text:
RealityChek
~ So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time….
Tag Archives: China tariffs
(What's Left of) Our Economy: New U.S. Manufacturing Data Bolster Case for Keeping Trump's Tariffs
29 Monday Mar 2021
Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy
CCP Virus, China, China tariffs, consumer electronics, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, exports, GDP-by-industry, gross domestic product, imports, manufacturing, Port of Los Angeles, recession, recovery, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy
As known by RealityChek regulars, throughout the CCP Virus period, I've been writing about how resilient the American domestic manufacturing industry has been, and how a good chunk of the credit should go to the Trump era tariffs. I've argued that they've rendered lots of imports – especially from China – much less price competitive, and created new opportunities for U.S.-based industry to sell to American customers.
With the release last Friday of the U.S. government's latest "GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by Industry" data, this case looks ever more convincing.
The new figures bring the story up to the end of last year, and the key numbers entail the production and the trade deficit figures for the second quarter of 2020 (the first full quarter when the virus and related lockdowns and other mandated and voluntary economic activity curbs impacted economic data) and for the fourth quarter (the most recent numbers from this quarterly data set).
These new figures show that, during that period, according to an output measure called "value added" (a favorite of economists, because it seeks to eliminate the double-counting that inevitably results from including in manufacturing production levels both final products and all the parts, components, and materials that go into those products), manufacturing production increased by 14.32 percent. (This figure does not account for inflation's effects, because the U.S. government doesn't publish detailed inflation-adjusted data for the trade statistics we'll also be examining.)
The comparable growth figure for the whole U.S. economy between the second and fourth quarter? Just 10.12 percent.
It's true that the trade deficits for manufacturing and the whole economy rose strongly as well during this period. But manufacturing outperformed here as well, as its shortfall climbed by 24 percent, versus 24.46 percent for all U.S. goods and services industries combined.
That's a tiny edge, of course, but any edge at all is pretty remarkable, especially given the massive pandemic-era popularity of the consumer electronics products sold so massively to Americans by China, and that most of these goods escaped the Trump levies. In this vein, it's revealing that net imports of laptops, cell phones, and the like represented fully 22.07 percent of the second-to-fourth quarter manufacturing trade deficit's worsening.
And even so, during this period, the manufacturing-dominated China goods trade shortfall increased by just 13.53 percent – a clear testament to the Trump tariffs.
It's important to remember that many major U.S. services industries have taken outsized pandemic- and lockdowns etc-related hits because their business models depend on personal contact. But interestingly, between the first and second quarters, manufacturing output fell faster than total GDP – by 12.47 percent versus 9.47 percent on an annualized basis versus 9.47 percent. So industry had an unusually deeper hole to climb out of. And despite this challenge, whereas total U.S. current dollar output in the fourth quarter was still a bit (0.31 percent) lower than in the first quarter (the final full pre-CCP Virus-affected quarter), manufacturing value-added was fractionally higher.
There's still a possible fly in the ointment – and a big one. Due to equipment and labor shortages, since late November there's been there's a big, growing backup in unloading ships laden with Asian imports at the Port of Los Angeles – a prime gateway for such commerce. And on a monthly basis, since November (and through January), U.S. goods imports from China are down 14.43 percent.
But underscoring the tariffs' effects all the same: Goods imports from Vietnam, which is supposed to be a major winner from the U.S.-China trade conflict, dipped by just 3.93 percent during this period. And many Vietnamese products enter the United States through Los Angeles, too.
The manufacturing trade deficit remains way too high, and manufacturing's value-added growth slowed dramatically last year – from an its all-time high of 13.4 percent between the second and third quarters to a mere 0.80 percent between the third and fourth.
But as the entire U.S. economy recovers from the pandemic due to vaccinations and the approach of herd immunity, as the lockdowns and consumer caution ebb, as more immense government stimulus kicks in, as aerospace giant (and traditional trade surplus star) Boeing recovers from its safety woes, as vaccine production booms, and as the Biden administration continues to keep the Trump tariffs in place, unless Washington makes some big policy mistakes, it seems tough at best to be a U.S. manufacturing pessimist these days.
Im-Politic: New Signs that Biden Will Lift the China Tariffs – & That Beijing is Counting on It
09 Friday Oct 2020
Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic
China, China tariffs, currency, election 2020, exchange rates, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Susan Page, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Vice Presidential debate, Xi JInPing, yuan
Between wall-to-wall coverage of the fly and the smirks, it was easy to lose sight of one of the most important reveals of Wednesday's vice presidential debate: There's now more reason than ever to believe that if Joe Biden becomes President, he'll lift President Trump's tariffs on China. And just as important, there's now more reason than ever to believe that this is exactly what China is expecting.
Whether you believe that Trump-type China trade policies have been needed and/or have worked (two closely related but not identical matters), the likelihood that the tariffs would be toast is incredibly important because it begs the questions of whether the Democratic nominee has a coherent alternative China trade poicy in mind that can adequately serve U.S. interests (along with alternative investment and tech policies) and whether he's capable of developing one.
As known by RealityChek regulars, I believe that on both scores, the answer is an emphatic "No." But what's more important right now is making clear that Biden running mate Kamala Harris' debate performance strongly indicated that a major course change is coming.
First, though, a deserved swipe at moderator Susan Page's China question. Page, the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today, inadvertently reminded viewers (and should have reminded the Commission on Presidential Debates that organizes such events) why veteran campaign and White House reporters are almost uniquely unqualified to serve in these roles – at least if you're looking for some minimally satisfactory discussion of issues.
For these journalists tend to be preoccupied with politics, not policy – and with the most superficial horse race or gossipy dimensions of politics at that. As a result, their substantive background is even less impressive than that usually boasted by colleagues who are supposed to know something about the issues they cover (a low bar).
So although Page deserves some credit for even bringing up the topic of China policy, no one should have been surprised by the Happy Talk nature of her question. I mean, here's a country that's been blamed across the American political spectrum for destroying huge numbers of American jobs with its wide-ranging trade predation, whose tech companies have been just as widely deemed as dangers to U.S. national security and American's privacy rights, which increasingly is threatening U.S. allies and other countries in the "Indo-Pacific" region (foreign policy mavens' latest name for the Asia-Pacific region, due to India's, and which is treating its own population ever more brutally.
And Page's question was dominated by claims that China is "a huge market for American agricultural goods" and "a potential partner in dealing with climate change and North Korea"? Not to mention suggesting that its role in bringing the coronavirus to the nation and world is nothing more than a charge leveled by President Trump?
All the same, Harris' answer was what counted:
"Susan, the Trump administration's perspective, and approach to China has resulted in the loss of American lives, American jobs and America's standing. There is a weird obsession that President Trump has had with getting rid of whatever accomplishment was achieved by President Obama and Vice President Biden. For example, they created, within the White House, and office that basically was just responsible for monitoring pandemics. They got away, they got rid of it."
Previously that evening, she argued that:
"You, [Vice President Mike Pence] earlier referred to, as part of what he thinks is an accomplishment, the President's trade war with China. You lost that trade war. You lost it. What ended up happening is, because of a so called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Farmers have experienced bankruptcy, because of it. We are in a manufacturing recession, because of it. And when we look at this administration has been, there are estimates that by the end of the term of this administration, they will have lost more jobs than almost any other presidential administration."
Let's leave aside the accuracy or relevance of any of these points – like the 300,000 manufacturing jobs claim loss claim that apparently comes from an economist who admits his 2016 predictions about economy's performance during the Trump era were completely off-base; or the plainly nutty insistence that the Trump China policy cost American lives.
If Harris believes any of this, and especially that the trade war has been "lost," then clearly the only important question about the China tariffs isn't whether they'll be lifted by a President Biden, but how fast.
Moreover, there's abundant evidence that Biden fully agrees that these Trump measures have been seriously counter-productive. When asked in August if he'd "keep the tariffs," he responded, "No. Hey, look, who said Trump's idea's a good one?" said Biden. "Manufacturing has gone into a recession. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay." In other words, most of the main anti-tariff arguments in two pithy sentences.
An aide to the former vice president tried to walk back these remarks, shortly afterwards, but Biden's words perfectly fit journalist Michael Kinsley's epic definition of what's usually mischaracterized in American politics as a "gaffe": an instance "when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."
Equally interesting and important with regard to the Biden-Harris China policies – one clear and one possible new sign that Beijing is actively rooting for their success, and assuming the tariffs' removal. The first came during the vice presidential debate, when Chinese authorities censored some of Pence's critical comments on China just as Chinese audiences were about to hear them, and then restored the signal in time for Harris' rejoinder.
The second came last night, when in its first announcement since the end of its Golden Week holiday of a new exchange rate for China's currency, the yuan, versus the U.S. dollar, Beijing revalued (i.e., made it more expensive compared with the greenback) by the greatest amount in four and a half years. The main reason – at least as I see it: China believes that Biden will win, and is permitting its currency to strengthen because any competitiveness loss by its exports resulting from this and even significant further revaluation will be more than offset by the removal of U.S. levies that have typically hit 25 percent.
Of course, I could be wrong about Biden. So could China. But keep in mind that the former Vice President boasts that he knows Chinese dictator Xi Jinping well because of all the time he's spent with him. Does anyone seriously think that, by the same token, Xi hasn't learned a thing or two about Biden as well?
(What's Left of) Our Economy: Confusing but Overall Downbeat News on U.S. Manufacturing Productivity
aluminum, CCP Virus, China tariffs, coronavirus, COVID 19, durable goods, lavbor productivity, manufacturing, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, multifactor productivity, productivity, steel, tariffs, trade war, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy
I wish I could say that the detailed U.S.manufacturing labor productivity statistics for 2019 that came out late last week provided a clear, pre-CCP Virus picture of domestic industry's health, and especially insights into how well manufacturing was holding up during the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. Unfortunately, the sector-by-sector data add up to a confusing mix of halfway decent and bad news.
First a reminder: Productivity is an important measure of efficiency, and labor productivity is the narrower of the two sets of productivity statistics tracked by the Labor Department. But although it only measures output per hour by individual workers (as opposed to examining the usage and output results for a wide-ranging combination of inputs), the labor productivity figures are released on a timelier basis than the more comprehensive multifactor productivity numbers.
Also important to remember: For all their importance, the productivity data represent the statistics in which economists have the least confidence, although the problem is much more difficult in services than in goods like manufactured products.
Nevertheless, most economists do agree that raising productivity levels is any economy's best way to boost living standards on a sustainable basis, and so it's discouraging to report that the overall context for manufacturing last year was pretty dreary. Another productivity series from the Labor Department judged that labor productivity in industry shrank by 0.56 percent. In 2018, it rose by 0.64 percent. Moreover, this general result certainly doesn't indicate that American manufacturers made much progress compensating for higher costs created by metals and China tariffs by figuring out how to make their workers more efficient.
At the same time, last year, labor productivity fell in 54 of the 86 manufacturing sectors monitored by the Labor Department. As bad as that sounds, this result was actually better than that for 2018, when labor productivity decreased in 67 of those sectors.
Although the so-far-pervasive but widely varying use of Chinese materials, parts, and components makes identifying the China tariffs' impact on labor productivity, figuring out the effects of the metals tariffs is much easier, and here the news is more encouraging still.
In durable goods – the super-sector that contains the major U.S. industries that use tariff-ed steel and aluminum – labor productivity fell in 31 of the 51 sectors examined. That's a genuine improvement on 2018, when labor productivity decreased in 41 out of 51.
Even more revealing: Most of the big metals users themselves stepped up their productivity game somewhat in 2019, though in absolute terms (as shown in the table below), their yearly performances weren't by any means impressive.
fabricated metals products: -1.4 percent -0.1 percent
machinery: 0 percent -0.2 percent
household appliances: +1.6 percent +2.0 percent
motor vehicles: -7.6 percent -2.1 percent
motor vehicle parts: -1.2 percent -0.6 percent
aerospace products & parts: -8.1 percent -2.2 percent
As long as the CCP Virus keeps affecting the American and global economies (an especially important point for manufacturing, since in 2019, its exports represented nearly 18 percent of its total gross output), it'll be tough to get a handle on underlying trends in manufacturing labor productivity and other performance indicators. But on the labor productivity front, last week's figures sadly make clear that a return to pre-virus levels won't be terribly difficult to achieve.
