The U.S. is on pace to leapfrog both Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s biggest oil producer.

The latest data released by the Energy Information Administration shows U.S. output growing again next year to 11.8 million barrels a day.

 

Linda Capuano, who heads the agency, says that would make the U.S. the world’s No. 1 producer.

 

The director of the International Energy Agency, a group of oil-consuming countries, made a similar prediction in February.

 

Russia and Saudi Arabia pumped more crude than the U.S. last year.

 

Production is booming in U.S. shale fields because of newer techniques such as fracking and horizontal drilling.
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Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday the country will soon sign up to a $3 trillion African free trade zone.

Nigeria is one of Africa’s two largest economies, the other being South Africa. Buhari’s government had refused to join a continental free-trade zone established in March, on the grounds that it wishes to defend its own businesses and industry.

The administration later said it wanted more time to consult business leaders.

“In trying to guarantee employment, goods and services in our country, we have to be careful with agreements that will compete, maybe successfully, against our upcoming industries,” Buhari told a news conference during a visit by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“I am a slow reader, maybe because I was an ex-soldier. I didn’t read it fast enough before my officials saw that it was all right for signature. I kept it on my table. I will soon sign it.”

The continental free-trade zone, which encompasses 1.2 billion people, was initially joined by 44 countries in March. South Africa signed up earlier this month.

Economists point to the continent’s low level of intra-regional trade as one of the reasons for Africa’s enduring poverty and lack of a strong manufacturing base.
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China expressed shock Wednesday at the Trump administration’s decision to prepare 10-percent tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports covering thousands of products, the latest move in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s commerce ministry called the decision totally unacceptable and vowed to respond.

The proposed new U.S. tariffs follow the decision to impose duties in two stages on $50 billion in Chinese goods. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration has patiently urged China to stop its unfair practices, open its market and engage in true market competition. 

“Rather than address our legitimate concerns, China has begun to retaliate against U.S. products,” Lighthizer said in a statement announcing the tariffs.”There is no justification for such action.”

The proposed tariffs come just days after the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on more than 800 Chinese products worth about $34 billion, citing what it calls China’s unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.Beijing followed suit with an equal amount of levies on U.S. goods.

Christine McDaniel, a senior research fellow at George Mason University in Virginia, told VOA that while the Trump administration’s actions have bipartisan congressional support, its strategy to date of tariffs and investment restrictions could be costly to U.S. manufacturers and consumers.

“A tariff is a tax and in today’s global economy.American manufacturers are simply tied to suppliers from outside the U.S. for their competitiveness.So when we tax those imports, we’re taxing American manufacturers, not to mention consumers, and that heavily handicaps our own manufacturers.”

McDaniel said the longer the tariff battle goes on, the greater the impact will be felt in both economies.She added trade actions against China would be more effective if they were done in concert with America’s allies.McDaniel also expects China to eventually change its policies away from state-owned enterprises and implement more market-oriented rules and regulations, but predicts that will take time.

Despite bipartisan support, the Trump administration’s latest move drew criticism from House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is retiring at the end of his term in January. Ryan reiterated his opposition to the president’s tariffs Wednesday, saying they “are not the right way to go.” Ryan singled out China as one of a number of countries that engage in unfair trade practices, but added, “I just don’t think tariffs are the right mechanism” to resolve the problem.

The Trump administration’s decision was received with dismay by key lawmaker Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.Hatch said in a statement the decision “appears reckless and is not a targeted approach.”

A high-ranking administration official said the U.S. Trade Representative’s office will accept public comments on the plan and hold hearings in late August, before reaching a final decision.
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The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel has been welcomed by U.S. producers of the material but slammed by American manufacturers that rely on a global steel supply chain to make everything from cars to razor blades. VOA’s Michael Bowman visited a can company that is being squeezed by the new tariff and has this report, which was produced by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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Grabbing a bicycle from a docking station and riding the streets of Paris used to be one of the city’s many charms, but the once-loved Velib system has fallen into disarray and some new dockless bike-share programs are struggling to survive.

After it launched in 2007, Velib quickly became a hit, signing up more than 250,000 users who could take advantage of 20,000 bikes around the city. But advertising company JCDecaux’s concession to run Velib expired last year.

A French-Spanish consortium called Smovengo won the tender to run the service for the next 15 years, but it struggled to meet a January deadline to install new docking stations and has battled a raft of technology problems, leaving users frustrated.

At the same time, four dockless bike-share programs, all run by Asian operators, have popped across the city, offering users the ability to unlock a free-standing bike via an app for a fee.

While initially popular thanks to their novelty and Velib’s problems, some of those schemes are now running into trouble, with users unhappy with the quality of the bikes, many of which have been vandalized or thrown in the Seine.

Singapore’s oBike this week became the second of the programs to give up on Paris, which wants to be an urban leader in green mobility. Officials of oBike did not return calls, but a former official said key staff in France had left the company.

In February, Hong Kong startup Gobee.bike halted its operations because of theft and vandalism.

China-owned bike-share firms Ofo and Mobike remain active and have been steadily growing their numbers, thanks in part to Smovengo’s struggle to get fully up and running.

Laurent Kennel, general manager at Ofo France, said the firm now had about 2,500 of its bright yellow bikes on Paris roads and aimed to increase that to 3,000 to 4,000 by the end of summer.

“In Paris and elsewhere, there have been low-quality bikes that were not made to last,” he said. “Free-floating bike sharing hasn’t created the chaos that some had predicted a few months ago. It’s going quite well.”

