Aurelia Butler

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – North American leaders aim to give new impetus to strengthening economic ties at a meeting this week, even as a major dispute grinds on over Mexico’s energy policies which has distracted from cooperation on other issues like immigration. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will host his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for talks in Mexico City from Monday through Wednesday, the first summit between the three since late 2021.”A meeting like this is so that we keep moving forward on economic integration,” Lopez Obrador said this week.Still, Mexico remains mired in an energy dispute with the United States and Canada, who argue their firms have been disadvantaged by Lopez Obrador’s campaign to give control of the market to his cash-strapped state energy companies.A combative leftist, Lopez Obrador says his policy is a matter of national sovereignty, on the grounds that past governments skewed the energy market to favor private interests.Washington and Ottawa believe his actions breach the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal, and have launched dispute resolution proceedings against Mexico, souring the mood for cooperation over jobs and investment.Trudeau told Reuters on Friday he would make the case that resolving the energy dispute would help bring more foreign investment to Mexico, and was confident of making progress.Others argue the time for negotiation is over.Aindriu Colgan, director of tax and trade policy at the American Petroleum Institute – whose members include ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) – said it was time to call a dispute panel because “Mexico is blatantly violating the USMCA.”Ahead of the summit, officials have publicly stressed North America’s shared economic interests, while privately tempering prospects for a major breakthrough on the energy spat.”They will do their utmost to make it appear a happy gathering,” said Andres Rozental, a former Mexican deputy foreign minister. “As long as Lopez Obrador keeps migrants out of the border area, Biden will be happy.”SNUBS, FENTANYL, IMMIGRATIONSince the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled supply chains, policymakers have stepped up calls for firms to relocate business from Asia to make the region’s economy more resilient.As part of that drive, Lopez Obrador, who in June snubbed Biden’s invitation to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in protest at his exclusion of the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, wants to discuss his plan to boost solar power in northern Mexico and secure U.S. financial support for it.Biden’s aides say they expect a positive tone at the gathering after the announcement of a new migration plan this week, and Mexico caught a prominent cartel boss.Ovidio Guzman, son of jailed kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a gang blamed for helping to fuel a surge in fatal overdoses of synthetic opioid fentanyl in the United States.The U.S. government said stopping fentanyl flows would be an important part of talks on combating drug cartels. Supply chains, climate change and immigration would also be discussed.A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any tensions over Lopez Obrador’s June snub had dissipated and the two presidents were in a better position to work together.Mexico’s government has repeatedly urged the United States to commit funds to Central America and southern Mexico to boost development and stem the northward trek of migrants from what has long been one of the poorest regions on the continent.It has also urged Washington to make it easier for migrants to get U.S. jobs. A Mexican official said the deal unveiled on Thursday broadening border expulsions would do that due to a quid pro quo it contained on facilitating migrant entry by air.Mexico has recently also raised U.S. hackles with a plan to prohibit imports of genetically modified corn. Although Lopez Obrador’s government agreed to delay the ban until 2025, the issue would be discussed, he said. More

Mortgage borrowers face being stranded on the wrong side of a growing debt divide if they have to refinance a fixed-rate home loan this year, with younger homeowners set to be hit the hardest. With millions of borrowers set to roll off fixed-rate mortgage deals during the course of 2023, the “lottery” of rising costs could plunge more middle-income households into financial difficulties, according to the Financial Resilience Barometer report from Oxford Economics and Hargreaves Lansdown.Almost 90 per cent of the lowest-income households have poor or very poor financial resilience, but almost one-third of middle-income households now also fall into this category, showing how higher mortgage costs are pushing the squeeze further up the income scale. “Younger borrowers are particularly exposed, because they’re likely to have stretched themselves to buy when prices were higher,” said Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “To add insult to injury, at this stage in life they’re also less likely to have as much savings to fall back on, so ramping up mortgage repayments could mean they end up building a mountain of short-term debt.”Some lenders are set to trim mortgage rates this week as the housing market slows, but they nonetheless remain at much higher levels than a year ago. The average two-year fixed rate loan was 5.8 per cent at the end of 2022, according to price comparison site Moneyfacts, up from 2.4 per cent at the close of 2021.The difference would add nearly £500 to monthly costs based on a typical £250,000 repayment mortgage, according to the Financial Times’s calculations. Although the headline rate of inflation is expected to start to fall in 2023, economists warn that the cost of living crisis is far from over as low-income households remain less financially secure than they were before the pandemic.The last quarter of 2022 is expected to be the peak of the cost of living squeeze with nearly 40 per cent of UK households having to cut back, raid their savings or take on debt to maintain usual levels of spending, according to Oxford Economics. By the end of 2023, this figure is expected to have reduced to 24 per cent of households. However, the report’s authors warned that households without savings to draw on were more at risk of falling into problem debt. More

