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As the U.S. and China escalate their trade standoff, consumers in both countries are starting to see the impact. VOA’s Mykhailo Komadovsky reports from Washington.
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As the U.S. and China escalate their trade standoff, consumers in both countries are starting to see the impact. VOA’s Mykhailo Komadovsky reports from Washington.
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President Donald Trump and his national security team have emphasized a willingness to use military force against adversaries like North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. But critics say that threat is undermined by the president’s reluctance to get involved in foreign conflicts. VOA’s Brian Padden reports.
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President Donald Trump and his national security team have emphasized a willingness to use military force against adversaries like North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. But critics say that threat is undermined by the president’s reluctance to get involved in foreign conflicts. VOA’s Brian Padden reports.
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President Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, a former newspaper publisher who has written a flattering political biography of Trump.

Black’s media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times and The Daily Telegraph of London. He was convicted of fraud in 2007 and spent three and a half years in prison. 

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says Black “has made tremendous contributions to business, and to political and historical thought.”

In 2018 he published “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”

Trump has also pardoned Patrick Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. Nolan has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform since he spent more than two years in federal prison during the 1990s.
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President Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, a former newspaper publisher who has written a flattering political biography of Trump.

Black’s media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times and The Daily Telegraph of London. He was convicted of fraud in 2007 and spent three and a half years in prison. 

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says Black “has made tremendous contributions to business, and to political and historical thought.”

In 2018 he published “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”

Trump has also pardoned Patrick Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. Nolan has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform since he spent more than two years in federal prison during the 1990s.
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A U.S official has called for the trial of a Turkish employee of the U.S. Consulate on espionage charges to be resolved “swiftly, transparently and fairly.”

The trial was adjourned Wednesday until June 28.

Metin Topuz, a translator and assistant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, has been jailed on charges of espionage and attempting to overthrow the Turkish government. His case is one of several issues that have strained ties between the NATO allies.

Topuz is accused of links to U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government blames for the 2016 coup attempt. Topuz, who faces a life sentence if convicted, denies the charges.

U.S. charge d’affaires Jeffrey Hovenier told reporters there was “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” against Topuz.

 
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A U.S official has called for the trial of a Turkish employee of the U.S. Consulate on espionage charges to be resolved “swiftly, transparently and fairly.”

The trial was adjourned Wednesday until June 28.

Metin Topuz, a translator and assistant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, has been jailed on charges of espionage and attempting to overthrow the Turkish government. His case is one of several issues that have strained ties between the NATO allies.

Topuz is accused of links to U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government blames for the 2016 coup attempt. Topuz, who faces a life sentence if convicted, denies the charges.

U.S. charge d’affaires Jeffrey Hovenier told reporters there was “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” against Topuz.

 
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Lawmakers in the southeastern U.S. state of Alabama passed a near-total ban on abortion Tuesday, sending what would be the nation’s most stringent abortion law to the state’s Republican governor.

The Republican-dominated Senate voted 25-6 to make performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony punishable by up to 99 years or life in prison for the abortion provider. The only exception would be when the woman’s health is at serious risk.

Senators rejected an attempt to add an exception for rape and incest.

Supporters said the bill is designed to spark a court case that might prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationally.

The spokeswoman for Governor Kay Ivey said she intends to withhold comment until she has had a chance to thoroughly review the final version of the bill.

Planned Parenthood Southeast Director Staci Fox issued a statement calling the bill’s passage “a dark day for women in Alabama and across this country. Alabama politicians will forever live in infamy for this vote.”

Abortion opponents in several states are seeking to challenge abortion access, emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s new conservative justices.

Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia have approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy.

 
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The typical routines of life on a family farm carry a heavier burden these days for Pam Johnson.

“First thing I do is make a pot of coffee,” she told VOA in an interview in one of the cavernous sheds that contain her green and yellow John Deere farming equipment. Once she has that coffee, she “(goes) to the computer and look at what grain prices have done overnight and usually do a gut clutch, because they’ve been going down. They’re at five-month lows.”

Driven there in part by retaliatory tariffs imposed by one of the largest importers of U.S. soybeans – China.

Johnson and her husband are proud sixth-generation farmers but say they are dealing with some of the harshest economic conditions of their lives.

