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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California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency to combat a hepatitis A outbreak that has killed 18 people in San Diego.
Brown said Friday that the proclamation would allow the state to increase its supply of vaccines. The state can now purchase vaccines directly from manufacturers and distribute them.
California is experiencing the largest hepatitis A outbreak in the United States transmitted from person to person — instead of by contaminated food — since the vaccine became available in 1996.
There have been 576 cases reported throughout California, the vast majority in San Diego
Eighteen U.S. states vowed Friday to sue President Donald Trump’s administration to try to stop him from scrapping a key component of Obamacare — subsidies to insurers that help millions of low-income people pay medical expenses — even as Trump invited Democratic leaders to negotiate a deal.
One day after his administration announced plans to end the payments next week, Trump said he would dismantle Obamacare “step by step.”
His latest action raised concerns about chaos in insurance markets. The subsidies cost $7 billion this year and were estimated at $10 billion for 2018, according to congressional analysts.
“As far as the subsidies are concerned, I don’t want to make the insurance companies rich,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They’re making a fortune by getting that kind of money.”
Trump’s action took aim at a critical element of the 2010 law, his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. Frustrated by the failure of his fellow Republicans who control both houses of Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump has taken several steps to chip away at it.
Democrats accused Trump of sabotaging the law.
Democratic attorneys general from the 18 states as well as the District of Columbia planned to sue in federal court in California late in the day. The states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington — will ask the court to force Trump to make the next payment.
Legal experts said the states were likely to face an uphill battle in court.
‘Breathtakingly reckless’
“His effort to gut these subsidies with no warning or even a plan to contain the fallout is breathtakingly reckless,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. “This is an effort simply to blow up the system.”
The new lawsuit would be separate from a case pending before an appeals court in the District of Columbia in which 16 Democratic state attorneys general are defending the legality of the payments.
If the subsidies vanish, low-income Americans who obtain insurance through Obamacare online marketplaces would face higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. It would particularly hurt lower-middle-class families whose incomes are still too high to qualify for certain government assistance.
About 10 million people are enrolled in Obamacare through its online marketplaces, and most receive subsidies. Trump’s action came just weeks before the period starting November 1 when individuals have to begin enrolling for 2018 insurance coverage through the law’s marketplaces.
The administration will not make the next payment to insurers, scheduled for Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York expressed optimism about chances for a deal with Republicans to continue the subsidies.
“We’re going to have a very good opportunity to get this done in a bipartisan way” during negotiations in December on broad federal spending legislation, “if we can’t get it done sooner,” Schumer told reporters.
Trump offered an invitation for Democratic leaders to come to the White House, while also lashing out at them. “We’ll negotiate some deal that’s good for everybody. But they’re always a bloc vote against everything. They’re like obstructionists,” Trump told reporters.
The Senate failed in both July and September to pass legislation backed by Trump to repeal Obamacare because of opposition by a handful of Republican senators. One of them, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who had been contemplating running for governor next year, on Friday said she planned to remain in the Senate and would use her voice in reforming the health care system.
Insurer, hospital shares drop
Hospitals, doctors, health insurers, state insurance commissioners and patient advocates decried Trump’s move, saying consumers would ultimately pay the price. They called on Congress to appropriate the funds needed to keep up the subsidy payments.
Shares of U.S. hospital companies and health insurers closed down on Friday after the subsidies announcement. Centene Corp. closed down 3.3 percent and Molina Healthcare closed down 3.4 percent. Among hospital shares, Tenet Healthcare finished 5.1 percent lower and Community Health Systems declined 4.0 percent.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that erasing the subsidies would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion over the next decade because the government still would be obligated under other parts of Obamacare to help lower-income people pay for insurance premiums.
Trump, who as a candidate last year promised to roll back the law formally called the Affordable Care Act, received applause for his latest action during an appearance on Friday before a group of conservative voters.
“It’s step by step by step, and that was a very big step yesterday,” Trump said. “And one by one, it’s going to come down, and we’re going to have great health care in our country.”
Earlier on Twitter, he called Obamacare “a broken mess” that is “imploding,” and referred to the “pet insurance companies” of Democrats.
Failed repeal efforts
Republicans for seven years had vowed to get rid of Obamacare, but deep intraparty divisions have scuttled their efforts to get legislation through the Senate, where they hold a slim majority.
