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General Electric’s new Chief Executive John Flannery on Monday outlined steps that will turn the biggest U.S. industrial conglomerate into a smaller, more focused company, surprising some investors who sold the company’s shares to a five-year low.

Flannery’s plan to shrink GE’s multi-industry array of businesses was a reversal of the deal-driven empire building of his predecessors, Jeff Immelt and Jack Welch, and potentially a milestone in the decline of the conglomerate as a business strategy.

Other companies that once emulated the GE model of spreading bets among diverse industries are now unwinding their portfolios as well, something Immelt also did throughout his 16 years as CEO, even as he made acquisitions.

Flannery said he will pare GE down to three core businesses: power, aviation and healthcare. He will keep Immelt’s strategy of building software to complement GE’s machinery, albeit with a narrower focus and reduced budget.

For investors, Flannery’s decision to cut both the dividend and the 2018 earnings forecast by half added up to a whole that was less than they judged GE be worth last week.

GE shares fell to their lowest level in more than five years as investors worried the years-long overhaul would not pare down enough expenses or generate as much cash as they hoped. They closed off the day’s lows, down 7.2 percent to $19.02.

“They need to cut more cost,” said Scott Davis, an analyst at Melius Research. “GE is still a bloated company with duplicate costs up and down the organization.”

GE stock has effectively been dead money since September 2001, when Immelt took over, posting a negative total return even after reinvesting its juicy dividends. Once the most valuable U.S. publicly traded company, GE now has a market value of $168 billion, less than a fifth of Apple.

“You have pessimism around its portfolio of businesses mixed with a pretty harsh cut in the dividend,” said John Augustine, chief investment officer at Huntington Private Bank. “It took them years to get into this mess and it will take them several years to right the ship and get back into a stronger position.”

‘Soul of the Company’

Flannery, who took over as CEO on Aug. 1, said he was “looking for the soul of the company again” and would focus on “restoring the oxygen of cash and earnings to the company.”

He will cut its board to 12 from 18 members, and bring on three new directors early next year.

GE said it already has shed 25 percent of its corporate staff, meaning 1,500 jobs around the world, including some at its Boston headquarters. It is aiming to reduce overhead cost by $2 billion next year, half of that at its troubled power unit that sells electrical generation equipment.

The transition includes GE getting rid of at least $20 billion of assets through sales, spin-offs or other means.

GE will jettison businesses with “a very dispassionate eye,” Flannery said, keeping only units that offer growth, a leading market position and a large installed base.

GE said it would exit its lighting, transportation, industrial solutions and electrical grid businesses, all of which were widely expected, closing factories around the globe.

But it was vague about other disposals.

It plans to get rid of its 62.5-percent stake in oilfield services company Baker Hughes, only months after making the multi-billion dollar investment. Baker Hughes shares lost 3.2 percent.

Flannery offered no quick fixes for investors. He said power, one of the businesses GE would focus on, was “challenged,” but could be turned around in one to two years.

GE’s Digital unit, on which Immelt bet billions of dollars, would focus on selling apps to customers in its core businesses, Flannery said. He confirmed that the shift meant sales staff were being let go, as Reuters reported last week.

GE also will cut spending on the digital unit to $1.1 billion in 2018 from $1.5 billion in 2017. GE had previously said it would invest $2.1 billion in its digital unit in 2017, but that tally included money not tied to Predix, GE’s industrial-internet platform, GE said.

Flannery said there is “no retreat on the idea” of GE providing both applications and the Predix platform to connect industrial equipment to computers that can make machines run better. However, getting one of its key applications to run on Predix could take two more years.

Flannery added that some of its healthcare IT business, such as software for imaging and hospital staff scheduling, were still critical to the company and not likely to be divested.

Dividend Cut

The dividend cut, to 48 cents from 96 cents next year, is only the third in the company’s 125-year history and the first not during a broader financial crisis. It is expected to save about $4 billion in cash annually.

“This dividend cut will be a major disappointment to GE’s (roughly 40 percent) retail shareholder base,” said RBC Capital Markets analyst Deane Dray.

The cut will be the eighth-biggest dividend cut in history among S&P 500 companies, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst of S&P Dow Jones Indices. GE also had the biggest cut when it slashed its dividend by $8.87 billion in 2009, Silverblatt said.

GE forecast 2018 adjusted earnings of $1 to $1.07 a share, compared with its earlier estimate of $2 per share. Wall Street was expecting $1.16, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Industrial free cash flow will total just $6 billion to $7 billion next year, up from an estimated $3 billion in 2017, but far below earlier targets of $12 billion for 2017.

GE said the weak power business had largely prompted the dividend cut and lowered earnings forecast. Demand for new power plants will remain slow through 2019, Flannery predicted.

But GE also was to blame, he said.

“We did not manage the (power) business well,” he said. “That’s a fundamental change we need to make and that’s going to take some time. This is not a magic wand.”
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Mexico’s government is preparing a macroeconomic response in case U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on threats to quit the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an event which could wreak havoc on the Mexican economy and hurt the peso.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Monday the government and central bank were preparing a plan to address the possibility of a future without NAFTA, but gave few details.

The government has said it is examining how it could adjust Mexican legislation to give investors certainty about their investments if the almost 24-year-old NAFTA collapses.

Underpinning some $1.3 trillion in annual trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, NAFTA has been a central pillar of recent Mexican economic development. Nearly 80 percent of Mexican exports are shipped to the United States.

Trade negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada meet in Mexico City this week to continue talks on overhauling the accord, and Videgaray reiterated the government’s position that the expectation was that talks would ultimately succeed.

Mexico would continue to work on diversifying trade, protect foreign investment, review possible changes to tariff barriers, and prepare a macro-economic response from the finance ministry and the central bank, Videgaray added.

“These are the four lines a plan B must include,” he told Mexican radio. “We have to be prepared for all the scenarios and one of the scenarios is that the United States leaves the treaty, and as we have said, that is not the end of the world, the Mexican economy is much bigger than NAFTA.”

Separately, the International Monetary Fund said in a report on Monday that ending NAFTA would bring back World Trade Organization “most-favored nation” tariffs, which would disrupt Mexican-U.S. trade, and could crimp economic growth, dampen capital inflows and raise risk premia.

The IMF suggested that among various policy responses at Mexico’s disposal, “temporary foreign exchange interventions and liquidity provision could help smooth extreme volatility.”

Concerns that Trump could follow through on his threats to dump NAFTA have battered the Mexican peso in recent weeks.

Additionally, Mexico should continue to implement its structural reforms and boost efforts to diversify trading relationships, which would increase competitiveness and help economic growth over the medium-term, the IMF said.

