Month: March 2018

White House officials are looking into whether $500 million in loans that went to Trump administration senior adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate company may have spurred ethics or criminal law violations, according to the head of the federal government’s ethics agency. David J. Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter sent late last week to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi that the White House Counsel’s office told him that officials were probing the loans to Kushner Cos. and whether “additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future.” Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, had asked Apol on March 1 about a New York Times report in February that Kushner Cos. accepted $184 million in loans from Apollo Global Management and $325 million from Citigroup last year over a span of several months after Kushner met with officials from the two firms. As President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions. Both companies have insisted their officials did nothing wrong in meeting with Kushner. Both firms had financial interests overseen by the federal government at the time and both firms – either independently or through industry groups – backed elements of the tax reform legislation that passed Congress last year with support from Trump. In one case cited by the Times, Citigroup lent $325 million to Kushner Cos. in spring 2017 shortly after Kushner met with Citi’s chief executive, Michael Corbat. Last week, Citigroup’s general counsel …

The United States is imposing sanctions on seven Pakistani companies for alleged links to the nuclear trade. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIC) placed 23 companies —15 from Sudan and one from Singapore, in addition to the seven from Pakistan — on its Entity List. The Entity List contains companies the U.S. determines are “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States,” according to BIC’s website. Companies placed on the list need special licenses to do business in the United States. A U.S. State Department spokesperson told VOA that the U.S. regularly adds entities to the list. “It is not country-specific. Entities are looked at on a case-by-case basis, irrespective of national affiliation, and are added based on whether they operate counter to U.S. national security interests,” the spokesperson said. VOA tried to talk to some of the companies on the list, but they would not comment on their designation. Pakistan said it would “seek more information” from the U.S. and these companies to better understand the circumstances which led to its listing. A statement released by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “Pakistan believes that there should be no undue restrictions on the access to dual-use items and technologies for peaceful and legitimate purposes. Pakistan has always been transparent and willing to engage with the suppliers of the dual-use items.” Dual-use technologies have both civilian and possible military uses.  The sanctions could potentially hurt Pakistan’s chances to join the 48-member …

Talks to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are opening a window of opportunity that might allow the United States, Mexico and Canada to reach a basic deal in the coming weeks, a Mexican private sector business leader said on Monday. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on March 5 that negotiators had a matter of weeks to reach an agreement “in principle,” and last week industry sources said the U.S. team had withdrawn one of its most contentious demands. The head of Canada’s Unifor union, Jerry Dias, and others said that Washington had dropped its insistence that all autos made in NAFTA countries have 50 percent U.S. content. Moises Kalach, head of the international negotiating arm of the CCE business lobby, which represents the Mexican private sector at the talks, said that news had fueled hopes that a deal on NAFTA might be attainable. “There are positive signs that there is the will, and that the window of opportunity we were looking at, is happening,” he told Reuters by telephone. Kalach said the United States had yet to put forward a revised proposal for autos, and that it remained to be seen whether U.S. negotiators would drop other “toxic” demands. However, if negotiators could conclude around eight NAFTA chapters that were close to completion, it would make it easier to focus on the sticking points, he added. “It gets that off the table. And if there really is the will to get an agreement in principle on …

Canceling the new Mexico City airport would cost about 120 billion pesos ($6.55 billion), the head of the company in charge of the project said on Monday following threats by the presidential election front-runner to scrap it. Federico Patino, the chief executive officer of Grupo Aeroportuario de la Ciudad de México (GACM), the firm overseeing the $13 billion project, said with 321 contracts put out and around 45,000 people employed on building the airport, the cost would be high. “There will surely be lawsuits and damages with penalty clauses … and if we add this to the unfortunate cancellation of the labor on top of severance costs … the figure that we have is around 120 billion pesos,” he told a news conference. The leftist who is leading opinion polls for the July election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has threatened to abandon the airport. Last week he said he would file legal challenges to block future work, lashing out at the project as “corrupt.” However, he since softened his stance, calling for a thorough review of the project. GACM’s Patino dismissed suggestions that the airport was tainted by corruption and said that it was being built in accordance with high transparency standards. “It’s a glass box through which any citizen can see what’s happening in real time,” he said. ($1 = 18.3100 Mexican pesos) …

