Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

The war in Ukraine has Added to the Food Crisis/Inflation in the U.S.

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It is well known that Russia had been stealing Ukrainian cargo ships loaded with wheat and other food commodities and then reselling as their own. When it comes to the supply chain related to food, transportation and inflation, neither Biden nor Harris have bothered to report this crisis much less punish Russia for such actions.

But let us understand what Ukraine supplies to not only Africa but to the global inventory and supply in the first place…adding to the shortages in total.

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How could the war in Ukraine impact global food supplies?

Both Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s largest food exporters. How could global food be impacted?

By: Hannah Ritchie
March 24, 2022

Ukraine has been one of the world’s largest contributors to the World Food Programme – the UN agency that provides food aid to countries in crisis. The Head of the WFP – David Beasley estimates that it provides 40% of its wheat.

The war has now reversed this flow: the WFP is now working to provide Ukrainians with the supplies they need in this crisis.

The war in Ukraine could have profound impacts on global food supplies, with far-reaching consequences for hunger and food security across the world. But it doesn’t have to – there is time to react and to contain a larger crisis.

In this article, I present the data we need to understand the scale of their contribution, and which countries are most reliant on Ukraine for their food supplies.

Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s largest exporters of cereal crops and oils

Ukraine and Russia both play a major role in global food markets. They are net exporters of several of the leading cereal crops: wheat, maize (corn), and barley. Both are also dominant exporters of sunflower oil, one of the world’s dominant vegetable oils. Some countries – such as India – rely heavily on imports of sunflower oil for domestic food supplies.

In the charts I show their contribution to global food exports (how much is traded between countries); and global food production.

The charts show that in 2019 around one-quarter of global wheat exports come from Ukraine and Russia. One-fifth of global maize, and barley too. They are the source of nearly two-thirds of traded sunflower oil, with Ukraine alone accounting for almost half of global exports.

Which countries are most reliant on food imports from Ukraine and Russia?

The potential impacts of reduced food outputs from Ukraine and Russia will not be felt equally everywhere. Some of the most vulnerable are countries that import directly from these countries.

But it will not be contained to these direct importers. Food prices are rising, which means that all countries that are net importers of these commodities could feel significant impacts.

To identify the countries that are most vulnerable – and might need assistance in the months ahead – I have brought together country-by-country import data from these key crops. In the data explorer below you can see the global situation for a range of commodities and metrics.

You can see which countries import the most wheat, maize, barley or sunflower oil; which countries import from Ukraine and/or Russia; and how dependent they were on imports for the domestic supply.

We can see, for example, that many countries across the Middle East and North Africa rely heavily on wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia; they supply more than two-thirds of imports in Egypt, Libya and Lebanon. For maize, the reliance on Ukraine and Russia has a larger geographical reach with countries across East Asia and Europe also importing a large share from them.

To maintain consistency between production, domestic supply and import metrics I have sourced all of the underlying data for these calculations from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It is all based on physical units i.e. tonnes of crops.

Joe’s Most Jobs Added is Officially Declared a Fraud

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Even former President Obama in his speech at the DNC declared that same thing….millions of jobs created. Ehhhh not so much. When Joe Biden was in fact running for a second term, he often declared he created more jobs than any other president in history. What about Kamala….did she ever question the numbers as she has an under graduate degree in political science and economics. Nah…so the truth is the numbers are a fraud, a lie. Add this lie, a big lie to the many others we have been told and as such, likely more lies to come.

In just one year by the way…

source

From MarketWatch:

The U.S. added 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024, indicating the labor market began to cool off earlier and faster than it appeared at the time.

The government’s revised estimate of employment growth showed the economy gained about 2.1 million jobs from April 2023 to March 2024. Originally the increase in employment during that span was put at 2.9 million.

The updated employment figures mean the economy created an average of 173,000 jobs a month during the period in question instead of 242,000 under the old estimates.

The lower number of new job created gives further impetus for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in September as widely expected. The central bank is required under the law to keep inflation low and employment high.

With inflation gradually slowing toward the Fed’s 2% target, the bank has put greater weight on the health of the labor market in considering when to reduce high U.S. interest rates.

The Fed jacked up a key short-term rate to a 23-year peak in 2022 and 2023 to quell the highest inflation in 40 years.

