Telepsychiatry Helps Recruitment And Patient Care In Rural Areas
Colombia Is Turning Into A Major Medical Marijuana Producer
Workers prune marijuana plants at a Clever Leaves greenhouse in Pesca, Colombia. The company employs over 450 people.
Courtesy of Clever Leaves
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Courtesy of Clever Leaves
Patricia Santiago and her family were forced to flee their home near Colombia’s Caribbean coast after complaining about neighborhood dope dealers who, in turn, threatened to kill them. But in an odd twist, Santiago now works in the drug trade — at a medical marijuana facility.
At first, Santiago felt like she was breaking the law as she pruned and clipped cannabis plants on a plantation run by a Colombian firm called Clever Leaves. However, the government legalized medical marijuana in 2016 and now Clever Leaves is exporting cannabis-based products to Canada and the United Kingdom.
Rather than a symbol of the country’s dark past of narco-fueled violence, Santiago smiles and says, Colombian drugs “can now be used to treat people.”
At least that’s the bet of a growing number of entrepreneurs who are building vast marijuana plantations and state-of-the-art pharmaceutical laboratories that produce everything from cannabis-based pain relievers for cancer patients to dog treats that act as calming agents.
Other countries are passing laws to permit the production, import and export of medical marijuana but Colombia has a leg up because it did so three years ago, says Rodrigo Arcila, president of the Colombian Cannabis Industry Association. He said the group’s 29 member companies have invested more than $600 million in building medical marijuana facilities.
Arcila maintains that Colombia can produce cannabis products at lower prices than competitors due to affordable land, relatively low wages and an abundance of skilled farm hands who cut their teeth in Colombia’s booming flower business.
Colombia sits near the equator, giving it 12 hours of daily sunlight year-round. By contrast, countries with seasonal variations require the extensive use of artificial lights, which drives up production costs.
“This is a marvelous opportunity in a country where drugs have caused so many problems,” Arcila says.
Colombia is already well-known as a major marijuana supplier. In the 1960s and 1970s, tons of illegal Colombian cannabis, mostly grown in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the Caribbean coast, were smuggled into the United States.
But marijuana traffickers, including the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, soon switched to cocaine, which was far more profitable. That made Colombia ground zero for the war on drugs, a conflict that in the 1980s and ’90s killed thousands of Colombians, police and army soldiers, anti-drug agents, judges and politicians.
In recent years Colombia — like Canada, several European and Latin American nations and many U.S. states — has taken a more permissive stance on pot. Since the mid-1990s, Colombian courts have upheld the right of individuals to possess up to 20 grams of marijuana, though a government decree last year banned people from using drugs in public.
An aerial view of the Clever Leaves plantation in Pesca. It currently covers 37 acres and plans to expand cultivation to over 200 acres of marijuana plants by 2021.
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As an emerging venture it’s unclear how the medical marijuana business will play out. For example, it remains illegal to import marijuana-based products into the United States. Due to government bureaucracy in Colombia, it can take months or years for startups to secure the proper permits and licenses.
Yet the uncertainty hasn’t stopped companies from betting big on cannabis. Khiron, a Canadian firm founded in 2017 and based in Colombia’s capital of Bogotá, now has marijuana plantations in this country as well as Chile and Uruguay. CEO Álvaro Torres, a 40-year-old Colombian engineer, says one reason he got involved in the business was the occurrence of so many high-profile deaths, including the music star Prince, from opioid-based drugs.
“So I look at that and say: ‘Why not cannabis which has less hazardous effects for the body?” Torres says.
Julián Wilches is the co-founder of Clever Leaves. Before getting into medical marijuana, he used to work on drug policy at Colombia’s Justice Ministry.
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John Otis for NPR
Julián Wilches, who co-founded Clever Leaves in 2016, used to work for the Colombian Justice Ministry combating the illegal narcotics industry. But he has fully embraced medical cannabis.
“I feel great about doing this,” Wilches says during a tour of the Clever Leaves facility in the town of Pesca, a four-hour drive from Bogotá. “This is the right way to use controlled substances.”
The land around Pesca has long been used for potato and dairy farming, but it’s now home to 37 acres of marijuana bushes. Clever Leaves intends to increase the acreage to more than 200 by 2021, in its quest to become the world’s largest medical marijuana company.
Inside green houses, Clever Leaves workers wearing smocks and rubber gloves water, prune and clip the cannabis plants which grow to a height of about five feet before they are harvested. The flowers, which are rich in chemical compounds called cannabinoids, are then dried and ground into a powder that is turned into oils, extracts and crystals at a Clever Leaves laboratory.
“Pharmaceuticals always come from the global north to South America to Africa to Asia,” Wilches says “This is something that is changing that model. This is from Colombia to the world.”
