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#10 Why Amazon Fires Keep Raging 10 Years After a Deal to End Them- UN Sustainable Goals

Ranchers in Brazil are burning the Amazon forest to make way for their thousands of cattle. They continue to burn and have destroyed the natural ecosystem and continue to do so after signing a treaty with Greenpeace.

According to the UN Sustainable Goals number 15 is to restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and forests. This means the halting of deforestation. Not to mention these forests are helping slow the heating of the globe, so if they are chopped down, Climate change is going to move faster.

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Many of the thousands of fires burning in Brazil's Amazon are set by ranchers. A deal inked 10 years ago was meant to stop the problem, but the ecological arson goes on as the Earth warms.

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The Amazon Is Still Burning. Blame Beef.

Welcome to the lawless heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Here, cattle ranchers and loggers - emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro - are clearing and burning huge swaths of rainforest every day in the name of progress.

It's moving fast. It's not just a ground fire. It's reaching up into the canopy here, too, and just scorching everything. Is this the usual amount of fire that you see? Are you worried about the illicit activity that happens here? Pará, Brazil. Parts of the rainforest in this region have lost so much tree cover it hardly looks like the Amazon. I'm on a highway called the BR-163. In August, this corridor for soy and beef exports lit up like an inferno. Many of the fires were started on protected lands on a single day, a so-called Day of Fire. So, I take the highway here to a protected reserve that saw major burning on that day. It's called the Jamanxim National Forest. This year, the Jamanxim lost over 45 square miles of tree cover. That's an area twice the size of Manhattan. It's the worst deforestation of all protected areas in Brazil. But many people who live here see this as progress. And it has a lot to do with beef. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef. About half of the cattle are raised on pasture that used to be rainforest. And demand is growing. I'm visiting an annual barbecue and auction near the Jamanxim. But it's not your typical backyard get-together. Some landowners and ranchers here brazenly defy environmental laws. Last year, a government report linked this man, a union leader, to land-grabbing schemes. This woman, head of a national association, was fined for burning 350 acres of rainforest. This man, a local mayor, was caught destroying over 700 acres of virgin rainforest inside the Jamanxim reserve. They all deny wrongdoing. What producers here want is to privatize the reserves, and there's hostility here towards anyone who tries to stop them. The producers are petitioning an important government official, Nabhan Garcia, appointed by President Bolsonaro to open up the Amazon for development. There's no question which side Mr. Garcia's on. He's a rancher and farmer himself. According to your own government studies, many of the people in some of these protected areas came in after the park was created. They're in there illegally according to your own government standards right now. Part of the reason we're here is because of all the fires, right? To be clear, deforesting land without authorization is illegal in Brazil. It's seized land that's logged, burned and converted, mostly for grazing. We're talking millions of acres, billions of dollars and a web of criminal activity. But at the core of the issue is what turns out to be a pretty complicated question. Who does all this land belong to? I catch up with Luiz Helfenstein, who I'd met at the barbecue. His ranch is right at the edge of the Jamanxim National Forest. He considers himself one of the pioneers here. When you started, is this the first settlement that you built? Luiz came here back in the '80s. He was handed 4,000 acres of rainforest, part of a government plan to develop the Amazon. That's the BR-163. November 1994. Then the political winds shifted and preservation became the priority. In 2006, the government established the Jamanxim National Forest, taking back most of the land previously given to Luiz and other producers. They felt cheated, and some have responded by grabbing and burning protected land. I take a ride with Agamenon da Silva Menezes. Is this your car? He's the head of a union for ranchers out here. Was the Day of Fire an example of that disobedience? But satellite data confirms there was an unusual spike in the number of fires on Aug. 10. Local reporters wrote about this so-called Day of Fire, exposing a coordinated plan among ranchers and land-grabbers to burn newly cleared forest. One of those reporters, Adecio Piran, soon found his face on a wanted poster. Did you ever receive death threats or threats to your personal safety? That type of intimidation helps explain how so much criminal activity can go unpunished. Last year, 30 environmental activists were murdered in Brazil. I follow a group of firefighters with one of Brazil's environmental agencies into a biological reserve. The agency has been attacked by locals and their authority undermined by Bolsonaro's government. None of the men will speak on the record. So this is what the effort to protect the forest here now looks like: a handful of men carving control lines and putting out brush fires with a leaf blower. It takes a bird's-eye view to capture the magnitude of what they're up against. This fire is nearly four miles long. According to Brazilian satellites, more than a soccer field worth of rainforest is cleared every minute. I'm back on the road, driving off federal land, when I see these two trucks. They pull on to the BR-163 highway with loads of fresh logs.

Welcome to the lawless heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Here, cattle ranchers and loggers - emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro - are clearing and burning huge swaths of rainforest every day in the name of progress.

When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right. But do they? In this series, The Times investigates to see if those promises were kept.
SERRA DO CACHIMBO BIOLOGICAL RESERVE, Brazil - A smoky, choking haze drifted over a lush rainforest reserve in the Brazilian Amazon last month, as fires lit by cattlemen illegally ranching on protected land spread through the jungle.

From an elevated vantage point, a dozen blazes could be spotted across an 845,000-acre nature preserve.

As damaging as these fires would be to the Serra Do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, they represented just a tiny fraction of the total number burning vast swaths of the Amazon, with 26,000 recorded in August, the highest number in a decade.

The immense scale of the fires in Brazil this summer raised a global alarm about the risks they posed to the world's largest rainforest, which soaks up carbon dioxide and helps keep global temperatures from rising.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Ten years ago, an agreement was reached that was intended to help end these devastating acts of ecological arson.

In 2009, the three biggest Brazilian meatpacking companies signed an agreement with the environmental group Greenpeace not to buy cattle from ranchers who raised their beef in newly deforested areas.

The deal was meant to be a model for the world, a partnership between private industry and environmental activists that would benefit both.

For Greenpeace, the agreement offered a solution to one of the biggest causes of rainforest destruction: The cattle industry is responsible for up to 80 percent of the clearings in recent years, according to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

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Smoke from fires drift over a cattle farm in the state of Mato Grosso. Credit... Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

For the meatpackers, the agreement relieved pressure from a growing international environmental campaign against them and threats of boycotts against retailers selling their beef.

But the vows made by those three companies - JBS, Minerva and Marfrig, which handle about 50 percent of the beef raised in the Amazon - have been only partially kept, according to prosecutors, environmentalists and academics who study the cattle industry.

The failure to fulfill crucial elements of the ambitious promise - which were always going to be a challenge to achieve - is one of the main reasons the Amazon is on fire.

Cattle ranching has been responsible for 18,000 square miles of additional deforestation - equivalent to New Hampshire and Vermont combined - since the 2009 agreement between Greenpeace and the meatpackers, according to University of Wisconsin researchers.

Convinced that the meatpackers were not living up to their commitments, Greenpeace pulled out of the agreement in 2017.

"We saw that they failed to comply with what they had promised," said Adriana Charoux, the lead Greenpeace Amazon activist. "They could have done much more. The slaughterhouses are making a minimal effort."

What We Found

In September, the fires were abundant in the Serra Do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, set aside by the Brazilian government 15 years ago as a pristine wilderness area off-limits to all commercial activity.

But driving over the creaky river bridges built by the ranchers in this reserve, it was easy to find illegal cattle operations here, as it is throughout Brazil's Amazon. Where giant otters and jaguars once roamed, there were fields where cattle grazed.

Fazenda Canaã, a 2,700-acre farm carved out of the reserve's rainforest around 2013, made no effort to hide. The jungle that had stood on this land was replaced by open savanna - grazing land for its 400 cattle.

For a ranch hand working there, the exchange of rainforest for productive farmland seemed like a fair deal.

"The right thing to do is let people work," said Isaías Hermogem, as he watched over cattle grazing in a clearing edged with papaya and coconut trees. "Let's open up more space."

