YCLOAK

Businesses owned by U.S. President Donald Trump have filed requests for visas with the Department of Labor to hire dozens of temporary foreign workers.

The news of the requests comes during the White House’s “Made in America Week,” urging American companies to hire American workers, a central theme of Trump’s presidential campaign.

The president’s Mar-a-Lago Resort and his nearby golf club in southern Florida are seeking to bring in the workers under the H-2B visa program, which allows companies to hire temporary, non-agricultural workers when American workers can’t be found. The jobs would run during the clubs’ busy season between October and May.  

Mar-a-Lago is seeking to hire 70 cooks, servers and housekeepers, while the golf club is looking for six cooks.

The Department of Labor certifies companies to apply for the visas, which are issued by the Department of Homeland Security.  

Trump announced a one-time expansion of the H-2B visa program earlier this week, increasing the number of available visas from 66,000 to 81,000. 
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An international energy watchdog warns that the decline in global investment in the oil sector could lead to energy shortages when prices start to rebound. The International Energy Agency says energy investments have declined 20 percent in the past three years as oil profits fell. One analyst tells VOA that is a short-term recipe for long-term problems. Mil Arcega reports.
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The government of Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Thursday that it was firing its special counsel in a corruption probe of Brazilian builder Odebrecht, sparking accusations of interference.

Justice Minister Marisol Perez said she dismissed special attorney Katherine Ampuero for blocking Odebrecht’s sale of its irrigation company Olmos. Perez said the decision put thousands of jobs at risk and deprived the state of revenues it would have seized as payment for reparations under a new anti-graft law.

Ampuero argued that Odebrecht would have used the sale of Olmos to pay its creditors abroad instead of Peru, which the company denied.

“Trust in Ampuero was lost because she did not apply the law, and by not applying the law she created economic loss for the state,” Perez told reporters on Thursday.

The announcement put the Odebrecht graft probe in Peru under increased scrutiny and renewed tensions between Kuczynski’s year-old government and the opposition-controlled Congress, which has already pressured three of Kuczynski’s ministers to step down.

“The president should ask Perez to resign immediately,” Popular Force lawmaker Hector Becerril said in broadcast comments on local broadcaster RPP. “This is a government of lobbyists.”

Odebrecht has been offloading its assets as it faces at least $2.6 billion in fines and graft probes in several countries where it has admitted bribing officials. In Peru, the company has been negotiating a plea deal with the attorney general’s office in which Ampuero had taken part as the state’s representative.

Anti-corruption state attorney Julia Principe said she was fired for refusing to dismiss Ampuero and noted that Ampuero had asked the attorney general’s office in March to look into any links that Kuczynski might have had with Odebrecht.

“This situation is a clear interference by the executive branch,” Principe said in a news conference flanked by Ampuero.

Kuczynski’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kuczynski has denied knowing about or being involved in the $29 million in bribes that Odebrecht has said it paid to officials in Peru over a decade.

Last year Odebrecht said it agreed to sell Olmos to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP and Suez SA for an undisclosed sum.

The sale will remain blocked pending an appeals court’s decision on whether to allow it.
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India’s top builders have pledged to make at least a fifth of their new housing developments sustainable by 2022, as the country looks to tap sectors other than renewable energy to meet its ambitious climate goals.

The campaign is led by the Sustainable Housing Leadership Consortium (SHLC) comprising builders Godrej Properties, Mahindra Lifespaces, Shapoorji Pallonji, Tata Housing and VBHC Value Homes. It is backed by the Ministry of Housing.

Builders will use mainly local and recycled material, and design homes that conserve water and electricity and make best use of natural light and wind patterns, while also pursuing more energy-efficient methods of construction.

“The construction industry has one of the biggest carbon footprints, so it’s really important for us to take action to minimize the impact,” said Jainin Desai, head of design and sustainability at developer Mahindra Lifespaces.

“This initiative pushes us to incorporate sustainability right from the selection of the site to the design, the use of materials and in increasing awareness in the industry, as well as among our clients,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

India is the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

As a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, India is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by a third by 2030.

It is doing so with tougher emission norms, more electric vehicles and giant solar power plants to replace energy generated by coal.

The real-estate sector is responsible for nearly a quarter of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. Those emissions come mainly from energy-intensive processes in making construction materials such as steel, cement and bricks.

As India’s economy grows at a fast clip, demand for homes, offices, roads, airports and factories is also rising. The demand for homes is particularly acute: in urban areas alone, there is a shortage of about 20 million homes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made affordable housing a priority, with incentives such as subsidized loans to meet a 2022 target of “Housing for All.” This has led to a boom in construction across the country.

The effort by SHLC – an initiative of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation under the eco-cities program of the European Union – will add 110 million sq ft of green housing by 2020.

Green homes the norm?

While “green” homes were built at a premium earlier and therefore had a niche appeal, newer technologies and greater demand have narrowed the cost differential between them and traditional housing to “almost nothing” now, Desai said.

Developers and buyers are also able to tap financing more easily for sustainable projects, as banks and investors look beyond renewable energy. The SHLC campaign is backed by HDFC Bank and PNB Housing Finance.

“India has huge funding requirements in … sustainable housing, metro rail networks, urban waste management and infrastructure development, that can be met through green financing options,” said Sanjeev Jha, India head of Global Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

India, a relatively new player to green financing, has issued nearly $4.5 billion worth of green bonds so far, he said.

For homeowners, green homes will create savings of 198 million kWh per year in electricity consumption, and 108 billion liters in water savings, according to SHLC.

This will reduce India’s carbon footprint by approximately 0.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, it estimates.

“Our long-term goal is to make green homes 100 percent of the industry portfolio,” Desai said. “We see green homes becoming the default choice.”
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While Western drivers like the “new car smell” of a vehicle fresh off the production line, Chinese would rather their cars didn’t smell of anything — a cultural divide that’s testing carmakers seeking an edge to revive sales in the world’s biggest auto market.

At Ford Motor Co., for example, 18 smell assessors, dubbed “golden noses,” at its research plant outside the eastern city of Nanjing test the smell of each material that goes inside a Ford car to be sold in China and around Asia.

The China smell test isn’t unique, but illustrates the lengths automakers go to to attract buyers in markets where consumer attitudes vary widely.

Smell matters

“In North America, people want a new car smell and will even buy a ‘new car’ spray to make older cars feel new and fresh. In China it’s the opposite,” says Andy Pan, supervisor for material engineering at the Ford facility, which employs around 2,300 people.

The smell of a new car in China can have an outsized effect.

A J.D. Power report last year showed that unpleasant car smells were the top concern for Chinese drivers, ahead of engine issues, road noise or fuel consumption.

