Brazil: Brazilian president's daughter-in-law and granddaughter test positive for COVID-19

Heloisa Bolsonaro shared that her daughter, Georgia Bolsonaro, only experienced mild symptoms, including a fever and runny nose.

'On the first day we felt bad, now, thank God, we're fine,' she wrote. 'And thanks to a drug that I just took and I got better right away. Impressive.'

Read more at: Brazilian president's daughter-in-law and granddaughter test positive for COVID-19 | Daily Mail Online

Coronsvirus: Brazil exceeds 500,000 COVID-19 deaths

Brazil hit the tragic milestone of half a million COVID deaths on Saturday when it added 2,495 fatalities to its count.

Read more at: Brazil exceeds 500,000 COVID-19 deaths | World| Breaking news and perspectives from around the globe | DW | 19.06.2021

Brazil's Bolsonaro says coronavirus restrictions kill economy - by Carolina Mandl, Leonardo Benassatto

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Saturday that lockdown measures used to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus “kill” and have “suffocated” the country’s economy. 

Read more at: Brazil's Bolsonaro says coronavirus restrictions kill economy - Reuters

Coronavirus latest: Donald Trump bans entry into the US from Brazil

The US president made the move as Brazil's COVID-19 crisis deepens and
its death toll rises sharply. The proclamation prohibits entry for
anyone who has been in Brazil in the last 14 days.

Read more:
Coronavirus latest: Donald Trump bans entry into the US from Brazil | News | DW | 25.05.2020

Weapons Industry: India seeks shift from buying weapons to exporting them

India's arms imports account for nearly 10% of the global total, with Russia being the country's main supplier. However, New Delhi is now seeking to become a big exporter of weapons to the rest of the world.

Read more at:
https://www.dw.com/en/india-seeks-shift-from-buying-weapons-to-exporting-them/a-52270331

Trump says he will reimpose steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina, opening new trade war fronts

President Donald Trump said he would impose tariffs, effective immediately, on all steel and aluminum shipped into the United States from Brazil and Argentina.

Read more: Trump says he will reimpose steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina, opening new trade war fronts | Agweek

South America: Corporations, Environment and Pollution: Coca-Cola And Nestlé To Privatize The Largest Reserve Of Water In South America

Private companies such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé are allegedly in the process of privatizing the largest reserve of water, known as the Guarani Aquifer, in South America. The aquifer is located beneath the surface of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay and is the second largest-known aquifer system in the world. 

Reported by Correiodo Brasil the major transnational conglomerates are “striding forward” with their negotiations to privatize the aquifer system. Meetings have already been reserved with authorities of the current government, such as Michel Temer, to outline procedures required for private companies to exploit the water sources. The concession contracts will last more than 100 years. 

The first public conversation about this dilemma was scheduled on the same day the process of voting for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff was opened. As Central Politico reports, “This coincidence was fatal for the adjournment of the meeting.”

“There must be another list of projects to be granted or privatized in the medium term, with auctions that may occur in up to one year, such as Eletrobras energy distributors and freshwater sources,” adds the news site, translated via Google from Portuguese. 

This issue extends beyond South America, as all humans will be affected by the decision to privatize the second-largest aquifer system in the world. Essentially, the corporations are profiting off a natural resource that should be freely available to all. 

Under the Guarani Aquifer Project’s Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Project, known as ANA’s Guarani Aquifer Project (SAG), the aquifer would be managed and preserved for present and future generations. Following the conservatives’ victory in Argentina and the coup d’état, pressed for by the ultra right in Paraguay and Brazil, only Uruguay was left to vote on the privatization of the aquifer. 

Approximately two-thirds (1.2 million km²) of the reserve is located in Brazilian territory, specifically in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. Future generations will ultimately suffer if this deal goes through, which is why human rights organizations around the world are getting involved.

