India has allowed wheat shipments of 469,202 tons since banning most exports last month, but at least 1.7 million tons is lying at ports and could be damaged by looming monsoon rains, government and industry officials told Reuters. 

Shipments that have been allowed moved mainly to Bangladesh, the Philippines, Tanzania and Malaysia, said a senior government official, who also stated the total quantity. 

The ban pulled Indian wheat exports down to 1.13 million tons in May from a record 1.46 million tons in April, the official said, declining to be named. 

India, the world’s second-biggest wheat producer, imposed a general ban on exports on May 14 as a scorching heat wave curtailed output and pushed domestic prices to record highs. 

Exceptions were allowed for shipments backed by letters of credit that had already been issued and those to countries that requested supplies to meet their food security needs. 

But even after the departure of some wheat, at least 1.7 million tons remained piled up at various ports, three dealers with global trading firms told Reuters. 

Before the ban, exporters moved unusually large quantities to ports, because the crop was then expected to be strong and the government was encouraging them to replace Black Sea supply lost because of the war in Ukraine. 

They expected New Delhi to authorize shipments this year of 8 million to 10 million tons or even more, compared with 7.2 million tons last year. 

“Kandla and Mundra ports have maximum wheat stocks,” said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm. “Together they are holding more than 1.3 million tons.” 

The government needed to issue export permits promptly, because wheat at the ports was in loose form and therefore vulnerable to monsoon rains, said a New Delhi based dealer with a global trading firm. 

India receives heavy rainfall during the monsoon season, from June to September. 

“The government banned wheat exports to ensure food security, but if stocks get damaged by rains, then it will not serve any purpose,” the dealer said. 

Moving the wheat back out of ports and into interior towns for local consumption was unfeasible, as traders would incur additional losses on loading and transportation fees, said the Mumbai-based dealer. 

“The government should allow exports of wheat lying at ports for government-to-government deals,” he said. 

India has received requests to supply more than 1.5 million tons of wheat from several countries facing shortages. Read full story 

Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav, Aftab Ahmed; Additional reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; editing by Gavin Maguire and Bradley Perrett 
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Міжнародне співтовариство закликає Росію розблокувати порти й дозволити експорт українського зерна
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«Девальваційні очікування громадян і бізнесу є нестійкими і чутливими до розвитку воєнної ситуації»
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U.S. President Joe Biden met with major manufacturers of infant formula on Wednesday, and suggested their ranks should grow, as his administration presses ahead with efforts to boost imported supplies to help ease a nationwide shortage. 

“We need more new entrants in the infant formula market,” Biden said during a virtual meeting with executives from ByHeart, Bubs Australia, Reckitt Benckiser Group, Perrigo Company and Nestles Gerber. 

Multiple global suppliers are seeking U.S. approval to ship critical baby formula as Biden’s administration accelerates what it has dubbed “Operation Fly Formula” to help fill store shelves and calm frustrated parents. 

With about $4 billion in annual sales, the U.S. baby formula market has historically been dominated by domestic producers, with imports limited and subject to high tariffs. 

But U.S. parents have struggled to find baby formula in recent months after a February recall of some formulas by one of the nation’s main manufacturers, Abbott Laboratories, coupled with pandemic-related supply chain issues. 

The latest administration effort to solve the problem includes an announcement on Wednesday that United Airlines has agreed to transport U.K.-made Kendamil formula free of charge from Heathrow Airport in London to multiple airports across the United States over a three-week period. 

This first shipment, which includes Kendamil Classic and Kendamil Organic formula, will be available at Target stores across the country in the coming weeks. 

The administration also secured two flights totaling 380,000 pounds of baby formula from Bubs Australia that will be delivered to California and Pennsylvania on June 9 and June 11, respectively. 

Biden said on Wednesday he first learned of the severity of the U.S. baby formula shortage in early April. The White House said it had been working around the clock since February to address the problem. 

U.S. lawmakers have criticized the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for not acting promptly to address the problems that caused the recall at Abbott’s Michigan plant, which is set to reopen June 4. 

The Biden administration has relaxed its import policy and invoked the Defense Production Act to help increase available U.S. supplies, which is still expected to take weeks. It has also said it could use federal resources to help transport supplies to retailers. 

Two million cans of formula have been sent from the U.K., and Australian manufacturers are also preparing to send in more product. 

Thorben Nilewski of Organic Family, which makes the popular Holle infant formulas, said in an email that the German company applied for the FDA’s temporary approval but has not yet received any feedback. 

Many U.S. parents rely on baby formula. Fewer than half the babies born in the United States were exclusively breast-fed through their first three months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2020 Breastfeeding Report Card. 
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The U.S. launched a new trade pact with Taiwan on Wednesday, hoping to forge closer economic ties with the island territory that China claims as its own, while blunting Beijing’s economic clout in the region.

Biden administration officials said the U.S.-Taiwan deal would boost bilateral digital and clean energy trade and that the two partners would open talks to further technology trade and investments. 

