Month: April 2019

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he hopes to makes “substantial progress” in trade talks with China, as the world’s two largest economies try to reach a resolution to their trade war.

Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are leading a U.S. delegation meeting with Chinese officials this week in Beijing.

Next week, Chinese officials will travel to Washington for another round of talks.

Washington and Beijing have held several rounds of talks this year to resolve a trade war that began in 2018 when President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. He has been trying to compel Beijing to change its trade practices. China retaliated with tariff increases on $110 billion of U.S. exports.

 
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Their iconic blue-colored planters and grain cars are recognizable on many farms across the United States. They are also easily spotted in large displays, some stacked one on top of the other, in front of Kinze’s manufacturing hub along Interstate 80, where, inside buildings sprawling across a campus situated among Iowa’s corn and soybeans fields, the company’s employees work with one key component. 

“Steel is the lifeblood of Kinze,” says Richard Dix, a company senior director. “We’re a factory that’s essentially a weld house. We cut, burn, form, shape, cut, paint steel.”

WATCH: Kane Farabaugh’s video report

Steel now costs more, the result of a 25 percent tariff on the material imported from most countries, including China.

“When there is a tariff on steel it cuts rights to the core of our fundamental product construction,” says Dix.

In March of 2018, President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel, with the goal of boosting U.S. production and related employment. 

While there has been a modest benefit to the domestic steel industry, Dix says increased costs are negatively impacting smaller manufacturing companies like Kinze.

“We see the bills that come in from our suppliers are higher based on those tariffs,” Dix explains. “Not just in steel but also in a lot of the electronics, rubber commodities and other agricultural parts we buy from China as well. Those tariffs take their effect on our cost structure, on the profitability for the family, through our employees, and now to our dealers and on to our customers.”

Those customers are mostly U.S. farmers who use some of Kinze’s products to put soybean and corn seeds into the ground. Soybean exports in particular are now subject to retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese, one of the biggest export markets for U.S. farmers, which has sunk commodity prices and contributed to another year of overall declining income for U.S. farmers. 

​That means many are less likely to purchase the products Kinze makes.

“The market is substantially down,” says Dix. “The farmers don’t have that level of security they need to go out into the dealerships and buy that equipment. We get a one-two punch. We pay more for the product that comes into us and therefore on to the customer, and then we have a reciprocal situation where we can’t export what was advantageous to us.”

These are some of the concerns Dix explained to Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who participated in a roundtable discussion at Kinze along with farmers and others in Iowa impacted by tariffs. It was part of a “Tariffs Hurt the Heartland” event hosted by Kinze, and organized by the group Americans for Free Trade along with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. 

Ernst says the personal stories she gathers from these meetings go a long way in helping President Donald Trump understand the impact on her constituents.

“He has a very different negotiating style,” she told VOA. “He wants to start with the worst possible scenario, and negotiate his way to a good and fair trade deal, but again sharing those stories is very important and yes it does have an impact. I think the president does listen.”

Ernst says she is encouraged by news from the Trump administration on developments in negotiations that lead her to believe the trade dispute with China, and the related tariffs, could end soon.

“When I last spoke to [U.S. Trade Representative] Robert Lighthizer, he had indicated that the deal with China is largely done, it’s just figuring out the enforcement mechanism, and that is what the United States and China are really bartering over right now.”

But Kinze’s Richard Dix says one year under tariffs has already taken a toll on the company’s operations.

“We’re not really that big, so we can say that this impact has been a seven-figure impact for us in the last year, and that’s a substantial amount of money.”

It’s an amount that Dix says, so far, hasn’t been passed on to Kinze’s customers, or the employees.

“We have not actually had any direct layoffs that are attributable to this tariff situation, but we’re all tightening our belts.”
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A U.S. government body that monitors global religious freedom says conditions in Iran worsened last year, with escalated government targeting of non-Shi’ite Muslims and minority Baha’is and Christians.

In its annual report published Monday, the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said Iran merits designation as one of 16 countries of particular concern based on conditions in 2018. The State Department has made that designation for Iran every year since 1999, a move that enables the United States to impose travel restrictions and other sanctions on Iranians responsible for perceived religious freedom abuses. 

USCIRF uses its religious freedom findings to make policy recommendations to the U.S. president, State Department and Congress.

“Sadly, this year (our report) shows no progress in Iran at all between last year and this year,” USCIRF Commissioner Gary Bauer told VOA Persian at a Monday presentation of the report at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington. “(Iran) continues to persecute various religious minorities including Muslim minorities that don’t agree with its Shi’ite regime.”

There was no immediate response to the USCIRF report in Iranian state-approved media. 