The smell assessors at Ford, whose China sales are down 7 percent this year, carry out 300 tests a year, a third more than their counterparts in Europe. They rate the odor of all materials used in a car from “not perceptible” to “extremely disturbing.”

Pungent materials, from carpets to seat covers and steering wheels, are noted as smelling of anything from “burnt tire” and “bad meat” to “moth balls” or “dirty socks”. Some are sent back to the supplier.

Seats for Ford cars in China are stored in perforated cloth bags to keep them ventilated before being installed, as opposed to plastic wrapping in the U.S. market where consumers are less concerned about chemical smells.

“The smell inside the car can often be pretty pungent,” said Tom Lin, a 24-year-old high-school teacher in Zhejiang province, who bought a local Roewe brand car last October. He said there was still a bit of an odor six months later.

“With the next car I buy, I’m going to take more care to check out any odd smells,” he said.

Looking for an edge

To be sure, smell is just one factor for automakers to get right in China, where picky buyers are always looking for fresh car models and Beijing is making a big drive toward new energy vehicles.

In a slower market — consultancy IHS forecasts vehicle sales will slip slightly this year — firms are looking for an extra edge to appeal to consumers, beyond price discounts, says IHS analyst James Chao.

Local rivals Geely Automobile and BYD Co. Ltd. tout their in-car air filters to protect drivers from China’s harmful air pollution, and BMW says it is adding larger touch screens and tweaking colors to appeal to Chinese buyers.

Concern about chemicals, pollution

Smell is key though, reflecting a wider concern in China about chemicals and pollution.

“When I lived in the United States I might look at the suspension or the engine,” said Don Yu, China general manager at CGT, which makes materials to cover car seats and dashboards for General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford.

“In China, though, people open the car and sit inside, if the smell isn’t good enough they think it will jeopardize their health.”

For Ford’s “golden noses” that means a strict routine.

Testers undergo a tough selection process, proving themselves on blind smell tests before being chosen.

“We have to have very healthy habits; we can’t smoke, we can’t drink,” says one of the team, 33-year-old Amy Han, adding she avoids spicy food and doesn’t wear nail polish, strong perfume or even a leather jacket to keep her smell sense sharp.
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Venezuela’s severe economic crisis will worsen if President Nicolas Maduro presses ahead with a controversial new congress that would further undermine investor confidence in the OPEC nation, the head of the country’s biggest business guild said.

Despite months of protests by the majority-backed opposition and widespread international condemnation, the ruling Socialist Party is holding a vote on July 30 to set up a legislative superbody known as a Constituent Assembly.

The assembly would have powers to rewrite the constitution and abolish the existing opposition-controlled legislature in what foes fear would enshrine a leftist dictatorship.

“What country in the world has a successful socialist model? None!” Carlos Larrazabal, 60, president of Fedecamaras told Reuters on Tuesday during its annual meeting in the sweltering western city of Maracaibo.

“In a constituent process, with the characteristics that are being proposed, there is no legal certainty and that does not attract investment but rather scares it away,” added the U.S-educated economist.

Fedecamaras has long been at odds with the government after

a former head briefly became interim president in a 2002 coup against late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Though officials have given few details on what the Constituent Assembly – which the opposition is boycotting – might do, investors fear its legal and economic ramifications.

Comments by a Socialist Party candidate that the assembly could rewrite parts of the constitution that allow joint ventures with foreign companies have spooked some in the country’s oil sector – though state energy company PDVSA later reassured partners that would not happen.

The political showdown comes amid a brutal economic crisis: inflation is in triple digits, the currency has fallen 99 percent against the dollar since Maduro was elected in 2013, and millions are struggling with food shortages.

A Reuters poll of economists on Wednesday forecast Venezuela would shrink 6 percent this year and another 3.0 percent in 2018.

“The forecasts are catastrophic. We have no positive expectations,” Maria Uzcategui, president of retailers’ guild Consecomercio, told Reuters at the Maracaibo conference.

‘Real Solutions’

Consecomercio estimates almost a million jobs in the private sector were lost in the last 18 months, and 1,150 businesses looted amid this year’s violent anti-Maduro protests.

Venezuela’s private sector wants to see an end to currency controls, enacted by Chavez in 2003 to curb capital flight, and price controls, which crimp production.

“Those would be the real solutions,” said Uzcategui.

Some 100 people have died in nearly four months of anti-Maduro unrest. On Sunday, Venezuela’s opposition capitalized on anger and held an unofficial vote in which they said 7.5 million participated and 98 percent rejected the Constituent Assembly.

The campaign is due to escalate on Thursday with a national strike, recalling events prior to a short-lived coup against former leader Chavez in 2002.

Fedecamaras’ line on the strike is that each employer and employee must decide for themselves whether to follow the opposition call for a 24-hour shutdown.

Maduro says the July 30 vote is necessary to achieve peace in the volatile South American nation, and also defeat an “economic war” being waged against his government by the opposition and Washington.

“Here, there is no economic war… They’ve expropriated more than 1,500 businesses, taken more than 5.2 million hectares… The economic war is in fact against all these companies that were private that now don’t produce!” said Larrazabal.
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Argentina said Wednesday that it has sent the regional bloc Mercosur its ratification of the group’s 2010 trade agreement with Egypt, and the pact will go into force within a month.

The trade deal, which covers food, cars, auto parts and industrial supplies, was signed by Egypt and Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay in 2010, but it did not go into effect because Argentina’s Congress had not approved it.

Argentina’s Congress signed off on the deal in May, and Argentina has sent Mercosur its formal ratification, the last step needed for implementation, Argentina’s production ministry said.

“In 30 days the agreement will be in full force,” the ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

The deal will eliminate tariffs on 60 percent of Argentina’s exports immediately and phase in reduced tariffs for other products over 10 years, the ministry said.

Tariffs in Argentina on imports of beef, pears, apples and cars and auto parts from Egypt will also be lifted, it added.

The announcement comes as Mercosur has been seeking to finalize trade deals with other blocs and countries, including the European Union, Canada and South Korea, after pro-business governments took office in Argentina and Brazil.
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Asia’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, suddenly finds himself cornered. The giant Dalian Wanda Group, which he heads, is facing a range of regulatory investigations and actions from the Chinese authorities. 

The latest move involves asking banks to stop financing overseas forays of the Wanda Group, which owns an array of foreign assets, including a Hollywood studio and AMC Theaters, the biggest exhibitor of movies in the U.S. 

The Group faced a regulatory probe into its financial deals in early June, which was followed by an announcement that Wanda had sold off part of its business to a Tianjin based real estate developer for $9.3 billion.

