YCLOAK

Tourists haven’t been deterred from visiting the tropical island of Guam even though the U.S. territory has been the target of threats from North Korea during a week of angry words exchanged by Pyongyang and Washington.

Chiho Tsuchiya of Japan heard the news, but she decided to come anyway with her husband and two children. “I feel Japan and Korea also can get danger from North Korea, so staying home is the same,” said the 40-year-old.

Won Hyung-jin, an official from Modetour, a large South Korean travel agency, said several customers called with concerns, but they weren’t worried enough to pay cancellation fees for their trips.

“It seems North Korea racks up tension once or twice every year, and travelers have become insensitive about it,” Won said. His company has sent about 5,000 travelers to Guam a month this year, mostly on package tours.

The U.S. territory has a population of 160,000, but it attracted 1.5 million visitors last year. One-third of Guam’s jobs are in the tourism industry.

Guam is a key outpost for the U.S. military, which uses it as a base for bombers and submarines.

The island’s sandy beaches and aquamarine waters make it a popular getaway for travelers from Japan and South Korea. Guam is only about three hours by plane from major cities in both countries.

The number of South Korean travelers in particular has been growing lately because five low-cost airlines started flying to Guam from South Korea, said Antonio Muna, the vice president of Guam Visitors Bureau. This helped boost arrival figures to a 20-year high in July, Muna said.

The threats came in a week in which longstanding tensions between the countries risked abruptly boiling over. New United Nations sanctions condemning the North’s rapidly developing nuclear program drew fresh ire and threats from Pyongyang. President Donald Trump responded by vowing to rain down “fire and fury” if challenged. The North then threatened to lob missiles near Guam.

Kenji Kikuchi, 39, arrived from Japan last week and planned to leave Tuesday as scheduled. He was aware of the threat from reading the local newspaper and was a little worried. But he said North Korea’s missiles would fall in the water not on Guam. His 8-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter weren’t concerned.

“They talk about it, but they don’t care about it. So they like the sea and the pool,” he said. 

The Guam Visitors Bureau has heard reports of cancellations, but Muna said it doesn’t yet have any concrete figures on how many took place. Officials are still expecting a strong August, Muna said.

“Japan and Korea make over 90 percent of our arrivals. And they’re much closer to North Korea than Guam is,” Muna said.

The agency has been relaying assurances from the governor and defense officials that Guam is protected and safe, he said.

Trump told Guam’s Republican governor the global attention would send more tourists to the island.

“You’re going to go up like tenfold with the expenditure of no money,” he told Gov. Eddie Calvo in a telephone conversation Calvo posted Sunday on Facebook. Trump said he’d been watching scenes of Guam on the news, and “it just looks like a beautiful place.”

At a news conference Monday, Calvo said that Guam is in a “normal state of readiness and it’s business as usual.”

There is “no change in security threat levels.”

He told the reporters that “we are defended and will be protected.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his trade office Monday to investigate whether China is stealing American intellectual property, but Beijing warned in advance that both countries would end up losers in a trade war.

Trump took a break from his working vacation at his golf resort in New Jersey to return to Washington to sign an executive order directing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to investigate the alleged Chinese theft of American technology and intellectual property.  Trump wants trade officials to look at Chinese practices that force American companies to divulge their proprietary intellectual information in order to do business in China.

“We will defend our workers…protect our innovations,” Trump said.

He described the investigation as “one big move. This is just the beginning.”

If the United States pursues the case, it could eventually ask the World Trade Organization to impose penalties on China or seek some other remedy.

Analysts says the investigation could heighten tensions between the United States and China and lead to a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for recently voting with the United States at the U.N. Security Council to impose new sanctions on North Korea for its test missile launches and nuclear weapons development. Beijing announced Monday it is banning imports of coal, iron ore, seafood and other products from North Korea to comply with the new sanctions aimed at cutting Pyongyang’s export income by $1 billion annually.

But Trump has often complained about the chronic U.S. trade deficit with China, $347 billion in 2016 and mounting at a similar pace this year. The United States imports an array of consumer goods from China, with many of U.S. consumers’ favorite technology devices manufactured in China, such as Apple’s iPhones.

Meanwhile, major U.S. companies are reporting higher earnings in recent weeks, in part because of their Chinese operations. Caterpillar, a U.S. manufacturer of heavy construction machinery, said it expects the demand for its products to remain strong in China through the rest of the year.

Before Trump’s directive to Lighthizer, China warned against his action.

“There is no future and no winner in a trade war and both sides will be the losers,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. “As we have emphasized for many times, the nature of China-U.S. trade relations is mutual benefit and win-win.