Mobike also has several thousand of its red bikes on Paris streets and has been adding a larger version, more suited to European frames, also with three speeds, like Ofo and Velib.

Paris cyclists have welcomed the new programs, but are nostalgic for the old Velibs, which they say offered a better, smoother ride and were cheaper, thanks to state subsidies.

“Bike-share services are good for short distances. You can drop them wherever you want, which is convenient,” said Paris cyclist David Bober. “But their quality is not great and they are not very comfortable for long distances.”

He said he used to pay about 30 euros a year for his Velib subscription but that membership for two Asian dockless schemes costs him around 20 euros a month.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has recognized that the city needs to get a grip on the programs and make sure Velib works.

“We know there is this entire field, this entire space of mobility which exists and can be managed in a different way. But for us it clear that it must be regulated,” she said.

Still, more startups are using Paris as a test center. Last month, California-based Lime launched a fleet of dock-free electric scooters in the city, part of a wider rollout in several European cities.

Danish bike share operator Donkey Republic has also launched several hundred dockless bikes. Unlike Mobike and Ofo, the large Danish bikes cannot be parked anywhere but must be chained up at designated parking spots.
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The United States has decided to impose tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China after efforts to negotiate a solution to a trade dispute failed to reach an agreement, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the United States would impose tariffs of 10 percent on the additional Chinese imports.

The move would be the latest in the escalating trade skirmish between the world’s two biggest economies. They slapped tariffs on $34 billion worth of each other’s goods last week.

President Donald Trump has said the United States might ultimately impose tariffs on more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods — roughly the total amount of U.S. imports from China last year.

Administration officials said a two-month process would allow the public to comment on the proposed tariffs before the list is finalized.
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In an ideal world, Alex Fearnside would cycle home from work, park his bike in the basement of his apartment complex in Melbourne city center, then jog upstairs through a beautiful courtyard to his flat, stopping only for a quick chat with other residents in the shared dining area.

Later, Fearnside and his wife would head down to the communal kitchen to eat a meal cooked by their neighbors.

Fearnside’s 10-year-old dream for life in the Australian city is nearing reality as it awaits planning approval. It is shared by 50 other Melbourne residents who belong to Urban Coup, a collective that wants to turn a disused button factory in an old industrial area into a co-housing community by 2020.

“What is driving us is we want to know our neighbors,” said the 38-year-old environmental scientist. “We want to know that as we’re growing old, we have people around us who have similar values to who we are and what we bring.”

Urban Coup is one of five innovative housing initiatives that put community at their heart.

The projects are supported with expertise and networks mobilized by Resilient Melbourne, part of 100 Resilient Cities, a network backed by The Rockefeller Foundation to help cities deal with modern-day pressures.

This year, more than half of Asia-Pacific’s population will be urban, and that figure will increase to two-thirds by 2050, the United Nations estimates.

But as the region’s cities continue to expand, services and infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with rising populations and economic growth, while the effects of climate change have created additional challenges.

The Melbourne projects aim to help find solutions to the city’s expanding urban sprawl, worsening traffic congestion and growing social isolation – all of which can contribute to problems like alcoholism and domestic violence.

And by building stronger community bonds, Melbourne should be better placed to recover from potential shocks and stresses, such as rising temperatures and droughts, infrastructure failures and potential pandemics, the schemes’ proponents say.

“Many of the people who started Urban Coup remember growing up on streets where they knew everybody on that street,” said Fearnside. “We wanted a building that would enable us to know our neighbors and allow us to support each other.”

Urban Sprawl

In the past decade, Melbourne has topped various polls as the world’s most liveable city, attracting new residents to Australia’s second-biggest city.

Just under 5 million people live there, and the population is expected to double over the next 30 years, putting increased strain on infrastructure and housing.

As more estates have been built on greenfield sites outside the center, the rise in urban sprawl has brought problems.

Housing developments have outpaced infrastructure, leading to dormitory suburbs, whose residents commute daily but enjoy few services, amenities and transport links.

That causes traffic congestion and longer commute times, as well as a lack of interaction between neighbors, experts say.

“We live in a really beautiful part of Melbourne but we don’t really know our neighbors,” said Fearnside, who currently lives with his wife in a townhouse 5 km (3 miles) north of the central business district.

In Melbourne’s central areas, high-rise blocks have become more common in recent years. But as in many other Australian cities, first-time buyers and families have struggled to afford steeper prices stoked by overseas property investors.

And much new construction has been driven by developers, which tend to put profit before the provision of leisure or communal facilities.

On average, Melbourne property prices have doubled over the last decade, said Clinton Baxter, state director at Savills property agency in the city, and this trend is set to continue.

Central government efforts to help first-time buyers include a grant for deposits and stamp duty concessions, while state governments have sought to open up more land and fast-track approval processes for developments.

Despite this, the supply of new and affordable housing in Melbourne has struggled to keep up with demand. It is not uncommon to see would-be buyers camping out overnight ahead of a land sale to be front of the queue for their own building plot.

“The state government has struggled to keep up with the infrastructure requirements for such a rapidly growing city,” Baxter said.

Living Experiment

The five projects supported by Resilient Melbourne will bring together developers, city and state government agencies, service providers and potential buyers and renters.

Each project is crafted around different community-focused models – some based on renewal of the inner-city and others starting from scratch on greenfield sites.

The projects will also be part of an academic study.

