US Business

A whistle reverberates through a sugar factory in central Cuba to signal the resumption of milling at midday after an hours-long halt when the raw cane ran out.

It is cane harvest time in Cuba — once the world’s top sugar exporter but now reliant on imports. 

A critical shortage of harvesters and trucks to deliver the cane to factories has hamstrung production even as the government scrambles to revive the once-vibrant industry.

Cuba’s 2020-21 harvest yielded 800,000 tons of the sweet stuff, according to official figures.

This was just 10 percent of peak production some three decades ago and the worst outcome in 130 years for an industry that was once Cuba’s economic motor and a huge source of national pride.

“This is a war without end,” Lazaro Manuel Torres, boss of the Antonio Sanchez mill in Cuba’s central Cienfuegos province, told AFP.

“From the moment you wake up, you run into a mountain” of problems, said Torres, watching with obvious relief as a column of white smoke billowed from the chimney after the restart. 

– Just 56 mills left –

Until 1989, Cuba was the world’s biggest sugar exporter.

The United States was its major client until 1960 — two years before Washington imposed crippling sanctions on the communist island nation.

The Soviet Union, a political ally, then became an important buyer and was given preferential rates. 

Sugar was at the heart of Cuba’s plans for a prosperous future, with Fidel Castro leading a drive in the 1970s — complete with propaganda photos of him wielding a machete in the sugar plantations — to push the country’s output to 10 million tons per year. 

The goal was never achieved. 

The fall of the communist bloc in 1991 marked the beginning of the end for Cuba’s sugar industry — exacerbated by sanctions, a steep drop in prices and a lack of investment that saw 100 mills disappear.

Just 56 are left today.

Cuba now needs to import sugar to meet local demand and its export commitments.

“We have been in decline since 2017,” Noel Casanas, vice director of state-owned sugar producer AZCUBA, told AFP.

“If the situation continues, it is true that (the industry) will disappear.”

Sugar is still an important income generator for 50 of Cuba’s 169 municipalities, or some 1.2 million of the country’s 11.2 million inhabitants, he said.

– ‘Practically a corpse’ –

In December, the government approved dozens of measures in a bid to resuscitate sugar.

It doubled the price paid to cane producers, authorized the free hiring and firing of labor, and gave factories more decision-making autonomy in a country where just about everything is state-run.

“I don’t think these measures can revive an industry that is already practically a corpse,” said economist Emilio Morales of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group.  

Casanas conceded production faces “limitations of all kinds” — critically a lack of foreign investment due to the strengthening of US sanctions since the presidency of Donald Trump.

Since the cane harvest opened in December, Antonio Sanchez has not managed to exceed 65 percent of milling capacity, set at 20,000 tons for this year’s harvest.

The problem has not been a lack of fuel or raw product, this time, but a shortage of harvesters and delivery trucks.

There are not enough spare parts, even tires, for vehicles in Cuba and producers such as Torres cannot afford to buy the limited components that are available.

“If you don’t have harvesters, if you do not have trucks, you cannot mill,” he lamented. 

Sugar producers in Cuba are also hard hit by a lack of fertilizers and pesticides.

For now, the government’s measures have managed to slow an exodus of sugar workers, industry bosses told AFP.

“We cannot complain, we are doing quite well — up to 700 pesos (about $29) a day,” said farmer Livan Hernandez. 

The average monthly Cuban salary is about $162.

Casanas said what is needed is foreign investment and expanding the industry into highly lucrative sugar derivatives such as bioethanol.

Sugar “is no longer the locomotive (of the Cuban economy) nor will it be,” he said.

But “it continues to be a strategic sector… that must be developed.”

Amazon told a federal agency it will file “substantial” objections to last week’s worker election in New York that established the company’s first union in the United States, according to a filing released Thursday.

In a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the retail giant requested more time to compile and present evidence about alleged problematic election conduct on the part of the union and the board’s officials. 

“This election involves more than 8,300 eligible voters, and voting spanned over 50 polling hours,” Amazon attorneys with the firm Hunton Andrews Kurth said in a motion to the NLRB. 

“It is simply infeasible for Amazon to sufficiently investigate the myriad of objectionable conduct within five business days.”

The NLRB granted Amazon until April 22 to present proof, but the company still must file its objections by Friday night, an official said.

