The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised a key interest rate for the third time this year in response to a strong U.S. economy and signaled that it expected to maintain a pace of gradual rate hikes.

The Fed lifted its short-term rate — a benchmark for many consumer and business loans — by a quarter-point to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent. It was the eighth hike since late 2015.

The central bank stuck with its previous forecast for a fourth rate increase before year’s end and for three more hikes in 2019.

The Fed dropped phrasing it had used for years that characterized its rate policy as “accommodative” by favoring low rates. In dropping that language, the central bank may be signaling its resolve to keep raising rates.

Many analysts think the economy could weaken next year, in part from the effects of the trade conflicts President Donald Trump has pursued with China, Canada, Europe and other trading partners. The tariffs and countertariffs that have been imposed on imports and exports are having the effect of raising prices for some goods and supplies and potentially slowing growth.

Compounding the effects of the tariffs, other factors could slow growth next year. The benefits of tax cuts that took effect this year, along with increased government spending, for example, are widely expected to fade.

Still, some analysts hold to a more optimistic scenario. They think momentum already built up from the government’s economic stimulus will keep strengthening the job market and lowering unemployment — at 3.9 percent, already near a 50-year low. A tight employment market, in this scenario, will accelerate wages and inflation and prod the Fed to keep tightening credit to ensure that the economy doesn’t overheat.

Full-year growth

The U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, is expected to grow 3 percent for 2018 as a whole. That would mark the strongest full-year gain in 13 years. For the first nine years of the economic expansion, annual GDP growth averaged only around 2.2 percent.

The robust job market has helped make consumers, the main drivers of growth, more confident than they’ve been in nearly 18 years. Business investment is up. Americans are spending freely on cars, clothes and restaurant meals.

All the good news has helped fuel a stock market rally. Household wealth is up, too. It reached a record in the April-June quarter, although the gain is concentrated largely among the most affluent.

Many economists worry, though, that Trump’s combative trade policies could slow the economy. Trump insists that the tariffs he is imposing on Chinese imports, for which Beijing has retaliated, are needed to force China to halt unfair trading practices. But concern is growing that China won’t change its practices, the higher tariffs on U.S. and Chinese goods will become permanent, and both economies — the world’s two largest — will suffer.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has so far been circumspect in reflecting on Trump’s trade war. Powell has suggested that while higher tariffs are generally harmful, they could serve a healthy purpose if they eventually force Beijing to liberalize its trade practices.
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The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development warns the world economy remains fragile, one decade after the collapse of the U.S. financial titan Lehman Brothers triggered a global economic crisis.

In its report Trade and Development Report 2018: Power, Platforms and the Free Trade Delusion, UNCTAD says the world economy once again is under stress. It views trade wars and escalating tariffs as symptoms of a growing economic malaise. It warns the world economy is walking a tightrope between debt-fueled growth and financial instability.

Lead author of the report Richard Kozul-Wright says many of the underlying problems that caused the 2008 financial crisis have not been addressed. He says footloose capital, precarious jobs, persistent inequality and rising debt remain problematic.

“We see growing asset bubbles and emerging crises everywhere,” he said. “Profits have been on an all-time high and real investment in the economy has not picked up. What we know from history is that debt-fueled booms always end badly. We do not know how. We do not know when, but if history is any guide the excessive reliance on debt in the current global economy will not end well for many economies.”

Kozul-Wright says trade wars, in many ways, are a reflection of lack of trust across the political system. He blames much of the tensions and problems seen in the global trading system on hyper globalization, which has not resulted in a win-win world.

The report finds global trade continues to be dominated by big firms. It says more than 50 percent of world trade is run through the top one percent of each country’s exporting firms.

 

 
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After losing his job with a foreign food company in March, Alexander Costa surveyed Brazil’s anemic labor market and decided to start selling cheap lunches by the beach in Rio de Janeiro to try and provide for his young family.

“I could have stayed home, looking for work, sending out resumes, with few jobs and things very hard,” Costa said. “But I didn’t stand still. I decided to create something different … to reinvent myself.”

Many other Brazilians have also had to reinvent themselves in recent years, as Latin America’s largest economy struggles to overcome a jobs crisis more than a year after officially exiting recession.

Nearly 13 million people – or more than the entire population of Greece – are out of a job, with the unemployment rate hovering between 12 percent to 14 percent since 2016. As a result, unemployment is among voters’ top concerns ahead of next month’s election.

The desperate search for work amid a string of political graft scandals and rising violence has soured the mood, polarizing debate and distracting from the country’s underlying fiscal challenges.

But only by lowering the unemployment rate will Brazil achieve the rise in household spending it needs to maintain sustained growth, said Marcos Casarin, the head of Latin America macro research at Oxford Economics.

“The only way to have a prolonged recovery in economic activity is if unemployment starts to fall in a substantial way,” he said.

However, it could take several years to get the rate below 10 percent, he said, adding: “I’m not very optimistic.”

Divisive Figures

With no presidential candidate likely to win a majority in the first-round vote on Oct. 7, it looks increasingly likely voters will face a choice between two candidates in the Oct. 28 run-off: far-right Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party.

Both are divisive figures — rejected by nearly half the electorate — making it likely that either one will face an uphill battle to pass ambitious economic reforms that foreign investors have long called for.

Bolsonaro has vowed to erase Brazil’s primary budget deficit by 2020 through controversial privatizations and spending cuts.

Haddad has proposed broadening the central bank’s mandate to include unemployment, while boosting government-led investments, revoking a spending ceiling and scuttling privatizations.

Both Bolsonaro and Haddad are pitching their proposals as ways to tackle the unemployment crisis, which has pushed many into the informal sector, sapping tax income and leaving workers without paid holidays, salary raises and other benefits.