“Considering the importance of the China-U.S. relations,” she said, “China is willing to make joint efforts with the United States to keep trade and economic relations on sustained, healthy and stable development on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.”
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There is a new addition to Africa’s busiest air transport hub, O.R. Tambo International Airport near Johannesburg: the continent’s first airport-based brewery. Airport Craft Brewers is a reflection of South Africa’s burgeoning independent beer sector, with growing numbers of beer drinkers not satisfied with industrial, mass-produced beverages.

The hectic international arrivals terminal at the O.R. Tambo airport. Not far from here, businessmen in smart suits lean on a marble bar counter, sipping black and copper-colored beers.

A tall man in his 40s, in a white lab coat, zips between big, shiny, silver tanks, monitoring the temperature of his latest brew.

Phumelelo Marali learned to make beer from one of South Africa’s master brewers, Lex Mitchell.

“He always said to me that, ‘Phumi, it will take you two years to be exact, to learn how to brew beer,’ which is now in a [proper] brew house. It took me six months. But it took me about four years to understand the technicality behind it,” said Marali.

Marali prefers brewing, and drinking, sweeter beers, like his dark malt porter.

“Roasted kind of toffee notes, that is what you get from a porter; chocolaty, and some people in their nose, they pick up coffee,” he said.

He also makes blonde lager, German-style wheat beer, and Irish red ale.

The brewery owners decided to make all the beer at the airport so customers could see the process firsthand and to ensure a “fresher” taste. The brewery turns out about 20,000 liters a week.

Marali says it is great to be one of South Africa’s few black beer brewers, and to be at the forefront of the country’s craft beer revolution.

 

A decade ago, there were six craft beer makers in South Africa. Now, there are about 200, with the artisanal sector having captured almost one-percent of the nation’s massive beer market.

The sector remains dominated by South African Breweries, one of the world’s biggest brewers and part of the multinational beer behemoth, Anheuser-Busch InBev. But economic analysts say craft brewers like Marali are successfully carving out a niche in the local South African market.

 

The airport supplies a constant flow of customers.

Most of his clients though, are South Africans, like James Nkuma, holding a golden beverage in the bar area.

“It is a blonde [lager]. I love, I love it; I enjoy each and every second of it. It is an easy to drink beer. It is light, not hard like I need to drink and drink and get drunk; no,” he said.

Marali’s also training the next generation of young brewers, like Sibusiso Khumalo.

“Calculations, what you have to put in, the right recipe; the temperatures. The whole process takes one month,” said Khumalo.

But as Marali says “good things come to those who wait.”
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A Chinese state newspaper warned Monday that President Donald Trump “could trigger a trade war” if he goes ahead with plans to launch an investigation into whether China is stealing U.S. technology.

In a commentary by a researcher at a Commerce Ministry think tank, the China Daily said Trump’s possible decision to launch an investigation, which an official says he will announce Monday, could “intensify tensions,” especially over intellectual property.

The official told reporters Saturday the president would order his trade office to look into whether to launch an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 of possible Chinese theft of U.S. technology and intellectual property.

The Chinese government has yet to comment on the announcement.

A decision to use the Trade Act to rebalance trade with China “could trigger a trade war,” said the commentary under the name of researcher Mei Xinyu of the ministry’s International Trade and Economic Cooperation Institute.

“And the inquiry the U.S. administration has ordered into China’s trade policies, if carried out, could intensify tensions, especially on intellectual property rights.”

The commentary gave no indication of how Beijing might respond but Chinese law gives regulators broad discretion over what foreign companies can do in China.

If an investigation begins, Washington could seek remedies either through the World Trade Organization or outside of it.

Previous U.S. actions directed at China under the 1974 law had little effect, said the China Daily. It noted China has grown to become the biggest exporter and has the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves.

“The use of Section 301 by the U.S. will not have much impact on China’s progress toward stronger economic development and a better future,” said the newspaper.
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Beside rows of rusting shipping containers, a decorative wrought iron fence surrounds Taquería Mi Pueblo, one of the first family-run Mexican restaurants in southwest Detroit, Michigan.

Its owner, Jalisco-native José de Jesús López, surveys the trees he planted and his ornamental roosters.

“Everything was abandoned, a dump over there,” he said, walking down Dix Street. When he first arrived as an undocumented immigrant in 1981, López recalls a drug-addict-infested lot and overrun lawn.

“Mexicantown,” as the area is affectionately and marketably called today, is one of Metro Detroit’s most vibrant dining scenes for locals and tourists — and a model for other immigrant neighborhoods.