Mark Zuckerberg might want to delete the last 10 days from his timeline and everyone else’s. In a little more than a week, Facebook has turned from one of the market’s darlings to a stock investors are running from.   Facebook has dropped 13.5 percent after allegations a political consulting firm working for the Trump campaign got data inappropriately from millions of Facebook users. On Monday the Federal Trade Commission said it’s investigating the social media giant’s privacy practices and legislators in the U.S. and the U.K. have demanded answers and called for inquiries. Facebook stock tumbled as much as 6.5 percent Monday, but finished with a small gain as the broader market surged.   The slide has wiped out $73 billion of Facebook’s value. That’s about as much as the entire company was worth in 2012, the year it went public. Facebook’s first trading day was beset by glitches and its first year on the market was rocky, but for the last four and a half years it had enjoyed an enormous run of success.   Before the recent drop investors valued Facebook at more than $500 billion, which made it the fifth most valuable company in the U.S. It now ranks sixth, right behind Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.   But the scandal over Facebook’s handling of data comes after the company was criticized for becoming a conduit of fake news and propaganda from Russian-linked trolls disrupting the 2016 presidential election.   The company eventually acknowledged those problems just …

China called on World Trade Organization members on Monday to unite to prevent the United States “wrecking” the WTO, and it urged them to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs targeting China’s alleged theft of intellectual property. Trump’s trade policy, labeled “medieval” by former WTO head Pascal Lamy, has inflamed international opinion this year. While a U.S. veto on new WTO judges jams up legal disputes in Geneva, Trump has slapped tariffs on solar panels, cited national security to restrict steel and aluminum imports, and demanded that China slash $100 billion from its U.S. trade surplus. China’s WTO ambassador Zhang Xiangchen said the latest U.S. move, linked to alleged theft of U.S. innovation, was fundamentally incompatible with the WTO. “In the open sea, if the boat capsizes, no one is safe from drowning. We shouldn’t stay put watching someone wrecking the boat. The WTO is under siege and all of us should lock arms to defend it,” he told a WTO meeting. Washington needed WTO authorization for the intellectual property tariffs, he said. “WTO members should jointly … lock this beast back into the cage of the WTO rules,” Zhang said. A U.S. diplomat at the meeting said Chinese technology transfer policies cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars annually, and noted that the United States had filed a WTO complaint accusing China of allowing patent theft and discriminating against foreign technology holders. China is alone in facing that allegation, but it is not alone in its opposition to Trump’s worldwide …

U.S. firearms and ammunition manufacturer Remington has filed for bankruptcy protection in order to reorganize its operations and put in place a debt reduction deal with its creditors. The company filed its petition for the so-called Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday, six weeks after announcing an agreement to reduce its $950 million in debts while transferring ownership. Remington’s filing listed both its debts and assets between $500 million and $1 billion. The company is one of the largest firearms makers in the United States and has been in business for 200 years. But its sales have been slumping, dropping from $865 million in 2016 to $602 million last year. In 2013, it reported more than $1.2 billion in total sales.  A February document describing the restructuring plan estimated sales will rebound in the coming years, returning to more than $800 million by 2021. A company report released in October of last year said the decline was due to a number of factors, including “reduced consumer demand and excess inventories,” as well as changes in buying behaviors and a rise in imported products. It also discussed various government proposals to increase gun regulations, warning that if they were to become law “the cost to the company and its customers could be significant.” That report, and Remington’s restructuring plan, came before the most recent mass shooting in the United States, a February attack at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead.  Since that shooting, there has been an increase in calls …

A senior Chinese official is warning that a trade war would hurt all sides and set off a “greater conflict.” “A trade war serves the interests of none. It will only lead to serious consequences and negative impact,” Vice Premier Han Zheng said at a development forum in Beijing Sunday. “We believe trade protectionism, against the trend, will lead to nowhere.” Han did not mention the United States or President Donald Trump by name, whose announcement of stiff tariffs on imported Chinese steel and aluminum was answered with tariffs and duties on a list of U.S. imports. Han appealed to all global trading partners to “cooperate with each other like passengers in the same boat … make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.” Fears of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies have sent world markets tumbling. The United States has accused China of unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft and dumping Chinese goods on the global marketplace to make U.S. goods appear more expensive. China has denied the U.S. charges, and Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call Saturday that China is ready to defend its interests. …

