Month: June 2017

The State Department has approved arms sales to Taiwan worth a total of $1.4 billion, the first such deal with the self-governing island since President Donald Trump took office, officials said Thursday.

The sale will anger China, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory. It comes at a delicate time for relations between Washington and Beijing over efforts to rein in nuclear-armed North Korea.

The sale to Taiwan comprises seven items, including technical support for early warning radar, anti-radiation missiles, torpedoes and components for SM-2 missiles, according to a U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss the details before they were formally announced.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the Trump administration had notified Congress of its intent to approve seven proposed deals now valued at around $1.42 billion. Nauert said the approvals did not violate the Taiwan Relations Act that governs U.S. contacts with the island.

“It shows, we believe, our support for Taiwan’s ability to maintain a sufficient self-defense policy,” Nauert said. “There’s no change, I should point out, to our ‘one-China policy.”‘

Lawmakers, which are generally strongly supportive of such sales, have 30 days to object. The U.S. is legally obligated to sell weapons to Taiwan for its self-defense.

The U.S. official said the sales represented upgrades, converting existing systems from analog to digital.

The last U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, worth $1.8 billion, were announced in December 2015. They included two decommissioned U.S. Navy frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and was the first sale for four years.

China objected strongly, but it did not notably set back U.S.-China relations and military ties, which has happened after past arms sales to Taiwan.

However, relations across the Taiwan Strait have deteriorated since then, as Taiwan last year elected a leader from an independence-leaning party, Tsai Ing-wen. China has increased diplomatic pressure, cut off its contacts with the island’s government and discouraged travel there by Chinese tourists.
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President Donald Trump’s first, temporary ban on travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations was short-lived, but it sparked confusion, panic and anger that lasted through months of court rulings. The Supreme Court is now taking up the case in the fall. In the meantime, the government can enforce parts of a second version of Trump’s order.

 

So what’s new this time?

BANNED FOREIGNERS

Old order: Three-month ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, including those who had valid visas but were outside the United States when the ban was signed.

Supreme Court version: Iraq has been dropped from the ban.

 

For 90 days, the government can bar new visa applicants from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Iran and Libya who can’t prove they have a “bona fide relationship” with close relatives or a business in the United States. The State Department says valid relationships include a parent, spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already in the United States. Journalists, students, workers or lecturers who have valid, formal invitations or employment contracts in the U.S. will also be welcome.

Refugees hoping to come to the United States who aren’t already approved for travel must now also prove one of these relationships. Otherwise, they’ll be barred for 120 days.

SYRIANS

Old order: Syrian visitors, immigrants and refugees were barred from the United States indefinitely.

Supreme Court version: Syrians will be treated in the same manner as citizens of the other five designated countries.

REFUGEES

Old order: Four-month halt to refugees entering the United States.

Supreme Court version: The refugee ban will be in place for 120 days. But refugees already vetted and approved for travel through July 6 will be allowed to move to the United States. The “bona fide relationship” standard applies after a cap of 50,000 refugees that Trump set for the fiscal year is met. That is likely to happen soon. The new rules will most likely affect refugees in the next fiscal year, which starts in October. The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the ban that same month.

TIMING

Old order: The January 27 order was immediately put into place, causing chaos and panic at airports as the Homeland Security Department scrambled to figure out who was covered by the order and how it was to be implemented.

Supreme Court version: It goes into effect about 8 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, more than 72 hours after the Supreme Court issued its opinion.
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Poor and southern U.S. counties will get hit hardest by global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind detailed projection of potential climate change effects at the local level.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases. It looks at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths, then estimates the effect on average local income by the end of the century.

Researchers computed the possible effects of 15 types of impacts for each county across 29,000 simulations.

“The south gets hammered and the north can actually benefit,” said study lead author Solomon Hsiang, a University of California economist. “The south gets hammered primarily because it’s super-hot already. It just so happens that the south is also poorer.”

The southern part of the nation’s heartland — such as Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and southern Illinois — also feels the heat hard, he said. Michigan, Minnesota, the far northeast, the northwest and mountainous areas benefit the most.