Landing destination

Like López, many foreigners stumbled upon Detroit, viewing the city as an economically viable “second landing destination” — friendly to immigrants, but with cheaper housing and commercial space than traditional immigrant hubs like New York and San Francisco.

Through the 2008 recession and recovery, native-born residents fled. But immigrants kept coming, starting new businesses, hiring local residents and making their neighborhoods a safer place for children.

A June study by Global Detroit and New American Economy reveals that the city’s immigrant population grew by 12.1 percent between 2010 and 2014, at a time when the city’s overall population declined by 4.2 percent. Though the four-year increase in immigrants amounts to merely 4,137 individuals, the study claims the effects have been widely felt.

Watch: Beleaguered Detroit Relying on Immigrants to Revitalize City

“Immigrants are leading in the city’s recovery,” said Steve Tobocman, director of Global Detroit, “particularly in its neighborhoods like Mexicantown, in Banglatown, where new residents are moving in and helping to stabilize working-class communities by fixing up homes, opening up businesses, and creating more consumers.”

Depopulation, Tobocman adds, remains Detroit’s biggest challenge moving forward, while immigrants are “our best hope to rebuilding,” especially on the neighborhood level.

No ‘magic bullet’

According to Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and Fiscal Policy Institute, more than one-third of Detroit-area “Main Street” business owners were immigrants as of 2013.

But data measuring their economic contributions can be misleading, says Stanley Renshon, CUNY professor of political science.

“Any economic activity is grabbed by economists as positive,” Renshon told VOA. “Yes, you increase the overall financial numbers of the country, but the people who benefit most from that are the immigrants themselves, and that’s fine. We want them to prosper, but don’t tell me that what you’re doing is saving the country or the city or the town.”

Detroit’s ongoing struggles, including a long history of political corruption and one of the highest murder rates in the country, can’t be solved by new immigrants, he added.

Hurting American workers?

Last week, White House senior adviser for policy Stephen Miller announced the administration’s support for an immigration bill that would cut legal immigration by half.

Their premise that less-skilled immigrants take away work opportunities from native-born Americans is an “America first” message intended to resonate with President Donald Trump’s base in depressed rust belt towns like Detroit.

“How is it fair, or right or proper that if, say, you open up a new business in Detroit, that the unemployed workers of Detroit are going to have to compete against an endless flow of unskilled workers for the exact same jobs?” asked Miller during a White House press briefing Aug. 2.

Global Detroit’s Tobocman says Trump’s proposed policies won’t produce any new jobs and may cost the Michigan economy hundreds of millions of dollars.

“[Trump’s actions would choke] off a critical supply of talent, of investment, and of global connections that are critical to the future of Michigan, to us being a mobility capital for the world,” Tobocman said.

Detroit suffered an unemployment rate of 28.4 percent during the great recession, but had rebounded to 7.8 percent in June.

Banglatown

Following the likes of Mexicantown, Metro Detroit’s second-most populous foreign-born community, from Bangladesh, hopes to follow suit and create a cultural tourist destination of its own: Banglatown.

“You will hardly find any vacant spot right now,” said Ehsan Taqbeem, founder of Bangladeshi-American Public Affairs Committee (BAPAC), driving his Jeep Grand Cherokee past South Asian restaurants, fabric and fish shops in Detroit and neighboring Hamtramck.

“The value of the homes have gone up since [the recession], businesses have been thriving, and traffic has gone up tremendously,” he said.

Unlike Mexicantown, Banglatown is a concept still in its early stages. There are no traditional rickshaws carrying tourists down Conant Avenue — at least not yet.

But Taqbeem, who runs an automotive retrofitting service, along with other local business owners, sees the benefit of being a branded community in a global-minded city.

Mahabub Chowdhury, part-owner of Aladdin Sweets & Cafe, found success in nourishing his neighborhood and patrons, a majority of whom are non-Bangladeshis. One regular customer, whom he describes as a nice “American white person,” calls him directly.

“Sometimes his car is broken, and he calls us, ‘Can you pick me up from my house?’ And we go to his house and bring him to our restaurant,” Chowdhury said.

‘​Believing in Detroit’

In Mexicantown, Lopez’s eyes well as he recalls his early days on a Jalisco ranch, before finding eventual success in Detroit.

“My main dream was to be able to buy a truck for my dad,” Lopez said. “I worked all my life, and when I had the money, I didn’t have my father anymore.”

Now an American citizen, López, a father of four, says he accomplished the American Dream by creating something that will outlive him and provide for the community long after he has passed.