Why Apple Is Entering The Crowded Credit Card Field
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Ted Rossman, industry analyst at CreditCards.com, about whether Apple’s new credit card is disrupting the industry.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The new titanium Apple credit card launched last month. It certainly looks different from the cards you’ve already got in your wallet – sleek, all white, no number on it and so delicate that the company warns you have to be careful how you store it so it doesn’t get stained. But there’s more to distinguish this card than just looks. And that’s what we’re going to consider on this week’s All Tech Considered.
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KELLY: We’re joined now by Ted Rossman. He’s an industry analyst at creditcards.com and he is on the record as being officially underwhelmed by this card.
Ted Rossman, welcome.
TED ROSSMAN: Thanks for having me.
KELLY: So how is the Apple Card different from any other credit card?
ROSSMAN: When it comes to the key aspects, like rewards, interest rates, fees, we’ve seen it all before. When I said I was underwhelmed, I was specifically referring to the rewards. That’s a huge thing for the 40% of cardholders who can pay their bills in full. We all love cash back, airline miles. This card lags most rewards cards. For the most part, this is something that’s appealing to Apple fanatics. It’s not a groundbreaking card.
KELLY: So you think people who may be attracted to this card are going to be people who liked Apple anyway and want to have an Apple Card in their wallet.
ROSSMAN: Yes. I think for the Apple fanatic, there is a definite desired market there. My thinking on this card has also evolved a little bit in that they’re approving a lot more people with subprime credit scores than I expected. And I think when you look at this card through that lens, the rewards start to look more attractive because, generally, you can’t get a good rewards credit card if you’re FICO score is below, let’s say, 670. But Apple is really dipping into the low 600s, even the 500s in some cases. So if you have spotty credit because of a blemish in the past or if you’re a young adult or an immigrant who’s new to credit, then this card starts to look more attractive.
KELLY: I’ll also put on the table what Apple says should be a selling point for this card. They say that it’s got way better privacy and security features than some other credit cards. Fact-check that for me. Does it?
ROSSMAN: That’s true. This card is more secure for a few reasons. One is that the card number and the expiration date and the card verification value, they’re not even printed on the physical card.
KELLY: Right.
ROSSMAN: That’s really unique. To get this card online, you need to also have the phone. That’s how you’re going to buy something from a website. You’re going to have to look in the Wallet app on your iPhone and find the number and the expiration date there. That’s secure. They’re also pushing privacy in another way, which is Apple and Goldman are not going to share or sell your purchase information, which is pretty unique in the credit card world.
KELLY: You mentioned Goldman. What’s their stake in this?
ROSSMAN: Goldman Sachs is the card issuer. They’re the bank, you know, behind the card. It’s their first consumer credit card, which is notable. I actually think it’s going to be even harder for them to make money with this because the card’s advertising no fees. They’re advertising lower interest rates. And they’re really encouraging you to pay as much as possible through these budgeting tools they have in their app. So I think for Goldman, it’s going to be a tough sell to make money. For Apple, I think they’re less in it for the revenue and more in it for the long game of getting more people loyal to their phones, getting more people using Apple Pay. I think they’re trying to play this long game to get deeper into our financial lives.
KELLY: That’s Ted Rossman, industry analyst at creditcards.com, talking about the new Apple credit card.
Ted Rossman, thanks.
ROSSMAN: Thank you.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
NPR Names Veteran Media Executive John Lansing As Its New CEO
John Lansing, the chief executive officer and director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, will become NPR’s CEO in mid-October.
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U.S. Agency for Global Media
NPR has a new CEO. John Lansing, a veteran government broadcast and cable television executive, has been selected by NPR’s corporate board to succeed its current chief, Jarl Mohn.
Lansing, who is 62, is currently the chief executive of the government agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio and Television Martí and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, among others. He made his mark in his current job with stirring defenses of journalism, free from government interference.
Lansing will start in his new position in mid-October. He will be the 11th permanent president or chief executive in the radio network’s nearly 50-year history.
In an interview, Lansing said he wants to build on NPR’s successes in broadcast news and entertainment to become even more dominant in podcasting and more prevalent in streaming.
“When I think of NPR and I think of the member stations collectively, I think really of journalism as a public service, not tied to a profit motive,” Lansing told NPR News. He defined NPR’s mission as “serving the public with information and an excellence and quality about it that makes it ‘must see’ on a variety of platforms.”
A number of executives will report directly to Lansing, including Nancy Barnes, senior vice president for news and editorial director, who joined NPR last November and oversees the network’s newsroom.
Four years ago, Lansing was named by President Barack Obama to be the first chief executive of the broadcasting outfit that was renamed the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Lansing has won plaudits from journalists for his rousing defense of a free press even while serving in the Trump administration, which has been notably hostile to traditional notions of the role of journalism in civic life.
