Aurelia Butler

SYDNEY (Reuters) – China will complete a review into years-long tariffs on Australian wine by the end of March and is also reviewing its restrictions on lobster imports, Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell said on Sunday.Farrell said he was hopeful China would lift the tariffs of up to 218% on Australian wine, first introduced in 2021, once the review finished and that good progress was also being made in relation to the unofficial restrictions on lobster imports.”That process (wine) is coming to an end now and by the end of March that process will be completed,” he said on Sky News on Sunday. “The Chinese trade minister confirmed that to me the week before last.”However, Farrell said Australia would not hesitate to resume a World Trade Organisation suit against the tariffs if China did not remove them after the review, which Beijing began last year.China has been steadily lifting trade barriers put in place from late 2020 on a range of commodities including barley, wine, coal and lobsters. The restrictions were part of an escalating spat over foreign investment and security that boiled over when Australia called for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.The wine tariffs and unofficial restrictions on lobster imports are among the few barriers left in place.Farrell said the Chinese trade minister had also told him that a review into the lobster restrictions was also underway.”As far as lobster is concerned … I got an understanding from the Chinese authorities that they are reviewing the issue of our lobster coming into China,” he said “Everything is heading in the right direction.” More

(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a spending bill that averted a partial government shutdown, the White House said in a statement.Biden acted after the U.S. Senate on Friday approved spending legislation for several government agencies just hours before current funding was due to expire. More

The US has widened its productivity lead over Europe, sparking fears in the EU that it faces a “competitiveness crisis” as policymakers call for greater public and private investment.New data released on Friday showed eurozone productivity fell 1.2 per cent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, while in the US it rose 2.6 per cent in the same period, separate data showed. Labour productivity growth in the US has been more than double that of the eurozone and UK in the past two decades. “In the long term, productivity growth in the US is projected to be higher than in Europe,” said Bart van Ark, managing director at the UK-based Productivity Institute. “Europe is not showing the same dynamism. That is widening the growth gap between the US and the EU.”Some economists argue that the US is growing faster than the eurozone in part because its population is younger, growing more rapidly and working longer hours. But a big part of the output gap is because people in the US also produce more for each hour that they work. EU policymakers view the trend as deeply worrying — and a reflection of a long-standing failure to match US levels of private or public sector investment. You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.Output per hour worked, a standard measure of labour productivity, has grown more than 6 per cent in the US non-farm business sector since 2019, according to official data. That far outpaces the eurozone and UK, which have seen growth of around 1 per cent over the same period. The recent jump in US productivity comes after a massive fiscal stimulus centred on green industry, a frenzied period of rehiring and a surge in new business formation in homeworking hotspots.By contrast, the eurozone has received less fiscal support from governments while suffering a much bigger rise in energy prices as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The fragmentation of Europe’s financial markets, fiscal policy and regulation also makes it more exposed to external pressures than the US. “When Europe is hit by a shock, it is fragmented, so it doesn’t respond as coherently as the US,” said Yannis Stournaras, governor of Greece’s central bank.While short-term factors have undoubtedly fuelled the US rebound, some economists think there is more to it than that.“We have stalled productivity in the eurozone,” said Gilles Moëc, chief economist at the insurer Axa. “Since the uptick has been persisting for so long, we need to contemplate the possibility that something structural is happening.”Moëc notes that if eurozone productivity continued to lag the US to the same extent, GDP growth would be a percentage point lower each year. Isabel Schnabel, executive board member of the European Central Bank More