On April 1, more than 55 percent of the votes at the Staten Island, New York JFK8 warehouse sided with Amazon Labor Union (ALU), handing the bootstrap labor organization a surprise victory that has cheered the American labor movement and drew kudos from President Joe Biden.

The filing accuses union backers of intimidating workers, and said the NLRB administration of the vote led to “inordinately” long wait times that depressed turnout.

But the document did not provide evidence of these allegations, saying the company needed more time “to further compile, review and outline evidence” to support the claims.

Eric Milner, an attorney representing ALU, dismissed as “absurd” Amazon’s complaints.

“The employees have spoken and their voices have been heard,” Milner told AFP. 

“Amazon is choosing to ignore that, and instead engage in stalling tactics to avoid the inevitable; coming to the bargaining table and negotiating for a contract on behalf of the fulfillment center associates at JFK8.”

Meanwhile, organizers of an effort to form a union at an Amazon warehouse in the Alabama city of Bessemer on Thursday accused the company of interfering with a vote there that was still up in the air.

The vote is a redo of a 2021 ballot thrown out by federal officials in which 993 workers cast ballots against the labor group, compared with 875 employees in favor.

But there were 416 “challenged” ballots, according to the NLRB, meaning the number of votes still to be settled is big enough to potentially decide the final result.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union backing the Bessemer campaign asked the labor board for a hearing to decide whether Amazon “created an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals and thus interfered with the employees’ freedom of choice.”

If that is found to be true, the results of the Bessemer vote should be put aside, union officials argued.

Canada’s finance minister, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shelled out more money for the military in a budget Thursday that also aims to tackle soaring costs of living and a housing crisis.

But the additional Can$8 billion (US$6.4 billion) earmarked for defense over five years falls far short of a NATO target of spending two percent of GDP.

In a speech to parliament, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said: “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that our own peaceful democracy — like all the democracies of the world — depends ultimately on the defence of hard power.”

“We know that freedom does not come for free, and that peace is guaranteed only by our readiness to fight for it,” she said. “That is why this budget makes an immediate, additional investment in our armed forces.”

According to NATO, Canada currently spends 1.36 percent of GDP on the military, which is down slightly from just a few years ago.

To meet the two percent NATO target, Ottawa would have to set aside tens of billions of dollars more each year, according to parliament’s independent fiscal watchdog and other experts.

Freeland suggested Ottawa could still close that NATO gap soon, proposing “a swift defence policy review to equip Canada for a world that has become more dangerous.”

Canada, with one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas in the world, also announced an additional Can$1 billion in loans through the International Monetary Fund and Can$500 million in military aid for Ukraine this year.

The budget is the first since Prime Minster Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a third term in elections last September. 

With support from a small leftist faction the minority government is expected to pass it in a soon-to-be held vote in the House of Commons.

– Slashing spending –

The budget will see spending slashed by Can$131 billion after the government doled out significant pandemic aid over the past two years that pushed the debt to a record Can$1.16 trillion this year.

At the same time, Freeland said she recognizes that Canadians are struggling with higher costs for almost everything and so the government is rolling out targeted measures to mitigate the impacts of inflation.

Notably, Ottawa aims to double the number of new homes built over the next decade to ease a supply crunch and soaring prices, as well as ban foreign investment in an overheated housing market. 

It also earmarked billions of dollars for a new dental care program, coming on the heels of a new national childcare program.

And Ottawa is setting up a fund to attract private foreign investment in Canada’s transition away from fossil fuels, raising taxes on banks and insurance companies, and supporting domestic exploration for critical minerals used to make electric vehicle batteries and semi-conductors.

After what Freeland described as having “teetered on the brink” in 2020 when the pandemic hit, the Canadian economy has rebounded strongly.

It has recovered 112 percent of the jobs lost in those early months, and the unemployment rate — at 5.5 percent — is now just shy of a pre-pandemic low, while economic growth is “1.2 percent above where it was before the pandemic,” she noted.

Private sector economists surveyed by Ottawa forecast slightly slower growth of 3.9 percent in 2022 and 3.1 percent next year. 

“After wave after wave and lockdown after lockdown, our economy has not just recovered, it is booming,” Freeland said.

