The last mass-produced car designed and built in Australia rolled off General Motors Co.’s production line in the industrial city of Adelaide on Friday as the nation reluctantly bid farewell to its auto manufacturing industry.

GM Holden Ltd., an Australian subsidiary of the U.S. automotive giant, built its last car almost 70 years after it created Australia’s first, the FX Holden, in 1948.

Since then, an array of carmakers including Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Leyland have built and closed manufacturing plants in Australia.

Clocking out for last time

After the last gleaming red Holden VF Commodore, a six-cylinder rear-wheel drive sedan, left the plant in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth that had grown over decades to provide its workforce, 955 factory workers will clock off the last time

“It’s pretty tragic really that we’ve let go probably one of the best cars around the world,” an auto painter who identified himself as Kane told reporters.

The 36-year-old was worked at Holden for 17 years and starts a new job with an air conditioner manufacturer Monday. But he knows many other former Holden employees won’t find jobs so quickly.

Dozens of Holden enthusiasts gathered outside the factory, bringing with them generations of Holdens dating back to favored FJ models that were built between 1953 and 1956.

South Australia state Premier Jay Weatherill said car manufacturing was seminal to the state’s industrial know-how.

“It has provided the backbone for our manufacturing capability in this state,” Weatherill told reporters. “It’s given us … the capacity to imagine ourselves as an advanced manufacturing state.”

​Iconic Australian brand

Holden is an iconic Australian brand and has been a source of national pride for generations.

The V8 Holden Commodore has sold in the United States since 2013 as the Chevrolet SS.

The brand will survive although Holdens will all now be imported from GM plants around the globe.

Holden retains design and engineering teams, a global design studio, a local testing ground, 1,000 employees and a 200-strong national dealer network.

The brand that became known as “Australia’s own car,” accounted for more than half the new cars registered in Australia by 1958.

The reasons behind the demise of Australian auto manufacturing are numerous.

The first Holden cars were built in an era of high Australian tariffs and preferential trade with former colonial master Britain, which encouraged global carmakers to set up local factories to increase market share.

Australian import tariffs have since tumbled through bilateral free trade deals with car manufacturing countries like the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

The Holden workers’ union blames a lack of government support through subsidies for GM’s decision to end manufacturing.

There had been debate about whether the 7 billion Australian dollars ($5.5 billion) that the government spent on the car industry in subsidies since 2001 was worth the jobs that it created.

“We’re not just losing a car, we’re not just losing an industrial capability. We’re losing an icon and that is a tragedy,” Labor lawmaker Nick Champion, who represents the Holden factory region, told reporters Thursday.
…

Hundreds of workers streamed through dark streets, blocking an entrance to an Apple iPhone supplier’s factory in eastern China to protest unpaid bonuses and factory reassignments, two witnesses and China Labor Watch, a New York based non-profit group, said Thursday.

The protest Wednesday night at Jabil Inc.’s Green Point factory in Wuxi city prompted Apple to launch an investigation and vow to redress the payment discrepancies. “We are requiring Jabil to send a comprehensive employee survey to ascertain where gaps exist in payment and they must create an action plan that ensures all employees are paid for the promised bonus immediately,” Apple said Thursday in an email to China Labor Watch.

The incident highlights the complexity of overseeing global supply chains that can involve hundreds of manufacturers and subcontractors, as well as third-party labor brokers — and their subcontractors — that are tasked with recruiting workers for those factories. Companies differ in the amount of responsibility they are willing to take on. Apple stepped up oversight and disclosure following a spate of negative reports about worker suicides and injuries at suppliers.

After Tim Cook took over as chief executive, in 2011, Apple began publicly identifying top suppliers. It also publishes annual audits detailing labor and human rights performance throughout its global web of suppliers. Apple said it did comprehensive audits of 705 sites last year and documented significant improvements in compliance with its supplier code of conduct.

“About 600 workers went protesting for failing to get their bonus,” a worker who asked that only his family name, Zhang, be published for fear of retribution, said Thursday. He said that like many of his colleagues, he was promised a bonus of up to 7,000 yuan ($1,056) if he stayed for 45 days when he signed up for the job through a labor broker. “It has already been over three months but I still haven’t got the money,” he said.

Tu Changli, a security guard at Jabil’s Green Point factory, said a labor broker promised him 2,000 yuan ($302) if he stayed for two months. “I didn’t get it at all,” he said. He also said he saw hundreds of workers protesting. The company he said he works for, Wu Tai Security Co., declined comment.

A spokeswoman for U.S.-based Jabil, Lydia Huang, disputed those accounts, saying only 20 to 40 employees were actually protesting and the rest were night-shift workers trying to enter the factory. “As long as they can present evidence of promises by brokers we will help them to get paid,” she said.

Jabil, in a statement late Thursday, said it was “committed to ensuring every employee is paid fairly and on time.”

Tensions had been running high at Jabil’s Green Point factory. Tu, the security guard, said he saw a worker talked down from the edge of a rooftop in late September. And Zhang said that on Sept. 30, he saw a security guard hit a worker with a wooden stick so hard the stick broke.

Apple in its email to China Labor Watch said both incidents had to do with disputes with security guards, not underpayment, and added that it was working with Jabil “to make sure their security guards are properly trained to avoid and de-escalate situations.”

The current iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus had a 2 percent share of the iOS device market nearly a month after their launch, significantly lagging the 5 percent share grabbed by the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus at a similar point last year, according to Localytics, a mobile engagement platform that analyzes iPhone adoption rates. Analysts attribute iPhone 8 sluggishness to the pending release of the iPhone X.

 
…

Missouri officials were submitting a bid Thursday for Amazon’s second headquarters that would involve an innovation corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis rather than a single location in one of the state’s major metropolitan areas.

 

That’s proposal is in addition to individual applications submitted by Kansas City and St. Louis, two of a number of North American metropolitan areas vying to become the company’s second home. Amazon in September opened the search for a second headquarters and promised to spend more than $5 billion on the site. The Seattle-based company says it would bring up to 50,000 jobs.

