As the U.S. stock market hit a new all-time high Wednesday, key U.S. lawmakers staked out core positions for a looming battle that could impact economic performance for decades: reforming America’s complicated and much-maligned tax system.

“Comprehensive tax reform represents the single most important action we can take now to grow the economy and to help middle-class families finally get ahead,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, adding that Washington has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to act.

“For families, we want to make their taxes simpler, fairer and lower. For small businesses, we want to provide the conditions they need to form, invest and grow,” McConnell said.

An object of near-universal ridicule, the federal tax code is thousands of pages long and forces many Americans to hire accountants or attorneys to comply with its vast array of provisions.

President Donald Trump made tax reform a major campaign promise last year, including lowering America’s corporate tax rate, the highest among the world’s major economies. Failure to deliver on what has been a core Republican pledge to voters for multiple election cycles would be a bitter pill for a party still licking its wounds over its inability — so far — to abolish former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

While Senate Democrats unified in opposition to repealing Obamacare, many say they are eager to work with Republicans on tax reform so long as certain conditions are met.

“First, don’t cut taxes for the top 1 percent [richest Americans],” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “Second, don’t increase the [federal] debt and deficit. And third, negotiate in a fair and open process.”

Opposition to reconciliation

Democrats are objecting to any Republican attempt to pass tax reform though reconciliation, a Senate procedure that sets aside the three-fifths majority commonly required to advance a bill. Under reconciliation, Republicans could approve tax reform using their narrow Senate majority, bypassing Democrats entirely.

Schumer warned that reconciliation would torpedo “bipartisan tax reform before a discussion between our two parties has even begun.”

“Is he [McConnell] closing the door on bipartisanship because he so dearly wants to cut taxes on the top 1 percent?” the minority leader asked. “The wealthy are doing great right now, God bless them.”

For his part, McConnell promised ample opportunities for Democrats to help shape a final tax reform bill.

“Our expectation is for this legislation to move through the committees this fall under regular order, followed by consideration on both the House and Senate floor,” the majority leader said. “There’s a great deal of bipartisan consensus about what ails our tax code, and my hope is our friends on the other side of the aisle [Democrats] will join us in a serious way to address it.”

Revenue-neutral

McConnell has said that tax reform should be revenue-neutral, meaning that any tax cuts would have to be offset by revenue increases in other areas of the federal code. It is widely assumed that Republicans will propose reducing a variety of tax rates paid by wage earners and businesses, while eliminating some tax deductions many Americans use to lower their tax bills.

For decades, some Republicans have argued that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating the economy, leading to higher output and more tax revenue. Democrats contend the theory was proven false under the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, which saw deficits rise after major tax cuts were enacted.
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Egypt’s foreign reserves reached over $36 billion in July, a record high, which the prime minister described as “good news” as it shows that the economy is recovering, the central bank said Tuesday.

The bank announced the increase in a brief statement saying that the figure is 4.7 billion dollars higher compared to the previous month. In December 2010, foreign reserves reached $36 billion.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Sherif Ismail hailed the increase of the foreign reserves saying, “this is an assuring message about the Egyptian economy and that we are capable of covering the needs of the Egyptian people.”

 “This means that the Egyptian economy has recovered,” he said.  

$12 billion loan from IMF

The rise comes after the government secured a $12 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. In order to qualify for that loan, the government imposed a set of tough economic measures, including subsidy cuts and the flotation of its local currency.

The economic measures were hailed by the IMF but have left many Egyptians struggling with both reduced buying power and spiraling inflation while the government struggles to generate jobs in country with an official population of 92 million.

This summer, Egypt raised electricity prices by more than 40 percent and increased gasoline prices by up to 55 percent while doubling the price of the household staple butane canisters, used for cooking.

Measures benefit middle, lower classes

Ahead of the latest hikes, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi approved a package of measures benefiting middle and lower class Egyptians, including income tax relief, bonuses for state employees, increases in pensions and ration card subsidies.

The government embarked on the economic reform program soon after el-Sissi took office three years ago. Egypt’s economy has been battered since the 2011 uprising and continues to face major challenges, including a rising Islamic militancy. Tourism, a major pillar of national revenue, was dealt a blow in 2015 when militants belonging to an affiliate of the Islamic State group downed a Russian airliner killing all 224 people aboard.

 
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Some European oil majors have made inroads into the emerging U.S. offshore wind energy market, aiming to leverage their experience of deepwater development and the crowded offshore wind arena at home.

Late entrants to the offshore wind game in Europe, which began with a project off Denmark 25 years ago and is now approaching maturity, they are looking across the Atlantic at what they view as a huge and potentially lucrative new market.

Norway’s Statoil has won a license to develop a wind farm of the New York coast, is marketing its new floating turbine to California and Hawaii and is retraining some oil and gas staff to work in its wind division.

Royal Dutch Shell bid for a lease offshore North Carolina earlier this year while Denmark’s DONG Energy, a wind energy pioneer which agreed to sell its oil and gas business in May, is in a Massachusetts-based offshore wind consortium, holds a lease off the New Jersey coast and has opened an office in Boston.

Offshore wind generation began in the United States late last year, ironically after the election of President Donald Trump. He is skeptical about climate change, complains about subsidies for renewable energy and battled against an offshore wind farm near his Scottish golf resort.

However, a string of federal seabed leases were awarded before Trump took office and more are planned. The investment needed to get projects going is one of the biggest

obstacles.

“Undeniably, offshore wind is a big boys’ game because it requires large amounts of capital because scale is such an important cost driver,” said Samuel Leupold chief executive of DONG Energy’s offshore wind business.

While DONG has shifted decisively towards renewables, Statoil and Shell are still firmly rooted in fossil fuels and other major European oil companies, in common with their U.S. counterparts, have so far steered clear of U.S. offshore wind.

Washington estimates its potential at 2,000 gigawatts (GW), many times anticipated capacity in Europe of 25 GW by 2020, but U.S. federal subsidies expire at the end of 2019 and while they may be renewed by Congress, that is no means certain.