(What's Left of) Our Economy: Manufacturing Jobs Revisions Burnish Trump's Employment and Trade War Record
Barack Obama, Bureau of Labor Statistics, China tariffs, election 2020, Jobs, manufacturing, manufacturing recession, metals tariffs, tariffs, trade war, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy
However much of a pain it is for us data geeks to slog through monthly U.S. jobs reports incorporating multi-year revisions, President Trump, his supporters, and everyone rooting for the domestic manufacturing sector (which should be everyone) should be grateful for the latest such exercise.
For the results show that the economy's manufacturing job creation record under his administration has been better on the whole even than previously believed. Moreover, that conclusion also is justified for manufacturing employment since the President's tariff-heavy trade policies began in earnest (in April, 2018, the first full month when the global duties on imports of steel and aluminum were in effect).
Not that this morning's release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came up all roses for Trump-World and U.S.-based industry. Manufacturing lost 12,000 net jobs sequentially in January – the worst such total since October's 41,000 (when payrolls were dragged down by the strike at General Motors). Ignoring that anomalous figure, the January manufacturing jobs shrinkage was the worst monthly decline since August, 2016's 21,000 nosedive.
Moreover, the year-on-year gain of 26,000 was the weakest since the 17,000 annual improvement in February, 2017 (the President's first full month in office).
But check out the revisions, and the record during the Trump years improves in some key respects – especially compared with that compiled under his predecessor, Barack Obama. The table below shows how the revisions change the picture between the two administrations – an issue bound to matter greatly during the current presidential campaign. They begin with 2015 (the first year for which the totals were updated) and proceed through last month. The figures for the post-Trump tariffs period and the Trump administration's tenure stop in January (because that's when the effects of the benchmark revisions stop. The left-hand column shows the pre-revision results and the right-hand column the new. All figures are seasonally adjusted (the statistics most closely followed by economists):
Old manufacturing job change New change
2015: +30K +70K
2016: -45K -6K
2017: +196K +185K
final 34 Obama months: +270K +259K
first 34 Trump months*: +478K +479K
since tariffs* +197K +231K
(April, 2018):
21 months before: +320K +253K
*thru December, 2019
To me, the most important comparisons involve those between the two administrations, and those between the pre- and post-tariff periods of Mr. Trump's presidency.
The Obama and Trump figures show how manufacturing employment changed during their periods in office closest together in the current (expansionary business) cycle – the comparison that yields the best apples-to-apples results. The Obama period ends with January, 2017 (the former President's last – near-full month in office and the Trump period begins with February, 2017 (his first full month in office).
And as made clear above, the growth in manufacturing payrolls was a bit weaker during the Obama period than previously reported, and the growth during the Trump period ever-so-slightly stronger.
As for the impact of Mr. Trump's tariffs, although these numbers don't isolate the industry sectors likely to be most seriously affected (especially the metals-using industries – which I'll examine shortly), the results are instructive in particular for the China duties' effects, since they're so widely, if unevenly, spread throughout domestic manufacturing.
Since the Trump tariffs' advent, 21 revised data months passed through December, 2019, so the best comparison is that with the 21 months preceding them. And interestingly, the revisions show that although manufacturing's hiring pace indeed has slowed since the first full tariff month, they've slowed much less markedly (by 8.70 percent rather than 38.44 percent). And that means that manufacturing employment has improved more since the tariff era began than previously thought (by 231,000 instead of 197,000).
Manufacturing trends won't be working in Mr. Trump's favor politically this year unless its recent weakness (which may not technically have been a recession) ends – especially on the hiring front. Sure , he could in theory blame the troubles of Boeing and its safety-related woes, which could last many months more. But voters are unlikely to be interested.
Economically speaking, however, the President can legitimately contend that, contrary to endless predictions, American industry and indeed the entire nation are weathering the trade conflict with China in particular just fine – and claim that the modest costs have been well worth the strategic goal of checking the economic and technological progress of this dangerous dictatorship.
(What's Left of) Our Economy: A Thoroughly Muddled Manufacturing Production Figure
aluminum, Boeing, China tariffs, Federal Reserve, General Motors, General Motors strike, industrial production, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, recession, steel, supply chains, tariffs, trade war, {What's Left of) Our Economy
The latest U.S. inflation-adjusted manufacturing output numbers (for September) are now out, and they leave more muddled than ever the matter of how much (if any) damage American industry has suffered from President Trump's tariff-heavy trade policies.
And it's not just because of ongoing uncertainties about the effects of President Trump's current and threatened China tariffs, and all the fluctuations in coverage and rates. It's not just because of the month-long General Motors strike – which could end soon if the union rank-and-file approve the settlement agreed on by their leaders, and which the Federal Reserve itself (which tracks manufacturing output) fingered as a big culprit behind September's lousy read. It's also because of the impact of Boeing aircraft's continuing safety woes (a subject on which the Fed has been strangely silent).
As I've reported, the Boeing effect finally showed up in the latest U.S. trade data – which is especially important given the aerospace giant's reliance on exports. But it hasn't appeared anywhere else, including the new manufacturing production figures, even though orders for Boeing jets have been dramatically slashed, and even though the company is a huge consumer of materials, parts, and components from other manufacturing sectors.
With all those cautions out on the table, here's what the new Fed statistics showed. After-inflation domestic manufacturing output slid by 0.48 percent sequentially in September, the worst such result since April's 0.87 percent decrease, and more than enough to keep industry overall in recession. Since July, 2018, its real output is down a total of 0.38 percent.
GM's labor troubles clearly dragged the total number down. Constant dollar vehicles and parts production in September sank by 4.22 percent on month, its worst such performance since January's 7.18 percent nosedive (when the federal government was still shut down, surely depressing consumer confidence).
The Fed made clear that "Excluding motor vehicles and parts, [its] overall [industrial production] index and the manufacturing index each moved down 0.2 percent." (More precisely, the real manufacturing decline would have been only 0.15 percent without automotive.) Oddly, though, the Fed didn't mention that any development that depresses vehicle and parts production is bound to ripple through all the industries making up its extensive supply chain, too.
Yet despite the export troubles revealed in the trade figures, the Fed's statistics show that aircraft and parts production enjoyed a terrific September. Indeed, the 1.82 percent sequential jump was the biggest since March, 2014's 2.42 percent.
Nor do sectors comprising the aerospace supply chain (which broadly overlaps considerably with automotive's) seem to be lagging significantly, except for primary metals. For example, below are the inflation-adjusted output figures for some big supplier sectors and control groups since April (the first full data month following actions the world over grounding or banning from various air spaces Boeing's 737 Max jets):
overall manufacturing: +0.44 percent
durable goods: +0.75 percent
primary metals: -3.38 percent
fabricated metals products: -0.17 percent
machinery: +1.19 percent
As for the impact of the trade wars, as usual, the consequences of the President's tariffs on aluminum and steel are easiest to gauge, since they've been on the longest, and the major metals-using industries (the presumed leading victims) are so easy to identify. The table below represents the changes in their real output since April, 2018 (the first full month in which the levies were in effect), with the data for manufacturing overall used as a control group, and durable goods included because it's the super-category in which most of the main metals-using industries are located:
Old Apr thru Aug New Apr thru Aug April thru Sept
overall manufacturing: +0.54 percent +0.57 percent +0.09 percent
durables manufacturing: +1.98 percent +2.00 percent +1.25 percent
fabricated metals prods: +1.88 percent +2.07 percent +1.85 percent
machinery: +0.67 percent +1.39 percent 0 percent
automotive: +0.17 percent +0.30 percent -3.92 percent
major appliances: -2.04 percent -1.22 percent -2.19 percent
aircraft and parts: +4.39 percent +3.54 percent +5.43 percent
The results are mixed – and obviously the most recent automotive number has little to do with the metals duties. Otherwise, three of the remaining four metals users have gained momentum versus the rest of manufacturing (durables, appliances, and aircraft), although their output performances remain subdued in absolute terms, and machinery has lost momentum.
Unfortunately, this kind of analysis not only remains much more difficult for the impact of the China tariffs. But every twist and turn in the trade talks saga only increases the challenge. Primarily because of uncertainties stemming from differences between the manufactured goods classification systems used by the U.S. Trade Representative's office (which publishes the lists of tariff-ed items) and the main system used by other U.S. government agencies (like the Fed), the sectors below are among the handful that are reasonably certain to have faced tariff pressure since the first duties were placed in imports from China in July, 2018. Each column shows the real output changes since their first full month in effect through July, August, and September of this year:
Aug thru July Aug thru Aug Aug thru Sept
overall manufacturing: -0.89 percent -0.33 percent -0.81 percent
ball bearings: -2.32 percent -2.26 percent -2.30 percent
industrial heating equip: -4.58 percent -1.72 percent -1.01 percent
farm machinery & equip: -6.91 percent +9.71 percent -0.69 percent
oil/gas drilling platform pts: -0.86 percent -1.38 percent -1.38 percent
As is clear, these results are even more mixed than for the metals-using industries – to which all of these products belong. And with the President's trade policies all too likely to stay ragged as the 2020 elections come closer, "more confusion" looks like the safest prediction possible regarding American manufacturing production
(What's Left of) Our Economy: It's Still the Same Old Story – No Tariff Damage to U.S. Manufacturing's in Sight
China tariffs, Jobs, Labor Department, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, tariffs, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy
At this stage, despite what you read in the Mainstream Media, it would be genuinely newsy to report that official U.S. government data were indeed showing any significant damage to domestic manufacturing from the President Trump's tariffs. Figures showing no significant damage at all from either the levies on steel and aluminum, or on products from China? They've become old hat, and this morning's Labor Department report on the job market for January was no exception.
As of this January data, we now have ten months' worth of statistics shedding lots of light on whether the metals tariffs have harmed the country's metals-using industries. As you'll recall, a main argument against the metals tariffs held that because the metals-using sectors were much larger, even if the levies helped steel and aluminum makers, they'd become an exercise in cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. For the number of workers and factories hurt by higher costs for a key material would far outnumber those helped by more expensive steel and aluminum.
Nonetheless, the January jobs report shows once again that nothing of the kind is happening. Indeed, as the table below makes clear, most of the country's main metals-using manufacturing industries keep outperforming the rest of manufacturing. And some are creating jobs at a faster pace than the private sector overall.
And the laggards? Automotive is unmistakably gaining momentum, and household appliances are still experiencing the effects not only of metals tariffs, but of narrower tariffs on household laundry machines, and of a slumping housing sector.
Old thru Dec. New thru Dec. Thru Jan.
entire private sector: +1.37 percent +1.36 percent +1.60 percent
durable goods: +1.67 percent +1.72 percent +1.97 percent
fabricated metals products: +1.75 percent +1.57 percent +1.78 percent
non-electrical machinery: +2.20 percent +2.33 percent +2.57 percent
automotive vehicles & parts: +0.77 percent +1.07 percent +1.15 percent
household appliances: not available -2.21 percent not available
aerospace products & parts: not available +5.51 percent not available
But maybe the story is different for the China tariffs? Here the picture is fuzzier, both because the first tranche has only been in place since early July, and because the jobs data doesn't match up that well with the categories of products tariff-ed in that first group (except for farm machinery and equipment). In addition, most of these categories are too narrow to show up in the Labor Department interactive data bases without a one-month lag. But the numbers below, which represent major manufacturing sectors that contain the tariff-ed goods, don't show much tariff-related damage on the employment front since (and including) July.
As has been the case during this period, some industries have outperformed; others have under-performed. The resulting takeaway? Lots of factors other than China tariffs are affecting payrolls in these manufacturing segments.
July-December July-January
overall manufacturing +0.80 percent +0.91 percent
aircraft engines and engine parts: +0.58 percent not available
industrial heating equipment: +1.12 percent not available
oil and gas drilling platform parts: +2.71 percent not available
farm machinery and equipment: +0.20 percent not available
ball bearings: +1.05 percent not available
But although the coverage of the Trump tariffs has stubbornly remained an exercise in gloom-mongering in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence (here's just one recent leading example), one reason for hope can be identified. Maybe the gulf between the trade reporting and the trade facts simply results from inherent argumentativeness and contrarianism – the kind that's often seen in teenagers. If I'm right, the minute the tariff data becomes bad, the Mainstream Media will start serving up anecdotes about plucky exceptions to the rule.
(What's Left of) Our Economy: As Trump Tariffs Continue, U.S. Manufacturing Growth Steams Along
aluminum, China, China tariffs, Federal Reserve, industrial production, inflation-adjusted growth, manufacturing, metals, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, {What's Left of) Our Economy