 

Missouri Chief Operating Officer Drew Erdmann said the state’s bid could be aided if it succeeds in landing a high-speed Hyperloop track connecting the cities.

 

 
…

The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since Richard Nixon was president.

THE NUMBERS: The Labor Department said Thursday that claims for jobless aid dropped by 22,000 to 222,000, fewest since March 1973. The less volatile four-week average slid by 9,500 to 248,250, lowest since late August.

 

The overall number of Americans collecting unemployment checks dropped to 1.89 million, lowest since December 1973 and down nearly 9 percent from a year ago.

 

THE TAKEAWAY: Unemployment claims are a proxy for layoffs. The low level suggests that employers are confident enough in the economy to hold onto workers.

 

The unemployment rate last month hit a 16-year low 4.2 percent. Employers cut 33,000 jobs in September — the first monthly drop in nearly seven years — but only because Hurricanes Harvey and Irma rattled the economies of Texas and Florida; hiring is expected to bounce back.

 

KEY DRIVERS: The economic impact of Harvey and Irma is fading; claims dropped in Texas and Florida as more people returned to work. But the Labor Department said that Hurricanes Irma and Maria have disrupted the ability of people to file claims in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

 

 
…

In Iraq, young entrepreneurs cash-in on a food trend popularized in the West. Trucks serving American-style fast food serve meals on-the-go and opportunities for those hungry for work. Arash Arabasadi reports.
…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday, driven by a jump in IBM after it hinted at a return to revenue growth.

The Dow hit 22,000 on Aug. 2, only 54 trading days earlier and roughly half the time it took the index to move from 21,000 to 22,000. This marks the fourth time this year the Dow has reached a 1,000-point milestone.

“Retail investors continue to pour into the marketplace, and with each headline about a new record, and especially round numbers like that, people tend to feel like they’re missing out and you kind of suck more people into the market,” said Ian Winer, head of equities at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.

“Ultimately, the only way you’re going to top is by getting everybody all in. And we’re getting close.”

Investors globally pulled $33.7 billion from U.S. equity funds during the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters’ Lipper research unit. The funds are on course to post net outflows for the full year.

Shares of IBM, which beat expectations on revenue, jumped 8.9 percent and accounted for about 90 points of the day’s 160 point-gain in the blue-chip index.

Solid earnings, stronger economic growth and hopes that President Donald Trump may be able to make progress on tax cuts have helped the market rally this year.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also hit record closing highs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 160.16 points, or 0.7 percent, to end at 23,157.6, the S&P 500 gained 1.9 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,561.26 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.56 point, or 0.01 percent, to 6,624.22.

“Today the catalyst is clearly IBM … which appears to have turned the corner. It gave the Dow the boost to stay over 23,000,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

The Dow had briefly surpassed the all-time peak on Tuesday but closed just shy of it.

The financial index jumped 0.6 percent, led by bank stocks recovering from recent post-earnings losses. Bullish calls by brokerages helped to support the bank shares.

Bank shares had run up ahead of recent results, which resulted in some selling following the news, Krosby said.

Investors await news on Trump’s decision on the Federal Reserve chair position. The White House said Wednesday Trump will announce his decision in the “coming days.”

Abbott rose 1.3 percent after the company’s profit beat estimates on strong sales in its medical devices business.

After the bell, shares of eBay fell 4 percent following its results.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.09-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.32-to-1 ratio favored advancers. About 5.6 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 5.9 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.

 
…

Every month, Fatma Ahmed sends $200 of the earnings she makes in London to her family in Somalia.

“It’s for daily life. For rent, for buying grocery things, to live over there. Because actually in Somalia, that much we do not have,” she said.

Remittances from overseas diaspora constitute a vital part of the economy of many developing nations, none more so than Somalia, where the inflows add up to more than foreign aid and investment combined. However, analysts warn that the industry is poorly understood by regulators and banks, putting the welfare of millions of people at risk.

The two million Somalis living overseas send an estimated $1.3 billion back home every year. With no formal banking system in Somalia, most of the diaspora use remittance services.

Technology makes that possible, says Abdirashid Duale, CEO of Dahabshiil, one of Africa’s biggest remittance services.

“Now, it is so instant, where we have the latest technology, with the internet, secure channels that we can use to send money back home,” Duale said. “Or we use mobiles … smartphones, technology where it will help us to deliver money quickly, but less costly. Technology is supporting us also with the compliance issue.”

Remittance companies rely on global banks to route the money, and those banks must comply with regulations on money laundering and the financing of crime and terrorism.

Citing those concerns, many banks have chosen to withdraw from the market. Such a move is unnecessary, says remittance industry expert Laura Hammond of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“Very often, it is not based on any kind of empirical evidence that shows that money is going into the wrong hands,” Hammond said. “The fear is just there is a conflict in Somalia, there’s the al-Shabab movement. And so there is a problem in a sense, a real precarious nature of the Somali remittance industry.”

The industry received a high-profile boost last month as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million using the remittance firm Dahabshiil, along with mobile phone companies Somtel and eDahab, with the money transferred “live” to 1,000 families suffering the drought in Somalia.

The technology is moving fast. However, the cooperation of the global banking system remains key, and the remittance industry wants regulators to do more to support this lifeline. 
…

Remittances from overseas diaspora constitute a vital part of the economy of many developing nations, none more so than Somalia, where the inflows add up to more than foreign aid and investment combined. But analysts warn the industry is poorly understood by regulators and banks — and its precarious nature puts the welfare of millions of people at risk. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

A Geneva trade official says China and Taiwan have joined many U.S. allies including Israel at the World Trade Organization to express concerns over a Trump administration executive order that seeks to maximize use of American-made goods, products and materials in government procurement. 