What Detroit still needs, he said, is more people to call it home. 

“That’s happening little by little,” Lopez said. “The greatest changes won’t happen overnight.”

“They happen slowly, and that’s part of believing in oneself, believing in Detroit,” he said.

 
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Detroit, Michigan, knows hardship and recovery. One of the hardest hit areas in the country during the Great Recession, the Midwestern Rust Belt city has since found an ingredient to its economic revitalization through empowerment of its immigrant communities. But not everyone is convinced that the solution is viable or helps anyone beyond the immigrants themselves. Ramon Taylor has more.
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U.S. stock market indexes posted gains in Friday’s trading, a change in direction after several down days amid tensions between President Donald Trump and North Korea.

In New York, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the Dow Jones industrial average each advanced about one-tenth of a percentage point, while the Nasdaq composite index rose almost eight-tenths of a percentage point. Earlier, stocks in Paris and London were off 1 percent, while Hong Kong stocks fell 2 percent and Korean shares slid nearly as much.

Global stock prices had been falling for several days, losing nearly $1 trillion in value during angry exchanges between the U.S. and North Korea, which continued Friday.

Investors have reason for concern, according to Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist of IHS Markit. He said the economic consequences of even a conventional conflict would most likely be “horrific” and “devastate” the South Korean economy, hurting that nation’s trading partners, particularly Japan.  

In an email exchange with VOA, Biswas called the possibility that North Korea could actually use nuclear weapons a “nightmare but still low probability scenario” and noted there had been prior incidents of rising tensions on the peninsula.  

A similar view came from Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, who wrote, “All parties, including the North Koreans, have substantial incentives to once again cut a deal rather than fight. Based on past crises, there will be a great deal of theater, only to end in some kind of deal.”

He wrote that military action was “unlikely” in the short term, suggesting “worry is overdone at the moment.” But he wrote that military action “is actually very possible in the medium term.”  

McMillan wrote that such a conflict could have “dramatic and substantial” impact on many economies because South Korea “is a major trading and manufacturing hub.” That means “disruption there would break supply chains around the world” and might last “for months or years.”  

He wrote that rising uncertainty would prompt money to move out of stocks and into less risky investments, which would drive down stock market prices: “Clearly, there are real reasons to try to avoid a war.”
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Rising tensions between the United States and North Korea brought a wave of falling stock prices recently as worried investors moved money out of equities and into the perceived safety of gold, Swiss currency and similar products. At one point, this change of investment strategy cut $1 trillion from the value of global stock markets.

For some perspective on these concerns, VOA’s Jim Randle spoke with IHS Markit’s Rajiv Biswas in Singapore. IHS Markit employs thousands of financial, data, and other experts who track economic issues worldwide. Biswas is the company’s chief economist for APEC. His comments here were edited for brevity and clarity.

Randle: Why do rising nuclear tensions prompt falling stock prices?

Biswas: In the nightmare, but still low-probability scenario in which North Korea were to succeed in using nuclear weapons against South Korea, the devastation of the Korean peninsula would be catastrophic. Global financial markets would also suffer a tremendous shock in the short term, with massive flight to safe haven assets such as gold, USD and CHF. The humanitarian crisis and economic reconstruction of the Korean peninsula after such a nuclear conflict would require large-scale international cooperation led by China, the U.S. and EU, and would likely take over a decade to rebuild the economy.

Even a conventional war would result in considerable destruction to the South Korean economy… and likely result in tremendous casualties in both South and North Korea. The economic consequences … would likely be horrific, and … also result in a temporary shock to global financial markets. The greatest vulnerability would be for the South Korean financial markets and Korean won. Other regional East Asian financial markets would also be vulnerable, particularly Japanese financial markets, with risks of disruption to Northeast Asian regional trade and investment flows and manufacturing supply chains.

The South Korean economy accounts for around 1.9% of world GDP, and a severe drop in South Korean GDP … would have negative effects on key trade partners. Japan is also concerned that North Korea could launch missiles at Japanese targets, particularly… U.S. military bases in Japan. The reconstruction and rebuilding of South Korea’s economy after a major conflict would likely take many years, with significant international support needed to help South Korea with the reconstruction task.

Randle: Why do worried investors seek gold, oil, and Swiss currency?

Biswas: If international investors fear that the probability of a military conflict on the Korean peninsula is rising, they will likely reduce their exposure to global growth assets, such as Asian equities and Asian currencies…  as they fear that the world economy and Asian countries near North Korea could suffer economic dislocation and trade disruption in the event of a conflict.