“We’re all tightening our belts,” she says.

The ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China, initially sparked by U.S. tariffs on imported aluminum and steel, is now impacting most farms across the country. 

As U.S. farmers head to the fields to plant this spring, they are facing a potential sixth consecutive year of declining farm income, because of international tariffs that have depressed prices for their grain products as well as increased costs for the materials to produce and store them.

​Short-term concern over U.S. trade policy is turning into long-term fear for farmers, who face uncertainty over congressional support for a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and the impact of China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. grain exports. 

“We hear it may be out to 2025 before we see some of those markets come back to us, if they ever do,” Johnson said. “I think that’s the thing that hurts the most is, what is the damage being done that is irreparable?”

It is damage her son Ben Johnson, the seventh generation in the family business, may eventually have to deal with.

“All farms are going to suffer because of this,” he explained. “There’s a difference between ‘making it’ and flourishing.”

The Johnsons feel there is a growing disconnect between farmers and the rest of the American workforce, fueled by politicians increasingly hostile to trade policies the agricultural industry depends on.

“We need as much trade as we can and to be openly trading with as many places as we can,” Ben Johnson says. “It’s no different to any business – you want as many customers as you can. And to intentionally discourage them is frustrating.”

Neither Johnson nor his mother voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, largely because if his trade positions, they say. 

​Nothing that has happened since the election has eased Pam Johnson’s concerns.

“Saying that ‘I’m a tariff man’ and that ‘trade wars are easy to win’ concerns me,” she says, quoting comments the president has made. “There are still a lot of farmers who still support President Trump. I think there are more seeds of doubt being planted as we look forward into 2019 and no resolution and the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting dimmer about getting these things done.”

Politics aside, Pam Johnson admits success for her family business is closely tied to U.S. trade policy.

“I don’t want to see President Trump fail in these trade endeavors. We all need him to make this work so that all of us win,” she says.

A win her son Ben says can’t come soon enough.

“We’ve already missed the peak soybean export season, so in a way, it’s already too late… I guess it’s never too late, but before now would have been great,” he says.

While negotiations continue, the Trump administration says it is actively working on a new financial assistance program to help farmers weather the continuing trade storm.
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday Tehran does not seek war with the United States despite mounting tensions between the two arch-enemies over Iranian nuclear capabilities and its missile program.

In comments to senior officials carried by state television, Khamenei also reiterated that the Islamic Republic would not negotiate with the United States on another nuclear deal.

“There won’t be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance,” Khamenei was cited as saying by the state media. “We don’t seek a war, and they don’t either. They know it’s not in their interests.”

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President Donald Trump withdrew the United States a year ago from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers under which Tehran curbed its uranium enrichment capacity, a potential pathway to a nuclear bomb, and won sanctions relief in return.

Since then, Trump has ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, seeking to reduce its lifeblood oil exports to zero, to push Tehran into fresh negotiations on a broader arms control deal, targeting in part the Iranian ballistic missile program.

“(Such) negotiations are a poison,” Khamenei said.

The United Arab Emirates reported on Sunday that four commercial vessels including two Saudi oil tankers had been sabotaged offshore from the UAE emirate of Fujairah just outside the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. national security agencies believe proxies sympathetic to or working for Iran may have been behind the attacks.

Iran has rejected the allegation and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that ”extremist individuals” in the U.S. government were pursuing dangerous policies, stoking a war of words with Washington over sanctions.

Trump warned on Monday Iran would “suffer greatly” if it targeted U.S. interests after Washington deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East.
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday Tehran does not seek war with the United States despite mounting tensions between the two arch-enemies over Iranian nuclear capabilities and its missile program.

In comments to senior officials carried by state television, Khamenei also reiterated that the Islamic Republic would not negotiate with the United States on another nuclear deal.

“There won’t be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance,” Khamenei was cited as saying by the state media. “We don’t seek a war, and they don’t either. They know it’s not in their interests.”

​

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States a year ago from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers under which Tehran curbed its uranium enrichment capacity, a potential pathway to a nuclear bomb, and won sanctions relief in return.