The 10 WTO members, also including the European Union, Canada and Japan, urged Washington to continue honoring the trade body’s “Government Procurement Agreement” adopted by Washington and 45 other countries — mostly EU states — that aims to promote fairer, freer access to government contracts. 

The official said the countries took issue Wednesday with the “Buy American and Hire American” executive order signed in April that lays out a policy aimed to “maximize” use of U.S.-made items in government procurement and assistance awards.
…

Trade ministers from the United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up a contentious fourth round of talks this week, aimed at modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the Trump administration’s proposals to reshape NAFTA have some trade analysts wondering if the 23-year-old trade pact can survive. Mil Arcega has more.
…

Canada’s foreign minister says there are “unconventional” and “troubling” proposals on the table as Canada, the United States and Mexico seek to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The fourth round of talks on revising the 23-year-old NAFTA deal wrapped up Tuesday, with more talks set for Mexico next month and additional discussions early next year.

Canada’s Chrystia Freeland said proposals created “challenges,” and “turn back the clock” on NAFTA. Failure could threaten jobs across North America, she said. In addition, ending NAFTA could hurt the North American teamwork that produces cars efficiently and makes them competitive with products from other regions, she added.

Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said it was clear from the beginning that the talks would be tough and “we still have a lot of work to do.” He also said all nations “have limits.”

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the United States faces a large trade deficit, and blamed NAFTA for the loss of manufacturing jobs. He expressed frustration that his negotiating partners were not willing to make changes to reduce those deficits. 

NAFTA was harshly criticized by candidate Donald Trump, and press reports say Washington has since proposed renegotiating the deal every five years, requiring more U.S.-made content in automobiles, and scaling back a mechanism to resolve disputes. Trump has blamed what he called poorly negotiated agreements for the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs that hurt the U.S. economy. He promised to drive harder bargains in trade deals. 

The Brookings Institution’s Dany Bahar said trade deficits are not the cause of job losses, and called the U.S. focus misplaced. He said NAFTA’s dispute resolution mechanism and some other provisions could use some updating. However, he told VOA that NAFTA is closer to collapse than in previous rounds of talks. Such a collapse would mean U.S.-made cars would become more expensive and less competitive on world markets, likely making the United States the “biggest loser” if the trade deal fails, he said.
…

U.S. homebuilders are feeling more optimistic than they have in months, looking past a recent slowdown in new home sales and the risk of rising labor and materials costs following hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index released Tuesday rose four points to 68 this month. That’s the highest reading since May.

Readings above 50 indicate more builders see sales conditions as good rather than poor. The index has remained above 60 since September of 2016.

According to the latest survey by FactSet, the index easily exceeded expectations for a reading of 64 among industry analysts.

Readings gauging builders’ view of single-family home sales now and over the next six months rose from September. A measure of traffic by prospective buyers also rose.

The deadly hurricanes that swept into Texas, Louisiana and Florida raised concerns among builders that that their new-home projects could be delayed and face rising construction and materials costs as the focus turned to rebuilding properties that were flooded or damaged by the fierce winds and rainstorms. Homebuilders were grappling with a shortage of skilled construction labor before the hurricanes hit.

Those concerns remain, but builders appear to be drawing encouragement from the thin supply of homes on the market, which has helped lift sales of new homes ahead of last year’s pace.

“It is encouraging to see builder confidence return to the high 60s levels we saw in the spring and summer,” said Robert Dietz, the NAHB’s chief economist. “With a tight inventory of existing homes and promising growth in household formation, we can expect the new home market continue to strengthen at a modest rate in the months ahead.”

A shortage of homes for sale coupled with rising prices has turned affordability into a challenge for many would-be buyers.

Sales of new U.S. homes slid 3.4 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 560,000. It was the second straight monthly decline, though sales are running 7.5 percent higher year-to-date than in 2016, thanks to solid sales gains earlier this year. New-home sales figures for September are due out next week.

This month’s builder index was based on 323 respondents.

A measure of current sales conditions for single-family homes rose five points to 75, while an outlook for sales over the next six months climbed five points to 78. Builders’ view of traffic by prospective buyers increased one point to 48.

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s net worth declined by some $600 million to $3.1 billion in the past year, according to Forbes magazine.

The biggest contributing factor to Trump’s declining fortune was his real estate holdings, much of which is in New York City. Several of his Manhattan properties have declined in value, reducing his fortune in this sector by nearly $400 million.

Some of Trump’s golf properties overseas and in the United States also have declined in value, the apparent result of potential guests being offended by Trump’s politics and bluster, Forbes reported.

The presidential campaign also contributed to a decline in Trump’s net worth. His cash holdings were reduced to about $100 million since last year after he spent $66 million on his campaign.

The reduction in Trump’s cash holdings also was the result of a $25 million payment Trump made to settle a lawsuit over Trump University.

Forbes said it calculated Trump’s net worth “after months of digging through financial disclosures and public property records and conducting dozens of interviews.”

Forbes now ranks Trump as the 248th richest person in the U.S., down from 156 in 2016.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates topped the list of wealthiest Americans for the 24th consecutive year with a net worth of $89 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos came in number two with a net worth of $81.5 billion.
…

For the last year, the deli that Egyptian-American Hatem El-Gamasy owns in Queens, New York has been the backdrop to on-air discussions on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs that are broadcast in Egypt. But when Egyptian broadcasters caught wind of his daytime job, the calls suddenly stopped. But VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports that El-Gamasy’s dream to achieve journalistic success carries on.
…

The church was empty, except for the piano too heavy for one man to move. It had been 21 days since the greatest storm Wayne Christopher had ever seen dumped a year’s worth of rain on his town, drowning this church where he was baptized, met his high school sweetheart and later married her.

 

He had piled the ruined pews out on the curb, next to water-logged hymnals and molding Sunday school lesson plans and chunks of drywall that used to be a mural of Noah’s Ark. Now he tilted his head up to take in the mountain of rubble, and Christopher, an evangelical Christian and a conservative Republican, considered what caused this destruction: that the violent act of nature had been made worse by acts of man.