Counties hit hardest

The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income.

Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country. 

Five of the 10 counties that would benefit the most from global warming are in Michigan. The others are in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and the mountainous region of North Carolina. Mineral County in Nevada would see a 13 percent increase in income, while Tacoma, Washington’s Pierce County would benefit by about 2 percent, the most among counties with a population of more than 500,000.

“You’re going to see this transfer of wealth from the southeast to the parts of the country that are less exposed to risk,” said study co-author Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist. “On average both in this country and on this planet just poorer people are in hotter areas.”

The whole nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7 percent for every degree Fahrenheit temperatures go up, the study calculates, but that masks just how uneven the damage could be. On average, the poorest counties would suffer a drop of 13.1 percent of income if carbon pollution continues unabated, while the richest counties would fall 1.1 percent.

Rise in fatalities

Economists and scientists who specialize in climate and disasters praised the study as groundbreaking.

“This is the most comprehensive, the most detailed information to date,” said University of Illinois finance professor Donald Fullerton, who wasn’t part of the study. “Nobody had ever done anything like this.”

The biggest economic damage comes from an increase in deaths. In the early stages of warming, overall deaths fall because the number of deaths from extreme cold falls fast. But as the world warms further, the increase in deaths from heat rises faster and results in more deaths overall by the end of the century.

Fullerton said the one place where he felt the study could overstate costs is in these deaths because it uses the same government-generated dollar value for each life — $7.9 million per person — when most of the people who die in temperature-related deaths are older and some economists prefer valuing deaths differently by age.

The study looks at production of four different crops — soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could be hit “with the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl,” Hsiang said.

The study also examines two types of crime data: property and violent crime. Previous studies have found a direct and strong correlation between higher temperatures and higher rates of violent crime such as assault, rape and murder, Hsiang said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann called it “a fascinating and ambitious study.” But because many extreme weather factors weren’t or can’t yet be calculated, he said the study “can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes.”
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in Wednesday defended his country’s free trade agreement with the United States, which U.S. President Donald Trump denounced in the past as a “job killing deal.”

Moon addressed a pro-free trade audience of business leaders and lawmakers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the first day of his presidential visit to Washington. He will meet with Trump at the White House Thursday and Friday.

The South Korean president stressed the 5-year-old U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement (KORUS) has been good for both countries, especially in the auto industry, where now half of all Hyundai and Kia cars are built in the United States.

“South Korea’s carmakers are creating investment and employment in production factories in the U.S. Outstanding U.S. companies are also creating jobs in South Korea in industrial innovation and research and development,” Moon said.

In the last three years, Korean direct foreign investment in the U.S. almost tripled to $40.1 billion, and last year Korean companies in America employed 45,000 people and contributed $138 billion to the U.S. economy, according the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.

Foreign steel

However Trump has threatened to renegotiate or terminate KORUS for creating a $27 billion U.S. trade deficit with South Korea last year.

A White House official told reporters Trump would raise concerns about “the enormous amount of steel that sometimes ends up being surplus Chinese steel that comes to the United States via South Korea.” The Trump administration is considering whether to impose tariffs or quotas on steel imports.

In April, Trump ordered an investigation under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 that allows restrictions on imports for reasons of national security. Foreign steel companies have been concerned the investigation may be aimed at shoring up American producers and cutting out foreign competition.

Unfair trade

Trump is also expected to raise unfair trade practices in the auto industry that account for nearly 80 percent of the bilateral trade deficit. The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea faults confusing and difficult to meet environmental and safety standards being imposed by South Korean agencies for the trade imbalance, and has urged the Moon administration to resolve these issues.

“Failure to follow these remedy mechanisms of the KORUS free trade agreement and achieve closure on these outstanding issues puts the entire KORUS free trade agreement at risk,” said David Ruch, United Airlines’ country manager in Korea.

On Wednesday Moon said his government would work to eliminate unfair trade practices.

For the most part Moon focused on the positive side of the economic relationship between South Korea and the U.S. noting, “While world trade has decreased by 12 percent for the last five years due to global economic depression, trade between two countries has increased by 12 percent.”