In times of geopolitical crisis, the traditional safe haven assets for global investors are gold, U.S. dollars, U.S. Treasuries and Swiss francs, as these are very stable, internationally traded liquid assets. These safe haven assets tend to rise in value when investors fear that geopolitical crises could weaken global growth prospects as investors switch their investments out of global equities and emerging market currencies into the safe haven assets.

Randle: Are U.S. stocks ripe for a fall? 

Biswas: While geopolitical risks due to escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula have been reflected in some modest declines in some international equity markets in recent days, there has been many previous episodes of rising military tensions on the Korean peninsula. Global investors have previously shown considerable resilience to earlier bouts of geopolitical tensions on the Korean peninsula, such as North Korea’s sinking of the South Korean navy warship Cheonan and the North Korean artillery shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island in 2010

During 2017 to date, the U.S. equity market has been driven by a wide range of positive factors, including sustained U.S. economic growth momentum, planned corporate tax cuts by the Trump administration, moderate inflation pressures and positive U.S. corporate earnings growth prospects, so geopolitical risks from North Korea are not the only factor impacting on the U.S. equity market outlook.

Randle: Even if actual hostilities don’t break out, could these nuke worries be enough, in theory, to spark a sharp drop in financial markets? 

Biswas: “The canary in the coal mine that will signal rising international financial markets’ risk aversion [worry] is likely to be South Korean asset classes. The South Korean stock market and the Korean won are likely to be most vulnerable to declines in response to rising international investor concerns that military tensions are escalating further. One measure of financial risk are the South Korean sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, with IHS Markit data indicating that South Korean CDS spreads widened in July following North Korea’s ICBM tests, and spiked up further this week following North Korea’s threat to attack Guam. So far, these widening spreads only signal a moderate increase in financial markets perceptions of geopolitical risks on the Korean peninsula, but a sharp further widening of the South Korean sovereign CDS spread would be a clear signal of rising investor anxiety.”
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Israel has been known as the land of milk and honey since Biblical times – but the land of single malt whiskey? One appropriately named distillery is trying to turn Israel into a whiskey powerhouse.

Smooth, honey-brown whiskey is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of Israel. However, at the Milk and Honey Distillery, rows of casks proudly stamped “Tel Aviv” hold liters of the stuff.

The country’s first whiskey distillery is preparing to release Israel’s first single malt whiskey.

 

“It’s a young whiskey,” said Eitan Attir, the distillery’s CEO.

 

Attir says the brew is aged for three years and two months in virgin oak and old bourbon barrels at the company’s renovated former bakery in a rugged industrial area of south Tel Aviv.

 

“It’s complex for its age,” he said. “The taste feels like more than three years, more like seven or eight and again the story is much more important in this case. This is the first ever single malt whiskey that any distillery has released from Israel.”

 

Although wine has been produced in the Holy Land for millennia, and modern Israeli wines have gained international renown in recent years, whiskey production is new to the country.

 

Milk and Honey was founded in 2013 and began distilling small experimental batches of whiskey a year later. One hundred bottles from their first cask of Single Malt are set to be sold at an online auction starting August 11.

 

Whiskey is universally acceptable for religious Jews to consume, Attir says, and Milk and Honey’s drink is “ultra-kosher.”

 

“We don’t work on Saturday, we don’t work on Yom Kippur or Passover,” he said. “And we want to symbolize our being Jewish or Israeli and then we called it the Milk and Honey Distillery.”  

 

Warmer climate more amenable

The single malt was made in Israel from start to finish, according to the company’s website, though the ingredients, barrels and equipment were imported from the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. The warmer climate in Israel allows for a speedier aging process in the barrel than whiskey made in colder climates, according to Ran Latovicz, an Israeli whiskey connoisseur and bar owner.  

 

“In colder climates like Scotland or Ireland, whiskey usually ages for about seven to 10 to 12 years before it’s even bottled because [it is] just the way, you know, it gets to its full potential,” he said.

 

The distillery believes it is well positioned to ride a wave of growing international interest in new world whiskeys, like rising stars from Taiwan or India, and hopes this initial offering whets the appetites of aficionados everywhere.

“There’s a huge demand nowadays for whiskey from other places around the world – new world whiskey. There’s more than 70 countries now with a minimum of one distillery and one of them is Israel,” Attir said.

 

Gal Kalkshtein, Milk and Honey’s founder and owner, said he hopes that once the whiskey starts getting shipped abroad in 2019, it will create a buzz for Israeli whiskies.

 

“We want to be recognized for our quality, not the gimmick,” he said.
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