Taking a cue from demonstrations that paralyzed Canada’s capital city for weeks, U.S. truckers on Wednesday plan to embark on a 2,500-mile (4,000-km) cross-country drive toward Washington D.C. to protest coronavirus restrictions.

Organizers of the “People’s Convoy” say they want to “jumpstart the economy” and reopen the country. Their 11-day trek will approach the Beltway around the U.S. capital on March 5 “but will not be going into D.C. proper,” according to a statement.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday it had approved 400 D.C. National Guard troops to “provide support at designated traffic posts, provide command and control, and cover sustainment requirements” from Feb. 26 through March 7.

About 50 large tactical vehicles were also approved to be placed at traffic posts.

Brian Brase, a truck driver who is one of the organizers, said regardless of where the trucks stop “we’re not going anywhere” until the group’s demands are met. Those demands include an end to COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements.

Most U.S. states are already easing some restrictions. In California, where the convoy begins, universal mask requirements were lifted last week while masks for vaccinated people are required only in high-risk areas such as public transit, schools and healthcare settings.

Another convoy was expected to leave Scranton, Pennsylvania – President Joe Biden’s hometown – on Wednesday morning and arrive on the 495 Beltway (highway) in Washington sometime during the afternoon.

Organizer Bob Bolus told WJLA news, an ABC affiliate in Washington, that his convoy has no intention to break laws or block traffic, but warned this could happen if their demands regarding pandemic mandates and the cost of fuel are not meant.

“They are not going to intimidate us and they are not going to threaten us. We’re the power, not them,” he said.

In Canada, pandemic-related protests choked streets in the capital Ottawa for more than three weeks and blocked the busiest land crossing between Canada and the United States – the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario – for six days.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency powers to end the protests, and Canadian police restored a sense of normalcy in Ottawa over the weekend.

“We plan to stay a while and hope they don’t escalate it the way Trudeau did with his disgusting government overreach,” Brase said from Adelanto, California, where the convoy will begin, about 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Los Angeles.

Brase said he expected thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would participate. Organizers bill the convoy as nonpartisan, trucker-led, and supported by a wide range of ethnic minorities and religious faiths.

Economic growth in the United States – as in other countries – was brought to a juddering halt by the imposition of lockdowns in 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The economy has boomed since the federal government pumped in trillions of dollars in relief, growing 5.7% in 2021, the strongest since 1984 albeit from a low ebb in 2020, the Commerce Department reported in January.

Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 4%, close to the 3.5% rate of February 2020, just before the pandemic took hold, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But headwinds related to strained supply chains and inflation remain.

“It is now time to reopen the country,” the protest organizers said in a statement.

Among other demands, the protesters want an immediate end to the state of emergency in California – the most populous U.S. state with one of the world’s largest economies -that Governor Gavin Newsom has extended.

Nationwide, new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to the coronavirus have plummeted from all-time highs hit a month ago, though nearly 2,000 people per day are still dying from the disease and the number of total deaths is closing in on 1 million since the pandemic began. 
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Торги на українському міжбанківському валютному ринку 23 лютого завершуються на рівні 29 гривень 43–48 копійок за долар
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«Усі платіжні системи, доступ до коштів, робота банків загалом продовжується в звичайному режимі. НБУ має достатньо резервів для підкріплення банків готівкою» – регулятор
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Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку станом на 12:40 відбувалися на рівні 28 гривень 28–32 копійки за долар
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Постанова передбачає створення передумов Раді національної безпеки і оборони для застосування персональних економічних санкцій
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The Biden administration announced on Tuesday actions taken by the federal government and private industry that it says will bolster the supply chain of rare earths and other critical minerals used in technologies from household appliances and electronics to defense systems. They say these steps will reduce the nation’s dependence on China, a major producer of these elements. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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As Russia moves troops into the Donbas region of Ukraine, experts warn that the prospect of a shooting war erupting in Europe, combined with heavy sanctions on Russia, is likely to cause instability in the energy market, possibly translating into significantly higher costs for both gasoline and natural gas. 