Since taking office in January, Trump threatened many times to cut the subsidies. Health insurers that planned to stay in the Obamacare market prepared for the move in many states by submitting two sets of premium rates to regulators: with and without the subsidies.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said the change would drive up premium costs for consumers by at least 12 to 15 percent in 2018 and cut more than $1 billion in payments to insurers for 2017.
The White House announced the cutoff just hours after Trump signed an order intended to allow insurers to sell lower-cost, bare-bones policies with limited benefits and consumer protections.
Republicans have called Obamacare an unnecessary government intrusion into the American health care system. Democrats have said the law needs some fixes but noted that it had brought insurance to 20 million people.
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The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization run by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said Friday that it had helped eliminate elephantiasis, a disfiguring tropical disease, from two states in Nigeria where the problem was at its worst.
Dr. Yisa Saka of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health said in the Carter Center’s announcement, “This is a great day for the people of Plateau and Nasarawa states, and all of Nigeria.” He called the disease, also known as lymphatic filariasis, “a terrible disease that has plagued good people for far too long.”
The World Health Association classified elephantiasis as a “neglected tropical disease.” In areas threatened by the disease, people must take annual doses of preventive drugs to keep the parasitic infection from spreading.
Damages lymphatic system
Elephantiasis, transmitted by mosquitoes, causes damage to the lymphatic system, often in childhood, where it can remain hidden for years. Years later, the resulting swelling, which can be significant, can cause physical disability as well as social stigma. Asymptomatic infection can remain invisible but cause damage to the lymphatic system and kidneys, affecting the body’s immune system.
Experts say more than 120 million people in Nigeria live in at-risk areas. Only India has more people at risk of catching the disease, which often causes its victims social isolation and poverty.
“Eliminating lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem in Plateau and Nasarawa states is a significant achievement that challenges everyone to broaden their appreciation of what is possible,” said Dr. Frank Richards of the Carter Center. “Success in these two states not only protects the 7 million people who live there, but it also sets a pattern for similar success throughout the rest of Nigeria, as well as in other highly endemic countries.”
Dr. Gregory Noland of the Carter Center said health professionals have been working for years to eradicate the disease in Plateau and Nasarawa, through drug treatment and use of bed nets to ward off mosquitoes at night. Testing of more than 14,000 children over the past two years has not discovered any new infections.
The milestone is seen as a step toward eradicating the disease altogether. It is one of seven diseases the Carter Center has named as potentially eradicable.
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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.
America’s weight problem isn’t getting any better, according to new government research.
Overall, obesity figures stayed about the same: About 40 percent of adults are obese and 18.5 percent of children. Those numbers are a slight increase from the last report but the difference is so small that it could have occurred by chance.
Worrisome to experts is the rate for children and teenagers, which had hovered around 17 percent for a decade. The 2-to-5 age group had the biggest rise.
The years ahead will show if that’s a statistical blip or marks the start of a real trend, said the report’s lead author, Dr. Craig Hales of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bad news is that the numbers didn’t go down, experts say. In recent years, state and national health officials have focused on obesity in kids, who were the target of the national Let’s Move campaign launched by former first lady Michelle Obama in 2010.
The report released Friday covers 2015 and 2016.
“This is quite disappointing. If we were expecting the trends to budge, this is when they would be budging,” said Andrew Stokes, a Boston University expert on tracking obesity.
The new figures are from an annual government survey with about 5,000 participants. The survey is considered the gold standard for measuring the nation’s waistline, because participants are put on a scale to verify their weight.
Obesity means not merely overweight, but seriously overweight, as determined by a calculation called body mass index . Until the early 1980s, only about 1 in 6 adults were obese. The rate climbed dramatically to about 1 in 3 around a decade ago, then seemed to level off for years.
More details from the report:
– The 40 percent rate for adults is statistically about the same as the nearly 38 percent in the 2013-2014 survey.
– By age, the fattest adults are in their 40s and 50s. The obesity rate for that age group is 41 percent for men and 45 percent for women.
– By race and gender, the problem is still most common in black and Hispanic women; more than half are obese.
– Among children, the rate for the 12-to-19 age group was the same at nearly 21 percent. For kids 6 to 11, it rose to 18 percent, from 17 percent.
– But for children ages 2 to 5, the rate jumped to 14 percent from about 9 percent.