Many ranchers have taken that advice.

Fazenda Canaã is just one of at least 71 ranches in the Serra do Cachimbo, and both the number of ranches and the size of each appears to be growing. In August, just as the rampant fires in the Amazon gripped the attention of a warming world, Fazenda Canaã extended its turf with additional burning.

About 200 million heads of cattle are raised in the Brazil, with an estimated 173,746 square miles of forest - the size of California, plus Massachusetts and New Jersey - converted to cattle pasture over recent decades, according to the Yale School of Forestry.

Livestock farming generates more than $6 billion in annual export revenues and about 360,000 jobs. Much of the exported beef goes to meet growing demand in China.

Despite the promise of the major meatpackers not to buy cattle from ranches like Fazenda Canaã, cattle that spent time on this farm were purchased by JBS over the last three years, according to government data.

In fact, JBS, the biggest meatpacker worldwide, bought cattle that passed through 11 ranches in the preserve over the last two years, according to the government data.

Marfrig and Minerva each made indirect purchases from one ranch here, according to government data that traces a complex supply chain.

An audit in 2016 by federal prosecutors in Pará State, where the Serra do Cachimbo reserve is and where about a third of the cattle slaughtered in the Amazon come from, showed that 6 percent of the cattle JBS had bought between October 2009 and 2016, totaling 36,739 heads of cattle, came from ranches that had been illegally cleared.

In 2016, 118,459 cattle, or 19 percent of the total bought by JBS in Pará, were acquired "with evidence of irregularities," according to the audit by the Brazilian Federal Prosecution Service using satellite information, on-the-ground inspections and traced purchasing data.

"There is no reason why after 10 years there could not be better results," said Nathalie Walker, a director at the National Wildlife Federation, who has studied the Brazilian cattle industry. "There were firm negotiated agreements."

What We Found

Brazil has many thousands of cattle farms in the Amazon, spread out across one of the world's most remote areas, which hinders efforts at law enforcement, inspections and, especially, tracking cattle over their life spans.

It's rare for a cow to spend its entire life on the farm where it was born; it may be bought and sold multiple times, until it reaches the ranch that sells it directly to a slaughterhouse.

This complex supply chain has made the phenomenon of "cattle laundering" common and is the crux of the problem in fulfilling the deal's promise.

A calf may be born on illegally deforested land and then ultimately sold to a fattening ranch whose land was cleared long ago and is within the terms of the accord.

When the slaughterhouses buy from these ranches, they can say they have acquired a cow from a compliant source.

JBS asserts that 100 percent of its cattle purchases from its direct suppliers "were in compliance with our responsible sourcing policies," according to a statement from a company spokesman.

The company said it uses satellite technology, geo-referenced farm data and official government records to monitor more than 280,000 square miles, an area larger than Texas, and that it assesses more than 50,000 potential cattle suppliers every day.

"JBS has an unwavering commitment to combat, discourage and eliminate deforestation in the Amazon region," said the company statement.

Despite those efforts, an audit commissioned by JBS acknowledged that the company does not fully monitor indirect suppliers because of a lack of accessible public data tracking the transport of animals.

"JBS can track 100 percent of its direct suppliers," according to its third-party auditor, DNV GL, a Norwegian quality-assurance and certification company. But JBS "has not yet been successful in implementing traceability processes" for indirect suppliers.

And this gap, critics say, has rendered the agreement largely ineffectual.

Most of the Amazon ranches that sell cattle directly to JBS, Marfrig and Minerva are essentially middlemen, aggregators of cattle from multiple, inadequately monitored farms, according to data provided by University of Wisconsin researchers.

Based on an analysis of publicly available property records as well as on-the-ground interviews with hundreds of farmers in the Amazon, the University of Wisconsin researchers found that at least 15 percent of the indirect suppliers to the three major meatpackers have continued to deforest land since the 2009 agreement was signed.

"The agreement has so many holes, the deforestation is still just going on," said Holly Gibbs, a University of Wisconsin geographer who has studied the agreement.

In a separate study of the cattle export market in the Amazon and the nearby Cerrado, a region which is not covered by the agreement, Trase, a research group that studies commodity supply chains, said that beef exports by JBS contributed to an estimated 100 square miles of deforestation a year from 2015 to 2017.

And the deforestation totals in the report reflect only a small part of the problem, because 80 percent of the meat produced in the region goes into the domestic market, whose effect on deforestation Trase did not measure.

"The lack of monitoring of indirect suppliers is a big blind spot," said Erasmus zu Ermgassen, a researcher with Trase and the Université Catholique de Louvain. "Slaughterhouses, like JBS, have no way of guaranteeing that cattle from deforesting properties don't ultimately end up in their supply chain."

What We Found

The landmark agreement signed by JBS, Minerva and Marfrig was considered very promising.

The deal obligated the three companies to ensure that farmers who sold them cattle were not actively engaged in deforestation.

Soon after the Greenpeace deal, federal prosecutors reached an accord with 13 additional national meatpackers allowing federal law enforcement officers to monitor the source of their cattle so slaughterhouses would cut ties with cattlemen who cleared a significant amount of forest. Eventually, about 100 signed on, including the Big 3.

At first, the agreements did lead to improvements, as the meatpacking companies established the necessary protocols to monitor their direct suppliers.

In Pará State, for example, the University of Wisconsin research team found that while 36 percent of supplying ranches had recent deforestation in 2009, only 4 percent did in 2013.

But at the same time that the agreements limited the amount of new land for grazing, demand for beef was growing both domestically and internationally.

The incentive to clear more rainforest for pasture became hard to resist, and the result was a surge in the cattle laundering practice that has undermined the deals and ravaged Brazil's rain forests.

Compounding the problem, farmers and ranchers have treated the inauguration of the right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro as president in January as a green light to burn deeper into the rainforest.

"If there was one thing Bolsonaro was crystal clear about," said Jeremy M. Martin, vice president for energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas, a California-based research organization, "it was that he was 100 percent willing to compromise the Amazon for economic upside."

What We Found

The agreement with Greenpeace recognized that animals that end up in slaughterhouses are not always raised by the direct suppliers, and the three companies agreed they would monitor the complex path taken by cattle as they moved through the Amazon.

The tracking system was supposed to be in operation by 2011.

But on the 10th anniversary of the agreement, the companies still have not found a way to fully monitor the indirect suppliers.

While critical of the performance of JBS and other meatpackers, government prosecutors and academics say the three companies are only part of the problem, and so can only be part of the solution.

The companies have been handicapped by the inconsistent quality of government inspections that monitor cattle traffic from farm to farm. And cattle data is scattered and incomplete, government officials say.

Daniel Azeredo, a senior federal environmental prosecutor who has investigated the cattle industry, said that JBS and the other meatpackers have acknowledged the problem. "In meetings they say, 'We are victims of fraud,'" he said. "But I think they could do more."

The independent auditor used by JBS said that tracing the full supply chain would only be possible if JBS had complete access to animal transportation documents that are closely guarded by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Another of the signatories to the deal, Minerva, also pointed to the intractable problems in the supply chain. "Today there are no reliable and accessible statistics on the cattle traceability chain," Minerva said in a statement. "Any indirect supplier control initiative at this time is not monitorable, reportable and attestable."

Marfrig said it was in full compliance with the agreement, and is working to develop "new solutions to foment a deforestation-free supply chain."

Brazil's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina da Costa Dias, agreed in an interview that the government's animal transport information was disorganized, dispersed and difficult to access.

Asked if the cattle industry was doing enough to protect the Amazon, she said, "That's a very difficult question."

What We Found

No one disagrees with the minister about the difficulty of the task.

Following the life cycle of a cow takes sophisticated surveillance, regulatory supervision, standardized records and systematic auditing - a complex process that, critics acknowledge, is especially hard in the Amazon.