Outgoing President Michel Temer last year passed an overhaul of the country’s labor laws, which was intended to make the job market more flexible and which the government said would help create new jobs, an effect that as yet has failed to materialize.

Bolsonaro supports Temer’s labor reform and wants to further cut work regulations to boost jobs. Haddad has suggested putting the labor reform, which was opposed by unions, to a referendum, while also advocating a short-term stimulus program.

Costa, however, was unwilling to wait and see what Brazil’s next president comes up with.

His meals-on-wheels business started slowly, selling 13-reais ($3) lunches from the back of his car in Rio’s wealthy Barra da Tijuca neighborhood. But business took off when he joined forces with his friend, Stefan Weiss, whose white BMW provides a ritzier shop window from which they now sell roughly 200 hot meals each day.

“At the moment, Brazil faces a big problem in relation to the economy and the lack of jobs,” said Weiss, who works on an offshore oil platform but sells meals on days off to earn extra cash. “The people who lost their jobs are trying to find new ways to establish themselves in the market.”
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A Taiwanese owned company whose parent firm posted a more than half billion dollar profit last year has been refusing to pay compensation in line with an arbitration ruling to hundreds of Cambodian workers it made redundant.

Pou Yuen (Cambodia) Enterprise Ltd, which supplies Finnish sporting goods giant Amer Sports, gave workers zero notice when it closed its Phnom Penh factory in December last year.

It’s parent company, Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) Limited, is the biggest footwear manufacturer in the world, supplying the likes of Nike, Adidas, Reebok, ASICS, New Balance and Puma.

Yue Yuen posted a $519 million profit for 2017, its own annual report shows, while its parent company, Pou Chen Group, posted a more than $400 million in profits.

Yet its Cambodian subsidiary has refused to give compensation to 478 workers in line with an Arbitration Council ruling that would see them receive about $2,000 each on average – according to the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL).

“The factory always told the workers that they were losing profit and the reason that they shut the factory down they said was because they were bankrupt, that they didn’t make any profit and they pushed workers very hard to reach the targets,” said 38-year-old former employee Yan Bunthan. “And at the end they’re still not taking care of the workers and just run away irresponsibly without providing us with fare compensation.”

Cambodia’s Arbitration Council ruled in late February that Yan and 477 others who had worked at the company for more than two years should have been compensated as permanent employees.

That would have entitled then to compensation for lack of prior notice, indemnity for dismissal, unused annual leave, damages and final wages.

Instead, Pou Yuen treated them as fixed duration employees and gave them 5 percent of their salary only.

Wage calculations shown to VOA by CENTRAL suggests this would result in compensation payouts ranging from between $91 to $243 for workers who had stayed with the factory in some cases for more than seven and a half years.

But though the Arbitration Council effectively ruled this compensation was illegal, its decision is non-binding because Pou Yuen chose to contest it.

In an emailed response, Amer Sports highlighted the non-binding nature of the ruling and the fact that Pou Yuen had paid the 5 percent severance to some 1,900 workers.

“Pou Yuen Cambodia owns the direct relationship with their employees,” Vice President of Amer Sports Sourcing, Pascal Covatta wrote. “We are working with Pou Yuen Cambodia but also with the parent organization Pou Chen Group to find the best solution for the employees in due course.”

Calls to Pou Yuen have gone unanswered while a former assistant to the general manager told VOA she was unaware of any update in the case.

In an emailed response, Chihchien Lin of Pou Chen Group’s legal department, stood by their decision to class the workers as non-permanent employees on fixed duration contracts, noting that all but 50 workers – some 1,900 people – had taken the payments they offered.

“PYC sincerely regrets that there are still existing complaints about the termination at factory disclosure due to different interpretation on the laws regarding FDC [fixed duration contracts] and UDC [unspecified duration contracts],” Lin wrote.

“PYC will immediately reach out to the complaining employees to initiate good faith discussion, and target to reach mutual agreement on this dispute with amicability in [the] future couple of weeks based on the direction of UDC [unspecified duration contracts] as indicated in the arbitration decision.”

Lin stressed that workers had received termination payments at the expiration of each fixed duration contract since the operation began in 2010.

Moeun Tola, executive director of CENTRAL, said it was not surprising to him that a hugely profitable company would refuse to implement an Arbitration Council ruling.

“If no pressure, those companies would continue exploiting their laborers peacefully although they have [a] clear Code of Conduct to respect workers’ rights,” he said in a written response.

While Pou Yuen were entitled to choose a non-binding arbitration, defiance of the ruling still violated the ethical sourcing policies brands like Amer Sports purported to adhere to, Moeun said.

“I think Amer Spot [sic] should look at the history of AC awards so far, how people take serious about AC decision in such corrupted system in the country and should be responsible for their consumers by stop exploiting their laborers and apply their CSR [corporate social responsibility],” said Moeun Tola.

Labor Ministry spokesman Heng Sour said the government would step in to pay workers their final salary, annual leave and severance pay, but not damages or termination compensation.

“As the government we provide the compensation to workers, as we don’t want them to worry or be frustrated about their payment,” he said.

The government, he said, would pursue the foreign investors responsible for the closure or others holding liability to recuperate the sums owed, vowing that “when they come here we’ll take action”.

He shouldn’t have to look far, as Pou Yuen is still in Cambodia, according to Amer Sport’s Covatta, who said the firm is building a new, 2,800 worker capacity facility – reflecting his company’s “commitment to provide jobs in Cambodia”.

That’s cold comfort for Sor Chanthorn, the 46-year-old president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions local branch. 

She said the closure had left her in financial dire straits since other factories refused to take workers of her age.