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Bigger and more powerful flying drones are slowly entering everyday life. At this year’s international technology show in Dubai, a number of drone manufacturers displayed machines that could substantially increase the mobility of various public services, from police and firefighters to taxis. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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It covers almost three-fourths of the planet, but it’s probably not a good idea to fill your cup from a river. Drinkable water flows to most of our taps only after it gets a good scrubbing. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a drinking water treatment plant in the Washington metropolitan area.
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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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The wildfires burning through Northern California are sending visitors packing, threatening the $2 billion-plus spent annually by tourists on wine tours, fine food, limousine rides and much more, business leaders said.
At the Inn on First bed and breakfast in the famous wine town of Napa, co-owner Jamie Cherry was encouraging callers to postpone rather than cancel visits, as wildfires burned largely unchecked across the region.
“People are canceling as far as November already,” Cherry said. “It’s going to be devastating in terms of financial loss for everybody.”
The fast-moving fires have killed at least 26 people and left hundreds missing in an area less than an hour’s drive from San Francisco.
With hundreds of wineries, expensive restaurants and bucolic rolling scenery, the wine country of Sonoma and Napa counties is a major draw for visitors. Limousines and buses clog parking lots at weekends as visitors sip Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignons in towns known for their mix of rural and cosmopolitan vibes.
Now, with at least 13 burned wineries, shuttered tasting rooms and thick smoke in the air from nearly two dozen fires that have charred more than 190,000 acres across the state, it is unclear how quickly the region can lure back tourists.
‘We’d go back’
Napa Valley welcomed 3.5 million visitors last year, with overnight guests spending on average $402 per day, according to Visit Napa Valley, the region’s tourism marketing group.
“There is a good amount of infrastructure that has burned down, homes have burned down, wineries have burned. There are restaurants that are not going to open quickly,” said Clay Gregory of Visit Napa Valley.
On Thursday, tasting rooms remained closed and the famous Napa Valley Wine Train, which ferries tourists through the vineyards, said it planned to reopen Sunday.
Dozens of limousines and tour buses, their polish dulled by a film of ash, sat in a parking lot and warehouse on the outskirts of Napa. The company’s owner, Michael Graham, said the business had just hit peak demand of 100 reservations a day, but since the fires that had slumped to two.
Graham remains hopeful, however, citing tourism’s quick recovery after the 6.0 earthquake that hit Napa in 2014: “People were out wine-tasting the same day.”
Graham said the region was still largely intact, with vast swathes of countryside untouched by fire.
“It’s just smoky. As soon as they get this contained it will be back to business as usual,” he said.
Others agreed the effect of the fires on tourism would be short-lived.
Roseanne Rosen has fond memories of the trip with her husband to wine country that she just finished ahead of the fires. The couple from Kansas City has been coming for the last decade and has no plans to abandon that tradition.
“It’s one of our favorite destinations and I don’t see that changing,” Rosen said by telephone. “Once people are open and ready for business, we’d go back in an instant.”
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The government of Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said Thursday that it will request special powers to legislate economic policies from the opposition-ruled Congress, after growth slowed sharply during his first year in office.
During a presentation in Congress, Prime Minister Mercedes Araoz said her cabinet wants to legislate policies aimed at consolidating an incipient economic recovery and making Peru a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a wealthy-country think tank.
In Peru, Congress traditionally grants legislative powers to the executive branch at the start of a president’s term, and it is rare for a prime minister to seek them so far into an administration – underscoring ongoing worries about the economy.
Growth in Peru, one of the region’s most robust economies, faltered early this year after a corruption scandal halted public work projects and severe flooding destroyed billions of dollars in infrastructure.
The government and central bank now expect the economy to grow by about 2.8 percent this year thanks to better prices for Peru’s key copper exports, down from 3.9 percent last year.
Araoz said the economy should expand by at least 4 percent in coming years.
It was unclear whether the opposition would grant the government its request for new legislative powers following a political crisis in September that ended with Congress ousting Kuczynski’s former cabinet.
Kuczynski appointed a more socially conservative cabinet led by Araoz that won initial praise from the right-wing populist party Popular Force, which has an absolute majority in Congress.
But Congress must approve the new cabinet with a vote of confidence scheduled for Thursday.
Araoz said that she would present the request for legislative powers in coming days.
Congress gave Kuczynski legislative authority on economic policies in September 2016, which his government used to pass laws aimed at reducing and expediting bureaucratic permits.