Claims keep getting made that President Trump's tariffs-heavy trade policies have been hammering American manufacturing. (Here's just one example from as recent as yesterday.) And government, economy-wide data keeps on coming out showing these claims to be complete bunkum.
Today it's the Federal Reserve's turn; its new industrial production report (covering December) make plain as day that metals-using manufacturing for the most part continues to out-perform the rest of manufacturing when it comes to inflation-adjusted output even though Trump metals are supposed to be crippling them with skyrocketing cost increases for key inputs. (As the latest producer price results made clear, almost none of that inflation per se can be detected, either.) And although the effects of the China tariffs are more difficult to unpack, what can be presented responsibly fails to reveal discernible damage since the first tranche was imposed.
Below are the numbers for manufacturing overall, and for industry's main metals-using sectors. They show after-inflation output since April, since the steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect in late March. In addition to the April-through- December percentage changes, you can also see results through November as reported by the Fed last month, along with the revised through-November numbers, to provide a sense of the trends' momentum.
old thru Nov new thru Nov thru Dec
machinery: +5.11 percent +5.55 percent +4.93 percent
automotive: -1.46 percent -1.32 percent +3.36 percent
major appliances: -0.88 percent -0.31 percent +0.08 percent
As you can see, the only category that's experienced production growth problems has been the major appliance sector. February was the first full month during which these levies were in place, and since then, price-adjusted output has been off by 1.99 percent (versus a 3.93 percent improvement for manufacturing as a whole). But as the above table demonstrates, even they've been making a comeback lately. In cases like aerospace and automotive, the growth pace has quickened significantly, while in machinery, we see some growth fall-off.
Analyzing the impact of the China tariffs is tougher both because they started more recently (in early July), because they've been greatly expanded since then, and because Chinese inputs are used in and compete with such a huge number of domestically produced goods. Moreover, the government's list of these levies uses a different industry classification system than the Fed uses for industrial production, and exact match-ups don't abound.
So the below table, showing real output changes for some products tariff-ed since July, is a best guess, with the exception of farm machinery and equipment, and ball bearings. But more power to you if you see China tariff-related damage here.
aircraft engines and engine parts: +5.42 percent
industrial heating equipment: +0.14 percent
oil and gas drilling platform parts: +2.21 percent
farm machinery and equipment: +3.29 percent
ball bearings: -0.17 percent
"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow. You're always a day away!" is a well-known Broadway lyric. As the new Fed industrial production figures demonstrate, "tomorrow" is also the best hope for the tariff alarmists to show that the trade curbs are in anyway undermining the American economy on net.
(What's Left of) Our Economy: Can We (Finally) Start Deflating the Tariffs-Led Inflation Claims?
aluminum, China, China tariffs, inflation, metals, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, steel, tariffs, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy
Good luck to you if you're looking for signs of tariffs-led inflation in yesterday's U.S consumer price data from the Labor Department.
It's not that goods that used tariff-ed products (either steel and aluminum, or inputs from China) or that are tariff-ed themselves (final products from China) haven't become more expensive since the relevant levies were imposed. It's that the prices of many goods completely unaffected by the tariffs have gone up as well – and in many cases, faster than those that have been affected by the trade curbs. So there's no evidence that the tariffs themselves have had any notable impact.
In fact, these latest figures (bringing the story up through December) underscore how many forces and developments influence price changes.
A great example is provided by canned fruits and vegetables – presented below in the table showing price changes over various key periods of time (including for the post-March tariff period) for metals-using products. Their costs of course include the cost of either the aluminum or the type of steel used in their cans. When you look at the numbers for most of these time frames, it's clear that the prices of these foods have risen faster than the overall rate of what's called "core inflation" – the inflation rate minus the costs of food and energy, which are considered too volatile price-wise to yield an accurate understanding of what economists regard as the nation's underlying, most fundamental, inflationary performance.
Interestingly, the prices for canned fruits and vegetables have increased much faster during these periods than the prices of food overall. So what's driving the big price increases in these canned foods must be the cans, right – and presumably what they're made of? Not if you look closely.
For the real problem is clearly vegetables. Both month-to-month and clearly for the entire year, fresh vegetable prices have soared. Largely as a result, the prices of canned vegetables have jumped unusually strongly, and significantly boosted the numbers for the overall canned fruits and vegetables category.
The special role being played by vegetable prices is also clear from looking at the trends in food prices – which aren't included in the core inflation number. Except for December, these prices have risen considerably more slowly than those prices in the core grouping, or in the economy as a whole.
If you're still skeptical, look at the price trends for several other food products that often come in cans – like beverages of all kinds, and soup. There's simply no consistent pattern of their increasing faster than core inflation over any time period.
Similarly, although the prices of metals-using auto parts have risen more robustly than core inflation, the prices of metals-using vehicles have risen much more weakly. In fact, from December, 2017 to December, 2018, they've fallen in absolute terms. So something, or somethings, other than metals prices and tariffs count for much more in the total prices of these goods.
Nov.-Dec. Since April y/y April y/y Dec.
core inflation: 0.21 percent +1.39 percent +2.12 percent +2.22 percent
overall inflation: -0.06 percent +1.09 percent +2.43 percent +1.95 percent
food: +0.37 percent +0.98 percent +1.39 percent +1.58 percent
fresh fruits & vegs: +1.94 percent +1.82 percent -0.45 percent +1.75 percent
fresh fruits: +1.33 percent -1.73 percent +1.35 percent -0.73 percent
fresh vegetables: +2.63 percent +6.05 percent -2.53 percent +4.63 percent
processed fruits +0.67 percent -0.64 percent -0.59 percent +0.87 percent
& vegs:
canned fruits +1.48 percent +0.99 percent -0.07 percent +3.12 percent
& vegs
canned fruits: +1.44 percent +1.39 percent -1.50 percent +2.29 percent
canned vegs: +1.30 percent +1.12 percent +1.04 percent +4.18 percent
soups: +2.49 percent +2.28 percent -0.54 percent -1.43 percent
malt beverages -0.04 percent +1.82 percent +0.84 percent +1.87 percent
consumed at home
alcoholic bevs -0.04 percent +1.34 percent +2.17 percent +2.25 percent
consumed away
juices & non- + 0.13 percent +1.77 percent -0.25 percent +2.51 percent
carbonated drinks: +0.41 percent +3.01 percent +0.03 percent +4.07 percent
non-frozen, non- +0.18 percent +1.37 percent -0.53 percent +1.46 percent
carbonated non-
new cars & trucks: 0 percent +0.78 percent -1.62 percent -0.24 percent
auto parts: +0.42 percent +1.58 percent -0.74 percent +2.20 percent
Tariffs on goods from China have been in effect for fewer months than the metals tariffs. And since July, they've been imposed in phases, which were followed by a decision by President Trump to delay increases in a big tranche as part of the latest cease-fire in the trade conflict with China. So the data is less definitive. But thus far, at least, the prices of the goods below – which represent some of the main imports from China subjected to tariffs by the first rounds of these levies, which were imposed in July – have mainly rising more slowly than the rest of core inflation sectors. (The sportswear numbers are dicey, since such apparel is not broken out from the rest of the category as such. So the figures below represent results from a women's apparel category that includes sportswear.)
Nov.-Dec. Since Aug. Aug. y/y Dec. y/y
core inflation: +0.21 percent +0.73 percent +2.19 percent +2.22 percent
furniture: +0.55 percent +0.90 percent -0.66 percent +1.68 percent
auto parts: +0.42 percent +0.82 percent +0.39 percent +2.20 percent
tires: +0.98 percent +1.50 percent -1.64 percent +1.29 percent
appliances: -0.33 percent +1.25 percent +2.31 percent +4.74 percent
sportswear: -0.89 percent -2.14 percent -0.86 percent -1.33 percent
As for appliances, their out-performance is due largely to a separate set of tariffs imposed on large household laundry equipment starting in February. As shown below, however, even in this case, price increases are starting to moderate. That's clear from the decline in the year-on-year figure between February and December, and from very slow price increase recorded between November and December.
Nov.-Dec. Since Feb. Feb. y/y Dec. y/y
major appliances: +0.19 percent +11.59 percent -4.22 percent +9.02 percent
I know that I may be starting to sound like a broken record on the (negligible) impact of tariffs on the American economy so far. But until globalization cheerleaders in politics and business, and their mouthpieces in the Mainstream Media, start telling the story accurately, I'll keep correcting the record.
Glad I Didn't Say That! U.S. Automakers Debunk Their Own Tariff Fear-Mongering
Posted by Alan Tonelson in Glad I Didn't Say That!
automotive, China tariffs, FCA, Financial Times, General Motors, Glad I Didn't Say That!, metals tariffs, msn.com, Patti Waldmeir, tariffs, Trade, trade war
"The auto industry…fears that new tariffs, on top of those already enacted on Chinese-made vehicles and imported aluminum and steel, could have a major negative impact on the American new car market."
–MSN.com, November 18, 2018
General Motors' "head of US sales, said on Thursday: 'We feel confident heading into 2019 because we have more major truck and crossover launches coming during the year and the US economy is strong.'"
–Financial Times, January 3, 2019
FCA's head of US sales "also predicted a 'solid' 2019, attributing the company's strength in 2018 to 'the efforts we undertook to realign our production to give US consumers more Jeep vehicles and Ram pick-up trucks.'"
(Sources "Hit hard by trade war, automakers hoping Trump will hold off on new round of tariffs," Money, MSN.com, November 18, 2018, https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/hit-hard-by-trade-war-automakers-hoping-trump-will-hold-off-on-new-round-of-tariffs/ar-BBPOjRn & "US car sales defied predictions of a slowdown in 2018," by Patti Waldmeir, Financial Times, January 3, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/e538e316-0f52-11e9-a3aa-118c761d2745)
(What's Left of) Our Economy: New Fed Manufacturing Figures Mock Tariff-Mageddon Claims
aluminum, aluminum tariffs, appliances, automotive, China, China tariffs, durable goods, Federal Reserve, manufacturing, manufacturing production, metals, metals-using industries, non-durable goods, steel, steel tariffs, tariffs, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy
With this morning's release of the Federal Reserve's new real manufacturing output figures, we just got more data indicating both the impact of President Trump's metals tariffs and his China levies. And, as with other manufacturing numbers, like employment statistics, the Fed output release mocks widespread claims that both kinds of trade curbs are already undermining U.S. domestic industry.
Here are the results for major metals-using sectors – with one caveat. Because it includes many goods so diminutive and stuffed with electronics that they're clearly no longer using much steel or aluminum (unlike the large appliances), placing the small household appliances category on this list seems to have been mistaken all along. But I'm leaving them on so you can make up your own mind. The data start with April (because the first metals tariffs were imposed in late March) and go through October (the latest month covered by this Fed series). And I'm presenting the previously reported and revised September results in order to provide a sense of the trends' momentum.
old through Sept new through Sept through Oct
small appliances: -1.23 percent -3.67 percent -6.62 percent
major appliances -0.87 percent -0.99 percent -3.32 percent
Superficially, the picture is somewhat mixed. But as I just said, in my view, the small appliances category should be ignored. Accelerating deterioration clearly characterizes the major appliances sector, but do tariffs (which include not only the metals levies but separate tariffs on household laundry machines that result from a trade law case initiated during the Obama years) deserve most of the blame? Maybe not, considering that the domestic housing sector – a big generator of major appliance sales – is in the middle of a noteworthy slowdown.
Momentum is clearly weakening in the automotive sector as well (where even the seasonally adjusted monthly Fed production numbers are notoriously volatile and subject to significant revisions). But it's likely that sagging output is reflecting sales that are sagging overwhelmingly because of the industry's own cyclical dynamics.
Indeed, these industry-specific developments look all the stronger considering that two other major metals-using sectors – fabricated metals products and non-electrical machinery – are gaining production momentum. So something other than the price of metals must be kneecapping the laggard sectors.
The new Fed data also shed noteworthy light on the impact of the President's China tariffs. Levies on a total of $50 billion worth of goods began in July, and tariffs on $200 billion more worth of merchandise imports were imposed in September. So many products have been tariff-ed, and the lists contain so many producer as well as consumer goods, that even a genuinely deep dive into the data might not yield firm conclusions.
But here's what we know from the 30,000-foot level about after-inflation domestic manufacturing output during the three months preceding the first China tariffs, and the three months following them:
April-July July-Oct
overall manufacturing: +0.29 percent +1.02 percent
durable goodsL -0.28 percent +2.22 percent
non-durable goods: +0.87 percent -0.21 percent
Good luck finding much China damage on net from these numbers.
Back in the 18th century, Jonathan Swift lamented that "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it." Will Mainstream Media coverage of the industrial production figures and Trump tariffs prove him right once again?
Current Thoughts on Trade
Protecting U.S. Workers
Marc to Market
Alastair Winter
Smaulgld
Reclaim the American Dream
David Stockman's Contra Corner
Washington Decoded
Upon Closer inspection
Keep America At Work
Sober Look
GubbmintCheese
VoxEU.org: Recent Articles
Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS
George Magnus
(What's Left Of) Our Economy
(What's Left of) Our Economy
Glad I Didn't Say That!
Im-Politic
Our So-Called Foreign Policy
The Snide World of Sports
Those Stubborn Facts
The Brighter Side
Terence P. Stewart
So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....
Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics
Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver
Kausfiles
Finance, Economics and Markets


