bolsonaro’s team, as weak growth and a huge budget deficit give little room to maneuver.

“The exact details of how his administration plans to achieve (its) objectives are limited,” wrote Fitch analysts led by Shelly Shetty. “The lack of fiscal space, a high unemployment rate and a sluggish economic recovery will also likely limit economic policy options.”

Onyx Lorenzoni, a fellow congressman whom Bolsonaro has tapped as chief of staff, told journalists that Guedes would be responsible for structuring an independent, autonomous central bank with targets.

Asked about Brazil’s currency, Lorenzoni said Bolsonaro would offer businesses more predictability, but ruled out an exchange rate target.

In a separate interview with Reuters, he said the president-elect would meet with Guedes and other members of his team on Tuesday. He will oversee the transition from Rio this week and fly to the capital Brasilia next week, Lorenzoni added.

In parallel, representatives for Bolsonaro will begin meeting this week with President Michel Temer’s team to start work ahead of the Jan. 1 inauguration.
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The leaders of Japan and India are reaffirming their ties amid growing worries about trade and regional stability.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived Saturday, was meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a resort area near Mount Fuji on Sunday. Modi is also visiting a nearby plant of major Japanese robot maker Fanuc.

 

Relations with China are a major issue shared by Modi and Abe, as their cooperation may balance China’s growing regional influence and military assertiveness.

 

“The India-Japan partnership has been fundamentally transformed and it has been strengthened as a ‘special strategic and global partnership,'” Modi told Kyodo News service. “There are no negatives but only opportunities in this relationship which are waiting to be seized.”

 

Modi chose Japan among the first nations to visit after taking power four years ago. He has been urging countries in the Indo-Pacific region to unite against protectionism and cross-border tensions.

 

In another sign of closer relations, India and Japan are also set to hold their first joint military exercises involving ground forces, starting next month.

 

Abe has just returned from China, where he met President Xi Jinping and agreed the two nations were “sharing more common interests and concerns.”

 

President Donald Trump’s policies that have targeted mostly China with tariffs, but also Japan and other nations, accusing them of unfair trade practices, are working to prod India and Japan to promote their economic ties.

 

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said the leaders had lunch at a hotel in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo, and exchanged a wide range of views on pursuing “a free and open” Indo-Pacific region. Abe told Modi about his recent trip to China, and both sides agreed on the need to cooperate closely on getting North Korea to drop nuclear weapons development, the ministry said in a statement.

 

Japan’s investment in India still has room to grow. Japan is helping India build a super-fast railway system.

 

Abe has made bolstering and opening the nation’s economy central to his policies called “Abenomics,” and has encouraged trade, foreign investment and tourism.

 

Although Japan has long seen the U.S. as its main ally, especially in defense, Abe is courting other ties. He has also been vocal about free trade, which runs counter to Trump’s moves to raise tariffs.

 

Earlier this year, Japan signed a landmark deal with the European Union that will eliminate nearly all tariffs on products they trade. European and Japanese leaders pledged to strengthen their partnership in defense, climate change and human exchange, to send what they called a clear message against protectionism.

 

Abe and Modi will hold a more formal summit Monday in Tokyo.

 

 

 

 
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There is no risk of contagion from Italy’s budget crisis in the European Union but the euro zone is not prepared enough to face a new economic crisis, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told daily Le Parisien on Sunday.

The European Commission rejected Italy’s draft 2019 budget earlier this week for breaking EU rules on public spending, and asked Rome to submit a new one within three weeks or face disciplinary action.

“We do not see any contagion in Europe. The European Commission has reached out to Italy, I hope Italy will seize this hand,” he said in an interview.

“But is the eurozone sufficiently armed to face a new economic or financial crisis? My answer is no. It is urgent to do what we have proposed to our partners in order to have a solid banking union and a euro zone investment budget.”

Eurozone officials have said that Rome’s unprecedented standoff with Brussels seems certain to delay the reform process and probably dilute it for good.

Le Maire also said French banks with branches in Italy had issued corporate and household loans totaling 280 billion euros ($319 billion).

