AS NAFTA TEETERS BUSINESS GROUPS · 12.10.2017 · AS NAFTA TEETERS TRUMP WANTS OVERHAUL Sweeping...
Transcript of AS NAFTA TEETERS BUSINESS GROUPS · 12.10.2017 · AS NAFTA TEETERS TRUMP WANTS OVERHAUL Sweeping...
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Gail Collins PAGE A23
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
A Philadelphia case is a rare victory fora movement that offers potential depor-tees sanctuary in churches. PAGE A17
Free From Deportation Threat
WASHINGTON — The NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement,long disparaged by PresidentTrump as bad for the UnitedStates, was edging closer towardcollapse as negotiators gatheredfor a fourth round of contentioustalks here this week.
In recent weeks, the Trump ad-ministration has sparred withAmerican businesses that sup-port Nafta and has pushed for sig-nificant changes that negotiatorsfrom Mexico and Canada say arenonstarters. All the while, thepresident has continued threat-ening to withdraw the UnitedStates from the trade agreement,which he has maligned as theworst in history.
As the trade talks began onWednesday, Mr. Trump, seated inthe Oval Office beside Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau of Canada,said it was “possible” that theUnited States would drop out ofNafta.
“It’s possible we won’t be able tomake a deal, and it’s possible thatwe will,” the president said. “We’llsee if we can do the kind ofchanges that we need. We have toprotect our workers. And in allfairness, the prime ministerwants to protect Canada and hispeople also. So we’ll see what hap-pens with Nafta, but I’ve been op-posed to Nafta for a long time, interms of the fairness of Nafta.”
Mr. Trudeau, in comments laterat the Canadian Embassy, said heremains optimistic about the po-tential for a Nafta deal but notedthat Canadians must be “ready foranything.”
The collapse of the 1994 tradedeal would reverberate through-out the global economy, inflictingdamage far beyond Mexico, Cana-da and the United States and af-fecting industries as varied asmanufacturing, agriculture and
BUSINESS GROUPSSOUND AN ALARMAS NAFTA TEETERS
TRUMP WANTS OVERHAUL
Sweeping Opposition to aBreakup, but Unions
Would Applaud
By ANA SWANSON
Continued on Page A15
WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump, after failing to repeal theAffordable Care Act in Congress,will act on his own to relax healthcare standards on small busi-nesses that band together to buyhealth insurance and may takesteps to allow the sale of otherhealth plans that skirt the healthlaw’s requirements.
The president plans to sign anexecutive order “to promotehealth care choice and competi-tion” on Thursday at a WhiteHouse event attended by small-business owners and others.
“Since Congress can’t get its acttogether on HealthCare, I will beusing the power of the pen to givegreat HealthCare to many people— FAST,” Mr. Trump said in aTwitter post on Tuesday.
Although Mr. Trump has beentelegraphing his intentions formore than a week, Democrats andsome state regulators are nowgreeting the move with increasingalarm, calling it another attemptto undermine President BarackObama’s signature health carelaw. They warn that by relaxingstandards for so-called associa-tion health plans, Mr. Trumpwould create low-cost insuranceoptions for the healthy, driving upcosts for the sick and destabilizinginsurance marketplaces createdunder the Affordable Care Act.
“It would have a very negativeimpact on the markets,” said MikeKreidler, the insurance commis-sioner in Washington State. “Ourstate is a poster child of what cango wrong. Association healthplans often shun the bad risks andstay with the good risks.”
They also worry that the Trumpadministration intends to loosenrestrictions on short-term healthinsurance plans that do not satisfyrequirements of the AffordableCare Act.
“By siphoning off healthy indi-viduals, these junk plans couldcannibalize the insurance ex-changes,” said Topher Spiro, avice president of the Center forAmerican Progress, a liberal re-
Trump OrderSeen as BurdenTo Health Law
Plans Could Weakenthe Marketplaces
By ROBERT PEARand REED ABELSON
Continued on Page A15
With Harvey Weinstein firedamid escalating allegations of sex-ual harassment and misconduct,the business he helped create isconsumed not just with what he isaccused of doing, but with whatother company leaders knew andhow they responded.