Costs in Europe have fallen to a level that enabled DONG to place a zero subsidy bid earlier this year, but offshore wind farms are still multi-billion dollar projects. A push into deeper U.S. waters and the bigger turbines needed to compete without subsidies will keep price tags high.

Early Days

Trump signed an executive order in March expected to roll back his predecessor Barack Obama’s plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants. There is also no carbon price mechanism across the United States like those in Europe and elsewhere, although there are two regional ones.

U.S. oil companies have some investments in solar and onshore wind, but when it comes to offshore wind, many say they are waiting for a time when government support is not needed.

“Chevron supports renewables that are scalable and can compete without subsidies,” said Morgan Krinklaw, a spokesman for Chevron, which owns an onshore wind farm.

A report from analysts at Lazard in December pegged the cost of U.S. offshore wind at $118 MWh, around twice as much as onshore wind or combined-cycle gas turbines.

Asked to comment on that figure, Statoil, which is building its first floating wind turbine park off the Scottish coast, said costs were coming down and it was working to drive them down further, partly by redeploying existing staff.

The company has about 1,000 employees in the U.S. oil industry, said Stephen Bull, senior vice president of the company’s wind business. “There’s scope for us to plug into our existing oil and gas supply chain,” he added, referring to existing contracts with equipment and service suppliers.

Statoil spokeswoman Elin Isaksen said she did not expect any of its offshore wind projects in the U.S. to have begun construction by 2019 and that it was too early to quote numbers for the New York project, while acknowledging there was, as yet, no supply chain.

“We expect to see – and will help – the supply chain evolve rapidly in step with the broader industry as offshore wind takes hold in the U.S. in the coming years,” she said.

In Virginia, where Spanish utility Iberdrola’s Avangrid has secured an offshore wind licence, a rich marine engineering heritage is expected to help local companies gain work. Smaller European oil and gas firms are also gaining work.

JDR Cable Systems, a British company that has traditionally supplied subsea power lines to oil and gas platforms, earlier this year won a $275 million contract to provide electric cables for the largest U.S. offshore wind farm off the Maryland coast.

“We are well placed to develop business in the U.S. because of the existing relationships we have in Europe,” said John Price, global sales director for renewables at JDR.

State level decision-making on electricity procurement, the next stage of getting offshore wind off the ground, is helping.

Massachusetts, where DONG has secured a seabed license, last year issued a law requiring its utilities to buy up to 1.6 GW of offshore wind power by June 2027, with a tender to be held later this year.

DONG’s North America wind power president Thomas Bostrom said it would bid in the Massachusetts power purchase tender in December and would not comment on costs ahead of that. He too, emphasized his company was playing the long game.

“As excited as we are for offshore wind in the U.S., we are still in the early days of the industry,” Bostrom said.
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Qatar filed a wide-ranging legal complaint at the World Trade Organization on Monday to challenge a trade boycott by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, the director of Qatar’s WTO office, Ali Alwaleed al-Thani, told Reuters.

By formally “requesting consultations” with the three countries, the first step in a trade dispute, Qatar triggered a 60-day deadline for them to settle the complaint or face litigation at the WTO and potential retaliatory trade sanctions.

“We’ve given sufficient time to hear the legal explanations on how these measures are in compliance with their commitments, to no satisfactory result,” al-Thani said.

“We have always called for dialogue, for negotiations, and this is part of our strategy to talk to the members concerned and to gain more information on these measures, the legality of these measures, and to find a solution to resolve the dispute.”

The boycotting states cut ties with Qatar — a major global gas supplier and host to the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East — on June 5, accusing it of financing militant groups in Syria, and allying with Iran, their regional foe. Doha denies these allegations.

The boycotting countries have previously told the WTO that they would cite national security to justify their actions against Qatar, using a controversial and almost unprecedented exemption allowed under the WTO rules.

They said on Sunday they were ready for talks to tackle the dispute, the worst rift between Gulf Arab states in years, if Doha showed willingness to deal with their demands.

The text of Qatar’s WTO complaint cites “coercive attempts at economic isolation” and spells out how they are impeding Qatar’s rights in the trade in goods, trade in services and intellectual property.

The complaints against Saudi Arabia and the UAE run to eight pages each, while the document on Bahrain is six pages.

No reaction

There was no immediate reaction from the three to Qatar’s complaint, which is likely to be circulated at the WTO later this week.

The disputed trade restrictions include bans on trade through Qatar’s ports and travel by Qatari citizens, blockages of Qatari digital services and websites, closure of maritime borders and prohibition of flights operated by Qatari aircraft.

The complaint does not put a value on the trade boycott, and al-Thani declined to estimate how much Qatar could seek in sanctions if the litigation ever reached that stage, which can take two to five years or longer in the WTO system.

“We remain hopeful that the consultations could bear fruit in resolving this,” he said.

The WTO suit does not include Egypt, the fourth country involved in the boycott. Although it has also cut travel and diplomatic ties with Qatar, Egypt did not expel Qatari citizens or ask Egyptians to leave Qatar.

Al-Thani declined to explain why Egypt was not included.

“Obviously all options are available. But we have not raised a consultation request with Egypt yet,” he said.

In its WTO case, Qatar would also draw attention to the impact the boycott was having on other WTO members, he added.

Many trade diplomats say that using national security as a defense risks weakening the WTO by removing a taboo that could enable countries to escape international trade obligations.

Al-Thani said governments had wide discretion to invoke the national security defense but it had to be subject to oversight: “If it is self-regulating, that is a danger to the entire multilateral trading system itself. And we believe the WTO will take that into consideration.”

Aviation group

Qatar also raised the boycott at a meeting of the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on Monday, al-Thani said.

In comments to Qatar-based Al Jazeera television later Monday, Qatar’s transport and information minister said the boycotting countries had discriminated against Doha in violation of an international agreement guaranteeing overflights.

“These countries have used this right arbitrarily and imposed it on aircraft registered only in the \state of Qatar,” Jassim bin Saif al-Sulaiti said.