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New research finds nearly 14 million people a year are losing their homes because of sudden onset disasters such as floods and cyclones.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, which analyzed the impact of sudden onset disasters in 204 countries and territories, warns that homelessness will continue to rise unless significant progress is made in managing disaster risk.
According to the research — officially released on Friday, marking International Day for Disaster Reduction — eight of the 10 disaster-prone countries with the highest levels of displacement are in East, South or Southeast Asia. India and China top this list. The two countries outside this region are Russia, ranked ninth, and the United States, ranked 10th.
The head of data and analysis at the center, Justin Ginnetti, said the 13.9 million people displaced by sudden onset disasters excluded those told to evacuate an area before a disaster struck. He called this a conservative figure, since homelessness due to drought was not included in the data.
Floods chiefly repsonsible
“Most of this displacement is being driven by floods, which is on the increase in a globally warming world and where population growth is increasing in flood-prone areas,” Ginnetti said. “Population exposure is indeed a key component of displacement risk. More people are likely to be displaced by disasters in countries with large populations.”
The data show displacement associated with disasters will mainly affect developing countries. However, the chief spokesman for the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Dennis McClean, said economic losses would be greatest in the richer countries. He said this year would probably be the worst year on record in terms of economic losses.
“If we look just at the Atlantic hurricane season, which is still ongoing, we see that economic losses in the United States alone are probably in the region of about $300 billion,” McClean said. “That is what the initial estimates are telling us. And, of course, the losses are perhaps even more significant in small island states in the Caribbean, which have also been devastated by these events.”
Specialists in disaster risk reduction are urging nations to improve land zoning and the quality of buildings, especially in seismic zones and on land exposed to storms and floods. They note that good early warning systems may not save homes but will save lives.
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Washington has increased tensions in talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement by insisting that any new deal be allowed to expire after five years, two officials familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday.
Canada and Mexico both strongly oppose the concept of a so-called sunset clause, a provision that had been floated earlier.
But the officials, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential, said the U.S. side formally proposed it late on Wednesday during the fourth of seven scheduled rounds to update the rules governing one of the world’s biggest trade blocs.
The Trump administration says the clause, causing NAFTA to expire every five years unless all three countries agree it should continue, is to ensure the pact stays up to date.
But Mexico and Canada insist there is no point updating the pact with such a threat hanging over it, arguing the clause would stunt investment by sowing too much uncertainty about the future of the agreement.
“It’s a source of total uncertainty,” said one of the NAFTA government officials familiar with details of the negotiations.
U.S. President Donald Trump says NAFTA, originally signed in 1994, has been a disaster for the United States and has frequently threatened to scrap it unless major changes are made.
Business and farm groups say abandoning the 23-year-old pact would wreak economic havoc, disrupting cross-border manufacturing supply chains and slapping high tariffs on agricultural products.
Trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has quadrupled under NAFTA, now topping $1.2 trillion a year. As well as the sunset clause, the United States wants to boost how much North American content autos must contain to qualify for tax-free status and eliminate a dispute settlement mechanisms that Canada insists must stay.
Some trade observers said it is difficult to see how negotiators could reach an agreement given U.S. demands that many see as nonstarters.
The head of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector labor union, said it was clear the United States did not want a deal.
“NAFTA is not going anywhere. This thing is going into the toilet,” Jerry Dias told reporters on Thursday.
Despite clear signs of impatience from Canada in particular, U.S. negotiators have yet to submit their proposal on rules of origin for the auto sector. That looked unlikely to come before Friday, another official familiar with the talks said.
Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings that he might terminate the pact and said he was open to doing a bilateral deal with either Canada or Mexico if three-way negotiations fail.
He was speaking at the White House with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said Canada was “braced” for Trump’s unpredictability but taking a serious approach to the NAFTA talks.
Negotiators were also set to cover the difficult issue of government procurement on Thursday.
Canada and Mexico want their companies to be able to bid on more U.S. federal and state government contracts, but this is at odds with Trump’s “Buy American” agenda. U.S. negotiators have countered with a proposal that would effectively grant the other countries less access, people familiar with the talks say.
On automotive rules of origin, NAFTA negotiators face tough new U.S. demands to increase regional vehicle content to 85 percent from 62.5 percent, with 50 percent required from the United States, according to people briefed on the plan.