In announcing the pact, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said economic relations between the U.S. and Taiwan were especially important because Taiwan is a leading supplier of advanced semiconductors needed in an array of consumer technology products. Senior administration officials said controls on the export of sensitive technologies would be addressed in talks between the U.S. and Taiwan. 

“Taiwan is an incredibly important partner to us, especially as it relates to semiconductors,” Raimondo told reporters. “We look forward to continuing to deepen our economic ties with Taiwan, and we are in active conversations with Taiwan.” 

The U.S.-Taiwan pact comes days after President Joe Biden announced a new economic cooperation agreement with a dozen Asia-Pacific countries during his trip to South Korea and Japan.

Taiwan was not invited to join the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework out of concerns from some countries that the country’s participation might anger China.

But a senior administration official said, “The Biden-Harris administration sees Taiwan as a leading democracy, a technological powerhouse and a key economic and security partner.” 

The latest U.S.-Taiwan connection could further strain Washington-Beijing relations. In Asia last week, Biden said the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if China were to attack the democratic, self-governed island, a statement seemingly at odds with the U.S.’s long-standing “one China” policy recognizing Taiwan as part of mainland China. 

While the White House later said there was no change in U.S. policy, the U.S. does ship weaponry to Taiwan. 

Biden’s comment drew a rebuke from China, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying that “no forces, the U.S. included, can hold back the Chinese people’s endeavor to reunify the nation.”
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Nigerian manufacturers say they are struggling with rising grain prices, especially for wheat, sparked by Russia’s war on Ukraine. But even before the war started in February, Nigeria had been dealing with fuel and power shortages and high inflation. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja, Nigeria.
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In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 spread throughout the world in ways not fully understood, the United States faced a critical shortage of protective masks. 

Dozens of manufacturing startups attempted to meet the demand for what was then a confusing array of grades and types — N95, KN95, full-face respirators.  

Now, after a short respite from many COVID-19 precautions, the U.S. is weeks into a new surge in cases that may foreshadow a greater one this fall, and those same small companies that make masks are hurting.  

John Bielamowicz is a co-founder of United States Mask. The Fort Worth, Texas, company is among those struggling.  

Bielamowicz launched his mask-making mission after reading social media posts about medical professionals not having N95 masks in the pandemic’s terrifying early months. It was caregivers like them who had helped his family in 2016, when his son Matthew was born missing 80% of his diaphragm on the left side. 

Bielamowicz and his business partner ​David Baillargeon put their commercial real estate business on hold to start the mask company. 

“This was our way of paying it back … for the gift that they gave us for sending us home with our son,” Bielamowicz told VOA Mandarin in a virtual interview. “It was a debt that I never thought that I’d be able to pay back.” 

The partners began reading and experimenting in February 2020, and by late October of that year, their N95 masks carried a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health certification. At its peak in early 2021, the company produced millions of N95 masks a month and employed close to 50 people. 

“For me and my family, this was a mission, and we were going to do it or fail trying,” Bielamowicz said. “And we didn’t fail. We did it.”  

Masks and jobs

The American Mask Manufacturers Association (AMMA) represents small companies that started making masks during the pandemic.  

“During the pandemic, we created just over 8,000 new manufacturing jobs. And this was at a time where most businesses were laying people off or furloughing people,” Lloyd Armbrust, president of the association, told VOA in a virtual interview.  

But attitudes toward mask wearing have varied widely across the U.S. since 2020, and on April 18, a federal judge in Florida voided the national mask mandate covering airplanes and other public transportation. This came a day before the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce a U.S. mask mandate.  

Armbrust American, Armbrust’s mask company in Pflugerville, Texas, staggered from the twin blows.  

“That day, we saw our online sales be cut at half or even more,” said Armbrust, who added that he and other mask-makers had already been competing with cheap masks from China before the one-two punch.  

China and masks 

According to research published last year by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, 72% of the masks and respirators imported by the U.S. in 2019 came from China. 

When the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was first identified in humans in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, U.S. imports of protective masks from China plunged. 

When China resumed exporting government-subsidized masks in 2020, it attempted to create “a monopoly within the PPE (personal protective equipment) market,” the AMMA charged, and manufacturers such as Armbrust American found themselves in difficulty. 

“Our raw material costs me about $0.015 per mask,” Armbrust said. “And yet China can deliver it to the United States for less than $0.01. They say that they’re more efficient, but how is that possible when the cost of their finished products is cheaper than I buy the raw materials for? It’s just not possible. The answer is, the Chinese government is subsidizing it because they don’t want to lose this business.”  

In response to VOA Mandarin questions about China’s mask exports to the U.S., Liu Pengyu, the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said, “I would like to point out that as a market economy, China has earnestly fulfilled its WTO (World Trade Organization) commitments and abides by multilateral economic and trade rules. Chinese merchandise is cheap and good because of the good supply chain, sufficient competition and economies of scale, not non-market behavior.” 

“I can be very competitive, but I can’t be competitive against the whole government. … In 2021, we laid off about 70% of our staff,” Armbrust said. 