He took over a troubled organization beset by infighting and bureaucratic inefficiency. He is credited with restoring morale, in part by naming a noted journalist as head of the Voice of America: Amanda Bennett is a former top news executive at the Philadelphia Inquirer who previously held senior newsroom jobs at Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal.
Lansing said he took pride in maintaining conventional broadcasts while appealing to new audiences, reaching about 25% more people each week.
“What you really want to do is be connected to people that are consuming content on something they’re holding in their hand, and aren’t necessarily tied to a TV set on a wall or a radio in a living room,” Lansing said. “Your mobility becomes extremely important to be involved and connected to audiences that are mobile and that tend to be, frankly, younger and, as we think of it at USAGM, future leaders, who can influence the rise of free and open societies.”
Lansing’s tenure at the agency has not been without controversy.
He held off a push by House Republicans to spin off Voice of America into a nongovernmental broadcaster. Lansing also elevated to chief strategy officer a former U.S. State Department staffer who recently pleaded guilty to having defrauded the U.S. Agency for Global Media out of more than $40,000 in government money in 2018, according to federal prosecutors.
Lansing says the agency referred Haroon Ullah’s expenditures to auditors and investigators after travel assistants flagged them; according to the Justice Department statement, Ullah admitted submitting fraudulent receipts for hotel room reimbursements and fake medical claims to get government payments of upgrades in airline seat assignments, among other offenses.
Lansing previously held positions overseeing the Scripps Co.’s local television stations and then its national cable channels, which include the Food Network and HGTV, among others. For two years, he served as the president and CEO of a cable trade group called the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing.
He will now lead the nation’s top audio producer and broadcaster.
“In terms of mission, understanding of media, the depth of experience, his strategic leadership, his commitment to people and culture, I would say those were really the key things that we were looking for,” said Goli Sheikholeslami, vice chairwoman of the NPR board of directors and CEO of Chicago Public Media.
“The challenges he will face at NPR are not dissimilar to challenges across the media landscape as a whole,” said Sheikholeslami, who will soon take up the CEO job at New York Public Radio.
NPR stands stronger than it did at the outset of Mohn’s five-year term in 2014. The network had run deficits in six of the seven previous years; under Mohn, it has achieved a slight surplus for each year during his tenure, even as the annual budget grew by more than 40%.
NPR draws more than 28 million listeners each week and 40 million unique monthly visitors to its website — both represent a rise of several million over those five years. NPR has also been the nation’s leading producer of podcasts since Podtrac started measuring audiences. NPR maintains 17 national bureaus and 17 bureaus abroad. The network has won acclaim for its coverage of wars and disasters, yet suffered its own crisis and tragedy in 2016 when its David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were killed while on assignment in southern Afghanistan. Mohn placed an emphasis on fostering a more collaborative dynamic with the public radio stations that NPR serves and was given credit for making progress on that score.
Yet Lansing also takes over an institution riven by a scandal that hit its top reaches, with a chief news executive toppled over #MeToo complaints of inappropriate conduct toward female subordinates and colleagues. Mohn fired head of news Michael Oreskes on Halloween 2017. A later report commissioned by the NPR board found that questions had been raised about Oreskes’ behavior even before his hiring and that concerns were raised throughout his tenure; the repeated and formal warnings by top executives (including Mohn) to Oreskes to stop the unwanted attention he paid to female colleagues proved ineffective.
NPR’s president of operations, Loren Mayor, was the leading internal candidate for the chief executive position. While serving as chief operating officer, she took on a greater role during two of Mohn’s medical leaves and in the aftermath of the sexual harassment scandal. She also has led initiatives to reform hiring practices and to sweep far more temporary positions into permanent slots, often working closely with the network’s chief unions to do so.
Mayor is said to be staying on at the network as a top executive and deputy to Lansing, retaining the enhanced portfolio she took on after Mohn’s health crises. Both Lansing and Sheikholeslami say he is adamant about pressing forward with reforms to the workplace culture at NPR that Mayor has already started to put in place.
NPR faces financial pressures from two fronts.
The network’s fight for listeners’ time has become more feverish. Others have waded into the podcast fray with a vengeance. The streaming platform Spotify paid nearly a quarter-billion dollars to buy the podcast producer Gimlet, founded by former staffers of NPR and other public radio outlets. And The New York Times has won praise and new fans through its weekday podcast The Daily, with in-depth interviews of reporters and newsmakers.
The other is the fight for donors. Mohn had promised to attract major contributions to NPR before the end of his tenure; to date he has not landed the major eight- and nine-figure donations his stated aspirations suggested.
“Jarl would be the first to say that it is the area where he feels that his work was not complete,” Sheikholeslami said. “The combination of his health issues plus the situation with Mike Oreskes did derail his plans.”
