The White House’s decision this week to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries: The undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children.

But the cost, which is difficult to quantify for a workforce faced with the real possibility of losing their job and forced to leave the country, is evident to employers, who largely view both the moral and economic implications of ending the program as intertwined.

“Losing [the economic contributions of DACA recipients] is a direct cost,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s business leadership. She said the state’s DACA workforce contributes several billion dollars a year to the local economy.

WATCH: DACA Repeal to Cost U.S. Businesses, Economy Billions

“It’s also a signal to the rest of the world that somehow America is no longer a place that is embracing talent and hard work and the energy of immigrants,” Wylde told VOA. “That message has a ripple effect in terms of hurting recruitment efforts by our major companies, because they need talent — multilingual talent — from all over the world.”

Employers bear the brunt

To date, more than 400 U.S. entrepreneur and business leaders have signed an open letter that calls on U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress to preserve DACA and provide a permanent solution that ensures recipients’ ability to continue working legally in the country without risk of deportation.

“Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions,” the letter reads, referencing research conducted by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, over a 10-year period.

The conservative-leaning CATO Institute places that figure at $280 billion.

​Lose-lose

Following the announcement of DACA’s repeal, the White House suggested unemployed American workers might somehow benefit, based solely on the age of the workforce.

“There are over 4 million unemployed Americans in the same age group as those that are DACA recipients,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

“Over 950,000 of those are African-Americans in the same age group; over 870,000 unemployed Hispanics in the same age group. Those are large groups of people that are unemployed that could possibly have those jobs,” Sanders said.

But economists and immigration analysts find fault with Sanders’ argument: The native-born unemployed population is not a perfect substitute for the DACA workforce, and the displacement of one worker for another does not increase productivity.

Under the repeal of DACA, CATO estimated employers would incur $6.3 billion in turnover costs, a figure that includes the recruiting, hiring and training of 720,000 new employees in often highly skilled positions. Thirty-six percent of DACA recipients 25 and older hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

Many DACA recipients “are highly educated and working in positions such as health care and education, where they are more highly paid and therefore more productive,” said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at CATO Institute. “[Those are] the industries where you’re going to see a greater impact as a result of this forced turnover caused by the DACA repeal.”

“Contracting the labor force, kicking people out of the country, will not create jobs. It will just shrink the overall size of the economy,” Bier said.

Over the long term, Wylde said, failing to find a permanent solution for DACA workers would inhibit U.S. businesses’ ability to compete.

“We want to be at the forefront of the attraction and support of our talent,” she said. “We don’t want to be deporting them.”
…

The White House’s decision to repeal DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries who arrived in the U.S. as children. Over the next two years, more than 700,000 employed recipients will find themselves without a job. And for their employers, laying off a qualified workforce carries not only moral implications, but billions in lost revenue and an overall reduction in U.S. economic growth. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
…

Two back-to-back storms will have a significant impact on U.S. growth and productivity, according to economists tracking the impact of Hurricanes Harvey in Texas, and Irma — expected to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Despite the potential catastrophic loss in lives and capital, economists who spoke with VOA say the damage to the U.S. economy is likely to be short-lived. Mil Arcega has more.
…

China’s producer price inflation accelerated more than expected to a four-month high in August, fueled by strong gains in raw materials prices and pointing to strong, sustained growth for both factory profits and the economy.

The producer price index (PPI) rose 6.3 percent in August from a year earlier, from 5.5 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said Saturday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the August producer price inflation rate would edge up to 5.6 percent, its first pickup in six months.

Strong industrial profits

China’s industrial firms have been posting their strongest profits in years thanks to a government-led construction boom that has fueled demand and prices for everything from cement to steel.

The country’s strong appetite for resources such as iron ore has helped fuel a reflationary pulse in the manufacturing sector worldwide.

But analysts continue to maintain that factory-gate prices will lose steam eventually as the government continues to clamp down on riskier types of financing, which is slowly pushing consumer and corporate borrowing costs higher.

China’s commodities futures markets have rallied hard this year and continued to surge through in August. Strong restocking demand and government pledges to shut inefficient and highly polluting mines and plants have underscored concerns over tight supply heading into winter.

Steel industry expands

Activity in China’s steel industry expanded in August at the fastest pace since April 2016, reflecting high levels of production and low inventory.

With the industrial sector in high gear, China’s economy grew by a faster-than-expected 6.9 percent in the first half of this year, turbo-charged by heavy government spending and massive bank lending last year.

That momentum plus strong August readings so far should allow Beijing to easily meet or beat its full-year growth target of 6.5 percent.

Indeed, relatively steady growth through the rest of the year would see the world’s second-largest economy accelerate for the first time in seven years. Last’s years pace of 6.7 percent was the slowest in 26 years.

China’s consumer inflation rate also rose more than expected to a seven-month high of 1.8 percent in August, the bureau said, the first time it has accelerated in three months.