Because Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and natural gas, disruptions in its output, whether as an unintended consequence of military action or as a response to international sanctions, can have a profound effect on energy prices. 

Global oil prices are extremely sensitive to supply disruptions, said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. 

“Russia exports about four and a half million barrels (of oil) a day, in a global market that’s roughly 100 million barrels a day,” Hirs told VOA. “If a million barrels gets pushed aside, either for the war effort or because sanctions cut off delivery, or there’s a catastrophe with the Russian oil fields as the war progresses … we’d expect to see the oil prices increase by 20% to 25%. That would mean the retail price of gasoline would go up 50 cents to 75 cents a gallon.” 

Sanctions levied on Russia 

As tensions have increased in Ukraine over the past few months, oil prices, in particular, have responded to widespread uncertainty by rising sharply. On Tuesday, the price of Brent Crude, which is commonly used as a benchmark, was above $96 per barrel, up from under $70 in early December. 

On Monday and Tuesday, leaders in the United States and Europe began announcing a list of punitive measures being imposed against Russia. Most of the sanctions targeted banks and wealthy individual Russians, and were not a direct move against Russia’s energy sector. 

The one exception was the announcement by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the German government would not allow the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would transport natural gas directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, to open.  

As the pipeline has never been operational, that announcement had no effect on current energy supplies. However, a senior administration official Tuesday hailed the decision to suspend the approval of the pipeline as an important step in breaking Europe’s dependence on Russia for natural gas, and said that the U.S. would continue to ramp up shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe to compensate for any loss of supply from Russia. 

Biden addresses fuel prices 

In announcing the U.S. sanctions targeting Russia, President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned that they would have consequences for Americans in the form of higher fuel prices. “Defending freedom will have a cost for us, as well, here at home,” he said. “We need to be honest about that.” 

He said that his administration would “take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours.” He promised to lead a coordinated effort involving major oil producers that would “blunt” the impact of supply disruptions on fuel prices.  

“I want to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump,” he said. “This is critical to me.” 

Markets already stressed 

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, energy markets were already significantly disordered, even before Russia began massing troops on the border of Ukraine last year. 

In the early phases of the pandemic, global demand for oil and gas plummeted as lockdowns kept people from driving and using public transportation. At one point in April 2020, there was such a supply glut that the price of oil plunged into negative territory, meaning that producers were having to pay buyers to take supply off their hands. 

One consequence was a major decrease in production, as many high-cost extraction operations became economically unsustainable and were taken offline. 

Demand has largely recovered, according to Gregory Upton, an associate research professor at Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. However, Upton told VOA, oil production remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels, which has added upward pressure on prices. 

Markets will compensate 

Upton told VOA that if supplies of Russian oil and gas are significantly curtailed as a result of war in Ukraine, that would encourage oil producers to reactivate some of the production facilities that were shut down during the pandemic. 

“If sanctions are put on Russian oil and/or natural gas, and that reduces that supply to the global market, that will put upward pressure on prices,” Upton said. “Markets will respond. Upward pressure on prices will incentivize people to go drill more wells … and it will move that market back into equilibrium.” 

That doesn’t mean that there will not be disruptions, some potentially significant, in the near term. But, as of Tuesday, Upton said futures markets continued to predict that, in the medium term, oil prices will fall. 

 
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The Biden administration announced actions taken by the federal government and private industry that it says will bolster the supply chain for rare earths and other critical minerals used in technologies from household appliances and electronics to defense systems. They say these steps will reduce the nation’s dependence on China, a major producer of these elements. 

“China controls most of the global market in these minerals,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday from the White House. “We can’t build a future that’s made in America if we ourselves are dependent on China for the materials that power the products of today and tomorrow.”   

The steps include a $35 million contract to MP Materials to process heavy rare earth elements at the company’s Mountain Pass, California, production site — the first processing and separation facility of its kind in the United States.   