Iran is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation led by Shi’ite clerics who established the Jaafari school of Shia Islam as the state religion in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Of the 99% of Iranians who are Muslims, U.S. government data show 90–95% are Shi’ites while 5–10% are Sunnis. 

Iran’s constitution permits the practice of four schools of Sunni Islam. But, it does not recognize Sufism, a mystical form of Islam whose adherents, known as Dervishes, are seen as a heretical minority by Iran’s ruling clerics. USCIRF’s report said hundreds of Sufis were arrested and scores were sent to solitary confinement and beaten in prison last year. 

USCIRF said Tehran also discriminated against minority Sunnis by rejecting their repeated requests to build an official mosque in the Iranian capital last year. It said several Iranian Sunni clerics were targets of violence, with a gunman killing one last July in southern Iran. 

Iran’s estimated 300,000 Bahai’s, who constitute the nation’s largest non-Muslim minority, faced ongoing arbitrary detention, harassment and imprisonment based on their religion last year, according to the report. The Iranian government does not recognize the Baha’is faith as a religion and labels its followers as heretics as well. “(Iran) continued its long-term practice of egregious economic and educational persecution of the (Baha’i) community,” USCIRF said. 

Iran recognizes Christianity, but the USCIRF report said it “drastically” escalated arrests of the nation’s almost 300,000 Christians last year. USCIRF said Iranian authorities arrested 171 Christians in 2018, most of them in the first week of December ahead of the Christmas holiday. It said Iran arrested only 16 Christians the year before. 

USCIRF said another Iran-recognized religious minority, a community of 15,000 to 20,000 Jews, faced a government-driven anti-Semitic sentiment that was less pronounced than in previous years. But, it said Iran continued to “propagate and tolerate anti-Semitism,” highlighting an Iranian presidential aide’s role in organizing an October 2018 Tehran conference that accused Jews of manipulating the global economy and exploiting the Holocaust. 

“The Iranian government regularly calls for a second Holocaust when they call for the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world,” USCIRF Commissioner Bauer told VOA Persian. 

The USCIRF report urged the U.S. government to speak out frequently at all levels about what it called “severe religious freedom abuses” in Iran; to freeze the assets of Iranian officials responsible for such abuses and bar their entry into the United States; and to press for the release of all prisoners of conscience in the country. 

“We have asked both the (Trump) administration and Congress to keep religious liberty and human rights as a central part of our dealings and negotiations with Iran,” Bauer said. 

The Trump administration has said it wants to negotiate a new deal with Iran to end an alleged nuclear weapons program and other perceived malign behaviors. But Iranian leaders have rejected any negotiations until the United States lifts all sanctions re-imposed on Tehran since Trump withdrew last year from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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Military officials say the commander of the task force that runs the prison at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been fired for a “loss of confidence in his ability to command.”

A statement from U.S. Southern Command says Navy Rear Adm. John Ring was relieved of duty Saturday. The facility’s deputy commander, Army Brig. Gen. John Hussey, has been designated the acting commander.

The commander of Southern Command, Navy Adm. Craig Faller, relieved Ring. The statement says the change in leadership “will not interrupt the safe, humane, legal care and custody provided to the detainee population at GTMO.”

About 40 prisoners are being held at the facility. At its peak, in mid-2003, it held nearly 700.
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In this scruffy, high-desert town encircled by prairies and potato farms, Sen. Cory Gardner drew shouts of approval last week for his message that Democrats are shoving the country toward socialism.

“That’s not what government is or what it should be,” he told about 200 Alamosa County Republicans at a barbecue fundraiser in a National Guard armory. “We have to stand up and fight. Are you going to join me in this fight?”

For Gardner and other Republicans making the same pitch, including President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the key question is whether it will attract moderate voters, not just their conservative stalwarts. Based on interviews with over three dozen Coloradans last week from Denver’s suburbs south to this town in the flat San Luis Valley, the argument has yet to take root, though the GOP has 18 months to sell it before Election Day 2020.

Few volunteered a drift toward socialism as a major worry, with health care and living costs cited far more frequently. Several said capitalism was too embedded in the U.S. to be truly threatened and Republicans were using socialism to stir unease with Democrats by raising the specter of the old, repressive Soviet Union and today’s chaotic Venezuela.

“They’re preying on fear,” said David Kraemer, 67, a financial adviser who’s not registered with a political party and lives in the Denver suburb of Westminster.

Yet when asked directly whether socialism was a concern, many expressed a wariness of injecting more government into people’s lives. Rather than naming policies that troubled them, many mentioned two self-proclaimed democratic socialists: Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination , and freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The comments suggested that Republicans might be tapping into unease over letting either party go too far.