The consumer price index (CPI) had been expected to rise 1.6 percent on-year compared with an increase of 1.4 percent in July.

Food prices, the biggest component of the consumer price index (CPI), fell 0.2 percent from a year earlier.

Nonfood price inflation quickened to 2.3 percent in August from 2 percent in July. Analysts had expected the CPI to rise 1.6 percent from 1.4 percent in July but remain well within the central bank’s comfort zone.
…

Aid groups have criticized efforts by European leaders to stem the flow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, arguing Europe’s economy needs more workers. One nongovernmental organization in Italy has been trying to fill the gap by training African migrants to work as beekeepers and then pairing them with local honey producers in need of employees. Ricci Shryock reports for VOA from Alessandria, Italy.
…

As women pound the pavements of Abidjan selling their wares, direct manic traffic in blue police uniforms and host popular television shows, it’s hard to believe Ivory Coast has one of the world’s widest gender gaps.

With stark inequalities in school, as well as in access to healthcare and jobs, the United Nations ranks French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy 155 out of 159 countries when it comes to gender equity.

“Ivorian women get by because we have strength,” said Animata Touré, before trying to cajole passersby into buying her fruit in the city’s business district Plateau.

“[Life] is a bit hard,” she acknowledged.

The 46-year-old has scraped by as a hawker all her life, shelving her dream of opening a small restaurant as unrealistic.

“Who is going to give me the means to do that?”

Ivorian women earn on average half as much as men, the World Bank says, largely because they are less educated, spend several hours a day cooking and caring for children, and lack access to finance, equipment and commercial networks.

Supporting would-be female entrepreneurs, like Touré, could generate at least $6 billion, or a third of the country’s current revenues, the Bank says.

“We have huge potential here,” said Ahmed Diomande, an official in the trade ministry, describing the World Bank’s latest data as an “alarm bell.”

“The challenge is convincing men that they have a vested interest in gender parity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a women’s rights conference in Abidjan.

The government is working to reduce the gender gap by using a $9 million loan from Morocco to fund small- and medium-sized businesses run by women entrepreneurs, he said.

It is also backing a private-sector initiative to lift women out of the informal sector by training them as grocery store managers in more than a dozen shops in Abidjan.

As Ivory Coast’s vast, informal economy is largely run by women, authorities and business leaders are keen to help them make the leap to better-paying, regulated businesses with training and access to credit.

“Economic power is in women’s hands,” said Salimata Porquet, a former politician who fought successfully for gender equality at work to be included in Ivory Coast’s 2016 constitution.

Books for Boys

Ivory Coast needs to get more girls into school and provide them with role models across the board, from business to politics, activists say, as reducing gender inequality has proven key to the success of many emerging nations.

Discrimination starts young in Ivory Coast, where only 33 percent of women are literate compared to 53 percent of men – a gap that has widened since the early 1980s, the bank says.

Unlike most African nations, Ivory Coast does not have an equal number of boys and girls in primary school.

Many poor parents educate their boys, rather than girls, as they believe the sons will get better jobs and provide for them.

Girls, meanwhile, often become married mothers in their teens.

“The more we see women… in a field that we like, the more we have young girls trying to follow that path,” said Tchonté Silué, 23, a female blogger who runs a children’s library in Abidjan to encourage youngsters to read.

She tries to inspire Ivorian girls by sharing her story as a young woman who earned a master’s degree in the United States.

Activists say women also need to support each other as they advance in business and politics.

“If we’re able to share our experiences, that can inspire each woman to do her part,” said Marie-Thérèse Boua N’Guessan, who runs a publication about women’s leadership.
…

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman’s future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy.

 

In a CNBC interview, Mnuchin on Thursday avoided a direct answer when asked whether he supported the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist who was a leader in the Underground Railroad.

 

“People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he said. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we have a lot more important issues to focus on.”

 

During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, for his “history of tremendous success” and said the decision to replace him with Tubman was “pure political correctness.”

 

Trump suggested during the campaign that one possibility would be to put Tubman on another bill and leave Jackson on the $20. He and Ben Carson, currently secretary of housing and urban development, had both suggested during the GOP primaries that Tubman might go on the $2 bill instead.

Then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced last year that he had decided to place Tubman on the $20 bill as part of a make-over of the nation’s currency to improve security features on the bills. The new currency bearing Tubman’s portrait was scheduled to be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.

 

Lew arrived at the decision to displace Jackson on the $20 bill after generating a loud outcry with an initial proposal to put a woman on the $10 bill replacing Alexander Hamilton.

 

In the CNBC interview, Mnuchin said, “The number one issue why we change the currency is to stop counterfeiting. So the issues of why we change it will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes.”

 

At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, “I’m not aware of any policy change. I’d certainly have to check into that.”