But getting through the last two years came at a “significant cost” and now the government must reduce spending as it reaches for an eventual balanced budget, she said.

“We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline,” the minister said. 

“Our pandemic deficits are and must continue to be reduced. The extraordinary debts we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must be paid down.”

The budget deficit is expected to fall from Can$113.8 billion in 2021-2022 to Can$52.8 billion in 2022-2023. 

The debt-to-GDP ratio, meanwhile, is forecast to fall from 46.5 percent in 2021-2022 to 45.1 percent in 2022-2023.

The US Congress voted Thursday to end normal trade relations with Moscow and codify the ban on Russian oil, as the White House ratchets up pressure on President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.

The legislation — which also applies to Russia’s ally Belarus — enables President Joe Biden to inflict steep tariff hikes on imports from both countries.

Biden announced the steps in a speech last month arguing that Russia must “pay the price” for the bloodshed in its ex-Soviet neighbor, where it has denied accusations of committing atrocities.

“Putin must absolutely be held accountable for the detestable, despicable war crimes he is committing against Ukraine: the images we have seen coming out of that country… are just pure evil,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“It reminds us of the worst moments in human history, caused by the evil man, Putin: hundreds of civilians murdered in cold blood.”

A key principle of the World Trade Organization, the so-called most favored nation status known in the United States as permanent normal trade relations (PNTR), requires countries to guarantee one another equal tariff and regulatory treatment.

The latest trade sanction, which passed the House with support from every Democrat and just a handful of Republicans voting no, caps several rounds of measures intended primarily to sever Moscow’s economic and financial ties with the rest of the world.

They have included banning Russian oil imports — a measure Biden already implemented by executive decree — seizing the assets of billionaires tied to Putin, and freezing the nation’s stockpile of cash.

– Unwavering support –

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the latest action as a sign that the United States was “unwavering” in its commitment to support Ukraine and hold Russia to account.

“Putin’s aggression and barbaric war crimes have horrified the world and demand a strong response,” she said in a statement. 

Together, the moves have already pushed Moscow to the brink of a debt default.

They have also caused prices for key commodities like gasoline and wheat to soar, harming US consumers already facing the highest inflation in four decades.

The United States imported just under $30 billion in goods from Russia last year, including $17.5 billion in crude oil.

The legislation includes a measure to reauthorize Magnitsky Act sanctions that target human rights violations and corruption with visa bans, asset freezes and other penalties.   

The United States moved Wednesday to block foreign investment in Russia and state-owned enterprises and levied further sanctions on the country’s banks and senior officials.   

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC News that global punishments had put the Russian economy into a “deep recession.” 

“And what we’re seeing is a likely contraction of the Russian economy by about 15 percent,” he said.

“That is dramatic… We’ve seen an exodus from Russia of virtually every major company in the world. And Putin, in the space of a matter of weeks, has basically shut down Russia to the world.”   

The IMF announced Thursday a conditional agreement to provide Lebanon with $3 billion in aid to help it emerge from a severe economic crisis, following months of negotiations.

The country has been battered by triple-digit inflation, soaring poverty rates and the collapse of its currency since a 2020 debt default.

Officials in Beirut applauded the announcement as it will open the door to additional financial support from foreign donors.

But experts reiterated doubts over the willingness of Lebanon’s political elite, widely blamed for endemic corruption, to implement the reforms needed to resuscitate the economy.

The deal is “a visa stamp for donor countries to begin co-operating with Lebanon and to put Lebanon back on the global finance map”, Prime Minister Najib Mikati told reporters on an upbeat note after the International Monetary Fund announcement of the “staff-level agreement”.

Saudi Arabia, a key financial backer, announced Thursday it was sending an ambassador to Lebanon for the first time since a row broke out five months ago over the Riyadh-led military intervention in Yemen. 

Fellow oil-rich Gulf state Kuwait, which sided with Riyadh in the row, also announced that its ambassador would return “in response to appeals of moderate national forces” in Lebanon.

Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, who led the IMF mission to Lebanon, said that once approved by the global crisis lender’s board, the 46-month financing programme will “support the authorities’ reform strategy to restore growth and financial sustainability”.

However, approval is contingent on “timely implementation of all prior actions and confirmation of international partners’ financial support”, he said in a statement.