But thousands of miles from the Brazilian rain forests, in Madison, Wis., a team of University of Wisconsin researchers has spent nearly a decade attempting to show it can be done.

Working with the National Wildlife Federation, the team has developed a computerized tracking tool, called Visipec, that documents the movement of cattle from the calving farms to the slaughterhouses by linking the data sets on government websites.

Using that data, the researchers say, the tool can help slaughterhouses track almost all their direct and indirect suppliers.

It's unclear, however, how much private support or political will there is for such a solution, since it would close what some experts suggest has been a convenient loophole for all parties in the Brazilian cattle industry.

The National Wildlife Federation has offered Visipec for free to the major meatpackers, including JBS. So far, none of them are using it.

And just as the tool is ready to be fully deployed, much of the data underpinning it may soon become more difficult to access.

One of the key data sets had come from the website of the Brazilian agriculture ministry, which had posted online records of cattle transactions in the Amazon.

In April, the agriculture ministry released a memo saying that parts of the database would not be made publicly available because they contain "personal information" that "does not interest the general public." Already, some of the data has become harder to download, said Ms. Gibbs, the lead university researcher.

While tracking the supply chain had always been difficult, she said, now "it is essentially impossible."

The Takeaway: A supply chain can only be as green as its least eco-friendly link.
Clifford Krauss and Mariana Simðes reported from the states of Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil. David Yaffe-Bellany reported from New York.

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Why Amazon Fires Keep Raging 10 Years After a Deal to End Them

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Many of the thousands of fires burning in Brazil's Amazon are set by ranchers. A deal inked 10 years ago was meant to stop the problem, but the ecological arson goes on as the Earth warms. When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right.

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#9 China Tries to Squeeze more out of a small trade deal with America- trade/lobbying

To end the trade war between China and the US, a mini trade deal has been proposed. Trump will stop raising tariffs if china buys two times the amount of farming goods (such as soy). However even if this new deal is signed there is no saying as to weather or not the trade war will actually come to an end.

If we can get China to buy all that soy, that will be a huge influx of money into the US’s economy, especially into the farming industry. The US isn’t known for it’s exports, only its imports so this would be a win for the US. Maybe even trump would benefit because most of his supporters come from the Midwest where they are growing these crops. He would probably get a lot more lobbying money from them if this deal goes through.

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T HE TRADE conflict between China and America has been a clash not just of giant economies but of utterly different public negotiating styles. In one corner are President Donald Trump's tweets, in which he veers between heaping praise on China and declaring that he has pummelled it. In the other is a Chinese bureaucracy that has stuck doggedly to the same message: tariffs must be removed for the two countries to reach a trade agreement. A mini-deal, hashed out last month, is shaping up to be a mini-test of their contrasting approaches.

The outline of the mini-deal-or, as Mr Trump put it, the "substantial phase-one deal"-seemed clear enough. China would buy American agricultural products, and America would hold back from slapping yet more tariffs on China. With this basic agreement under their belts, the two combatants would move onto weightier topics such as China's support for its strategic industries. But two problems have since emerged: one predictable, one not.
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As was foreseeable at the time, the lack of detail about the mini-truce concealed big differences. Mr Trump said that trade talks had been "a love fest", and that China would buy $40bn-50bn in farm goods from America, more than double the level before the trade war. But the more he gloated, the more China appears to have seen an opening to push for more. According to multiple reports, Chinese negotiators have demanded that to complete the mini-deal, America must remove some of its existing tariffs, not just refrain from new ones.

China's gambit might just pay off. On November 4th a Trump administration official reportedly said that a phase-one deal between America and China could roll back the 15% tariff imposed on September 1st, on $112bn of goods. China could be offering some sweeteners such as a purchase of liquefied natural gas, which Wilbur Ross, America's commerce secretary, hinted at on November 5th. But the tariff reduction would be an American concession. The previous stance of Robert Lighthizer, America's chief trade negotiator, was that tariffs should remain until China proves that it is honouring whatever deal is struck.

The unpredictable complication was Chile's big protests. Mr Trump and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, had hoped to seal their mini-deal on neutral ground at a summit of Asia-Pacific countries in Chile in mid-November. But the organisers have cancelled the summit. That poses the question of where and when the leaders should meet, itself a matter of negotiation. Given Mr Trump's tendency to improvise, China wants to be sure there is a political win on the table before it agrees to meet.

The Chinese may yet include more juicy titbits for American businesses as part of the mini-deal. But even if it is signed without a hitch, the trade war will be far from over. Hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese exports would still be affected by tariffs and companies would still have to live with the uncertainty of the old ones coming back. Mr Trump would still have the final word, and another one after that too. ■

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China tries to squeeze more out of a small trade deal with America

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T HE TRADE conflict between China and America has been a clash not just of giant economies but of utterly different public negotiating styles. In one corner are President Donald Trump's tweets, in which he veers between heaping praise on China and declaring that he has pummelled it.

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#8- China's football fans ask what it takes to become Chinese- Soccer/ Remittance  

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#8- China's football fans ask what it takes to become Chinese- Soccer/ Remittance  

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China is extremely concerned about it’s soccer team. They want to do well to prove that they are a big super power. Recently they recruited a man from Brazil and granted him citizenship. Many Chines citizens are upset and racist. However when he played well, they were more okay with the idea.

This goes hand in had with our soccer unit. The World Cup is a huge deal to many countries and China wants to win and are extremely ashamed of their team. China doesn’t want to be a country known for it’s immigrants and therefor the Brazilian is going to face a lot of racism. Also remittance can be at play if the player is sending money back to Brazil or brining his knowledge back to Brazil.

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W HEN HE WAS still vice-president, in 2011, Xi Jinping declared three goals for Chinese football: to qualify for, host and eventually win a World Cup. China had appeared only once in the tournament, in 2002, and failed to score a single goal. The consistently embarrassing performance of the national team touches a sensitive nerve in a country striving for great-power status. China's squad is ranked 68th in the world, just above that of North Macedonia (population 2m). Mr Xi, an avid football fan, insists the country can do much better.

No one expects China to lift the ultimate trophy any time soon. But it may at least qualify to play in the next World Cup competition, due to be held in Qatar in 2022. Its prospects may have improved thanks to a new strategy adopted by China's football federation: recruiting talented foreigners to the team and giving them Chinese citizenship to ensure they comply with the World Cup's nationality rules.
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China's own law on citizenship does not allow dual nationality, so someone becoming Chinese has to renounce any other passports. But some are ready to take up the offer. Last month Elkeson, who is originally from Brazil and goes by one name, became the first player without Chinese ancestry to don the Chinese jersey. He joins Nico Yennaris, a British-born player whose mother is Chinese, as the team's second naturalised citizen. A gifted striker, Elkeson might be its best player. He scored two goals in his debut match in September and another in his second game on October 10th. That is one quarter of all China's goals in its current World Cup campaign.

Under the rules of FIFA, football's global governing body, naturalised players must have strong links with the country they represent. This might include having a parent or grandparent born in that country, or having lived there oneself for five years continuously since the age of 18. China's Super League, the equivalent of England's Premier League, has several foreign players who would pass the residency test. As many as seven are being naturalised, says China's football federation.

More problematic is the way they are regarded by native Chinese. Normally it is virtually impossible to acquire Chinese citizenship unless one is the child of a Chinese national. At the time of the most recent census in 2010 fewer than 1,500 people had managed it. Comments on social media suggest many Chinese fans believe Chinese ethnicity is essential for players on the national team. "We are not a country of immigrants," said an angry fan on Weibo, a Twitter-like service, after Elkeson announced he had become Chinese. Another wrote: "You don't love China. You only love Chinese yuan."

Some were more explicitly racist. "At least he's not black," said one commentator. Hao Haidong, a former national player who is the country's most prolific scorer of all time, said the use of naturalised citizens in Team China was "very scary". In response to such criticisms, the football federation has promised not to recruit foreign-born players on a "large scale".