The government action against a businessman known for his strong connections with the Communist Party has caused a stir in the business community, with many asking if the government is sending out a political message to all privately owned businesses, informed sources said. 

Role of politics

“That is a surprising development in a lot of different ways. Wang Jianlin has many friends all through the political establishment in China,” said Christopher Balding, an associate professor of finance and economics at Peking University HSBC Business School. 

The industry in China is debating about whether the Wanda Group has been hit by a policy measure or Wang has fallen from the grace of the political establishment. 

“I don’t think this [action] is particularly targeting Mr. Wang, the chairman of Wanda Group, or purposefully targeting the Wanda group,” said Peng Liu, professor of real estate and hotel management at the Cornell University. “Actually, those [moves] are in line with the government action on control of financial risks.” 

Wanda Group’s recent deals include the $930 million acquisition of the Nordic Cinema Group in January, and the $1.1 billion purchase of Carmike Cinemas, the fourth-largest cinema operator in America. But Wang faced a rare setback early this year when he was forced to abandon a $1 billion takeover of Hollywood-based Dick Clark Productions.

On the face of it, the government is asking companies to cut down on their financial risks and stop adding pressure on China’s foreign exchange reserves.

But the signals go deeper than that because the action involves one of China’s best-known companies and comes ahead of a crucial Communist Party meeting which will determine the fate of some of the country’s top leaders. 

“It is not far fetched to say that there is definitely a political message being sent, and they are using Wanda as an example to other companies, (to say) ‘don’t do this’,” Balding said, adding, “And it is also a signal that there is a political fighting going on behind the scenes.”

Corporate vs government power

Giant multinationals are sometimes regarded as the sources of big power, who often influence government policies in different countries. Beijing may not be comfortable with additional power groups during its own influence gathering pursuit through the Belt and Road program, analysts said. 

Yue Su, an economist with The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), pointed out the government has been investigating two other companies, Fosun and Anbang, who were engaged in aggressive buying of business assets overseas. 

“The government is also worried that these companies are trying to move asset abroad and keep their debt within the country, which is worsening domestic economic conditions,” he said. 

Wider impact

Besides Wanda, many Chinese companies have been forced to revise their investment plans as the government reversed its earlier policy of encouraging them to acquire foreign brands and assets.

Beijing has since intensified its battle against capital flight amid a reduction in foreign exchange reserves early this year. This came as a shock to several companies who were forced to cut down their long range plans for growth in the international market.

“Another thing that needs to be pointed out is it was only 12-24 months ago that Chinese regulators were strongly encouraging Chinese companies to go out and make foreign acquisitions,” Balding said. “So, this was not done in a vacuum. So while Wanda may have pushed the limits, they were doing nothing more than what they were being encouraged to do by Chinese regulators.”

The government action to cut off funding to Wanda, and possibly to other companies, may have major consequences for China’s industrial economy.

“So consequently if their access is cut off, that could have a very significant impact on not just their ability to make foreign acquisitions but to do a lot of different things,” Balding said.

Peng Liu said the government will make a distinction in the case of its Belt and Road program and allow overseas investments by Chinese companies who wish to do so under that program. 

“The belt and road program is the government’s strategy. I think that is different. Corporations will find the match in terms (their) business vision and growth strategy and the government’s strategy on infrastructure and global collaboration in development,” he said.
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German automaker Daimler says it is voluntarily recalling 3 million diesel cars in Europe to improve their emissions performance.

The Stuttgart-based company, which makes Mercedes-Benz luxury cars, says it is taking the step to reassure drivers and strengthen confidence in diesel technology.

Diesels have been under a cloud since Daimler’s competitor Volkswagen admitted equipping vehicles with illegal software that meant they passed emissions tests, but then exceeded limits in everyday driving. There has been a push for diesel bans in some German cities because of concerns about levels of nitrogen oxide emitted by diesels.

The Daimler announcement comes hours after the regional government in the company’s home region of Baden-Wuerttemburg agreed to abandon proposals to restrict diesels if older diesels could be mechanically fixed to pollute less, the dpa news agency reported.

Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said Tuesday that “the public debate about diesel engines is creating uncertainty – especially for our customers.”

The recall will cover nearly all vehicles made under the EU5 and EU6 emissions standards and start in the next few weeks. The company said it would cost 220 million euros ($254.21 million), but that customers wouldn’t pay anything.

Daimler said in May that German investigators had searched its offices in connection with investigations of Daimler employees because of suspicion of fraud and criminal advertising relating to the possible manipulation of exhaust controls in cars with diesel engines. The company has said it is cooperating with the investigation.
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Cake and conversation, it seems, can go only so far to mend longstanding economic rifts between the United States and China.

Three months after President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, shared chocolate cake at an amiable summit in Florida, tensions between the world’s two biggest economies are flaring again.

Just as officials of the two nations prepare to meet Wednesday in Washington, the Trump administration is considering slapping tariffs on steel imports, a step that risks igniting a trade war. For the United States, it’s a perilous option to address a problem caused largely by China’s overproduction of steel.

And Trump is criticizing China again for failing to use its economic leverage to rein in its neighbor and ally, the nuclear rogue state North Korea.

Could this week’s U.S.-China Comprehensive Dialogue produce a meaningful breakthrough in economic relations?

Most China watchers are skeptical.

“I’m not looking for anything worthwhile,” says Derek Scissors, a China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

For one thing, the points of difference between the two countries run deep. For another, Xi faces political pressures at home and won’t want to cause a stir in Beijing.

For all the tensions between the two nations, Trump’s words about Xi himself have remained warm. He has suggested that the personal bond he formed with Xi when the two met April 6-7 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort can overcome fundamental differences on trade and national security. Last week, the president called his Chinese counterpart a “friend of mine,” ”a terrific guy” and “a very special person.”

At a White House event Monday, Trump suggested that the relationship is so strong that he asked during the Florida summit to start exporting U.S. beef to China and that the request was quickly granted. Trump said that the beef industry was so pleased to return to China after a 14-year ban that one executive from Nebraska “hugged me, he wanted to kiss me so badly.”

“We welcome this opportunity,” Kenny Graner, a North Dakota cattle farmer who is president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, says of the China market. “They have a middle class that’s growing in income. It’s big, a lot of people.”

After the meeting, the president softened his accusations of abusive Chinese practices, dropped his threat to label China a currency manipulator and expressed optimism that China would pressure North Korea to scale back its nuclear program.

Still, the Trump-Xi relationship has yet to deliver the substantive changes that Trump the candidate had promised voters – a core piece of his mantra to put “America first.” The economic irritants are likely to vex U.S. and Chinese officials this week.