“It’s nearly one year that we have not got compensation. I went to work in the construction sector, it’s already hard because my husband got sick, he had a stroke, then he cannot move,” she said. “I cannot go to work because I have to take care of my husband and my daily life condition is very bad because I don’t have any income and I’m also waiting to get compensation from the factory.”
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China says it is impossible to hold trade talks with the United States with a new round of tariffs in place.

U.S. imposed duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and a retaliatory set of tariffs imposed by Beijing on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, took effect on Monday. 

Chinese vice commerce minister Wang Shouwen asked reporters in Beijing Tuesday how can any talks proceed now that the Trump administration has adopted such “large-scale restrictions,” which he said is like “holding a knife to someone’s throat.” Wang led a Chinese delegation to Washington for the last round of talks between the two sides in August. 

The new U.S. duties covers thousands of Chinese-made products, including including electronics, food, tools and housewares. The new tariffs begin at 10 percent, then will rise to 25 percent on January 1, 2019. Among the items included in the new Chinese tariffs on U.S. products are liquefied natural gas.

The Trump administration has argued tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.

It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cyber theft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.

The U.S. has already imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount on U.S. goods. And President Donald Trump has threatened even more tariffs on Chinese goods — another $267 billion worth of duties that would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.

Economic forecasters say the trade spat between the world’s two biggest economies could slow the global economy through 2020.
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At a community center on Shek Lei public housing estate in northern Hong Kong, stacks of mooncake boxes are waiting to be distributed on Mid-Autumn Festival the following day. 

Inside they contain some of the 76,000 mooncakes that have been collected by Food Grace, a local charity, this holiday season to be redistributed to low-income families and individuals. 

Most are leftovers from manufacturers, says Food Grace Project Officer Casey Ng, who over-produced in an attempt to cash in on the Chinese tradition of exchanging boxes of mooncakes with friends and family each autumn – now a $2 billion international industry. 

“I would say the excessive situation has been there [historically], but it’s kind of a growing situation because some mooncake manufacturers have to record higher sales each year,” he said. 

Redistributing mooncakes is just one solution in how to tackle the more than 2 million mooncakes, valued at least $12.8 million, that will be thrown out after in Hong Kong alone after Mid-Autumn Festival. 

Ng attributed much of the glut to the trend for new flavors each year or expensive luxury varieties of mooncakes. 

While mooncakes, calorie-dense flaky pastries meant to represent the full moon, are traditionally made with simple fillings like red bean or egg yolk, they now come in a range of flavors from chocolate to pandan or vanilla custard. 

An ordinary box of four retails for around $25, but specialty boxes produced by high end hotels or luxury manufactures can sell for over $100 each in complex packaging.

While they are exchanged between family members, they are also often given out at work to mark a business relationship. 

The exchange, though, can become a financial and social burden, according to Ng, which is why Food Grace has also created a mooncake charter for companies to pledge not to share them at work. 

“We have to educate or we have to encourage them that [even if] you are not sending a mooncake as a gift, [it] does not harm your relationship with your partners or with your employees,” Ng said. 

“We have run some surveys and people actually don’t want to receive mooncakes anymore,” he added, saying they often end up with too many. 

Convincing individuals, however, to donate their mooncakes is still taking time to catch on, according to Conrad Tsang, another project officer. 

“If they have a religious background, say if they are Buddhist or Christian, they might have more motivation to do something like that but let’s just say ordinary folk [no],” he said. 

While Food Grace placed collection boxes in over 60 locations around Hong Kong, most of the mooncakes they received are still from manufacturing companies. 

While giving away gifts is a well-established Hong Kong tradition, he felt giving to charity was still not as strong – one reason so many mooncakes may still end up in the trash this year, uneaten. 
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The five remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal have agreed to establish a special payment system to allow companies to continue doing business with the regime, bypassing new sanctions imposed by the United States.

Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran issued a statement late Monday from the United Nations announcing the creation of a “Special Purpose Vehicle” that will be established in the European Union. The parties said the new mechanism was created to facilitate payments related to Iranian exports, including oil. 

Federica Mogherini, EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters after the deal was announced that the SPV gives EU member states “a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran…and allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance to European Union law and could be open to other partners in the world.”

Mogherini said the financial agreement is also aimed at preserving the agreement reached in 2015 with Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for relief from strict economic sanctions. The deal was reached under then-President Barack Obama, but Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, pulled out of the accord in May of this year, saying it didn’t address Tehran’s ballistic missile program or its influence in the Middle East.
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The “gig” economy might not be the new frontier for America’s workforce after all.

From Uber to TaskRabbit to YourMechanic, so-called gig work has been widely seen as ideal for people who want the flexibility and independence that traditional jobs don’t offer. Yet the evidence is growing that over time, they don’t deliver the financial returns many expect.

And they don’t appear to be reshaping the workforce. Over the past two years, for example, pay for gig workers has dropped, and they are earning a growing share of their income elsewhere, a new study finds. Most Americans who earn income through online platforms do so for only a few months each year, according to the study by the JPMorgan Chase Institute being released Monday.

One reason is that some people who experimented with gig work have likely landed traditional jobs as the economy has improved. Drivers for Uber, Lyft and other transportation services, for example, now collectively earn only about half as much each month as they did five years ago.

The new data echo other evidence that such online platforms, despite deploying cutting-edge real-time technology, now look less like the future of work. A government report in July concluded that the proportion of independent workers has actually declined slightly in the past decade.

“People aren’t relying on platforms for their primary source of income,” said Fiona Grieg, director of consumer research for the institute and co-author of the study.

