Опоненти закону кажуть, що сильно залежать від доходів від реклами, а також висловлюють побоювання черз загрозу свободі слова
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Washington — U.S. consumers appear less optimistic about the jobs market and more worried about future financial conditions, bringing a closely watched confidence metric to its lowest level since July 2022, a survey showed Tuesday.

The consumer confidence index fell to 97.0 in April, said The Conference Board, significantly below the 104.0 reading that analysts anticipated.

This marks the third straight month consumer confidence has worsened, the report said, and comes as President Joe Biden struggles to boost perceptions about the economy as his reelection campaign ramps up.

“Consumers became less positive about the current labor market situation, and more concerned about future business conditions, job availability, and income,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board.

But she added that despite the slip, “optimism about the present situation continues to more than offset concerns about the future.”

The biggest worries surrounded “elevated price levels, especially for food and gas,” said Peterson.

Meanwhile, politics and global conflicts were “distant runners-up,” she added.

While consumers rated current business conditions “positively,” their views of the labor market weakened with more reporting that jobs are hard to get, said The Conference Board.

Consumers also became less upbeat about their families’ financial situations, both currently and in the future.

“Perceptions about the labor market deteriorated even as job growth remains robust, and the unemployment rate is historically low,” noted Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

“A deteriorating trend in sentiment could persist,” she cautioned.

This risks bogging down spending and growth, given that inflation remains persistent and interest rate cuts are “not imminent,” she said.
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Paris, France — G7 environment ministers committed on Tuesday to ramp up the production and deployment of battery storage technology, an essential component for increasing renewable energy and combating climate change.  

Here is how and why batteries play a vital role in the energy transition:   

Growing demand

Batteries have been central to the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) but are also critical to wind and solar power because of the intermittent nature of these energy sources.  

Surplus electricity must be stored in batteries to stabilize distribution regardless of peaks in demand, or breaks in supply at night or during low winds.   

Battery deployment in the energy sector last year increased more than 130 percent from 2022, according to a report released last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA).    

The main markets are China, the European Union and the United States. 

Following closely are Britain, South Korea, Japan and developing nations in Africa, where solar and storage technology is seen as the gateway to energy access.  

Six-fold goal

To triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 — a goal set at the UN climate conference in December — the IEA says a six-fold increase in battery storage will be necessary.  

Clean energy is essential to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and to hope to keep the international target of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.   

The total storage capacity required to achieve this target is an estimated 1,500 gigawatts by 2030.  

Of this, 1,200 GW will need to be supplied by batteries.

Cost challenges

In less than 15 years, the cost of batteries has fallen by 90 percent.  

“The combination of solar PV and batteries is today competitive with new coal plants in India. And just in the next few years, it will be cheaper than new coal in China and gas-fired power in the United States,” IEA chief Fatih Birol said last week.   

“But still the pace is not fast enough to reach our goals in terms of climate change and energy security.”  

Costs will have to come down further, he said, while calling for supply chains to be diversified.   

Most batteries are currently produced by China.   

But some 40 percent of planned battery manufacturing projects are in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA.   

If those projects are realized, they would be nearly sufficient to meet the needs of those countries.

Metal matters

Another thorny issue is the availability of critical metals like lithium and cobalt that are essential to make batteries.  

Experts say the development chemical alternatives could complement the dominant lithium-ion technology.  

“Transition in the technology will reduce the amount of lithium” needed, said Brent Wanner, head of the IEA’s power sector unit, adding, “this includes shifting to sodium-ion batteries.” 

Beyond 2030, high-density solid-state batteries that offer a longer lifespan are expected to become commercially available. 

There are other storage options, although not as widely applicable or available as batteries.

Pumped storage hydropower has long been used in the hydroelectric sector.

The transformation of electricity into hydrogen, which can be stored and transported, is a new technology expected to become more readily available. 

Be flexible

Renewable energy is not entirely reliant on storage and measures can be taken to improve the flexibility of its production to meet demands.   

Industry and governments are gearing up for the transition.   

The European Union’s Energy Regulators Agency called on member states in September to assess their “flexibility potential” based on estimates that renewables will need to double by 2030.   

Such a rise requires greater “flexibility” in grids, meaning energy can be stored and distributed consistently despite fluctuating production and demand.   

The G7 said Tuesday it would not only support more production and use of battery storage, but promote technological advancements in the sector as well as grid infrastructure.