The rules of origin demands are among several conditions that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has labeled “poison pill proposals” that threaten to torpedo the talks.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday that he believed higher percentages for automotive content would be achieved, and “car companies will adapt themselves to it.”
However, a study released on Thursday by the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents U.S. auto parts makers, showed the higher content requirements would lead to the loss of up to 24,000 U.S. jobs, as some companies would forgo NAFTA’s tariff-free benefits and ship in more components from other countries.
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British billionaire Richard Branson on Thursday placed another bet on the future with an investment in Hyperloop One, which is developing super high-speed transportation systems.
Hyperloop One said Branson’s Virgin Group would take the company global and rebrand itself as Virgin Hyperloop One in the near future.
Branson has joined the board of Hyperloop One, which aims to develop pods that will transport passenger and mixed-use cargo at speeds of 250 miles per hour (402 km per hour).
The pod lifts above a track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to low aerodynamic drag.
The company did not disclose the size of the investment.
Hyperloop One was originally conceptualized by Elon Musk. In July, Musk said he had received verbal approval to start building the systems that would link New York and Washington, cutting travel time to about half an hour.
Last month, Hyperloop One raised $85 million in new funding, bringing the total financing raised to $245 million since it was founded in 2014.
Hyperloop One’s co-founders, executive chairman Shervin Pishevar and president of engineering Josh Giegel, have previously worked at Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic is Branson’s space company, which in 2016, was granted an operating license to fly its passenger rocket ship with the world’s first paying space tourists once final safety tests are completed.
“Virgin Hyperloop One will be all-electric and the team is working on ensuing it is a responsible and sustainable form of transport,” Virgin Group said in a statement.
Hyperloop One is also working on projects in the Middle East, Europe, India and Canada, according to the statement.
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Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Thursday she “absolutely” supports the public release of all advertisements produced by a Russia-linked organization during the 2016 presidential election.
Sandberg said the company is “working on transparency” following the revelation last month that a group with alleged ties to the Russian government ran $100,000 worth of ads on Facebook promoting “divisive” causes like Black Lives Matter.
“Things happened on our platform that shouldn’t have happened,” she said during the interview with Axios’s Mike Allen.
Later Thursday, Sandberg is set to meet with Congressional investigators who are looking into what role the advertisements which began running in 2015 and continued through this year may have played in the 2016 presidential election.
The $100,000 worth of ads represent a very small fraction of the total $2.3 billion spent by, and on behalf of, President Donald Trump and losing-candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaigns during the election.
Multiple congressional investigations have been launched, seeking to determine what effect alleged Russian meddling may have played in the election.
In addition, Robert Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is conducting a criminal probe, including whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian operatives during the election season. Trump has denied working with the Russians.
Facebook had previously agreed to disclose the thousands of Facebook ads to congress. Sandberg said Thursday she thinks “it’s important that [the investigators] get the whole picture and explain that to the American people.”
In response to the Russian ad buys, Sandberg said Facebook is hiring 4,000 new employees to oversee ads and content. She said the company is also using “machine learning and automation” to target fake accounts that spread fake news.
She defined fake news as “things that are false hoaxes” and said Facebook is working to stamp out the bad information by teaming up with third-party fact checkers and warning users before they share news deemed fake by Facebook.
She said it is important to be cautious when going after fake news because “a lot of what we allow on Facebook is people expressing themselves” and “when you cut off speech for one person, you cut off speech for all people.”
“We don’t check the information posted on Facebook before people post it, and I don’t think people should want us to,” she said.
Hundreds of fake accounts were used to distribute the Russia-linked advertisements, Sandberg said. But had those ads been posted by legitimate users, “we would have let them run,” she said.
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The European Union’s Brexit negotiator said Thursday that that little progress was made with the U.K. in a fifth round of talks on the country’s departure from the EU in 2019, and that he cannot yet recommend broadening negotiations to include trade.
Michel Barnier said that despite the “constructive spirit” shown in this week’s negotiations in Brussels, “we haven’t made any great steps forward.” On the question of how much Britain has to pay to settle its financial commitments, he said: “We have reached a state of deadlock, which is disturbing.”
Barnier said he would not be able to recommend to EU leaders meeting next week that “sufficient progress” has been made to broaden the talks to future EU-British relations like trade.