The data is derived from a sample of 39 million JPMorgan checking accounts studied over 5½ years. In March 2018, about 1.6 percent of families participated in the gig economy, equivalent to about 2 million households. That is barely up from the 1.5 percent of a year earlier.

Most participants cycle in and out of gig work to supplement their incomes from other jobs. Previous research by JPMorgan has found that in any given month, one in six workers on online platforms are new — and more than half will have left the gig economy after a year of entering it.

For drivers, 58 percent work just three months or less each year through online economy websites. These include ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft as well as delivery drivers and movers who find work through online apps. Amazon, for example, now uses independent drivers to deliver some packages. Fewer than one-quarter of drivers performed gig work for seven months or more, the study found.

The study also reviewed online platforms that provide home improvement work. These include TaskRabbit as well as dog-walking, home cleaning and other services. Two-thirds of those workers perform gig work for only three months a year or less.

Low pay likely helps explain the frequent turnover of workers who use the gig platforms. For transportation workers, who mostly include Uber and Lyft but also package delivery services, average monthly incomes have fallen from $1,535 in October 2012 to just $762 in March of this year, not adjusted for inflation, the study found.

That drop may at least partly reflect the fact that many drivers are likely working fewer hours, Grieg said. As the number of independent drivers has ballooned over the past five years, drivers have faced intensifying competition. And many have likely found other sources of income as the job market has strengthened. Still, some platforms may be paying their workers less, Grieg said.

How much Uber drivers make on an hourly basis is a hotly debated subject. A 2015 analysis by Princeton University economist Alan Kruger found that drivers in 20 large markets earned $19.04 an hour. But those figures, like JPMorgan’s, do not factor in expenses, such as gas and wear and tear, that drivers themselves must shoulder.

Competition among drivers has clearly intensified. The number of independent workers in taxi and limousine services, which includes ride-hailing companies, jumped 46 percent in 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the Census Bureau.

Todd Suffreti has seen the difference in the two years that he’s driven for Uber. Suffreti, who works out of Frederick, Maryland, says his weekly income has dropped by a quarter since he began.

“It’s really saturated, and the calls don’t come in as often,” said Suffreti, 45. “It’s not like it used to be. I have to work harder and longer to get what I used to get.”

For drivers, online income now makes up just 26 percent of their total annual earnings, the JPMorgan study found — down from nearly 52 percent in October 2013.

Research by Uber’s chief economist, Jonathan Hall, and John Horton of New York University found that when Uber raised its fares, drivers initially earned more money. But there were offsetting effects: The higher rates attracted more drivers while reducing the number of trips consumers made. Overall earnings for drivers soon fell back to their previous levels.

The JPMorgan study found that transportation — including package delivery and moving — is increasingly the dominant force in the gig economy. Transportation makes up 56 percent of all gig work, up from just 6 percent in 2013. Selling items through such online sites as eBay and Etsy has sunk to 19 percent of gig work, down from 72 percent.

“It’s really those transportation platforms that have grown tremendously and now represent the lion’s share of the dollars and participation,” Grieg said.

People who participate in leasing websites, such as Airbnb and car rental site Truro, are earning much more — averaging $2,113 in March of this year. But just 0.2 percent of households participate in such sites, the study found.

 
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Out of 15 countries polled, young people in China, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico were found to be more optimistic about the future than youths in the other countries, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Young people in these countries are more likely to believe they can affect the way their countries are governed and that their generation will have a more positive impact on the world than their parents’ generation, according to the Goalkeepers Global Youth Poll, conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs.

The poll surveyed more than 40,000 people age 12 and older and asked for “their outlook on their personal lives, challenges for their communities, and the direction of their countries,” according to the foundation report. Youths expressed more optimism than older people about their futures at home and globally.

In the poll, Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, the United States and Saudi Arabia were deemed higher-income countries. Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria and Russia were considered middle- or lower-income. 

Happiness ratings show general contentedness among the 15 countries, but youths in lower- and middle-income countries reported the highest levels of optimism. 

Relationships with friends and family were the most important influence on a person’s life, and was highest in Sweden, the poll found.

Mexicans, Kenyans and Americans also ranked their relationships very high, like most countries, and more important than the impact of social media. And while social media scored high among Mexican youths, it remained lower than the positive impact of friends and family.

Health or well-being, and finances followed family and friends in importance. If they could have any job, most youths said they wanted to be doctors, while most adults said they wanted to be entrepreneurs.

Optimism about the ability to find good jobs was highest in China and lowest in Nigeria. Most countries hovered in the midrange. 

Worldwide, most people, young and old, agreed “life is better for men and boys than for women and girls,” and will continue that way, and there was very little difference between male and female responses, the poll found.

“This is particularly true in India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, the U.S. and Brazil,” the results said. Most responses said they thought conditions would improve for women.

Religion was most important to youths in Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, Sweden and Kenya, and least important to youths in China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Mexico and Russia.

In China, both youths and adults reported overwhelming optimism in the future of their country: 90 percent of youths and 78 percent of adults feel good about the future of their country. India, Nigeria, Mexico, Kenya and Indonesia reported similar levels of optimism about their countries.

In the U.S., 35 percent of youths and 18 percent of adults reported feeling optimistic about their country. Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain and France also reported feeling less optimistic.

In response to the sentence, “My generation is better off than my parents were,” both Chinese youth (90 percent) and adults (80 percent) were most positive. Nigerian, Indian, Indonesian and Saudi Arabia youths followed in line for youths. Indian, Indonesian, German, Saudi Arabian and Swedish adults in succession said their generation was better off than their parents.

Government or political leaders, and climate change or pollution had the most negative impact on life for both youths and adults.

Both younger and older respondents cited ending poverty and improving education as paramount over other issues, including ending conflicts.