That said, Mohn set higher annual expectations for the network in fundraising and agreed to be co-chairman of its 50th-anniversary capital campaign. He has previously announced he would be staying on as president emeritus to help the network raise major gifts, and along with his wife, Pamela Mohn, he personally committed $10 million to the network.
Unlike some predecessors, Lansing doesn’t face a particularly fraught political landscape. Government support for the public radio system isn’t in any immediate jeopardy. NPR takes only a few million dollars a year from federal sources for its programs. While member stations on average receive about 10% of their funding from the federal government, fees from the stations make up a significant part of the NPR budget.
Lansing has earned an advanced degree in political agility. At the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Lansing championed a free press even as leaders of many nations move against it.
“Governments around the world are increasingly cracking down on the free flow of information; silencing dialogue and dissent; and distorting reality,” Lansing said in a speech he delivered in May to the Media for Democracy Forum. “The result, I believe, is a war on truth.”
He continued: “Citizens in countries from Russia to China, from Iran to North Korea, have been victimized for decades. But now we’re seeing authoritarian regimes expanding around the globe, with media repression in places like Turkey and Venezuela, Cambodia and Vietnam.”
Trump has notably praised authoritarian figures, including the leaders of North Korea, the Philippines, Russia and Turkey and has waged his own fight against journalists.
While they do not broadcast within the U.S., the Voice of America and the other media outfits Lansing has overseen typically adhere to traditional concepts of factual, nonideological journalism, with the frequent exception of Radio Martí — historically an anti-Castro and anti-Cuban communist outlet. The roots of the VOA involved providing truthful reports to people under Nazi and Axis power rule during World War II. The varied broadcasters also offered jazz and other music to appeal to people under communist regimes using a soft form of diplomacy. Their editorial independence is enshrined in federal law, though it sometimes came under attack.
Now Lansing says he wants to draw on the intellectual and creative impulses of his new staffers as he leads a domestic journalistic powerhouse with an international reputation and reach.
“I want to hear the ideas that are bubbling underneath right now and what people are excited about, what they’re looking forward to developing,” Lansing said Thursday. “And I want to look for areas that I can provide leadership to bring resources together as needed strategically to find the right priorities that make the most sense for growing NPR this year and then into the future.“
Disclosure: This story was reported by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik under guidance from NPR chief business editor Pallavi Gogoi. Under standard procedures for reporting on NPR matters, NPR’s corporate and news executives were not allowed to review the report until it was posted.
‘It’s The Stone Age Of Fossil Fuels’: Coal Bankruptcy Tests Wyoming Town
In Gillette, Wyo., miner Bill Fortner stands by stalled trains that normally would be transporting coal. Local production has declined by one-third in the past decade.
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Cooper McKim/Wyoming Public Media
Two months ago, coal company Blackjewel declared bankruptcy, putting hundreds of miners in Wyoming and across Appalachia out of work. Miners affected by the bankruptcy in Kentucky have been camping out on a train track for six weeks in protest.
Blackjewel is the third coal company in Wyoming to declare bankruptcy this year, but this one is more dramatic: paychecks went unpaid, a CEO was pushed out and, most importantly, the gates of the mines in Gillette, Wyo., which calls itself the energy capital of the U.S., were locked, stopping coal production. Miners say that just doesn’t happen.
The move left about 600 people out of work in Gillette. In two months, only 25% of workers have found jobs, according to local management.
Until two months ago, Darlene Rea worked in Blackjewel’s warehouse. She received freight, wrote invoices and found parts. Since the coal company’s abrupt bankruptcy, she’s been stuck looking for work.
“Every day, every day, every day, you keep waiting and wondering if somebody is going to call you up. And then there’s nothing,” Rea says, slapping down a sheet of paper listing all the places she’s applied for jobs.
“Peabody Energy, Cloud Peak, Campbell County Hospital, Walmart, Pegasus,” she says.
Next to many is the word “rejection.”
Rea has a medically retired husband and a mortgage. Worst comes to worst, they might have to sell the house and move — a tough option with grandkids nearby. Rea says her positivity is fading with each passing day of a particularly prolonged bankruptcy.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this long. Seriously.”
Ty Cordingly is one of the few who managed to land a new job.
“I got some co-workers that had to go to Nevada, Montana, South Carolina, you know, Arizona,” he said. “When there’s not very many jobs — our entire community is based around the energy industry.”
Gillette isn’t just losing people — it’s losing money, too. Blackjewel owes the county $37 million — funds that support not only local services but state education. It’s left local vendors unpaid. The company even owes the federal government more than $60 million. Cordingly thinks Wyoming relies too much on energy.