 

“I think the Lord put us over the care of his creation, and when we pollute like we do, destroy the land, there’s consequences to that,” he said. “It might not catch up with us just right now, but it’s gonna catch up. Like a wound that needs to be healed.”

 

Jefferson County, Texas, is among the low-lying coastal areas of America that could lose the most as the ice caps melt and the seas warm and rise. At the same time, it is more economically dependent on the petroleum industry and its emissions-spewing refineries than any other place in the U.S. Residents seemed to choose between the two last November, abandoning a four-decade-old pattern of voting Democratic in presidential elections to support Donald Trump.

 

Then came Hurricane Harvey. Now some conservatives here are newly confronting some of the most polarizing questions in American political discourse: What role do humans play in global warming and the worsening of storms like Harvey? And what should they expect their leaders — including the climate-skeptic president they helped elect — to do about the problem now?

Answers are hard to come by in a place where refineries stand like cityscapes. Nearly 5,000 people work in the petroleum industry. Some have described the chemical stink in the air as “the smell of money” — it means paychecks, paid mortgages and meals.

 

Christopher, like most people in Jefferson County, believed that global warming was real before the storm hit. Post-Harvey, surrounded by debris stretching for block after block, he thinks the president’s outright rejection of the scientific consensus is no longer good enough.

 

But how do you help the climate without hurting those who depend on climate-polluting industries?

 

“It’s a Catch-22 kind of thing,” he said. “Do you want to build your economy, or do you want to save the world?”

 

___

 

“Steroids for storms” is how Andrew Dessler explains the role global warming plays in extreme weather. Climate change didn’t create Hurricane Harvey or Irma or Maria. But Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, and most scientists agree that warming and rising seas likely amplify storms that form naturally, feeding more water and more intensity as they plow toward land.

 

“It will be 60 inches of rain this time, maybe 80 inches next time,” Dessler said of Harvey’s record-setting rainfall for any single storm in U.S. history.

As a private citizen and candidate, Trump often referred to climate change as a hoax, and since taking office he and his administration have worked aggressively to undo policies designed to mitigate the damage. He announced his intention to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, a global accord of 195 nations to reduce carbon emissions, and his administration has dismantled environmental regulations and erased climate change data from government websites. This month, his Environmental Protection Agency administrator promised to kill an effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired plants.

 

Anthony Leiserowitz, a Yale University researcher, traces the politicization of the climate to 1997, when then-Democratic Vice President Al Gore brokered a commitment on the world stage to reduce greenhouse gases. The political parties have cleaved further apart ever since, and climate change denial reached a fever pitch as the Tea Party remade the GOP during President Barack Obama’s first term.

 

Americans tend to view the issue through their already established red-versus-blue lens, Leiserowitz said. But while there are fractions on each extreme, the majority still fall somewhere along a scale in the middle.

 

A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that 63 percent of Americans think climate change is happening and that the government should address it, and that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the issue. Most Americans also think weather disasters are getting more severe, and believe global warming is a factor.

 

As the downpour from Hurricane Harvey stretched into its second day, with no end in sight, Joe Evans watched from the window of his home in the Jefferson County seat of Beaumont, and an unexpected sense of guilt overcame him: “What have we been doing to the planet for all of these years?”

Evans, a Republican, once ran unsuccessfully for local office. He ignored climate change, as he thought Republicans were supposed to do, but Harvey’s deluge left him wondering why. When he was young, discussions of the ozone layer were uncontroversial; now they’re likely to end in pitched political debate.

 

“I think it’s one of those games that politicians play with us,” he said, “to once again make us choose a side.”

 

Evans voted for Trump, but he’s frustrated with what he describes as the “conservative echo chamber” that dismisses climate change instead of trying to find a way to apply conservative principles to simultaneously saving the Earth and the economy. Even today, some Republicans in the county complain about Gore and the hypocrisy they see in elite liberals who jet around the world, carbon emissions trailing behind them, to push climate policies on blue-collar workers trying to keep refinery jobs so they can feed their families.

 

Evans isn’t sure if the disastrous run of weather will cause climate change to become a bigger priority for residents here, or if as memories fade talk of this issue will, too.

 

“I haven’t put so much thought into it that I want to go mobilize a bunch of people and march on Washington,” he said. “But it made me think enough about it that I won’t actively take part in denying it. We can’t do that anymore.”

 

___

 

Most in Texas didn’t believe climate change existed when Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, began evangelizing about the issue years ago. Now studies estimate that 69 percent of Texans believe that the climate is changing, and 52 percent believe that has been caused by human activity. Most resistance she hears now is not with the science itself but over proposed solutions that mean government intrusion and regulation.

Jefferson County’s refineries produce 10 percent of the gasoline in the United States, 20 percent of diesel and half of the fuel used to fly commercial planes, said County Judge Jeff Branick, a Democrat who voted for Trump and then switched his party affiliation to Republican, in part because of his disagreement with the Democratic Party’s climate policies.

 

Branick doesn’t deny that climate change exists, but he calls himself a cheerleader for the petroleum industry and believes environmental policies are “job killers.”

 

John Sterman, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, said addressing climate change will invariably lead to gradual job losses in the fossil fuels industry. But communities have lost a dominant industry before, and those able to diversify can prosper. Jefferson County could look to the renewable energy industry, with jobs that require many of the skills refinery workers have, he said. Texas already produces more wind power than any other state.

 

Angela Lopez’s husband works in a refinery, so she understands the worry of the economic cost of addressing global warming. But her county is nicknamed “cancer alley” for its high levels of disease that residents have long attributed to living in the shadow of one of the largest concentrations of refineries in the world.

 

“It’s our livelihood, but it’s killing us,” Lopez said, standing in what used to be her dining room. Now her house in Beaumont is down to the studs. As Harvey’s floodwaters rose, she tried to save what she could. She piled the dresser drawers on the bed and perched the leather couch up on the coffee table. It did no good. The water didn’t stop until it reached the eaves, and the Lopezes lost everything they own.