text:
Brad Clark Flip-Flops on LRT ... Yet Again
In what is becoming a habitual act of pure cynicism, the Ward 9 candidate keeps reversing his LRT position.
By Ryan McGreal
Brad Clark, former Stoney Creek councillor and a current candidate for Ward 9, is a veritable see-saw when it comes to the city's light rail transit (LRT) plan. Despite being on record supporting LRT since before submitting his nomination, Clark just shamelessly flip-flopped this morning [PDF]:
Brad Clark, City Councillor Candidate for Ward 9, is calling for the cancellation of the LRT. "I have confirmed that the Province of Ontario is indemnified should the current LRT request for proposal (RFP) process be cancelled. As such there is no risk of financial penalties to the City of Hamilton", said Brad Clark.
"Therefore, I can unequivocally continue my opposition to LRT without fear of legal or financial penalties to taxpayers. There are far more pressing infrastructure needs across our city," said Clark.
It's particularly cynical that he claims he will "continue" opposition to LRT when he is on record clearly supporting LRT as of just a few weeks ago. On September 12, the Hamilton Spectator quoted Clark's LRT position in their profile of Ward 9 candidates:
Yes. I can't in good conscience oppose LRT when the environmental assessment, land acquisition and the request for proposals have all been approved. Reversing that direction has serious cost implications, potential legal risks and will damage the city's reputation to potential investors. It's time to move forward and implement the approved city-wide transit enhancements on a parallel track.
You'll note that he raised a number of reasons to support LRT that have nothing to do with indemnification.
And Clark's position in September was also consistent with what Clark said this past June at a panel discussion on the city's transportation challenges:
It's been eight or nine years now where Main Street, the infrastructure on Main Street has not been improved. Pull the plug on LRT and you're going to start a brand-new EA which could be two or three years, you now will have 12 or 13 years of no work on infrastructure, water, sewer, pipes, everything. It's a mess. So they have to proceed with that infrastructure upgrade one way or the other. With LRT, the province is paying for it.
Again, it's clear that his sudden interest in the city's risk of financial penalties is just a cheap rationalization.
If we decide to kill the LRT plan, the following negative outcomes will all still be true:
We will still harm our reputation among investors, employers and developers as a reliable place to invest.
Bidders on future transportation projects will inflate their bids to account for the unreliability of the city. (This has already happened in Ottawa, which frivolously canceled an LRT system and then later decided to proceed with it after all.)
We will still have wasted $137 million in public money spent or committed to the LRT project.
There is a huge risk that we won't end up ever seeing any of the $1 billion currently earmarked for LRT. That money is committed today, after a process that took close to a decade. No one knows what process the Province will require to approve a different use of that money, but they are not just going to cut us a cheque.
Clark is a very smart man who certainly understands all this. However, political flip-flops are becoming a habit for Clark, who did the exact same thing in 2014 when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor.
Indeed, we can go back to 2011, when Clark was a City Councillor and stated that Council "must make a final decision" on LRT once the Province confirmed funding. That funding confirmation took place on May 26, 2015, and Council did, indeed, make a "final decision" to accept the funding and work with Metrolinx to implement the line.
Regardless of how you feel about the city's LRT plan, such breathtaking cynicism should give anyone pause.
Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a programmer, writer and consultant. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. Ryan wrote a city affairs column in Hamilton Magazine, and several of his articles have been published in the Hamilton Spectator. His articles have also been published in The Walrus, HuffPost and Behind the Numbers. He maintains a personal website, has been known to share passing thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, and posts the occasional cat photo on Instagram.
By fmurray (registered) | Posted October 02, 2018 at 09:35:04
Why am I surprised again that there is a PC wolf under the sheep's clothing?
Permalink | Context
By KevinLove (registered) | Posted October 02, 2018 at 23:06:28 in reply to Comment 123856
Have you ever met and talked with the man? This is a wolf in wolf's clothing.
By Haveacow (registered) | Posted October 03, 2018 at 13:07:53
I realize that these comments come during an election campaign and that I don't even live in Hamilton. I also know that one wannabee city council candidate doesn't necessarily speak for a whole city. That being said, with a provincial government that doesn't necessarily share the same enthusiasm for LRT as the previous Liberal government and worrying sounds that provincial funding for future lines will most likely be, let's say, a lot less bountiful, it's most annoying to read so many Hamiltonians don't feel that LRT is the way to go.
Especially, after 10 years of hard but successful lobbying and planning, a rather vocal minority wants to derail the entire process just as construction is ready to begin. Most of all, you got all the money for the project and don't have to contribute the customary 33% of the capital costs. Will there be costs on Hamilton's budget because of the LRT? Yes, but considerably less costs to have to absorb than what the citizens of Waterloo and here in Ottawa have!
There's no nice way of saying it, these anti-LRT people in Hamilton are misinformed at best and at the worst, are flat out lying about LRT. I'm a trained professional planner and have dealt with this type of resistance to transportation projects before. Again, even though I don't live in Hamilton, these people are now pissing me off!
Here in Ottawa Stage 1 of the Confederation Line will hopefully open to the public (late) sometime in the early winter of 2019. Certain elements of Stage 2 are already under construction and will hopefully lead to three extensions (1 to the Trillium Line and 2 to the Confederation Line) being opened to the public in 3 separate phases in 2021, 2022 and 2023-24. The total for Stages 1 & 2 is around $5.1 Billion plus an extra $300 million of related city projects, so $5.4 Billion.
The city's share of this is a staggering $1.9 Billion. It's been painful and not everyone was happy about it, to say the least! The reality is that, there are no planned large infrastructure projects payed for by the City of Ottawa until 2031, because of the LRT program.
We are now planning for Stages 3 & 4. There is no set budget and Ottawa will need a lot of help post 2023-24 to keep building LRT. I have been told by a spy of mine that various Stage 3 LRT projects are almost ready for the Transit EA process.
To the anti-LRT people in Hamilton, you are dreaming if you think this Conservative provincial government will just keep $1 Billion plus in an account waiting for you to spend, while you decide what you want to do. I'm being nice when I say you are politically naive and extremely uninformed about what is good rapid transit. A decade of studies and planning have gone into what you simply dismiss as a poor choice. If you cancel LRT that Billion is gone! You won't see any of it. You are easily being duped by people who are not anti-LRT but anti-transit! International business and city planning experts the world over say LRT is the way to go. The days of wide suburban roads and low cost driving is over. The wealthy are moving back to the city, it's cheaper than living in far flung suburbs. As transportation costs increase in the coming years, the increase in land values downtown vs. the suburbs is showing off this new reality. It's cheaper for large companies to be attached to rapid transit stations than paying for enormously expensive to maintain parking lots in suburban office parks.
If you really don't want LRT in Hamilton, we here in Ottawa have a proposal for you. We want LRT and have been putting our money were are collective mouths are for years now! So we will just take your Billion in LRT funding match it to new federal funding and we'll happily build more LRT and yes, even more BRT. You guys won't have to worry about LRT sullying the City of Hamilton. With Ford in power, you will get nothing, not LRT or BRT funding. The time for whining about LRT is over make up your freaking minds!
I'm a trained professional planner and have dealt with this type of resistance to transportation projects before. Again, even though I don't live in Hamilton, these people are now pissing me off!
In my opinion, the behaviour of these people is best explained by the Marxist analysis of this situation.
By Haveacow (registered) | Posted October 04, 2018 at 11:37:05 in reply to Comment 123876
Always liked Groucho! Very funny!
BRT is generally cheaper to build than LRT however, you have to spend a lot more to continuously upgrade the right of way as passenger levels grow than with rail. In fact at a certain point, BRT stations and rights of way have to become larger and more robust than rail infrastructure to carry the same number of passengers as rail. This was one of several key breaking points for Ottawa.
Ottawa as a city has a population of 970,000. Around 2008 when the bus fleet was creeping up to 1100 buses, the budget people at O.C.Transpo took notice. To accommodate future growth on the Transitway Network (Ottawa's BRT System Marketing Name) as well as the rest of the system, a fleet of 1400-1500 was being planned for. Budget people soon realized that this was not affordable at all. LRT requires far fewer buses so many older ones will be retired (about 110 in total) and many unneeded drivers laid off. 475 (fewer than the 600 originally stated) drivers will be laid off when Stage 1 opens. As many as 600 more when Stage 2 opens in 2023-24 and up to 120 more buses. Ottawa's current bus fleet is around 1025 units. Many new double decker buses are replacing articulated buses as they age out. Double decker buses are still hard on roads but hold more passengers and don't get stuck in snow storms as quickly as articulated buses do.
Bi-articulated (24 metres long) and even tri-articulated (28-30 metres long) buses had been looked at in the mid to late 1990's but refused because Transport Canada was going to require extremely expensive safety measures to run them even in a test program. They still only last as long as normal buses do, have horrible hill climbing capability on wet pavement, need a huge fleet of snow plows because like any articulated bus they can't handle more than 10-12 centimeters of snow and are so heavy that, Transitway stations require concrete bus pads in the bus docking lane because they can chew up asphalt roads in less than 2 years. They aren't road legal in Canada or the USA, there are no North American manufacturers, their spare parts and maintenance/training packages are stunningly expensive oh yes, they cost as much as 2 single articulated buses to buy.
Both the bi-articulated and tri-articulated bus designs are significantly shorter than the length of 1, 48.5 metre long Citadis Spirit LRV. Ottawa will be running 2 LRV's on each train on the Confederation Line. The 80 metre long Stadler FLIRT DMU's with replace the current Alstom Lint 41 DMU's on the existing Trillium line in 2021. Both Alstom's Citadis Spirit LRV's and yes, even Bombardier's Flexity LRV design planned for several of Toronto's LRV lines like Finch West and the Crosstown are modular and can add more sections to increase the length of the vehicle. Unfortunately, the Bombardier Flexity Outlook vehicles used on Toronto's streetcar network can't be expanded because of the super tight turning radius of the existing streetcar tracks. These modifications can be done in the existing maintenance facilities and doesn't require the vehicle to be sent back to the factory. This built in capacity is something BRT just can't do cheaply.
If we in Ottawa had stayed with BRT instead of changing to LRT operating technology we would have had to build a massive BRT tunnel instead of an LRT tunnel in downtown. The right of way would have to on opening day handle a peak hour passenger load of 10500 passengers per hour per direction. Traveling on 185-200 buses per hour (65% of them articulated).
The tunnel would have to have each below grade station platform have to handle no fewer than 10 bus docks for the simultaneous birthing of up to 10 articulated buses. That's a 200 metre long platform at each station. That's an underground mainline railway station platform (imagine somthing almost as big as your favorite GO Train Station underground). That's just to cover planned passenger growth to 2031. Toronto's and Montreal's longest subway station platforms max out at 152 metres (500 ft.) and they have some of the longest platforms in North America. Ottawa's LRT tunnel has 120 metre long platforms some of the longest LRT station platforms in North America, although several cities do have LRT platforms that easily exceed this length.
The BRT Tunnel stations would need a minimum of 4 metre wide platforms, a 3.5 metre docking lane and a 4 metre wide passing lane (these are the current Transitway Standards in Ottawa). That's 11.5 metres of width for each direction of travel. That means a single tunnel would have to be a minimum of 23 metres or a minnimum station box width of 24-25 metres or 2 parallel tunnel and station boxes, on 2 parallel streets (Albert and Slater for example) 12 metres wide. The current LRT tunnel, including platforms is only 13 metres wide, 2 platforms, 2 tracks and a devil strip between the tracks of 1 metre. The station box width is about 15 metres (mostly under Queen and Rideau Streets). In fact, the tunnel box width of the single Bus tunnel design would have allowed for 4 tracks and 2 side platforms as well as 1 centre platform! Each platform would be 3 metres wide. You only have to look at pictures of the LRT stations under construction at Tunney's Pasture and Trembley Road (the location of our VIA Rail Station) and see how much wider the former BRT right of way was in comparison.
What is not generally appreciated is the work that would have to be completed to upgrade the capacity of the existing BRT stations outside of the core of Ottawa to accept the constantly growing numbers of Transitway buses. No fewer than 10 possible up to 12 stations outside of the tunnel would require huge increases in platform lengths most would have to be more than doubled. Many would also require big increases in their ability to handle passengers as well as much improved local bus platforms at many of the existing stations. There was kilometers of expensive concrete upgrades needed as well as converstions to concrete from asphalt at many of the station docking lane. The desperately needed work on the stations outside of the tunnel alone, was budgeted at over $1 Billion.
Many of the older Transitway stations would still have to be upgraded LRT or not, Tunney's Pasture, Lees, and Hurdman Transitway stations all were 30+ years old and in desperate need for outright replacement due to crumbling cracked concrete supporting structures as well as completely rusting through of the red steel tubes that made up the bulk of the stations roof structures. This is just for Stage 1 LRT work. One of the concrete elevator shafts at Tunney's Pasture was so bad a construction engineer told me that, they didn't need to do much to knock it down and it was probably going to have to come down in a few years anyway. Stage 2 work required or still requires knocking down Queensway (due to the widening of the Queensway or Highway 417), Baseline, Carling and Westboro stations where as Bayshore (built in the early 2000's) and Moodie Stations (just finished last year) will need modifications (Iris, Montreal Road and Dominion stations are just platforms with a bus shelter, so no big effort required there to take them down). Greenboro, Walkley and South Keys stations will require modifications and upgrades due to Trillium Line work even though they only date from the mid 1990's.
Many of the bridges on the network were in great need of work. The Mann Avenue bridge required outright replacement, the key Transitway Bridge over the Rideau River between Lee's and Hurdman needed 7 months of repairs and upgrades. Twice the length of repair time that O.C. Transpo thought it needed. The bridge over the O-Train right of way at Bayview collapsed as they were tearing it down. This was just for Stage 1, no fewer than 6 bridges will need replacement and another 7 needing serious work for the Stage 2 LRT project.
Comment edited by Haveacow on 2018-10-04 11:00:33
Sure go ahead!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I remember there was a site called Bubblews. I liked it and they billed themselves as a social media site that allowed their users to make money from their content. Bubblews was a great site, had an excellent concept and I loved using the site regularly. Unfortunately, the site ended up closing down and that was that.
I notice that there are some similarities between Bubblews and Tuetego, but in my opinion Tuetego is better. I like the layout better and the features better. I'm still getting the hang of using Tuetego, as I'm brand new to the community.
I hope Tuetego grows and becomes sustainable and successful! Only time will tell if that'll happen.
ze2000 › I never saw Bubblews. The good thing of Tuetego is that the message is honest, there are no hidden conditions or stuff like that. What you do is what you get, end.
I never saw Bubblews. The good thing of Tuetego is that the message is honest, there are no hidden conditions or stuff like that. What you do is what you get, end.
Scorpio311 › I used to write on Bubblews. You could get paid when you reached $50. I reached $50 and submitted a payout request. It was pending for a long time. Then they decided to cut their reward money from $0.01 to $0.0001 and announced that all requests for payments made before November 5th were cancelled. My request was made on Nov. 2nd :( They brought my balance down to $0.00 and cancelled my $50 payout. I tried again to raise that money, but then discovered that people in India (where I lived at that time) earned much less for their articles than people in the USA. When I asked why, I was told that life is cheaper in India. That is when I quit the program. A friend of mine in the US quit soon after because she did not get paid either.
I used to write on Bubblews. You could get paid when you reached $50. I reached $50 and submitted a payout request. It was pending for a long time. Then they decided to cut their reward money from $0.01 to $0.0001 and announced that all requests for payments made before November 5th were cancelled. My request was made on Nov. 2nd :( They brought my balance down to $0.00 and cancelled my $50 payout. I tried again to raise that money, but then discovered that people in India (where I lived at that time) earned much less for their articles than people in the USA. When I asked why, I was told that life is cheaper in India. That is when I quit the program. A friend of mine in the US quit soon after because she did not get paid either.


