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For Syria’s Economy, the Way Forward Starts With Sanctions Relief

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Years of strife ruined the energy sector, battered the currency and strangled growth. The West must ease financial controls to help the economy, experts say.Although the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria was shockingly quick, rebuilding the devastated economy he left behind will be painfully slow.After nearly 14 years of brutal civil war and political repression, most of Syria’s oil and gas wells, roads, electricity grids, farmland and infrastructure are in ruins. Ninety percent of the population is living in poverty. The value of the Syrian pound has plummeted, and the central bank’s reserves of foreign currency — needed to buy essentials like food, fuel and spare parts — are nearly depleted.Before the war, oil accounted for two-thirds of Syria’s exports and agriculture made up roughly a quarter of economic activity. More recently, Syria’s most profitable export was captagon, an illegal, addictive amphetamine controlled by a cartel of politically connected elites.“The whole economic system in Syria is not functioning,” said Samir Aita, a Syrian economist and the president of the Circle of Arab Economists.Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that has taken power in Syria, has a daunting task ahead to unify the rebel factions, reconstitute the government, re-establish the rule of law, provide security and manage essential services like the distribution of water and other scarce resources.Even so, there is widespread agreement that the single most important step in rebuilding Syria’s economy can be taken only by the United States: Lift the punishing layers of sanctions that have effectively cut off Syria from international commerce and investment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Threats About the Dollar Could Push Other Countries to Find Alternatives

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that seek to replace the dollar in trade or undermine its global reserve currency status.When Republicans nominated Donald J. Trump to be their presidential candidate over the summer, the party’s platform included a pledge to maintain the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency.Since winning the election, Mr. Trump has indicated that he wants to deliver on that promise. Over the last week he warned that if the group of nations known as BRICS countries — which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — tried to create their own currency to rival the dollar, he would punish them with 100 percent tariffs and shut them out of U.S. markets.“There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.The warning was intended to preserve the dollar’s premier status, but economists and analysts suggested that it could have the opposite effect. Although it appears unlikely that the BRICS would be able to create their own currency, the aggressive use of tariffs and sanctions by the United States is the reason that other nations have increasingly been considering alternatives to the dollar. By making such threats, Mr. Trump could end up accelerating that trend.“Threatening retaliation against the unlikely creation of a BRICS currency only reinforces the rest of the world’s concerns about the U.S. willingness to wield dollar dominance as an economic and geopolitical weapon,” said Eswar Prasad, the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “This will intensify other countries’ attempts to diversify away from use of the dollar for international payments and for foreign exchange reserves.”The dollar has been the world’s dominant currency for about a century and has served as the world’s reserve currency since the end of World War II. It makes up the majority of foreign exchange reserves held in global central banks and is widely used in international transactions such as trade and loans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Logging Is the Deadliest Job, but Still an Oregon Way of Life

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    In southwestern Oregon, semi trucks loaded with logs snake along roads through dark, lush forests of Douglas fir. The logging industry has shaped and sustained families here for generations.A steady demand for lumber and a lack of other well-paying jobs in rural parts of the state have made logging one of the most promising career paths.It also comes with grave risk.A glossary of logging terms includes an entry for heavy broken branches that can fall without warning: widowmakers.Inside the Deadliest Job in AmericaMostly employed in densely forested pockets of the Pacific Northwest and the South, loggers have the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injuries of any civilian occupation in the nation, outpacing roofers, hunters and underground mining machine operators.About 100 of every 100,000 logging workers die from work injuries, compared with four per 100,000 for all workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Logs stacked for shipment at a port in North Bend, Ore.“There is a mix of physical factors — heavy equipment and, of course, the massive trees,” said Marissa Baker, a professor of occupational health at the University of Washington who has researched the logging industry. “Couple that with steep terrain and unforgiving weather and the rural aspect of the work, and it leads to great danger.”In the most rural stretches of Oregon, where swaths have been scarred by the clear-cutting of trees, many workers decide the risk is worth it. Most loggers here earn around $29 an hour. And average timber industry wages are 17 percent higher than local private-sector wages, according to a recent report from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.Logging operates mostly year round, with workers usually bouncing among companies — sometimes called outfits — where pay can vary according to the specific job that needs to be done. But the industry has declined steeply since the 1990s, partly because of competition from other countries, including Brazil and Canada, and years of legal battles as conservationists seek to limit logging in old-growth forests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Europe Braces for Trump: ‘Worst Economic Nightmare Has Come True’