 

Just about all of her relatives are conservatives, and indeed the political divides in the county run deep: Even as most of the communities along the Gulf Coast turned red years ago, Jefferson County clung to its Democratic roots. The county is ethnically diverse — 41 percent white, 34 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic — with a historically strong union workforce. Trump won Jefferson by just 419 votes.

 

“To come up with real solutions, you have to be honest with yourself about what causes something to happen,” Lopez said. “It’s not just because some storm came, it was bad and unprecedented. It was unprecedented for a reason, so we have to acknowledge that and start working toward being better. And part of that conversation should be climate change.”

On a porch outside another ruined house nearby, two neighbors who both lost everything to Harvey started having that conversation.

 

Gene Jones, a truck driver who didn’t vote, asked Wilton Johnson, a Trump supporter, if he thought climate change intensified the storm.

 

“I don’t think so, no,” Johnson said.

 

“You don’t? You don’t think about the chemical plants and the hot weather? You don’t think that has anything to do with it?”

 

“I can understand people believing that,” Johnson replied. But he blames natural weather cycles for upending their lives so completely.

 

Jones now lives in a camper in his driveway; Johnson’s father has been sleeping in a recliner in his yard to ward off looters.

 

Johnson feels like he’s gone through the stages of grief. At first, as he fled his home, he denied how devastating the storm might be. Then he got angry, when he realized nothing could be saved — not the family photos or the 100-year-old Bible that fell apart in his hands. He grew depressed and now, finally, he thinks he’s come to accept this new reality as something that just happened because nature is not always kind, and never has been.

 

And he remains unshaken in his support for Trump’s environmental agenda.

 

“We need to be responsible human beings to the Earth, but at the same time we shouldn’t sacrifice the financial freedoms,” he said. “What good is a great environment if we’re poor and living like cavemen? And vice versa, I understand the other side of that: What’s great about living in luxury when you can’t go outside?

 

“I just don’t think we should look at two storms and say, ‘We’re ruining the Earth! Shut the plants down!'”

 

___

 

When Wayne Christopher was a boy in Jefferson County, it got so hot he remembers frying eggs on the sidewalk. It has always been hot here, and there have always been hurricanes.

 

But it seems to him that something is different now. There is a palpable intensity in the air, in the haze that hangs over the interstate. The region has warmed about two degrees in his lifetime, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and annual rainfall has increased by about 7 inches on average. Christopher counts the number of times a beach road he’s driven on all his life has had to be rebuilt because the ocean overtook it.

 

“The sea keeps moving in — water rising, land disappearing or eroding or whatever you want to call it — it’s happening,” said Christopher, who is 66 now and retired after toiling more than 40 years for the railroad. “I think Mother Nature can come back, but there’s a point to where, if we just keep on and keep on, I don’t know if she can come back.”

 

He thinks the president he helped put in office should do something: take the threat seriously, research before he talks or tweets, not dismiss established science as a hoax because acknowledging it’s real would mean acknowledging that something must be done.

 

But like many others here, Christopher is not pushing to stick with the Paris climate agreement or other global coalitions because he’s not sure it’s fair that the United States should invest in clean energy when other countries that pollute might not. He worries that could cause more job losses to overseas factories, put a squeeze on the middle class and forfeit a slice of American sovereignty.

 

His wife, who also supported Trump, cocked her head as she thought about that sentiment.

 

“I can see the pros, I can see the cons,” Polly Christopher said. “But if you were to simplify it to your children, and they say, ‘Well, everybody else is doing it, if I do it what difference is it going to make?’ you would just get on them and say, ‘You’ve got to do the right thing. Right is right, and wrong’s wrong.'”

 

For weeks, the couple have been gutting Memorial Baptist Church, a place they consider their home. The congregation dwindled over time to about 45, mostly older people, and it was so hard to make ends meet the church canceled a $19,000-a-year flood insurance policy just two months before Harvey hit. Now it could cost some $1 million to rebuild, meaning the church may never be rebuilt at all.

 

So when Christopher’s granddaughter came by to help, found the piano in the otherwise empty sanctuary, sat down and started to play, he was overcome with a sense of grief.

 

“In my head I was thinking the whole time, this could be the last time that piano is played inside the auditorium,” he said. Then she started to sing: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …”

 

“It did something to me,” he said.

 

Both he and his wife believe President Trump has a responsibility to look at the destruction Harvey left them with and act accordingly.

 

“He’s got a business mind. Whatever it takes to make money, that’s what he’s going to do to make America great again,” Christopher said, and that’s why he voted for Trump. “But it does make me wonder if he looks at global warming as a real harm. Because you can make all the money in the world here. But if you don’t have a world, what good is it going to do you?”
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For months, the outlook for the eurozone economy has brightened thanks to a series of electoral defeats for populist parties in key states like France. Now, following votes in Germany and Austria and the uncertainty over the Spanish region of Catalonia, concerns are growing again about the potential impact of euroskeptic politics.

The euro has edged lower in recent weeks despite data showing that the eurozone economy is enjoying one of its strongest periods of growth since the global financial crisis exploded a decade ago. On Monday, it was down 0.3 percent at $1.1785, having been above $1.20 at the end of August for the first time in two years.

 

One of the reasons relates to the electoral success of populist forces, first in Germany in late-September when the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany received almost 13 percent of the vote and won representation into the country’s parliament for the first time. Though the center-right Christian Democrats came out on top, the authority of Chancellor Angela Merkel was somewhat undermined by AfD’s relative success and she has still to forge a new coalition.

 

The populist tide was further evidenced in Sunday’s Austrian election, which saw the right-wing Freedom Party come second with around 27 percent of the vote — enough to possibly become part of a government led by the People’s Party and its 31-year-old leader, Sebastian Kurz.