BEIJING (Reuters) – China still faces structural employment issues and overall pressure on jobs has not eased, the human resources minister said on Saturday, as the slowing economy braces for another record number of college graduates in 2024. The job market has seen a good start this year, particularly in the artificial intelligence and big data segments, said Human Resources Minister Wang Xiaoping, adding that 32,000 job fairs have been held so far.Still, authorities will strengthen policy support to improve youth employment and help small private firms, Wang told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual parliament meeting in Beijing.China could see 11.79 million college graduates this year, she added, reiterating an education ministry forecast. At the start of the parliament session this week, the government unveiled its 2024 target for economic growth, aiming for an expansion of “around 5%”. China’s gross domestic product grew 5.2% last year.But headline indicators have tended to underplay the tension in its vast job market, especially among young people, including the millions of college graduates seeking work each year.More than one in five of the roughly 100 million Chinese aged 16 to 24 were unemployed in June 2023, the latest figure before statistics bureau officials abruptly suspended the series. China resumed publication of the data in January, but it now excludes college students, and put youth unemployment at 14.9% in December.’WORK IN FACTORIES’Authorities are under pressure to create enough jobs, particularly as ever more college graduates chase a shrinking pool of white-collar jobs in a weak economy after the COVID19 pandemic. China has tried to steer them to vocational and technical jobs as the world’s second-largest economy builds its advanced manufacturing sector and relies less on the West amid technology curbs imposed by the United States and others. But lack of skilled talent remains a hurdle for the sector. Wang said China needs to spur young people to acquire technical skills and work in factories, in its efforts to nurture talent. This year, China aims to create more than 12 million new urban jobs and keep its survey-based urban unemployment rate at around 5.5%. Last year 12.44 million urban jobs were added, with urban unemployment at 5.2% on average, official data shows.(This story has been corrected to fix the youth jobless rate in paragraph 7) More

(Reuters) -Federal Reserve policymakers weighing when to start interest-rate cuts got fresh reasons on Friday to remain on standby, after a government report showed robust job growth in February but also signs of labor market cooling that could help the Fed’s battle with inflation.U.S. employers added 275,000 jobs last month, a Labor Department report showed on Friday, handily beating the 200,000 that economists expected. But the report’s revisions of prior months’ estimates showed smaller job gains in January and December than had earlier been thought, and other details of the report suggested a rebalancing in the labor market continues. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, its highest in two years, though still below levels the Fed sees as sustainable in the long-run.And wage growth has continued to edge down, rising 4.3% in February from a year earlier, down from 4.4% in January. Fed policymakers won’t see that growth as consistent yet with their 2% inflation goal, but it is moving in the right direction.In testimony on Capitol Hill this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he feels the economy is healthy and policymakers are “not far” from having enough confidence on inflation’s downward direction to start reducing interest rates. Friday’s report showing the labor market is still strong but easing slowly “will provide reassurance to the Fed that real economic conditions remain broadly consistent with inflation converging durably towards 2%, and it will be appropriate to cut by June,” said Evercore ISI’s Krishna Guha.Futures contracts that settle to the Fed policy rate now point to about an 80% chance the Fed will start cutting interest-rates by mid-June, with a little more than a one-in-four chance of a May 1 start. Traders firmed up their expectations for a full percentage point of rate cuts by the end of the year, the equivalent of four quarter-point reductions over the remaining seven Fed policy-setting meetings this year. INFLATION KEY Fed policymakers next meet March 19-20, and are nearly universally expected to keep the policy rate in the current 5.25%-5.5% range, where it has been since last July. Powell said this week that range is likely to be the peak and is putting downward pressure on price pressures. With inflation by the Fed’s targeted measure, at 2.4%, still above the Fed’s 2% goal, policymakers are looking for further assurance that it is headed durably downward before they decide to cut rates. Instead, since the start of they year, some readings on inflation have been stronger than expected, prompting some Fed policymakers to say they may need to delay rate cuts a bit longer. Fed Governor Christopher Waller, whose takes on monetary policy have proven prescient over the past couple of years, said in February that he wants a couple more months of data to verify progress on inflation, and that strong job gains underscore there is “no rush” to cut rates. Meanwhile policymakers continue to look for any signals the labor market is cracking under the pressure of the highest U.S. policy rate in decades. Analysts said they won’t find much in Friday’s jobs report. “It is clear that the pace of hiring is cooling, which was to have been expected,” wrote Regions Financial Corp (NYSE:RF) Chief Economist Richard Moody. “There is, however, nothing in the data, including the higher jobless rate, that tells us the labor market is on the verge of rolling over.” More