“Checks and balances are what make this country so great,” said Steve Lajoie, 46, a self-employed carpenter from Denver and independent voter.

Gardner, 44, who’s expected to face a tough re-election fight next year, has been repeating his argument for months. He cites liberal Democrats’ “Medicare for All” bills for government-provided health care and a Green New Deal proposal for aggressively cutting carbon emissions.

Sanders has sponsored Medicare for All legislation that’s been embraced by many of his Democratic presidential rivals. Ocasio-Cortez is an architect of the Green New Deal, which remains a concept, not proposed legislation. Many Democrats, especially moderates, have kept their distance from both plans, divisions Republicans are happy to exploit.

Democrats reject the socialism assertion as a distraction from Trump’s unpopularity and the issues they will emphasize, especially improving health care and protecting jobs and income. They say efforts to make health care more available and combat global warming have nothing to do with limiting individuals’ rights.

Democrats note that voters gave them total control of Colorado government in November despite GOP attempts to pin the socialism label on former U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who was elected governor. They say growing numbers of younger, urban and Hispanic residents are steadily making the state more liberal.

GOP cries of socialism are “Cold War stuff” that’s irrelevant to most voters, said Morgan Carroll, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

“I think that probably does fire up their base, but you cannot win an election in Colorado with the Republican base alone,” Carroll said.

Republicans see a powerful argument in telling voters they need a GOP-controlled Senate for protection against Democrats who are coming after their current health insurance, their energy sector jobs and more.

“I think we’re running to be the firewall that saves the country from socialism,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters recently.

Republicans say the anti-socialism message will prove powerful in a state that overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative creating single-payer health care and where registered unaffiliated voters, often with libertarian leanings, outnumber both Democrats and Republicans.

The GOP hopes the appeal will win over suburbanites whose distaste for Trump helped Democrats capture the House in the fall. They note that public opinion polls find socialism is especially unpopular among older voters, Republicans and moderates.

Avery Jones, of Westminster, is one potential target.

“Taxes kill,” said Jones, 27. While she’s eager to improve her family’s health coverage, she sees “some merit” to checking Democrats from pushing toward universal health care because “it would just drive up taxes.”

But for every Jones, there’s a Rhett Lucero. Lucero, 40, eating lunch at the Riverwalk park that winds through the city of Pueblo, says Democrats’ efforts to expand health coverage and curb global warming make sense.

“It’s helping each other out,” said the auto body mechanic, who, like Jones, is an unaffiliated voter. “It’s putting our taxes to a real good use.”

Not all Democrats are dismissive of the socialism strategy.

Eva Henry, a commissioner of Adams County outside Denver, says her community’s blue-collar families might buy the GOP argument if they believe Democrats’ proposals would drive up taxes. “Our Democrats can vote Republican because they vote their pocketbooks,” the Democrat said.

Pueblo Mayor Nicholas Gradisar said he doubts the argument will sway many Democrats but warned, “Democrats have to be wary of it and they have to respond” by telling voters the party “will give you a fair shake.” Pueblo County, south of the economically surging corridor that runs from Boulder to Colorado Springs, leans Democratic but backed Trump in 2016.

Republicans, who’ve already cast Democrats as socialists this year with digital videos and roadside billboards, tried the theme in several states in November to little effect. It wasn’t new: Actor Ronald Reagan and GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater castigated Medicare as socialist in the 1960s, yet it’s now a cherished medical lifeline for millions of older Americans.

Republicans say this time will be different. But one Coloradan’s comments suggest that past GOP warnings about Democrats may haunt Republicans.

“Every time a Democrat gets elected, they say, ‘We’re going to lose our guns,'” said Marc O’Leary, 48, of Westminster. “It never happens.”

 
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The saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” means you shouldn’t prejudge the value of something by its outward appearance. And that was one of the messages at a college near Washington, where some people became human books, of sorts, as they talked about how appearances can be deceiving and lead to preconceived biases. 

At an event called the Human Library Project, students at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia, could check out a person — a “human” book — instead of a book in their library. 

The organizer, Patricia Cooper, said the human books are celebrating diversity by verbally sharing the stories of their lives with the students in a non-judgmental atmosphere. In this third annual event, the “collection” included a civil rights activist, NASA scientist, and an opera singer.

“The goal of the human library is to talk to people in your community who you may otherwise not speak to because you have your own prejudices, stigma or you’re afraid,” said Cooper. She hoped the discussions “in a safe and supportive environment will break down some of these barriers.”