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In part from the New York Times:

The U.S. economy added far fewer jobs in 2023 and early 2024 than previously reported, a sign that cracks in the labor market are more severe — and began forming earlier — than initially believed.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department said that monthly payroll figures overstated job growth by roughly 818,000 in the 12 months that ended in March. That suggests employers added about 174,000 jobs per month during that period, down from the previously reported pace of about 242,000 jobs — a downward revision of about 28 percent.

The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, based on surveys, are reconciled with more accurate but less timely records from state unemployment offices. The new figures, once finalized, will be incorporated into official government employment statistics early next year.

The updated numbers are the latest sign of vulnerability in the job market, which until recently had appeared rock solid despite months of high interest rates and economists’ warnings of an impending recession. More recent data, which wasn’t affected by the revisions, suggest job growth slowed further in the spring and summer, and the unemployment rate, though still relatively low at 4.3 percent, has been gradually rising.

You Need to Know this about BRICS

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BRICS is a collection of countries that launched in 2010 to dominate the global economy. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Just recently, a BRICS summit was held in Johannesburg to discuss the next mission and that is oil and the expansion of alternative currencies.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin speaks via video link during a press conference on the closing day of The Brics summit at the Sandton Convention Center on August 24, 2023

Getty Images  Vladimir Putin addressed the summit via a video link

Russian President Putin attending by video link since he is under arrest by the International Criminal Court for war crimes yet that has not stopped the emerging threat BRICS is about to impose on the global stage…control of at least 30% of the world’s oil industry.

Putin in his remarks states that Western powers with their ‘neo-liberalism’ pose a threat to traditional values in developing countries.

Several additional countries were extended an invitation to join BRICS and they include Saudi Arabita, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. If these countries accept the invitation to join, collectively 30% of the world’s GDP would be under BRICS. China pushed the hardest for the expansion of the bloc as a way to counter Western dominance.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan attempted to play down the bloc’s expansion plans.

He said that due to Brics countries’ divergence of views on critical issues, he did not see it as “evolving into some kind of geo-political rival to the United States or anyone else”.

BBC posted in part by Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South programme at the Quincy Institute in Washington:

‘US can’t set all norms’

Nevertheless, the Brics expansion does represent a shift.

“No longer is it a world where the US can set all the norms, or drive all the institutions. There’s no question about that. But a replacement? No, I would say much more of a complementarity than a replacement that is on the horizon,” Mr Shidore added.

So for a group that says they all value and respect each other’s opinions, maybe no-one won or lost. It really was just a diplomatic gathering with some give and take.

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President Biden does not take issue with any of this since he continues with his war on domestic oil production. He just blocked and restricted oil and gas development in the Gulf and millions of acres of land giving eco groups all they want.

Does this look like the United States has energy stability now or in the future?

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New composition of BRICS will control 80% of world oil production With the addition of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran to the BRICS, the Union will be able to control the lion’s share of the world’s oil production. The same goes for the sharp GDP growth of the new BRICS countries. It will amount to 30% of world GDP and exceed $30 trillion.

This is now a global oil cartel….oh add in OPEC.

 

 

WH/Susan Rice is well Aware of Child Labor Violations/Immigrants

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Yes, THAT Susan Rice, the hateful video/Benghazi lady that works at the Biden White House. Furthermore, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Beccera does nothing when it comes to sponsors that immigrant children are released to. And then there is the Department of Labor….silence…

But this is nothing new as it began under the Obama administration. After an internet search, several outlets reported much that same that the Obama administration actually did separate children from parents or when just children came across the border they were placed into sponsors’ care and trafficked into the sex slave industry or into agricultural operations under all the same conditions described by the recent New York Times investigation. Yes, imagine the New York Times actually doing on investigation on this scandal…yes….after a long read, there is much the NYT’s left out but it is a start, at least.

As a primer, the Department of Labor is responsible for child labor law enforcement which does include limited exemptions. These immigrant children are actually slave labor working in conditions and overnight shifts that violate the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Related stories: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/01/american-child-labor

So, what did the New York Times investigation offer? Titled –>

Read the full NYT’s investigation here.

As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings

The White House and federal agencies were repeatedly alerted to signs of children at risk. The warnings were ignored or missed.

In the spring of 2021, Linda Brandmiller was working at an arena in San Antonio that had been converted into an emergency shelter for migrant children. Thousands of boys were sleeping on cots as the Biden administration grappled with a record number of minors crossing into the United States without their parents.