“We want this to be a genuine living experiment so that we can understand in deep ways what works and what doesn’t work – and record it so the successes can be replicated in Melbourne but also internationally,” said Toby Kent, the city’s chief resilience officer.

The projects backed by Resilient Melbourne include a greenfield site for about 5,000 homes led by developer Mirvac.

It is working with local authorities to incorporate community aspects from an early stage.

Besides at least one new school, there will be a town center with shops and a supermarket, and a hub to house programs and events run by the council or residents, with a community-managed cafe and playground, said Anne Jolic, a director at Mirvac.

“Often people who move to some of these … new housing (developments) will feel very isolated,” she said.

Melbourne developer Assemble, meanwhile, plans to turn an old CD and DVD factory near the city center into 73 flats.

The property will include communal spaces like a cafe, a co-working space, crèche and grocery store, and is consulting with potential residents and existing neighbors on the design.

When the final plans are drawn up, residents will pay a refundable 1 percent deposit to secure a place, said Kris Daff, managing director of Assemble.

Once built, they will move in and start a five-year lease with an option to buy at a pre-agreed price, or exit the lease and leave at any time.

Services and events on offer will include dry cleaning, apartment cleaning, dog walking, community dinners, walking groups and film nights in a communal room.

“There is a huge amount of research that shows that when acute shocks have struck in cities, communities where there are existing connections are better able to bounce back,” said Kent, Melbourne’s resilience chief.
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The president of OPEC urged Canada on Tuesday to invest in infrastructure to move oil and gas, or risk watching investment flow away to the United States.

The Canadian government agreed in May to buy the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and a related expansion project from Kinder Morgan Canada for C$4.5 billion ($3.4 billion), highlighting the lengths deemed necessary to overcome stiff opposition to such projects.

Insufficient space in the country’s oil pipelines has deepened the discount Canada’s heavy crude can attract from U.S. refiners, compared with U.S. light oil futures.

“If you don’t have the major infrastructure, investors are going to go to your neighbor, where infrastructure is not an issue,” said Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries President Suhail al-Mazrouei. “Act and act quickly if you want to retain those investors. I am being frank because I want to be a true friend to the Canadians.”

“I don’t want them to lose opportunities,” he added.

Mazrouei was speaking in Calgary at a TD investor conference during the city’s Stampede, an annual rodeo that is also the year’s major meet and greet for Canada’s energy sector.

Mazrouei, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister, also singled out Canada’s low-priced natural gas. Much of it is produced in landlocked Alberta, and the country lacks a robust liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector to consume it.

LNG Canada, a proposed C$40 billion export facility for the British Columbia coast, is being reviewed by its joint venture partners ahead of a final investment decision.

“The solution is LNG and pipelines to export that natural gas,” Mazrouei said. “If you provide optionality for the gas, it’s going to fix itself.”
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Iran formally opened a secondary market for hard currency Tuesday, abandoning after three months an effort to dictate a single exchange rate for the rial against the dollar as the threat of U.S. sanctions pressures the Iranian currency.

The new market will cater to small exporters and importers from the private sector, the Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported. Fars said the first transaction exchanged rials for United Arab Emirates dirhams, at a rate equivalent to 75,000 rials to the U.S. dollar.

A central bank official said the secondary market would allow exchange rates to fluctuate freely.

“The price of the foreign currency will be set based on supply and demand,” Mehdi Kasraeipour, the central bank’s director of foreign exchange rules and policies, was quoted as saying on Monday by the IRNA state news agency.

Authorities had announced in early April they were unifying official and free-market rates for the rial in favor of a single rate set by the central bank, and warned that those caught trading the dollar at other rates would face arrest.

The move aimed to halt a plunge in the rial to record lows against the dollar that was fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from world powers’ 2015 deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

Sanctions coming back

Some U.S. sanctions against Iran’s economy are to be reimposed in August and some in November, and the prospect has triggered a panicky flight of ordinary Iranians’ savings into dollars.

The single-rate system failed to stabilize the rial, however, and in late June, the currency sank to record lows of around 90,000 per dollar in black market trade. It was around 80,000 on Tuesday, compared with about 43,000 at the end of 2017.

Worse still, the new system starved importers, other private businesses and Iranians traveling abroad of hard currency, because few holders of dollars were willing to sell at the unattractive central-bank set rate, now 43,010.

Only government agencies and some importers of “priority” goods could obtain dollars at the official rate, prompting complaints by Iranian business leaders and two days of protests by some market traders in Tehran, who shut their shops.

The secondary market was launched Tuesday to ease the hard currency shortage, although Kasraeipour did not elaborate on how it would work or say whether the government might intervene if the rial fell too sharply there.

Tehran has tried twice previously in the past two decades to create a single-exchange rate system for the rial, but both attempts quickly failed because of inadequate dollar supplies, corruption and speculation against the Iranian currency.
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Uber is getting into the scooter-rental business.

 

The ride-hailing company said Monday that it is investing in Lime, a startup based in San Mateo, California.

 

“Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” Rachel Holt, an Uber vice president, said in a statement.

 

Uber will add Lime motorized scooters to the Uber mobile app, giving consumers another option for getting around cities, especially to and from public transit systems, Holt said.

 

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

 

Lime co-founders Toby Sun and Brad Bao wrote in a blog that Uber’s “sizable investment” is part of a $335 million fund-raising round led by GV, the venture-capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc. They said Alphabet is among several new investors. The money will help Lime expand and develop new products.