Rigo blamed “many years of unsustainable macroeconomic policies” for the crisis in Lebanon that came to a head in 2020 when it defaulted on its sovereign debt for the first time in its history.

The Lebanese pound has lost about 90 percent of its value on the black market and four out of five Lebanese now live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations.

The situation has been exacerbated by soaring inflation, the Covid-19 pandemic and the devastating August 2020 explosion at Beirut port.

“Lebanon is facing an unprecedented crisis, which has led to a dramatic economic contraction and a large increase in poverty, unemployment, and emigration,” Rigo said, adding that the programme will support increased social spending.

– ‘Highly unlikely’ – 

The aid would be released under the global lender’s “Extended Fund Facility” but only after parliament in Beirut approves a 2022 budget and a new bank secrecy law to fight corruption.

It also will require cabinet approval of a debt restructuring plan, Rigo said.

The cabinet must likewise approve a bank restructuring strategy.

A former vice governor of Lebanon’s central bank, Nasser Saidi, said he had doubts that such reforms would ever materialise.

“This is good news if the set of Monetary-Fiscal-Governance-Structural reforms including banking sector restructuring are implemented. Highly unlikely!” he wrote on Twitter.

In a joint statement with President Michel Aoun, Mikati said the IMF deal would help “to revive Lebanon and put it on the path of recovery and solutions”.

Cabinet and parliament must approve the agreement and the reforms demanded by the IMF before the deal goes through.

For more than two years, the ruling elite has been unable to lift the country out of crisis, as it is beset by political horsetrading between rival factions that have repeatedly left Lebanon without a government.

Financial analyst Henri Chaoul dismissed the IMF agreement as a “non-event”.

“The prior actions will never be done. We are light years away,” he told AFP.

“We have 30 years of track record with a perfect-fit regression line.”

Walmart will lift starting pay for truckers to as much as $110,000 a year in the retail giant’s latest move to recruit and retain logistics staff in the tight US labor market.

The new salary level compares with current pay averaging $87,500 for first-year drivers and is roughly twice the average $56,491 annual pay for a long-haul driver, according to data cited by Walmart.

Whether a new driver can make the full $110,000 depends on factors such as miles driven and location, a Walmart spokesman said.

The aim is to make working as a driver for the company a “destination job,” Walmart supply chain executives Fernando Cortes and Karisa Sprague said in a blog post. 

“The investments in pay and training build on multiple recent driver bonuses and improved schedules that enable drivers to spend more time at home,” they said. “Once drivers are on board, this is a job many leave only for retirement.”

Walmart, which currently has 12,000 drivers in its fleet, is looking to add another 5,000 in 2022.

The company has also established an internal training program where staff from other parts of Walmart can train for 12 weeks and earn a commercial driver’s license. The goal is to bring on 400 to 800 drivers through the program by the end of the company’s 2023 fiscal year, a spokesman said.

The hiring push comes amid a period of significant revenue growth for Walmart and other big-box chains throughout the coronavirus pandemic, a period also characterized by port backlogs and supply chain snarls.

The crunch in drivers has prompted some larger trucking companies to argue for lowering the national driving age, a policy opposed by independent truckers who have called for more parking capacity, less unpaid waiting time and other improvements in working conditions to improve employee retention.

Tesla welcomed throngs of  electric car lovers to Texas Thursday for a huge party inaugurating a “gigafactory” the size of 100 professional soccer fields.

Online buzz has swelled ever since Tesla’s colorful but controversial founder and chief executive Elon Musk tweeted word of the event, with reports of perhaps as many as 15,000 guests taking part in the official plant opening in the state capital Austin.

Tesla owners posted plans for cross country road trips, while others urged the uninvited to just show up and find a way inside.

As Thursday arrived, Musk tweeted images and video of preparations including a kaleidescope-like walkway leading into a plant given a nightclub look with red and blue lights.

Tesla electric cars were on a stage backed by a giant “Giga Texas” sign made of neon lights. The festivities would not start until the evening, Musk tweeted.

The company has remained mum about details of the extravaganza, but rumors abound, including reports of an open bar and concert at Tesla’s 74-acre home in Texas.

Tesla fans have posted drone footage and other video showing sightings of what could be new vehicle models on display at the event.