China's chances of playing in Qatar are still not promising. On October 15th it suffered a humiliating scoreless draw against the Philippines, ranked 127th. Yet many fans noted how well Elkeson played. "I support naturalisation" was a common refrain on Weibo in the hours that followed. ■

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China's football fans ask what it takes to become Chinese

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W HEN HE WAS still vice-president, in 2011, Xi Jinping declared three goals for Chinese football: to qualify for, host and eventually win a World Cup. China had appeared only once in the tournament, in 2002, and failed to score a single goal.

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#7- How the Twists and Turns of the Trade War are Hurting Growth- trade 

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#7- How the Twists and Turns of the Trade War are Hurting Growth- trade 

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With no sign of the trade war letting up, the IMF reports that the global economy is going down.  The IMF states that its predicted global growth is at 3% rather than lasts years 3.6%. This means that China, the US and other countries like India are hurting. This means a loss of 125 billion of American dollars and 300 billion of Chinese dollars.

Trade is no longer between two parties, in todays globalized world trade can affect the entire globe. With the trade war, other countries are losing money. This can be devastating. We can only hope that trump’s war on trade proves positive for growth on both ends.

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A FTER WELCOMING the St Louis Blues, a championship-winning ice-hockey team, to the White House on October 15th, President Donald Trump fondly recalled a recent triumph of his own: last week's tentative trade deal with China. Simply put, America will impose no further punitive tariffs on Chinese imports if China promises to buy American farm goods worth billions of dollars. How many billions? "It's very big numbers," Mr Trump emphasised. "I said, 'Ask for 70.'...My people said, 'All right, make it 20.' I said, 'No, make it 50.'"

Will this carefully calibrated amount ever materialise? China does not want to pay over the odds or deprive other, friendlier suppliers of its custom. It also wants America to go beyond promising no new tariffs and to start removing existing ones. The deal may unravel before it is written down, let alone signed by the two countries' leaders next month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Santiago.
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That unpredictability is a problem. Not just higher tariffs but "prolonged trade-policy uncertainty" are damaging the world economy, said Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, this week as the fund again cut its forecast for global growth. "Manufacturing firms have become more cautious about long-range spending and have held back on equipment and machinery purchases," the fund notes. The fog of trade war is depressing investment spending. And because machinery, equipment and other capital goods are often imported, weak investment spending is further hurting trade. The IMF now expects the world economy to expand by just 3% this year, compared with 3.6% last year. That would be the slowest rate in the decade since the global financial crisis.

Both America and the euro zone are expected to grow more slowly this year than the fund had envisaged in July, before trade tensions escalated. India's prospects have dimmed sharply: it is forecast to grow by 6.1% rather than the 7% expected only months ago. And in 2020 China is now projected to expand by less than 6% for the first time in 30 years.

The fund has, unsurprisingly, slashed its forecast for Hong Kong. The city is now expected to grow by only 0.3%, compared with the 2.7% foreseen in April, before its economic prospects vanished in a cloud of tear-gas. The unrest could also jeopardise the fragile trade truce between America and China. On October 15th the House of Representatives passed a measure enjoining America to assess Hong Kong's autonomy annually and sanction officials who violate it. China reacted angrily to what it describes as meddling in its affairs.

The IMF's economists have valiantly tried to quantify the damage to the world economy from the trade war if Mr Trump's putative deal falls apart. The direct impact is surprisingly modest. The tariffs already in place and in the pipeline could reduce America's GDP by just over 0.2% next year, compared with a world in which the trade war had never started (see chart). More harmful are indirect effects: weaker business confidence, productivity and risk-appetite on financial markets. These bring the damage to almost 0.6% of America's GDP in 2020. The damage to China would be almost 2% of its GDP.

These are small percentages-but of vast economies. If the IMF is right, an unresolved trade war could cost America roughly $125bn of forgone output next year alone. The cost to China could exceed $300bn (at market exchange rates). Big numbers indeed. ■

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How the twists and turns of the trade war are hurting growth

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A FTER WELCOMING the St Louis Blues, a championship-winning ice-hockey team, to the White House on October 15th, President Donald Trump fondly recalled a recent triumph of his own: last week's tentative trade deal with China. Simply put, America will impose no further punitive tariffs on Chinese imports if China promises to buy American farm goods worth billions of dollars.

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#6- The West is now Surer that China is not About to Liberalize- Liberalization 

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#6- The West is now Surer that China is not About to Liberalize- Liberalization 

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There was a big meeting held to talk about China and where they stand economically and politically. Overall China continues to state that they don’t want to change their authoritarian state capitalism form of government. The Chinese’s form of government requires foreign firms to buy access to Chinese markets by handing over technology to local rivals and sensitive data to the government.

China is hesitant to liberalize because they knew that as a developing country this would only hold them back and make them vulnerable to global super powers. However foreign firms don’t want their technologies going to the Chinese government, which is hindering China’s growth.(social remittance: technology) The US wants to push for the liberalization of China to ensure its own growth, Trump is pushing this agenda through the trade war.

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Post #5, October 14, Faced With a Drug Shortfall, Doctors Scramble to Treat Children with Cancer-
Chorev's article

This article talks about the shortage of drugs in the United States needed to treat childhood cancers such as Leukemia and Lymphoma. The company making the medicine decided to withdraw from the market because they had a quality problem.

I connect this with Chorev’s making medicine article because if companies like this were to expand from the U.S., produce somewhere else, and import the medicine, not only would the U.S. benefit from the less strict regulations, but another country would have access to the medicine and technology they wouldn’t otherwise have.

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A critical chemotherapy medication is in short supply, and physicians say there is no appropriate substitute.

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A 2-year-old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukemia receiving chemotherapy treatment in Florida. The common childhood cancer can be cured in most cases when the drug, vincristine, is available. Credit Credit Gary Coronado/ The Palm Beach Post/ZUMA Press, via Alamy

A critical drug that serves as the backbone of treatment for most childhood cancers, including leukemias, lymphomas and brain tumors, has become increasingly scarce, and doctors are warning that they may soon be forced to consider rationing doses.

Persistent shortages of certain drugs and medical supplies have plagued the United States for years, but physicians say the loss of this medication, vincristine, is uniquely problematic, as there is no appropriate substitute.

"This is truly a nightmare situation," said Dr. Yoram Unguru, a pediatric oncologist at the Herman and Walter Samuelson Children's Hospital at Sinai in Baltimore. "Vincristine is our water. It's our bread and butter. I can't think of a disease in childhood cancer that doesn't use vincristine."

Shortages of the chemotherapy drug, which is on back order, will likely affect children throughout the country, he said, obligating physicians to make difficult decisions.

"There is no substitution for vincristine that can be recommended," Dr. Unguru said. "You either have to skip a dose or give a lower dose - or beg, borrow or plead."

Vincristine is one of the drugs used to manage acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer. Vincristine is also an important agent in the treatment of Wilms tumor, a rare kidney cancer that mostly affects children.

The Children's Oncology Group, a collaboration of researchers at hospitals and cancer centers, has made recommendations for altering clinical trial treatment protocols involving vincristine, including checking the hospital pharmacy's supply before trial enrollment; considering using half the dose if the full amount is not available; skipping doses during the maintenance phase of treatment; or in some cases omitting the drug altogether.

"We are all devastated," said Dr. Michael Link, a pediatric oncologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
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Without vincristine, many children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia will still be cured, "but this is a difficult disease to treat in general, and with one hand tied behind your back, it makes it much more difficult," Dr. Link said.

Until earlier this year, there were two suppliers of vincristine: Pfizer and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. In July, Teva made a "business decision to discontinue the drug," according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Since then, Pfizer has been the sole supplier, and the company lately has experienced manufacturing troubles.

