Calling US farms the ‘breadbasket of democracy,’ president vows to do more to offset food supply issues amid Russian invasion
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China’s export growth slumped in April to its lowest level in almost two years as the country’s “zero-COVID” policy continues to impact manufacturers and, according to trade experts, pushes many foreign businesses to reconsider operations in China.

Exports in terms of dollars grew 3.9% in April from the year-ago period, marking the slowest pace since June 2020, according to China’s customs administration.

They also dropped sharply from the 14.7% growth reported in March, according to official figures.

Import growth was essentially flat in April, improving slightly from a 0.1% decline in March and a bit better than the 3.0% contraction by a Reuters poll.

The weak figures reflect the state of China’s trade sector, which accounts for about one-third of gross domestic product. The sector has been losing momentum as COVID-19 restrictions across the country disturb supply chains in major centers such as Shanghai, which has been under a lockdown since late March.

It’s not clear when authorities will fully lift the restrictions. The city tightened them over the weekend as President Xi Jinping pledged to “unswervingly” double down on the zero-COVID policy.

Auto factories and other manufacturers that tried to keep operating by having staff live at their facilities were forced to reduce production because of supply chain disturbances and logistics issues.

Tesla Inc. has halted most production at its Shanghai plant because of problems securing parts for its electric vehicles, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

According to the memo, the plant planned to manufacture fewer than 200 vehicles at its Shanghai factory on Tuesday, far below the roughly 1,200 units a day it was producing shortly after reopening on April 19 after a 22-day closure.

“Shanghai’s lockdown had impacted components of China’s economy that are the most vulnerable — service workers, delivery drivers and other people still working,” Rui Zhong, program associate at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, said in an email. “This includes Tesla workers who are producing luxury vehicles in conditions that have been described as them sleeping in factories.”

Tesla’s sales in China slumped by 98% in April, according to data released Tuesday by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). After reopening, the factory sold 1,512 vehicles in April, down from 65,814 cars sold in March, according to CPCA.

Other automakers also reported a steep slowdown in sales and production for April. Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, reported that it was halting some operations in eight plants in Japan from May 16 to 21 because of a parts shortage resulting from the lockdown in Shanghai, according to the Automotive News website. More foreign businesses in China are cutting revenue expectations and plans for future investment because of China’s recent COVID-19 outbreak and related restrictions.

A survey released Monday by the American Chamber of Commerce in China shows that 58% of survey respondents said they have decreased their 2022 revenue projections, up from 54% in a similar survey in April. Meanwhile, 52% of respondents have already either delayed or decreased investments in China.

The latest study, conducted from April 29 to May 5, covered 121 companies with operations in China.

Gordon Chang, author of the 2021 book “The Coming Collapse of China,” told VOA Mandarin in an email that despite concerns raised by foreign businesses, China would stick to its strict coronavirus containment policy at least through the end of May.

“Many, however, think the lockdown of Shanghai will continue through at least the end of this month and the ‘zero-COVID’ policy will continue through the (Chinese Communist) Party’s 20th National Congress, which will be held in the fall if tradition holds,” Chang said. The congress is scheduled to convene in the second half of 2022.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Though inflation may be soaring, supply chains remain snarled, and the coronavirus won’t go away, America’s casinos are humming right along, recording the best month in their history in March.

The American Gaming Association, the gambling industry’s national trade group, said Wednesday that U.S. commercial casinos won more than $5.3 billion from gamblers in March, the best single-month total ever. The previous record month was July 2021 at $4.92 billion.

The casinos collectively also had their best first quarter ever, falling just short of the $14.35 billion they won from gamblers in the fourth quarter of last year, which was the highest three-month period in history.

Three states set quarterly revenue records to start this year: Arkansas ($147.4 million); Florida ($182 million), and New York ($996.6 million).

The numbers do not include tribal casinos, which report their income separately and are expected to report similarly positive results.

But while the national casino economy is doing well, there are pockets of sluggishness such as Atlantic City, where in-person casino revenue has not yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

“Consumers continue to seek out gaming’s entertainment options in record numbers,” said Bill Miller, the association’s president and CEO. He said the strong performance to start 2022 came “despite continued headwinds from supply chain constraints, labor shortages and the impact of soaring inflation.”

The trade group also released its annual State of the States report on Wednesday, examining gambling’s performance across the country.

As previously reported, nationwide casino revenue set an all-time high in 2021 at $53.03 billion, up 21% from the previous best year, 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

But the report includes new details, including that commercial casinos paid a record $11.69 billion in direct gambling tax revenue to state and local governments in 2021. That’s an increase of 75% from 2020 and 15 percent from 2019. This does not include the billions more paid in income, sales and other taxes, the association said.