 
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У листопаді 2024 року цей дозвіл може бути продовжений
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«За результатами переговорів сторонам вдалося досягнути домовленостей щодо значної лібералізації доступу як до ринків товарів, так і до ринків послуг»
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HAVANA — Alejandro Fonseca stood in line for several hours outside a bank in Havana hoping to withdraw Cuban pesos from an ATM, but when it was almost his turn, the cash ran out. He angrily hopped on his electric tricycle and traveled several kilometers to another branch, where he finally managed to withdraw some money after wasting the entire morning.

“It shouldn’t be so difficult to get the money you earn by working,” the 23-year-old told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Fonseca is one of an increasing number of frustrated Cubans who must grapple with yet another hurdle while navigating the island’s already complicated monetary system — a shortage of cash.

Long queues outside banks and ATMs in the capital, Havana, and beyond start forming early in the day as people seek cash for routine transactions such as buying food and other essentials.

Experts say there are several reasons behind the shortage, all somehow related to Cuba’s deep economic crisis, one of the worst in decades.

Omar Everleny Perez, a Cuban economist and university professor, says the main culprits are the government’s growing fiscal deficit, the nonexistence of banknotes with a denomination greater than 1,000 pesos (about $3), stubbornly high inflation and the nonreturn of cash to banks.

“There is money, yes, but not in the banks,” said Perez, adding that most of the cash is being held not by salaried workers but by entrepreneurs and owners of small- and medium-size business who are more likely to collect cash from commercial transactions but are reluctant to return the money to the banks.

This, Perez says, is either because they don’t trust the local banks or simply because they need the pesos to convert into foreign currency.

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners in Cuba must import almost everything they sell or pay in foreign currency for the supplies needed to run their businesses. Consequently, many end up hoarding Cuban pesos to later change into foreign currency on the informal market.

Converting those Cuban pesos to other currencies poses yet another challenge, as there are several, highly fluctuating exchange rates on the island.

For example, the official rate used by government industries and agencies is 24 pesos to the U.S. dollar, while for individuals, the rate is 120 pesos to the dollar. However, the dollar can fetch up to 350 Cuban pesos on the informal market.

Perez notes that in 2018, 50% of the cash in circulation was in the hands of the Cuban population and the other half in Cuban banks. But in 2022, the latest year for which information is available, 70% of cash was in the wallets of individuals.

Cuban monetary authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s emailed request for comment.

The shortage of cash comes as Cubans grapple with a complex monetary system in which several currencies circulate, including a virtual currency, MLC, created in 2019.

Then, in 2023 the government announced several measures aimed at promoting a “cashless society,” making the use of credit cards mandatory to pay for some transactions — including purchases of food, fuel and other basic goods — but many businesses simply refuse to accept them.

Making things worse is stubbornly high inflation, meaning more and more physical bills are needed to buy products.

According to official figures, inflation stood at 77% in 2021, then dropped to 31% in 2023. But for the average Cuban, the official figures barely reflect the reality of their lives, since market inflation can reach up to three digits on the informal market. For example, a carton of eggs, which sold for 300 Cuban pesos in 2019, these days sells for about 3,100 pesos.

All while the monthly salary for Cuban state workers ranges between 5,000 and 7,000 Cuban pesos (between $14 and $20).

“To live in an economy that, in addition to having several currencies, has several exchange rates and a three-digit inflation is quite complicated,” said Pavel Vidal, a Cuba expert and professor at Colombia’s Javeriana University of Cali.
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SYDNEY — The Asian Development Bank holds its annual meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, next week, with discussions on climate change and the world’s aging population high on the agenda.

The four-day summit, starting Thursday, marks the first time that the ADB’s 68 members have gathered for a meeting in Georgia, which joined the multilateral development bank in 2007.

“Georgia sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia,” said Shalini Mittal, a principal economist for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“This meeting signifies ADB’s agenda of bridges to the future where technology and expertise from the West can be used to enhance structural reforms in Asia,” Mittal told VOA.

Alongside numerous panel discussions and a keynote speech from ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa, finance ministers from Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries Japan, China and South Korea will also meet on the sidelines.

“Given the geopolitical uncertainty with the Ukraine-Russia war and tensions in Asia with China’s problematic relations with its neighbors, I think the meeting is taking place at a crucial time,” said Jason Chung, a senior adviser with the Project on Prosperity and Development at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It provides an additional path to have meaningful discussions on global economic issues,” Chung told VOA.

Climate change stressed

The issue of climate change is set to headline proceedings at the conference, with the ADB now marketing itself as the climate bank for the Asia-Pacific region.

The bank pledged a record $9.8 billion of climate finance in 2023, supporting developing countries to cut greenhouse emissions and adapt to extreme conditions as global warming continues.

“Storm surges, sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, and floods — all our countries suffer from all of the imaginable impacts of climate change,” said Warren Evans, who, as senior special adviser on climate change in the ADB president’s office, acts as the institution’s climate envoy.