Qatar in June asked Montreal-based ICAO to resolve the conflict, using a dispute resolution mechanism in the Chicago Convention, a 1944 treaty that created the agency and set basic rules for international aviation.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain said Sunday that they would allow Qatari planes to use air corridors in emergencies.
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The crocodile industry in Australia’s Northern Territory, a new report says, is worth more than four times the previous estimate of US $80 million. Officials hope the findings will give poorer aboriginal communities the chance to develop crocodile farming industries.

The saltwater creature is the world’s largest reptile. In Australia, they were once hunted to the brink of extinction, mainly for their skins, which were used to make durable leather goods and clothes.

They have been a protected species since the early 1970s, and their numbers in Australia’s tropical north have soared.

Economic opportunities

The Northern Territory regional government now sees economic opportunities for indigenous communities, where officials want to see an expansion of crocodile egg collection programs.

The eggs would help to stock crocodile farms owned by aboriginal groups, or traditional owners of land, which would supply reptile skins to big fashion houses including Louis Vuitton and Gucci, as well as supplying crocodile meat.

“We are looking at direct investments into rangers to make sure that we see on country a growth in the crocodile industry, so the harvesting of eggs, the growing of the crocodile locally and remotely, which is a very important and valuable use of traditional country done by traditional owners,” said Michael Gunner, the Northern Territory’s chief minister.

Hunting for sport?

An independent Australian MP, Bob Katter, has said that as crocodile numbers increase, so does the threat to people. He believes big game trophy hunters should be allowed to shoot them for sport. Katter has argued that crocodile safaris would boost the incomes of indigenous communities.

While the Northern Territory government supports crocodile safaris, the final decision rests with Australia’s federal government, which has refused to allow them. Conservationists have insisted that the shooting of iconic animals for profit in Australia is abhorrent and should never be allowed.
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At the Terranova Ranch near Fresno, California, general manager Don Cameron examines grapes in a vineyard that workers flooded last spring.

Winter rains had ended a severe drought and he was engaged in “groundwater recharge,” returning unused water from the North Fork of the Kings River to an underground aquifer, the source of irrigation for this region. Some were skeptical because he was flooding a working vineyard and not a special basin designed for the purpose.

“We’ve been through a five-year drought,” Cameron explained. “Our groundwater has been depleted during that period, and long term, we want to rebuild what we’ve lost.”

Recharging groundwater on fields that are in production was a test, and the vines were closely monitored. They held up well to the thousands of cubic meters of water that flooded the fields and percolated down to nature’s underground storage system.

A research team led by hydrologist Helen Dahlke at the University of California, Davis, wants to test this concept throughout the Central Valley.

California produce

The 50,000-square-kilometer swath of California farmland produces one-quarter of the food for Americans, and 40 percent of their fruits, nuts and vegetables.

The Terranova Farm grows 25 crops, from tomatoes to onions, and Cameron wants to see how other crops respond to the winter flooding. He is expanding the farm’s recharge project with help from a $5 million grant from the California state government, and envisions recharge efforts at farms around the state.

Aquifers are like a banking system, says Graham Fogg, a UC Davis geologist and water expert who says depleted aquifers have three times the available storage capacity of surface reservoirs. “If you’re looking for places to store water, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.

The idea of groundwater banking took root in the 1990s, when water authorities such as the Semitropic Water Storage District near Bakersfield, California, created exchange systems to credit farmers for surplus water returned to canals and reservoirs when it is not needed.

Farmers later use that water instead of pumping water from the ground. The district also floods recharge basins to let the water seep down to replenish the aquifer.

Surface and groundwater are parts of the same system, says district general manager Jason Gianquinto, “so we can take advantage of the wet years and put a lot of water in storage and then fall back on the groundwater in the dry years.”

Groundwater measures

In 2014, California legislators imposed restrictions on pumping groundwater and gave local authorities until 2020 to implement measurements and controls.

The law aims to stop aquifer depletion within two decades and create a record of groundwater use, something already seen in many other Western states.  

Hydrologist Fogg says intervention was needed because Central Valley aquifers have been dramatically lowered in places, which has led to subsidence or sinking of the ground that could potentially lead to the collapse of some aquifers. He notes that aquifer depletion is also a problem in many developing nations, including China and India.

Issues surrounding water in California are politically charged and pit residents of the north against those of the south, cities against farmers, and environmentalists against agricultural interests.

Regulations to regulate the pumping of groundwater are being drawn up by local agencies, and it needs to be done right, says farm manager Cameron, or “you’re going to have fewer jobs. It’s a ripple effect through the economy.”

He says that farmers could face a stark choice of pumping less groundwater or growing fewer crops.

Whatever happens, Cameron says, “it’s going to be a real game-changer for this area when we get to 2020,” when the groundwater management system is in place.
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More Americans applied for jobless aid last week, though the number of people seeking benefits remains near historic lows pointing to a healthy job market.

THE NUMBERS: Weekly unemployment applications rose by 10,000 to 244,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the largest weekly increase since late May. The less volatile four-week average was unchanged at 244,000. The number of people collecting unemployment benefits has fallen 8.3 percent over the past 12 months to 2 million.

THE TAKEAWAY: The job market appears solid as the U.S. enters its ninth year of recovery from the Great Recession. Employers are holding onto workers with the expectation that business will continue to improve. Jobless claims – a close indication of layoffs – have come in below 300,000 for 125 weeks in a row. That’s the longest such stretch since 1970, when the U.S. population was much smaller.

KEY DRIVERS: After a weak start this year, the economy is expected to grow at roughly 2 percent. That would be roughly in line with annual gains during the recovery. Consistent hiring has helped sustain the gradual recovery, although the expansion is starting to show its age as the pace of job gains has slowed this year.

The unemployment rate has fallen to a healthy 4.4 percent. The Labor Department’s report for June showed that U.S. employers added a robust 222,000 jobs, the most in four months and a reassuring sign that businesses may be confident enough to keep hiring despite a slow-growing economy.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it is keeping its key interest rate unchanged at a time when inflation remains undesirably low despite the job market continuing to strengthen.
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China plans to raise the speed of its bullet trains back up to 350 kph (217 mph), state media reported on Thursday, six years after a deadly high-speed rail crash prompted authorities to slow trains across the country.