It also ranked the largest casino markets in the U.S. in terms of revenue for 2021. The Las Vegas Strip is first at $7.05 billion, followed by:

Atlantic City ($2.57 billion)
the Chicago area ($2.01 billion)
Baltimore-Washington D.C. ($2 billion)
the Gulf Coast ($1.61 billion)
New York City ($1.46 billion)
Philadelphia ($1.40 billion)
Detroit ($1.29 billion)
St. Louis ($1.03 billion)
the Boulder Strip in Nevada ($967 million)

The association divides most of Pennsylvania’s casinos into three separate markets: Philadelphia, the Poconos and Pittsburgh. Their combined revenue of nearly $2.88 billion would make them the second largest market in the country if judged as a single entity. It also counts downtown Las Vegas, and its $731 million in revenue, as a separate market.

Seven additional states legalized sports betting and two more added internet gambling in 2021.

The group reported many states saw gamblers spending more in casinos while visiting them in lower numbers compared to pre-pandemic 2019.

The average age of a casino patron last year was 43 1/2, compared to 49 1/2 in 2019.

Americans bet $57.7 billion on sports last year, more than twice the amount from 2020. That generated $4.33 billion in revenue, an increase of nearly 180% over 2020.

Internet gambling revenue reached $3.71 billion last year, and three states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan — each won more than $1 billion online. West Virginia’s internet gambling market reached $60.9 million in revenue in its first full year of operation, while Connecticut’s two internet casinos reported combined revenue of $47.6 million after launching in October.
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President Joe Biden on Wednesday hailed American farmers as the “backbone of freedom,” pledging hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of support and calling on them to offset a global grain shortage caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“You’re literally the backbone of our country, it’s not hyperbole,” he said, speaking at a family farm in Kankakee, Illinois, where, earlier in the day, he stood in front of a tractor and gazed over growing waves of grain. “But you also feed the world. And we’re seeing, with Putin’s war in Ukraine, you’re like the backbone of freedom.”

Russia’s 11-week-old invasion of Ukraine has imperiled global supplies of wheat, corn, barley, oilseeds and cooking oil, and it has disrupted fertilizer supplies. World food prices have risen nearly 13% in the wake of the invasion, the White House says.

Biden has announced a number of interventions for American farmers. Those include support that would allow farmers to plant two sets of crops in one year; access to technology that would allow for less fertilizer use, and the doubling of funding for domestic fertilizer production, to $500 million.

Biden told the gathered farm community that blame for the crisis rested on Putin, whose navy is blocking Ukrainian exports from Black Sea ports.

“But we’re doing something about it,” Biden said. “And our farmers are helping … on both fronts, reducing the … price of food at home and expanding production and feeding the world in need.”

The head of the European Investment Bank (EIB) this week sounded the alarm, saying that Ukraine is sitting on a staggering amount of wheat it can’t export.

“Ukraine is a rich country,” EIB President Werner Hoyer said. “Ukraine is the wheat basket of Europe, and it’s sitting on €8 billion (U.S. $8.5 billion) worth of wheat right now from last year’s harvest. They cannot export it; they have no access to the sea.

“This is one of the key issues that we must address, because they are industrious people,” he added. “They are sowing like crazy right now, and they will expect probably a good harvest, maybe 70% of last year’s harvest, in a couple of months — and then what to do with it? So these are issues that need to be addressed immediately, in addition to the social needs and the daily problems that Ukrainian citizens face.”

Worldwide effects

The European Union’s top diplomat warned of global impact.

“They are causing scarcity,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said of the Russian military, which invaded Ukraine on February 24. “They are bombing Ukrainian cities and provoking hunger in the world.”

Already the effects have spread across the world. Last month, farmers in Sri Lanka participated in strikes over rising food and fuel prices. That movement ultimately resulted in the resignation of the island nation’s Cabinet and prime minister.

And the crisis is likely to hit hardest in parts of the world where resources are already stretched thin, analysts said.

“This is a real reversal for the global economy,” Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA. “And those are the countries that are impacted the most — countries that are very reliant on food and energy imports are really going to get hit very hard. And politically, it’s going to be extremely difficult for those countries.”

Analysts say food price inflation could lead to instability on the world’s least-developed continent.

“Most African governments will scramble to cushion the loss of purchasing power stemming from higher inflation,” said Jacques Nel, head of economic-focused research firm Africa Macro. “Many will not be able to provide the necessary relief. Unrest is a matter of when and where, and not if.”