The bank says that the Asia-Pacific region was hit by over 200 disasters last year alone, with many of them weather related, a problem that shows no sign of letting up.

“Right now, there’s a heatwave in Bangladesh that is causing severe impacts. Schools are closed, they’re seeing a drop in agricultural productivity, hospitals are getting overloaded with people with heatstroke,” Evans told VOA.

“Mortality rates are going up and, of course, women and children are the most vulnerable to those impacts,” he said.

While much of the Asia-Pacific region is extremely vulnerable to climate change, it is also a huge driver of the phenomenon.

The region contributes more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions, with a heavy reliance on coal as a source of energy, according to the ADB.

To try to reach net zero targets, many Asia-Pacific nations require huge investment to convert to clean energy alternatives.

One way that the ADB is tackling this issue is through a program targeting coal-burning power plants, a major contributor to emissions.

“With private sector partners and sovereign funding, we’re refinancing coal-fired power plants in order to be able to close them down early,” Evans said. The ADB’s “energy transition mechanism” uses private and public capital to refinance investments in coal-fired power, allowing power purchase agreements to be shortened and plants to be closed as much as a decade earlier than planned. The financing is also used to fund clean energy projects to generate the power that would have come from the coal plant.

The project looks to replace these plants with clean energy alternatives, ensuring that power is generated more sustainably.

A coal-burning power plant in Indonesia’s West Java is set to become the first to be retired early under the initiative.

“The communities that are impacted will have support, allowing people to find new jobs or to get social welfare,” Evans said.

Aging population in Asia

During the Tbilisi summit, the ADB will also launch a major report on aging population, which also affects member countries’ economies.

According to the bank, 1 in 4 people in the Asia-Pacific region will be over 60 by 2050, close to 1.3 billion people.

“The speed of aging is very quick in Asia, because of the rapid progress in the social development that has taken place in the region,” said Aiko Kikkawa, a senior economist for the ADB’s Aging Well in Asia report.

Researchers have investigated the implications of this demographic transition, with Kikkawa finding that the Asia-Pacific region is currently “unprepared” for aging populations.

“Large numbers of older people do report a substantial disease burden, lack of access to decent jobs or essential services, such as health and long-term care, and even lack of access to pension coverage,” Kikkawa told VOA.

The ADB has pledged to help to improve the lives of older people across the Asia-Pacific region, by supporting the rollout of universal health coverage and providing infrastructure for ‘age-friendly cities’ that are more accessible for older people.

Poverty to be addressed

While much of the focus in Tbilisi will be on climate change and aging populations, the ADB’s core edict remains to eradicate extreme poverty in its many developing country members.

That task has become even more challenging in an environment of high inflation and growing government debt.

However, Chung, the former U.S. director of the ADB, told VOA he believes that this goal should be at the center of discussions in the Georgian capital.

“The ADB should focus on its core mission of alleviating poverty and creating paths for economic growth in the developing member countries.

“While climate risk is important, I think given the state of uncertainty, it is important to provide support to create economic conditions for growth,” he told VOA.
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WASHINGTON — The nation’s economy slowed sharply last quarter to a 1.6% annual pace in the face of high interest rates, but consumers — the main driver of economic growth — kept spending at a solid pace.

Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — decelerated in the January-March quarter from its brisk 3.4% growth rate in the final three months of 2023.

A surge in imports, which are subtracted from GDP, reduced first-quarter growth by nearly 1 percentage point. Growth was also held back by businesses reducing their inventories. Both those categories tend to fluctuate sharply from quarter to quarter.

By contrast, the core components of the economy still appear sturdy. Along with households, businesses helped drive the economy last quarter with a strong pace of investment.

The import and inventory numbers can be volatile, so “there is still a lot of positive underlying momentum,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.

The economy, though, is still creating price pressures, a continuing source of concern for the Federal Reserve. A measure of inflation in Friday’s report accelerated to a 3.4% annual rate from January through March, up from 1.8% in the last three months of 2023 and the biggest increase in a year. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose at a 3.7% rate, up from 2% in fourth-quarter 2023.

From January through March, consumer spending rose at a 2.5% annual rate, a solid pace though down from a rate of more than 3% in each of the previous two quarters. Americans’ spending on services — everything from movie tickets and restaurant meals to airline fares and doctors’ visits — rose 4%, the fastest such pace since mid-2021.

But they cut back spending on goods such as appliances and furniture. Spending on that category fell 0.1%, the first such drop since the summer of 2022.