 

The impact of a coalition involving a party that has sought to downplay the country’s Nazi past could hinder efforts to further integrate the economies of the 19 countries that use the euro, as advocated for by new French President Emmanuel Macron.

 

“Even though Austria is highly integrated and depends on the eurozone’s structure and openness, a new Austrian government will make the eurozone’s life harder, trying to push through self-interests,” ING economist Inga Fechner said.

 

Also of potential concern to the unity of the eurozone is the uncertainty surrounding Catalonia following its disputed independence referendum earlier this month. On Monday, there was still a lack of clarity as to whether the region’s leader, Carles Puigdemont, has declared independence following the vote that Madrid has deemed illegal.

 

The Spanish government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has repeatedly said it’s not willing to negotiate with Puigdemont if independence is on the table, or accept any form of international mediation. The government has threatened to activate Article 155 of Spain’s Constitution, which could see Madrid take temporary control of some parts of Catalonia’s self-government.

 

All these signs of populism come at a time when the European economy is enjoying one of its most sustained upswings for a decade. A run of economic indicators have shown that the recovery, especially among those countries that use the euro currency, has been gaining momentum through 2017. The recovery, which has also seen unemployment come off highs, has prompted speculation that the European Central Bank will start to ease back on some of its emergency stimulus measures in the coming months.

 

Many economists ascribe the improving economic backdrop to the defeat of populist politicians earlier this year, notably in France where National Front leader Marine Le Pen lost overwhelmingly in the presidential runoff against Macron. Her defeat come a few weeks after Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party fared worse than anticipated in Dutch elections.

 

At the start of this year, the rise of populism was considered by many economists as the gravest cloud hanging over Europe’s economic future, especially as worries over Greece had abated. The Brexit vote in Britain in the summer of 2016 had shown how vulnerable the region could be to populist movements. The great fear for those overseeing the euro currency is that a party may come into government seeking to get out of the single currency and revert to the country’s original currency.

 

What’s occurred in the past few weeks is evidence that those populist forces are not done yet.

 

Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist at BNY Mellon, said “it would make sense for the euro to weaken if concerns about populism in the eurozone re-emerged.”

 

The next potential worry is Italy, where elections have to be held by May 2018. The country has for years grown more slowly than other developed economies and there are concerns that a party seeking to blame the country’s problems on the euro could make headway in the elections, potentially triggering more volatility for a currency that’s spent years dodging crises. In August, former premier Silvio Berlusconi floated the idea of a parallel currency being introduced in Italy.

 

 
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The world economy is the healthiest it’s been in years but could still use a little help from low-interest rates and higher government spending from countries that can afford it, the International Monetary Fund says. 

 

“There was a strong consensus that the global outlook is strengthening,” said Agustin Carstens, governor of the Bank of Mexico and outgoing chair of the IMF’s policy committee. “This does not mean we are declaring victory just yet.” 

 

The 189-member IMF and its sister agency, the World Bank, wrapped up three days of meetings Saturday. 

Broad recovery, risks

The IMF expects the global economy to grow 3.6 percent this year, up from 3.2 percent in 2016. And three-quarters of the global economy is growing, making this the broadest recovery in a decade. 

 

But IMF and World Bank officials pointed to risks that could derail global growth. Geopolitical risks are rising, including a confrontation between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The income gap between rich and poor is growing, fueling political discontent with the free trade and global cooperation that the IMF and World Bank promote. 

 

So in a communique Saturday, the IMF’s policy committee called on world central banks to protect the fragile global recovery by keeping interest rates down in countries where inflation is too low and economies are performing below potential. 

 

IMF officials have also urged some countries with healthy finances, such as Germany and South Korea, to make investments that will spur growth. 

 

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde appealed to countries to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient and spread prosperity to those who have been left behind. Specifically, Lagarde argued that countries could improve their economies and reduce inequality by putting more women to work, improving their access to credit and narrowing their pay gap with men. 

On Saturday, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a White House adviser, appeared with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to launch a World Bank initiative to support women entrepreneurs. The World Bank fund has raised $350 million, which is designed to allow the World Bank to deploy at least $1 billion in capital to finance women-owned businesses. 

 

Ivanka Trump told the audience that she wanted to “spend a lot of time offering any value that I can as a mentor.” 

 

Adjusting to Trump

The World Bank and IMF delegates are still adjusting to the Trump administration, which is skeptical of international organizations and contemptuous of free trade agreements. This week, the United States pulled out of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency. It is has balked at providing additional capital to the World Bank unless the anti-poverty agency rethinks the way it distributes loans. It has scrapped an Asia-Pacific trade deal and is threatening to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. 

 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he carried in his pocket a list of all the G-20 nations and the size of the trade balances the United States has with each of those nations. With most of the G-20 countries, the United States is running a trade deficit.

 

In a speech Saturday to the IMF policy group, Mnuchin said he wanted to see the IMF be a more “forceful advocate” for strong global growth by taking a harder look at countries that abuse world trade rules. 
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Throughout Northern California, where wildfires have raged for almost a week, killing at least 36 people and destroying about 6,000 buildings, residents are taking stock of what they have and what they have lost.

Many are feeling lucky to have survived with their lives. The fire’s path of destruction lacked rhyme or reason, destroying an entire winery in one case but leaving patio furniture outside the tasting room untouched.

Pierre Birebent, who has been a winemaker at the Signorello Estate for the past 20 years, said he feels lucky.

WATCH: Winemakers Vow to Rebuild Destroyed Winery

When the fire came to his winery on the Silverado Trail, the main artery of Napa’s Wine Country, Birebent grabbed a hose and tried to fight the flames himself. One of the winery’s owners, who was in the residence above the winery, had fled after alerting the staff to the fire.

Birebent lost the battle to save the winery, the tasting room, an office and the residence. 

“It was like fighting a giant,” he said.

​Damage unknown

It’s too early to know the extent of the damage to Northern California’s wine industry. Fires still burn around the hillsides, and pickers hurry to get the grapes off the vine before they are damaged by smoke, a condition known as “smoke taint.”