Cancer was the No. 1 health concern universally. HIV/AIDS came in second globally, with greatest concern in Kenya, Nigeria and Mexico.

The “sadness of aging” bummed out everyone, youths and adults, with responses ranking in the negatives, meaning no one was happy about aging. 
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Malawi continues to struggle to develop its tourism industry, despite having several attractions, including national parks, game reserves and mountains. But the government has developed a Tourism Strategic Plan that seeks to address challenges to attracting more tourists. Lameck Masina reports on Malawi’s efforts to develop the industry, after attending a recent tourism street carnival in the country’s commercial capital, Blantyre.
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The United Nations, the World Bank and the International Committee of the Red Cross are partnering with technology powerhouses to launch a global initiative aimed at preventing famines.

“The fact that millions of people — many of them children — still suffer from severe malnutrition and famine  in the 21st century is a global tragedy,” World Bank President Jim Young Kim said announcing the initiative.

The global organization will work with Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services to develop the Famine Action Mechanism (FAM), a system capable of identifying food crisis area that are most likely to turn into a full-blown famine.

“If we can better predict when and where future famines will occur, we can save lives by responding earlier and more effectively,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement.

The tech giants will help develop a set of analytical models that will use the latest technoligies like Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to not only provide early warnings but also trigger pre-arranged financing for crisis management.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning hold huge promise for forecasting and detecting early signs of food shortages, like crop failures, droughts, natural disasters and conflicts,” Smith said.

According to the U.N. and World Bank, there are 124 million people experiencing crisis-level food insecurity in the world today.

FAM will be at first rolled out in five countries that “exhibit some of the most critical and ongoing food security needs,” according to the World Bank, which didn’t identify the nations. It will ultimately be expanded to cover the world.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vows the United States will be victorious in any trade war with China, a day before the Trump administration’s latest tariffs on Chinese imports go into effect.

Pompeo told Fox News on Sunday. “We are going to get an outcome which forces China to behave in a way that if you want to be a power, a global power… you do not steal intellectual property.”

The Trump administration has argued tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.

It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cyber theft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.

Last week, the United States ordered duties on another $200 billion of Chinese goods to go into effect on September 24 (Monday). China responded by adding $60 billion of U.S. products to its import tariff list.

The Untied States already has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount of U.S. goods.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened more tariffs on Chinese goods — another $267 billion worth of duties that would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.

 
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Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox in the battle for Sky after offering 30.6 billion pounds ($40 billion) for the British broadcaster, in a dramatic auction to decide the fate of the pay-television group.

U.S. cable giant Comcast bid 17.28 pounds a share for control of London-listed Sky, bettering a 15.67 offer by Fox, the Takeover Panel said in a  statement shortly after final bids were made Saturday.

Comcast’s final offer was significantly higher than its bid going into the auction of 14.75 pounds, and compares with Sky’s closing share price of 15.85 pounds on Friday.

Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive of Comcast, coveted Sky to expand its international presence as growth slows in its core U.S. market.

Owning Sky will make Comcast the world’s largest pay-TV operator with around 52 million customers.

“This is a great day for Comcast,” Roberts said on Saturday. “This acquisition will allow us to quickly, efficiently and meaningfully increase our customer base and expand internationally.”

Comcast, which also owns the NBC network and movie studio Universal Pictures, encouraged Sky shareholders to accept its offer. It said it wanted to complete the deal by the end of October.

Comcast, which requires 50 percent plus one share of Sky’s equity to win control, said it was also seeking to buy Sky shares in the market.

A spokesman for Fox, which has a 39 percent holding in Sky, declined to comment.

The quick-fire auction marked a dramatic climax to a protracted transatlantic bidding battle waged since February, when Comcast gate-crashed Fox’s takeover of Sky.

It is a blow to media mogul Murdoch, 87, and the U.S. media and entertainment group that he controls, which had been trying to take full ownership of Sky since December 2016.

It is also a setback for U.S. entertainment giant Walt Disney, which agreed on a separate $71 billion deal to buy the bulk of Fox’s film and TV assets, including the Sky stake, in June and would have taken ownership of the British broadcaster following a successful Fox takeover.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May’s aides have begun contingency planning for a snap election in November to save both Brexit and her job, the Sunday Times reported.

The newspaper said that two senior members of May’s Downing Street political team began “war-gaming” an autumn vote to win public backing for a new plan, after her Brexit proposals were criticized at a summit in Salzburg last week.

Downing Street was not immediately available to comment on the report.

Meanwhile, opposition Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said Saturday that his party would challenge May on any Brexit deal she could strike with Brussels, and he said there should be a national election if the deal fell short.

The British government said Saturday that it would not “capitulate” to European Union demands in Brexit talks and again urged the bloc to engage with its proposals after May said Brexit talks with the EU had hit an impasse.

“We will challenge this government on whatever deal it brings back on our six tests, on jobs, on living standards, on environmental protections,” Corbyn told a rally in Liverpool, northern England, on the eve of Labor’s annual conference.

“And if this government can’t deliver, then I simply say to Theresa May the best way to settle this is by having a general election.”

Labor’s six tests consist of whether a pact would provide for fair migration, a collaborative relationship with the EU, national security and cross-border crime safeguards, even treatment for all U.K. regions, protection of workers’ rights, and maintenance of single-market benefits.
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Tensions between China and the United States escalated Saturday as China’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to issue a harsh protest against U.S. sanctions set for the purchase of Russian fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles.

The move came hours after China canceled trade talks with the U.S. following Washington’s imposition of new tariffs on Chinese goods.