Najeeb Baha, director of recreation and wellness at the college, knows all too well what it’s like to try to break down barriers. Because he has fair skin, reddish hair and an Arabic name, people are often surprised to learn he is from Afghanistan. Baha said he has been detained in airports by security because he doesn’t look like what people perceive as the typical Afghan. And surprisingly, he said worshippers at a Virginia mosque were also prejudiced against him for the same reason.

“My goal is to inform everybody about the things that I’ve gone through,” said Baha, as he spoke to student Angel Navia about his story. Baha told him he thinks people shouldn’t focus on skin color, judge individuals by their last name, or discriminate against persons who have an accent.

Navia shook his head in disbelief. “The struggles that come from something simple like just a name, or where you’re from, and how that dictates some aspects of your life,” he said.

Overcoming hardships

Student advisor Connie Robinson was another human book, sharing how she survived domestic abuse by her ex-husband.

“Life is 10 percent of what happens to us and 90 percent how we deal with it. That’s what I follow,” she said.

She explained that a college education helped get her out of a terrible situation so she could control her destiny.

“When I talk to students, I just want them to know that whatever they’re going through, continue to strive for their education because it is so important.”

Human book Siem Sium, an Eritrean immigrant who is also a student at the college, chatted about not judging people who are homeless. He described what it felt like to live in a homeless shelter, at one point, when his hardworking family was unable to make ends meet. But through the hardship, he shared with other students, he learned “that it is what’s inside of someone that counts,” and “the quality of a person is so much more valuable than the quality of their possessions.”

Not all the human books were affiliated with the college. Some, like Tyra Garlington, came from the local community. The optimistic inspirational speaker, who said she had suffered loss and abuse and survived cancer, told two women from Africa to take whatever comes their way and use the good, bad and scary to improve their lives.

“She inspired me to stay strong and work hard,” said Nancy Blankson from Ghana.

Brian Dailey, a human book who is an artist, spoke about his trips to 113 countries in seven years. Dailey said that during his travels, he asked people he photographed for a one-word response to a series of other words, including love, freedom and war. He discovered people in different countries often had very different reactions to the same word.

“The word war in southern Africa was considered justification, liberation, and peace,” Dailey said, adding that when he talked to people in Syrian refugee camps, “it was tears, hunger, fear, and destruction.”

But he said people in most of the countries had a similar answer when he said the word government. Most people, he said, don’t like theirs very much.
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Local governments often try to solve problems using old technology. A U.S. Senate bill aims to fund small tech teams to help state and municipal governments update and rebuild government systems. Deana Mitchell takes a look at the impact on one program that is serving the needy.
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Four people died and three were injured when a construction crane on the new Google Seattle campus collapsed Saturday, pinning six cars underneath.

One female and three males were dead by the time firefighters arrived at the scene, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said. He said two of the dead were crane operators and the other two were people who had been in cars.

A 25-year-old mother and her 4-month-old daughter as well as a 28-year-old man were taken to Harborview Medical Center, according to Seattle Fire spokesman Lance Garland. A fourth person also was injured and treated at the scene.

Harborview spokeswoman Susan Gregg said Saturday evening that the mother and baby would be discharged, while the man injured was in satisfactory condition.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office said it would not release names of people who died until Monday.

“My thoughts and prayers are with those killed and injured,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on Twitter.

The crane collapsed near the intersection of Mercer Street and Fairview Avenue near Interstate 5 shortly before 3:30 p.m., Scoggins said.

With Amazon and other tech companies increasing their hiring in Seattle, the city has dozens of construction cranes building office towers and apartment buildings. As of January, there were about 60 construction cranes in Seattle, more than any other American city.

Scoggins said officials do not yet know the cause of the collapse.

Daren Konopaski, the business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302, which represents heavy-equipment operators, told The Seattle Times he understood the crane was being dismantled when heavy winds moved through the area.

“We don’t know, but that’s what seems to have happened here,” he said. “We are in the process of trying to get information.”

The National Weather Service in Seattle said a line of showers moved over Seattle just about the time the crane fell. An observation station on nearby Lake Union showed winds kicked up with gusts of up to 23 mph at 3:28 p.m., just about the time officials said the crane fell.

“It was terrifying,” witness Esther Nelson, a biotech researcher who was working in a building nearby, told the newspaper.

“The wind was blowing really strong,” she said, and added that the crane appeared to break in half. “Half of it was flying down sideways on the building,” she said. “The other half fell down on the street, crossing both lanes of traffic.”

The office building the crane fell from was badly damaged, with several of its windows smashed.

“Trudi and I join all Washingtonians in extending our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the four people who died in this afternoon’s tragic accident,” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement. Inslee also said he hoped for a speedy and full recovery for those injured, thanked first responders and urged people to stay clear of the accident scene.
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