The state of the U.S. economy has seized Americans’ attention as the election season has intensified. Although inflation has slowed sharply from a peak of 9.1% in 2022, prices remain well above their pre-pandemic levels.

Republican critics of President Joe Biden have sought to pin responsibility for high prices on Biden and use it as a cudgel to derail his re-election bid. And polls show that despite the healthy job market, a near-record-high stock market and the sharp pullback in inflation, many Americans blame Biden for high prices.

Last quarter’s GDP snapped a streak of six straight quarters of at least 2% annual growth. The 1.6% rate of expansion was also the slowest since the economy actually shrank in the first and second quarters of 2022.

The economy’s gradual slowdown reflects, in large part, the much higher borrowing rates for home and auto loans, credit cards and many business loans that have resulted from the 11 interest rate hikes the Fed imposed in its drive to tame inflation.

Even so, the United States has continued to outpace the rest of the world’s advanced economies. The International Monetary Fund has projected that the world’s largest economy will grow 2.7% for all of 2024, up from 2.5% last year and more than double the growth the IMF expects this year for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Businesses have been pouring money into factories, warehouses and other buildings, encouraged by federal incentives to manufacture computer chips and green technology in the United States. On the other hand, their spending on equipment has been weak. And as imports outpace exports, international trade is also thought to have been a drag on the economy’s first-quarter growth.

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, cautioned last week that the “flipside″ of strong U.S. economic growth was that it was “taking longer than expected” for inflation to reach the Fed’s 2% target, although price pressures have sharply slowed from their mid-2022 peak.

Inflation flared up in the spring of 2021 as the economy rebounded with unexpected speed from the COVID-19 recession, causing severe supply shortages. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made things significantly worse by inflating prices for the energy and grains the world depends on.

The Fed responded by aggressively raising its benchmark rate between March 2022 and July 2023. Despite widespread predictions of a recession, the economy has proved unexpectedly durable. Hiring so far this year is even stronger than it was in 2023. And unemployment has remained below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.

Inflation, the main source of Americans’ discontent about the economy, has slowed from 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5%. But progress has stalled lately.

Though the Fed’s policymakers signaled last month that they expect to cut rates three times this year, they have lately signaled that they’re in no hurry to reduce rates in the face of continued inflationary pressure. Now, a majority of Wall Street traders don’t expect them to start until the Fed’s September meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
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«Враховуючи послаблення фактичного й очікуваного цінового тиску, а також зниження ризиків для надходження міжнародної фінансової підтримки, Національний банк продовжує цикл пом’якшення процентної політики»
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Раніше про зустріч із Гантом повідомив президент Володимир Зеленський
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Paytm, a popular payment app in India, faces government restrictions on business because of its Chinese connections, local media say. India is ramping up scrutiny and restrictions on other Chinese tech companies, too, amid concerns about security and geopolitics. Henry Wilkins has the story from Mumbai.
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У БЕБ розповіли, що у цій справі детективи аналізують понад 5 мільйонів банківських транзакцій
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На кінець 2023 року їхня вартість «на 1,7 мільярда швейцарських франків менше, ніж цифра, повідомлена за грудень 2022 року»
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«Українці вже придбали через Дію понад 4 мільйони облігацій і заробили на цьому більш ніж 94 мільйони гривень»
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Washington — U.S. officials are considering a request from Vietnam to be removed from a list of “nonmarket” economies, a step that would foster improved diplomatic relations with a potential ally in Asia but would anger some U.S. lawmakers and manufacturing firms.

The Southeast Asian country is on the list of 12 nations identified by the U.S. as nonmarket economies, which also includes China and Russia because of strong state intervention in their economies.  

Analysts believe Hanoi is hoping for a decision before the November U.S. election, which could mean a return to power of Donald Trump, who during his previous term as president threatened to boost tariffs on Vietnam because of its large trade surplus with the United States.

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Treasury also put Vietnam on a list of currency manipulators, which can lead to being excluded from U.S. government procurement contracts or other remedial actions. The Treasury, under the Biden administration, removed Vietnam from this list.

On the eve of President Joe Biden’s September visit to Hanoi, where he and Vietnamese Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong elevated the U.S.-Vietnam relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership.

Vietnam formally asked U.S. Department of Commerce to remove it from the list of nonmarket economies on the grounds that it had made economic reforms in recent years.  

The Biden administration subsequently initiated a review of Vietnam’s nonmarket economy (NME) status. The Department of Commerce is to issue a final decision by July 26, 270 days after initiating the review.  

“Receiving market economy status is the highest diplomatic priority of the Vietnamese leadership this year, especially after last fall’s double upgrade in diplomatic relations,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor at National War College where he focuses on Southeast Asian politics and security issues.