Trump had campaigned on a promise to shrink America’s trade deficits, which he blames for wiping out American factories and manufacturing jobs. The United States last year ran a trade deficit in goods with China of $347 billion, the amount by which imports exceeded exports. It’s by far the widest gap that U.S. has with any country. Trump says China unfairly subsidizes exports.

Take steel. From 2000 to 2016, China accelerated steel production, raising its share of the world market from 15 percent to nearly 50 percent. As Chinese steel poured into the market, global prices fell, hurting American steelmakers. Scissors notes that China has long promised to stop subsidizing steel and to slow production but hasn’t delivered.

The Trump administration responded by invoking a little-used weapon in American trade law that lets the president tax or restrict imports – if a U.S. Commerce Department investigation finds that they imperil national security. (The result of Commerce’s investigation of steel imports is expected soon.) The rationale was that the American military relies on steel for airplanes, ships and other equipment. Steel also goes into roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

The problem is that the United States already blocks most Chinese steel imports. So any tariffs or limits on imports would instead hurt other countries, including such staunch allies as Canada and South Korea.

Scissors says the United States could try to coordinate sanctions against China by countries that do import Chinese steel.

David Dollar, a former World Bank and U.S. Treasury official who is now at the Brookings Institution, thinks Xi isn’t likely to make a bold move to cut Chinese steelmaking capacity – or enact other economic reforms – in advance of the Chinese communist party’s National Congress this fall. At the meeting, Xi will want to further tighten his grip on the party.

What’s more, the European Union and others are likely to lash back if the U.S. imposes sanctions on foreign steel, thereby running the risk of a broader trade war.

Then there’s North Korea. As a presidential candidate, Trump attacked China for refusing to pressure Pyongyang to back off from developing nuclear weapons. After the Mar-a-Lago summit, though, Trump praised Beijing for agreeing to help deal with North Korea. As a reward, he abandoned his vow to accuse China of manipulating its currency to benefit Chinese exporters.

This month, North Korea defiantly proceeded with its first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Trump tweeted his complaint:

“Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!”

Brookings’ Dollar says the administration will likely continue to be disappointed.

“China is not going to do anything dramatic” to pressure North Korea, he says. “They don’t want that regime to collapse” and thereby destabilize the Korean peninsula and likely send North Korean refugees into China.

Overall, Dollar expects more turbulence between Washington and Beijing. The Obama administration, he notes, had kept the relationship stable despite economic differences by working with China on such issues as the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. But Trump has pulled out of the Paris deal and denounced the Iran pact.

“We’re going to see more volatility in the U.S.-China relationship than we’ve seen in years,” Dollar says.

 
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Nepalis stand to lose millions of dollars held in high-value Indian bank notes that India banned last year and has yet to exchange, a Nepali central bank official said on Tuesday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November banned 500 rupee ($7.77) and 1,000 rupee bank notes as part of a drive against unaccounted wealth in India that has also hit Nepal where Indian rupees are widely used.

People holding the notes in India were given a little less than two months to exchange them at banks.

In March, officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) visited Nepal and promised to allow every Nepali citizen to exchange 4,500 Indian rupees ($70) worth of the old notes for new ones.

“That was only a verbal assurance but no formal decision from India has come to us,” said Chinta Mani Shivakoti, a deputy governor of the central Nepal Rastra Bank.

“Even if this amount was exchanged, individuals holding more than 4,500 Indian rupees risk losing the excess,” Shivakoti said.

Nepal depends heavily on funds from workers in India, who sent home $640 million in 2016, or about 3 percent of its gross domestic product.

The Indian central bank declined to comment. An Indian Finance Ministry spokesman also declined to comment, saying it was a central bank matter.

India fears that if it agrees to Nepal’s demand to allow Nepalis to exchange unlimited amounts, a large number of Indians may launder their ill-gotten old notes through Nepal.

Shivakoti said Nepal’s banks hold 78.5 million Indian rupees worth of the old notes, while business officials estimate that up to 10 billion in old Indian rupees ($155 million) may be held by individuals in Nepal’s informal sector.

Another NRB official, Bhisma Raj Dhungana, said the delay in resolving the issue was causing concern.

“India should have allowed the exchange facility much earlier,” Dhungana said.

Ordinary Nepalis say they have been hit badly by the delay.

“My savings are worth no more than waste papers. I can’t do anything about it,” said Saila Thakuri, who has 8,000 Indian rupees in old notes sent by his son who works in a restaurant in New Delhi.

 
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House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a 10-year budget blueprint that would dramatically increase military spending while putting the GOP on record favoring Medicare cuts opposed by President Donald Trump.

The GOP plan, authored by Budget Chairman Diane Black, R-Tenn., would also pave the way for overhauling the U.S. tax code this fall, and would pair that effort with cuts to benefit programs such as food stamps. The plan also lays out a plan to balance the budget inside a decade through deep cuts to a wide swath of domestic programs — though GOP leaders have no intention of actually carrying out the cuts.

 

Black announced a committee vote for Wednesday, but action by the entire House could be delayed by an ongoing quarrel between the GOP’s tea party and moderate factions over spending cuts.

 

Medicare is the second largest mandatory program after Social Security, and the House GOP plan again proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher-like program in which future retirees would receive a fixed benefit to purchase health insurance on the open market. Republicans have proposed the idea each year since taking back the House in 2011, but they’ve never tried to implement it — and that’s not going to change now, even with a Republican as president.

 

The plan, in theory at least, promises to balance the budget through unprecedented and unworkable cuts across the budget. It calls for turning this year’s projected $700 billion or so deficit into a tiny $9 billion surplus by 2027. It would do so by slashing $5.4 trillion over the coming decade, including almost $500 billion from Medicare, $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and the Obama health law, along with enormous cuts to benefits such as federal employee pensions, food stamps, and tax credits for the working poor.

 

“The status quo is unsustainable. A mounting national debt and lackluster economic growth will limit opportunity for people all across the country,” Black said in a statement. “But we don’t have to accept this reality. We can move forward with an optimistic vision for the future and this budget is the first step in that process. This is the moment to get real results for the American people. The time for talking is over, now is the time for action.”

 

But in the immediate future the GOP measure is a budget buster. It would add almost $30 billion to Trump’s $668 billion request for national defense, which already exceeds an existing “cap” on spending by $54 billion. But while Trump proposed taking that $54 billion from domestic agencies and foreign aid, the GOP budget plan would restore most of the cuts, trimming non-defense agencies by just $5 billion.

 

All told, the GOP plan would spend about $67 billion more in the upcoming annual appropriations bills than would be allowed under harsh spending limits set by a failed 2011 budget and debt agreement and pads war accounts by $10 billion. And, like Trump’s budget, the House GOP plan assumes rosy economic projections that would erase another $1.5 trillion from the deficit over 10 years.