According to the company website, customers can rent Lime scooters in more than 70 locations in the U.S. and Europe and leave them parked for the next customer to ride. The company is looking to buy tens of thousands of motorized foot-pedal scooters to expand its reach.

 

The scooters aren’t without their critics, however, who consider them a nuisance and a hazard to pedestrians. Officials in cities like San Francisco have been torn between promoting cheap and relatively non-polluting transportation and keeping sidewalks safe and clear of clutter.

 

For Uber, the Lime investment follows its purchase for an undisclosed sum of Jump Bikes, which rents electric bicycles in a half-dozen cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Washington.

 

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi aims to turn Uber into the Amazon.com of transportation, a single destination where customers can go to hitch a ride in a car and on other modes of transportation — even buy rides on city buses and subway systems. Uber also has a food-delivery service.

 

Rival Lyft is looking for new rides too. Last week, it bought part of a company called Motivate that operates Citi Bike and other bike-sharing programs in several major U.S. cities including New York and Chicago. It will rename the business Lyft Bikes. Terms of that deal were not disclosed either.

 

While the often brightly colored rental bikes are becoming a more common sight in the U.S., they have already gained widespread use in China and parts of Europe.
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President Donald Trump is threatening to “respond” after several major U.S. drug companies raised prices of some widely prescribed medicines.

“Pfizer and others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason,” Trump tweeted Monday. “They are merely taking advantage of the poor and others unable to defend themselves while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe and elsewhere.”

Pfizer hiked the cost of about 40 different drugs earlier this month, including Viagra for male impotence, Lipitor for treating high cholesterol, and the arthritis drug Xeljanz.

Trump, who campaigned on promises to lower drug prices, said in May that some companies were volunteering to cut prices.

Pfizer said the list price of medicines do not include discounts and rebates, and that customers generally do not pay full price at the drug counter.

It also said it makes more than 400 different drugs and is cutting prices on some of them.
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Behind a row of sealed red incubator doors in a new facility in northern China, about 400,000 chicks are hatched every day, part of the rapidly modernizing supply chain in China’s $37 billion egg industry, the world’s biggest.

As China overhauls production of everything from pork to milk and vegetables, farmers raising hens for eggs are also shifting from backyards to factory farms, where modern standardized processes are expected to raise quality and safety.

That’s an important step in a country where melamine-tainted eggs and eggs with high antibiotic residues have featured in a series of food safety scandals in recent years. It is also spurring demand for higher priced branded eggs over those sold loose in fresh produce markets.

“These days if you’re a small farmer, your eggs won’t get into the supermarkets,” said Yuan Song, analyst with China-America Commodity Data Analytics.

Tough new regulations on treating manure and reducing the environmental impact from farms have also pushed many small farmers out.

Most egg producers now have between 20,000 and 50,000 hens, said Yuan, a significant change even from two years ago. The remainder with less than 10,000 birds are likely to be shut down soon as local governments favor larger producers that can be more easily scrutinized.

High-tech hatchery

Those rapid changes are driving investments like the 150 million yuan ($22.60 million) hatchery in Handan, about 400km (250 miles) southwest of Beijing.

The highly automated plant, owned by a joint venture between China’s Huayu Agricultural Science and Technology Co. Ltd. and EW Group’s genetics business Hy-Line International, is the world’s biggest hatchery of layer chicks, or birds raised to produce eggs rather than meat.

By producing 200,000 females a day, or around 60 million layers a year (one day a week is for cleaning), it can meet demand from larger farms who want to buy day-old-chicks in one batch, said Jonathan Cade, president of Hy-Line International, based in West Des Moines, Iowa.

“That’s the best way to start off with good biosecurity,” he said. When the birds on one farm are the same age, they are less likely to spread disease.

Imported, latest-generation equipment helps speed up the throughput of the hatchery. An automatic grading machine, which can handle 60,000 eggs an hour, sorts eggs into two acceptable sizes before they enter incubators — uniform eggs produce similar sized chicks that will have the same feeding ability.

Once hatched, female chicks go to automated beak-clipping machines that process around 3,500 an hour.

Only 20 staff will be needed in the new plant, compared with around 100 in Huayu’s older hatchery, said Huayu chairman Wang Lianzeng.

Fierce competition, disease

Efficiency is important in an industry which is not expected to see much volume growth. The Chinese already eat more eggs per capita than almost everyone else, about 280 a year or almost one billion a day across the country, so consumption is unlikely to rise much.

Breeders like Huayu are trying to grow by taking market share from others. In addition to the new Handan hatchery, it is building another in Chongqing, which will bring annual production to 180 million chicks.

Layer inventory last year was around 1.2 billion, according to the China Animal Agriculture Association.

Huayu is also looking into breeding layers and building hatcheries in South-East Asia and Africa, said Wang, the chairman.

Key to industrial-scale facilities will be managing the risks of disease. Prices and demand for eggs and poultry plunged last year, after hundreds of people died from contracting bird flu, even though the disease left flocks largely unscathed.

Although that has created new opportunities for large players to expand after others were forced to exit, the impact of a disease outbreak on intensive operations is significantly higher.

Huayu itself has recently suffered from outbreaks, with high rates of poultry disease Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) in China’s breeding flocks last year, said Wang. The disease can reduce egg production in layers.

Wang said biosecurity is the major advantage in the new hatchery, which uses advanced ventilation and environmental controls to keep new chicks healthy.

“When you enter the hatchery, you wouldn’t know you’re in a hatchery,” he said, referring to the smell typical in older facilities.