The IMF sees Mexico’s economy growing 1.9 percent next year after projected expansion of 2.1 percent in 2017.
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Promoted as needed relief for the middle class, the Senate Republican tax overhaul would increase taxes for some 13.8 million moderate-income American households, a bipartisan analysis showed Monday.

The assessment by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation emerged as the Senate’s tax-writing committee began wading through the measure, working toward the first major revamp of the tax system in some 30 years.

Barging into the carefully calibrated work that House and Senate Republicans have done, President Donald Trump called for a steeper tax cut for wealthy Americans and pressed GOP leaders to add a contentious health care change to the already complex mix.

Trump’s latest tweet injected a dose of uncertainty into the process as the Republicans try to deliver on his top legislative priority. He commended GOP leaders for getting the tax legislation closer to passage in recent weeks and then said, “Cut top rate to 35% w/all of the rest going to middle income cuts?”

That puts him at odds with the House legislation that leaves the top rate at 39.6 percent and the Senate bill as written, with the top rate at 38.5 percent.

Trump also said, “Now how about ending the unfair & highly unpopular individual mandate in (Obama)care and reducing taxes even further?”

Overall, the legislation would deeply cut corporate taxes, double the standard deduction used by most Americans, and limit or repeal completely the federal deduction for state and local property, income and sales taxes. It carries high political stakes for Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, who view passage of tax cuts as critical to the GOP preserving its majorities at the polls next year.

With few votes to spare, Republicans leaders hope to finalize a tax overhaul by Christmas and send the legislation to Trump for his signature.

The key House leader on the effort, Rep. Kevin Brady, said he’s “very confident” that Republicans “do and will have the votes to pass” the measure this week.

Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doesn’t expect major changes to the bill as it moves to a final vote in the House. Still, he said Trump’s call for removing the requirement to have health insurance as part of the tax agreement “remains under consideration.”

Trump and the Republicans have promoted the legislation as a boon to the middle class, bringing tax relief to people with moderate incomes and boosting the economy to create new jobs.

“This bill is not a massive tax cut for the wealthy. … This is not a big giveaway to corporations,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, insisted as the panel had its first day of debate on the Senate measure.

Hatch also downplayed the analysis by congressional tax experts showing a tax increase for several million U.S. households under the Senate proposal. Hatch said “a relatively small minority of taxpayers could see a slight increase in their taxes.”

The committee’s senior Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said the legislation has become “a massive handout to multinational corporations and a bonanza for tax cheats and powerful political donors.”

Tax increase for some

The analysis found that the Senate measure would increase taxes in 2019 for 13.8 million households earning less than $200,000 a year. That group, about 10 percent of all taxpayers, would face tax increases of $100 to $500 in 2019. There also would be increases greater than $500 for a number of taxpayers, especially those with incomes between $75,000 and $200,000. By 2025, 21.4 million households would have steeper tax bills.

The analysts previously found a similar magnitude of tax increases under the House bill.

A group of more than 400 millionaires and billionaires, including prominent figures such as Ben and Jerry’s founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, designer Eileen Fisher and financier George Soros, asked Congress to reject the GOP tax plan and not give cuts to the super-wealthy like themselves.

“We urge you to oppose any legislation that further exacerbates inequality,” they said in a letter made public Monday.

Neither bill includes a repeal of the so-called individual mandate of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the requirement that Americans get health insurance or face a penalty. Several top Republicans have warned that including the provision would draw opposition and make passage tougher.

Among the biggest differences in the two bills that have emerged: The House bill allows homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes while the Senate proposal unveiled by GOP leaders last week eliminates the entire deduction. Both versions would eliminate deductions for state and local income taxes and sales taxes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked whether the Senate’s proposed repeal of the property tax deduction could bring higher taxes for some middle-class Americans, acknowledged there would be some taxpayers who end up with higher tax bills.

“Any way you cut it, there is a possibility that some taxpayers would get a higher rate,” McConnell told reporters after a forum in Louisville, Kentucky, with local business owners and employees. “You can’t craft any tax bill that guarantees that every single taxpayer in America gets a tax break. What I’m telling you is the overall majority of taxpayers in every bracket would get relief.”
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Foreign investors walked a red carpet at a state palace Monday eager to hear strategies for reorganizing Venezuela’s billions in debt, but they left minutes later having learned no concrete plans to address the country’s financial crisis.

Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who headed the talks, used much of his time to rail against U.S. President Donald Trump and foreign lenders for leading what the government calls an “economic war” against this oil-rich nation.

But he also tried to assure creditors that debts will continue to be paid, echoing statements by President Nicolas Maduro that Venezuela has made more than $70 billion in debt payments since 2013.

“The state has fully honored its national and international commitments, especially with regard to external debt service,” El Aissami said in a televised broadcast. “Even with great sacrifice, we have paid every penny of our debt service.”

Those few investors who bothered to show up had few expectations for the meeting, which from the start was clouded in confusion.

Maduro invited investors to Caracas a little more than a week ago while announcing his goal of renegotiating a foreign debt that he said has become impossible to repay because of a U.S.-led financial “blockade” of the socialist-run country.

As Venezuela spent heavily on social programs under the late President Hugo Chavez, a time when global oil prices soared, its debt skyrocketed to over $120 billion, about half of which is in the form of dollar-denominated bonds. The drop in crude prices has ravaged the country that sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, leading to widespread shortages amid triple-digit inflation.

Strained relations between Venezuela and the United States are compounding the situation.

The Trump administration has sanctioned a growing list of Venezuelan officials, including the government’s top two debt negotiators, Economy Minister Simon Zerpa and El Aissami. The vice president is accused of being a major drug trafficker.

Washington has also barred U.S. companies from lending new money to Venezuela because of human rights abuses committed during months of anti-government protests and Maduro’s efforts to squash the opposition.

But in a sign the Trump administration might be willing to soften its stance, the Treasury Department said last week that it would consider allowing Americans to deal in new debt if any restructuring plan was backed by Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress, whose authority has been steadfastly ignored by Maduro’s government.

Russ Dallen, managing partner of Caracas Capital Markets, said several U.S. investors he represents told him they wouldn’t bother attending. One said he couldn’t get a visa on such short notice and another reported planning to send an intern, citing the lack of information.

“You’d think they’d put it on the table and let you study it if there was some kind of proposal,” Dallen said. “There’s nothing. Just crickets.”

Also Monday, at an informal meeting to discuss Venezuela at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called Venezuela “an increasingly violent narco-state” that threatens the world.

Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador, Rafael Ramirez, responded by denouncing the session.

“This is a hostile act from the United States and an interference that violates the sovereignty principles of a country that is a member of the United Nations,” he told reporters.