History shows that the humble grain holds immense power, perhaps no more famously than when the price of bread nearly doubled in 1788 France. Peasants revolted against the monarchy, hungry for governance ruled by the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Revolution came the following year.
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Uzbek cotton farmers are celebrating the lifting of a 13-year-old international boycott of their product following a finding that the cautiously reform-minded government is no longer using organized forced labor to harvest the economically vital crop.

The decision will open the door to long-closed markets for one of the world’s biggest cotton producers, including major American clothing retailers such as Amazon, Gap, J.Crew, Target and Walmart.

The U.S.-based Cotton Campaign, a coalition of more than 300 businesses and organizations, initiated the boycott in 2009. At that time, it said, the Uzbek authorities were “forcing over 1 million children and adults, including medical staff, public sector employees and students, to pick cotton every year during the harvest.”

The boycott ended after the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, a Cotton Campaign partner, reported this spring that it found “no systemic or systematic, government-imposed forced labor during the cotton harvest” in 2021.

Despite the Uzbek Forum’s finding of discrete incidents of forced labor in several regions, the Cotton Campaign said, “This historic achievement comes after years of persistent engagement by Uzbek activists, international advocates and multinational brands, together with a commitment by the government of Uzbekistan to end its use of forced labor.”

The campaign now urges end users to conduct human rights due diligence at all stages of production — at cotton farms, spinners, fabric mills and manufacturing units — and ensure to have “credible, independent mechanisms in place for forced labor prevention, monitoring, grievance and remedy.”

The Cotton Campaign also fights state-sponsored forced labor in Turkmenistan, which it defines as “one of the most closed and repressive countries in the world.”

It says the authoritarian government there every year “forces tens of thousands of public sector workers to pick cotton in hazardous and unsanitary conditions and extorts money from public employees to pay harvest expenses.”

Jonas Astrup, the International Labor Organization technical adviser in Tashkent, told VOA that freeing Uzbek cotton “from systemic forced and child labor is a political victory for the country.”

“They did not get rid of the boycott to please the international community but for Uzbekistan itself. Responsibility and accountability ultimately lie with the Uzbek people for how and whether they trust the system and how and whether the government can deliver for its citizens,” he said. “But it’s time to seize economic benefits of job creation, economic growth, attracting trade and investment to the country.”

Astrup said the biggest root cause of forced labor “was the state quota system for cotton production and official complicity in it. That has been changed but will take time, of course. But the system of production quotas for provinces, districts and farmers has gone away, and this is really the key.”

The ILO has been monitoring child labor in Uzbekistan since 2013 and forced labor since 2015. It has a network of 17 independent civil society activists, including former political prisoners, who will continue to use tested tools and methodology.

“We have helped inspections grow from 200 to 400 labor inspectors. They are now issuing an annual report with data that is useful for policy and business decisions. They have the mandate to issue fines, investigate violations and submit cases for criminal prosecution,” Astrup said.

Astrup sees the end of the boycott as especially timely as Uzbekistan weathers the impact of sanctions on Russia, a key trading partner.

“We can help Uzbekistan credibly develop its textile and garment industry and give assurance to international brands and retailers that they can start placing orders,” he said.

Astrup added that the ILO and its partners will establish a Better Work Uzbekistan program, focusing on social dialogue mechanisms at factories and cotton-textile clusters, including collective bargaining and bringing employers and workers to the table with government to promote reforms.

Human rights advocates, meanwhile, are calling on the Uzbek government to accelerate reforms and adhere to its international obligations.

Speaking in Tashkent, Bennett Freeman, a Cotton Campaign co-founder and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said Uzbekistan’s next challenge is “to open space for civil society and to create the enabling environment essential for responsible sourcing that will attract global brands and protect labor and human rights.”

Hugh Williamson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said Tashkent must lift restrictions on activists and NGOs “to enable them to monitor forced labor and ensure this terrible abuse does not return.”

Tanzila Narbayeva, Uzbekistan’s Senate chair who has led efforts to end forced and child labor, admits the country still faces enormous problems.

“Ensuring human rights and freedom, specifically labor rights, is one of the priorities in our development strategy,” Narbayeva told VOA.

“First, we will strengthen our legal basis, synchronizing our laws with international standards. We will continue reforming agriculture and must also develop our institutions, including a solid monitoring system to base policy on reliable data and research,” she said.

Narbayeva said Tashkent hears international calls for an independent civil society. She said the government is processing registration applications and conducting a discourse with nongovernmental groups.