Disinfection is used at every step along the chain and workers follow strict procedures on hygiene, he added.

A safe environment with very high standards of biosecurity is important in raising chicks, said Wang.

With such pressures on production, improving animal welfare is unsurprisingly not a priority, said Jeff Zhou, China representative for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a nonprofit.

China has no animal welfare regulations, although some companies have begun voluntarily to phase out the painful beak-trimming practice, including Huayu rival Ningxia Xiaoming Farming and Animal Husbandry Co. Ltd.

Xiaoming is also supplying male chicks from its hatcheries to local farmers to rear for meat in free-range environments, according to CIWF. Huayu sells its male chicks as food for snakes, which are farmed in China for traditional medicine.
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The possibility of more Western sanctions against Moscow is the key risk for the Russian economy, as much as 21 percent of which has already felt the impact of existing sanctions, Russia’s Analytical Credit Ratings Agency said in a report Tuesday.

Western sanctions are expected to weigh on Russia’s oil-dependent economy in the longer run, having dented incomes of Russian households, the Kremlin-backed ACRA said.

The West first imposed economic and financial sanctions against Moscow in 2014 for its annexation of Crimea and its role in the Ukrainian conflict.

Russia has responded with counter-sanctions, banning imports of a wide range of food from countries that had targeted Moscow.

Later, sanctions against Russia were expanded, putting extra pressure on Russia’s economy and the ruble.

“The risk of widening of anti-Russian sanctions remains one of the key risks that the Russian economy could face this year,” ACRA said.

New sanctions listed by ACRA might target more companies, Russian state debt or even disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT payment system.

For now, Russia’s international reserves, which stood at nearly $456 billion as of late June, “fully cover external debt, which is vulnerable to wider sanctions,” ACRA said.

“Sanctions should not be named the key factor that limits economic growth in Russia in the mid-term … The impact of sanctions on growth rate could turn out to be more pronounced in the long term for both companies and the economy in general,” ACRA said.

Western sanctions have hit Russian companies that account for 95 percent of the country’s oil and gas industry revenues.

Restrictions imposed on Russian oil and gas companies in 2014 will affect their oil output in 2020s, ACRA said.

Sanctions have also hit Russia’s major state-owned banks, which account for 54 percent of banking assets. But the sanctions’ impact on the financial health of companies and banks has been less pronounced than that of the country’s economic policies, ACRA said.

Moscow’s response to the sanctions, which limited imports, has inflated prices for a number of goods.

“Counter-sanctions have resulted in price growth and a decline in households’ incomes by 2-3 percentage points in 2014-2018,” ACRA said.
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World fish production is expected to grow over the next 10 years despite a slowdown in both farmed and wild caught fish, the U.N.’s food agency said.

In a new report on global fisheries, the Food and Agricultural Agency predicts world fish production will grow to 201 million metric tons by 2030 — an 18 percent rise over current levels.

This is despite the amount of wild caught fish leveling off and the number of farmed fish slowing down after decades of rapid growth.

“The fisheries sector is crucial in meeting FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition, and its contribution to economic growth and the fight against poverty is growing,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said.

But the report said future growth depends on sustainable and stronger fishing management, and successfully fighting such problems as pollution, global warming and illegal fishing.

The report said nearly 60 million people are employed in the world’s fishing industry, with China being the biggest producer and exporter of fish.

The European Union, United States and Japan are the world’s top three consumers of fish and users of fish products.
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What started as a simple desire to be able to provide for her children has turned into a multimillion-dollar business for Tammie Umbel of Dulles, Virginia. She not only runs a cosmetics company but home-schools her 14 children — and says she still finds time for herself. Leysa Bakalets has her story.
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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will seek to end the country’s massive fuel imports, nearly all from the United States, during

the first three years of his term while also boosting refining at home.

The landslide winner of last Sunday’s election told reporters Saturday morning before attending private meetings with members of his future cabinet that he would also prioritize increasing domestic production of crude oil, which has fallen sharply for years.

“The objective is that we stop buying foreign gasoline by the halfway point of my six-year term,” said Lopez Obrador, repeating a position he and his senior energy adviser staked out during the campaign.

“We are going to immediately revive our oil activity, exploration and the drilling of wells so we have crude oil,” he said.

On the campaign trail, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City pitched his plan to wean the country off foreign gasoline as a means to increasing domestic production of crude and value-added fuels, not as a trade issue with the United States.

Lopez Obrador also reiterated on Saturday his goal to build either one large or two medium-sized oil refineries during his term, which begins December 1.

While he said the facilities would be built in the Gulf coast states of Tabasco and possibly Campeche, he has been less clear about how the multibillion-dollar refineries would be paid for.

So far this year, Mexico has imported an average of about 590,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gasoline and another 232,000 bpd of diesel.

Foreign gasoline imports have grown by nearly two-thirds, while diesel imports have more than doubled since 2013, the first year of outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto’s term, according to data from national oil company Pemex.

Far below capacity

Meanwhile, the six oil refineries in Mexico owned and operated by Pemex are producing at far below their capacity, or an average of 220,000 bpd of gasoline so far this year.

Gasoline production at the facilities is down 50 percent compared with 2013, and domestic gasoline output accounts for only slightly more than a quarter of national demand from the country’s motorists.

During the campaign, the two-time presidential runner-up also promised to strengthen Pemex. He also was sharply critical of a 2013 constitutional energy overhaul that ended the company’s monopoly and allowed international oil majors to operate fields on their own for the first time in decades.