 

The measure, called a budget resolution, is nonbinding. It would allow Republicans controlling Congress to pass follow-up legislation through the Senate without the threat of a filibuster by Democrats. GOP leaders and the White House plan to use that measure to rewrite the tax code.

 

As proposed by House leaders, tax reform would essentially be deficit neutral, which means cuts to tax rates would be mostly “paid for” by closing various tax breaks such as the deduction for state and local taxes. However, the GOP plan would devote $300 billion claimed from economic growth to the tax reform effort.

 

But conservatives are insisting on adding cuts to so-called mandatory programs, which make up more than two-thirds of the federal budget and basically run on autopilot. After extended negotiations, Black would instruct 11 House panels to draw up $203 billion worth of mandatory cuts. But neither tea party lawmakers nor moderates are pleased with the idea. Conservatives want larger cuts, while moderates are blanching at voting to cut popular programs such as food stamps.
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The Trump Administration has launched “Made In America Week” to highlight the importance of U.S. manufacturing and tout its policies to bring more such jobs back home from overseas. But as VOA White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman reports, many Trump family products are made in foreign factories, leading to criticism of the president’s trade campaign.
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Foreign fishing vessels, many from China, prowl the waters off West Africa every day. They capture millions of fish — catches that used to go to local boats. The fish are then shipped to China, Europe and the United States, satisfying a global demand for seafood and fueling a multibillion-dollar industry.

The foreign vessels make life hard for West African fishermen.  

Foreign trawlers from Asia and Europe have cost West Africa’s economy 300,000 jobs and $2 billion in income, according to John Hocevar, a marine biologist with Greenpeace.

However, what to do about the problem — and possible damage to regional fish populations — has eluded experts and officials.

Chinese presence

Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but experts agree no single country has a greater presence off the coast of West Africa than China.

In a 2015 report, Greenpeace estimated that, two years earlier, China had 426 distant water fishing vessels off Africa’s West Coast.

Between 2000 and 2011, 64 percent of China’s average annual catches, valued at more than $7 billion, came from that area, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Fishing isn’t a big part of China’s economy, representing less than one percent of total gross domestic product. But for many in China’s coastal provinces, it’s both a livelihood and way of life, according to Haibing Ma, the China program manager for the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit group that researches sustainability.

Chinese fishers have traveled to Africa because their own fish stock has nearly run out. “Overfishing has destroyed the sustainability of China’s inshore fisheries,” Ma said.

Lack of oversight

Fishing practices are inherently difficult to monitor and regulate. Oceans are vast, vessels are hard to reach, and a mix of local and international laws and regulations complicates enforcement.

Domestic laws regulate waters up to 200 miles off the coast, and international laws control waters past that, according to Todd Dubois, assistant director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement.

This complex environment has led to a variety of creative ways to maximize profits without breaking the law.

For example, legislation in Guinea-Bissau has kept large industrial fishing vessels away from its coast.  So, fishing companies have deployed small boats that don’t need licenses from nearby countries such as Senegal. Those boats will fish in Guinea-Bissau and return their catches to a large “mothership,” which in turn takes its bounty back to Senegal to be traded.

In other cases, “floating factories” — large, nearby vessels used for processing and packaging catches — have enabled other boats to catch small pelagics, such as mackerels and sardines, quickly and on a massive scale for prolonged periods.

And bottom trawls, a kind of gear that contributes to overfishing, were installed on most Chinese vessels studied by Greenpeace in 2015.

Many see international fishing off Africa’s West Coast as an exploitation of local resources by foreign powers. But some of the most damaging practices occur within the law, and local African economies sometimes benefit from illegal fishing.

In Mauritania, for example, a Chinese company made a secret deal with the local government to build a fish-processing factory and bring 80 large vessels to the coast in exchange for a $100 million investment in the country.

That deal may have benefited both countries, says Andre Standing, an adviser at the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements, but it has had a profoundly negative impact on small-scale fishermen.

Responsible practices

Fishing, even when done on a massive scale, can be sustainable, provided there’s adequate planning and reporting. That means understanding the vulnerability of local fish populations and managing catches accordingly.

“Some reproduce very fast and can handle quite heavy fishing, such as tuna, and some of the small pelagics like the sardines,” Standing said, but other fish, such as sharks, develop very slowly. “We’re already seeing across Africa and across the world that industrial fishing and long line fishing in particular, they’ve decimated populations of the other types of fish.”

Standing cautions against drawing conclusions about the entire Chinese fishing industry. Individual fishing companies need to be judged on their own merits, he said. There are good Chinese companies, just as there are bad European companies.

China’s presence off Africa’s west coast shows no signs of shrinking, though. The Chinese government has enabled the industry to expand far beyond the country’s own shores. In 2013, the government gave the fishing sector about $6.5 billion in subsidies, according to a brief Standing wrote for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Whether considering the actions of China, the European Union, or local African governments and businesses, the root of the problem comes from a lack of focus on long-term sustainability, according to Standing.

“In many areas, there really isn’t this careful, precautionary approach to managing fishing intensity,” he said. “A lot are being driven by short-term profit, and that’s really at the heart of the unsustainable nature of fisheries.”

Zhan Yang, Teng Xu and Ricci Shryock contributed to this report.
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The United States needs more foreign workers to keep some American businesses from floundering, according to a decision announced by U.S. officials Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it will make 15,000 additional H-2B visas available for companies to hire temporary, non-agricultural foreign workers before the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30.

In a written statement, DHS Secretary John Kelly called the move a “one-time increase,”

The Trump administration promotes what it calls a “Hire American” policy and the president has repeatedly called for more limited immigration. Pressed by a reporter about how the policy announcement to allow more foreign workers into the U.S. supports American jobs, a DHS spokesperson said that without those extra workers, U.S. businesses could suffer “irreparable harm.”

Exemption is not renewed

In order to hire foreign workers through the non-immigrant visa program, businesses must show there are not enough U.S. workers “able, willing, qualified, and available” for the jobs.

The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 new visas annually; of that, 33,000 is reserved for workers who are hired during the first half of the fiscal year (Oct. 1 — March 31) and the remainder are for the latter half (April 1 — Sept. 30).

Since 2015, however, some returning workers were able to participate beyond the cap, increasing the number of H-2B visas issued last year to nearly 85,000, according to State Department data.

But Congress did not renew the returnees exemption when it expired last fall, effectively curbing the number of available visas. Businesses that rely heavily on seasonal workers, like the tourism industry, said they have struggled to fill vacancies since then.