"Pfizer has experienced a delay, and we are working closely with them and exploring all options to make sure this critical cancer drug is available for the patients who need it," the F.D.A. said in a brief statement.

Jessica Smith, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said the company would expedite additional shipments of the drug over the next few weeks to "support three to four times our typical production output," in an effort to make up for Teva's withdrawal from the market.

Teva did not return numerous calls for comment.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists tracks more than 200 medications in short supply, among them everyday necessities like antibiotics, dextrose and several vaccines, including the rabies vaccine.

The shortages tend disproportionately to involve older, generic injectable drugs, which are difficult to manufacture but command low prices, a combination that often leads manufacturers to get out of the business of making them.

Those withdrawals may leave just one or two companies continuing to supply the drugs in the United States. Their factories must run at peak production to turn a profit and provide a sufficient supply, but the moment there is a quality problem and production shuts down, shortages follow.

Generic drugs play a vital role in the treatment of cancer. Of the 19,000 American children and adolescents younger than 19 who develop cancer every year, 85 percent are cured. But treatment hinges largely on inexpensive, older drugs like vincristine, which have been off patent for decades.

Shortages cause disruption in treatment. According to a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013, 83 percent of oncologists said that they were unable to prescribe the chemotherapy agent they wanted to use because of a shortage, and that they had to substitute a different drug or delay treatment.

Dr. Unguru said the survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which accounts for nearly one-quarter of all cancers in children, is nearly 90 percent. But eight of the 10 drugs most commonly used to treat it have been unavailable at times over the past decade.

A drug shortages task force established in 2018 by the former F.D.A. Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is supposed to submit a report with findings and recommendations to Congress by the end of the year.

"This shouldn't be happening in the United States," said Dr. Peter Adamson, chair of the Children's Oncology Group.

"It's hard enough for any family having a kid with cancer, and having a child with cancer likely to be cured except we can't give them the drug is beyond the imagination. How can we do that to families?"

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Faced With a Drug Shortfall, Doctors Scramble to Treat Children With Cancer

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A critical chemotherapy medication is in short supply, and physicians say there is no appropriate substitute. A critical drug that serves as the backbone of treatment for most childhood cancers, including leukemias, lymphomas and brain tumors, has become increasingly scarce, and doctors are warning that they may soon be forced to consider rationing doses.

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Post #4, October 14, After a Caribbean Hurricane, the Battle is Where, or even Whether, to Rebuild- climate change/ pushing out the poor

This article is about the devastating Hurricane that swept through the Caribbean in 2017 and how little has actually been done to rebuild. Many believe that this is just the beginning and more deadly hurricane’s are on their way. The French own part of the Island and are trying to push the poor out during this time of instability.

Climate change is among us and it is even harder to deny it in these islands that are taking the hit. France wants to update the building codes to make sure they can withstand more hurricanes, however this doesn't fix the root of the problem. They are also trying to force out the poor so they can build on their land, land that has been in their family for generations.

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Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island. Credit... Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

Promises Made

When Hurricane Irma crushed St. Martin two years ago, the French state vowed swift assistance. Aid has flowed in, but a fight has followed about recovery plans, exposing racial and class tension.

Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island. Credit... Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right. But do they? In this series, The Times investigates to see if those promises were kept.
SAINT-MARTIN, French West Indies - In the debris that had once been furniture and a roof were the vestiges of a holiday home: a cluster of flip-flops, a romance novel, a child's ball floating in a plunge pool's fetid waters.

On a recent visit, it looked like an artillery barrage had smashed into this small bungalow and a dozen or so other nearby cottages in a similar state of ruin, in what had been a pleasant vacation compound on a bluff above the Atlantic Ocean.

This scene of utter destruction in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane was not in the Abaco Islands or on Grand Bahama, devastated by Dorian last month. This wasteland was on St. Martin, an island that took a direct hit from Hurricane Irma on Sept. 6, 2017, and where, two years later, recovery is still far from complete.

The hurricane caused billions of dollars in damage across the 34-square-mile island, which is split between the French territory of Saint-Martin, with a population of about 32,000,and Sint Maarten, a mostly autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with a population of about 41,000.

Immediately after the storm blasted the island, President Emmanuel Macron of France promised a speedy recovery for the French side.

"Saint-Martin will be reborn, I am committed," Mr. Macron vowed. "We will do it quickly, we will do it well, and we will do it better."

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But Saint-Martin's slow, if steady, recovery shows just how difficult coming back from a hurricane can be on a small island, with challenges that go well beyond just the size of financial aid packages.

In Saint-Martin, the toughest, most uncomfortable questions are less about who will pay for rebuilding - France has delivered more than a half-billion dollars of aid - but where and how to rebuild, or whether to rebuild at all amid the threat of evermore powerful storms.

This has made the debate less an economic one and more about politics, class, culture and race, often pitting the local majority-black population against the French state.

The top French official on the island says she wants more restrictions on construction in the areas most at risk to future storms, in order to protect lives and the economy.

But many working-class residents fear they could be forced to abandon property that has been in their family for generations. Some suspect a land grab, where their waterfront plots will be taken and sold to wealthy developers.

In a region that has experienced the awesome forces of Category 5 storms with terrifying frequency in recent years, the story playing out on St. Martin is likely to be repeated on many other Caribbean islands - and in the United States, too.

WHAT WE FOUND

On the French side of the island, Hurricane Irma damaged about 95 percent of the buildings, including the home of Bernadette Carty.

Ms. Carty had lived all her 65 years on the waterfront, and she felt it was safe to ignore the evacuation orders that preceded Irma's landfall. After all, at least seven generations of her family had survived numerous hurricanes on this same patch of land, and she figured this time would be no different.

But Irma was among the most powerful storms ever to hit the island, and a prime example of how climate change has made hurricanes more destructive.

As Irma rumbled ashore, Ms. Carty, her daughter and two grandchildren dove for cover under a mattress and rode out the storm as it mauled her island.

When Irma had finally moved on, the family emerged from their hideaway to discover that the storm surge and wind had gouged holes in two sides of the house and had swept away Ms. Carty's sister from her home next door. She was one of 11 people who died on the French side of the island, according to the local authorities. Two died on the Dutch side, according to the prime minister's office.

Ms. Carty has been living in a temporary apartment ever since, and hopes to get permission to rebuild her house.

"This hurricane is the devil," she said.

The storm devastated the island's main airport, blocked its ports and effectively shut down the island's essential tourism industry for months.

The French government's promise to deliver substantial help was not an empty one.

It allocated more than $500 million in aid and subsidies in the first six months after the storm to the recovery and reconstruction of Saint-Martin and the smaller, nearby French island of Saint-Barthélemy, according to Sylvie Feucher, the French state's top representative based in the two territories.

Considering the dire shape Saint-Martin was in right after the storm, with its infrastructure flattened, the fact that much of the territory is back on its feet confirms the aid has made a difference.

Hotels and restaurants have reopened, and tourists are again lounging on its beaches.

But on a visit to the island in late August, a checkerboard of remaining damage was visible all around. Buildings without roofs. Businesses still shuttered. The half-sunken hulls of storm-scuttled ships.

While Irma battered the island for just a matter of hours, Ms. Feucher predicted that it could take up to three more years for the territory to fully recover.

WHAT WE FOUND

Hurricane Irma made clear that natural disasters not only obliterate structures and lives; they can also expose deep socioeconomic fault lines. In Saint-Martin, a long simmering discontent - loaded with racial and class tension - is on the verge of boiling over.

Ms. Feucher, the deputy prefect for Saint-Martin, is convinced that some areas of the territory are just too dangerously exposed to the power of the most severe storms to be safely inhabitable. And she is trying to convince the population of this, too.

The focus of her mission, backed by Paris, is a push for more severe restrictions on construction and land use in the areas at greatest risk of damage during major storms, like that bluff with the pulverized cottages.