The statement on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website called the imposition of sanctions “a serious violation of the basic principles of international law” and a “hegemonic act.” The ministry also wrote, “Sino-Russian military cooperation is the normal cooperation of the two sovereign states, and the U.S. has no right to interfere.” The U.S. actions, it said, “have seriously damaged the relations” with China. 

China had earlier called on the U.S. to withdraw the sanctions, and speaking to reporters Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing had lodged an official protest with the United States.

China’s purchase of the weapons from Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport violated a 2017 U.S. law intended to punish the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin for interfering in U.S. elections and other activities. The U.S. action set in motion a visa ban on China’s Equipment Development Department and director Li Shangfu, forbids transactions with the U.S. financial system, and blocks all property and interests in property involving the country within U.S. jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that China had planned to send Vice Premier Liu He to Washington next week for trade talks, but canceled his trip, along with that of a midlevel delegation that was to precede him.

Earlier Friday, a senior White House official had said the U.S. was optimistic about finding a way forward in trade talks with China.

The official told reporters at the White House that China “must come to the table in a meaningful way” for there to be progress on the trade dispute. 

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there was no confirmed meeting between the United States and China, the two countries “remain in touch.”

“The president’s team is all on the same page as to what’s required from China,” according to the official.

The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States. 

It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cybertheft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.

Earlier this week, the United States ordered duties on another $200 billion of Chinese goods to go into effect on Sept. 24. China responded by adding $60 billion of U.S. products to its import tariff list.

The United States already has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount of U.S. goods.
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America’s rediscovered prowess in oil production is shaking up old notions about the impact of higher crude prices on the U.S. economy.

It has long been conventional wisdom that rising oil prices hurt the economy by forcing consumers to spend more on gasoline and heating their homes, leaving less for other things.

Presumably that kind of run-up would slow the U.S. economy. Instead, the economy grew at its fastest rate in nearly four years during the April-through-June quarter.

President Donald Trump appears plainly worried about rising oil prices just a few weeks before mid-term elections that will decide which party controls the House and Senate.

“We protect the countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us, and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices!” Trump tweeted Thursday. “We will remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!”

Members of The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, who account for about one-third of global oil supplies, are scheduled to meet this weekend with non-members including Russia.

The gathering isn’t expected to yield any big decisions — those typically come at major OPEC meetings like the one set for December. Oil markets, however, were roiled Friday by a report that attendees were considering a significant increase in production to offset declining output from Iran, where exports have fallen ahead of Trump’s re-imposition of sanctions.

OPEC and Russia have capped production since January 2017 to bolster prices. Output fell even below those targets this year, and in June the same countries agreed to boost the oil supply, although they didn’t give numbers.

Rising oil prices

Oil prices are up roughly 40 percent in the past year. On Friday, benchmark U.S. crude was trading around $71 a barrel, and the international standard, Brent, was closing in on $80.

The national average price for gasoline stood at $2.85 per gallon, up 10 percent from a year ago, according to auto club AAA. That increase likely would be greater were it not for a slump in gasoline demand that is typical for this time of year, when summer vacations are over.

The United States still imports about 6 million barrels of oil a day on average, but that is down from more than 10 million a decade ago. In the same period, U.S. production has doubled to more than 10 million barrels a day, according to government figures.

“Because the U.S. now is producing so much more than it used to, [the rise in oil prices] is not as big an impact as it would have been 20 years ago or 10 years ago,” said Michael Maher, an energy researcher at Rice University and a former Exxon Mobil economist.

The weakening link between oil and the overall economy was seen — in reverse — three years ago. Then, plunging oil prices were expected to boost the economy by leaving more money in consumers’ pocket, yet GDP growth slowed at the same time that lower oil prices took hold during 2015.

Other economists caution against minimizing the disruption caused by energy prices.

“Higher oil prices are unambiguously bad for the U.S. economy,” said Philip Verleger, an economist who has studied energy markets. “They force consumers to divert their income from spending on other items to spending on fuels.”

Since energy amounts to only about 3 percent of consumer spending, a cutback in that other 97 percent “causes losses for those who sell autos, restaurants, airlines, resorts and all parts of the economy,” Verleger said.

Pack leader

The federal Energy Information Administration said this month that the U.S. likely reclaimed the title of world’s biggest oil producer earlier this year by surpassing the output of Saudi Arabia in February and Russia over the summer. If the agency’s estimates are correct, it would mark the first time since 1973 that the U.S. has led the oil-pumping pack.

And that has made the impact of oil prices on the economy a more complicated calculation.

When oil prices tumbled starting in mid-2014, U.S. energy producers cut back on drilling. They cut thousands of jobs and they spent less on rigs, steel pipes and railcars to ship crude to refineries. That softened the bounce that economists expected to see from cheaper oil.

Now, with oil prices rising, energy companies are boosting production, creating an economic stimulus that offsets some of the blow from higher prices on consumers. Oil- and gas-related investment accounted for about 40 percent of the growth in business investment in the April-June quarter this year.

Moody’s Analytics estimates that every penny increase at the pump reduces consumer spending by $1 billion over a year, and gasoline has jumped 24 cents in the past year, according to AAA. That is “a clear-cut negative,” but not deeply damaging, said Ryan Sweet, director of real-time economics at Moody’s.

“Usually with gasoline prices, speed kills — a gradual increase [like the current one], consumers can absorb that,” Sweet said. Consumers have other factors in their favor, he added, including a tight job market, wage growth, better household balance sheets, and the recent tax cut.

Sweet said the boon that higher prices represent to the growing energy sector, which can invest in more wells, equipment and hiring, means that the run-up in crude has probably been “a small but net positive” for the economy.

“That could change if we get up to $3.50, $4,” he said.
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China has canceled trade talks with the United States following Washington’s imposition of new tariffs on Chinese goods.