Businesses need to petition for visas

Part of budget legislation passed in May, however, gave the Department of Homeland Security — which includes U.S. CItizenship and Immigration Services — discretion to go over the 66,000 cap to compensate for the shortfall.

Businesses will be able to petition for the additional visas when the rule is published in the General Register later this week, according to senior DHS officials. Previous applicants who did not make the earlier cut-off for the fiscal year will have to reapply, the officials added, but if hired by the end of the fiscal year, they will be able to work past Sept. 30.

President Donald Trump uses the H-2B visa program to staff his Florida private club, where he has hosted visiting heads of state since his inauguration in January. 

 
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EU foreign ministers approved on Monday measures to allow Ukraine to export more industrial and agricultural products free of tariffs to the bloc in recognition of reforms undertaken by Kyiv and the country’s fragile economy.

By the end of September, Ukraine will be able to export greater tonnage of farm products, including grains, honey and processed tomatoes for three years.

The EU will also remove for the same period import duties on fertilizers, dyes, footwear, copper, aluminum, televisions and sound recording equipment.

The measures add to a free-trade agreement provisionally in place since January 2016 that has opened both markets for goods and services.

“It is our duty to support Ukraine and strengthen our economic and political ties, also in the face of the ongoing conflict on its soil,” said Estonia Foreign Minister Sven Mikser, whose country holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union.

Trade has been at the heart of a dispute between Russia and the European Union over relations with Ukraine, with Moscow and Brussels both competing to bring Kyiv closer to their side through offers of greater economic integration.

While Kyiv has moved westward, Russia has sought to destabilize Ukraine, EU governments and NATO say, by annexing Crimea and providing separatists with weapons and troops in Ukraine’s industrial east.
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On a sweltering summer morning in the southern Indian city of Chennai, a dozen garment workers crowd into a small courtroom for the latest hearing in a protracted battle over low wages in factories supplying global fashion brands.

The women are among tens of thousands of workers in Tamil Nadu state – the largest hub in India’s $40 billion-a-year textile and garment industry – who are seeking millions of dollars in compensation following a landmark court ruling last year that declared they had long been grossly underpaid.

The Madras High Court ordered that the garment workers should receive a pay rise of up to 30 percent – the first minimum wage hike for 12 years – and that they could claim arrears going back to 2014.

But 12 months on, many factory bosses have failed to pay up.

Squeezed into a corner at the back of the stuffy Chennai courtroom, a middle-aged woman leans against the blue walls, clutching polythene bags full of documents to prove her claim.

Normally she spends her days hunched over a sewing machine, stitching skirts, shirts and dresses destined for high streets around the world.

But for months she has been taking days off work to attend court.

“I forgo a day’s salary to come for these hearings. It may not seem like a big amount, but for us it is hard earned money,” said the 48-year-old seamstress, who did not wish to be identified fearing it would impact her case. “I am only asking for what is rightfully mine. And they won’t even tell me how they are calculating my dues.”

More than 150 claims have been filed against tailoring and export garment manufacturing units in the Chennai region alone, according to data requested by the Thomson Reuters Foundation under the Right to Information Act.

The claims, which would benefit at least 80,000 workers at factories around the port city, add up to more than 490 million Indian rupees ($7.6 million).

But workers’ unions say these claims are probably the tip of the iceberg as they only represent cases filed by government labor inspectors.

Salary cuts

Under the 2016 Madras court ruling, Tamil Nadu’s garment and textile workers should see their pay rise from a monthly average of 4,500 to 6,500 rupees – which campaigners say is comparable to wages for textile jobs in most other states.

But workers say managers have defaulted or delayed on payments since the ruling, with some even introducing pay cuts.

Despite the state’s minimum wage laws, salaries continue to be “grossly low” for thousands of workers who are still not given pay slips or are often hired only as apprentices, campaigners say.

“Instead of paying workers their correct salaries, companies are finding ways to surreptitiously squash their rights,” said Selvi Palani, a lawyer helping workers’ unions fight their cases. “There is a court order but the money is not on the table.

Workers continue to be underpaid.”

Sujata Mody of Penn Thozhilalargal Sangam, a women workers’ union, said some companies that had raised wages were now docking pay for sick days, and for factory meals and shuttle buses which were previously free, meaning many workers had seen little or no change in pay.

Some factories were also firing more expensive workers on trivial grounds, she added.

“The workers are struggling to be heard and the managements are coming up with new forms to deduct their income,” Mody said.

Repeated delays

Under the 1948 Minimum Wages Act, state governments are required to increase the basic minimum wage every five years to protect workers against exploitation, but textile manufacturers have repeatedly challenged pay rises in Tamil Nadu.

The state’s labor commissioner, Ka Balachandran, said inspectors were verifying every company’s records to check that wages were now in line with last year’s ruling.

“We are doing everything to ensure workers get fair wages, and get it quickly,” he added.

But manufacturers in Tamil Nadu say the hike is too high, putting them at a disadvantage to competitors in other states. Some say they are already paying workers more than the minimum wage.

“The new norms are not distinguishing clearly between skilled and non-skilled workers,” said S Shaktivel of the Tirupur Exporters’ Association.

He said some companies had launched an appeal against the order at the Madras High Court.

In the Chennai labor court, case numbers are called out in quick succession.

The seamstress, who is expecting arrears of up to 5,000 rupees, strains to listen over the slow whirring of the ceiling fan.

“My financial situation is not very good,” she whispers. “My husband had surgery a few months back, we have a loan to pay back and a house to run. The company owes me arrears for almost one year. I need that income desperately.”

Her case is called. The lawyer representing the company asks for more time. Another date is set, with the judge warning against further delays.

“I hope I get a good settlement,” the seamstress said as she left court. “After all these years, I would like to stop working, but that looks unlikely. At least if they paid me properly, I would feel a little better.”
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A severed marine cable has left Somalia without internet for weeks, triggering losses for businesses, residents said, and adding a layer of chaos in a country where Islamist insurgents are carrying out a campaign of bombings and killings.

Abdi Anshuur, Somalia’s minister for posts and telecommunications, told state radio that internet to the Horn of Africa state went down a month ago after a ship cut an undersea cable connecting it to global data networks.

Businesses have had to close or improvise to remain open and university students told Reuters their educational courses had been disrupted.

Anshuur said the outage was costing Somalia the equivalent of about $10 million in economic output.

“The night internet went off marked the end of my daily bread,” Mohamed Nur, 22, told Reuters in the capital Mogadishu.

Nur said he now begged “tea and cigarettes from friends” after the internet cutoff also severed his monthly income of $500 that he took in from ads he developed and placed on the video website, YouTube.

Somalia’s economy is still picking up slowly after a combined force of the army and an African Union peacekeeping force helped drive the Islamist group, al Shabaab, out of Mogadishu and other strongholds.