But the campaign has become a flash point in an increasingly contentious relationship between the French government and a local population bristling against French bureaucracy and overseas control.

Several of the flood-prone coastal neighborhoods of greatest concern to Ms. Feucher have large low-income populations, and many residents suspect the French government is waging a veiled campaign to drive poor, black residents off their land through condemnation so it can be sold to developers.

Cédrick André, a community activist in Sandy Ground, one of the high-risk neighborhoods, views the matter as nothing less than an existential struggle for Saint-Martin's working-class population.

"They want to change everything: the way we live, the way we speak, the way we sex, the way we eat," said Mr. André, 42. "They want to change who we are."

"They are not attacking the people who have their pocket full and can defend themselves," he added. "They are attacking people without their pocket full."

Sandy Ground - bracketed by a bay on one side and a lagoon on the other - was first settled by squatters decades ago, many of them black immigrants from other Caribbean islands.

The authorities turned a blind eye to the settlement, allowing it to grow, and now thousands of people live along the neighborhood's narrow streets and unpaved lanes.

"Many of us living by the sea, we know the risk," said Marie Abner, 48, who has lived in the neighborhood since she immigrated from Haiti as a child. "If anything happen, we leave the home. Then we come back."

The French government has set up a fund to buy out property owners living in the highest-risk flood zones, but Ms. Feucher insists that nobody will be forced to sell.

Still, residents of Sandy Ground, and other neighborhoods with significant working-class populations, like Grand Case and Quartier d'Orléans, are unassuaged and angry.

Daniel Gibbs, president of the local government in Saint-Martin, has demanded that the French state give the community more time to study the issue.

"I need to hear the needs of my population - at least the majority of my population," Mr. Gibbs added. "I think there's plenty of room for compromise."

On a recent evening, Jah Bash, a Rastafarian farmer, said that the population's patience with an overbearing French state was wearing thin.

"For me, it's a conspiracy to take over the island," said Mr. Bash, whose family has lived in Sandy Ground for five generations. "It's about wealth."

Protests against the plan could turn violent, Mr. Bash warned. "The only way to get your attention is to do something to you that you fear," he said. "The country will burn easily."

WHAT WE FOUND

Hurricane recovery is hard anywhere. And that's particularly true in Caribbean islands like St. Martin because of a unique combination of factors.

As with many places in the Caribbean, the economy is over-reliant on a single industry - tourism - for jobs and tax revenue. When hotels are wrecked by a storm, business dries up, unemployment soars and government coffers suffer.

Geographic isolation makes everything more expensive. Building materials need to be brought in by ship or plane, increasing costs. The elevated demand for qualified workers in a small labor pool jacks up wages.

Recovery is also hamstrung by the fact that few are left untouched by a severe disaster: The officials responsible for leading the recovery are themselves sometimes fighting to get on their feet.

"They are so small that almost every human being on the island is directly impacted," said Tahseen Sayed, the World Bank country director for the Caribbean. "The challenge of the government for reconstruction becomes even longer and more difficult."

Local governments often lack the resources to manage the task of hurricane recovery alone.

Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin of Sint Maarten said her government had insufficient fiscal, legal and environmental staff to help manage those aspects of recovery after Irma.

"The hurricane really exposed those weak areas that we have as a government," she said.

WHAT WE FOUND

The island that Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten occupy was divided between the French and the Dutch in the 17th century. As with two competitive siblings close in age, just about everything that happens on one side demands comparison with the other.

Hurricane recovery has been no different, revealing that distinctions in culture and governance have had a significant bearing on progress during the past two years.

The consensus view on both sides of the island is that the Dutch half has recovered more quickly. A higher percentage of hotel rooms on the Dutch side, for example, are open again for business.

The French state runs a famously laborious bureaucracy that, according to residents, has slowed the rebuilding process.

"We have norms and rules and regulations on the French side," said Angèle Dormoy, the president of Saint-Martin's Chamber of Commerce. "Everything is controlled and re-controlled, three or four times."

In contrast, Sint Maarten has developed a more laissez-faire culture, helping to accelerate the rebuilding process.

While the French state may seem overbearing to some in Saint-Martin, whose residents are French citizens, its people are entitled to all the protections of France's generous social net. But that state largess may have undermined private initiative during this reconstruction period.

"That's the strength and weakness of France," Ms. Feucher said. "We give a lot of attention to the population, and it can prevent people from developing a sense of responsibility in terms of taking care of themselves."

On the Dutch side, much of the rebuilding has been driven by private funds, particularly those associated with tourism, which dwarfs the French-side tourism sector.

"They pulled up their socks and got on with it," said Lorraine Talmi, board president of the Sint Maarten Hospitality & Trade Association.

But the differences have also left some on the Dutch side wondering whether in their haste to rebuild, and in their comparatively looser regulatory environment, the rebuilding did not happen with enough thought given to withstanding future storms.

On the French side, some believe their patience will pay off with a more resilient island, better able to withstand the effects of the Atlantic's warming waters.

In 2017, Mr. Macron said Saint-Martin will be "rebuilt in a durable way that also meets seismic and environmental needs." The widespread destruction, he said, could be blamed in part on "buildings that were constructed under conditions that wouldn't have been accepted in other territories of France."

Ms. Feucher said she was trying to get the population to take the long view in these matters: that getting the rebuilding right, even if it takes time, could save lives in the next big storm.

But Ms. Feucher conceded that persuading people to accept new regulations is no easy task.

"Changing mentalities is always difficult," she said.

The Takeaway: As storms become more destructive, hurricane recovery is as much about rethinking as it is rebuilding.

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After a Caribbean Hurricane, the Battle Is Where, or Even Whether, to Rebuild (Published 2019)

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Promises Made When Hurricane Irma crushed St. Martin two years ago, the French state vowed swift assistance. Aid has flowed in, but a fight has followed about recovery plans, exposing racial and class tension. Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island.

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Post #3 Those Foreign Business Ties? The Trump Sons have Plenty Too- FDI

In this article, President Trump and his sons are highlighted doing business in other countries. They continue to open luxury resorts in Indonesia, China, Ukraine and many other foreign countries. Since Trump took office, his sons have taken on a lot of the responsibility and have gotten foreign governments involved to benefit the trump companies.

This is a classic Foreign Direct Investment, Trump is taking his business into these countries to make a profit. By building luxury hotels and apartments he has rich/ high paying customers. And because of his political status, he can use this power to help his business. It's a win win for him.

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Donald Trump Jr. speaking with his family's business partner in Indonesia, the billionaire Hary Tanoesoedibjo, at an August event promoting two resorts. Credit Credit Mast Irham/EPA, via Shutterstock

Last month, the Trump family business received approval from a local government in Scotland for a major expansion of its golf resort near Aberdeen, marking the largest real estate development financed by the Trump Organization since the 2016 election.

In August, President Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., flew to Jakarta to help kick-start sales at a pair of Trump-branded luxury resorts planned for Indonesia. He appeared at a private event with wealthy prospective buyers and joined his politically connected billionaire Indonesian business partner at a news conference.

And last year, Donald Jr. visited India to sell condos at future Trump-branded towers, appearing at an event that also featured India's prime minister.

"I'm here as a businessman," Mr. Trump told the gathering in New Delhi. "I'm not representing anyone."

But for the children of the politically powerful, personal business and public dealings can often be indistinguishable, especially when private projects depend on foreign governments that are looking to bolster ties with Washington.

In recent weeks, as the president has become embroiled in a scandal involving his interactions with Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have taken to attacking Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for his business dealings in Ukraine and China.

The brothers have accused him of leveraging his family name for personal gain while his father served in the Obama administration. Among other things, Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that has been a focus of Mr. Trump's interest in the country.

"At the VERY LEAST, there's the appearance of impropriety," Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter. "A clear conflict of interest." At a rally in Minneapolis on Thursday, Eric Trump's charged remarks about the former vice president's son inspired the crowd of Trump supporters to chant, "Lock him up!"