In 2020, the government awarded $9.6 million to the company, which owns the only American rare earths mine. The $35 million announcement Tuesday will complement the $700 million that MP Materials will invest by 2024 to create an American rare earth magnetics supply, said company CEO James Litinsky, who spoke virtually at the White House event.   

Last June, following an executive order from Biden, the administration released a report on the supply chain, concluding an over-reliance on China for critical minerals. Currently, China controls 87% of the global permanent magnet market, as well as 55% of rare earths mining capacity and 85% of its refining. 

What Beijing is holding right now is critical, said Phoebe Moon, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine, focusing on global supply chains and economic statecraft. 

“We are using more hydro energy. We are using more climate and environmentally friendly energy sources,” Moon told VOA. “And the list of rare earth materials that the Biden administration announced that they will be targeting on this issue really has that in its heart.” 

Rare earths 

Rare earths are 17 minerals that are not rare, just difficult and costly to mine and process cleanly. The U.S. is the second-biggest miner of rare earths, after China, according to the latest government data.  Other top miners include Myanmar, Australia, Madagascar, India, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil.   

The administration’s goal is to become reasonably self-sufficient for some key essential industries such as auto and network equipment for national security and competitiveness, said Jen-Yi Chen, associate professor of operations and supply chain management at Cleveland State University. 

“By ‘reasonably,’ I mean not 100% ending our dependence on the Chinese, since it would be too costly and not sustainable, as we are not that resource-rich and thus need to prioritize and focus on the real essentials,” Chen told VOA. “By and large, in the near future, we may still need the Chinese inputs and capacity to keep prices low for the nonessentials but should not compromise much on the essentials.”    

Chen said ramping up domestic production, despite its environmental costs, still makes sense. 

“In case of a shutdown in operations, the time to recover will be much shorter than going to partners, especially during the pandemic,” Chen added. It may also motivate better environmental oversight as “they are now right in our backyard.” 

Chinese pressure 

Earlier this week Beijing announced sanctions aimed to restrict access to rare earth minerals to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, two companies that provide maintenance services to Taiwan’s missile defense systems. Beijing considers Taiwan its breakaway province. 

  Last month, legislators introduced a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate that could prohibit defense contractors from procuring rare earths from China by 2026 and force the Pentagon to create a strategic reserve of those minerals by 2025.  

“The Chinese Communist Party has a chokehold on global rare earth element supplies, which are used in everything from batteries to fighter jets. Ending America’s dependence on the CCP for extraction and processing of these elements is critical to winning the strategic competition against China and protecting our national security,” said Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one of the bill’s sponsors.  

Moon said recognizing the importance of critical minerals supply chains is a great start, but there must also be fundamental, cooperative efforts to keep geopolitics stable. 

“The problems we face today cannot be solved by ourselves in many cases, and these efforts to reshore and ally-shore will create an echo chamber and undermine our efforts to understand each other, creating peace in a more fundamental way,” she said, referring to efforts to move production domestically or to friendly countries.  

Also at the White House event on Tuesday, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables announced it is setting up a facility to test the commercial viability to extract lithium from geothermal brines at Imperial County, California, an area that contains some of the largest deposits of lithium in the world. 

Other steps the White House announced include partnerships with Ford and Volvo for the collection and recycling of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, a $140 million pilot project to recover rare earth elements and critical minerals from mine waste, and a $3 billion investment in refining and recycling battery materials. 

 
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Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку завершуються на рівні 29 гривень 4–6 копійок за долар
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22 лютого ціна нафти Brent перевищила 99 доларів за барель уперше з вересня 2014 року
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Ghana’s rapid urbanization is producing more waste while fueling a boom in luxury housing that the average Ghanaian cannot afford. One entrepreneur may have the answer to both problems – producing inexpensive houses made from recycled plastic. Senanu Tord reports from Ghana’s capital, Accra.
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Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку станом на 13:05 відбувалися на рівні 28 гривень 94,5–96,5 копійки за долар
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