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    The United States is the biggest trading partner for the European Union and Britain, whose economies could be at risk from the president-elect’s policies.The outlook for Europe’s economy has been disappointing.Last week — after Donald J. Trump’s presidential election — it got worse.Deep uncertainty about the Trump administration’s policies on trade, technology, Ukraine, climate change and more is expected to chill investment and hamstring growth. The launch of a possible tariff war by the United States, the biggest trading partner and closest ally of the European Union and Britain, would hammer major industries like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and machinery.And the need to raise military spending because of doubts about America’s guarantees in Europe would further strain national budgets and increase deficits.In addition, the president-elect’s more confrontational attitude toward China could pressure Europe to pick sides or face retribution.“Europe’s worst economic nightmare has come true,” said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at the Dutch bank ING. The developments, he warned, could push the eurozone into “a full-blown recession” next year.With political turmoil in Germany and France, Europe’s two largest economies, this latest blow could hardly come at a worse time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Win Shows Limits of Biden’s Industrial Policy

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    When President Biden addressed the nation this week after a gutting election, his reflections on his economic legacy offered a glimpse into why Democrats were resoundingly defeated.The efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to reshape American manufacturing were the most ambitious economic plans in a generation, but most voters had yet to see the fruits of those policies.“We have legislation we passed that’s only now just really kicking in,” Mr. Biden said, explaining that a “vast majority” of the benefits from federal investments that his administration made would be felt over the next decade.Legislation enacted by the Biden-Harris administration was designed to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the United States economy to develop domestic clean energy and semiconductor sectors. The investments were likened to a modern-day New Deal that would make American supply chains less reliant on foreign adversaries while creating thousands of jobs, including for workers without a college degree.But anger over more immediate and tangible economic issues — including rapid inflation and high mortgage rates — dwarfed optimism about factories that had yet to be built. That reality helped topple Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and showed the limits of industrial policy as a winning political strategy.In the days since Mr. Trump’s victory, current and former Biden administration officials have been grappling both privately and publicly with why their economic strategy did not prove to be more popular. They have comforted themselves with the fact that inflation has led to the defeat of incumbent leaders around the world, although most of those governments were also struggling with weak economies, whereas growth in the United States remains robust.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Another Jolt of Uncertainty for a Global Economy Mired in It

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    The U.S. presidential election result has ensured a sharp turn in economic policy expected to upend global commerce and diverge from decades of American norms.The U.S. presidential election is over. What remains is a disorienting miasma of fresh economic uncertainty.Despite reams of campaign proposals, just how President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration will handle policy decisions that are crucial to the global economy’s path — on trade, technology, climate, industrial policy and more — is still unclear.Meanwhile, pre-election sources of instability keep spinning. War rumbles on in Ukraine. Escalating conflict in the Middle East could reignite a rise in food and energy prices. China, a vital engine of global growth, is trying to resuscitate its flattened economy. Many poor and middle-income countries face an unscalable wall of debt.Increasing bouts of extreme weather continue to destroy crops, wreck cities and swell the flow of migrants from economically devastated regions. And advances in artificial intelligence are poised to eliminate, create and reconfigure tens of millions of jobs.Then there is the hangover from the pandemic. Philip N. Jefferson, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, has said policymakers are still trying to understand the economic aftereffects of this “once-in-a-century disturbance of worldwide consequence.”Inflation, in particular, has become harder to predict in the pandemic’s aftermath as political and military tensions have risen, he noted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Factory Towns Laid Low by the ‘China Shock’ Are Benefiting From New Investments

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    Communities that suffered the worst of plant closings in recent decades are now gaining an outsize share of fresh investment and new jobs.For much of the last half century, economic life in the heart of North Carolina has been dominated by factory closings, joblessness and downgraded expectations. Textile mills and furniture plants have been undercut by low-priced imports from Mexico and China. Tobacco processing jobs have disappeared.Yet over the last several years, an infusion of investment in cutting-edge industries like biotechnology, computer chips and electric vehicles has lifted the fortunes of long-struggling communities.North Carolina presents a conspicuous example of this trend, yet a similar story is playing out elsewhere. From industrial swaths of the Midwest to factory towns in the South, areas that suffered the most wrenching downsides of trade are now capturing the greatest shares of investment into forward-tilting industries, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a public policy research organization in Washington.As furniture manufacturing and textile jobs vanished, Chatham County, N.C., suffered the consequences for decades.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesThe Plant in Pittsboro, N.C., is home to a variety of small businesses and includes outdoor event spaces and restaurants.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesBrookings researchers examined pledges of private investment across the United States, using data compiled by the Biden administration as part of its campaign to subsidize domestic production of computer chips and electric vehicles. They also tapped a Massachusetts Institute of Technology database that tracks investments in clean energy. Over the last three years, $736 billion in investment has been promised for these key industries, the researchers found.When they mapped the investments, the Brookings team concluded that nearly a third of the total is flowing into communities that experienced the worst effects of the so-called China Shock — the factory closures that followed China’s entry to the global trading system in 2001.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Russia Raises Interest Rate to 21 Percent, Its Highest in Decades

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    Military spending and recruitment are causing the country’s economy to overheat, leaving regulators in a struggle to rein in rising prices.Russia’s central bank raised the cost of borrowing in the country to its highest level in more than two decades on Friday in an effort to slow inflation that is being fueled by record military spending and recruitment.The central bank raised Russia’s benchmark interest rate to 21 percent during its regular monetary policy meeting. That makes borrowing in the country even more expensive than at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when the central bank sharply increased interest rates to calm the economy. The effective cost of borrowing in Russia is now the highest since 2003.It was the third increase in a row, and Elvira Nabiullina, the central bank’s president, said that interest rates could rise further later this year.“We don’t see inflationary pressures slowing down,” Ms. Nabiullina, who maintains some policy independence from the Kremlin, told reporters after announcing the new rate.The increase underscores the challenges that Ms. Nabiullina faces as she tries to cool inflation, which she forecasts will average 8.8 percent this year. At that level, prices are rising more than twice as quickly as the central bank considers healthy for the Russian economy.Ms. Nabiullina implicitly blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the continued price increases. She said the Kremlin’s decision to raise spending by $15.5 billion next year, mostly to cover war-related costs, was overheating the economy and feeding inflation.In particular, she said, high government spending blunts the central bank’s main tool for controlling inflation — setting interest rates. This is because companies that receive military contracts are willing to take out loans at any cost to meet production deadlines.Labor shortages resulting from military recruitment during the war have also fueled inflation.The war has left hundreds of thousands of Russian men dead or seriously injured, according to Western intelligence agencies. Hundreds of thousands more have left the country to avoid being called up. And hundreds of thousands of others have joined the army to benefit from ever-rising payouts, leaving the civilian economy deprived of workers.“Spare hands no longer exist in the economy,” Ms. Nabiullina said, which leaves companies competing for workers by offering them higher wages.In turn, those rising wages spur consumer spending, further contributing to inflation.Military spending has caused a boom in the Russian economy: The International Monetary Fund said this week that Russia’s economy would grow 3.6 percent this year, 0.4 percentage points higher than its previous forecast. But economists say that the situation is breaking the balance between supply and demand, with potential long-term consequences for the country’s financial stability.Yet the Kremlin is showing no signs of letting up on war spending.“Our main priority are the goals of the special military operation,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told RBC, a business newspaper, this week, referring to the war in Ukraine. “We will spend as much money as we need on the battlefield, on the victory.”Oleg Matsnev More

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    California Tribal Casinos May Sue to Curb City Card Rooms

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    In the sprawl of Los Angeles County, a handful of casinos have operated for decades.There’s the crescent-shaped casino in Commerce, an industrial city off Interstate 5. A warehouse-like gambling parlor in Hawaiian Gardens, a short drive south. Two card rooms in Gardena, a nearby suburb.Beyond being places to gamble and unwind, they have two things in common. They generate a large portion of their cities’ revenue. And their existence may soon be challenged in court by California’s tribal nations.After a multimillion-dollar lobbying battle, state legislation signed into law last month allows Native American tribes, which own some of California’s largest and most lucrative casinos, to dispute the legality of certain games played inside these small, privately owned gambling halls.Tribes have argued that such casinos — also known as card rooms because they have only table games and not slot machines — have siphoned millions of dollars away from them.The new law opened a window until April 1 for tribes to take their case to state courts, where they had lacked legal standing. At particular issue is whether the card rooms offer games considered Las Vegas-style gambling, to which the tribes have exclusive rights in California.A group called the California Cardroom Alliance has said the law puts jobs at risk.Recent legislation allows Native American tribes to challenge the legality of certain games played in card rooms.Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More