The overhaul was designed to reverse a 14-year-long oil output slide and has already resulted in competitive auctions that have awarded more than 100 exploration and production contracts to the likes of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil.

“What’s most important is to resolve the problem of falling crude oil production. We’re extracting very little oil,” said Lopez Obrador.

During the first five months of this year, Mexican crude oil production averaged about 1.9 million bpd, a dramatic drop compared with peak output of nearly 3.4 million bpd in 2004, or 2.5 million bpd in 2013.
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One of the world’s biggest cargo shippers announced Saturday that it was

pulling out of Iran for fear of becoming entangled in U.S. sanctions, and President Hassan Rouhani demanded that European countries to do more to offset the U.S. measures.

The announcement by France’s CMA CGM that it was quitting Iran dealt a blow to Tehran’s efforts to persuade European countries to keep their companies operating in Iran despite the threat of new American sanctions.

Iran says it needs more help from Europe to keep alive an agreement with world powers to curb its nuclear program. U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement in May and has announced new sanctions on Tehran. Washington has ordered all countries to stop buying Iranian oil by November and foreign firms to stop doing business there or face U.S. blacklists.

European powers that still support the nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, say they will do more to encourage their businesses to remain engaged with Iran. But the prospect of being banned in the United States appears to be enough to persuade European companies to keep out.

Foreign ministers from the five remaining signatory countries to the nuclear deal — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — offered a package of economic measures to Iran on Friday, but Tehran said they did not go far enough.

“European countries have the political will to maintain economic ties with Iran based on the JCPOA, but they need to take practical measures within the time limit,” Rouhani said Saturday on his official website.

‘We apply the rules’

CMA CGM, which according to the United Nations operates the world’s third-largest container shipping fleet with more than 11 percent of global capacity, said it would halt service for Iran because it did not want to fall afoul of the rules, given its large presence in the United States.

“Due to the Trump administration, we have decided to end our service for Iran,” CMA CGM chief Rodolphe Saade said during an economic conference in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. “Our Chinese competitors are hesitating a little, so maybe they have a different relationship with Trump, but we apply the rules.”

The shipping market leader, A.P. Moller-Maersk of Denmark, already announced in May it was pulling out of Iran.

In June, French carmaker PSA Group suspended its joint ventures in Iran, and French oil major Total said it held little hope of receiving a U.S. waiver to

continue with a multibillion-dollar gas project in the country.

Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanne said Saturday that the company had been left with little choice. “If we continued to work in Iran, Total would not be able to

access the U.S. financial world,” he told RTL radio. “Our duty

is to protect the company. So we have to leave Iran.”

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh called the tension between Tehran and Washington a “trade war.” He said it had not led to changes in Iranian oil production and exports.

He also echoed Rouhani’s remarks that the European package did not meet all economic demands of Iran.

“I have not seen the package personally, but our colleagues in the Foreign Ministry who have seen it were not happy with its details,” Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.

Some Iranian officials have threatened to block oil exports from the Gulf in retaliation for U.S. efforts to reduce Iranian oil sales to zero. Rouhani himself made a veiled threat along those lines in recent days, saying there could be no oil exports from the region if Iran’s were shut.
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The opening shots have been fired in what some fear may be the start of a major trade war. China retaliating at midnight Friday with equivalent tariffs on U.S. goods after the U.S. followed through on its threat to raise tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports. All this as the U.S. job market posted solid gains last month. Mil Arcega has more.
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Amid the very real hardships Syrian refugees face, little has been said about another major health and humanitarian issue: What to do with the massive accumulations of trash and waste. But one refugee camp in Jordan is doing something about it. With the help of an international nonprofit group, the residents of the Zaatari Refugee Camp launched a recycling program to eliminate the trash left by the tens of thousands of refugees who live there … and provide jobs. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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The political squabbling between China and the United States over trade and other issues affect the world’s two largest economies through a variety of mechanisms with unpredictable results. 

For example, prices of stock in both nations have been hurt as some shareholders sold their shares and other investors were reluctant to buy shares of companies that might be hurt by rising tariffs. These actions cut demand for certain stocks, making prices fall. Shareholders are part-owners of companies who hope to profit when the company prospers and grows. Rising tariff costs make growth less likely, and that hurts investor confidence.

World Trade Organization spokesman Dan Pruzin told Reuters that worries about trade are already being felt.

“Companies are hesitating to invest, markets are getting jittery, and some prices are rising,” he said, adding that further escalation could hurt “jobs and growth,” sending “economic shock waves” around the world. 

Confidence

Trade squabbles can hurt business confidence, because managers are less willing to take the risk of buying new machines, building new factories or hiring new workers. Less expansion means less demand for equipment, and a smaller workforce means fewer people have the money to rent apartments, buy food or finance a new car. Less demand for goods and services ripples through the economy and sparks less economic activity and less growth.

​Agriculture

U.S. farmers are another group feeling the effects of this trade dispute, as Beijing raises tariffs on U.S. soybeans. Higher tariffs raise food costs for Chinese consumers, so demand falls for U.S. farm products, a key American export. Anticipating slackening demand for U.S. soybeans, market prices dropped even before the tariffs were imposed. That means U.S. farmers can no longer afford to buy as many tractors and hire as many workers. Fewer workers mean fewer people with the money to buy products, which slows economic growth in farm states. 