“I got a golden ticket!” Luke Metger, president of a Texas environmental organization, tweeted on the eve of the party, attaching a screen-shot of his invite to the Cyber Rodeo – Giga Texas gala.

But will Texas be Musk’s land of promise?

– Farewell Silicon Valley –

The move to a US state known for conservative Republican politics is seen by some as Musk stepping away from the liberal Silicon Valley culture in which he made his fortune.

The South African-born serial entrepreneur is now ranked the world’s richest man. He founded Tesla in Silicon Valley in 2003, but shifted its headquarters to Texas late last year.

Musk has clashed with California regulators, particularly when health precautions mandated at the height of the pandemic closed Tesla’s Fremont plant.

California is also investigating whether discrimination took place at Tesla’s plant there.

It remains to be seen how Musk will navigate conservative policies in Texas, such as the state’s restrictive new abortion law and limits on seeking health services for transgender children.

Part of the Texas allure is a lack of corporate or personal income taxes. Tesla received more than $60 million in tax breaks to build the factory, which is expected to employ 10,000 people over time.

While Musk has spoken of a desire for a shift away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels, Texas is known for oil rigs and gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

“I think he is having a bit of an identity crisis and forgotten who his customer is, and it is going to come back to bite him,” tech analyst Rob Enderle said of Musk.

“He is drifting to the right; what he doesn’t seem to remember is that most of the people who buy electric cars are the liberals.”

– Cybertruck –

Giga Texas has been in operation since late last year. It is the fifth and largest gigafactory cranking out battery packs and vehicles for Tesla.

Since starting with a car plant in Silicon Valley, Tesla has gone global with mega-factories in Berlin and Shanghai as well as in US states New York and Nevada.

The Austin plant will produce Model 3 and Y cars and eventually a Cybertruck pickup and a semi for hauling cargo trailers set to go into production next year, according to Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.

Tesla demand is outstripping supply to the point that some Model Y and 3 cars are being delivered months late in some parts of the world, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

“The solution is mainly in Austin and Berlin,” Ives said.

Gigafactory Berlin officially opened last month.

Tesla wants to ramp up production by some 50 percent annually, and should easily top that goal this year, Musk said recently.

He has delivered more than a million vehicles during the past 12 months despite production constraints caused by a global chip shortage plaguing many industries.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday called for increased oversight of cryptocurrencies, after President Joe Biden last month green-lit work on creating a digital American dollar.

Digital currencies such as bitcoin and ethereum have seen explosive growth in recent years, even as American officials have expressed concerns over whether the assets are properly regulated, or could be used for criminal activity.

In a speech at American University in Washington, Yellen said better regulations on such assets would protect consumers while still allowing for innovation.

“As banks and other traditional financial firms become more involved in digital asset markets, regulatory frameworks will need to appropriately reflect the risks of these new activities,” Yellen said.

“And new types of intermediaries, such as digital asset exchanges and other digital native intermediaries, should be subject to appropriate forms of oversight.”

Biden’s order last month put the United States among the more than 100 countries that are exploring or have launched pilot programs with their own central bank digital currency, including China’s digital yuan, although Yellen said issuing such a currency is likely to “require years of development, not months.” 

Washington has also looked to expand taxation of cryptocurrencies, with the $1 trillion national infrastructure overhaul that Congress passed last year including provisions to expand reporting requirements for digital assets.

Governments worldwide have fretted that cryptocurrencies are being used to fund illicit activities.

On Tuesday, Germany shut down Russian-language illegal darknet marketplace Hydra, the largest such network in the world, and seized bitcoin worth $25 million.

The US Treasury sanctioned that site and Garantex, an exchange for virtual currencies that it said was used for collecting ransomware payments.

Yellen warned that “‘financial innovation’ of the past has too often not benefited working families, and has sometimes exacerbated inequality,” and added that the department is working with Congress to regulate stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies backed by reserves.

Yellen called for “tech neutral” regulations on digital assets that are intended to protect consumers and businesses without hampering the technology behind them.

“In many cases, regulators have authorities they can use to promote these objectives and Treasury supports those efforts,” Yellen said.

“To the extent there are gaps, we will make policy recommendations, including assessment of potential regulatory actions and legislative changes.”