In Brussels earlier in the day, the European Union banned arms sales to Venezuela and set up a system to slap asset freezes and travel restrictions on Venezuelan officials as it seeks to ramp up pressure on Maduro. The weapons ban would stop sales of military equipment that could be used for repression or surveillance of Venezuelans.
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The federal government began its new budget year with an October deficit of $63.2 billion, up sharply from a year ago.

The Treasury Department reported Monday that the October deficit was 37.9 percent higher than the $45.8 billion deficit recorded in October 2016.

Both government receipts and spending were up for the month, with receipts climbing 14.3 percent to $235.3 billion, a record for the month of October. The larger spending figure was up a sizable 11.6 percent to $298.6 billion.

The deficit for the 2017 budget year, which ended on Sept. 30, totaled $666 billion, up 13.7 percent from a 2016 deficit of $586 billion.

Many forecasters believe the deficit will rise higher in the current budget year, reflecting the impact of proposed tax cuts Congress is considering and hurricane relief.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June that the deficit for the current budget year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, would fall to $563 billion. However, that estimate did not include money for a tax cut being pushed by the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers. It also did not include increased spending to deal with three devastating hurricanes that have hit the U.S. mainland and territories.

Taking those developments into account, economists at JPMorgan Chase estimate that the deficit in the current budget year could climb to $675 billion, with the deficit in 2019 rising even higher to $909 billion.

Lawmakers passed a budget resolution that would provide for $1.5 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade to reflect the lost revenue from the pending tax cuts. The Trump administration contends the tax cuts will end up generating increased economic activity and will not be that expensive.

For October, the 11.2 percent rise in spending reflected an increase of $4 billion in spending by the Department of Homeland Security, with outlays rising from $4 billion in October 2016 to $8 billion last month, a jump that was attributed to higher spending for hurricane relief.

The 14.3 percent increase in revenues included a $12 billion increase in individual taxes, including payroll taxes for Social Security, compared to October 2016.

The government has run deficits in October for each of the past 64 years.
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President Donald Trump is wrapping up 12-day, five-nation tour of Asia dominated by talks on the North Korea nuclear threat and bolstering trade.

After talks in Manila on Monday with the prime ministers of Australia and Japan, Trump promised to make a “major statement” on North Korea and trade when he returns to Washington this week. But he offered no details.

Trump’s meeting with Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull and Japan’s Shinzo Abe underscored the growing relationship between the three nations in the face of regional security issues. The top concerns include North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and countering China’s increasingly assertive maritime territorial claims.

“The key for us is to ensure very close trilateral cooperation so as to bring peace and stability on the ground,” said the Japanese leader, who has been displaying a united front against North Korea with Trump.

“We’ve got the same values and the same focus on ensuring that the North Korean regime comes to its senses and stops its reckless provocation and threats of conflict in our region,” Turnbull said. “Peace and stability have underpinned the prosperity of billions of people over many decades, and we’re going to work together to ensure we maintain it.”

Show of military force

A massive naval drill involving three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups was underway in western Pacific waters as a show of force.

The U.S. naval vessels and aircraft were joined by elements of the South Korean navy and Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.

The three leaders met on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit. Trump said “big progress” had been made on trade but he did not offer further details.

​Meeting with Duterte

Earlier Monday, the U.S. leader met with Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte, who hosted the ASEAN summit. Trump said the two have “a great relationship” and described their talks as “very successful.”

A joint statement released by the U.S. and Philippines said the two leaders condemned Pyongyang’s “unlawful nuclear weapons and missile development” and urged all nations, including those in the region, “to voice their opposition to these threatening programs and to take steps to downgrade their diplomatic and economic engagement with North Korea.

During a joint appearance, reporters tried to query whether Trump had raised the issue of human rights with Duterte. Duterte, facing strong criticism from human rights groups internationally, replied, “Whoa, whoa. This not a press statement. This is the bilateral meeting.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said of the meeting between Trump and Duterte:  “The conversation focused on ISIS, illegal drugs, and trade. Human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs.”  

Duterte’s spokesman denied that.

“No, that issue was not raised,” Harry Roque said replying to a reporter’s question. “My understanding is he explained at length the Philippine policy on the war against drugs. And from the body language of the U.S. president, he seemed to be in agreement and he made an assurance that President Duterte has a friend in President Trump and he’s been an ally since he was elected into office.”

Sidestepping controversy

Earlier, as regional leaders gathered at a colorful ceremony to open the summit in Manila, Duterte sidestepped the controversy over his war on illegal drugs and its thousands of extrajudicial killings.

In opening remarks before the 17 other leaders at the summit’s plenary session, he called illegal drugs a “menace” that threaten “the very fabric of our society,” without mentioning methods of the response.

“I apologize for setting the tone of my statement in such a manner,” said Duterte. “But I only want to emphasize that our meetings for the next two days present an excellent opportunity for us to engage in meaningful discussions on matters of regional and international importance.”

The communique resulting from the talks is expected to announce that ASEAN will begin official negotiations for a code of conduct for the South China Sea, where several nations have conflicting territorial claims.

A number of countries have concerns about China’s increased militarization of disputed islands it controls.  

Anti-Trump protests

For a second day Monday several thousand militant protesters marched in Manila, clashing with riot police who responded with truncheons, water cannons and sonic alarms to keep the demonstration out of sight of the delegates at the ASEAN Summit, which is surrounded by a security cordon.  

Protesters burned an effigy of Trump on Monday. Some protesters pushed the police, organizer Renato Reyes told VOA News, who said “scores” of protestors had been injured and some had to be treated at an on-site clinic. The protesters shouted for Trump to leave and accused the United States, a former colonizer of the Philippines, of looking for overseas wars.

Local media reported 10 people were injured, including six police officers.

Trump has praised his hosts during the Asia tour, which included stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

 “It was red carpet like nobody, I think, has probably ever seen,” Trump told reporters.

Ralph Jennings and Kenneth Schwartz contributed to this report.
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The next World Economic Forum of world leaders and CEOs in Davos will be chaired by women including International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and IBM’s chief executive Ginni Rometty.

The seven co-chairs for the four-day event in January were announced in the face of criticism that the conference has in the past lacked female representation.

“Co-chairs… were chosen to reflect global stakeholders,” said a spokeswoman for WEF, adding the co-chairs were all leaders in their fields.

The co-chairs shape the program and lead discussions and panels. The theme of the 48th conference is to “explore the root causes of, and pragmatic solutions for, the manifold political, economic and social fractures facing global society,” WEF said.

WEF, in an annual report this month, found it will take another 217 years before women earn as much as men and have equal representation in the workplace, revealing an economic gap of 58 percent.

It is the second straight year the Swiss non-profit has recorded worsening economic inequality.

A typical representative of the more than 2,500 titans of industry and influence that each January descend upon the Alps has received the unofficial moniker of “Davos Man” — a sign of the further shift in representation and thinking still necessary to balance uneven gender dynamics.