Al Shabaab wants to topple the western backed government and rule according to its strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

The group remains formidable and lethal, with its campaign of frequent bombings and killings a key source of significant security risk for most businesses and regular life.

Now the internet outage potentially compounds the hardships for most firms. Most young people who say they are unable to work because of the outage spend hours idling in front of tea shops.

Mohamed Ahmed Hared, commercial manager of Somali Optical Networks(SOON), a large internet service provider in the country, told Reuters his business was losing over a million dollars a day. Hared’s clients, he said, had reported a range of crippled services including passport and e-tickets printing and money remittances.

Some students and staff at the University of Somalia in Mogadishu told Reuters their learning had been disrupted because Google, which they heavily rely on for research, was now inaccessible.

The absence of especially popular internet sites like Facebook and YouTube and Google was, however, cause for celebration for some in the conservative, Muslim nation.

“My wife used to be (on) YouTube or Facebook every minute,” Mohamud Osman, 45, said, adding the online activity would sometimes distract her from feeding her baby and that the habit had once forced him to try to get a divorce.

“Now I am happy … internet is without doubt a necessary tool of evil.”

 
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Gibraltar will not be a victim of Brexit and has had guarantees from the British government it will not do a trade deal with the European Union which doesn’t include the territory, its chief minister said on Sunday.

The future of Gibraltar, a rocky enclave on the southern tip of Spain captured by Britain in 1704, and its 30,000 inhabitants is set to be a major point of contention in Brexit negotiations. The EU annoyed Britain and Gibraltar in April by offering Spain a right of veto over the territory’s post-Brexit relationship with the bloc.

Gibraltar, which Spain wants back, voted strongly in favor of remaining in the EU at last year’s referendum but is committed to staying part of Britain.

Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Sky News he had had “cast iron assurances” from Britain’s Brexit minister David Davis that the government would not do a trade deal with the EU if it did not include Gibraltar.

“I’m the backbone of this negotiation for Gibraltar and the backbone is made of limestone rock, it’s not going to be easy to buckle on that. We can have the War of the Summer, the War of the Autumn or the War of the Winter, if you like, on that, Gibraltar is not going to change its position,” he said.

“It’s our obligation now to energetically and enthusiastically pursue the result of the referendum and deliver a successful Brexit. We’re not going to get in the way of Brexit but we’re not going to be the victims of Brexit.”

During a state visit to Britain this week, Spain’s King Felipe said he was confident an acceptable arrangement could be worked out with Britain over the future of Gibraltar, but Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokeswoman said the topic had not come up during their bilateral meeting.

“There is not going to be any new arrangements in relation to the sovereignty of Gibraltar, that is going to remain 100 percent British,” Picardo said.
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Bilateral talks aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit with China have yielded some initial deals, but U.S. firms say much more needs to be done as a deadline for a 100-day action plan expires Sunday.

The negotiations, which began in April, have reopened China’s market to U.S. beef after 14 years and prompted Chinese pledges to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas. American firms have also been given access to some parts of China’s financial services sector.

More details on the 100-day plan are expected to be announced in the coming week as senior U.S. and Chinese officials gather in Washington for annual bilateral economic talks, rebranded this year as the “U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.”

A U.S. Commerce Department spokesman declined to discuss potential areas for new agreements since a May 11 announcement on beef, chicken, financial services and LNG.

​Trade deficit grows

Earlier in April, when Chinese President Xi Jinping met U.S. President Donald Trump for the first time at his Florida resort, Xi agreed to a 100-day plan for trade talks aimed at boosting U.S. exports and trimming the U.S. trade deficit with China.

The U.S. goods trade deficit with China reached $347 billion last year. The gap in the first five months of 2017 widened about 5.3 percent from a year earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

“It is an excellent momentum builder, but much more needs to be done for U.S.-China commercial negotiations to be considered a success,” said Jacob Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC) in Beijing.

Biggest irritants

There has been little sign of progress in soothing the biggest trade irritants, such as U.S. demands that China cut excess capacity in steel and aluminum production, lack of access for U.S. firms to China’s services market, and U.S. national security curbs on high-tech exports to China.

The Trump administration is considering broad tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminum on national security grounds, partly in response to what it views as a glut of Chinese production that is flooding international markets and driving down prices.

Deals struck

American beef is now available in Chinese shops for the first time since a 2003 U.S. case of “mad cow” disease, giving U.S. ranchers access to a rapidly growing market worth around $2.6 billion last year.

More beef deals were signed during an overseas buying mission by the Chinese last week.

“There are hopes there will be even more concrete results,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing in Beijing on Friday. He did not elaborate.

Critics of the 100-day process said China had agreed to lift its ban on U.S. beef last September, with officials just needing to finalize details on quarantine requirements.

China, meanwhile, has delivered its first batch of cooked chicken to U.S. ports after years of negotiating for access to the market. 

But unlike the rush by Chinese consumers for a first taste of American beef, Chinese poultry processors have not had a flurry of orders for cooked chicken.

Biotech crops, financial services

Other sectors in China under U.S. pressure to open up have moved more slowly.

Beijing had only approved two of the eight biotech crops waiting for import approval, despite gathering experts to review the crops on two occasions in a six-week period.

U.S. industry officials had signaled they were expecting more approvals. U.S. executives say the review process still lacks transparency.

Financial services is another area where little progress has been made, U.S. officials say.

USCBC’s Parker said it is unclear how long it will take for foreign credit rating agencies to be approved, or whether U.S.-owned suppliers of electronic payment services will be able to secure licenses.

The bilateral talks have also not addressed restrictions on foreign investment in life insurance and securities trading, or “the many challenges foreign companies face in China’s cybersecurity enforcement environment,” Parker said.

In an annual report released Thursday, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said China remained a “difficult market.”
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Take care of your soil, and your soil will take care of you. That’s the message agriculture experts have for farmers worldwide. They say farmers can halt the degradation of their land and save money by using techniques known as conservation agriculture. But as VOA’s Steve Baragona reports, adopting those techniques takes a change of attitude.
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Ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft have been so disruptive to New York City’s taxi industry, they are causing lenders to fail.

 

Three New York-based credit unions that specialized in loaning money against taxi cab medallions, the hard-to-get licenses that allow the city’s traditional cab fleet to operate, have been placed into conservatorship as the value of those medallions has plummeted.

 

Just three years ago, cab owners and investors were paying as much as $1.3 million for a medallion. Now they are worth less than half that, and some medallion owners owe more on their loans than the medallions are worth.

Like subprime loans

 

“You’ve got borrowers who are under water. This is just like the subprime loan crisis,” said Keith Leggett, a credit union analyst and former senior economist at the American Bankers Association.

LOMTO Federal Credit Union, which was founded by taxi drivers in 1936 for mutual assistance, was placed into conservatorship by the National Credit Union Administration on June 26 “because of unsafe and unsound practices.”

 

New York City has the nation’s largest taxi industry, with more than 13,000 medallions.

Value went up, then down

 

Marcelino Hervias bought his medallion in 1990 for about $120,000 and thought its value would hit $2 million by the time he was ready to retire.

 

Instead, the 58-year-old said he owes $541,000 and is driving 12 to 16 hours a day to make ends meet.

While some medallions are held by large owners with fleets, owning a single medallion was long seen as a ticket to the middle class for immigrants like Hervias, who is from Peru.

 

Many of them now owe more on their medallion loans than they originally paid for the medallions because they used their equity in the medallion for a home, a child’s education or other expenses.

 

Other medallion owners tell similar stories.

 

Constant Granvil bought his medallion for $102,000 in 1987 and said he now owes more than $300,000 to his lender. He could have sold the medallion for two or three times that a few years ago, “but I said no, I’m not going to sell it,” said Granvil, who is 76. “And then I got caught.”

 

The value of Granvil’s medallion is hard to pinpoint because 2017 sale prices have varied from the $200,000s to the $500,000s depending on whether lenders are willing to finance the purchase. 

 

Meanwhile, Granvil, who no longer drives because of poor health and uses a broker to hire a driver, said he is facing threats from the lender, Melrose Credit Union, to foreclose on not just his medallion, but also his house.

Level playing field

Supporters of the yellow cab industry have sued and pushed for city legislation to try to level the playing field between taxis and ride-hailing apps, which they say enjoy advantages like not paying a public transportation improvement surcharge that’s levied on yellow cabs and not having to outfit a percentage of cars with disabled-access features.

 

City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, called this week for a panel to investigate the fall in medallion values. 

 

According to a Morgan Stanley report, there were 11.1 million yellow cab trips in the city in April 2016, compared with 4.7 million Uber trips and 750,000 Lyft trips. The 11.1 million taxi rides were 9 percent fewer than the April 2015 number.

 

Some observers believe that the yellow cab’s market share will continue to shrink and that the value of a medallion won’t recover.

 

“This is a commodity that has been fundamentally disrupted,” said Leggett, who has written about medallion loans in his online newsletter Credit Union Watch. “I don’t see the value of the medallions getting close to what they were.”
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The White House said Friday that worsening tax revenues would cause the budget deficit to jump to $702 billion this year. That’s a $99 billion spike from what was predicted less than two months ago.

The report from the Office of Management and Budget came on the heels of a rival Congressional Budget Office analysis that scuttled White House claims that its May budget, if implemented to the letter, would balance the federal ledger within 10 years. The OMB report doesn’t repeat that claim and instead provides just two years of updated projections.

The White House budget office also said the deficit for the 2018 budget year that starts on October 1 would increase by $149 billion, to $589 billion. But lawmakers are already working on spending bills that promise to boost that number even higher by adding to President Donald Trump’s Pentagon proposal and ignoring many of his cuts to domestic programs.

Last year’s deficit registered $585 billion.

The White House kept the report to a bare-bones minimum and cast blame on “the failed policies of the previous administration.”

“The rising near-term deficits underscore the critical need to restore fiscal discipline to the nation’s finances,” said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney. “Our nation must make substantial changes to the policies and spending priorities of the previous administration if our citizens are to be safe and prosperous in the future.”

In late May, Trump released a budget plan proposing jarring cuts to domestic programs and promising to balance the budget within a decade. But the CBO said Trump relied on rosy predictions of economic growth to promise a slight surplus in 2027.

Trump’s budget left Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare alone, though House Republicans are poised next week to again propose cutting Medicare as they unveil their nonbinding budget outline.

Trump’s budget predicted that the U.S. economy would soon ramp up to annual growth in gross domestic product of 3 percent; CBO’s long-term projections predict annual GDP growth averaging 1.9 percent.
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The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives’ antitrust subcommittee has voiced concerns about Amazon.com Inc.’s $13.7 billion plan to buy Whole Foods Market Inc and is pushing for a hearing to look into the deal’s potential impact on consumers.

The deal announced in June marks the biggest acquisition for the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon has not said what it will do with Whole Foods’ stores and other assets, but analysts and investors worry the move could upend the landscape for grocers, food delivery services and meal-kit companies.

U.S. Representative David Cicilline requested the hearing on Thursday in a letter to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee chairman. Shares of Amazon were up 0.3 percent in mid-morning trading on Friday.

“Amazon’s proposed purchase of Whole Foods could impact neighborhood grocery stores and hardworking consumers across America,” Cicilline said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to fully scrutinize this merger before it goes ahead.”

The deal must be approved by U.S. antitrust enforcers, in this case most likely the Federal Trade Commission. Congress plays no formal role in that process but hearings are often used to highlight the possible impact of deals on consumers. The hearing is unlikely to happen without Republican support.

Amazon and Whole Foods declined to comment.

Also this week, hedge fund manager Douglas Kass from Seabreeze Partners Management Inc. said he was shorting shares of the retailer because of concern about Amazon in Washington.

Kass said he had heard rumblings on Capitol Hill regarding concern about Amazon’s size and clout but did not specify what the concerns were.

“I am shorting Amazon today because I have learned that there are currently early discussions and due diligence being considered in the legislative chambers in Washington, D.C.,” he wrote in a note to investors late on Wednesday. “If I am correct, word of this could lower Amazon’s shares by 10 percent overnight.”

Kass said in emailed comments to Reuters on Friday that he has what he called a “core” short position in Amazon, meaning a sizeable bet based on a long-term outlook.

“This has the potential of being the biggest business news story of [the] year,” he said. Kass declined to comment when asked for more details about pressure from Capitol Hill.

Kass is followed for his bets on declines in companies’ share prices. He shorted Marvel Entertainment in 1992 when its shares were in the high $60s, and the company went bankrupt 1-1/2 years later.

He also bet against big U.S. banks leading into the 2007-2009 financial crisis, shorting Bank of America, MGIC, Citigroup and several other financials that ultimately averaged a 98 percent price decline by the time they bottomed in 2009.

While antitrust experts have said they expect Amazon’s bid to win regulatory approval, some critics argue the deal should be blocked because it gives the retailer a big head start towards domination of online grocery delivery.

They argue the Whole Foods acquisition will give Amazon an unfair advantage over traditional grocers and new players that might emerge in the market, potentially grounds for the deal to be blocked for antitrust reasons.
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