 Read more: Coca-Cola And Nestlé To Privatize The Largest Reserve Of Water In South America

Steel Industry: EU proposes duties on Brazil, Iran, Russia, Ukraine steel

The European Union is planning to impose duties of up to 33 percent on hot-rolled steel imports from Brazil, Iran, Russia and Ukraine to counter what it sees as unfairly low prices, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The EU has over 40 anti-dumping measures to aid European steel producers, mostly aimed at China. 

In June, the bloc set duties of up to 35.9 percent on Chinese hot-rolled steel, prompting an angry response from Beijing. 

Steel is the second biggest industry in the world after oil and gas and the EU's attention has recently shifted as barriers aimed at cheap Chinese imports have an impact.

Read more: EU proposes duties on Brazil, Iran, Russia, Ukraine steel

Global Economics: Decoding the shift in global economic power

Much has been made of how there has been a substantial shift in the balance of economic power between the advanced capitalist economies (or the “North”) and some economies of the global South.

It is true that very recently the hype surrounding “emerging markets” has died down, as international capital flows have swung away from them and many of them have shown decelerating growth or even declines in income as global exports fall.

Nevertheless, the feeling persists that — in spite of a supposedly resurgent US economy — the advanced economies are generally in a process of relative decline, while the developing world in general and certain economies in particular have much better chances of future economic dynamism. And this process is generally seen to be the result of the forces of globalisation, which have enabled developing countries, especially some in Asia, to take advantage of newer and larger export markets and improved access to internationally mobile capital to increase their rates of economic expansion.

But how significant has this process actually been? In fact, there has definitely been some change over the past three and a half decades, but it has been more limited in time than is generally presumed.

The share of the advanced economies in global GDP in current US dollar prices, calculated at market exchange rates shows that the share of advanced economies declined from around 83 per cent in the late 1980s to around 60 per cent now, which is really quite a substantial decline.

However, the bulk of this change occurred in a relatively short period: the decade 2002 to 2012, when the share dropped from 80 per cent to 62 per cent.

The periods before and after have shown much less variation, and indeed, the share seems to have stabilised at around 61 per cent thereafter.

The dominant part of this shift is due to the increase in China’s share, which rose from around 3 per cent to more than 15 per cent.

Once again, this happened essentially during the decade after 2005, when the share of China in global GDP at market exchange rates jumped by more than ten percentage points. Indeed, the change in China’s share alone explains 87 per cent of the entire decline in the share of the advanced economies in the period 1980 to 2015.

Considering only the last decade, that is after 2005, the relative increase in China’s GDP accounts for a slightly lower proportion of the change, at 67 per cent — which is still hugely significant.

The change in shares of other regions provides some interesting insights. The Latin American region experienced a medium term decline in relative income share over the 1980s (the “lost decade”), recovered somewhat in the 1990s before declining once again in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The global commodity boom of 2003 onwards was associated with a revival in the region’s economic fortunes and the share of the region increased from 5 per cent in 2003 to more than 8 per cent in 2011, but thereafter it has stagnated and fallen with the unwinding of that boom.

The income share of the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) appears to be very strongly driven by global oil prices, with sharp peaks in period of high oil prices and stagnation or decline otherwise, and over the entire period there has been a stagnation in income share rather than any increase.

An even more depressing story emerges for Sub Saharan Africa, which showed decline in income share for a prolonged period between 1980 and 2002, and subsequently a slight recovery (from 1.1 per cent in 2002 to around 2 per cent in 2012 and thereafter) that was still well below the share of more than 3 per cent in 1980. The only developing region that shows a clear increase is developing Asia, which in this chart excludes China to clarify the respective significance of both.

But the increase in the income share of this region (minus China) has been much less marked than that for China, and most of it occurred after 2002, as the income share rose from 3.5 per cent in 2002 to 6.4 per cent in 2015.

It is evident that in terms of increasing share of global GDP, India has been the most impressive performer over the past decade in particular, with its share increasing from 1.8 per cent in 2005 to 3 per cent in 2015.