The Wall Street Journal reports that China had planned to send Vice Premier Liu He to Washington next week for the talks, but has now canceled his trip along with that of a midlevel delegation that was to precede him.

US was optimistic

Earlier Friday, a senior White House official said the U.S. was optimistic about finding a way forward in trade talks with China.

The official told reporters at the White House that China “must come to the table in a meaningful way” for there to be progress on the trade dispute.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said while there was no confirmed meeting between the United States and China, the two countries “remain in touch.”

“The president’s team is all on the same page as to what’s required from China,” according to the official.

Trade imbalance

The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.

It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cybertheft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.

Earlier this week, the United States ordered duties on another $200 billion of Chinese goods to go into effect Sept. 24. China responded by adding $60 billion of U.S. products to its import tariff list.

The United States has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount of U.S. goods.

Tariffs on all China imports?

Earlier this month, President Trump threatened even more tariffs on Chinese goods — another $267 billion worth of duties that would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.

“That changes the equation,” he told reporters.

China has threatened to retaliate against any potential new tariffs. However, China’s imports from the United States are $200 billion a year less than American imports from China, so it would run out of room to match U.S. sanctions.
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Canada and the United States showed scant sign on Thursday of closing a deal to revamp NAFTA, and Canadian officials made clear Washington needed to withdraw a threat of possible autos tariffs, sources said.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump wants to be able to agree on a text of the three-nation North American Free Trade Agreement by the end of September, but major differences remain.

“We discussed some tough issues today,” Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters after meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Freeland, who has visited Washington four weeks in a row to discuss NAFTA, gave no further details.

Market fears over the future of the 1994 pact, which underscores $1.2 trillion in trade, have been regularly hitting stocks in all three nations, whose economies are now highly integrated.

While multiple deadlines have passed during the more than year-long negotiations to renew NAFTA, pressure on Canada to agree to a deal is growing, partly to push it through the U.S. Congress before Mexico’s new government takes office on Dec. 1.

Canada says it does not feel bound by the latest deadline.

Asked whether time was running out, Freeland said her focus was getting a deal that was good for Canadians.

Trump came to power last year vowing to tear up NAFTA unless major changes were made to a pact he blames for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Trump struck a side-deal on NAFTA with Mexico last month and has threatened to exclude Canada if necessary. He also said he might impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian autos exports, which would badly hurt the economy.

​Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, who was briefed on the talks by Canada’s negotiating team, said Ottawa insisted that the tariff threat be withdrawn.

“Why would Canada sign a trade agreement with the United States … and then have Donald Trump impose a 25 percent tariff on automobiles?” Dias told reporters.

“That for us is a deal breaker. It doesn’t make a stitch of sense. … We are a small nation, we’re not a stupid nation,” added Dias.

Freeland said she would return to Canada on Thursday ahead of a two-day meeting of female foreign ministers she is co-hosting in Montreal. Early next week she will be in New York for a United Nations session.

Ottawa is under pressure from some sectors to abandon its insistence that a bad NAFTA is worse than no NAFTA.

Jim Wilson, the trade minister of Ontario — Canada’s most populous province and heart of the country’s auto industry — met federal negotiators on Wednesday and tweeted on Thursday, “It is imperative that the feds reach a deal.”

The Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday reported that U.S. negotiators want Ottawa to agree to capping its auto exports to the United States at 1.7 million vehicles a year, something that Canadian industry sources dismissed as unacceptable.

Separately, a Canadian source directly familiar with the negotiations said, “We have not discussed a cap.”

Reuters and other outlets reported in August that a side letter with Mexico would cap tariff-free or nearly duty-free Mexican imports to the United States at 2.4 million vehicles.

U.S. automakers privately question why the United States would seek to cap Canadian exports to the United States, given that companies are unlikely to expand production in Canada compared with lower-cost Mexico.
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Seven years after the Arab Spring, little has been done to address youth unemployment in Tunisia, a key factor in extremist groups’ ability to recruit marginalized youth, rights groups and experts warn.

“Someone who is marginalized with nothing to lose, no stability in life, no vision of the future, no hope for change, can become a very easy target for terrorist groups,” Amna Guellali, director of Human Rights Watch’s Tunisia office, told VOA.

The Arab Spring was ignited in Tunisia, in part because of deteriorating economic conditions. A frustrated street vendor set himself on fire outside a local municipal office in Sidi Bouzid to protest repeated harassment from authorities, who often confiscated his goods or fined him for selling without a permit. 

Although economic conditions that force people to eke out a living on society’s margins play a big role in the unrest, Guellali said that unemployment is the central issue in Tunisia.

 “Unemployment stands at 15 percent, rising to 36 percent for Tunisians under 24 years old. Unemployed youths with diplomas are 25 percent, according to the last statistic of 2017,” Guellali added.

The World Bank, which has been helping Tunisia in its development, has also warned that unemployment among young people is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

Economic growth 

The World Bank says Tunisia has made progress in its transition to democracy and good governance practices, compared with other countries in the Middle East, but still grapples with growing its economy and providing economic opportunities. 

Tunisia’s economic growth in the post-Arab Spring era remains weak despite a modest increase in 2017. According to World Bank data, the economy grew by 1.9 percent in 2017 compared with 1.0 percent in 2016. Since the revolution, the economy has been growing by an average 1.5 percent annually, lower than previous years.

“Tunisian youth don’t see improvement; they actually see that the economic conditions have worsened more than the previous regime,” Darine El Hage, a regional program manager at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), told VOA. 

El Hage added that the institute’s field research indicates that Tunisian youth are both frustrated and feel hopeless, with some appreciating the previous government of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali for its relative stability. 