The leaders meet in Brussels on Oct. 19-20, and it had been hoped they would agree to widen the talks.
The EU says this can only happen when there has been progress on the issues of the financial settlement, the rights of citizens affected by Brexit and the status of the Northern Ireland-Ireland border.
But Britain says these issues are closely intertwined with their future relations like trade and must be discussed together.
“I hope the member states will see the progress we have made and take a step forward” next week, British Brexit envoy David Davis told reporters.
“We would like them to give Michel the means to broaden the negotiations. It’s up to them whether they do it. Clearly I think it’s in the interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union that they do,” Davis said.
Barnier said the two sides would work to achieve “sufficient progress” in time for a subsequent meeting of EU leaders in December.
Britain must leave the EU on March 29, 2019, but the negotiations must be completed within about a year to leave time for EU states’ national parliaments to ratify the Brexit agreement.
Barnier reaffirmed that parting with “no deal will be a very bad deal.”
“To be clear, on our side, we will be ready to face any eventualities, and all the eventualities,” he said.
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Frustrated by failures in Congress, President Donald Trump will try to put his own stamp on health care with an executive order Thursday that aims to make lower-premium plans more widely available.
But the president’s move is likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and perhaps even some insurers — the same coalition that so far has blocked congressional Republicans from repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Critics say the White House approach would raise costs for the sick and the lower-premium coverage provided to healthy people would come with significant gaps.
Administration officials say one of the main ideas is to ease the way for groups and associations to sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land, reflecting Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums for consumers who buy their own health insurance policies, as well as for small businesses.
Less cost, but less coverage
Those “association health plans” could be shielded from state and federal requirements such as mandates for coverage of certain standard benefits, equal pricing regardless of a customer’s health status, and no dollar limits on how much the insurer would pay out.
Other elements of the White House proposal may include:
Easing current restrictions on short-term policies that last less than a year, an option for people making a life transition, from recent college graduates to early retirees.
Allowing employers to set aside pre-tax dollars so workers can use the money to buy an individual health policy.
No impact on 2018
Democrats are bracing for another effort by Trump to dismantle Obamacare, this time relying on the rule-making powers of the executive branch. Staffers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have been working on the options since shortly after the president took office.
But as Trump himself once said, health care is complicated and working his will won’t be as easy as signing a presidential order. Some parts of the plan will have to go through the agency rule-making process, which involves notice and comment, and can take months. State attorneys general and state insurance regulators may try to block the White House in court, seeing the plan as a challenge to their traditional authority.
Experts say Trump’s plan probably wouldn’t have much impact on premiums for 2018, which are expected to be sharply higher in many states for people buying their own policies.
Sponsors would have to be found to offer and market the new style association plans, and insurers would have to step up to design and administer them. For insurers, this would come at a time when much of the industry seems to have embraced the consumer protections required by the Obama health law.
Markets less viable
Depending on the scope of the order, some experts say the new plans created by the White House would draw healthy people away from Obamacare insurance markets, making them less viable for consumers and insurers alike. This could start happening as early as 2019. Premiums for those in the health law’s markets would keep rising, and so would taxpayer costs for subsidizing coverage.
“If the order is as expansive as it sounds, association plans could create insurance products that would siphon off healthy people with lower premiums and skinnier benefits, leading more insurers to exit the ACA marketplace or raise premiums significantly,” Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said recently.
“Healthy middle-class people not now eligible for subsidies could get cheaper insurance, but people with pre-existing conditions could be priced out of the market altogether,” he added.
Nonetheless conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe the federal government has overstepped its bounds in regulating the private health insurance market. They argue that loosening federal rules would allow insurers to design plans that, although they may not cover as much, work perfectly well for many people.
17 million buy policies
About 17 million people now buy individual health insurance policies.
Nearly 9 million consumers receive tax credits under the Affordable Care Act and are protected from higher premiums.
But those who get no subsidies are exposed to the full brunt of cost increases that could reach well into the double digits in many states next year.
Many in this latter group are solid middle-class, including self-employed business people and early retirees. Cutting their premiums has been a longstanding political promise for Republicans.
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Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo sought at least $1 billion in damages and a public apology from Uber Technologies Inc as conditions for settling its high-profile trade secret lawsuit against the ride-services company, sources familiar with the proposal told Reuters.
The Waymo self-driving car unit also asked that an independent monitor be appointed to ensure Uber does not use Waymo technology in the future, the sources said.