 

In a wide-ranging interview, Mnuchin also:

 

— Said the original goal of getting Congress to pass comprehensive tax reform by August “got delayed a bit,” but he stressed that the administration was still on track to have a measure signed into law by the end of this year.

 

Mnuchin’s comments on taxes came one day after Trump launched the administration’s fall push to overhaul the nation’s tax system with a speech in Springfield, Missouri. There he said the plan, details of which have yet to be revealed, would unlock strong economic growth, reduce the tax burden of the middle-class and encourage corporations to keep jobs in America.

Mnuchin rejected the idea that the administration has yet to settle on the details of the tax plan.

 

“We are on track to get this done by the end of the year,” he said. “So you’re going to see the detail come out [in September.] It’s going to go through a committee process. We expect the House and Senate will get this to the president to sign this year and we couldn’t be more excited about the progress we’ve made.”

 

Mnuchin would not say whether Trump’s goal of reducing the top corporate tax rate to 15 percent from the current 35 percent would remain in the finished administration proposal, or whether it might be changed to a less ambitious cut to 20 or 25 percent.

 

“We’ll go through with the [congressional] committees and see where we end up,” Mnuchin said.

 

— Expressed confidence that Congress will pass legislation needed to raise the government’s borrowing limit this fall and avoid a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. Mnuchin has authority to use a range of bookkeeping maneuvers to avoid breaching the limit through Sept. 29, although private analysts believe the actual deadline for Congress increasing the current $19 trillion limit will be in mid-October.

 

— Stated that the administration has a good working relationship with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. He refused to say how many candidates, other than Yellen, President Donald Trump is considering for the Fed job when Yellen’s current term expires in February. Trump said in an interview last month that Yellen, Gary Cohn, head of Trump’s National Economic Council, and “two or three” other contenders were in the mix.

Yellen used a high-profile speech last Friday at a central bank conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to defend the Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul passed in 2010. She described it as a successful effort to make the financial system stronger following the 2008 financial crisis. Trump has called the measure a “disaster” and he and GOP lawmakers would like to rewrite it extensively to reduce regulatory burden on banks.

Asked if this was an area of conflict between Yellen and the administration, Mnuchin said, “I had breakfast with Fed Chair Yellen this morning. … we have a very constructive dialogue on a lot of issues including regulation.”

 

Mnuchin said “ultimately the president will make a decision later in the year” on who he will nominate for a new term as Fed chair.
…

Gasoline futures surged more than 13 percent Thursday, and crude oil settled nearly 3 percent higher, as almost a quarter of U.S. refining capacity remained offline and traders scrambled to reroute millions of barrels of fuel.

U.S. gasoline futures have rallied more than 28 percent from the previous week to a two-year high above $2 a gallon, buoyed by fears of a fuel shortage days ahead of the U.S. Labor Day weekend’s traditional surge in driving. Gasoline settled up 25.52 cents, or 13.54 percent, at $2.1399.

Hurricane Harvey, which brought record flooding to the U.S. oil heartland of Texas and killed at least 35 people, has paralyzed at least 4.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity, according to company reports and Reuters estimates.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said that roughly 13.5 percent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico was also shut in Thursday.

US taps strategic oil reserves

The U.S. government tapped its strategic oil reserves for the first time in five years Thursday, releasing 1 million barrels of crude to a working refinery in Louisiana. Traders were also scrambling to redirect fuel to the United States.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled $1.27 higher at $47.23 per barrel, up 2.76 percent. It remained on track to close August down almost 6 percent, the steepest monthly loss since March.

International benchmark Brent crude settled $1.52 higher, or 2.99 percent, at $52.38 a barrel. It had fallen by just more than 2 percent in the previous session.

“The market has turned in reverse pretty sharply,” said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy. “You do have some signs of rebalancing, regardless of Harvey.”

US refineries key to oil prices

On Wednesday, oil prices fell despite a weekly drop in closely watched U.S. commercial crude stocks of 5.39 million barrels. Crude inventories are 14.5 percent below record levels hit in March.

OPEC output this month also fell 170,000 bpd from a 2017 high, a Reuters survey found, as renewed unrest cut supplies in Libya and other members stepped up compliance with a production-cutting deal.

Analysts called the status of U.S. refineries a key to oil prices.

“The disruptions in recent days may delay the ongoing global crude oil rebalancing process,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Stifel said U.S. outages would probably last several months, but it was difficult to estimate the exact damage. Others said higher gasoline prices might prompt operational refineries to delay typical September seasonal maintenance.

“Refineries outside the affected area may delay maintenance to benefit from high processing margins,” said Commerzbank oil analyst Carsten Fritsch. “Hence, the negative impact on crude oil demand and oil product supply might be less severe than feared.”

Shrinking crude stocks and expectations for rising growth in global demand meant analysts in a monthly Reuters poll raised their oil price forecasts for the first time in six months.
…