At Signorello, employees reported for work Friday, their first chance to see the damage.

Ray Signorello, the winery proprietor, went into Napa to rent temporary office space. He planned to keep the business going and rebuild.

“We can continue somewhat business as usual,” Signorello said.

“Our house is gone,” said Jo Dayoan, allocation director at the winery. “Our soul is not. We are family.”

Much to be thankful for

For Birebent, there are many things to be thankful for, among them, the 30-year-old vineyards, which didn’t burn.

“This is very important because it takes five years to plant the vineyard to get the first crop,” Birebent said.

Also spared by the fire was a warehouse where Signorello stored its 2016 vintage, as well as the last of the 2017 cabernet sauvignon grapes, which had been harvested just days before the fire and sat fermenting in 14 tanks at the edge of the parking lot.

But whether the wine inside the tanks is drinkable remains to be seen. Workers cleared leaves and ash from the outside of the tanks.

The wine from each of the tanks will be tasted and tested at a laboratory. The tanks hold 80 percent of the winery’s 2017 reds, which Birebent said was worth millions.

“It was so hot, we don’t know if the wine is still good or no,” he said.

As they take stock of the damage, the winemaker and the staff here are thinking about rebuilding, even as others continue to face wildfire dangers. The winery workers say they are lucky even as they stand in its ruins.
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In its 19th year, the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit brought together women leaders from a variety of industries to discuss the opportunities and pitfalls for companies seeking to grow in a fast-paced business environment. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump have raised fears that NAFTA, the 2-decades-old trade pact between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, may be on its last legs. Proponents of NAFTA warn that scrapping the three-nation deal could cause economic shocks around the globe. But others say that’s just a case of corporate fear mongering. Mil Arcega has more.
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The Trump administration Friday demanded that U.S.-made content account for half the value of the cars and trucks sold under the North American Free Trade Agreement, raising further doubts about any potential deal to renew the pact.

Three sources briefed on the protectionist U.S. proposal, which is in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal of shrinking a trade deficit with Mexico and stemming the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, said it also seeks sharply higher North American automotive content overall.

The proposal was made during contentious talks in Washington, in the fourth of seven planned rounds of negotiations to overhaul the treaty. Mexican sources denounced it as absurd and unacceptable, underlining the gaps between NAFTA’s three members as they try to wrap up a deal by a year-end deadline.

Trump, who complains that the original 1994 pact has been a disaster for the United States, is threatening to walk away from the agreement unless major changes are made.

WATCH: Are NAFTA’s Days Numbered?

Sour mood, but no quitting

Washington’s auto industry gambit came hot on the heels of its demand that NAFTA also contain a so-called sunset clause.

That could mean any new deal expires in five years, an idea that Canada and Mexico also strongly oppose.

Although sources briefed on the talks describe the mood as sour, Mexican and Canadian politicians say there is no question of leaving the table for now.

A collapse of NAFTA would wreak havoc throughout the North American economy, disrupting highly integrated manufacturing supply chains and agricultural exports with steep tariffs that would snap back into place. Trade among the three countries has more than quadrupled since 1994 to more than $1.2 trillion annually.

One of the sources close to the talks said Washington wants to increase the North American content requirement for trucks, autos and large engines to 85 percent from 62.5 percent over a period of years. That is in addition to its insistence that 50 percent of content be U.S.-made within the first year of a signed deal.

​Proposal seen as unworkable

A Canadian official noted that senior government figures in Ottawa have rejected both ideas as unworkable.

Trump has made clear he prefers bilateral trade deals, and skeptics wonder whether the U.S. demands are part of an “America First” strategy designed to ensure the current talks fail.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has listed the U.S. auto industry demand among a number of “poison pill” proposals that it said would torpedo the talks to renew NAFTA. The chamber says the proposal would cost jobs, because automakers and parts suppliers would likely forgo NAFTA benefits and simply pay the 2.5 percent U.S. tariff for imported cars and many parts.

Unifor, a union that represents most of Canada’s autoworkers, said the U.S. proposals were deliberately untenable. 

“Frankly, I think this is a bully move by the American government,” president Jerry Dias said in a statement.

Trump aides say current rules are too lax and allowed auto companies to bring in too many cheap parts from China and other low-wage Asian countries.

Mexico needs NAFTA

Mexico is heavily dependent on the United States and NAFTA for its economic viability, and uncertainty over the outcome of the talks helped push the Mexican peso to near five-month lows this week.

Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, seeking to downplay any setbacks in the latest round of negotiations, said Friday that tension in the talks was only natural.

Canadian officials also said it was too soon to write off the deal-making process. They noted that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo were to meet in Washington on Tuesday to take stock of the negotiations.

Separately, U.S. negotiators Friday formally asked Canada to address a bilateral dispute over dairy pricing, a request the Canadians are set to resist, sources familiar with the talks said.
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Disaster-prone countries that keep rebuilding homes, roads and utilities are in danger of becoming uninsurable unless their new infrastructure is built to survive further catastrophe, experts said Friday at a World Bank conference.

New construction must be low in carbon emissions and built on safe land at less risk of destruction as extreme weather intensifies under global warming, they said.

More infrastructure is about to be built in the next 20 years than was built in the past 2,000 years, said experts at the World Bank conference on infrastructure and resilience held in Washington.

The total cost of that infrastructure is seen at some $5 trillion a year.

“The expense of a constant construct, reconstruct, reconstruct, frankly, no country can afford,” said Christiana Figueres, former United Nations’ climate chief.

“Because we know we will be getting more of these effects, we cannot let ourselves get to a scenario where we are systemically uninsurable,” said Figueres.

Among recent disaster losses, no more than half were covered by insurance, she said.

Extreme weather such as flooding, severe storms and drought is increasing with global warming, experts say.

Mapping risky areas and determining the cost of making infrastructure resilient must be done before rebuilding, said Figueres.