North Korea

President Moon also stressed economic prosperity on the Korean Peninsula is linked to security. The liberal South Korean leader wants to increase dialogue and economic engagement with the Kim Jong Un government in Pyongyang to peacefully end North Korea’s continued testing and development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Reducing regional tensions through outreach and investment, Moon said, will maintain economic stability and create the conditions to improve business ties with North Korea after the nuclear issue is resolved.

“During the process of realizing my government’s plan, you will be able to invest in Korea with no concerns. And furthermore, you could also gain an opportunity to invest in North Korea at some point in the future,” he said.

Moon also supports strong military deterrence and sanctions, and has said his pro-outreach polices are in line with Washington’s “maximum pressure and maximum engagement” policy on North Korea and Trump’s comments that he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Un over hamburgers. But Trump’s foreign policy team has emphasized increasing pressure through sanctions and has indicated North Korea must first agree to halt its nuclear program before talks can take place.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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The majority of hate crimes experienced by U.S. residents over a 12-year period were not reported to police, according to a new federal report released Thursday that stoked advocates’ concerns about ongoing tensions between law enforcement and black and Latino communities.

More than half of the 250,000 hate crimes that took place each year between 2004 and 2015 went unreported to law enforcement for a variety of reasons, according to a special report on hate crimes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Hate crimes were most often not reported because they were handled some other way, the report said. But people also did not come forward because they didn’t feel it was important or that police would help. 

 

Based on survey

The report, based on a survey of households, is one of several studies that aim to quantify hate crimes. Its release comes as the Justice Department convenes a meeting Thursday with local law enforcement officials and experts to discuss hate crimes, including a lack of solid data on the problem nationwide. Attorney General Jeff Session is scheduled to speak. 

 

The new survey shows the limits of hate crime reporting, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, California State University.

“Many victims don’t report hate crimes because of personal and institutional reasons,” Levin said. For example, some Latino immigrants may be reluctant to call police after an apparent hate crime for fear of deportation, he said. 

 

Advocates fear that problem is worsening as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement. 

No increase in number

The report says Hispanics were victimized at the highest rate, followed by blacks.

 

“I think this report shows the kind of fear that is going on in our communities,” said Patricia Montes, executive director of the Boston-based immigrant advocacy group Centro Presente. She worries Latinos will be more reluctant to report hate crimes in the future. 

 

The new report said there was no significant increase in the number of hate crimes between 2004 and 2015. It cites racial bias as the top motivation, representing more than 48 percent of the cases between 2011 and 2015. Hate crimes motivated by ethnicity accounted for about 35 percent of those cases, and sexual orientation represented about 22 percent. Almost all of those surveyed said they felt they were experiencing a hate crime because of something the perpetrator said.

 

Law enforcement officials have long grappled with how to catalog hate crimes. While some victims’ distrust of police keeps them from coming forward, Levin said, some LGBT victims may opt not to report a hate crime for fear of losing a job or being outed to family.

 

Levin said many large cities are claiming they had no hate crimes, calling into question the reliability of federal hate crimes data that are based on voluntary submissions from police departments. 

“We have Columbus, Ohio, reporting more hate crimes than the state of Florida,” he said.

Committed to prosecution

Eric Treene, the Justice Department’s special counsel for religious discrimination, lamented the lack of solid data on hate crimes during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May, saying incomplete numbers stymie officials’ ability to fully understand the problem.

But he said the department is committed to prosecuting hate crimes, even as critics have blamed the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric and policies for a spike in such offenses. Civil rights groups said investigating and prosecuting hate crimes alone would be insufficient. 

 

“It’s past time for the Trump administration and the Sessions Justice Department to demonstrate, through action and its megaphone, its full and unflagging commitment to preventing hate-based violence and harassment that hurts our communities and destroys the fabric of our nation,” said Vanita Gupta, the top civil rights official in the Obama Justice Department and president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
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The GOP-led House Armed Services Committee narrowly defeated a bid by Democrats late Wednesday to compel the Air Force to detail how much has been spent on trips that President Donald Trump has made to his Florida estate and other properties he owns.