Since then, Trump has ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, seeking to reduce its lifeblood oil exports to zero, to push Tehran into fresh negotiations on a broader arms control deal, targeting in part the Iranian ballistic missile program.

“(Such) negotiations are a poison,” Khamenei said.

The United Arab Emirates reported on Sunday that four commercial vessels including two Saudi oil tankers had been sabotaged offshore from the UAE emirate of Fujairah just outside the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. national security agencies believe proxies sympathetic to or working for Iran may have been behind the attacks.

Iran has rejected the allegation and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that ”extremist individuals” in the U.S. government were pursuing dangerous policies, stoking a war of words with Washington over sanctions.

Trump warned on Monday Iran would “suffer greatly” if it targeted U.S. interests after Washington deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East.
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A federal judge has ruled a Florida-based broadcasting company that provides Russian programs to a Washington radio station must register as an agent of a foreign government.

The Justice Department said in a news release Tuesday that RM Broadcasting of Jupiter, Florida, was essentially providing publicity for Russia through an agreement with state-run Rossiya Segodnya. That entity’s “Sputnik” program is broadcast all day on WZHF-AM in the Washington area.

RM Broadcasting had asked Florida U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg to rule it’s not required to register as a foreign agent, but she sided with the Justice Department. Attorneys for the company didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Officials say this was the first civil enforcement since 1991 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
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A federal judge has ruled a Florida-based broadcasting company that provides Russian programs to a Washington radio station must register as an agent of a foreign government.

The Justice Department said in a news release Tuesday that RM Broadcasting of Jupiter, Florida, was essentially providing publicity for Russia through an agreement with state-run Rossiya Segodnya. That entity’s “Sputnik” program is broadcast all day on WZHF-AM in the Washington area.

RM Broadcasting had asked Florida U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg to rule it’s not required to register as a foreign agent, but she sided with the Justice Department. Attorneys for the company didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Officials say this was the first civil enforcement since 1991 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
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With the Trump administration locked in an escalating trade war with China, much of the media focus is on the immediate impact of decisions by leaders on both sides to impose sharp tariffs on goods flowing between the two countries. But while consumers and exporters in both countries will suffer in the near-term, an even more disruptive possibility looms in the long term: a “decoupling” of two massive economic systems that have become deeply interdependent over the past several decades.

At the root of the dispute is a U.S. effort to force China to bring its trade policies in line with other major industrialized countries.

Specifically, the U.S. wants to see China stop subsidizing domestic firms to help them compete on the world stage, eliminate the widespread theft of intellectual property by Chinese businesses, and open its markets to foreign competition.

The U.S. is also putting pressure on specific Chinese telecommunications firms, out of concern that they could be used by the Chinese government to spy on global rivals.

In recent days, the two countries have both ratcheted up economic pressures. As negotiations over a major trade deal stalled last week, President Trump announced that he would direct his administration to hike tariffs to 25% on Chinese goods that accounted for $200 billion in imports last year.

He indicated that he would eventually move to place that same levy on all $540 billion of annual Chinese imports. The Chinese government retaliated Monday with the imposition of tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods that flow into its country, and indicated that it will take more drastic steps if necessary.

While many experts believe that the two countries will strike a deal before the new tariffs really start to bite, there is increasing concern that strife between the world’s two largest economic powers could persist, forcing a disruptive overhaul of global supply chains that would echo around the world.

In fact, there is evidence that companies are already taking the first steps in a significant reorientation of global supply chains.

According to Paul Triolo, practice head for Geo-Technology at the Eurasia Group, there already has been a significant amount of decoupling by companies in the information and communications technology industries, as well as furniture, apparel, and agricultural products.

“US technology companies are already withholding new investment in manufacturing facilities based in China, and shifting parts of supply chains as feasible to southeast Asia and beyond,” he said in an interview. “There is a spectrum of potential options here, and so far most of the ‘easy’ stuff has been moved. The equation becomes much more complicated for things like advanced electronics.”

Understanding why this would be so disruptive requires digging below the surface of most discussions of US-China trade.

Political rhetoric about trade, much of it originating in President Trump’s Twitter feed, tends to oversimplify — and frequently misrepresent — the reality of global trade flows. The exchange of goods between the two countries is portrayed as a zero-sum game, in which U.S. consumers face a simple choice between buying widgets manufactured in China and buying competing products manufactured in the U.S.