On Tuesday, his brother and co-founder, Bob Weinstein, and thecompany’s president, DavidGlasser, told concerned employ-ees in a video conference call thatthey were shocked by the allega-tions and unaware of paymentsmade to women who complainedof unwanted touching, sexual har-assment and other over-the-linebehavior, according to several em-ployees who spoke on the condi-tion of anonymity.
Soon after, Bob Weinstein andthree other members of the rap-idly dwindling board issued astatement saying that new allega-tions of extreme sexual miscon-duct and sexual assault had comeas “an utter surprise” and that any“suggestion that the Board hadknowledge of this conduct isfalse.”
But interviews and internalcompany records show that the
Studio AwareOf SettlementsTwo Years Ago
By MEGAN TWOHEY
Continued on Page A18
The Boy Scouts of America an-nounced plans on Wednesday tobroadly accept girls, marking ahistoric shift for the century-oldorganization and setting off a de-bate about where girls betterlearn how to be leaders.
The Boy Scouts, which has seendwindling membership numbers
in recent decades, said that itsprograms could nurture girls aswell as boys, and that the switchwould make life easier for busyparents, who might prefer to shut-tle children to a single organiza-tion regardless of gender.
“I’ve seen nothing that devel-ops leadership skills and disci-pline like this organization,” saidRandall Stephenson, the group’snational board chairman. “It istime to make these outstanding
leadership development pro-grams available to girls.”
The decision was celebrated bymany women, but criticized by theGirl Scouts, which said that girlsflourish in all-female groups.
“We’ve had 105 years of sup-porting girls and a girl-only safespace,” said Lisa Margosian, chiefcustomer officer for the GirlScouts, who added that the orga-
In Historic Shift, Boy Scouts Will Accept GirlsBy JULIE BOSMAN
and NIRAJ CHOKSHI
Continued on Page A14
JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Blazes devastating California’s wine country were spreading so fast Wednesday that the goal wasnot so much to stop their spread as to slow them and channel them away from towns. Page A12.
On the Front Line in Sonoma County
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh —Hundreds of women stood in theriver, held at gunpoint, orderednot to move.
A pack of soldiers stepped to-ward a petite young woman withlight brown eyes and delicatecheekbones. Her name was Ra-juma, and she was standing chest-high in the water, clutching herbaby son, while her village inMyanmar burned down behindher.
“You,” the soldiers said, point-ing at her.
She froze.“You!”She squeezed her baby tighter.In the next violent blur of mo-
ments, the soldiers clubbed Ra-juma in the face, tore her scream-ing child out of her arms andhurled him into a fire. She wasthen dragged into a house andgang-raped.
By the time the day was over,she was running through a fieldnaked and covered in blood.Alone, she had lost her son, hermother, her two sisters and heryounger brother, all wiped out infront of her eyes, she says.
Rajuma is a Rohingya Muslim,one of the most persecuted ethnicgroups on earth, and she nowspends her days drifting througha refugee camp in Bangladesh in adaze.
She relayed her story to me dur-
ing a recent reporting trip I madeto the camps, where hundreds ofthousands of Rohingya like herhave rushed for safety. Her deeplydisturbing account of what hap-pened in her village, in late Au-gust, was corroborated by dozensof other survivors, whom I spokewith at length, and by humanrights groups gathering evidenceof atrocities.
Survivors said they saw gov-ernment soldiers stabbing babies,cutting off boys’ heads, gang-rap-ing girls, shooting 40-millimetergrenades into houses, burning en-tire families to death, and round-ing up dozens of unarmed malevillagers and summarily execut-ing them.
Much of the violence was flam-boyantly brutal, intimate and per-sonal — the kind that is detonatedby a long, bitter history of ethnichatred.
“People were holding the sol-diers’ feet, begging for their lives,”Rajuma said. “But they didn’tstop, they just kicked them off andkilled them. They chopped people,they shot people, they raped us,they left us senseless.”
Human rights investigators
said that Myanmar’s militarykilled more than 1,000 civilians inthe state of Rakhine, and possiblyas many as 5,000, though it will behard to ever know because Myan-mar is not allowing the United Na-tions or anyone else into the af-fected areas.
Peter Bouckaert, a veteran in-vestigator with Human RightsWatch, said there was growing ev-idence of organized massacres,like the one Rajuma survived, inwhich government soldiers me-thodically slaughtered more than100 civilians in a single location.He called them crimes against hu-manity.