She estimated the cost of making low-carbon infrastructure that can withstand shocks might be an additional 10 percent.

Although governments are increasingly aware of the need for resilient infrastructure, residents need incentive and encouragement to rebuild wisely, said Kamal Kishore, member of India’s National Disaster Management Authority.

“If you have a bridge across the River Ganges and you stop it for a day … the economic impact is huge,” he said. “We really have to make the case of life-cycle costs and benefits, not just the upfront costs of infrastructure.”

India has made considerable progress in reducing deaths from cyclones due to a combination of resilient infrastructure, community networks and scientific advances, he said.

Data indicating possible risk must be easily available to ensure infrastructure is not built on land prone to floods or other disasters, said Aris Papadopoulos, former chief executive of cement company Titan America. Papadopoulos recently set up a private-sector risk reduction network with the U.N.’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“We build in vulnerable locations to the same standards as were built in the safer location, and what’s the result? We have disaster,” he said.

Urging a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the Caribbean devastated by recent hurricanes, British businessman Richard Branson said the islands need more hurricane-proof homes and stronger electricity systems.

The original Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar U.S. program that helped rebuild Western European after World War II.

Cutting dependency on costly fossil fuels and switching to solar or wind energy would free up resources for islands that spend as much as a quarter of their national expenditures on fuel, said Branson.

Branson is trying to set up a fund to help Caribbean nations replace fossil fuel-dependent utilities with low-carbon renewable energy sources.

“How much more destruction is needed to show that the way we treat our planet is having serious consequences and sadly will have even more serious consequences?” he asked.
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The euro zone economy may be building up an impressive head of steam that shows no signs of cooling, but what policymakers at the European Central Bank really want – higher inflation – is still largely absent.

Industrial output in the bloc rose faster than anyone polled by Reuters expected in August, according to data on Thursday which followed a slew of forecast-beating releases and after the International Monetary Fund upgraded its outlook for global growth.

“Although the industrial sector only accounts for a quarter of GDP it has been the euro zone’s most cyclical sector historically, and so is an important indicator of the economy’s wider health,” said Christian Jaccarini at CEBR.

“With the economy gathering momentum, the European Central Bank should feel confident about starting to taper its asset purchase program at the beginning of next year.”

The economy is performing stronger than at any time since the global financial crisis so speculation the ECB will soon begin scaling back its massive stimulus program has been rife.

Policymakers at the Bank will announce on Oct. 26 a six-month extension to its asset purchase program but will cut how much it buys each month to 40 billion euros from January, a September Reuters poll predicted.  

Five people with direct knowledge of discussions told Reuters the ECB is homing in on extending its stimulus for nine months at the next meeting while scaling it back.

Yet the ECB’s key focus is inflation and numbers due on Tuesday will probably confirm prices only rose 1.5 percent in September on a year ago, still a lot weaker than the just below 2 percent rate-setters would like.

According to Reuters polls taken throughout 2017, which have been correct about how low it would remain this year, inflation won’t hit that ECB target for years.

“There is likely to be only a limited pick-up in inflationary pressures, meaning that interest rate hikes can be kept on hold until 2019 – later than markets seem to expect,” economists at Capital Economics wrote.

British dilemma

Across the Atlantic, U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers have already begun tightening but had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and slowing the path of future interest rate rises if it did not, according to minutes of the central bank’s last policy meeting.

“Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect… the influence of developments that could prove more persistent, and it was noted that some patience in removing policy accommodation while assessing trends in inflation was warranted,” the Fed said in the minutes.

Britain, however, has the opposite problem.

Since the vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union, the pound has lost around 13 percent of its value against the dollar, driving up the costs of imports and caused inflation to run well above the 2 percent the Bank of England would like it at.

In the referendum’s aftermath the Bank cut 25 basis points from borrowing costs, taking them to a record low 0.25 percent, hoping to stave off a predicted economic meltdown after the leave vote.

That meltdown never happened and Britain’s economy was one of the best performers last year although growth has since slowed sharply.

Still, at its November meeting the BoE will raise interest rates for the first time in a decade, according to economists in a recent Reuters poll taken after a barrage of hawkish rhetoric from BoE policymakers. However, most of them also said raising rates now would be a policy mistake.  

“On the strength of the MPC’s rhetoric and current market expectations, we continue to look for a November hike. But this assumes no significant downside surprises in the inflation and wage data next week,” said Allan Monks at JPMorgan.

“If the MPC is minded to back out of tightening in November – in response to the data or the Brexit process – we would expect at least some hint of this in any commentary between now and the next meeting on Nov. 2.”

Britain’s economy shows little sign of breaking out of its lethargy and it is “extraordinary” the BoE is considering raising interest rates, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Friday.

“We’d caution against an earlier than required tightening in monetary policy, which could hit both business and consumer confidence and weaken overall UK growth,” said Suren Thiru, BCC head of economics.

Divorce talks have this week ended in deadlock over a British refusal to clarify how much it will pay on leaving, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday.

But EU leaders could hand beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May an olive branch in Brexit negotiations next week by launching their own internal preparations for a transition to a new relationship with Britain, giving her some hope.

 
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China’s imports from North Korea fell 37.9 percent in September from a year earlier, marking the seventh consecutive month of decline, the customs office said Friday.

China-U.S. ties have been strained by President Donald Trump’s criticism of China’s trade practices and by demands that Beijing do more to pressure North Korea over Pyongyan’s nuclear and missile programmes.

China’s exports to North Korea in September dropped 6.7 percent from a year ago, a spokesman for the General Administration of Customs told a briefing, adding no seafood imports from North Korea were recorded last month.

China’s imports from North Korea fell 16.7 percent on-year to $1.48 billion in Jannuary-September, while exports to North Korea rose 20.9 percent to $2.55 billion in the same period.

That created a trade surplus with North Korea at $1.07 billion in the first nine months of this year.
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