Other co-chairs are Isabelle Kocher, head of French energy conglomerate Engie; Italian physicist and director general of the CERN particle physics research centre Fabiola

Gianotti; founder of the rural cooperative Mann Deshi Bank for women, Chetna Sinha; and International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

Next year’s event will take place January 23-26, 2018.

 
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The European Union has approved economic sanctions, including an arms embargo on Venezuela.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels announced the measures on Monday in response to regional elections last month, which they say worsened the country’s crisis.

The weapons ban is intended to prevent the government of President Nicolas Maduro from purchasing military equipment that could be used for repression or surveillance.

The sanctions also include setting up a system for asset freezes and travel restriction on some past and present Venezuelan officials close to Maduro.

Spain has long pushed for sanctions on those close to Maduro, but the EU has been divided over whom to target.

In Monday’s statement, ministers said they would focus on security forces, government ministers and institutions accused of human rights violations, and the disrespect of democratic principles or the rule of law.

Last Thursday, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on 10 current and former Venezuelan officials because of corruption and abuse of power allegations related to Maduro’s crackdown on the opposition.

The EU also stressed that it would not recognize Venezuela’s pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly, whose 545 members took office in August and sidelined the opposition-led National Assembly. The EU said its creation has only served to “further erode democratic and independent institutions.”
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Venezuela’s foreign debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Monday at the government’s “White Palace” in downtown Caracas, the finance minister said on Saturday.

“Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting,” Simon Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA but is on a U.S. sanctions list for alleged corruption, said in a Tweet.

Foreign investor sources had said Zerpa and committee head Tareck El Aissami, who is Venezuela’s vice president but also on a U.S. blacklist for alleged drug traffickers, would probably sit out the meeting to allay any fears about meeting them.

But Saturday’s exhortation by Zerpa, and the location of the meeting right opposite the Miraflores presidential palace, appear to indicate the meeting will not be a low-profile affair.

Socialist leader Nicolas Maduro’s move a week ago to summon bondholders for talks about “restructuring” and “refinancing” some $60 billion in bonds has spooked markets worried Venezuela is heading for a default amid U.S. financial sanctions.

President Donald Trump’s measures against the Maduro administration, which it accuses of being a “dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela’s 30 million people through corruption and incompetence, effectively bar U.S. banks from rolling over the country’s debt into new bonds.

Venezuela did, however, appear to be honoring its most recent debt payment: a $1.2 billion payment due on a bond from state oil company PDVSA. Two investors told Reuters they had finally received payment, albeit delayed.

It is unclear how widespread investor participation in Monday’s meeting in Caracas will be. U.S.-based creditors are not prohibited from attending the meeting, but are barred from dealings with officials like Zerpa and El Aissami.
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Emirates Airlines agreed to buy 40 Boeing 787-10s in a deal worth more than $15 billion.

The purchase was announced Sunday at the Dubai Air Show by the largest airline in the Middle East.

Deliveries of the wide-body, twin-engine planes are set to begin in 2022.

Boeing’s website says the aircraft typically carries 330 passengers with a range of 11,900 kilometers.  

The manufacturer says the 787 is 25 percent more fuel-efficient than the aircraft it replaces.

Also, Azerbaijan Airlines announced a $1.9 billion deal for more 787s, five to carry passengers and two more to haul freight.
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West Virginia could produce profitable niche crops grown on reclaimed mine sites.

At least that’s what Nathan Hall, president of Reclaim Appalachia envisions.

Hall spoke about uses for reclaimed sites at the West Virginia Good Jobs Conference last Tuesday at Tamarack. The goal of the conference is to bring together entrepreneurs, funders, local community leaders and government agencies to trade ideas, provide mentorship and support entrepreneurs in southern West Virginia.

Reclaim’s first operational site is next to the Buck Harless Wood Products Industrial Park in Holden, a property owned by the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority.

Former miners

Reclaim and Refresh Appalachia have partnered to develop an active commercial agroforestry site, which is on about 50 acres of land that was mined and reclaimed in the late 1990s, managing crops including blackberries, hazelnuts, lavender and pawpaws. The site also has animals including chickens, hogs, goats and honeybees, which are managed with “rotational grazing techniques.”

Hall said he first started work on the Mingo County site early last year. The business has five full time crew members and one crew chief. Of those six employees, four are former coal miners.

According to Reclaim’s website, the organization intends to replicate the model on more mined properties and on a larger scale.

“With any post surface mine landscape, this model works well,” Hall said. “It’s especially suited to areas where it’s not feasible to turn into a big shopping center or a golf course.”

Long-term approach

Hall said the model is designed to be long term and said sites like these may not see profit until a few years down the road.

“This approach is never profitable in year one or even year two,” he said. “It’s more of a three-five year horizon to get into the black. A lot of agricultural investments like this are longer term.

“With animals, you have to establish a breeding stock. It takes some time before you’re able to send animals to slaughter,” Hall said. “And with perennial plants, it takes a year of establishment to get fruit, sometimes three to four years. We are looking at this as a longer-term investment but this is a pretty common way to invest in projects you see on the West Coast and the Northeast. A lot of investors know this is not a quick turnaround.”

However, down the road, Hall said he envisions West Virginia as being primary producers of niche produce on the East Coast.

“If we produce enough at a low cost and upgrade to high value products, move it six to nine hours away, there is a huge amount of ways to use these lands in ways that we’ve barely started to scratch the surface,” he said.

Crops, animals for rocky soil

Hall mentioned the possibility of products including lavender or grapes — plants that can thrive in the rocky soil.

“You could even have things like goat meat, which is something you don’t think about as something to eat in this area,” Hall said. “There are huge markets for it, maybe not here but the conditions are great for these sites.”

Hall spoke about some of the struggles with using these sites including the rocky terrain itself.

“You think about nice farmland where there is this loose, fluffy, brown soil you can almost scoop your hand into,” he said. “This soil, you can’t get a shovel to go more than 2 inches. The only thing that can survive is something with a shallow breeding system.”

Controlling invasive species

Another issue is invasive species of plants that were planted for reclamation. However, Hall said animals including goats and hogs can eat the shrubby plants while also adding nutrients to the soil.

“I’m a fan of high-intensity rotational grazing,” he said. “You have people out there tending fences and maintaining the animals and the site regularly. It has a more diversified income. And there is a benefit to the land through manure and reducing unwanted vegetation. You can eventually replant to better quality pastures if you do rotational.”

He said stacking systems including orchards and animals have been efficient in maintaining the land along with adding a larger labor force.

“You have the animals in between the orchard growth keeping the areas maintained,” he said. “It’s benefiting the roots and the trees. You’re also able to sell the meat and eggs while harvesting fruit and berries.”