Bielamowicz’s United States Mask laid off people as well. 

“It was the worst day of my career,” he said.   

An uncertain future 

Nationwide, the AMMA, which peaked with almost 30 members in 2021, now includes fewer than 10 enterprises still producing masks. 

Facing masks’ uncertain future, Armbrust American shifted to producing home air filters. 

Bielamowicz has been traveling to Washington to lobby the federal government. 

“We’re asking for free competition,” Bielamowicz said. “We know the free market works.” 

That said, Armbrust hopes the government can subsidize small companies that make masks, as it does farmers, to preserve production capability so that when the next pandemic hits, small producers can jump back into mask making. 

“If I could just have a base,” Armbrust said, “… where I could mothball these machines and … I could afford to pay the rent for the space instead of actually shutting it down and scrapping the machines, that would be another solution.”  
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With inflation in the United States at levels not seen in decades, President Joe Biden on Tuesday met with Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, to discuss the ongoing effort to tame rising prices.

Over the 12 months ending in April, the Consumer Price Index, which tracks what average Americans pay for a broad array of goods and services, increased by 8.3%, down slightly from the month before, but still at a level not seen in 40 years.

The issue is a vital one for Biden, whose party is facing serious challenges in the run-up to November’s midterm elections. Public opinion polling indicates that rising prices are among voters’ biggest concerns at the moment, and high inflation appears to be driving down the president’s approval rating.

Political concerns

Despite political pressures, Biden approached his conversation with Powell cautiously, reluctant to appear to be meddling in the affairs of the central bank, which is meant to operate independently.

In advance of the meeting with Powell, Biden used an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal to signal that he does not want to be seen as pressuring the Fed, contrasting himself with former President Trump, who frequently made public statements critical of Powell and the central bank.

“First, the Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation,” Biden wrote. “My predecessor demeaned the Fed, and past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation. I won’t do this. I have appointed highly qualified people from both parties to lead that institution. I agree with their assessment that fighting inflation is our top economic challenge right now.”

Responding to inflation

As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve is currently engaged in a very delicate process, attempting to slow price increases without tipping the United States economy into a damaging recession.

The Fed’s main tool in the effort is the ability of the Federal Open Market Committee, a body within the broader central bank, to set benchmark interest rates that affect borrowing costs across the economy.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. economy was plunged into a recession in 2020, and the Fed lowered interest rates to just above zero in order to provide economic stimulus. A recession is typically defined as two or more consecutive quarters in which a nation’s gross domestic product shrinks. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research ruled that a two-month economic downturn at the beginning of the pandemic counted as a recession, making it the shortest on record.

However, low interest rates combined with other government stimulus programs and supply shortages related to the pandemic as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine snowballed to bring higher prices that have strained many Americans’ budgets.

In March of this year, the Fed began raising rates, and it continued with another rate increase in early May. With the “target” interest rate currently between 0.75% and 1%, the Fed has signaled that it will raise rates several more times before the end of the year, probably in increments of one half of a percentage point.

How it works

“Raising interest rates works by restraining demand in the economy and restraining spending,” Kenneth N. Kuttner, a professor of economics at Williams College and a former assistant vice president of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told VOA. “It’s only through restraining spending that inflationary pressures can be brought down.

“In order to get inflation down, the Fed would have to slow the economy until the level of desired spending can be accommodated by the supply side of the economy, or maybe a little bit lower,” Kuttner said. “The problem is, if it restrains spending too much, then the economy is going to go into a … recession.”

The trouble is that there is a significant lag between the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates and the effect that the increase has on economic activity, Greg McBride, senior vice president and chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, told VOA.

“By the time today’s actions take effect, the economy may look a lot different than it did,” McBride said. “That’s what makes this complicated and what brings about the risk of the Fed tipping the economy into a recession. They may be raising interest rates at a point where the economy is already slowing, and those rate hikes only serve to slow the economy further.”

McBride said he does not see a recession as likely in the immediate term. “The U.S. economy is growing this year, and the labor market is very strong,” he said. “Yes, growth will certainly slow through the balance of the year, but in terms of outright contraction, I see that more as a 2023 likelihood than 2022.”

Fed’s abilities limited

On Tuesday afternoon, in remarks at the start of his meeting with Powell, Biden reiterated his promise not to pressure the central bank over inflation.

“I’m not going to interfere with their critically important work,” the president said. “They have a laser focus on addressing inflation, just like I am.”

But while Biden may be counting on the Fed to bring down consumer prices, experts warn that many of the factors contributing to higher prices are well beyond the central bank’s control.

“The Fed has a very difficult task at hand,” said McBride. “A lot of that is tied to issues on the supply side, not just the demand side. The Fed cannot fix the supply chain. They can’t open ports in China that are closed. They can’t broker peace in Eastern Europe.”

He added, “What they can do is address the demand side in the U.S. … But without substantive healing of the supply chain, raising interest rates is not likely to be the panacea that it has been in the past, in terms of putting inflation to bed.”
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