On Wednesday, the United Na-tions human rights office said thatgovernment troops had targeted“houses, fields, food-stocks, crops,livestock and even trees,” makingit “almost impossible” for the Ro-hingya to return home.
Shaken Rohingya Recall Campaign of AtrocitiesBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
A boy’s drawing about escaping from Myanmar to Bangladesh, a trip made by hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims like him.SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Increasing Evidence ofOrganized Massacres
in Myanmar
Continued on Page A8
NOVATO, Calif. — I was on thesideline of a soccer field twoSaturdays ago, watching my12-year-old daughter and herNovato teammates. I don’t re-member much about that game,but Novato won, and one of thegoals was scored by the smallestgirl on the team, a quick andfeisty forward who wears a longponytail and jersey No. 8. Wewhooped and cheered her name.I found out later that her parentsweren’t there that afternoon.They were in Las Vegas for agetaway weekend.
About 36 hours later, I was onmy way to Las Vegas myself,rushing to join my New YorkTimes colleagues to cover thelatest mass shooting, maybebigger than them all. I hadn’t
covered one of them since 1999,when I was in the wrong place atthe right time and rushed intothe aftermath of Columbine.
A colleague of mine and Ichecked into a massive suite atMandalay Bay Resort and Casi-no, 11 floors directly below that of
the shooter. It had the same viewof the concert ground across theStrip, where investigators in thedaylight were picking throughthe carnage of the night before.That was about when my wifesent me a text. That little soccerplayer’s mom was at the concertthe night before, she said. She’smissing.
But Stacee Etcheber was notmy story. The gunman was. Ispent a week mostly about 100feet below where the shootercommitted mass murder, tryingto solve the mystery of what he’ddone. I talked to people, followedevery lead and wrote stories. It’swhat reporters do. It was a newsstory, as horrific as they come,and we’re trained to keep ouremotional distance from thethings that we cover.
Cheers on a Soccer Field, Far From Las VegasBy JOHN BRANCH
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
An orange ribbon tied to re-member one of the victims inthe Las Vegas attack.
PETER DASILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A13
Hurricane Maria obliterated much ofthe only tropical rain forest in theUnited States forest system. PAGE A11
NATIONAL A11-18
Another Puerto Rico CasualtyAfter trailing Cleveland two games tonone, the Yankees rise to the A.L.C.S.with a 5-2 win in Game 5. PAGE B11
SPORTSTHURSDAY B11-16
Yanks’ Champagne Comeback
American soccer has been rising, butnow the men are out of the World Cupfor the first time since 1986. PAGE B11
Big Step Back for U.S. Soccer
Some East African countries want to endimports on secondhand clothes. TheUnited States objects. PAGE A4
A Curb on Hand-Me-Downs
Three newly built subway stationsopened this year, but the polka-dottednewsstands on the platforms there havenot opened for business. PAGE A19
NEW YORK A19-21
A Subway Staple Yet to Open
Facebook answered questions about itsrole in the 2016 elections and its plansfor future platform safeguards. PAGE B3
BUSINESS DAY B1-9
Q. & A. With Facebook
On the first stop of a tour for his book ofshort stories, Mr. Hanks discussedHollywood, history and the presidencywith Maureen Dowd. PAGE D1
THURSDAY STYLES D1-10
Tom Hanks Has Some Stories
In online videos, the disembodied handhas become a symbol of craftsmanshipand entrepreneurial zeal. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-8
The Hand, an Online Sensation
On his new solo album, “Carry Fire,”the onetime Led Zeppelin frontmanexplores “grooves and moods.” PAGE C2
Robert Plant’s Latest EndeavorIn an 80-mile swath, five start-upsvalued at over $1 billion signal a grow-ing force for tech incubation. PAGE B7
Entrepreneurs Thrive in Utah
European allies and fellow Republicansare urging President Trump to preservethe 2015 accord with Iran. PAGE A6
INTERNATIONAL A4-10
Pressure Rises on Nuclear Deal
Late Edition
VOL. CLXVII . . . No. 57,748 + © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2017
Today, clouds breaking for somesunshine, not as warm, high 65. To-night, partly cloudy, low 54. Tomor-row, cloudy, seasonable, high 65.Weather map appears on Page B10.
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