Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) … [+] U.S. President Donald Trump listen in the Oval Office of the White House on March 27, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images
Ten years from now, when economists mull the exact moment the U.S. ceded the future to China this week’s events are sure to top the list of time-stamp candidates.
This was the week, after all, when Chinese President Xi Jinping tossed another 4 trillion yuan, or $565 billion, at an economy taking devastating coronavirus blows. The 4 trillion-yuan figure will sound familiar to students of 2008 and 2009, back when Beijing threw exactly that amount at plunging demand amid the “Lehman stock.”
It worked back then. China recovered rapidly from Wall Street’s crash thanks to aggressive infrastructure spending. By 2009, China was growing 8.7% again thanks to giant public works projects—six-lane highways, bridges, ports, new skyscraper-strewn commercial centers.
Now, as Xi’s Communist Party pulls a similar play, it’s hard not to lament this week’s missteps in Mitch McConnell’s Washington.
Within the same 24 hours during which Xi’s announced a nearly $600 billion plan to build even more airports, railways and power grids, Senate Majority Leader McConnell gave the thumbs down to comparable upgrades to America’s economic hardware. “Infrastructure is unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic that we’re all experiencing and trying to figure out how to go forward,” McConnell said.
Music to Xi’s ears. The trillions of dollars his government lavished on the “Made in China 2025” extravaganza is already positioning China to lead the future of artificial intelligence, automation, micro-processing, renewable energy, robotics, self-driving vehicles, you name it. And Trump made it easy for Xi. As China prepares for the global economy it will confront in 2025, Trump is making coal great again.
Granted, Xi has been slow to get the state’s tentacles out of the economy. His pledges to let market forces play a “decisive” role in decision making have gotten only modest traction in seven years. China’s hulking $10 trillion shadow-banking system, meantime, continues to allocate capital recklessly.
Look no further than the recent jump in the number of bank bailouts, including Hong Kong-listed Bank of Gansu. Beijing’s rescue efforts highlight the deterioration of balance sheets and the extreme opacity that plagues China Inc. The accounting fraud at Luckin Coffee, China’s supposed Starbucks killer, is a reminder Asia’s biggest economy isn’t ready for global prime time.
But Trump’s three-and-half years in office have been a lost period for building the kind of economic muscle needed to stay ahead of China. Trump is doing zero to get under the economy’s hood. His trade-war and protectionist policies might’ve worked in, say, 1985. In 2020, though, his tariffs are merely added headwinds as the global economy fends off COVID-19 fallout.
Trump isn’t increasing competitiveness and productivity or catalyzing innovation. He’s cutting investments in education, training and health. Trump’s Republican Party is avoiding the infrastructure “big bang” needed to raise America’s economic game. Instead, it cut taxes in ways that reward billionaires without incentivizing companies to fatten paychecks or hone competitiveness.
Over the last few years, Trump widened the gulf between rich and poor by putting monetary easing ahead of structural reform. It’s the same mistake Japan has been making since the 1980s. Stimulus alone does nothing to reduce corruption, increase efficiency or level playing fields.
America’s crumbling infrastructure could use its own nearly $600 million—or even $2 trillion—facelift. Not only would it create jobs, and fast, but also better prepare the U.S. for a 2025 when China’s dominance passes the point of no return.
Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the progress on the vaccine, anti-body, medicine and fast … [+] testing kit research and application during his visit to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, March 2, 2020.
Xinhua/Ju Peng via Getty Images
There’s an alternate reality in which China’s coronavirus debacle plays into Trump’s hands. China absolutely needs to account for its handling of a COVID-19 pandemic believed to have started in Wuhan. There should indeed be investigations and punishment doled by the global community. But Trump’s antics, lies and over-the-top bombast are helping China deflect blame.
Each bizarre Trump Twitter rant makes Xi’s China look serious and sober by comparison. Each Trumpian threat to impose new tariffs here, demand higher military payments there or manufacture some controversy over there plays into Beijing’s hands.
So does McConnell’s refusal to rise to the occasion. At 78, it’s reasonable to think the Kentucky Republican might not have many more years left in top Senate leadership. Yet the lost period of reform that McConnell represents will be with U.S.-China dynamics for decades to come.
Come 2025, U.S. investors may wish they could engineer their own alternative reality—one where McConnell and Trump favored a Marshal Plan of sorts to halt America’s slide toward developing-nation status in terms of infrastructure. When economic historians of the future mull when this risk morphed into fact, the last few days may haunt Washington.
OTTAWA – The federal government is expected to boost the minimum hourly wage that must be paid to temporary foreign workers in the high-wage stream as a way to encourage employers to hire more Canadian staff.
Under the current program’s high-wage labour market impact assessment (LMIA) stream, an employer must pay at least the median income in their province to qualify for a permit. A government official, who The Canadian Press is not naming because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the change, said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault will announce Tuesday that the threshold will increase to 20 per cent above the provincial median hourly wage.
The change is scheduled to come into force on Nov. 8.
As with previous changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the government’s goal is to encourage employers to hire more Canadian workers. The Liberal government has faced criticism for increasing the number of temporary residents allowed into Canada, which many have linked to housing shortages and a higher cost of living.
The program has also come under fire for allegations of mistreatment of workers.
A LMIA is required for an employer to hire a temporary foreign worker, and is used to demonstrate there aren’t enough Canadian workers to fill the positions they are filling.
In Ontario, the median hourly wage is $28.39 for the high-wage bracket, so once the change takes effect an employer will need to pay at least $34.07 per hour.
The government official estimates this change will affect up to 34,000 workers under the LMIA high-wage stream. Existing work permits will not be affected, but the official said the planned change will affect their renewals.
According to public data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 183,820 temporary foreign worker permits became effective in 2023. That was up from 98,025 in 2019 — an 88 per cent increase.
The upcoming change is the latest in a series of moves to tighten eligibility rules in order to limit temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers. Those changes include imposing caps on the percentage of low-wage foreign workers in some sectors and ending permits in metropolitan areas with high unemployment rates.
Temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector are not affected by past rule changes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