Trains on China’s high-speed rail network are designed to travel up to 350 kph, but Beijing ordered speeds to be cut to between 250-300 kph in 2011 after over 30 people were killed in a train crash in eastern Zhejiang province.

The Beijing News said the government planned to implement the increased speeds between Beijing and Shanghai in September, which would cut travel time to 4.5 hours from up to 6 hours currently.

China’s newest “Fuxing” bullet trains, which were unveiled in June and are capable of top speeds of 400 kph, will be used for that journey, it said.

China is home to the world’s longest high-speed rail network which competes heavily with domestic airlines. Of China’s 31 provinces and regions, 29 are served by high-speed rail with only the regions of Tibet and Ningxia in the northwest yet to be connected.
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Intel’s more than two decade-long reign as the king of the silicon-based semiconductor is poised to end Thursday when South Korea’s Samsung Electronics elbows the U.S. manufacturer aside to become the leading maker of computer chips.

Samsung reported record-high quarterly profit and sales Thursday. Analysts say it likely nudged aside Intel in the April-June quarter as the leading maker of semiconductors, the computer chips that are as much a staple of the 21st century wired world as crude oil was for the 20th century.

Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of 17.6 trillion won ($15.8 billion) during the April-June period.

Intel, which reports its quarterly earnings later Thursday, is expected to report $14.4 billion in quarterly revenue.

On an annual basis, Samsung’s semiconductor division is widely expected to overtake Intel’s sales this year, analysts at brokerages and market research firms say.

Mobile devices and data are the keys to understanding Samsung’s ascent as the new industry leader, even as its de facto chief is jailed, battling corruption charges, and it recovers from a fiasco over Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that had to be axed last year because they were prone to catch fire.

Manufacturers are packing more and more memory storage capacity into ever smaller mobile gadgets, as increased use of mobile applications, connected devices and cloud computing services drive up demand and consequently prices for memory chips, an area dominated by Samsung.

Just as Saudi Arabia dominates in oil output, Samsung leads in manufacturing the high-tech commodity of memory chips, which enable the world to store the data that fuels the digital economy.

“Data is the new crude oil,” said Marcello Ahn, a Seoul, South Korea-based fund manager at Quad Investment Management.

For over a decade, Samsung and Intel each ruled the market in its own category of semiconductor.

Intel, the dominant supplier of the processors that serve as brains for personal computers, has been the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenue since 1992 when it overtook Japan’s NEC.

Samsung is reaping the rewards of dominating in the memory chip market which is growing much faster than the market for computers that rely on processing units dominated by Intel, said Chung Chang Won, a senior analyst at Nomura Securities.

“Greater use of smartphones and tablet PCs instead of computers is driving the rise of companies like Samsung,” Chung said.

Since 2002, Samsung Electronics has been the largest supplier of memory chips, called DRAMs and NANDs. But for years demand for memory chips was vulnerable to boom and bust cycles depending on output and on demand from the consumer electronics industry. At times, competition was brutal as supply gluts arose.

That changed in 2012 when Japan’s Elpida filed for bankruptcy and was sold to Micron Technology, leaving only three major suppliers of DRAM, a type of memory chip used in servers, computers and handsets: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

Tight supplies coupled with rock solid demand have pushed prices of memory chips higher, with average selling prices of DRAMs and flash memory chips doubling over the past year, bringing South Korea’s memory chip makers record wide profit margins. Both Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to report all-time high profits this year.

Amid this boom that analysts call a memory chip “super cycle,” global semiconductor revenue is forecast to jump 52 percent this year, reaching $400 billion for the first time, according to market research firm Gartner.

For the full year, Intel is expected to post $60 billion in annual sales, according to a market consensus polled by FactSet, a financial data provider. Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business is expected to report 71.9 trillion won ($62.6 billion) in full-year revenues.

Looking ahead, Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than three quarters of the global DRAM sales, are raising their spending on semiconductor capacity and development in anticipation of robust future demand. SK Hynix raised its capital spending to 9.6 trillion won ($8.6 billion) this year, up more than 50 percent from last year. Samsung has said it plans to spend $18 billion in the next four years to expand memory chip production capacity at its South Korean plants.

Not just tech companies but also transport, retail, tourism, food and other industries are seeking ways to better use or manage data, to gain insights on trends or customer preferences and otherwise make money from “big data.” The rising use of vehicle connectivity and the “internet of things” is expected to drive still further demand for the chips that have helped Samsung move ahead, at least for now.
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Amazon is introducing express delivery to Singapore in its first direct effort to tap into surging online shopping in fast-growing Southeast Asia.

The American e-commerce company announced Thursday it will begin operating a distribution facility bigger than a football field in the wealthy island nation. It promises to deliver tens of thousands of types of items within two hours for free, if customers spend at least 40 Singapore dollars ($29.52).

That’s a step up from past international shipping options offered by Amazon, where items sometimes took weeks to arrive.

Amazon is late to capitalize on the region’s rising middle class. The biggest local competitor is Lazada, which is backed by Chinese giant Alibaba and launched in the region in 2012. It operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore.

Henry Low, the Asia Pacific director of Amazon Prime Now, said the company is keen to expand elsewhere in Southeast Asia, a market of more than 600 million people.

“I’m super excited about future possibilities,” Low said.

The number of internet users in Southeast Asia is expected to rise from 260 million now to 480 million by 2020, according to research by Google and state-owned investor Temasek Holdings. It forecasts that the value of e-commerce in the region will soar to 88 billion by 2025 from 5.5 billion in 2015.

“The offline-to-online shift will continue and we strongly believe in the great success of e-commerce [with] the rising middle class in many Southeast Asian markets,” said Hanno Stegmann, chief executive of the Asia Pacific Internet Group, the Asian arm of Rocket Internet, which founded Lazada.