Republicans denounced the measure as “gotcha politics” and an attempt to litigate the 2016 election. But Democrats fired back, saying Trump has invited the scrutiny by refusing to divest himself from his business empire or release his taxes.

“This is different,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., “This is unprecedented.”

Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Ariz., authored the measure as an amendment to the annual defense policy bill being considered late Wednesday by the GOP-led House Armed Services Committee. Committee members voted 31-31 on the measure, but ties count as defeats. The amendment would have required the Air Force to regularly submit presidential travel expense reports to Congress. Each report would include “costs incurred” for travel to a property owned or operated by Trump or his immediate family, according to the amendment.

Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, said the committee had no business asking for the travel costs.

“This is the House Armed Services Committee,” he said. “We don’t oversee the federal bureau of ethics.”

Conaway said the Defense Department can’t audit its books and records as it is. Adding another requirement for detailed cost information would make the problem even worse.

“This will add one more straw to that camel,” Conaway said.

As president, Trump flies on Air Force One. He is accompanied by staff members and military aides. Going to his properties incurs additional security expenses and support equipment, unlike a trip to Camp David, a government-owned retreat in Maryland that is protected year-round as a military installation.

Trump visited Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, on seven weekends this winter, embracing the estate as the “winter White House” and using it to host the leaders of Japan and China. He has also flown to New York City, home to Trump Tower. More recently he has favored his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he has a home.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, who was nominated to the post by Trump, told O’Halleran in a letter this month that Trump’s travel costs are “consistent” with former President Barack Obama’s.

“The Air Force total cost for movement of the president” between Jan. 20, when Trump was inaugurated, and May 18 was $15.8 million, or just under $4 million per 30 days, according to Wilson’s June 12 letter.

But backers of O’Halleran’s amendment said Wilson’s response failed to provide a breakdown of costs, which is what the lawmakers want. She said they are looking for “ongoing, regular transparency” of the financial impact to the Air Force’s budget that may be caused by the frequency of travel by the president and his family.

In the hours-long work on the bill, the committee approved an amendment that declares climate change “a direct threat to national security.” The measure, crafted by Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, won GOP backing because it only requires the Pentagon to deliver a report to Congress that assesses the impact of global warming on the U.S. military.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the committee chairman, wanted a bill that would provide the Pentagon with $705 billion for 2018, with $640 billion for core Pentagon operations. The rest would be used for ongoing warfighting missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

But he agreed to accept roughly $9 billion less after discussions with House leaders and the Budget and Appropriations committees. Thornberry, who called the deal a compromise, said he secured assurances from his GOP colleagues that future defense budgets would grow sufficiently to restock the U.S. arsenal, add more troops, improve military training and more.

But Smith, the committee’s top Democrat, said the bigger budget numbers could be illusory unless Republicans and Democrats agree to roll back a 2011 law that set strict limits on federal spending. That’s a tall order, said Smith, who noted that lifting the so-called budget caps would take 60 votes in the Senate.

“Right now, we’re just hoping,” Smith said. “We’re doing the $696 billion and we’re hoping that between now and Oct. 1 some path that at the moment is completely blocked and completely unforeseen is going to emerge.”

The Senate committee’s blueprint seeks to reverse what the panel described as a “crisis” in modernizing the armed forces with advanced weapons and support equipment. The panel called the defense budget that Trump sent to Congress last month a “step in the right direction,” but “insufficient to undo the damage of the last six years.” Trump made rebuilding the military services a signature promise during the presidential campaign.

The committee authorized $10.6 billion for 94 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, which is two dozen more than Trump requested. The troops would get a 2.1 percent pay raise under the Senate plan, which is less than the House Armed Services Committee approved. The Senate bill would add 5,000 active-duty troops to the Army, while the House seeks an increase of 10,000 soldiers. Those and other differences will have to be resolved.
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It’s been a tough stretch for Illinois farmer Wendell Shauman.  His costs for everything from fertilizer to seed have increased, but the price for his crops have not. 