Uber rejected those terms, said the sources, who were not authorized to publicly discuss settlement talks.
The precise dollar amount requested by Waymo and the exact time the offer was made could not be learned.
Waymo’s tough negotiating stance reflects the company’s confidence in its legal position after months of pretrial victories in a case that may help to determine who emerges in the forefront of the fast-growing field of self-driving cars.
The aggressive settlement demands also suggest that Waymo is not in a hurry to resolve the lawsuit, in part because of its value as a distraction for Uber leadership, said Elizabeth Rowe, a trade secret expert at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Waymo recently persuaded a San Francisco federal judge to delay a trial to decide the dispute from October to early December, citing the need to investigate evidence Uber had not disclosed earlier.
No further settlement talks are scheduled, the sources said. The judge overseeing the case mandated that the companies enter mediation with a court-appointed magistrate.
Amy Candido, a Waymo attorney, declined to comment on any settlement talks, but said the company’s reasons for suing Uber are “pretty clear.”
“Waymo had one goal: to stop Uber from using its trade secrets,” she said. “That remains its goal.”
An Uber spokesperson declined to comment.
Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that former engineer Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving to set up a self-driving truck company, called Otto, which Uber acquired soon after.
Uber denied using any of Waymo’s trade secrets.
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A Dutch team won a solar-powered car race across Australia for a seventh time on Thursday, with a University of Michigan car likely to take second place in the biennial event.
The Nuon team’s Nuna 9 car averaged more than 80 kph (50 mph) to reach the World Solar Challenge finish line in the southern coastal city of Adelaide after five days of racing across 3,022 kilometers (1,878 miles) of Outback highway from Darwin in the north.
The Delft University of Technology-based team has competed eight times.
The U.S. car Novum had yet to finish but was in second place followed by the Punch Powertrain team from Belgium, Tokai University from Japan and Solar Team Twente from the Netherlands.
Nuon team engineer Marten Arthens described the win as the “best feeling ever.”
“We’re going to celebrate, but first I’m going to take a shower. I haven’t done that a week,” Arthens said.
This year’s race attracted 95 teams from more than 20 countries.
The event marks 30 years since the first World Solar Challenge in 1987.
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China has a new richest man, according to the annual Hurun rich list of the country’s top movers and shakers.
Xu Jiayin, the chairman of developer China Evergrande Group, has seized top spot – beating out more familiar faces such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Jack Ma and rival property magnate Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda Group.
Xu’s reported $43 billion wealth – a gain of around $30 billion against last year – comes on the back of a surge in Evergrande’s shares, up over 450 percent so far this year amid plans to cut debt and focus on profit over scale.
The Hurun Report, established in 1999, is the leading China-based organization ranking the wealth of the country’s rich and famous, and its list gives a temperature check on the winners and losers in China.
Growth in China stabilized this year, but while the world’s second largest economy averted a hard landing, some major corporations have buckled under the weight of their debt or been sanctioned by authorities over risky investments overseas.
Wanda’s Wang – who took top spot for the last two years – dropped to fifth in the list after Wanda sold off much of the firm’s hotel and theme park assets to rivals in July, after coming under regulatory scrutiny over its high leverage.
Close behind Evergrande’s Xu were China’s top tech titans – Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent Holdings Ltd’s Pony Ma, who has seen his firm’s value rise on the popularity of its WeChat messaging app and its popular online games.
The list also underlined those who have fallen from grace in corporate China.
Jia Yueting, founder of sprawling conglomerate LeEco that once looked to rival both Tesla Inc and Netflix, dropped to 1,978th place from 31st last year.
Yang Kai, chairman of embattled Huishan Dairy – 66th last year – dropped off the list entirely as his firm fights off creditors amid billions of dollars of unpaid debt.
On the up was Wuxi Pharma Tech’s Li Ge and his wife, propelled by China’s push towards drug innovation, Zhang Lei of fast-growing online news portal Toutiao and Li Shufu of carmaker Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd.
“It has been a good year for manufacturing, cars, education, TMT and healthcare,” Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf said.
While many of those on the 2,000-strong list were members of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, only a few were delegates at the upcoming five-yearly Party Congress that begins next week.
These included corn magnate Li Denghai, alcohol billionaire Wu Shaoxun and Pan Gang of dairy giant Yili.