In Russia’s far north, the city of Vorkuta is slowly being reclaimed by the Arctic tundra. Its population has plummeted as the local coal mines have closed, and the very future of the city is in doubt. As Henry Ridgwell reports for VOA, Vorkuta’s fate reflects a wider population crisis across Russia’s far north as old Soviet industries have crumbled. …

Tourist numbers in Indonesia swelled last year on the back of overseas advertising and infrastructure development. President Joko Widodo has said he wants to “create 10 tourist destinations like the island of Bali.” But the pleasing economic numbers also come with a social and environmental cost as rampant development threatens ecosystems and traditional livelihoods. Jack Hewson has this report. …

German business leaders are expressing concerns that President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel could affect the auto industry in the South.   WABE Radio reports Mercedes-Benz USA this month opened its new North American headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, for 1,000 employees. The luxury car manufacturer is owned by Germany-based Daimler, but Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Dietmar Exler used the grand opening to remind the crowd of the brand’s U.S. presence. German automakers in US  That includes operations in South Carolina and in Alabama.   “We are now in the midst of construction of our own factory here, which will open doors in the fall in Charleston, South Carolina, and we’ll make all of the Sprinter vans for North America right here,” Exler said at the grand opening of its headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.   “Right next to me you have a member of the most successful SUV family, a GLE Coupe,” Exler said. “As you know, the GLE and the GLS are produced in Alabama. Last year, 280,000 cars were produced here not just for the U.S. market, but for markets all over the world.”   German car factories in the U.S. made more than 800,000 vehicles last year, and about half were sold overseas, according to the German Association of the Automotive Industry.   This month, Volkswagen of America Inc. announced plans to build a new five-passenger SUV at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it manufactures other vehicles. Volkswagen AG …

The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported. The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday. The deepening rift has sent a chill through financial markets and the corporate world as investors predicted dire consequences for the global economy should trade barriers start going up. Several U.S. chief executives attending a high-profile forum in Beijing on Saturday, including BlackRock Inc’s Larry Fink and Apple Inc’s Tim Cook, urged restraint. In his call with Mnuchin, Liu, a Harvard-trained economist, said China still hoped both sides would remain “rational” and work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency reported. U.S. officials say an eight-month probe under the 1974 U.S. Trade Act has found that China engages in unfair trade practices by forcing American investors to turn over key technologies to Chinese firms. However, Liu said the investigation report “violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, U.S. interests nor global interests”, Xinhua cited him as saying. In a statement on its website, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said it had filed a request – at the direction of Trump …

H. Wayne Huizenga, a college dropout who built a business empire that included Blockbuster Entertainment, AutoNation and three professional sports franchises, has died. He was 80. Huizenga died Thursday night at his home, said Valerie Hinkell, a longtime assistant. The cause was cancer, said Bob Henninger, executive vice president of Huizenga Holdings. Starting with a single garbage truck in 1968, Huizenga built Waste Management Inc. into a Fortune 500 company. He purchased independent sanitation engineering companies, and by the time he took the company public in 1972, he had completed the acquisition of 133 small-time haulers. By 1983, Waste Management was the largest waste disposal company in the United States. The business model worked again with Blockbuster Video, which he started in 1985 and built into the leading movie rental chain nine years later. In 1996, he formed AutoNation and built it into a Fortune 500 company. Sports team owner Huizenga was founding owner of baseball’s Florida Marlins and the NHL’s Florida Panthers — expansion teams that played their first games in 1993. He bought the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and their stadium for $168 million in 1994 from the children of founder Joe Robbie but had sold all three teams by 2009. “Wayne Huizenga was a seminal figure in the cultural history of South Florida,” current Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said in a statement. “He completely changed the landscape of the region’s sports scene. … Sports fans throughout the region owe him a debt of thanks.” The Marlins won the …

Austin, Texas, is not California’s Silicon Valley technology corridor. But companies from Silicon Valley and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austin’s growing tech scene. Austin’s lower cost of living and doing business, combined with its smaller size, are just a few reasons that people are attracted to the area. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains other reasons that tech companies are opening up shop there. …