“We want a pro-active civil society which closely works with relevant international organizations. There will be grants for NGOs, funding for anti-forced labor advocacy and promoting rights in the workplace,” she said.
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A top U.S. energy official says Russia’s war on Ukraine has driven home the need to diversify supply chains, and that Africa can benefit from this. Jose Fernandez made the comment to VOA Wednesday at an annual conference on African mining in Cape Town, South Africa.

Jose Fernandez, the U.S. Undersecretary for economic growth, energy, and the environment, is the highest-ranking American official ever to attend the Investing in African Mining conference, or Indaba. Indaba is a Zulu word for discussions.

Speaking to VOA, Fernandez said the U.S. is very interested in working with African partners to make the kind of investments that will benefit both sides.

“That’s a message that I’m not sure has been made here in the last few years,” he said.

He said Russia’s attempts to weaponize its oil and gas exports to Europe highlights the fact that the U.S., and other countries, cannot depend on one, or two, or even three suppliers for important products.

“Something we need to diversity is our sources of energy. We need to invest more in renewables. That requires wind turbines, it requires solar panels, it requires electric batteries and other components that are going to be critical for the energy future,” he said.

Fernandez said the U.S. geological service has identified almost 40 critical minerals that are going to be needed for a clean energy future as well as in products like cars, computers and chips — noting that Africa has many of them.

How could the continent benefit?

“In order to do that, it’s going to require foreign investment and one way or the best way to attract foreign investment is to have clear rules and a transparent regulatory regime. What I am here to do, is to see how the U.S. can help Africa take advantage of the opportunity and create jobs,” said Fernandez.

Tony Carrol, executive advisor of the conference, says the importance of Fernandez’s attendance cannot be overstated.

“It’s the first truly high-ranking U.S. government official we’ve had at the mining indaba in the 28 years. He is responsible for the energy and natural resource portfolio within the State Department and reports directly to the secretary of state. His meetings here were meaningful and I think they were enthused about this event and looking forward to coming back,” he said.
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Влада обіцяє стратегічний запас пального, який забезпечить наявність нафтопродуктів на найближчі місяці
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In any country, the currency exchange rate is an indicator of stability and the economy’s strength. With unprecedented sanctions being imposed on Russia, many economists are closely watching the ruble. Anna Rice narrates the story of the Russian ruble, and the effect economic sanctions are having.
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U.S. consumer price growth slowed sharply in April as gasoline prices eased off record highs, suggesting that inflation has probably peaked, though it is likely to stay hot for a while and keep the Federal Reserve’s foot on the brakes to cool demand.

The consumer price index rose 0.3% last month, the smallest gain since last August, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. That stood in sharp contrast to the 1.2% month-to-month surge in the CPI in March, which was the largest advance since September 2005.

But the deceleration in the CPI is probably temporary. Gasoline prices, which accounted for most of the pull back in the monthly inflation rate, are rising again and were about $4.161 per gallon early this week after dipping below $4 in April, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine is the main catalyst for the surge in gasoline prices. The war has also driven up global good prices.

Inflation was already a problem before Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine because of stretched global supply chains as economies emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic after governments around the world injected large amounts of money in pandemic relief and central banks slashed interest rates.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday acknowledged the pain that high inflation was inflicting on American families and said bringing prices down “is my top domestic priority.”

The Fed last week raised its policy interest rate by half a percentage point, the biggest hike in 22 years, and said it would begin trimming its bond holdings next month. The U.S. central bank started raising rates in March.

In the 12 months through April, the CPI increased 8.3%. While that was the first deceleration in the annual CPI since last August, it marked the seventh straight month of increases in excess of 6%. The CPI shot up 8.5% in March, the largest year-on-year gain since December 1981.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer prices gaining 0.2% in April and rising 8.1% year-on-year.

While monthly inflation will likely pickup, annual readings are likely to subside further as last year’s large increases fall out of the calculation, but remaining above the Fed’s 2% target at least through 2023.

China’s zero tolerance COVID-19 policy is seen putting more strain on global supply chains, driving up goods prices. Prices for services like air travel and hotel accommodation are also seen keeping inflation elevated amid both strong demand over the summer and a shortage of workers.

Solid gains in rents, airline fares and new motor vehicle prices boosted underlying inflation last month.

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI picked up 0.6% after rising 0.3% in March. The so-called core CPI increased 6.2% in the 12-months through April. That followed a 6.5% jump in March, which was largest gain since August 1982.
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