“This sum is manageable but substantial,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held plenty of grand opening ceremonies in his 15 years at Turkey’s helm. On Monday he will unveil one of his prized jewels — Istanbul New Airport —

a megaproject that has been dogged by concerns about labor rights, environmental issues and Turkey’s weakening economy.

Erdogan is opening what he claims will eventually become the world’s largest air transport hub on the 95th anniversary of Turkey’s establishment as a republic. It’s a symbolic launch, as only limited flights will begin days later and a full move won’t take place until the end of the year.

 

Tens of thousands of workers have been scrambling to finish the airport to meet Erdogan’s Oct. 29 deadline. Protests in September over poor working conditions and dozens of construction deaths have highlighted the human cost of the project.

 

Istanbul New Airport, on shores of the Black Sea, will serve 90 million passengers annually in its first phase. At its completion in ten years, it will occupy nearly 19,000 acres and serve up to 200 million travelers a year with six runways. That’s almost double the traffic at world’s biggest airport currently, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson.

 

“This airport is going to be the most important hub between Asia and Europe,” Kadri Samsunlu, head of the 5-company consortium Istanbul Grand Airport, told reporters Thursday.

 

The airport’s interiors nod to Turkish and Islamic designs and its tulip-shaped air traffic control tower won the 2016 International Architecture Award. It also uses mobile applications and artificial intelligence for customers, is energy efficient and boasts a high-tech security system.

 

All aviation operations will move there at the end of December when Istanbul’s main international airport, named after Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is closed down. Ataturk Airport now handles 64 million people a year. On the Asian side of the city, Sabiha Gokcen Airport handled 31 million passengers last year. It will remain open.

 

Erdogan is expected to announce the official name of the new airport, part of his plan to transform Turkey into a global player.

 

Turkish Airlines will launch its first flights out of the new airport to three local destinations: Ankara, Antalya and Izmir. It will also fly to Baku and Ercan in northern Cyprus.

 

Nihat Demir, head of a construction workers’ union, said the rush to meet Erdogan’s deadline has been a major cause of the accidents and deaths at the site that employs 36,000 people.

 

“The airport has become a cemetery,” he told The Associated Press, describing the pressure to finish as relentless and blaming long working hours for leading to “carelessness, accidents and deaths.”

 

The Dev-Yapi-Is union has identified 37 worker deaths at the site and claimed more than 100 dead remain unidentified.

 

Turkey’s Ministry of Labor has denied media reports about hundreds of airport construction deaths, saying in February that 27 workers had died at the site due to “health problems and traffic accidents.” It has not commented since then.

 

Airport workers in September began a strike against poor working conditions, including unpaid salaries, bedbugs, unsafe food and inadequate transport to the site. Security forces rounded up hundreds of workers and formally arrested nearly 30, among them union leaders. The company said it was working to improve conditions.

 

Megaprojects in northern Istanbul like the airport, the third bridge connecting Istanbul’s Asian and European shores and Erdogan’s yet-to-start plans for a man-made canal parallel to the Bosporus strait are also impacting the environment. The environmental group Northern Forests Defense said the new airport has destroyed forests, wetlands and coastal sand dunes and threatens biodiversity.

 

These projects are spurring additional construction of transportation networks, housing and business centers in already overpopulated Istanbul, where more than 15 million people live. Samsunlu, the airport executive, said an “airport city” for innovation and technology would also be built.

 

The five Turkish companies that won the $29 billion tender in 2013 under the “build-operate-transfer” model have been financing the project through capital and bank loans. IGA will operate the airport for 25 years.

 

Financial observers say lending has fueled much of Turkey’s growth and its construction boom, leaving the private sector with a huge $200 billion debt. With inflation and unemployment in Turkey at double digits and a national currency that has lost as much as 40 percent of its value against the dollar this year, economists say Turkey is clearly facing an economic downturn.

 

Despite those dark financial clouds, the airport consortium hopes the world’s growing aviation industry will generate both jobs and billions of dollars in returns.

 

“Istanbul New Airport will remain ambitious for growth and we will carry on mastering the challenge to be the biggest and the best. That’s our motto,” Samsunlu said.

 

 
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