Bilateral trade, intermediate goods

The truth is far more complex. Combined exports and imports between the two countries totaled $650 billion in 2018, according to U.S. government figures. Goods moving from China to the U.S. make up just under two-thirds of that total, and they are not limited to the cheap clothes and toys that made up a large portion of Chinese exports a generation ago. Smartphones, appliances, computers and other goods travel in a constant stream across the Pacific to U.S. markets.

Importantly, though, those finished goods often contain key elements, like microchips, that were originally manufactured in the U.S. and exported to China. These “intermediate goods” represent a huge market for U.S. technology firms.

Similarly, intermediate goods made in China find their way into finished products that bear the “Made in the U.S.A.” stamp. As a whole, intermediate goods make up between 60% and 65% of all global trade flows, which further illustrates the complexity of worldwide supply chains.

Restructuring supply chains

These complex manufacturing relationships have grown up over decades, and are very much baked into the way companies in both countries do business. Now, as the trade war escalates, they are facing the real possibility that ongoing conflict between Washington and Beijing could require companies to restructure global supply chains in a way that will provide more certainty and stability in the future.

But doing so would be a long and difficult process, experts warn.

“These value chains, or supply networks are both highly specialized and quite idiosyncratic,” said Scott Miller, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy said in an interview. “Company A and Company B might be in the same business, but the way they organize their supply network could be quite different.”

“The idea of ‘decoupling,’ well, if you’re in a business that requires assembly at scale, you’re going to find it hard replacing China,” Miller said. “It can be done, but it’s real work.” The problem is even worse if a company has developed a network of qualified suppliers in China. Replacing them is not like flipping a switch, he said. “It takes time, energy and capital to develop suppliers,” Miller said.

Should it come to that, economists warn, the effects on both countries, at both the macro- and microeconomic levels, could be immense.

Cost of tariffs

Within the U.S. alone, the potential damage from the proposed tariffs would be huge, warned Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Writing in a note to investors on Wednesday, he said, “The hit from 25% tariffs on all imports would be at least 0.6% of GDP, and probably much more as companies would have to rebuild entire supply chains. The hit to earnings growth would be of the order of 10%.”

It is also apparent that many of the supposed benefits of decoupling won’t necessarily accrue to the United States. President Trump has suggested that his trade policies will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., but by all indications, the manufacturers who are already starting to move away from China are relocating to other low-wage countries, like Vietnam and Mexico.

As grim as some of these predictions are, there is a school of thought in which the divisions between the U.S. and China, and their global impacts, become much, much worse.

Worst scenario

In an appearance on the television program Face the Nation on Sunday, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that if China and the U.S. successfully isolate themselves from one another — particularly in the realm of technology — the result could be a bifurcated global system that will devastate economic relationships.

“The real risk is that both countries through their actions will throw up or create an economic iron wall which means we’ll be decoupling global supply chains, right?” said Paulson, who also served as CEO of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

“We’ll be having two systems with incompatible standards and rules,” he added. “And so as I look at it the defining strength of America is innovation and we need to protect our technology, need to protect our innovation. But if we close ourselves off from other, you know, other innovative economies and entrepreneurs, we jeopardize our leadership position in the world and we’re much less attractive as a destination for foreign investment.”

Triolo, of the Eurasia Group, gave voice to a concern that fewer commentators are willing to discuss out loud, but which must lurk in the back of many business leaders’ minds.

“Many companies are now for the first time factoring in the potential for the trade and tech conflict to morph into a real shooting conflict, either by accident or miscalculation or deliberately,” he said. “The potential for actual conflict has now gone way up for the period 3-5 years out, and this has to be taken into account when multinationals are looking at global supply chain risk.

“The best case scenario, a trade truce with China making some limited concessions, will not necessarily improve this dynamic,” he said. “U.S. focus on the nature of China’s political system, the control of the Party over information, [Chinese President] Xi’s unwillingness to cede more state control of the economy, etc. are all contributing to the ‘clash of civilizations’ meme which is gaining traction among the extreme factions on each side, diminishing the room for rebuilding trust, which is now arguably at an all time low.”
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