text:
My Baby and Amber Arcades nominated for Edison award
Earlier in the evening, it was already reported that Wende, the duo Haevn and Douwe Bob in the race for the award for best album.
The nominations in eight other categories will be Tuesday morning in several programs on radio and television revealed. This includes among others the contenders in the categories of newcomer, hip-hop, dance and Folk.
The Edison is the oldest music prize in the Netherlands since 1960 are presented. The prize, consisting of a bronze statuette by the sculptor Pieter d'hont, according to the organization, similar to for example the Grammy Award.


text:
Why Almost Everything You've Discovered Indian Girl Is Inappropriate And What You Should Know
Helping The others Understand The Advantages Of Indian Girl
In 1989, I wrote a guide known as Brides usually are not for Burning, focusing on the elite class, which was pushing the bounds of the dowry. This legislation has been effective – families are being punished for crimes related to dowry, and are getting arrested.
Positive and regressive practices involving ladies have existed in a historic context. The Naari Puja in Kerala is a month where thousands of ladies are worshipped in December yearly no matter which caste or faith they belong to. On the opposite hand, Sati and Jouhar had been practiced earlier than it was made illegal after British colonization of the sub-continent. These involved widows being immolated alive with their husbands' funeral pyre. Dietary micronutrient intakes among ladies of reproductive age in Mumbai slums.
According to ancient Hindu scriptures no spiritual rite may be carried out with perfection by a person with out the participation of his wife. Married males along with their wives are allowed to carry out sacred rites on the occasion of various necessary festivals. Advertising firms and big data corporations know the way to change culture. We have to harness these abilities to change conversations about what it means to be a man, so ladies can flourish with out being imprisoned within the name of security. India – and the remainder of the world – would do properly to make ladies's security and freedom central objectives of democracy and growth, and study concerning the science of cultural change. India is in denial of the truth that a majority of its girls do not feel protected alone on the streets, at work, in markets, or at house, even though they've discovered how to deal with this existential anxiousness.
Zhiyong Lin and his colleagues on the University of Maryland find that whereas less than 5% women married males whose schooling was lower than themselves in the Nineteen Seventies, the proportion has grown to nearly 20% just lately. Could it be that the very success of India's economic transformation brings with it a stark realisation that it has not paid explicit care and a focus to ladies? The most promising sign of the enhancing conditions of Indian girls lies in declining inequality in education. In all villages and towns, mornings and afternoons are brightened by the smiling faces of ladies and young ladies, dressed in their uniforms, walking to school.
Lam noticed no contradiction between the 2 demands, branding males's reservations against ladies's voting rights as "cleaning soap-bubble materials". "Men say 'Home Rule is our birthright'," Tata acknowledged in 1918, echoing a famous nationalist slogan. Women don't need particular therapy, freebies and subsidies, free transportation, and even exclusive areas. Women just want the rule of regulation to prevail, so that they'll feel protected. I am cognizant of my huge privilege as I am an educated, working, financially impartial and safe woman. The fact that I don't live in India makes me even less likely to experience these daily stresses imposed on Indian ladies. Because those who are leering at and groping and following women in public areas don't appear to discriminate on the premise of caste, income, schooling, social status, age, privilege or religion.
India's gross home product is projected to contract significantly in the present monetary yr to March, the primary fall since 1979. Today, Biocon is considered one of India's largest biotech firms, with a market capitalisation of practically $7bn on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Mazumdar-Shaw herself is India's first self-made Indian female billionaire, owning with her Scottish husband John Shaw about sixty five per cent of Biocon. As a young graduate within the late Nineteen Seventies, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw aspired to follow in the footsteps of her father — the top brewmaster for considered other one of India's largest beer corporations. But though she had educated as a brewmaster in Australia, India's breweries felt it was too risky to induct a young lady right into a managerial function of their male-dominated trade. We use cookies for a variety of causes, such as preserving FT Sites reliable and secure, personalising content material and ads, offering social media features and to analyse how our Sites are used. Without the requisite enforcement, India's legal guidelines do not deter crimes against girls.
However, in rural India, women continue to be less educated than boys. According to the National Sample Survey Data of 1997, solely the states of Kerala and Mizoram have approached common female literacy. According to scholars, the major issue behind improvements in the social and financial standing of girls in Kerala is literacy.
Corruption has been up to now the best obstacle in way to India's progress. Minus corruption India would have been one of the most developed nations of the world. Women's contributions in politics and social providers have additionally been fairly vital. We can't fail to mention the name of Indira Gandhi who shone so brilliantly and radiantly within the firmament of India's politics. She dominated this country for more than a decade and took India victorious out of Pakistan-struggle which resulted within the historic creation of a brand new nation, Bangladesh.
Taking Your Indian Girls On A Break
They can practice them in stitching, knitting, embroidery and nursing during which ladies by nature excel. Another job in which Indian women are doing so nicely is that of academics.
Security Issues With Hot Indian Girls
Lady medical doctors have been discovered to perform efficient surgery by virtue of their gentle and accurate fingers. Very few males have been in a position to compete with them on this sphere as a result of the ladies have natural tendency to serve and clear. It is thus natural tendency present in women which motivated Florence Nightingale to make nursing popular among the many women of the higher lessons in England and in Europe. She confirmed the way to women sort how nobly they'll serve humanity in the hours of sufferings and agonies. It is a fact that girls are clever, onerous-working and environment friendly in work.