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Sunday he was willing to discuss pay rises for nurses in a bid to end strikes that have deepened a crisis within the health service the day before the government meets with trade union leaders.Britain’s National Health Service, long treasured and funded by taxpayers, delivers free care to all, but is under strain following years of relative underinvestment and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.The strikes, staff shortages, and winter flu have led some hospitals to declare critical incidents. Patients are facing hours-long waits for ambulances, and some are being treated in corridors. Sunak, who is under increasing pressure including from members of his Conservative Party to improve wage offers to healthcare staff, said the government was willing to have conversations with union leaders about pay, despite ministers previously refusing to reopen talks about this year’s deal.”We want to have a reasonable, honest, two-way conversation about pay,” Sunak told the BBC. “The door has always been open to talk about the things that nurses want to talk about, and the unions want to talk about more generally.”Pat Cullen, the head of the Royal College of Nursing union, said she had a “chink of optimism” after noticing a “little shift” in the prime minister’s stance.Thousands of nurses in Britain will go on strike again on Jan. 18 and 19 over pay after walking out on two days in December.”The prime minister talked about coming to the table. That’s a move for me because I’ve said ‘let’s meet halfway’. I can’t negotiate on my own,” Cullen said.”We will put our case, but what the government wants to talk about tomorrow is pay moving forward and in the broadest terms. That is not going to avert the strike action that’s planned for 10 days’ time.”Sunak also repeatedly refused to say whether he uses private healthcare insisting the issue is a “distraction from the things that really matter”.”As a general policy I wouldn’t ever talk about me or my family’s healthcare situation,” he said. “It’s not really relevant.” More

More than 560,000 homes were reported to be still without power in California as of 0506 ET (1006 GMT), according to data from PowerOutage.us.At least six people have died in the severe weather since New Year’s weekend, including a toddler killed by a fallen redwood tree crushing a mobile home in northern California.Forecasters have meanwhile warned yet another “atmospheric river” of dense, moist tropical air will clobber California on Monday with rain and mountain snow.An NWS weather alert on Saturday warned that the cumulative effect of successive heavy rain storms since late December could bring rivers to record high levels and cause flooding across much of Central California. More

CRIC surveyed one hundred companies. The figure for the year 2022 was 824 billion yuan, decreasing by 38% year over year, it said.The central bank said on Thursday that for cities where the selling prices of new homes fall month-on-month and year-on-year for three consecutive months, the floor on mortgage rates can be lowered or abolished for first-time home buyers in phases.China is also planning to relax restrictions on borrowing for property developers by dialing back the “three red lines” policy, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.In November and December, Chinese regulators rolled out a series of measures to bolster liquidity in the sector, including China’s biggest state-owned banks pledging at least $162 billion in fresh credit to ease a cash crunch in the sector.The property sector, which accounts for a quarter of China’s economy, was badly hit last year as many developers were unable to finish building projects that led to mortgage boycotts by some buyers. Lockdowns and movement control measures to control the spread of COVID-19 also hurt buyer sentiment.($1 = 6.8370 Chinese yuan renminbi) More