The list, with a combined wealth of $2.6 trillion, saw average wealth rising 12.5 percent – faster than broader economic growth – pointing to the growing financial muscle of China’s super-rich elite.
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The Trump administration says coal is back and nuclear energy is cool. Not at the expense of natural gas, wind and solar, insists an unusual coalition of business and environmental groups.
Dow Chemical, Koch Industries and U.S. Steel Corp. are standing with environmentalists in opposing an Energy Department plan that would reward nuclear and coal-fired power plants for adding reliability to the nation’s power grid and are pressuring the administration to shift course.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry says the plan is needed to help prevent widespread outages such as those caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and a 2014 “polar vortex” in the Eastern and Central U.S. The plan aims to reverse a steady tide of retirements of coal and nuclear plants, which have lost market share as natural gas and renewable energy flourish.
“The continued loss of baseload generation … such as coal and nuclear must be stopped,” Perry wrote in a Sept. 28 letter urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to adopt the new rule. “These generation resources are necessary to maintain the resiliency of the electric grid” amid sharp shifts in the U.S. energy market.
Perry’s plan coincides with President Donald Trump’s vow to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” while ending what he and other Republicans call a “war on coal” waged by the Obama administration. Perry, who has said he wants to “make nuclear energy cool again,” is certain to face questions about the plan and the opposition at a congressional hearing Thursday.
Critics see a bailout
The plan would compensate power plant owners that maintain a 90-day fuel supply protected against the elements. Critics say it could result in subsidies worth billions of dollars.
Environmental groups say the plan would boost dirty fuels and harm consumers, while the energy industry warns about interference in the free market and manufacturers complain about higher energy prices that could be passed on to consumers.
“Rick Perry is trying to slam through an outrageous bailout of the coal and nuclear industries on the backs of American consumers,” said Kit Kennedy, an energy policy expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This radical proposal would lead to higher energy bills for consumers and businesses, as well as dirtier air and increased health problems.”
A coalition of industry groups, ranging from the American Council on Renewable Energy to the American Petroleum Institute and the Natural Gas Supply Association, also blasted the plan, saying it could harm “entire industries and their tens of thousands workers.”
Amy Farrell, senior vice president of the American Wind Energy Association, said the proposal could “upend competitive markets that save consumers billions of dollars a year.”
Oil, gas: Let markets work
Marty Durbin, executive vice president of the petroleum institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said officials “need to be careful that government doesn’t put its thumb on the scale” in energy markets. “It’s better to let markets choose, which is what the United States is seeing with the growth of natural gas” as the leading U.S. electricity source, Durbin said.
The Industrial Energy Consumers of America, a trade group that represents Dow, Koch Industries and other manufacturing giants, is among those lobbying against the plan. In a letter to Congress, the group called the proposal “anti-competitive” and said it could distort or “destroy competitive wholesale electricity markets, increase the price of electricity to all consumers” and harm U.S. manufacturing.
The manufacturers and other critics say there is no evidence of a threat to the grid’s day-to-day reliability that would justify the emergency action Perry is seeking.
Indeed, in a report commissioned by Perry and delivered in August, the Energy Department said “reliability is adequate today despite the retirement of 11 percent of the generating capacity available in 2002, as significant additions from natural gas, wind, and solar have come online since then.”
Gerry Cauley, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., an international regulatory authority, said at a conference in June that “the state of reliability in North America remains strong, and the trend line shows continuing improvement year over year.”
Coal, nuclear groups hail plan
Even so, coal and nuclear groups hailed the plan. National Mining Association President and CEO Hal Quinn called Perry’s action “a long-overdue and necessary step to address the vulnerability of America’s energy grid,” while Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said disruptions caused by hurricanes and other extreme weather events show that “the urgency to act in support of the resiliency of the electric grid has never been clearer.”
The Energy Department seeks final action by mid-December, although industry groups and some members of Congress have pushed for a delay.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said the energy commission should reject Perry’s plan.
“Secretary Perry has embraced an obsolete view of the grid (that) would bail out coal and nuclear power plants at the expense everyone else,” she said.
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The ranking of the 50 most powerful women by Fortune magazine is out. The list include such stalwarts as General Motors Mary Barra and PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi. But it also seven newcomers, including the first foreign-born Latina CEO on the Fortune 500, Geisha Williams. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo was at their annual gathering in Washington this week and has this report.
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