Consumers

Meantime, new U.S. tariffs hit Chinese-made vehicles, aircraft, boats, engines, heavy equipment and many other industrial products. China’s Xinhua news agency said new U.S. tariffs are an effort to “bully” Beijing. The agency says the new tariffs violate international trade rules, and will hurt many companies and “ordinary consumers.” 

Experts say Washington tried to avoid tariffs on China that would directly raise costs to U.S. consumers. Economists say increasing taxes on products that help create consumer goods will still raise costs to consumers, fuel inflation and hurt demand. 

​Currency

PNC Bank Senior Economist Bill Adams, an expert on China’s economy, says one step China could take, but has not, would be to let its currency value drop. A weaker currency would mean Chinese-made products are cheaper and more competitive on international markets. Adams says China has taken steps recently to prop up the value of its currency. While a weaker currency helps exports, it can fuel inflation by raising the costs of imported products like oil or other raw materials needed by Chinese companies.

In the meantime, uncertainty fueled by trade disputes puts upward pressure on the value of the U.S. dollar, because investors see the United States as a safe haven in times of economic strife. But a stronger, more expensive dollar means U.S. products are more expensive for foreign customers, which hurts American exports and economic growth. 

All of this means it is hard to predict how this trade dispute will play out. Experts say it will depend in large measure on how many times the two sides raise tariffs in response to each other, how high the tariffs go, and how long the bickering lasts.

William Zarit, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, writes that this is the biggest trade dispute between China and the United States in 40 years.

The two sides must work something out, Zarit says, because a “strong bilateral trade and investment relationship is too important to both countries for it to be mired in verbal and trade remedy attacks and counterattacks.”

He says a new agreement would “significantly benefit both economies.”
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So is this what a trade war looks like?

The Trump administration and China’s leadership have imposed tens of billions of dollars in tariffs on each other’s goods. President Donald Trump has proposed slapping duties on, all told, up to $550 billion if China keeps retaliating and doesn’t cave in to U.S. demands to scale back its aggressive industrial policies.

Until the past couple of years, tariffs had been losing favor as a tool of national trade policy. They were largely a relic of 19th and early 20th centuries that most experts viewed as mutually harmful to all nations involved. But Trump has restored tariffs to a prominent place in his self-described America First approach.

Trump enraged such U.S. allies as Canada, Mexico and the European Union this spring by slapping tariffs on their steel and aluminum shipments to the United States. The tariffs have been in place on most other countries since March.

The president has also asked the U.S. Commerce Department to look into imposing tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, arguing that they pose a threat to U.S. national security.

Here is a look at what tariffs are, how they work, how they’ve been used in the past and what to expect now: 

Are we in a trade war?

Economists have no set definition of a trade war. But with the world’s two largest economies now slapping potentially punishing tariffs on each other, it looks as if a trade war has arrived. The value of goods that Trump has threatened to hit with tariffs exceeds the $506 billion in goods that China exported to the United States last year. 

It’s not uncommon for countries, even close allies, to fight over trade in specific products. The United States and Canada, for example, have squabbled for decades over softwood lumber. 

But the U.S. and China are fighting over much broader issues, like China’s requirements that American companies share advanced technology to access China’s market, and the overall U.S. trade deficit with China. So far, neither side has shown any sign of bending.

​So what are tariffs?

Tariffs are a tax on imports. They’re typically charged as a percentage of the transaction price that a buyer pays a foreign seller. Say an American retailer buys 100 garden umbrellas from China for $5 apiece, or $500. The U.S. tariff rate for the umbrellas is 6.5 percent. The retailer would have to pay a $32.50 tariff on the shipment, raising the total price from $500 to $532.50.

In the United States, tariffs — also called duties or levies — are collected by Customs and Border Protection agents at 328 ports of entry across the country. Proceeds go to the Treasury. The tariff rates are published by the U.S. International Trade Commission in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which lists U.S. tariffs on everything from dried plantains (1.4 percent) to parachutes (3 percent).

Sometimes, the U.S. will impose additional duties on foreign imports that it determines are being sold at unfairly low prices or are being supported by foreign government subsidies. 

Do other countries have higher tariffs than the United States?

Most key U.S. trading partners do not have significantly higher average tariffs. According to an analysis by Greg Daco at Oxford Economics, U.S. tariffs on imported goods, adjusted for trade volumes, average 2.4 percent, above Japan’s 2 percent and just below the 3 percent for the European Union and 3.1 percent for Canada.

The comparable figures for Mexico and China are higher. Both have higher duties that top 4 percent.

Trump has complained about the 270 percent duty that Canada imposes on dairy products. But the United States has its own ultra-high tariffs — 168 percent on peanuts and 350 percent on tobacco.

​What are tariffs supposed to accomplish?

Two things: Raise government revenue and protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Before the establishment of the federal income tax in 1913, tariffs were a big money-raiser for the U.S. government. From 1790 to 1860, for example, they produced 90 percent of federal revenue, according to Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy by Douglas Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth College. By contrast, last year tariffs accounted for only about 1 percent of federal revenue.

In the fiscal year that ended last September 30, the U.S. government collected $34.6 billion in customs duties and fees. The White House Office of Management and Budget expects tariffs to fetch $40.4 billion this year.

Tariffs also are meant to increase the price of imports or to punish foreign countries for committing unfair trade practices, like subsidizing their exporters and dumping their products at unfairly low prices. Tariffs discourage imports by making them more expensive. They also reduce competitive pressure on domestic competitors and can allow them to raise prices.

Tariffs fell out of favor as global trade expanded after World War II.

The formation of the World Trade Organization and the advent of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada reduced or eliminated tariffs. 