Second hand bike sales. Wrecking, Servicing and Tyre fitting.
Are you dreaming of a unique paint job on your custom bike, a camo gun stock or other one-of-a kind gear? Call us to get the unique look you're after. Our water transfer printing process makes allows us to apply an amazing array of designs to almost any 3D item – including metal, wood, plastic and glass.


text:
Share this Story: 'It's not just about the money': An interview with author Jim Grubman
'It's not just about the money': An interview with author Jim Grubman
The revered thinker talks about multi-cultural Canada, the need for emotionally intelligent advisors and 'Wealth 3.0'
Matthew Halliday • Canadian Family Offices
Dec 13, 2021 • December 13, 2021 • 8 minute read
Jim Grubman has become one of the foremost thinkers in the wealth-management world.
A clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career bringing psychological acumen to questions of family affluence, Jim Grubman has become one of the foremost thinkers in the wealth-management world.
His pioneering ideas on how families do — and don't — handle wealth have helped overturn old ideas and bring new complexity to the field. He has written two books, Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations and Cross Cultures: How Global Families Negotiate Change Across Generations.
Canadian Family Offices sat down with him for a chat about some of his most influential ideas, why a good wealth manager is also a little bit of an anthropologist, and what he's working on next.
Could you describe how you came to start focusing your work as a psychologist on these ideas of family wealth, the way different generations relate to money, and so on?
It really began because I first had some contact with affluence due to my father. He was a successful businessman who died suddenly at the age of 60 in 1980, and he left our family with an unexpected inheritance. So while I was working in health care, I was also suddenly learning about trusts and estates and investments and that world. My wife and I had three children of our own, and I became curious about what was being written about parenting with affluence, especially sudden affluence.
This was also the dot-com era in the 1990s, and the psychology of wealth was becoming much more talked about — the term "sudden wealth syndrome" was coined, people were talking about "affluenza," and so I just entered this field, by good fortune, when it was growing, and merged my psychology knowledge and my personal knowledge with what was developing from others in the field.
What did that early marriage of psychology and wealth management look like back in the late '80s or early '90s?
Well, before then, we had what you might call Wealth 1.0, which was really kind of a barren wasteland. Very little was written that was overtly psychological. Then in the '80s and '90s you had the rise of Wealth 2.0 — this explosion of books, writings, scholarship. And out of that came these ideas focusing on the difficulties of wealth, that wealth is not always the blessing it seems for families, about the difficulty of wealth transfer across generations, this whole idea that wealthy families will go "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."
A lot of this thinking was focused on overly negative biases. I think we're now bumping up against some of the limits of that thinking and those negative narratives, and I'm really interested in putting forth a more positive, strengths-based approach, which I call Wealth 3.0.
Why do you think some of these truisms around intergenerational wealth — like "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves" — have become so entrenched?
Everybody loves a statistic, even if it's a pseudo-statistic, or a statistic based on bad research design. Rather than say, "We don't actually know how common successful wealth transfer is," we fill in the gap with a statistic that sounds good. That's human nature. People love simple, clear narratives that tell a good story. And in Wealth 2.0, we built a good story: Wealth doesn't survive, wealth destroys families, the children of wealthy families can't handle wealth.
One of your early contributions to this field was the 2007 article "Acquirers' and Inheritors' Dilemma," which you wrote with your long-time collaborator Dennis Jaffe. Those ideas later became a book, Strangers in Paradise. Could you briefly describe the basic premise?
We were really looking at the demographics of wealth and found that most wealthy people come to it at some point in life, rather than inherit it. That made us pause. If people are born and raised in one economic culture, in the middle class or the working class, and then come to a new economic culture, they have characteristics of immigrants to a new culture.
That cultural model of wealth showed that wealthy families have many characteristics of immigrant families, where the older generation says, "You young people don't know where we came from." But the younger generation says, "Okay, but this is where we live now, and maybe we know more than you about this land."
Practically speaking, what challenges does that culture shift present for family offices or advisors working with these families?
I think family offices that are very traditional and not considering these family dynamics are repeating a lot of these same old ideas over and over, and it becomes a self-fulfilling bias. As in, "I love working with G1 [first generation] entrepreneurs, they've got that 'fire in the belly.' G2s or G3s aren't the same." But there is a growing number of more astute family offices who understand there's more complexity to this, and that many children of wealth are in fact quite capable of handling it.
That itself raises difficulties. What if you're a Wealth 3.0 advisor with a 2.0 client who just says, "I know my grandkids are going to screw this up, we need to tie it up into a trust. You'll help me do that, right?" And then the opposite: What happens to a 3.0 family, with a smart and engaged next generation, when they've got a 2.0 advisor?
But I think we're on the cusp of a new paradigm where these old ideas start dropping away more quickly. In part I think that's thanks to modern parenting, more open family communication and better advising.
A related but more recent idea you've described is that idea of the "fourth culture," that global families of affluence, whose members live and work and study around the globe, merge influences from many cultures — including the "honour" cultures of Latin America or the Middle East, the "face" cultures of East Asia, and the "dignity" cultures of the West. Could you describe how this idea developed?
Dennis and I have worked globally, and we were seeing cross-cultural patterns, behaviours and themes in the families of wealth who are more global. And when we ran across the honour-face-dignity paradigm, it was like the lightbulb went off, our heads exploded, whatever metaphor you want to use. All of a sudden, the traditional view of East versus West, which never really captured it, changed.
When Dennis and I wrote Cross Cultures in 2016, we actually put together the new honour-face-dignity paradigm with works like Erin Meyer's book The Culture Map, which uses eight different cultural dimensions to map out differences between cultures. We began to work with these ideas, and it has been incredibly powerful. In many ways, it was a coalescing of different threads, taking the complexity of cultural anthropology and applying it to global families of wealth.
This raises all new complexities for wealth managers in a country like Canada, who are likely dealing with a more global clientele all the time. Are we seeing an understanding of this new complexity yet in the wealth-management world?
We thought there would be five to 10 years before people could really start to see it, but it's happened faster than we anticipated. I've worked with some multi-family offices who say, "Well, we haven't really seen that in our clientele," and so they're kind of not interested in the idea as much. But others are saying, "Oh my God, we're seeing it all over the place a lot."
What we see is that some families run into cultural stress across generations because they're not prepared to adapt. I remember one family where the patriarch and matriarch really encouraged the kids to be educated globally, but when the kids returned they discouraged change to the family business based on what the kids had learned abroad. The mother, in fact, said, 'I'm afraid our children will lose their soul when they become Americanized.' But then I've seen other families that are more open. And of course, this isn't just kids bringing Western ideas back to their parents or their family businesses. Sometimes it's the opposite influence, from East to West. It's much more complicated.
So I think that's a phenomenon that's going on now. In Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, increasingly Ottawa and some mid-sized cities, you see more and more cross-cultural clientele. So if you work in some geographic areas, chances of running across the global citizenry and the development of the fourth culture in the next generation is going to be very strong, and it's important to become familiar with these ideas.
Related to that, you've written about how closely wealth managers should be integrated in family dynamics, and how to advise a multigenerational family having different and contrasting ideas and values. Have you seen ideas around this change?
This is changing hugely. In fact, it's part of the problem that we are facing right now, which is that the demand for psychologically minded advisors and consultants who understand these things is far outstripping supply. At the Ultra High Net Worth Institute [Grubman is chair of its Content and Curriculum Committee], a lot of the discussions that we have are basically about the difficulty in finding emotionally intelligent advisors who can serve families in a way that is attuned to family dynamics, because the desire is to do so much more than ever before.
In part, that's what's led to the development of the new model of the Ten Domains of Family Wealth, a new roadmap the institute has put out to advising UHNW families.
It was done in a radical way, in which we basically created a model that is completely divorced from, and agnostic to, service delivery. It's the purest model that's ever been developed, just looking at the family. All other approaches by family offices or whomever has always been through the lens of, "What are we delivering to the family?" So we started with a clean sheet of paper, which is why we really came up with the 10 domains. And what we're now moving back to is, "Let's look at the 'how' of delivering services to the family to fulfill what its needs are."
And so now we're looking at practice management in a very detailed way. We're looking at integration, at business models if you work in a family office versus an institutional private bank, and how firms can deliver services the family needs.
It's groundbreaking because it's not just about the money. I think in Wealth 3.0 the future lies in integrating services, truly family-centric services, driven not by fear but by purpose and optimism. It's incredibly exciting.
This interview has been edited and condensed.