Note, however, that this is still tiny in comparison to China, and indeed, just the increase in China’s share over that decade has been more than three times of India’s aggregate share. South Korea’s share has also increased, mostly over the 1980s and early 1990s, while Indonesia’s share increase occurred mostly during the commodity boom of the 2000s.

In terms of per capita GDP, however, the Indian performance looks much less impressive than those of the major Asian counterparts. Interestingly, even the Chinese experience appears not as sharply remarkable, although still hugely better than that of India.

Charts tracking the movements of per capita GDP, measured now in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates rather than market rates. There are numerous problems with the use of the PPP measure, but for current comparative purposes it does provide some kind of indicator.

This shows that by far the most impressive performance in terms of increasing per capita GDP has been in South Korea, followed by Malaysia. India shows the least improvement among these five economies, despite its apparently more rapid increase in terms of share of world GDP in the last decade.

Overall, therefore, while the world economy has changed over the past three decades, this change should not be exaggerated for most developing regions, or even for most countries in what is apparently the most dynamic region of Asia.

Read more: Decoding the shift in global economic power | Business Line

Global Economy: The crash of 2016? - by Robert J. Samuels

You cannot understand the vulnerable state of the U.S. and global economies — and nervous stock markets — without coming to grips with the crash of “emerging-market” countries. Led by China, these are middle-income countries that, along with the poorest countries, account for 85 percent of the world’s population and 60 percent of the global economy, according to Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund.

In many ways, their voyage into the global marketplace is a triumph. Rapid economic growth, driven in part by trade and international investment, has catapulted hundreds of millions of people out of deep poverty. By World Bank estimates, about 13 percent of the world’s population lives on incomes of $1.90 a day or less, but that’s down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981.

Unfortunately, emerging-market countries are now disappointing in ways that damage the world economy. After the 2008-09 financial crisis, a widespread expectation was that the rapid growth of emerging-market countries would create a safety net for the mature economies of the United States, Japan and the European Union. For a while, that happened. Since 2008, emerging-market countries have provided more than 80 percent of global growth, Lagarde said in a speech at the University of Maryland.

Compared with these heightened expectations, many emerging-market economies have crashed. China is at the epicenter of the problem. Its annual growth, once 10 percent, appears headed toward 6 percent. This, in turn, has led to a collapse in prices for raw materials (oil, metals, foodstuffs), because China’s demand has been weaker than expected. Commodity prices are down about two-thirds from recent peaks, Lagarde said.

The ripple effects have spread. Commodity-producing countries — Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Canada — have suffered setbacks. Companies that borrowed heavily to add capacity are now straining to repay debts. With prices depressed, some banks and bond investors may be stiffed. A Morgan Stanley analysis finds that most U.S. banks have ample reserves against likely defaults. This may be less true of banks in Europe and emerging-market nations. Facing large losses, emerging-market banks have already tightened credit, reports the Institute of International Finance (IIF), an industry group.

The United States cannot isolate itself from these realities. The weakening global economy would be less important if the U.S. domestic economy were booming. It isn’t. Americans spend cautiously because they’re still spooked by the shock of the 2008-09 financial crisis and Great Recession. Consumers try to protect themselves against a recurrence by raising their saving and reducing their debt. Businesses do likewise by skimping on investment projects. A recent Wall Street Journal story carried the headline: “Big Firms Hit Brake as Profit Slumps.”

The pessimism is often self-fulfilling. Consumers and companies act cautiously, producing a shaky prosperity that breeds more caution. To escape this trap, the U.S. economy needs a shove from abroad. The assumption once was that the boost would come from the emerging-market countries. This increasingly seems wishful thinking. It is hard to find large pockets of strong, confident growth anywhere in the world. This is the markets’ somber message: There is only a thin margin for error between continued recovery and dreaded recession.

Read more: The crash of 2016? - The Washington Post