​Why are tariffs making a comeback?

After years of trade agreements that bound the countries of the world more closely and erased restrictions on trade, a populist backlash has grown against globalization. This was evident in Trump’s 2016 election and the British vote that year to leave the European Union — both surprise setbacks for the free-trade establishment.

Critics note that big corporations in rich countries exploited looser rules to move factories to China and other low-wage countries, then shipped goods back to their wealthy home countries while paying low tariffs or none at all. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the United States has shed 3.1 million factory jobs, though many economists attribute much of that loss not just to trade but to robots and other technologies that replace human workers.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to rewrite trade agreements and crack down on China, Mexico and other countries. He blames what he calls their abusive trade policies for America’s persistent trade deficits — $566 billion last year. Most economists, by contrast, say the deficit simply reflects the reality that the United States spends more than it saves. By imposing tariffs, he is beginning to turn his hard-line campaign rhetoric into action.

Are tariffs wise?

Most economists — Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is a notable exception — say no. The tariffs drive up the cost of imports. And by reducing competitive pressure, they give U.S. producers leeway to raise their prices, too. That’s good for those producers, but bad for almost everyone else.

Rising costs especially hurt consumers and companies that rely on imported components. Some U.S. companies that buy steel are complaining that Trump’s tariffs put them at a competitive disadvantage. Their foreign rivals can buy steel more cheaply and offer their products at lower prices.

More broadly, economists say trade restrictions make the economy less efficient. Facing less competition from abroad, domestic companies lose the incentive to increase efficiency or to focus on what they do best. 
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U.S. employers kept up a brisk hiring pace in June by adding 213,000 jobs, a sign of confidence in the economy despite the start of a potentially punishing trade war with China.

The job growth wasn’t enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising from 3.8 percent to 4 percent, the government said Friday. But the jobless rate rose for an encouraging reason: More people felt it was a good time to begin looking for a job, though not all of them immediately found one.

The growing optimism that people can find work suggested that the 9-year old U.S. economic expansion — the second-longest on record — has the momentum to keep chugging along. Yet its path ahead is uncertain. Just hours before the monthly jobs report was released, the Trump administration imposed taxes on $34 billion in Chinese imports, and Beijing hit back with tariffs on the same amount of U.S. goods.

“The tariffs jumble things about what we should expect to see in the next few months,” said Cathy Barrera, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, the online jobs marketplace.

Some companies are likely to respond to the tariffs by putting their hiring plans on hold until the trade picture becomes clearer.

Major U.S. stock indexes were mostly higher in early trading Friday after the jobs report was issued, keeping the market on track for a weekly gain after two weeks of losses.

The June jobs data showed an economy that may be on the cusp of producing stronger pay growth, something that could be disrupted if additional tariffs are imposed. Trump has suggested that more than $500 billion worth of Chinese imports could be taxed in his drive to force Beijing to reform its trade policies, which he insists have unfairly victimized the United States.

Average hourly pay rose just 2.7 percent in June from 12 months earlier. That relatively modest increases means that, after adjusting for inflation, overall wages remain nearly flat. But the average was skewed downward in June because the influx of jobseekers was due mainly to those with only a high school education or less, who are generally paid lower wages,

The ranks of unemployed people seeking jobs jumped by 499,000 in June, which caused the unemployment rate to rise from its previous 18 year-low. With 93 straight months of job growth — a historical record — many employers have said they’re feeling pressure to raise wages. But significant pay gains have yet to emerge in the economic data.

Manufacturers added 36,000 jobs last month; the education and health sector added 54,000. But retailers shed 21,600 jobs, with the losses concentrated at general merchandise stores.

In its report Friday, the government revised up its estimate of job growth in May and April by a combined 37,000. Over the past three months, the economy has produced a robust average monthly job gain of 211,000.

The broader U.S. economy appears sturdy. Economists are forecasting that economic growth accelerated to an annual pace of roughly 4 percent during the April-June quarter, about double the previous quarter’s pace.

Signs of strength have helped bolster hiring despite the difficulty many employers say they’re having in finding enough qualified workers to fill jobs.

Manufacturers and services firms have said in recent surveys that their business is improving despite anxiety about the tariff showdown between the United States and China. Housing starts have climbed 11 percent so far this year. Retail sales jumped a strong 0.8 percent in May in a sign that consumers feel secure enough to spend.

Though economic growth appears to be solid, the gains have been spread unevenly. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have provided a dose of stimulus this year, but the benefits have been tilted significantly toward wealthy individuals and corporations. Savings from the tax cuts enabled companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index to buy back a record number of shares in the first three months of 2018.

Yet the tax cuts have done little to generate substantial pay growth. Most economists say they still think the low unemployment rate will eventually force more employers to offer higher pay in order to fill jobs.

The economy also faces a substantial threat from the Trump administration’s trade war with China and from other, ongoing trade disputes with U.S. allies, including Canada and Europe. Any escalation in the conflict with China could disrupt hiring as companies grapple with higher import prices and diminished demand for their exports. On Thursday, Trump floated the prospect of imposing tariffs on more than $500 billion in Chinese imports.

The Trump administration has also applied tariffs on steel and aluminum from allies like Canada and Mexico and has threatened to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement with those two countries. Trump has also spoken about slapping tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, which General Motors has warned could hurt the U.S. auto industry and drive up car prices.

Automakers added 12,000 jobs in June, but the tariffs could weigh on that industry’s job growth in the coming months.
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