During the last four years, Shauman’s income has dropped, and he was hoping that ending the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba would give his bottom line a little boost. 

“Cuba’s a logical market,” he explained to VOA on his farm in rural Kirkwood, Illinois.  “Something that’s 90 miles away should be your market.  Politics has had that thing tied up, probably since I was in high school.” 

Politics will keep it tied up, for now, as President Donald Trump seeks to limit trade with Cuba, reversing President Barack Obama’s efforts to ease restrictions with the Caribbean island nation. 

“Walking away from a Cuba market is just nonsense too,” says Shauman.  “It’s a market that is in our backdoor, you want to take advantage of that.” 

Shauman voted for Trump in the 2016 Presidential election. But like many voters living in rural communities, Shauman voted for Trump despite his stance against current U.S. trade agreements.  While Shauman still supports the President, and understands how trade agreements can hurt American factory workers by sending jobs overseas, he is at odds with some of the administration’s trade policies. 

“Never walk away from a trade deal, never walk away from a market,” says Shauman.  “The last increase in price is going to be the guy who will come from someplace else around the world and buy my product and pay the freight to get it to his market. And the more of that we do, the higher the price is going to be.  So trade is hugely important.” 

“I think the positions of the current administration on trade has been a little bit of a yo-yo for most farmers,” Tamara Nelsen, Senior Director of Commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau, told VOA.  “Farmers don’t like to be told where they can sell food, so they have long been opponents to the embargo, or any embargo that includes food products.  They believe the best way to change a government in a foreign country is to engage with them, not to take away their food.” 

The Illinois Farm Bureau is one of a number of organizations critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back trade with Cuba, but Nelsen admits it is a small market. 

“It’s maybe 25, 30 million dollars a year, at best for a state like Illinois depending on what we are exporting in a given year.” 

The Illinois Farm Bureau reports that income from U.S. corn and soy exports to Cuba reached an all-time high of $331 million in 2008, with Illinois representing about $66 million of that figure.  However, by 2014 the U.S. total had dropped to $120 million, with Illinois receiving about $24 million of that total. 

But Tamara Nelsen says trade with U.S. partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, involved much bigger numbers, and is a larger concern for farmers. 

“Trade with Canada and Mexico for our agricultural exports have quadrupled since the signing of NAFTA.” 

Which, says Nelsen, translates into about 35,000 jobs in Illinois.  NAFTA partners are also the primary destination for Wendell Shauman’s crops. 

“Mexico is our number one corn market now,” he told VOA.  “You can’t walk away from that.” 

Which is why he was relieved when the Trump administration announced it wanted to renegotiate – not abandon – NAFTA, something Illinois Farm Bureau’s Tamara Nelsen says could help the United States. 

“NAFTA renegotiation is probably fine,” she explained.  “Modernization of NAFTA really due to technology and some of the changing standards for health and sanitary requirements for animals or fruits and vegetable trade, or the use of technology to improve border crossings, that’s all going to be welcome changes to NAFTA, and it is far better than scrapping it completely or having the United States pull out.  And if farmers can be engaged in helping the U.S. get a better NAFTA agreement, even for our rural friends and neighbors who work in manufacturing, we’re all for that.” 

But Wendell Shauman wants to go a step further.  He wants to see the United States join the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, the multi nation trade agreement President Trump officially withdrew the United States from earlier this year.

“That’s, in my mind, a huge mistake,” says Shauman.  “If we get back into it, maybe we can salvage something.” 

With his crops now planted, Wendell Shauman plays the waiting game – waiting to see what changes in NAFTA the Trump administration seeks, and how Mother Nature will either help or hinder his harvest – and ultimately his bottom line – later this year.
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President Donald Trump has met with relatives of Americans who were killed by alien criminals. The meeting Wednesday was aimed at eliciting support for two immigration bills that are expected to go for a vote in the House of Representatives this week. One would increase penalties imposed on criminals convicted of illegal reentry into the United States, and the other would withdraw federal funds for cities that give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. VOA’S Zlatica Hoke has more.
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