He told VOA Vietnamese that the Vietnamese “are really linking the implementation of the joint vision statement to receiving that status.”

The U.S. is Vietnam’s most important export market with two-way trade totaling more than $125 billion in 2023, according to U.S. Census data. But Washington has initiated more trade defense investigations with Vietnam than with any other country, mainly anti-dumping investigations. Vietnam recorded 58 cases subject to trade remedies of the U.S. as of August 2023, in which 26 were anti-dumping, according to the Vietnam Trade Office in the U.S.

Vietnam has engaged a lobbying firm in Washington to help it win congressional support for a status upgrade. A Foreign Agents Registration Act’s statement filed to the U.S. Department of Justice shows that Washington-based Steptoe is assisting the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade and supporting the Vietnamese government in “obtaining market economy status in antidumping proceedings.”

“I understand why Vietnamese are lobbying,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“One reason is U.S.-Vietnam relations have come so far, and to hold the non-market [status] is a little bit disingenuous because most of the countries that have this status are countries like China, Russia, North Korea, who are not so friendly with the United States. So I think [the U.S. recognition of Vietnam as a market economy] would be a sign that relations have improved.”

US election key

Both Abuza and Hiebert believe that Vietnam is pushing hard to secure the upgrade before the November U.S. election that could bring Trump back into office.

“Trump began an investigation of Vietnam’s dumping just before the end of his administration. He may again start that process,” said Hiebert, who was senior director for Southeast Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce before joining CSIS.

But Vietnam’s campaign faces opposition from within the U.S.

More than 30 U.S. lawmakers in January sent joint letters to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo urging the Biden administration not to grant market economy status to Vietnam. They argued that Vietnam did not meet the procedural requirements for a change of status and that granting Hanoi’s wish would be “a serious mistake.”

The U.S. designated Vietnam as a nonmarket economy in 2002 during an anti-dumping investigation into Vietnamese catfish exports. Over the past 21 years, the U.S. has imposed anti-dumping duties on many Vietnamese exports, including agricultural and industrial products.

In a request sent to Raimondo to initiate a changed circumstances review, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade said that over the past 20 years, the economy of Vietnam “has been through dramatic developments and reforms.” It said 72 countries recognize Vietnam as a market economy, notably the U.K., Canada, Australia and Japan.

‘Unfairly traded Chinese goods’

U.S. manufacturing groups have expressed opposition to Vietnam’s request, arguing that Vietnam continues to operate as a nonmarket economy. In comments sent to Raimondo, the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AMM) said that Vietnam “cannot reasonably be understood to demonstrate the characteristics of a market economy.”

“There’s still heavy intervention by the governing Communist Party [of Vietnam],” said Scott Paul, president of AMM. “There’s a lot of indication that China may be using Vietnam as a platform to also export to the U.S., which is obviously concerning to firms here,” he said.

In a letter dated January 28, eight senators wrote “Granting Vietnam market economy status before it addresses its clear nonmarket behavior and the severe deficiencies in its labor law will worsen ongoing trade distortions, erode the U.S. manufacturing base, threaten American workers and industries, and reinforce Vietnam’s role as a conduit for goods produced in China with forced labor.”  

Many Chinese products have been found to be disguised or labeled as “Made in Vietnam” to avoid U.S. tariffs since Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018. Vietnam has promised to crack down on the practice.

Abuza pointed out what he called a contradiction in U.S. policy.

“Vietnam is too important to the United States economically in terms of trade and foreign direct investment, and we cannot look to Vietnam for supply chain diversification out of China if it doesn’t have market economy status.”

Hiebert said the U.S. “should do this and get moving” as Vietnam is “one of the U.S.’ best friends in Asia and Southeast Asia and help stand up to China.”
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The U.S. economy is always a major factor in the presidential campaign because the president plays a key role in setting and shaping trade and economic policies. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti reports on how the economy is doing and the difference between how the two presidential contenders would handle it. Camera: Mike Burke
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За даними уряду, від початку повномасштабної війни обсяг наданих інвестицій ЄІБ склав більше 2 мільярдів євро
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The Chinese-operated online markets Temu and Shein are shaking up e-commerce with their extremely low prices. But the firms are facing concerns from consumers and Congress. Evie Steele has the story from Washington.
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Національний банк України опівдні встановив довідкове значення курсу на рівні 39 гривень 77,16 копійки за долар, це на 17 копійок більше за офіційний курс на 19 квітня
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«Ми отримали запевнення в підтримці законопроектів обома партіями. Очікуємо, що найближчим часом цей великий пакет допомоги буде проголосовано»
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