Mohamed Malouche, founder of the Tunisian American Young Professionals organization, agrees. He believes that ordinary Tunisians feel betrayed by the country’s politicians.

“The Tunisian public has been very patient, but they are not seeing that democracy is paying off. They all feel that they have been cheated by politicians,” Malouche said. 

Ripe for extremism

Terror groups such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have large numbers of Tunisians among their ranks and are active in various countries in the region.

Youssef Cherif, an independent Tunisian analyst, believes that when young people join militant groups, it is not due to ideological or religious preferences.

“Tunisian youth are trying to find a space where they can feel that they are important and feel a sense of identity and sense of belonging,” Cherif said.

Malouche agrees. “The lack of economic opportunities, the feeling of injustice and the lack of trust in the government institutions force Tunisian youth to take the extremism route,” he said. 

“Tunisia is becoming a fertile ground to extremism recruiters who are taking advantage of vulnerable young men by offering them money and promises,” he added.

Malouche said lack of political representation is also a factor.

“The Tunisian youth are not [seeing] themselves in the political process. They don’t feel that they are truly represented by the current people in power,” he said.

Root causes

Since the toppling of autocrat Ben Ali in 2011, nine Cabinets have been elected, none of which fully addressed high inflation and unemployment.

“The government has not addressed the root causes of the situation. They haven’t adopted comprehensive policies. They only adopted some cosmetic measures,” Human Rights Watch’s Guellali said.

The government is trying to encourage foreign investment, but continued instability has deterred investors, she said. 

Political division

Political differences between President Beji Caid Essebsi and Prime Minister Youssef Chahed further complicate efforts to bring about reforms.

In July, Essebsi urged the prime minister to step down, citing the country’s political and economic problems. Chahed ignored the call.

“A change of government will shake the confidence of Tunisia’s international partners … as economic data will begin to improve by the end of this year [2018],” Chahed told state news agency TAP, responding to the president’s call for his resignation.

The Tunisian government has taken a number of steps to try to address  inflation and unemployment, including efforts to strengthen small businesses in the country and exemption of foreign companies from taxation to encourage more foreign investment. But analysts, like USIP’s El Hage, believe that these solutions are at best easy fixes.

“There are some mobilizations at the level of the government. However, these mobilizations are short-lived and don’t reflect long-term and comprehensive economic reform policy,” El Hage said. 

Some of the information in this report came from Reuters.
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New U.S. claims for jobless benefits fell for the third week in a row, hitting their lowest level in nearly 49 years for the third straight week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The new figures suggest the U.S. economy’s vigorous job creation continued unabated this month as the data were collected during the survey week for the department’s more closely watched monthly jobs report, due out next week.

Amid a widely reported labor shortage, employers are reluctant to lay off workers who are difficult to replace.

For the week ended September 12, new claims for unemployment insurance fell to 201,000, down 3,000 from the prior week. Economists had instead been expecting a result of 209,000.

The result was the lowest level since November of 1969, whereas the prior week’s level had been the lowest since December 1969.

However, economists say that in reality the levels are likely the lowest ever, given demographic changes in the United States in the past half century.

Claims have now held below the symbolic level of 300,000 for more than 3.5 years, the longest such streak ever recorded.

Though they can see big swings from week to week, jobless claims are an indication of the prevalence of layoffs and the health of jobs markets.

In a decade of economic recovery, the United States has seen uninterrupted job creation, driving the unemployment rate to historical lows.

In light of these trends, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates next week to prevent inflation from rising too quickly.

 

 

 
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The world is making progress in its efforts to lift people out of extreme poverty, but the global aspiration of eliminating such poverty by 2030 is unattainable, a new report found.

A World Bank report released Wednesday says the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day fell to a record low of 736 million, or 10 percent of the world’s population, in 2015, the latest year for which data is available.

The figure was less than the 11 percent recorded in 2013, showing slow but steady progress.

“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.

“But if we are going to end poverty by 2030, we need much more investment, particularly in building human capital, to help promote the inclusive growth it will take to reach the remaining poor,” he warned. “For their sake, we cannot fail.”

Poverty levels dropped across the world, except in the Middle East and North Africa, where civil wars spiked the extreme poverty rate from 9.5 million people in 2013 to 18.6 million in 2015.

The highest concentration of extreme poverty remained in sub-Saharan Africa, with 41.1 percent, down from 42.5 percent. South Asia showed the greatest progress with poverty levels dropping to 12.4 percent from 16.2 percent two years earlier.

The World Bank’s preliminary forecast is that extreme poverty has declined to 8.6 percent in 2018.

About half the nations now have extreme poverty rates of less than 3 percent, which is the target set for 2030. But the report said that goal is unlikely to be met.
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Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma said Wednesday that the Chinese e-commerce giant had canceled plans to create 1 million jobs in the U.S., blaming the ongoing trade war for the decision, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

“This commitment is based on friendly China-U.S. cooperation and the rational and objective premise of bilateral trade,” Ma told Xinhua. “The current situation has already destroyed the original premise. There is no way to deliver the promise.”

Ma originally pledged to spur job growth by letting American small businesses and farmers sell their goods on Alibaba, which is one of the world’s largest online retailers, when he visited then-President-elect Donald Trump early 2017.

Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports on Monday, threatening to place taxes on an additional $267 billion worth of Chinese imports if China attempts to retaliate.

China placed tariffs on about $60 billion worth of U.S. products the next day as previously planned, though it reduced the size of the tariffs.

At an Alibaba investor conference Tuesday, Ma described the state of economic relations between the two countries as a “mess” with consequences that could last for decades.

Some experts said Ma’s plan to bring 1 million jobs to the U.S. might have been overly ambitious in the first place.
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