Ms. Brandmiller’s job was to help vet sponsors, and she had been trained to look for possible trafficking. In her first week, two cases jumped out: One man told her he was sponsoring three boys to employ them at his construction company. Another, who lived in Florida, was trying to sponsor two children who would have to work off the cost of bringing them north.

She immediately contacted supervisors working with the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for these children. “This is urgent,” she wrote in an email reviewed by The New York Times.

But within days, she noticed that one of the children was set to be released to the man in Florida. She wrote another email, this time asking for a supervisor’s “immediate attention” and adding that the government had already sent a 14-year-old boy to the same sponsor.

Ms. Brandmiller also emailed the shelter’s manager. A few days later, her building access was revoked during her lunch break. She said she was never told why she had been fired.

Over the past two years, more than 250,000 migrant children have come alone to the United States. Thousands of children have ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws, a recent Times investigation showed. After the article’s publication in February, the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children.

Inside the White House, Ms. Rice was at the center of the migrant children crisis. As she pressed to move children out of shelters more quickly, clues began to emerge about what was happening to them once they left.

In the summer of 2021, near the height of the crush at the border, H.H.S. managers wrote a memo detailing their worry about increasing reports that children were working alongside their sponsors, a sign of possible labor trafficking. Ms. Rice’s team received the memo, and Ms. Rice was also told what it said, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

Andrew J. Bates, White House deputy press secretary, disputed that, saying Ms. Rice “did not see the memo and was not made aware of its contents.”

Around the same time, Ms. Rice’s team was told about concerns over a large group of children who had been released to one city in Alabama, according to six current and former staff members. The situation was the subject of frequent updates as H.H.S. sent case managers to the city to check on children, and coordinated with the Labor Department and Homeland Security Investigations to look into whether they were working in poultry plants. The full article is found here.

 

Climate Czar John Kerry to Marshal Wind Farms in Mexico Paid by the U.S.

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All coordinated and approved by the State Department? Yup

FNC: Mexico’s president said Wednesday that he expects the U.S. government or U.S. banks to provide interest-free loans to build four wind-power farms in the narrow waist of southern Mexico, an area known as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he expects U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to travel to the area next month to launch the projects.

López Obrador also fueled speculation that U.S. automaker Tesla will build a plant in Mexico, saying that he had been told that Elon Musk’s company was considering an industrial park about 2 miles from the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) near Mexico City.

Mexican presidential spokesman Jesus Ramirez said that this plant would serve as an export hub for the company.

“Tesla is looking at investing in that area to take advantage of AIFA,” Ramirez told Reuters 

The wind farms on the isthmus are part of López Obrador’s plans to build a total of 10 industrial parks along a renovated rail corridor linking the Pacific and Gulf coasts, as part of an effort to create jobs in the poorer, less-developed south of Mexico.

However, the construction of wind farms has faced past opposition from local residents in the area.

López Obrador’s administration also has refused to grant permits for private renewable energy projects backed by foreign investors in Mexico, sparking a commercial dispute with the United States.

The president has invested heavily in propping up the long-struggling state-owned electrical power company, and he said the new wind farms would be run by the state-owned firm.

López Obrador has pushed legislation that gives advantages to the state-owned electric company over private energy production, which in many cases was cleaner.

Mexico’s private energy production and clean energy production has been a growing dispute between the United States and Canada in recent months.

Last year, John Kerry was in Mexico launching the deal as reported by Reuters.

Kerry also said Lopez Obrador had shown a “serious commitment” to the discussion on the climate crisis.

“The president has been very clear about his readiness to transition but to do so in a way that meets the needs of the people of Mexico.”

Mexico is set to present 10 climate steps on Friday, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

This is expected to include increasing solar energy projects at the state energy company (COMFEL.UL) alongside the private sector, enhancing electric mobility and capturing methane gas.

Again, just a few weeks ago, John Kerry was back in Mexico. And Kerry must really love it in Mexico as he was also there just last October…the third trip and soon to be a forth?

Secretary Kerry will meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other government officials as well as U.S. companies to discuss bilateral cooperation and opportunities to enhance Mexico’s nationally determined contribution, promote zero-emission vehicles, reduce methane emissions, and deepen investment in renewable energy.

By the way it seems that pesky word ‘bilateral’ really means our tax dollars are paying for it all. But…the new House Oversight Committee is investigating John Kerry and his negotiations with the Chinese Communist Part. Great…but they need to add Mexico too.