text:
New Tariffs Coming on Imports from China, EU, France, Brazil, Argentina
Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Trade Report
The Trump administration has announced plans to impose tariff increases on imports of various goods from the European Union and France as well as steel and aluminum products from Brazil and Argentina. It also appears increasingly likely that the tariff increase on List 4B goods from China will take effect Dec. 15 as scheduled.
For more information on these tariffs, please contact trade consultant Nicole Bivens Collinson at (202) 730-4956 or trade attorney Kristen Smith at (202) 730-4965.
The U.S. imposed additional tariffs of 25 percent on more than 150 goods imported from EU countries, as well as an additional 10 percent tariff on new aircraft from France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, effective Oct. 18 due to the EU's failure to fully comply with a World Trade Organization ruling against subsidies it provided to aircraft manufacturer Airbus (click here for more information on affected products).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reports that on Dec. 2 a WTO compliance panel rejected EU claims that it complied with WTO rules by making minor changes to these subsidies and instead found that European governments had extended the subsidies in a way even more favorable to Airbus. In light of the panel report and what it called a lack of progress in efforts to resolve this dispute, USTR said it will issue later this week a Federal Register notice initiating a process under which it will consider increasing the existing tariff rates and expanding the number of EU goods subject to those tariffs.
Earlier this year France enacted a three percent tax on total annual revenues generated by some companies from providing certain digital interface services (e.g., e-marketplaces for goods and services) and Internet advertising services to, or aimed at, French users. USTR said Dec. 2 that it has determined that this digital services tax discriminates against U.S. companies and is inconsistent with prevailing tax principles on account of its retroactivity (to Jan. 1, 2019), its application to revenue rather than income, its extraterritorial application, and its purpose of penalizing particular U.S. technology companies.
In response, USTR is proposing to impose additional tariffs of up to 100 percent on products from France that are drawn from a preliminary list (see attached) that contains 63 tariff subheadings with an estimated import trade value for 2018 of $2.4 billion. Affected products include yogurt, butter, cheese, cosmetics, soap, handbags, and porcelain and china dinnerware.
USTR is also considering whether to impose fees or restrictions on services of France. USTR will hold a hearing on these issues Jan. 7 and is accepting written comments on them through Jan. 6. It is unclear when the proposed tariffs or other measures might take effect.
According to press sources, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the EU "would be ready to retaliate" if the U.S. imposes tariffs in this dispute.
Brazil and Argentina
In March 2018 President Trump suspended a 25 percent additional tariff on steel products and a 10 percent additional tariff on aluminum products with respect to Brazil and Argentina after they agreed to be subject to U.S. quotas. Trump said Dec. 2 that "effective immediately" he would "restore" these tariffs on "all steel and aluminum that is shipped into the U.S." from Brazil and Argentina because they "have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies" that has harmed U.S. farmers. However, at press time no official order making this change had been issued.
The U.S. is slated to impose an additional 15 percent tariff on List 4B goods from China as of Dec. 15. Press reports indicate that Beijing has been pushing for this increase to be canceled as part of the phase 1 trade agreement the two sides are currently negotiating. However, President Trump said this week that agreement could be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election in November 2020, suggesting that the List 4B tariff increase will take effect as scheduled.
View Document(s):
USTR notice on France
To get news like this in your inbox daily, subscribe to the Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Trade Report.


