Footwear companies face big costs in potential new tariffs on more Chinese imports. Almost all shoes sold in the U.S. are made overseas. Only about 200 factories remain. One man tried to change that.Read More
A congressional committee has upheld a prohibition against the Food and Drug Administration considering using gene-edited embryos to establish pregnancies.Read More
Fewer Chinese tourists have been visiting Hawaii, Arizona and other population destinations in recent years. The strong dollar has made travel more expensive, just as political tensions have grown.Read More
Rare earths are used in communications, health care and national security. China blocked rare earths to Japan in 2010, but analysts say the threat — regardless of the trade war — may be hollow.Read More
The Trump administration has reached a deal to lift tariffs on metal imports from Canada and Mexico, in a move that could make it easier to ratify the USMCA trade pact.Read More
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative published a list of Chinese goods that would be hit with new duties, from artists' brushes to watches.Read More
If the Trump administration follows through with its plan to hike tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports at midnight Friday, it would likely hurt not only China’s economy but American consumers and businesses, too.Read More
The newly disclosed sale agreement of Westminster Choir College to a conglomerate partly owned by the Chinese government appears to state that the prospective owners can close the school at any time.Read More
For years, America sold millions of tons of used yogurt cups, juice containers, shampoo bottles and other kinds of plastic trash to China to be recycled into new products. But last year the Chinese government dropped a bombshell on the world recycling business: They cut back almost all imports of trash. And now a lot of that plastic gets shipped to other countries that Read More
How can I find out if my plastic waste is really being recycled What makes some plastic recyclable and some not? Here are answers from the NPR correspondents working on "The Plastic Tide" series.Read More
Oregon’s bottle deposit system is recycling more containers than ever before despite major disruptions in global recycling markets.Read More
Farmers who grow pulse crops -- garbanzo beans, lentils and peas -- are in a bind this winter. They have to decide very soon what they’re planting for next year, and contract their seed. Pulse crops are often an important rotation crop for Western wheat growers. But there are record amounts of garbanzo beans in dry storage, and little movement of that heavily-exported Read More
An elite music college in Princeton, N.J., is up for sale. Its prospective buyer is a for-profit Chinese company — which is partially owned by the Beijing municipal government.Read More
Concerns over a Chinese scientist's claim that he created the first gene-edited babies grow with more questions about whether it worked and the possible harm he may have inflicted on the twin girls.Read More
With harvest wrapped up, the regional apple industry is in prime packing time. But growers and shippers are nervous. The fruit isn’t moving to international markets as quick as usual because of the trade wars. Read More
Starting early next year, you might see a hike in your favorite bottle of Northwest wine. Winemakers say that’s because the trade wars are driving up the cost of wine packaging. Read More
Retaliatory tariffs levied by China on U.S. goods are taking a toll on Pacific Northwest farm exports. Details about cancelled orders came out this week at a state Senate committee hearing in Seattle.Read More
The Chinese government announced on Tuesday that it would impose tariffs on $60 billion more of U.S. exports. This widens the range of Pacific Northwest companies caught in the trade crossfire.Read More
"Before, in China, you married to survive," says a Shanghai magazine editor. "Now I'm living well by myself, so I have higher expectations in marriage."Read More
At midnight, U.S. tariffs took effect on $34 billion worth of imported Chinese goods — and Beijing responded quickly. The tit for tat marks a significant escalation in the countries' trade dispute.Read More
In Tacoma, police tactical squads staged coordinated raids on middle class homes converted into indoor pot farms. What the authorities found follows a recent pattern in West Coast states: all of the marijuana growers arrested were immigrants from China who spoke little or no English.Read More
Over the past year, more than 10,000 tons of Oregon’s recycling has been dumped in landfills because there was nowhere else for it to go.
It’s one of the consequences of new restrictions on shipping recyclables to China.Read More
American fruit growers are starting to ship more containers of fresh fruit into China again. In recent weeks, some fruit shipments were stuck in customs in China. Public radio has learned that special flights to bring Northwest cherries to China had even been canceled. But that squeeze now appears to be lessening.Read More
Zhao Kangmin reconstructed the first warriors after farmers digging a well stumbled on fragments in 1974. They were commissioned by China's first emperor — to guard his tomb.Read More
So how do you convince a Chinese customer to pay a bit extra for already-expensive fresh Northwest cherries this summer?Read More
New tariffs on exports to China could have a big impact on Washington state. Tariffs went into effect Monday on 128 American products, including fruit, pork and metal pipes, in retaliation for proposed U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.Read More
Canadian oil has found a new route to Asia: It’s moving by rail through Washington to a shipping terminal in Portland. In the long run, Canada wants to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline to move oil from the Alberta tar sands west to British Columbia — and from there onto ships that would travel through the Salish Sea and then to Asia.Read More