“This isn’t a story about one individual or one generation. The state has always just counted on us being the cash cow for the state of Wyoming and they didn’t have to do any planning because the oil kept flowing and the trains kept rolling out with coal on it,” he says.
Ty Cordingly and his dad at a local Gillette diner. He’s seen coworkers leave the state for jobs and thinks Wyoming relies too much on the energy industry.
Cooper McKim/Wyoming Public Media
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Cooper McKim/Wyoming Public Media
Over the past year, Campbell County produced the most tax revenue for the state: 15% of it. Oil and gas are certainly still flowing, but coal isn’t having as much luck.
Driving to his regular diner, retired coal miner Bill Fortner says, “It’s the Stone Age of fossil fuels, coal is. It’s done.”
His ancestors homesteaded here four generations ago. Fortner is a staunch Republican who has mined coal for much of his life. He says President Trump has been the best shot coal has had, but it hasn’t been enough. Production in the Powder River Basin has declined by one-third in the past decade. Fortner says the area needs to adapt, and quickly.
“Otherwise, we’re going to be sitting here looking at another ghost town,” he said.
Local leaders say Gillette is already taking steps to diversify its economy. While that’s underway, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon says there may be some tight financial years ahead.
The future is still uncertain for Blackjewel’s two mines. The former owner says it plans to buy them back but would only keep them open for the short term.
The Price Of Gold Is At A 6-Year High. But Is It Actually A Good Investment?
The price of gold is at its highest in six years. “Gold bugs” — that is, die-hard gold investors — swear by the commodity as a certain bet. But are they right?
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The price of gold is at its highest in more than six years. Gold bugs – that is, die-hard gold investors – swear by the commodity as a sure bet. But are they right? Stacey Vanek Smith and Darius Rafieyan of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money report from New York.
STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: The world’s largest gold coin rolled through town all the way from Australia.
DARIUS RAFIEYAN, BYLINE: And it was put on display, like, on a literal pedestal in a little roped-off section in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
VANEK SMITH: This event was basically a gimmick, a big advertisement. It was there to promote investing in gold.
RAFIEYAN: Gold is having quite a moment right now – no question. The price of gold is at a six-year high, and investors from all over the world are jumping into gold.
VANEK SMITH: But why is the price so high right now? And is gold actually a good investment?
RAFIEYAN: The gold coin gimmick was admittedly pretty effective. A little crowd had gathered. They were taking selfies with the coin.
VANEK SMITH: But, you know, there was this one guy in the crowd who kind of stood out.
What does it – what do you feel when you look at it?
KAROL DIBYEC: Honestly, what I feel – I feel I want to steal it.
VANEK SMITH: (Laughter).
RAFIEYAN: Well, this very honest man is Karol Dibyec. He designs and installs kitchens. He lives in New Jersey. And Karol loves gold.
VANEK SMITH: Are you a gold bug?
DIBYEC: Yeah, I am (laughter).
VANEK SMITH: You are?
DIBYEC: (Laughter) Yeah.
VANEK SMITH: Gold bugs – so these are people who invest in gold, but these are not like the same people who invest in stocks and bonds.
RAFIEYAN: No, gold people are passionate about gold. They want to talk about it. They believe in it. For a lot of hardcore gold investors, gold is almost like a religion.
VANEK SMITH: Gold bugs believe that gold has this inherent value, that it is valuable everywhere. So if your country’s economy goes bust and your currency is suddenly worthless, you’re fine if your money is invested in gold.
RAFIEYAN: And this is why during times when people feel uncertain about the future or worried that the economy might go south, a lot of people start gravitating to gold.
VANEK SMITH: So is gold a good investment?
JOSH BROWN: No.
VANEK SMITH: (Laughter).
RAFIEYAN: Josh Brown is the CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and he says that the real appeal of gold is more nostalgic than rational. He says gold did have this golden moment back in the ’70s and ’80s when the economy and inflation were spinning out of control, and gold was this stable safe haven from all the chaos.
VANEK SMITH: Josh says ever since then, gold has had this reputation for being safe and secure, a place you can put your wealth when the economy is looking shaky.
RAFIEYAN: But Josh says when you actually look at the numbers, the data, this doesn’t really track.
BROWN: Gold is below the level it traded at in the early 1980s – almost 44 years ago – on an inflation-adjusted basis. Everything outperformed it. I mean, stocks versus gold over the last four decades – it’s embarrassing. It’s not even worth discussing.
RAFIEYAN: And this moment right now could be gold’s last real hurrah. Josh’s gold is getting a little outdated. A lot of younger investors who want an independent, government-free store of wealth now tend to gravitate not to gold but to cryptocurrency, like bitcoin.
VANEK SMITH: And Josh says you hear a lot of the same arguments and that same kind of extreme zeal that you used to hear from gold bugs now from crypto investors.
RAFIEYAN: Cryptocurrency – it’s still a relatively small market. But Josh says he thinks more and more, it will play the role for a certain stripe of investor that gold once did.
Darius Rafieyan.
VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith, NPR News.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
New Import Taxes Underscore China’s Role As Growing U.S. Food Supplier
The Trump administration leveled new tariffs this weekend on more than $100 billion worth of imports from China, including chocolate, sweet biscuits and chewing gum.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The Trump administration imposed new tariffs this weekend on more than a hundred billion dollars’ worth of Chinese imports. The targets include chocolate, sweet biscuits and chewing gum. The import taxes highlight the evolution in the kind of products China sells to the world. NPR’s Scott Horsley reports on America’s growing appetite for food from China.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Maybe it’s no surprise that China exported $89 million worth of green and black tea to the United States last year. But apple juice – yeah, almost $300 million worth. The U.S. also imported nearly $400 million worth of frozen tilapia from China. And in case the fish was a little bland, we also bought $43 million worth of Chinese garlic.
Agricultural economist David Ortega of Michigan State University says China has grown into the third-biggest supplier of foreign food to the U.S., behind Canada and Mexico. So when the trade war turns into a food fight, the indigestion cuts both ways.
DAVID ORTEGA: It’s not just American farmers that are missing opportunities to send products to China, but then we also have farmers in China whose livelihood depend on products coming here. And likewise, we have, you know, consumers on both ends that are being affected in terms of prices from these tariffs.
HORSLEY: Much of the food the U.S. buys from China requires labor-intensive processing, giving the country’s low-wage workers an advantage. China’s emergence as factory to the world is well-known, but its growing importance as farmer and fishmonger gets less attention.
Tony Corbo, who’s with the environmental group Food & Water Watch, says it’s easy to overlook the Chinese peas and spinach in the frozen food aisle or that river of Chinese apple juice.
TONY CORBO: Not only are you talking about the juice itself as a commodity, but apple juice is used as a sweetener in all sorts of other foods.
HORSLEY: China’s still recovering from a series of food safety scandals more than a decade ago involving tainted baby formula, toothpaste and pet food.
Darci Vetter, who was the chief agriculture negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative, says since then, the country has imposed more rigorous oversight.
DARCI VETTER: China has tried to respond by really upgrading its food safety laws and changing its food safety regime. That’s still something that’s a high priority for them.
HORSLEY: Many Americans are still wary, though. During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. opened the door to cooked and processed chicken from China but only if the birds themselves were raised in the U.S., Canada or Chile. Corbo says only one shipment ever made that circuitous journey.
CORBO: Why did the chicken cross the Pacific twice? It was – 110 pounds was exported to the United States, but that’s been it because it caused such a big controversy at the time.
HORSLEY: Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute says a lot of tilapia makes the opposite journey, raised on a fish farm in China but exported to be cut and packaged in this country.
GAVIN GIBBONS: That’s something that fuels jobs here in the U.S. It’s facilities in Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Illinois that do that.
HORSLEY: Gibbons says by relying on farm-raised fish from China, Midwestern processing plants can operate year-round without overfishing here at home. But fish imported from China is already subject to a 25% tariff, and that’s set to go to 30% next month. Gibbons says that makes it hard to compete with domestic chicken, beef and pork for Americans’ dinner plates.
GIBBONS: When it comes to seafood and tariffs, you know, we are really collateral damage in this trade war, and we get hit coming and going.
HORSLEY: America’s lobster fishermen have already been feeling the pain of China’s retaliatory tariffs for more than a year now.
Darci Vetter, the former trade negotiator, worries much like the food safety scandals of a decade ago, the trade war will do long-lasting damage in both China and the U.S., leaving a bad taste in consumers’ mouths that no amount of imported chewing gum will take away.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE SHINS SONG, “PINK BULLETS”)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Facebook’s New Requirements For Political Ads
NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Dipayan Ghosh, a fellow at Harvard University, about Facebook’s new political ad requirements.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Facebook’s credibility has been called into question ever since the company admitted that its platform was used as part of disinformation campaigns during the 2016 elections. Lawmakers threatened regulations, none came. And in the years that followed, the companies struggled to regain trust with the public as other abuses of the platform have come to light. Last week, Facebook announced a new set of requirements for any group or company that wants to target users with political ads on its site.
Here to talk more about that is Dipayan Ghosh. He is co-director of the Technology and Democracy Project at the Shorenstein Center. That’s at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ghosh previously worked at Facebook on issues of global privacy and public policy design. Dipayan, thanks so much for joining us.
DIPAYAN GHOSH: Of course. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Could you just start by telling us what we mean by a Facebook ad? Like, what do these political ads look like now, and what will they look like after these new requirements are implemented? I guess what I’m asking is, how will I know if I’m looking at a political ad on Facebook?
GHOSH: Well, that’s one of the criticisms that people have laid on this announcement, which is that we’re not really going to see. As users of Facebook, we’re likely not going to see much change on the front end of seeing the apps that we interact with on Facebook’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Instead, these changes are more on the back end for Facebook to help verify that the people putting ads out are legitimate political actors.
MARTIN: So to whom is this being disclosed? Is this being disclosed through Facebook? Is this being disclosed to the viewer on the site? How will we know?
GHOSH: Well, it seems like things are slightly unclear still, but what we have heard from the company is that the company is going to move toward a more rigorous verification system. Before – or, in fact, currently what the company is doing is if you’re a political operator, a political advertiser and you want to push an ad on Facebook or Instagram or one of its platforms, what you’ve got to do is essentially just let Facebook know that you’re a political advertiser, a political organization. And you’ve just got to register that with Facebook and register your name and your location.
What Facebook is additionally going to ask for now is, in addition to your street address and contact information, a tax ID number or a Federal Election Commission identification number or some kind of a governmental identification that can help the company verify that you are a political organization. That’s the main change that’s happening on the back end to help the company sort out whether or not you’re a political organization trying to advertise or you’re an illegitimate actor that’s trying to push a political ad.
MARTIN: And why is that? Again, just for people who – I mean, maybe this is obvious – but why does Facebook remain such an attractive place for political campaigns?
GHOSH: So much attention is moving toward Facebook and other digital platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Google. So many millions of dollars are spent to push political ads on these platforms. The eyeballs of society, particularly of young people in society who are coming into voting age are on Internet platforms. They’re not – they’re increasingly less and less on broadcast and radio. Additionally, what what political advertisers have realized is that they can start using these platforms in potentially interesting ways.
They can slice and dice different audience segments, meaning different classes of a constituent population and target them with incisive political advertising that triggers what those constituents believe or attempts to trigger an emotional response in ways that you can’t do on broadcast or radio because you’ve got to advertise to the entire constituent population, not just a targeted segment of it. And this, in fact, is exactly the tool that the Russian disinformation operators used in 2016 and which caused all the problems that we’ve seen in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica.
MARTIN: So, you know, given all that, given, you know, everything that we just talked about, some have called on Facebook to ban political ads altogether. What’s your opinion about that?
GHOSH: I think it’s very clear that companies should discontinue political advertising until and unless it can show that it can operate political advertising in a way that protects our democracy. To the extent that we lack transparency into the interactions that we have with political ads and the company remains unaccountable to mistakes that it makes, we should absolutely discontinue political advertising on Facebook. Now, the company can correct those problems, and if it can, then I think it can come back. But for the time being, we’ve seen too many mistakes to allow for another 2016 to happen.
MARTIN: That’s Dipayan Ghosh. He is a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He’s the co-director of the Technology and Democracy Project there. Mr. Ghosh, thank you so much for talking to us.
GHOSH: Thanks so much, Michel.
MARTIN: And we do want to mention that Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
A Blind Man Fulfills Mission To Make Legos Accessible For Visually Impaired
Lego announced a new program for downloadable audio and Braille instruction sets for the visually-impaired. One blind Lego enthusiast brought his passion project for accessibility to fruition.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A few months ago, we told you a story about a special project by Lego, the Danish toy company that makes all those plastic bricks. Lego decided to make Braille bricks to make it easier for visually impaired people to have fun with them. We have an update. This week, Lego released new audio and Braille instruction manuals for some of their sets. They’re available to download from their website. The sets can be used through the computer or with different devices to interpret them. The idea came from Matthew Shifrin, a 22-year-old Lego enthusiast from Massachusetts who is blind.
MATTHEW SHIFRIN: Find one dark green 2-by-6 brick. Put it knob side down vertically on the table. Then find three black 2-by-2 plates with side connectors and put these plates knob side down on top and starting from the back.
MARTIN: That is Shifrin reading from the new set of Braille instructions. And here’s what the computer audio version sounds like.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Next, we will build the escape car with flames. Find one black wagon bottom 4-by-10 with four side connectors. Put it…
MARTIN: Shifrin was instrumental in pushing the company to take this step. He’s been building with Legos since he was 5 with the help of family and friends. But as a kid, he couldn’t do it on his own because he couldn’t see the graphics-based instructions.
SHIFRIN: I just built what I could, just kind of making things up.
MARTIN: That changed on Shifrin’s 13th birthday thanks to a family friend named Lilya Finkel.
SHIFRIN: Lilya came over, and with her, she brought this big cardboard box and those big, fat binders, thick as a textbook. And in this big, fat box was an 843-piece Middle Eastern Lego palace. And the binder that she brought it had hand-Brailled instructions that she’d typed up on a Braille typewriter.
MARTIN: Shifrin says it was a game-changer for him.
SHIFRIN: For me, building a Lego set independently before this was about as likely as driving a car. And suddenly there it was. I could build these sets on my own. I realized that blind kids deserve this.
MARTIN: Shifrin and Finkel created more sets and launched a website to share them with others. But they couldn’t keep up with the requests for more. Then Finkel was diagnosed with cancer, and the pair realized they needed help to take the idea further. So they reached out to Lego. Eventually the Danish company was interested and expanded on the original concept to include audio instructions.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Open the box. This can be tricky for everyone.
MARTIN: This week’s release of the new audio and Braille instructions was a bittersweet moment for Matthew Shifrin, though. His family friend and partner in this project, Lilya Finkel, has since passed away. But Shifrin says her passion and creativity live on with a Lego project to be shared with others.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Why Many U.S. Companies Have Kept Production In China And Have No Plans Of Moving
NPR’s Ailsa Chang speaks with Basic Fun CEO Jay Foreman about the effects China tariffs are having on his toy company.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
With more tariffs looming in the U.S.-China trade war, American companies are growing more pessimistic about the outlook for doing business in China. But 87% of U.S. firms with operations in China say they still haven’t moved production to another country, and they have no plans to do so. That’s according to a new survey from the U.S.-China Business Council.
To find out why most plan to stay put, we’ve called up Jay Foreman. He’s the CEO of Basic Fun. It’s the toy company that makes K’Nex, Lincoln Logs, Cutetitos and Pound Puppies.
Jay Foreman, welcome.
JAY FOREMAN: Thank you. Glad to be here.
CHANG: So I understand that currently 90% of your products are manufactured in China. Tell me why. What benefits does China offer you to base your manufacturing there?
FOREMAN: Sure. I mean, China offers sort of a suite of benefits, if you will, which is a highly trained labor force, a well-financed infrastructure, a great safety and quality control regimen, excellent transportation and communication points and, basically, a system of production for light industrial that’s been set up over a 30-year period.
CHANG: I mean, how possible would it be to replicate those conditions in, say, Southeast Asia or India?
FOREMAN: It would be really difficult. For example, if we went to Vietnam – which is a great country with great manufacturing – it’s only 10% of the size of China. So if you just moved 5% or 10% of Chinese production into Vietnam, you’re going to max out the capacity of their workforce, and that’s going to increase prices, increase rents and make it more difficult for products to be produced there at the same competitive prices as we’ve been getting from China.
You can go to India, which has got a huge population base, but India’s infrastructure is really not set up for this. You know, we’ve developed protocols, at least in the toy industry in China, where we’re able to make safe, high-quality product at a great price. There’s no system like that set up in India. It could take 10 or 15 years to set that up. It’s taken us 30 years to build our production base in China.
CHANG: Yeah.
FOREMAN: And then bringing production back to the United States is not possible and realistic because we don’t have a labor pool here. The president is closing the borders to low-skill labor. So who’s going to make the product?
CHANG: Now, if President Trump does go through with imposing tariffs on toy imports from China after the holiday season – let me ask you – could you afford to maintain most of your production in China still?
FOREMAN: Well, we really won’t have a choice but to find a way to afford it. And the one way to afford it is, we will have to, at some point during the course of 2020, begin to pass the tariffs along to the consumer.
CHANG: So how much of a price hike are we talking for, say, like, a Cutetito?
FOREMAN: I think you’re thinking about everything from sneakers to bluejeans to toys to flip-flops to iPhones going up 15% to 30% in the second half of 2020. And by the way, what happens when you move it to India? Mr. Trump, the dealmaker, will make a deal with China sometime in the next six to 12 months, or somebody else will be in office and they’ll make a deal, while everybody’s moving their supply chain to India, and then India will become the next target for trade.
CHANG: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. How has that uncertainty affected daily operations in your company now?
FOREMAN: Well, instead of sitting down to plan on what we think kids are going to want to buy next year, we’re sitting down every day taking a look at what tariffs are going to do to affect our profitability, when they’re going to hit.
We have something called Fun Friday here every other week, and we talk about what’s happening in the business and what’s new. And usually, we talk about toys and holidays and all those kind of things. And now our employees are coming back to us and asking us how the tariffs are going to affect them, should they be planning on buying a car. Can they expect a bonus? And it’s hard for us to give them a straight answer on that because we really don’t know how this is all going to affect us.
CHANG: Jay Foreman is the CEO of Basic Fun, a toy company based in Boca Raton, Fla.
Thanks very much for speaking with us today.
FOREMAN: You’re welcome. Pleasure to be with you today.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