text:
Announcing the Inaugural CVEP Economic Development Week Award Winners
To limit in-person contact, CVEP staff is working primarily from home. We can be quickly reached by email. Click here for more information.
The Coachella Valley Economic Partnership (CVEP) celebrated Economic Development Week from May 9-15, 2021. Adding to the celebration this year, CVEP's inaugural Economic Development Week Awards recognize local individuals, companies, and organizations for their significant contributions to economic development in the Greater Palm Springs region. The awards are destined to become a highlight of Economic Development Week for years to come.
We are proud to announce the inaugural CVEP Economic Development Week Award winners in three categories:
Economic Development Champion, Jan Harnik
Criteria for this award: The individual is a champion of regionalism in economic development, he / she is an outspoken and vocal advocate for new economic development initiatives, possesses and projects a long-term vision for the Coachella Valley economy; and takes appropriate action to work towards realizing that vision.
Harnik is a leader in regional transportation and economic development efforts, including service on: Coachella Valley Association of Governments (CVAG) Transportation Committee; Second Vice President of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG); SCAG's Regional Council, Transportation Committee, Audit Committee, Executive Administration Committee, Legislative/Communications and Membership Committee, Emerging Technologies Committee, and on the Special Committee on Equity and Social Justice; CVEP Board of Directors and Executive Committee; Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) as chair, and as chair of RCTC's Executive Committee.
Outstanding Organization, College of the Desert
Criteria for this award: Be a business or organization of any size which directly and positively impacts the Greater Palm Springs economy through such means as: a policy or group of policies; job creation or retention; workforce development; direct business assistance; or marketing and promotion of economic development initiatives.
College of the Desert (COD) received this award for its dedication to making relevant education affordable and accessible throughout Greater Palm Springs. COD has satellite campuses in Desert Hot Springs, Mecca/Thermal, Indio, and Palm Springs, a main campus in Palm Desert, and an in-progress state-of-the-art campus at the site of the former Palm Springs Mall. Upcoming and innovative projects such as Roadrunner Motors in Cathedral City, a joint architecture program with Cal Poly Pomona, and a boutique hotel for hands-on hospitality management training are but a few examples of why COD is a major economic and workforce driver in Greater Palm Springs.
Together in Partnership, Coachella Valley Economic Recovery Team (CVERT)
Criteria for this award: Two or more organizations which have collaborated on a single economic development-related project or initiative.
Along with CVEP, the Coachella Valley Economic Recovery Team founding organizations were Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau (GPSCVB), Riverside County Office of Economic Development (RCOED), and Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce (GCVCC). GPSCVB, RCOED, and GCVCC received this award for their leadership in creating the Coachella Valley Economic Recovery Team, an informal collective of leaders from business, government, and industry. For more than a year, CVERT hosted weekly meetings during which critical health, business, and economic updates – as well as economic recovery initiatives and ideas – were shared.
A Time to Recognize the Importance of the Profession to Everyone in the Community
Economic Development Week is also the time for economic development organizations like CVEP to highlight the role they plan in:
● Government policies to meet broad economic objectives including inflation control, high employment, and sustainable growth;
● Fostering robust innovation ecosystems to encourage local entrepreneurship, and to attract new innovators to the region;
● Policies and programs explicitly directed at improving the business climate through business finance, marketing, neighborhood development, business retention and expansion, technology transfer, real estate development and others.
Now in its sixth year, Economic Development Week was created by the International Economic Development Council in 2016, to recognize the unique role that economic development has in creating vibrant communities with strong economies. As the largest professional membership organization of economic developers, in the first five years, more than 450 Economic Development Week campaigns have been created throughout the United States and Canada.
CVEP is proud to bring recognition to companies and organizations like our winners. Their efforts highlight their understanding that economic development is important to everyone in a community. It doesn't just affect business owners or major companies. The jobs and opportunity created by innovative and well-thought-out economic development initiatives reach every segment of our region, now and into the future.
By Laura James|2021-05-17T16:18:17-07:00May 15th, 2021|Categories: Economic Development, News|Tags: Awards, College of the Desert, CVERT, Economic Development Week, IEDC|
About the Author: Laura James
Laura is CVEP's Vice President of Innovation, and is also a sports fanatic, music lover, and consumer technology junkie. With an undergraduate degree in education, certificates in economic development, nonprofit management, and information systems management, and an M.B.A., she helps tech founders prove that business has the power to make the world an amazing place. Laura is the only Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) in the Coachella Valley.
Laura James to Speak at 2023 IEDC Leadership Summit
Expansion Coming to CSUSB – Palm Desert Campus
Look to the Future! Economic Development Week is Here!
Laura James Earns Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) Designation
Coachella Valley Business Conference & Economic Forecast 2022
Healthy Places Index – Coachella Valley
Household Income Indicators in the Coachella Valley
Investor Spotlight: LifeStream Blood Bank
Investor Spotlight: U.S. Bank
Follow CVEP


text:
Farkasudvar (1899-ig Farkas-Dovorán, szlovákul Dvorany nad Nitrou) község Szlovákiában, a Nyitrai kerület Nagytapolcsányi járásában.

Fekvése
Nagytapolcsánytól 8 km-re délnyugatra, a Nyitra folyó jobb partján fekszik. Nyitraludánnyal összeépült.

Története
A régészeti leletek tanúsága szerint már a hallstatti kultúra időszakában, majd a római korban és a korai szláv korszakban is éltek itt emberek.

A települést 1285-ben "Doran" alakban említik először. 1416-ban Farkas-Dovorán néven említik. Kezdetben a Gabajski család birtoka, majd 1416-tól a Ludányiaké, később a Berényi, Forgách, Zay családoké és másoké. 1663-ban a török elpusztította. 1715-ben szőlőskertje és 13 háztartása volt. 1753-ban 44 adózó családja lakta. 1787-ben 40 házában 324 lakos élt. 1828-ban 41 háza és 284 lakosa volt. Lakói főként mezőgazdasággal foglalkoztak.

Vályi András szerint "DOVORÁN. Falkas Dovorán. Tót falu Nyitra Vármegyében, földes Ura Gróf Berényi Uraság, lakosai katolikusok, fekszik Alsó Ladánynak szomszédságában, Tapoltsántól mintegy kis mértföldnyire, határja középszerű, fája elég, legelője hasznos, második Osztálybéli."

Fényes Elek szerint "Farkas-Dovorán, Nyitra m. tót falu, a Nyitra vizéhez közel: 291 kath., 6 zsidó lak., jó szántóföldekkel, szőlőhegygyel, és sok gyümöcscsel. F. u. többen. Ut. p. N. Tapolcsán."

A trianoni békeszerződésig Nyitra vármegye Nagytapolcsányi járásához tartozott. A háború után lakói főként a közeli nagybirtokokon dolgoztak.

Népessége
1910-ben 421, túlnyomórészt szlovák lakosa volt.

2001-ben 732 lakosából 710 szlovák volt.

2011-ben 754 lakosából 753 szlovák.

Nevezetességei
 Szent Vendel tiszteletére szentelt kápolnája 1768-ban épült.

Külső hivatkozások
 Községinfó
 Farkasudvar Szlovákia térképén
 E-obce.sk

Források

Farkasudvar
Nyitra vármegye települései

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia