ROME — After five weeks under a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, Cristiano Barberi’s children’s clothing store was among the few Roman shops allowed to reopen last week. But what may have looked like much-needed relief brought more financial punishment.
“It’s only for surviving,” said Barberi, wearing a mask and rubber gloves outside his family-owned boutique in one of Rome’s most fashionable neighborhoods, adding that he was opening to show “the people a new way, a new day.”
Almost a century old, his I Vippini Roma children’s clothing shop sells mostly handmade outfits. It had only a few customers on the day it reopened, and only one made a purchase.
Barberi’s tiny store and its customers are at the tip of the spear of Italy’s delicate economic reopening, one that will be watched by the rest of the world as policymakers try to prevent the pandemic from becoming an economic catastrophe.
Cristiano Barberi’s clothing store for children in Rome was among the few shops allowed to reopen.Bill O’Reilly / NBC News
Politicians, as well as medical and economic experts, warn that Italy may not make a convincing model for other countries — its death toll remains the highest in Europe, at 24,114, according to Johns Hopkins University. Some complain that Italy’s planning for its “phase two” of the outbreak is still too little, too late.
“Come on, you need to have a plan,” said Alessandro Vespignani, an Italian American physicist and expert on mathematical epidemiology at Northeastern University in Boston. “This is like everyone is talking about D-Day but they don’t know if they have ships, soldiers or support. But all everyone is talking about is when is [the date] of D-Day.”
Around two weeks before Italy is scheduled to reopen for business on May 3, an advisory task force of scientists, business and economy experts appointed by the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has yet to roll out a comprehensive plan to put Italians safely back to work. On Tuesday, Conte said that he was “confident” that he would be able to announce a plan for reopening the country by the end of this week.
The government describes this phase as the one in which Italians find a way to live with the virus — allowing people to return to work and use public transportation while still practicing social distancing, tracking personal associations and strengthening the health system to prepare for fresh outbreaks.
In Italy, as elsewhere, medical caution is colliding with hard economic realities. The heavily indebted country ranked among the least financially solvent in Western Europe even before the crisis, and recent estimates from the International Monetary Fund see Italy’s economy contracting by more than 9 percent by the end of the year — the worst projection in Europe.
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Even after Silvio Brusaferro, president of Italy’s National Health Institute, said last week that the “contagion curve is dipping,” the government is debating whether to extend the lockdown past May 3 over concerns of a viral rebound.
A person sits next to a bike at Gianicolo Hill in Rome on Sunday.Alberto Lingria / Reuters
The debate over Italy’s reopening has played out across familiar fault lines, pitting big business and industry against labor unions and the wealthy north against the much poorer south.
The government is tentatively planning to slowly reopen the economy in three stages across the north — by far the worst afflicted by the virus — the center and south of the country, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
Which businesses open first and how has become a central sticking point in the debate.
Children’s clothing stores like Barberi’s were allowed to open last week, along with bookstores, stationery stores and logging activities — counterintuitive categories that labor and industry leaders said were meant to prevent swarms of new customers.
“I think it’s because children grow up,” Barberi said about why his store was allowed to open so early. “If there was someone that was born in December or January, they finished their little dress.”
Barberi’s shop is among the 95 percent of Italian businesses that employ fewer than 10 employees. Those companies, less equipped to provide protection for their employees and typically more financially exposed, are among the most vulnerable to the virus.
But representatives of major industries in the automobile and garment sectors have been applying substantial pressure on the government to allow large factories to reopen.
Of particular concern are the “Made in Italy” brands — labels in fashion, food, furniture and mechanical engineering (mostly automobiles) that are largely for export and considered iconic.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera reported over the weekend that such businesses may be allowed to reopen before May 3.
“There is a real risk that these industries will be severely damaged,” said a representative of Confindustria, the Italian employers’ federation, which has been pushing hard to reopen big brands. “You can find ways to allow safe work. But you can’t just stay at home … because the social consequences can be really very, very serious.”
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The Confindustria representative argued that most new cases were transmitted within hospitals, private homes and nursing homes, not workplaces.
But epidemiologists have called such arguments misleading. While most patients who died from the disease are elderly and retired people, many probably contracted the virus from younger working people who carried few symptoms.
Labor unions have argued against returning to work while complaining that big business is prioritizing the economy over workers’ safety.
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“There’s a sort of contradiction between saying always ‘stay at home, stay at home, stay at home,’ but at the same time to tell workers to go to work without the security and conditions,” said Gianna Fracassi, deputy secretary-general of the Italian General Confederation of Labor, Italy’s main labor union.
Fracassi said that even after major industries had agreed with the government to keep the economy shut in public meetings Friday, they then privately lobbied the prime minister to reopen early.
The representative from Confindustria denied that industrial lobbies had disagreed with the government’s decision to extend the lockdown.
But the arguments around the reopening point to an emerging realization about phase two: For many, in particular labor unions such as Fracassi’s, it’s less a new phase than a new reality.
“We will be in a different world, and we will need to be in a very different social and economic situation,” Fracassi said. “We know that we are going to be different at the end of this story, which will be very long.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