As Amazon gears up in Singapore, Rocket Internet already is looking at other emerging markets. Its current focus is on Daraz, an e-commerce platform aimed at the 400 million people living in Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Still, there’s plenty of room for growth in Southeast Asia, where e-commerce accounts for only 2.6 percent of the retail market, said Sebastien Lamy, a partner at management consultancy Bain & Company.

That’s compared with 15 percent to 25 percent seen in the U.S. and China.

Even if online commerce is just getting started, it’s already having an impact in Singapore, whose glitzy malls are the backbone of the local economy and tourism.

Mall vacancies along Orchard Road and in other areas are rising, abandoned by shoppers like Rahil Bhagat, a content producer.

Rahil started buying video games and accessories online from the U.S. in 2009. Now, he makes 75 percent of his purchases, from car parts to quinoa, online.

“Physical shopping has lost its appeal,” he told the AP. “Even if I visited a brick-and-mortar store, I would be checking online to see if it’s cheaper. It usually is.”

 
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Leaders of the U.S. central bank said Wednesday that they were holding their benchmark lending rate at a low level — in a range between 1 and 1.25 percent — for the time being.  

Federal Reserve officials said in a report issued after their two-day policy meeting that the world’s largest economy was growing at a “moderate” pace and the job market was improving, but that inflation remained a bit low.

The chief economist of Stifel Fixed Income, Lindsey Piegza, said the Fed appeared eager to raise interest rates back to a more “normal” level and might well approve an increase at its next meeting in September. Sara Johnson of IHS Markit said the next rate hike likely would be in December.

Fed officials cut short-term interest rates to nearly zero during the 2007-09 financial crisis to boost investment and growth. They said the recovering economy no longer needed so much help, so they have been gradually raising interest rates and are expected to boost them further in the future.

In a VOA interview, Piegza said keeping rates too low for too long might prompt investors to seek better returns by putting money into excessively risky areas.

During the recession, the Fed also tried to boost growth by cutting long-term interest rates, with a complex program that involved purchasing huge amounts of securities.  

Fed officials said they would keep these assets for the time being but indicated they would begin selling them off “relatively soon.” Fed officials have said they will take care to reduce these assets in a gradual way that will not disrupt markets.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday urged federal lawmakers to raise the federal debt limit before they leave Washington for their August recess to avoid increased interest costs to taxpayers and market uncertainty about a potential default.

Mnuchin told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that maintaining U.S. creditworthiness was of “utmost importance” and that the United States must pay its bills on time.

“As I’ve suggested in the past, based upon our best estimate at the time, we do have funding through September, but I have urged Congress to take this up before they leave for the recess,” Mnuchin said.
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Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and major supplier to Apple Inc., has announced plans to build a $10 billion plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, to make LCD display screens.

The company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry and which supplies Apple with screens for the iPhone, made the announcement Wednesday as company executives paid a visit to U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump said at the meeting that the Foxconn commitment was a result of his election win. And, in fact, just two days after Trump was inaugurated, Foxconn Chief Executive Terry Gou told reporters his company plans to invest $7 billion in a U.S. factory to make computer displays.

 “If I didn’t get elected, he definitely would not be spending $10 billion,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We are going to have some very, very magnificent decades.”

In addition to Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who said the project will be the largest economic development project in Wisconsin history, were at the White House event.

Foxconn has pledged to invest $10 billion over the next four years to build a factory that will create a projected 3,000 jobs with a potential to add 10,000 more, the company said in a statement.

But Foxconn made a similar pledge for a factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 2013, promising it would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a plant to be built there. The deal was widely praised by state and local officials, but the factory was never built.

The Washington Post reported that Gou made similar announcements about planned projects in Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Brazil. In some cases, projects have begun, but fallen far short of the expansive results Gou promised.

Foxconn also has a history of worker safety issues and labor unrest. The company got unwanted international attention in 2010 when, between March and May of that year, 10 workers at Foxconn’s Shenzhen committed suicide. Foxconn’s Shanxi site was the site of a four-hour worker riot in September 2012 that involved some 2,000 people. It was eventually quelled by security personnel.

Apple has defended its supplier, but an audit it requested by the Fair Labor Association found that Foxconn workers were subjected to forced overtime, frequent accidents and unrealistic production quotas.

VOA’s Jim Randle contributed to this report.
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The European Union warned on Wednesday that it was ready to act within days to counter proposed new U.S. sanctions on Russia, saying they would harm the bloc’s energy security.

Sanctions legislation overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday has angered EU officials: they see it as breaking transatlantic unity in the West’s response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Brussels also fears the new sanctions will harm European firms with connections to Russia, and oil and gas projects on which the EU is dependent.

“The U.S. bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests,” EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement issued after a meeting at which European commissioners were united in their views, according to a senior EU official.

“If our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. ‘America First’ cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last,” he said, mentioning President Donald Trump’s guiding slogan.

A EU document prepared for the commissioners, seen by Reuters, laid out the EU’s plans to seek “demonstrable reassurances” that the White House would not use the bill to target EU interests.

The bloc, it says, will also prepare to use an EU regulation allowing it to defend companies against the application of extraterritorial measures by the United States.

If diplomacy fails, Brussels plans to file a complaint at the World Trade Organization. “In addition, the preparation of a substantive response that would deter the U.S. from taking measures against EU companies could be considered,” it says.

However, most measures taken by Brussels would require approval from all 28 EU member governments, which could expose potential differences in individual nations’ relations with Moscow and Washington.

Despite changes to the U.S. bill that took into account some EU concerns, Brussels said the legislation could still hinder upkeep of the gas pipeline network in Russia that feeds into Ukraine and supplies over a quarter of EU needs. The EU says it could also hamper projects crucial to its energy diversification goals, such as the Baltic Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.

The new sanctions target the disputed Nord Stream 2 project for a new pipeline running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. But the EU note says: “the impact would in reality be much wider.”

A list prepared by the EU executive, seen by Reuters, shows eight projects including those involving oil majors Anglo-Dutch Shell, BP and Italy’s Eni that risk falling foul of the U.S. measures.

Voicing frustration at the fraying in the joint Western approach to Moscow, Juncker said “close coordination among allies” was key to ensuring that curbs on business with the Russian energy, defense and financial sectors, imposed in July 2014, are effective.

EU sources said Juncker told Commissioners the risk to EU interests was collateral damage of a U.S. domestic fight between Trump and U.S. lawmakers.

It was unclear how quickly the U.S. bill would reach the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto. The bill amounts to a rebuke of Trump by requiring him to obtain lawmakers’ permission before easing any sanctions on Moscow.

Rejecting the legislation — which would potentially stymie his wish for improved relations with Moscow — would carry a risk that his veto could be overridden by lawmakers.

Industry concerns

European energy industry sources voiced alarm at the potentially wide-ranging damage of the new U.S. measures.

“This is pretty tough,” one industry source told Reuters.

“We are working with EU officials to see what safeguards can be anticipated to protect our investment and give us certainty.”

Five Western firms are partnered with Russia’s Gazprom in Nord Stream 2: German’s Wintershall and Uniper, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s Engie.

But EU officials warn the U.S. measures would also hit plans for the LNG plant on the Gulf of Finland in which Shell is partnering with Gazprom.

The EU document shows they might jeopardize Eni’s 50 percent stake in the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia to Turkey as well as the CPC pipeline, carrying Kazakh oil to the Black Sea, involving European groups BG Overseas Holdings, Shell and Eni.

It further warns that BP would be forced to halt some activities with Russian energy major Rosneft.
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 Amazon has some job openings. Lots of them.

The company said Wednesday that it’s looking to fill more than 50,000 positions across the U.S.

It’s planning to make thousands of offers on the spot on Aug. 2, when it opens the doors to potential hires at 10 Amazon.com Inc. shipping sites.

There will be more than 10,000 part-time jobs available at sorting centers, and some supporting and managerial positions.

The labor market is growing tight with back-to-school and holiday shopping around the corner. Others will be competing for those same hires.

The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, near a 16-year low, yet the average hourly pay rose just 2.5 percent in the past year. The last time unemployment was this low, wages were rising at roughly a 4 percent rate.

 
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Promising startups in the United States receive a shred of the billions of dollars investors pump into them when led by women, a major study found Tuesday.

Between 2011 and 2013, companies with a female CEO received $1.5 billion of the $51 billion that venture capital investors poured into those they deemed promising, or a mere 3 percent of available dollars, according to the study by U.S. researchers.

They also found that all-male teams were four times more likely to win venture funding than teams counting at least one woman among them.

Venture capital is money invested in small businesses thought to have high-return potential.

The findings published in the journal Venture Capital confirmed a pattern of historically low levels of venture funds flowing into businesses led by women.

A prior milestone study, the Diana Project, had found that venture capital injected into female-led companies never exceeded 4 percent of total funds invested between the early 1950s and the turn of the century.

In the new study, researchers examined nearly 7,000 U.S. companies that received venture capital between 2011 and 2013. They then identified companies with women on their executive teams.

‘Not in the right network’

Just why female-led companies were recipients of less venture capital raised questions about the industry’s inner workings, said co-author Candida Brush, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Massachusetts.

“What is the disconnect?” Brush said in a phone interview.

“My hypothesis on the disconnect is that women are not in the right network [or] they’re either being put through a tighter screen,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The report’s authors, who include other Babson College professors and an entrepreneurial consultant, found there was no significant performance difference between companies whose CEOs were women and those whose leaders were men.

The ratio of male to female startup entrepreneurs is fairly equal, according to the 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Global Report.

But the venture capital industry in the United States, where most leading venture capital firms are located, is 92 percent male, said Brush.

“Those are things that have to be looked at,” she said.

Earlier this month, prominent Silicon Valley investor Dave McClure resigned from his position as a partner at the venture capital firm 500 Startups following allegations of sexual harassment.

McClure’s resignation came after entrepreneur Sarah Kunst accused the investor of misconduct in a New York Times story.
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U.S. President Donald Trump named on Tuesday two possible candidates to run the Federal Reserve over the next few years: current Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Yellen, whose four-year term expires in February, “is in the running, absolutely,” to be renominated, Trump was quoted as saying. In addition, Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president who is now director of the National Economic Council, “certainly would be in the mix,” he said.

Trump said he probably would make the announcement at the end of the year, the paper reported. He was also quoted saying that there are “two or three” other contenders, though he declined to name them.

Any Fed nominee would need Senate confirmation.

Trump’s comments could sharpen speculation over who will take the helm of the world’s most influential central bank, which is leading a global shift toward tighter monetary policy.

Earlier this month, Politico reported that Yellen was increasingly unlikely to serve another term, while Cohn was the top candidate.

Cohn, a Democrat who is managing the White House’s search for candidates, did not work on Trump’s campaign and only got to know him after the November election. “I’ve gained great respect for Gary working with him,” the paper quoted Trump as saying on Tuesday.

Yellen took over from Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in February 2014 with the U.S. economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis still on shaky ground. As unemployment has since fallen, she has overseen four interest rate hikes and aims for at least one more before the end of this year.

“I like her. I like her demeanor. I think she’s done a good job,” Trump was quoted as saying. “I’d like to see rates stay low. She’s historically been a low-interest-rate person.”

During last year’s presidential election campaign, Trump had accused the Fed of keeping rates low to help President Barack Obama, saying the Fed had created a “false economy” and that rates should change.

In an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump did not rule out a second term for Yellen.
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Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has committed to build three big manufacturing plants in the United States, the Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. President Donald Trump as saying.

“I spoke to [Cook], he’s promised me three big plants — big, big, big,” Trump told the Journal in an interview on Tuesday.

Trump didn’t elaborate on where those plants would be located or when they would be built, the paper reported.

Cook said in May that Apple planned to create a $1 billion fund to invest in U.S. companies that perform advanced manufacturing. He also said the company intended to fund programs that could include teaching people how to write computer code to create apps.

Apple came under fire from Trump during his campaign because it makes most of its products in China.

“We’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries,” Trump had said in a speech in January last year.

Apple, on its part, had been making disclosures to highlight how it had been contributing to job creation in the United States.

Cook said in February that Apple spent $50 billion in 2016 with its U.S. suppliers.

The world’s largest company by market valuation had also claimed that it created 2 million jobs in the United States, 80,000 of which are directly at Apple and the rest coming from suppliers and developers for the company’s app ecosystem.

Trump’s comments on Tuesday were some of the first he has made regarding Apple’s manufacturing since assuming the presidency.

“I said you know, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success,” the Journal quoted Trump as saying.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump also said that Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, plans to build a big plant in the United States and is “strongly considering” putting it in Wisconsin, the Journal reported.

Foxconn said last month it plans to invest more than $10 billion in a display-making factory in the United States.
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Colombian officials received $27 million in bribes from Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, more than double previously thought, as the company sought to win a road-building contract, Colombia’s attorney general said on Tuesday.

As fallout from a massive corruption scandal continues to bite Odebrecht, Attorney General Nestor Humberto Martinez said bribes paid for the contract to build a 528-km (328-mile) highway were much more than the $11 million originally estimated.

Martinez said criminal charges for money laundering would be filed against two Brazilian citizens, one Portuguese and three Colombians. He will also ask the Supreme Court of Justice to investigate five congressional lawmakers.

Seven people, including a former senator and an ex-vice minister of transport, have been jailed for involvement in the corruption scandal.

Odebrecht’s bribes in Colombia spilled over into the election campaigns of President Juan Manuel Santos, who in March acknowledged that his 2010 election campaign received illegal payments. He said he had no knowledge at the time of the payments.

Odebrecht allegedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in association with infrastructure projects in 12 countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela, between 2002 and 2016.
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Peruvian authorities have launched a major crackdown on modern slavery after a warehouse fire in Lima last month killed four workers, including two who were trapped inside a padlocked container on the roof.

Officials said they had shut down six furniture factories in the capital on Monday in an operation to root out forced labor and exploitation, following raids by prosecutors, police and labor inspectors.

Last month’s toxic blaze which tore through several warehouses in the city center highlighted labor exploitation in the capital and prompted calls for better protection of workers’ rights and more labor inspections.

President visits site of blaze

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said the victims were “practically slave workers” when he visited the site following the June 22 blaze.

Peru’s attorney general said on Monday there would be more raids on factories and warehouses to prevent further “tragic accidents.”

Another eight operations are planned this year in the wider Lima region and the north of the country where forced labor has been linked to the fishing industry.

Prosecutors said the furniture factories targeted in Monday’s raids were operating without a licence, health and safety was “inadequate” and fire exits had been blocked, putting workers at risk.

Over 200,000 trapped in slavery

An estimated 200,500 people are trapped in modern day slavery in Peru, according to rights group The Walk Free Foundation, the third highest number in Latin America after Mexico and Colombia.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), which estimates there are 21 million people in forced labour worldwide, welcomed the new labor inspections in Peru.

“The tragic fire was shocking. People were outraged,” said Teresa Torres, coordinator of ILO’s program against forced labor in Peru.

“Having this kind of task force carrying out inspections is progress and an important response from the government,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Need for ‘justice’

Public prosecutors have launched an investigation into possible human trafficking following the fire.

“What’s important in this case is that there’s justice, and as such those people responsible are punished,” Torres said, adding those found guilty could face up to 25 years in prison.

Across Peru, forced labor is more commonly linked to the illegal logging industry and illegal gold mines in the Amazon jungle. Girls are also trafficked to these areas for sex work.

Forced labor widespread

Torres said the warehouse blaze showed forced labor is more widespread than many Peruvians believe.

“This is more evidence to show that forced labour doesn’t just happen in … remote areas of the Amazon, but it could be happening right in the center of the capital too,” Torres said.

“We have information that forced labor is also happening in the north of Peru, in other sectors such as the shrimp fishing industry.”

She said victims of forced labor were often hidden from view, working on fishing vessels, in small clandestine workshops, commercial agriculture or private homes.
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Following a lack of agreement at the U.S. China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue in Washington last week, analysts say they expect the Trump administration to impose stiff penalties on Chinese steel and other imports. They are also predicting the U.S. might go a step further and start questioning some of the rules of the World Trade Organization, which it regards as being unduly favorable to Beijing.

“It appears that not much was accomplished. Negotiations were deadlocked,” said Charles W. Boustany Jr., a retired U.S. Congressman and Counselor at The National Bureau of Asian Research. “I believe the Trump Administration is intent on imposing tariffs and other restrictions on steel imports”.

The dialogue mechanism was created last April after talks between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping as a means to resolve old sticking points, including a huge trade imbalance of $347 billion that favors Beijing. But the first meeting, which was co-chaired by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang, merely helps to highlight the stiff differences between the two sides.

At the heart of the differences were Chinese steel exports and the massive trade deficit. The U.S. feels cheap steel exports are resulting in job losses, a view echoed regularly in Europe.

Boustany said the Trump administration would impose controls on steel imports using national security as the reason. Similar views are being expressed by several experts.

” I do expect in some point in the near future for the Trump administration to impose penalties on steel imports from China and perhaps a few other countries justifying those limits on national security grounds,” Scott Kennedy, Deputy Director, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Washington based Center for Strategic & International Studies, said.

Rejecting WTO rules

He said the U.S. government may go further and start reviewing its commitment to some rules of the World Trade Organization.

“I think during the last five years, China’s economic policies, the level of innovation by the government in different industries, its promotion of high-tech in a discriminatory way has widened the gap between Chinese practices and its commitments (to WTO). And given China’s size, that had a big affect on the global economy, including on the U.S. and its high-tech industries,” he said.

Kennedy also said, “I think that has generated anxiety and doubts in the United States about the WTO’s rules and whether those rules were good enough to constrain Chinese trade practices.”

After the talks, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said the world’s two biggest economies need to cooperate and warned that “confrontation will immediately damage the interests of both.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin blamed the trade gap between the two countries on “Chinese government intervention in its economy.”

Trump’s surprise

“The Chinese basically wanted to bring Trump and his team back on the mainstream of U.S.-China bilateral dialogue on economic and trade cooperation the way it used to be during the Obama period. Even Bush did the same thing,” said Sourabh Gupta, Institute for China – America Studies in Washington. “Trump came with so much radicalism on trade issues that they just want to maintain a workable format, which is productive and result oriented.”

Paul T. Haenle, Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, said Trump’s approach to trade has completely thrown China’s long-term economic plans off the rails. He added that Beijing is not being helped with signs of rising protectionism in Europe.

“I think the Chinese side has been somewhat surprised by the toughness of the Trump administration, particularly on White House priority areas like trade (steel) and North Korea,” he said.

China recently began importing U.S. beef and took other measures to placate Washington. But these items are not enough to placate the new administration in Washington, Haenle said.

“The new U.S. administration has come away with a more realistic sense of the limits of Chinese cooperation, particularly in the lead up to the 19th Party Congress,” he said.

Analysts said the ruling Communist Party is unlikely to make too many concessions and appear weak in its negotiations with Washington ahead of the crucial Communist Party meeting later this year.

 
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A Ghanaian teenager wanted to develop a video search engine that could challenge the dominance of YouTube. As Faith Lapidus reports, he’s well on his way.
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From recycled paint to rented jeans, businesses large and small are looking at ways to cut waste, use fewer resources and help create what has been coined a “circular economy” in which raw materials and products are repeatedly reused.

Unilever, Renault, Google and Nike are some of the companies starting to move towards a circular business model, experts say.

Cities too – including London, Amsterdam and Paris – are looking at how they can shift to a circular economy, which means reusing products, parts and materials, producing no waste and pollution, and using fewer new resources and energy.

London’s Waste and Recycling Board last month published a road map for how the city as a whole could make the shift, thereby cutting emissions and creating jobs.

“As London grows it faces unprecedented pressure on its land and its resources. If we are to meet these challenges, moving London to a circular economy will be vital,” Shirley Rodrigues, London’s deputy mayor for environment and energy, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The city would likely need less land and infrastructure to manage waste, freeing up space for housing and saving up to 5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) in infrastructure costs. The shift could generate 40,000 jobs, including 12,500 new jobs across London, she said.

It would also cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is widely accepted that the circular economy has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions … through using less resources to make products in the first place and releasing less gases from energy generation, for example,” Rodrigues said.

“This can also be achieved through using resources more efficiently by extending the life of products and through the sharing of goods,” she added.

PwC, which offers audit, tax and consulting services, is going circular, and offering advice about this to its clients, who number 26,000 in Britain with more overseas.

The company uses cooking fat from its canteens and other kitchens to fuel its offices, it re-uses and remanufactures office furniture where possible and donates the rest to charity, and when its computers and phones need upgrading – a frequent occurrence – they send them to another company which resells them.

‘Walk the talk’

Bridget Jackson, PwC’s head of corporate sustainability, is looking at everything from office carpets to recycled wall paint to see how to cut the company’s waste and use of resources. Even worn out company uniforms are taken apart and reused.

“There are big cost savings, there’s reputational benefits from being responsible, and it is a topic which is of a lot of interest to our employees,” Jackson said.

“We are often giving advice to clients about how they can make their operations more efficient and be more sustainable, and we try to walk the talk,” she said.

Some companies are looking for ways to become less reliant on raw materials because they fluctuate in price and become harder to source.

That can mean recycling aluminum for cars, old trainers for sportswear, and others are looking at reusing parts.

Many have developed ways to lease products – including jeans, lighting and photocopiers – to customers who return them when they want to upgrade.

London authorities are hoping that architects will increasingly design buildings which can be taken apart at the end of their lives and the materials and components used again.

“I think increasingly, everything that we do will be seen through the lens of a circular economy,” said Wayne Hubbard, chief operating officer of the London Waste and Recycling Board.

Experts say change is happening in pockets.

“We’re still in the early stages where you see some businesses, some cities, national governments playing around with these ideas and … starting to make moves towards a circular economy,” said Ashima Sukhdev, head of governments and cities at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “I’m very hopeful that London will become a circular economy.”
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More steps to free up trade globally have been taken since Donald Trump was elected than measures to restrict it, the World Trade Organization said, despite concerns his administration would introduce a raft of punitive rules to protect U.S. jobs.

The WTO’s global monitoring report, debated at a trade policy review on Monday, covers October 2016 to May 2017.

“The report shows an encouraging decrease in the rate of new trade-restrictive measures put in place — hitting the lowest monthly average since the financial crisis,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said in a statement.

The semi-annual report, largely coinciding with the period since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, showed that the 164 WTO members put 74 new restrictive measures in place, including tariffs, customs regulations and quantitative restrictions, with an impact of $49 billion of trade.

At the same time, they took 80 steps to help trade, such as cutting tariffs or simplifying customs procedures, affecting a much bigger $183 billion of trade.

Restrictions peaked in 2011

Trade-restrictive steps peaked at 22 per month in 2011, roughly twice the level in the period of the latest report.

During the period under review, the United States introduced new restrictions including a provisional duty on Canadian softwood lumber, suspecting it of being unfairly priced.

It also brought in “Buy America” provisions to ensure that, subject to some conditions, state loan funds are not used for water infrastructure projects unless all the steel used in the project was produced in the United States, the WTO report said.

Liberalized trade

Trump had also liberalized trade by scrapping broadband privacy rules, allowing Internet service providers to commericalize user data without explicit permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the report said.

China, routinely the WTO member most often accused of unfair pricing and illegal subsidies, had introduced new restrictions with a cybersecurity law, requiring data generated in China to be stored in China, and a film production law, requiring Chinese movies get two-thirds of the screen time at Chinese cinemas.

But it also eased approval requirements for foreign-owned banks to invest in Chinese banks and to supply some investment banking services in China, the WTO report said.
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