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s consumer prices rose for the first time in six months due to spending linked to the Lunar New Year, offering some reprieve for the world’s second-biggest economy grappling with weak consumer sentiment, while factory-gate prices fell again.The consumer price index (CPI) climbed 0.7% year-on-year in February, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Saturday, beating the 0.3% gain forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.The year-on-year growth in consumer prices was also the highest in 11 months, buoyed by gains in some key foodstuffs such as pork and fresh vegetables, as well as travel amid a seasonal rush around Lunar New Year in February, according to the NBS data.The bounce into positive territory contrasted with the 0.8% fall in January, the steepest drop in over 14 years, due to a higher statistical base in January 2023 as the Lunar New Year arrived earlier that month and boosted spending.While other recent indicators, such as much stronger-than-expected trade figures this week, have suggested improvement in some parts of the economy, analysts warn that a full-throttled recovery is not yet in the cards. “It is too early to conclude that deflation in China is over,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.”Domestic demand is still quite weak. Property sales of new apartments have not stabilised yet.”In February this year, CPI rose 1.0% month-on-month, outpacing the 0.3% uptick in January and the 0.7% growth forecast by economists.But the producer price index (PPI) fell 2.7% from a year earlier in February versus a 2.5% drop the previous month. That was faster than a 2.5% decline forecast in the Reuters poll. Producer prices have declined for more than 1-1/2 years.The risk of deflation due to continued weak demand remains one of the main drags on China’s overall growth.In January-February, CPI was unchanged from a year earlier, with food prices down 3.4% and non-food prices 0.9% lower. China has been grappling with sub-par growth over the past year amid an entrenched debt crisis among the country’s property developers that had crushed home-buying sentiment and rocked what was once a mighty pillar of the economy. Weak international trade flows, declining domestic investment, and high local government debt further sapped economic growth. Policymakers have pledged to roll out new measures, promising to unleash “new productive forces”. The head of China’s central bank said on Wednesday there was room to cut the amount of cash that commercial banks set aside as reserves, following 50 basis points of cuts in banks’ reserve ratio requirement (RRR) in January, the biggest in two years.Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday announced an ambitious economic growth target of around 5%, although economists said the goal would be harder to reach as a post-COVID recovery loses steam. The International Monetary Fund has predicted China’s growth to ease to 4.6% from 5.2% last year. Li also set a 2024 inflation target of 3%, in line with goals set since 2015. Consumer prices rose 0.2% last year, missing the government’s target.”We only expect a modest recovery in CPI and PPI inflation despite the CPI inflation target of 3%, and a deeper property downturn may pose greater deflationary risk,” said economists at UBS in a research note this week. More

The program is to fund investments in critical infrastructure for flood control and slope stabilization, as well as the reconstruction of bridges and roads damaged by weather-related disasters. Costa Rica “remains highly exposed to extreme weather events and natural hazards, which increase the impact of these risks,” the country’s finance minister, Nogui Acosta, said in a statement from the World Bank.”This project is aligned with the country’s strategy for mitigating and adapting to climate change and will support our priority of investing in resilient infrastructure and services to protect people living in the most vulnerable areas,” Acosta added. More

(Reuters) – Oregon Governor Tina Kotek on Friday vowed to sign into law a bill that recriminalizes drug use, more than three years after voters approved the most liberal drug law in the country, one that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs.”I intend to sign House Bill 4002 and the related prevention and treatment investments within the next 30 days,” Kotek, a Democrat, said in a statement.The reversal, which can impose a misdemeanor sentence of 180 days for drug possession, was an acknowledgment that Measure 110, approved by voters in November 2020, failed in its approach to treat addiction as a public health matter, not a crime.Even as the state poured money from cannabis taxes into recovery services, cities like Portland experienced people openly consuming drugs in front of stores, trendy restaurants and hotels, many of them crouched over torch lighters held up to sheets of tinfoil or meth pipes.Meanwhile Oregon’s drug overdose deaths, which increased by a third from 2019 to 2020, rose another 44% in 2021, according to state figures.Under Measure 110, instead of arresting drug users, police could issue $100 citations along with drug treatment information. But there were no ramifications for declining treatment, and state data showed only 4% of those who received citations called the hotline.In November 2020, Measure 110 won support from 58% of voters. But by August last year, a survey by Emerson (NYSE:EMR) College found 56% of Oregonians supported a total repeal and 64% supported changes.While HB 4002 reimposes penalties, it also enables local governments and law-enforcement agencies to choose whether they want to offer users the opportunity to pursue drug treatment before going to jail.Nearly two dozen of Oregon’s 36 counties have agreed to opt into the treatment-first approach, the Oregonian reported, citing state lawmakers. More