Not the first attempt

Hall isn’t the first or the only person to grow crops on reclaimed mine sites. Hall mentioned one in particular back in the 1990s in Kentucky where there was a hog farm on a former mine site.

“There are a lot of activity in these spaces,” he said. “We are more focused on stacking systems and having this multifaceted approach. Other folks want one piece. It’s an interesting time to be involved. We can learn from each other and grow a new sector of the economy.”
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Ranchers in the Midwestern U.S. state of Nebraska are raising beef for tables in China, reopening trade suspended more than a decade ago during concerns over mad cow disease. From Nebraska, VOA reporter Abby Sun tells us how U.S. beef producers are changing to meet Chinese food-safety requirements.
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Luber Faneitte has lung cancer but there’s no medicine to treat it. She cannot make ends meet. Crime is rampant in her neighborhood.

And she fears that if Venezuela defaults on its $150 billion debt, which is considered likely, things will get worse.

Faneitte, 56, lives on the 18th story of a decrepit building in downtown Caracas. In her fridge there is only water. Meat is a luxury of the past because of inflation that the International Monetary Fund projects will hit 2,300 percent in 2018.

“We get by on grain, and that is just when we can get it. We make a kilo last two or three days,” Faneitte told AFP.

She is on disability from her job as a civil servant and survives on a pittance, equivalent to $8.70 per month.

She depends on food the government sells once a month at subsidized prices to offset the shortages of just about everything.

Last time she brought home two kilos (4.4 pounds) of beans, a kilo of rice, two liters (quarts) of cooking oil, a kilo of powdered milk and four kilos of flour.

But it went fast. Faneitte lives with a daughter and four grandkids. They all depend on her income.

Cendas, an NGO that monitors the cost of living in this oil-rich but now destitute nation, says that in September it took six times the minimum wage to provide for the average family.

Although she has nothing to cook, Faneitte leaves the gas stove running to save on matches.

The faucet drips, day and night. But she has no money to fix it, and water service — like that from other utilities — is practically given away by the government.

‘Hungrier’ and needier

Politically, the idea of Venezuela declaring default is seen as offering a possible short-term boost for widely unpopular President Nicolas Maduro, who has his eye on elections next year.

As oil prices are down — petroleum accounts for 96 percent of the country’s hard-currency revenue — Venezuela has cut down on imports to save money for debt service, worsening the seemingly endless shortages of basics, even such items as soap and toilet paper.

If Maduro declares default, it would free up money to buy imports, do election campaigning and thereby ease the risk of street protests.

But analysts say the long-term impact of defaulting would be disastrous. Venezuela would be mired in lawsuits by creditors and see its assets frozen abroad, said Alejandro Grisanti of the consultancy Ecoanalitica.

Maduro has said he wants to refinance and restructure Venezuela’s debt. But the idea of default is seen as looming.

“I don’t know if that is what Venezuela needs to open its eyes,” said Faneitte. “What I do know is that we are going to go hungrier and be more in need.”

She does not know how things got so bad but she certainly is feeling the effects.

Agonizing choice

She gave up chemotherapy in January because of the acute shortage of medicine to treat her cancer.

She made that tough decision after struggling for years over whether to buy food or treat her disease.

Doctors say she needs chemo. But instead she prepares a homemade concoction of liqueur, honey and aloe vera.

“I leave it outside for two days, then I take a spoonful in the morning and another at night. I think I breathe much better when I take it,” she said.

Faneitte has been a smoker since age 15. She struggles to breathe when she talks or walks. She has had three heart attacks.

She recalls sarcastically how the late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez once complained that poor people in his country were reduced to eating dog food.

“I want to eat that again,” said Faneitte.

Crime is yet another woe. There is no internet in her neighborhood because thieves have stolen all the cables.

Her apartment building is pocked with bullet holes from shootouts among rival gangs. That violence forced her to move the beds in her apartment away from the windows.

“I am resigned,” she said, “to whatever God wants.”
…

Afghanistan has received an inaugural consignment of wheat from India through an Iranian port, opening a new trade and transit route for the landlocked nation that bypasses neighboring Pakistan.

The strategic sea route, officials say, will help improve trade and transit connectivity between Kabul and New Delhi.

It will also potentially give India access to Central Asian markets through Afghanistan, because rival Pakistan does not allow Indian goods to be transported through its territory .

The shipment of almost 15,000 tons of wheat dispatched from India’s western port of Kandla on October 29 reached the Iranian port of Chabahar on November 1. It was then loaded on trucks and brought by road to the Afghan province of Nimroz, which borders Iran.  

Speaking at a special ceremony to receive the historic consignment Saturday in the border town of Zaranj, India’s ambassador to Kabul, Manpreet Vohra, said the shipment has demonstrated the viability of the new route. He added that India, Afghanistan and Iran agreed to operationalize the Chabahar port only a year-and-a-half ago.

“The ease and the speed with which this project is already working is evident from the fact that as we are receiving the first trucks of wheat here in Zaranj, the second ship from Kandla has already docked in Chabahar,” Vohra announced.

He said there will be seven shipments between now and February and a total of 110,000 tons of wheat will come to Afghanistan through Chabahar. Vohra added the shipments are part of a promised 1.1 million tons of wheat as India’s “gift” to Afghanistan out of which 700,000 has already been sent to the country.  

India is investing $500 million in Chabahar port to build new terminals, cargo berths and connecting roads, as well as rail lines.

The Indian shipment arrived in Afghanistan days after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a visit to New Delhi, allayed concerns the Trump administration’s tough stand on Iran could pose a fresh stumbling block to India’s plans to develop the strategic Iranian port as a regional transit hub.

The Indian ambassador also took a swipe at Pakistan, though he did not name the rival country.

“The logic of finding easy connectivity, assured connectivity for Afghanistan is also because you have not had the benefit despite being a landlocked country of having easy access to international markets. We all know that a particular neighbor of yours to the east has often placed restrictions on your transit rights,” Vohra noted.

The shortest and most cost effective land routes between India and Afghanistan lie through Pakistan.

But due to long-running bilateral territorial disputes between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and India are not allowed to do two-way trade through Pakistani territory. Kabul, however, is allowed to send only a limited amount of perishable goods through Pakistani territory to India.

“We are confident that with the cooperation, particularly of the government of Iran, this route now from Chabahar to Afghanistan will not see any arbitrary closure of gates, any unilateral decisions to stop your imports and exports, and this will provide you guaranteed access to the sea,” vowed Vohra.

Pakistan also allows Afghanistan to use its southern port of Karachi for transit and trade activities. However, Afghan officials and traders are increasingly complaining that authorities in Pakistan routinely indulge in unannounced trade restrictions and frequent closure of border crossings, which has undermined trade activities.

“With the opening of Chabahar Port, Afghanistan will no longer be dependent on Karachi Port,” provincial governor Mohammad Samiullah said while addressing the gathering. The economic activity, he said, will create job opportunities and bring billions of dollars in revenue to Afghanistan, Iran and India.

Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan have also plunged to new lows in recent years over mutual allegations of sponsoring terrorism against each other’s soils.

In its bid to enhance economic connectivity with Afghanistan, India also opened an air freight corridor in June this year to provide greater access for Afghan goods to the Indian market.

Pakistani officials, however, have dismissed suggestions the direct trade connectivity between India and Afghanistan is a matter of concern for Islamabad.

“It is our consistent position that Afghanistan as a landlocked country has a right of transit access through any neighboring country according to its needs,” said Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal.

Pakistan and Afghanistan share a nearly 2,600 kilometer largely porous border. However, Islamabad has lately begun construction of a fence and tightened monitoring of movements at regular border crossings between the two countries, saying terrorist attacks in Pakistan are being plotted on the Afghan side of the border.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, Saturday evening for a state banquet, followed by a day of meetings with Vietnamese leaders.

He has been in Danang, where he attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, one of several such events during his five-country Asian tour.

At the close of the meeting Saturday, the 21 member nations issued a statement expressing support for free trade and closer regional ties, without any mention of Trump’s “America First” doctrine.

WATCH: Leaders of US and China Offer Asia Business Leaders Divergent Paths

​Two views on trade

On Friday, Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, offered starkly contrasting views of the direction for trade in Asia in separate speeches to regional business leaders

Trump told the APEC CEO Summit that he is willing to make bilateral trade agreements with any country in the Indo-Pacific region, but he firmly rejected multinational deals, such as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was abandoned in the first days of his administration.

“I will make bilateral trade agreements with any Indo-Pacific nation that wants to be our partner and that will abide by the principles of fair and reciprocal trade,” Trump said. “What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.”

​The U.S. president said that in the past when his country “lowered market barriers, other countries didn’t open their markets to us.”

From now on, however, Trump warned the United States will, “expect that our partners will faithfully follow the rules. We expect that markets will be open to an equal degree on both sides and that private investment, not government planners, will direct investment.”

But making that happen is something that is easier said than done.

​Not playing by the rules

China has already shown that it has no intention of playing by the rules, said Fraser Howie, co-author of the book Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.

“China has been in WTO terms simply much sharper and smarter than the Americans,” Howie said. “While the Americans went in with good faith thinking the Chinese would change and whatever, the Chinese never had any intention of changing.”

Howie added that trade and access issues are difficult and sophisticated, and so far Trump has a poor track record when it comes to follow through — be it his travel ban, the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, health care reform or tax policy.

“Yes you’re going to get tough on them, but how do get tough without penalizing them,” Howie said, adding, “how can China be penalized when Xi Jinping is your best mate? It doesn’t make any sense.”

WATCH: Despite Tough US Talk on Trade, Experts See Greater Trade Opportunities

President Xi, whose country’s rise has been driven greatly by large-scale government planning, immediately followed Trump on the stage in Danang.

Xi embraced the multilateral concept, in particular calling for support for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), which would harmonize regional and bilateral economic pacts.

China was left out of the TPP, which was led by the United States and Japan, and was meant in great part as a bulwark against China’s strategic ambitions.

Xi also termed globalization an irreversible trend, but said the world must work to make it more balanced and inclusive.

The speeches came just hours after Trump left China where he and Xi met several times on Wednesday and Thursday.
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Chinese consumers are spending billions of dollars shopping online for anything from diapers to diamonds on “Singles Day,” a day of promotions that has grown into the world’s biggest e-commerce event.

China’s biggest e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group, said sales by retailers on its platforms had topped $19 billion by midafternoon Saturday in a count that started at midnight.

Its main rival, online retailer JD.com, which tracks sales starting from Nov. 1 through to the actual day, had topped $16.7 billion.

Starting at midnight, diamonds, Chilean frozen salmon, tires, diapers, beer, shoes, handbags, and appliances were shipped out from JD.com’s distribution centers on trucks bound for deliveries across China.

Singles Day was begun by Chinese college students in the 1990s as a version of Valentine’s Day for people without romantic partners.
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Despite President Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, international business leaders say they are excited by the prospects of greater cooperation among the 21 member countries of APEC. Many believe the annual economic leaders forum, established nearly three decades ago, will become more influential in the future and lead to greater and more balanced trade between East and West. Mil Arcega has more.
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Kurdish refugee Hakki Akdeniz left Turkey in 1999 and came to New York City. At times he was homeless and often wondered where his next meal would come from. But as Saleh Damiger reports, he has more than turned his life around.
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From Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to Formula One racing champion Lewis Hamilton — the leak of more than 14 million documents from firms involved in offshore finance, known as the Paradise Papers, has engulfed some of the world’s most famous names.

The latest revelations show U2 frontman Bono used a company based in low-tax Malta to invest in a shopping mall in Lithuania. The Irish band, well known for its campaigning against poverty, has faced past criticism for its tax arrangements. There’s no suggestion that Bono acted illegally.

But campaigners against poverty say sheltering profits in secretive tax havens is depriving the public.

“This is money that’s lost to healthcare, to education, vital public services,” says Murray Worthy of Global Witness.

Europe wants to blacklist jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate on tax transparency. After a meeting of finance ministers this week, French representative Bruno Le Maire said the threat must be credible.

“If states do not stick to their commitments we have to put sanctions on those states,” he said Thursday.

Many of the world’s wealthy shelter their money in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, which operate autonomously and have their own rules on tax and company law. British Prime Minister Theresa May said the government is demanding more openness. “We want people to pay the tax that is due,” she told business leaders this week.

Campaigners question that commitment, especially as economic uncertainty grows after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

“Since the Brexit vote here in the United Kingdom, the government has been far less assertive with British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies,” said Duncan Hames of Transparency International.

The group has just released the details of an investigation into how lax rules and enforcement on company ownership in Britain are exploited to launder illicit wealth. Hames says just six people are employed to police the ownership of the country’s 4 million registered companies.

“We looked at just over 50 known corruption and money-laundering schemes. And we found over 750 U.K. companies at the very heart of those schemes, which themselves amounted to some $80 billion.”

Forty-four of the companies identified in the investigation were officially registered at one mailbox — number 11, at 43 Bedford Street in central London.

The property is owned by a franchise of the firm Mail Boxes Etc. No allegations of corruption or money laundering are made against the owners — who told VOA they carry out due diligence and follow all U.K. laws. But mailbox forwarding services are a major weakness in the system, argues Hames.

“That has resulted in what we call ‘company factories’ — single locations where there are thousands upon thousands of companies registered. Not locations where there is any meaningful head office activity taking place. Half of the companies we found involved in these corruption and money-laundering schemes were registered at just eight addresses,” said Hames.

An estimated $100 billion of illicit wealth passes through London every year. Campaigners say British laws on company ownership urgently need tightening up.

 
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Maine’s wild blueberry crop fell sharply this summer to land below 100 million pounds (45.3 million kilograms) for the first time in four years, according to a trade group that promotes the industry.

Preliminary industry figures show the crop coming in at about 65 million pounds (29.5 million kilograms), Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine Executive Director Nancy McBrady said. It’s more than enough for the state to remain far and away the wild blueberry capital of the country, but a sharp drop from recent years when the size of the crop soared and the price to farmers dwindled.

The crop is down because of factors including bad growing conditions, such as a lack of rain, and lack of farming effort, McBrady said. Surplus supplies of blueberries from recent years and a resultant drop in prices to farmers have motivated some growers to scale back.

 “It’s going to be smaller,” she said. “Having a small supply, hopefully we can start to see more stable prices in the future.”

Last year, the crop grew a little less than one percent to almost 102 million pounds (46 million kilograms), while prices hit a 10-year low of 27 cents per pound to farmers. The drop in farm prices hasn’t significantly trickled down to consumers, in part because Maine isn’t the only source of the fruit. Canada is another major supplier of wild blueberries in the U.S.

Maine produces about a tenth of the blueberries in North America, according to the University of Maine. The state is best known for wild blueberries, which are smaller than cultivated blueberries and are almost always sold frozen.

Maine’s industry has been looking for new buyers to help drive up demand for the blueberries and improve prices. It recently found one such new buyer when Oakhurst Dairy, a major player in New England food that is based in Portland, announced it plans to begin issuing wild blueberry milk in the spring.

The company chose to make milk flavored with blueberries after the concept won a social media contest with consumers, said Jim Lesser, vice president of marketing for Oakhurst.

“This has more to do with what consumers want. It just happens to be good for Maine’s blueberry industry,” he said.

 
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The large drop in global cocoa prices has hurt African farmers, leading some to abandon their plantations. In Cameroon, however, cocoa producers are mapping out ways to encourage more local processing.

At Nkog-Ekogo in the center region of Cameroon, a cocoa post-harvest processing and treatment center is inaugurated. Farmer Petronella Ndukong said that will help farmers dry and conserve their produce while waiting for prices to increase.

“[It] is going to be a wonderful thing for the producers,” Ndukong said. “They will start learning how to transform it.”

The world’s fifth-largest cocoa producer, Cameroon’s average cocoa production was 230,000 tons in 2015. That increased to 260,000 tons last year when demand rose in the world market.

The International Cocoa and Coffee Organization reports that in 2015 there was a boom with growing demand, particularly in the new markets of China and India. This pushed farmers to produce a surplus of 400,000 tons of cocoa against the four-million-ton annual supply. In 2016 and 2017, there has been another surplus of about 400,000 tons.

Yet, local processing in Africa is only 25 percent of production, so the continent relies on developed countries for processing.

Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, Cameroon’s trade minister, said this year has been the worst in the last five as the farm gate price per kilogram officially dropped to $1, from $3 three years ago. That is pushing farmers to abandon their farms.

Atangana said the main challenge is that financial and social pressure is forcing some farmers to harvest cocoa that is not ready, and drying it under unhealthy conditions. The result, he said, is that prices will continue to be drastically reduced because the cocoa is of very poor quality.

And there are indications production will plummet.

Ambe Funui, president of a cocoa producers association in the Lekie, center region of Cameroon, said environmental factors are harming production.

“I pray that the production should not reduce this year because we have noticed that there is very timid bearing of cocoa, there is late bearing and then it seems as if there is persistent black spots despite the fact that farmers are applying the insecticides and fungicides,” Funui said.

During the Yaounde meeting to encourage African countries to process cocoa, Daniel Mercier of the French Confederations of Chocolate Makers and Confectioners said it will be dangerous for Africa’s economy if cocoa production is abandoned because of low prices. He advises that production should not be dropped and the quality of the crop should be controlled by halting early harvests. 

It is a shame, he said, that while developed countries process cocoa and make much profit from its sale, producing countries remain very poor. The best thing would be for cocoa-producing countries to process their cocoa to highly consumable food items like chocolate, he added.

Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa comes from west and central Africa. Producers have suggested that the issue of cocoa price decline should be included in the agenda of the Africa-EU summit to be held later this month in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which, together with Ghana, contributes 60 percent of the cocoa sold in the world.
…

President Donald Trump’s two-day stop in China saw the signing of $250 billion in deals between the world’s two biggest economies and the two countries aligning themselves closer in resolute opposition to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

But analysts say little new ground was broken on trade or North Korea, an issue that will continue to top President Trump’s agenda as he travels to Vietnam and attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

And the true test of the feel-good foundation forged during the meetings, analysts said, is likely to come in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Big deal?

By design, the $250 billion sum of the deals was meant to provide a sharp contrast to the $300-500 billion deficit that exists between the United States and China, something Trump called “horrible” before departing for his 12-day trip to Asia.

Chinese state media have kicked into overdrive hailing the visit as a huge success. Media reports have highlighted the tone of the meetings, repeatedly noting the total amount of the deals.

An editorial in the official China Daily Friday said, “Although the differences that had been pestering bilateral ties have not instantly disappeared, the most important takeaway from their talks in Beijing has been the constructive approach to these issue the two leaders demonstrated.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called the meeting “historic.”

“We will definitely write a new chapter in the U.S.-Chinese relations. We will definitely make a new contribution to realize a beautiful future for U.S.-Chinese relations,” Xi said at a banquet Thursday evening.

Whether the “historic” nature of the meetings will hold, however, remains in question.

Liao Qun, chief economist at China CITIC Bank International, said that the size of the deal shows trade takes priority above all else.

“Though the U.S. and China do not see eye to eye, both still compete on many geo-political issues, trade still remains at the top of their agenda. With closer trade relations, the U.S.-China relation will still make headway,” Liao said.

​No guarantees

But not all agree with that assessment.

Some analysts said that despite Trump’s softer approach and “incredibly warm” feeling he expressed about his Chinese counterpart, the president is likely to be back to criticizing China again in a few months.

“The president likes deals, and he likes big numbers, but we’re not going to change something he doesn’t like, which is the big China trade deficit, without changing Chinese practices,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “China has to have a different approach to trade in the world than it does.”

Scissors said that more than the deficit, it is what is behind the numbers, such as the fact that Chinese state-owned enterprises never go out of business.

“Which means American goods and services can’t ever win in the China market,” he said.

WATCH: Trump Touts Excellent Progress in Beijing During Talks with Xi

Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy said we may have a case of misaligned assessments of how the visit has played out.

The Chinese leadership may think that they have done a lot to give President Trump face, with all of the pomp and business deals, and that that has put the relationship on solid footing, he said.

“But President Trump may go home to a domestic political environment where people are disappointed he hasn’t achieved more progress on the structural trade and economics issues (market access, more fair and reciprocal treatment for U.S. businesses, intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer, and Chinese unfair industrial policies) and North Korea,” Haenle said. “My concern is you may see a shift towards a much harder line coming from the U.S. administration. That will be a huge surprise to China and President Xi.”

​Pretty small

The huge deals reached could create jobs in America and provide a small boost to exports, but the meetings did little to advance market access.

“Open markets are better for both sides. It is also better for China to open up its market. But China is not interested in opening markets,” said Christopher Balding, associate professor of finance at Peking University’s HSBC Business.

In a briefing with reporters Thursday after the two leaders issued a joint statement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that “in the grand scheme of a $300- to $500-billion trade deficit, the things that have been achieved thus far are pretty small.”

“I mean, they’re not small if you’re a company, maybe, that has seen some relief. But in terms of really getting at some of the fundamental elements behind why this imbalance exists, there’s still a lot more work to do,” he said.

China has repeatedly pledged to do more to open its markets, and the Communist Party recently approved amendments to its charter that called for letting “the market play a decisive role in the economy. But progress has been slow and contradictory.

Earlier this year, China announced it would be allowing U.S. credit card companies to operate fully owned units in the country after years of stalling. However, several sources recently told Reuters that authorities are still pressing foreign credit card companies to form joint ventures with Chinese companies.

On Friday, China announced that it will raise the ownership limits in joint venture firms involved in securities, futures and fund markets. China’s Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said that ownership limits would be raised from 49 to 51 percent, allowing foreign companies to hold a majority stake.

No time frame for implementing the measures was given, but according to Reuters Zhu did say that all restrictions on equity holdings for the sectors would be removed in three years.

Analysts note that while it is still hard to say what else was discussed behind closed doors, on trade and North Korea, the ball is clearly in China’s court.

“Trump has put the onus on President Xi to solve the North Korea problem. This is why he said that if Xi wants something to happen, it will happen,” Balding said.

VOA’s Joyce Huang and Saibal Dasgupta contributed to this report.
…

Donald Trump warned that the stock market was a “big, fat, ugly bubble” just weeks before he was elected. A year later, Wall Street remains on a milestone-shattering run that the president has been eager to tout and tweet about.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the broadest measure of the stock market, has notched 61 record highs and climbed about 21.3 percent in the year since Trump was elected.

That exceeds the S&P 500’s gain in the first-term election anniversaries of all but two presidents since World War II: George H.W. Bush (22.9 percent) and John F. Kennedy (27 percent), according to CFRA Research.

It also outpaces the market’s performance in the same postelection period of several other modern-era White House occupants, including Ronald Reagan (-3.3 percent), Bill Clinton (10.3 percent), George W. Bush (-22.1 percent) and Barack Obama (4.1 percent). But it trails the S&P 500’s gain in the first year after the second-term elections of Clinton (31.7 percent) and Obama (23.4 percent).

​Initially a sell-off in Asia

The billionaire’s surprise electoral victory initially set off a steep sell-off in Asian markets. But by the end of the day on Nov. 9, 2016, global markets had steadied and the S&P 500 index closed sharply higher. The market’s rally continued for several weeks, driving the major U.S. stock indexes to record highs. This year, stocks have gradually moved higher, clocking new milestones for the indexes along the way.

Since Trump’s election, investors have been betting that the White House and a GOP-controlled Congress will have a clear pathway to cut taxes, relax regulations and enact other business-friendly policies, despite legislative stumbles that have delayed the administration’s efforts.

Strong corporate profits, revenue

Yet, the biggest driver of the market’s gains has been strong corporate profits, Wall Street analysts say.

“The most important thing that’s happened is we’ve had very good earnings seasons,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. “Companies are making money. Earnings drive the market and earnings have been good.”

In recent weeks, more than 400 of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported their results for the July-through-September quarter, and they’ve been so much better than forecast that Wall Street has more than doubled its expectations for third-quarter earnings growth to 6.8 percent, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

What’s more encouraging to many investors is that more companies than usual are also reporting higher revenue than analysts had forecast.

Stock prices tend to track corporate profits over the long term, so the better-than-expected earnings growth helps to validate the stock market’s record-setting run, at least somewhat.

Betting on growth

Investors have also continued to bet big on economic growth in the U.S. and worldwide as economies in Europe and Asia have bounced back, Kinahan noted.

Since Trump’s election, technology companies have led the way with a 39 percent surge. Banks and industrial and basic materials companies have also soared. Only phone company stocks are down from a year ago.

During the first presidential debate between Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in September 2016, Trump cautioned that the stock market was in bubble and that even a small increase in interest rates would bring the market “crashing down.”

That’s not happened, even though the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates twice this year and is expected to do so again next month.

‘Sailing along’ another year

Eight years into the bull market, many analysts expect stocks to keep climbing, at least for the next year. The global economy is improving, corporate profits are rising and inflation remains low but not so low that it makes economists nervous.

On average, the S&P 500 has continued “sailing along” for another year after a president’s first-term election anniversary, before declining 10 percent or more, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.

He notes that the shortest time was 36 days following Kennedy’s first election anniversary, while the longest stretch was nearly four years after Clinton was elected.

“Should history repeat, and there is no guarantee it will, this bull (market) could continue to surprise investors with its resiliency,” Stovall said.
…

Former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is donating $50 million to help nations around the world shift from coal to combat pollution and climate change, expanding his funding outside the United States.

The project would start in Europe and expand into other countries later on, his charity, Bloomberg Philanthropies, said in a statement Thursday on the margins of U.N. climate negotiations among 200 nations in Bonn, Germany.

The European Climate Foundation, a non-governmental group, will be the leading partner in Europe, it said.

“Bloomberg’s announcement marks his first investment in efforts outside the U.S. to decrease reliance on coal and shift to renewable, cleaner energy sources,” Bloomberg’s charity said in a statement.

In the United States, Bloomberg has given $110 million to a Beyond Coal campaign to close mines since 2011.

“A growing number of European countries have made plans to go 100 percent coal-free, which sets a great example for the rest of the world — but coal still kills around 20,000 people in the European Union each year,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

Since 2011 nearly half of the U.S. coal-fired power plants, or nearly 260 plants, have closed.

The closures have continued this year despite President Donald Trump’s plan to pull out of the global Paris agreement for fighting climate change and instead promote jobs in the domestic fossil fuel industry.
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