Republicans, led by the president, have sought to make Hunter Biden's international business dealings an issue in the impeachment debate in Washington. But the high-profile attack roles being played by Mr. Trump's eldest sons have now thrust their own business dealings into the spotlight too.

Both sons have operated and promoted the Trump family business overseas during their father's presidency, even as he retains ownership. And while the Trump and Biden father-son relationships differ in many ways, the business dealings have set up a simple parallel.

"They are criticizing the vice president's son for doing exactly what they are doing themselves," said Martin Ford, a member of the Aberdeenshire Council in Scotland, which voted last month to approve a proposal by the Trumps to build a 500-unit housing development. "They are conducting international business here in Scotland."

Eric Trump, in a statement to The New York Times, said there was a distinction between his father's career in business, with his recent turn to politics, and Mr. Biden's decades in public office.

"When my father became president, our family stopped doing international business deals," he said, a reference to a pledge by the Trump Organization not to begin new overseas projects during the Trump presidency. Hunter Biden, he said, did the opposite when his father became vice president.

The Trump business activities in India, Indonesia and Scotland were considered in compliance with the pledge, according to the company's ethics rules, because they were building on deals already in the works.

Mr. Biden's campaign declined to comment on Friday. But in a tweet, the former vice president once again suggested that the attacks on his son were part of a political smear campaign. "Let me make something clear to President Trump: I'm not going anywhere," he wrote. "You're not going to destroy me. And you're not going to destroy my family. I don't care how dirty the attacks get."

Conducting business on the international stage has long been standard for the Trump Organization, which has placed the Trump name on hotels and towers in several countries.

But its international dealings have become far more complicated since Mr. Trump took office and his sons took leadership of the business, especially when foreign governments have been involved to the company's benefit.

When the Trump Organization tangled with the majority owner of a property in Panama, for example, its local lawyers at one point called on the Panamanian president for an assist.

In Indonesia, the government is helping to build a major new highway that will make a new Trump development more accessible. Construction is scheduled to begin soon on what will be known as Trump Residences Lido, which will include 280 homes, a golf course and a hotel, south of Jakarta.

The Trump family's partner in Indonesia - a billionaire named Hary Tanoesoedibjo - is financing the project, with the Trump family getting a cut of the sales.

In marketing materials released this summer, which featured the Trump family logo and a photograph of Donald Trump Jr., the company noted that the "Trump Residences Lido can be accessed directly through the newly opened Bocimi Toll Road."

In Scotland, the Aberdeenshire Council recently dropped an earlier requirement that the new housing development could not be built until the Trumps spent tens of millions of dollars on other investments at the resort.

Sebastian Leslie, a local official who supported the project, said the family received no special consideration. "We don't do that - we don't give anybody special favors," Mr. Leslie said.

But Mr. Martin, a council member who opposed the approval, said the Trumps benefited handsomely from the change. "It is a much, much more lucrative deal now," he said.

Revenues coming to the Trump family in the United States have drawn scrutiny too, including at the Trump International Hotel in Washington - a property, opened in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, that has flourished while Donald Trump Jr. and Eric have run the company.

The hotel has been a magnet for Republican lobbyists and political fund-raisers, and companies and foreign officials with business before the Trump administration have thrown parties there, including the Kuwait embassy and the government of Azerbaijan.

Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka has also retained a stake in the family business even as she serves as a White House adviser, and last year she received trademarks in China related to her separate fashion ventures. Her husband, Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the president, maintains a stake in his own family's real estate business, which has received and sought funding from international sources as well.

In 2017, Mr. Kushner met privately at the White House with top executives from Citibank and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Those meetings came as the firms were contemplating sizable loans to his family's business, Kushner Companies, which they did eventually make.

And since Mr. Kushner entered the White House, his family has courted state-connected investors in China and the Middle East - both regions that were in Mr. Kushner's government portfolio - to bail out the firm's headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

But the presidency has also come with some costs for the Trump family business since the sons have been at the helm.

The company had been banking on global expansion to drive its growth, but when the president agreed to put a hold on new foreign deals, it curtailed those ambitions for his sons.

George Sorial, the company's chief compliance counsel when the policy was developed, said it was the right thing to do even though it was not required by law and had cost the company significantly.

Eric Trump, in his statement to The Times, suggested that even the decision to forgo new foreign deals could be seen through the prism of Hunter Biden.

"My father was one of the most famous businessmen on earth and he sacrificed billions to be our president," he said. "Joe Biden was an incredibly influential politician - his family made millions."

The Biden campaign also sees opportunity in the nasty dispute. In a fund-raising email sent on Friday, the campaign singled out the Trump sons and the "lock him up" chant at the Thursday rally. "We are fighting back against this nonsense as hard as we know how every single day," the campaign wrote.

Jesse Drucker contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Those Foreign Business Deals? Trump's Sons Have Plenty, Too. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Those Foreign Business Ties? The Trump Sons Have Plenty Too

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Last month, the Trump family business received approval from a local government in Scotland for a major expansion of its golf resort near Aberdeen, marking the largest real estate development financed by the Trump Organization since the 2016 election.

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Post #2, October 14, The IMF Adds to a Chorus of Concern About Competition. - Free market/ "invisible hand"

The IMF produced a study that proves that the market is gaining too much power. Big businesses are monopolizing and are slowly increasing prices, which only benefits the CEO’s of the companies as well as the share holders. Market power is said to make economies less productive. It is said that firms prefer to merge than to compete thus creating these big monopolies.

Adam's Smith's idea is that a free market is the best kind of market. However now that we are seeing the monopolization of companies, free markets might not be such a good thing anymore. Government regulation is needed to stop the companies from rising the prices. What goes up must come down at some point, which is what the IMF is alluding to in this article.

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P HYSICISTS' QUEST for a "theory of everything" is well-known. The equivalent in economics is the hunt for common causes for the rich-world macroeconomic trends of the past decade or so: a shrinking share of the economic pie for workers, disappointing investment and lacklustre productivity growth. These must be reconciled with low interest rates, pockets of technological advance and juicy returns for investors willing to take risks.

The leading economic theory of everything is that competition has weakened as markets have become more concentrated. Unlike firms in competitive markets, monopolies limit production in order to keep prices and profits high. They can therefore be expected to restrain their investment, too. They might still be innovative-with monopoly profits up for grabs, why not be?-but market power usually makes economies less productive overall. And monopolies have many opportunities to take bites out of labour's share of the pie. Their high profits typically flow to investors, not workers. Their high prices eat into the purchasing power of wages. Their bargaining clout may even allow them to suppress pay directly.
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On April 3rd the IMF provided the latest evidence for parts of this theory. In a new study the fund's economists examined the markups over marginal cost-one proxy for market power-charged by over 900,000 firms in 27 countries. They found that markups rose by 8% on average between 2000 and 2015. In findings consistent with earlier analyses by The Economist, the fund concluded that market power has risen notably in America and by a smaller amount in Europe, and largely affected industries other than manufacturing (kept fiercely competitive by trade).

Case closed? Not so fast. Those who doubt that competition has weakened attribute such findings to the rise of "superstar" firms. They argue that economic activity is becoming concentrated in the best firms because of technology, network effects and globalisation. This "winner-takes-most" pattern could explain rising average markups, if pricey but brilliant products are capturing more market share, or if superstar firms are unusually reliant on spending on intangible assets that is not included as a cost in gross margins. Given the growing importance of intellectual property and brand value to obvious superstars such as Apple and Google, this objection is worth taking seriously.

The IMF study confirms that in most places a small share of firms are responsible for rising markups, which have soared among the best and are flat among the rest (see chart). The 10% of firms with the highest markups are 50% more profitable than their peers, more than 30% more productive and rely more on intangibles. The fund did not find that rising markups slowed innovation, at least using the (admittedly dubious) proxy of patent registrations.

Yet market power that grows organically is still market power. The fund found evidence of some of the pernicious consequences of less competition. Higher markups are associated with less investment in physical capital-enough to have lopped a percentage point off GDP in the average advanced economy, it estimates. Top firms with higher markups pay a smaller share of the economic value they create to workers. And the fund warns that market power could yet put a brake on innovation, should incumbent firms get too cosy.

That might happen if regulators are slow to respond to structural shifts in the economy, or too lax in policing mergers that allow incumbents to pick off potential competitors. The fund found that mergers and acquisitions were, on average, followed by significantly higher markups by the firms involved. Economists are sometimes accused of having "physics envy"-that is, of coveting the precision of the hard sciences. But if economics has a law worthy of the name, it is that firms prefer to merge than to compete.

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The IMF adds to a chorus of concern about competition

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P HYSICISTS' QUEST for a "theory of everything" is well-known. The equivalent in economics is the hunt for common causes for the rich-world macroeconomic trends of the past decade or so: a shrinking share of the economic pie for workers, disappointing investment and lacklustre productivity growth.

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Post #1, October 14, South Africa's President Promises Big Results- Eventually. IMF/ no economic growth

Since South Africa became a free republic, they haven’t done much to increase GDP and help out the economy. Not to mention public debt has doubled as well as unemployment numbers. Erratic and incoherent policies put off investors. Africa’s most industrialized economy slowed down dramatically. There have been plenty of reform ideas to help improve the economy, however, nothing is put in place and many place blame on the president.

Many are upset at the President for the little action that has been done to improve the economy. However when the idea that public sectors such as state owned power stations be sold into the private sector, Ramaphosa puts his foot down. He isn't buying into the idea of privatization, which may be stemming from South Africa's deal with the IMF.

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SOUTH AFRICANS are growing impatient with Cyril Ramaphosa, the former union boss, anti-apartheid activist and tycoon who is now their president. In his 20 months in office, no one has been prosecuted for the looting of the state that took place under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma. In an interview with The Economist in London on October 13th, Mr Ramaphosa gave a message to his critics. And it involves a rip-roaring second world war film.

In "Force 10 from Navarone", explains Mr Ramaphosa, British commandos try to blow up a dam so that the water will sweep away a bridge that the Nazis want to use. When the explosives go off, nothing happens. The commandos are furious. "It didn't work!" they say. But the explosives expert tells them to wait. The dam is structurally damaged and will soon collapse, he says. Once the fuse has been lit, there is no going back.
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For Mr Ramaphosa that fuse is the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa, one of several institutions he has sought to revive after their evisceration by Mr Zuma. The spectacular results people want may take time, but the process Mr Ramaphosa has set in motion "is irrevocable", he says. Arrests will happen.

A big bang is also what many analysts say is needed in South Africa's economy. GDP per head barely grew during the nine years that Mr Zuma was in power. He dramatically increased the size of the state as his cronies allegedly ransacked it. Public debt as a share of GDP doubled from 28% to 56%. Erratic and incoherent policies put off investors. Africa's most industrialised economy became one of its most sluggish.

Under Mr Ramaphosa there has, as yet, been little sign of improvement. GDP growth has been negative in three of the past six quarters. The official unemployment rate has grown to 29%-even higher than under his predecessor. Eskom, the state-run electricity company, has spiralling debts equivalent to 8.5% of GDP and remains insolvent and unreformed.

Many are frustrated with a president who can seem keener to talk about reform than to enact it. On August 27th, in an effort to nudge the president, his finance minister, Tito Mboweni, published a 77-page paper on the National Treasury website, replete with sensible ideas that could form the basis of a new "growth strategy", expected within the next two weeks, ahead of a budget on October 30th. If implemented Mr Mboweni's ideas could bring the country closer to the 4-5% growth rate required to dent its horrifically high unemployment. Yet how many of Mr Mboweni's suggestions does Mr Ramaphosa endorse?

"I endorse all of them," says the president. Does that include some of the more controversial ideas, such as on migration? South Africa desperately needs more skilled workers, yet it is all but impossible for foreign graduates or entrepreneurs to move there in search of work. Will he liberalise the visa rules so that there is an open-door policy for skilled migrants? "Absolutely," says Mr Ramaphosa, citing the benefits enterprising migrants have brought to Silicon Valley. "That's precisely what we need."

Another treasury priority is for municipalities to pay their electricity bills. Many currently do not. Soweto, a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, owes Eskom about 18bn rand ($1.2bn). Mr Ramaphosa explains that non-payment stems partly from the history of apartheid when, as a union leader, he called for rent boycotts in townships. "But now I'm saying the war is over, the struggle is over, we've now got to pay our way." He adds: "You cannot have a free ride on things that cost money to produce-and electricity is one of those."

Having people pay for the electricity they use is just one step towards putting Eskom on a sound financial footing. Another idea mooted by Mr Mboweni is to sell off state-owned power stations, so as to raise money, make generation more efficient and pass financial risk to the private sector. Here Mr Ramaphosa is more cautious. There is "no way" that he would sell some of the new (and fault-ridden) power stations, but he would welcome buyers for older ones, so as to extend their lives. Even then, though, buyers would have to pledge to ensure that communities in coal-rich areas receive a "just transition".

This sounds like classic Ramaphosism: reform, but only up to a point, and after much consultation. He endorses all of Mr Mboweni's tough ideas, but with a crucial qualification: "Of course you can't implement them all in one go." So how determined is he really? Does he have a sense of urgency-and is he willing to pursue reforms where there will be losers as well as winners?

"I prefer win-win solutions," says Mr Ramaphosa, "but of course there comes a time when there will be losers along the way." What matters is to avoid "calamitous outcomes". He believes that the skills he honed as a union leader and as one of the negotiators who ended apartheid will help him ensure that "everyone rises from the table thinking they are a winner."

Does this mean he plans to appease special interests? What about the people not at the table, like the unemployed or the pupils at failing schools? In South Africa nearly 80% of maths teachers cannot do sums expected of 12- and 13-year-olds. Unions have successfully fought to prevent incompetent teachers from being sacked. How can South Africa have a good education system without reducing the power of the teaching unions? Or create new jobs for the jobless when the government is more concerned with preserving the existing jobs of unionised workers?

Here the president says that he is trying to push his "allies" in the unions to reform. He likens the situation to having a rotten toe from diabetes: it is sad to lose it, but it would be worse to lose a leg. "It could well mean that your whole leg and your whole life could be at risk. You have to make choices."

"So when is Dr Ramaphosa going to operate?" asks your correspondent. The president guffaws. "People are asking when the operation...," he begins, before wisely deciding against continuing with the metaphor. "People are asking when are you going to arrest people? When are you going to put people into jail?" But it is not his job to arrest people, he argues, correctly. It is to "strengthen the institutions that must do their work".

Will they be able to go after powerful people, such as Ace Magashule, the secretary-general of the ruling party, who has been accused of corruption? "Once the institutions are strengthened, they should be able to go after anybody-including the president,'' says Mr Ramaphosa, not quite answering the question. And they must be allowed to do so "without fear, favour or prejudice".

Nelson Mandela was widely reported to have wanted Mr Ramaphosa to succeed him two decades ago, but the party picked Thabo Mbeki instead. The Economist asks whether Mr Ramaphosa wishes he had got the top job sooner. "It's a difficult one. It's a tough job...being the president of South Africa at this time...I wish had come in when the economy was better." South Africans are hoping that it is better late than never. If their cautiously reforming president stumbles, the crooks who captured so much of the state under his predecessor are itching to grab it again.

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South Africa's president promises big results-eventually

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SOUTH AFRICANS are growing impatient with Cyril Ramaphosa, the former union boss, anti-apartheid activist and tycoon who is now their president. In his 20 months in office, no one has been prosecuted for the looting of the state that took place under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.