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The national debt has passed a new milestone, topping $22 trillion for the first time.

The Treasury Department’s daily statement showed Tuesday that total outstanding public debt stands at $22.01 trillion. It stood at $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017.

The debt figure has been rising at a faster pace following passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut in December 2017 and action by Congress last year to increase spending on domestic and military programs.

Michael Peterson, head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, says “our growing national debt matters because it threatens the economic future of every American.”

Peterson said that interest on the national debt already costs more than $1 billion daily, and “as we borrow trillion after trillion, interest costs will weigh on our economy and make it harder to fund important investments for our future.”

The national debt is the total of the annual budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office projects this year’s deficit will be $897 billion, which would be a 15.1 percent increase over last year’s imbalance of $779 billion. The CBO is projecting that the deficit will keep rising in coming years and will top $1 trillion annually beginning in 2022 and never drop below $1 trillion through 2029. Much of the increase will come from rising costs to fund Social Security and Medicare as baby boomers retire.

The Trump administration contends that its tax cuts will eventually pay for themselves by generating faster economic growth. However, that projection is disputed by many economists.
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A social venture in Myanmar is boosting farm outputs with customized technologies and giving loans for seasonal migration to raise incomes in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Proximity Designs, which was set up in 2004 in the country’s commercial hub Yangon, focuses on farming, on which more than two-thirds of the population relies to make a living.

The ethical business gives farming advice, custom-designed irrigation products, and loans for crops, livestock and migration to about 200,000 clients in the Southeast Asian nation.

“It’s about improving access of smallholder farmers to knowledge, technology and capital,” said Ben Warren, head of strategy and finance at Proximity. “Myanmar was closed for so long, it was hard for farmers to access these. While access is better now, not many products are made for farmers or reach them.”

Myanmar began emerging from nearly half a decade of military rule in 2011. Helping its smallholder farmers requires a deep understanding of context, as well as empathy and creativity, Warren told Reuters.

Across Southeast Asia, businesses with a social purpose are improving the lives of vulnerable communities and helping narrow inequality.

In Myanmar, farmers rely heavily on the monsoon rain, and the country has one of the lowest percentages of irrigated farmland in Asia, according to Proximity.

The company designed a range of products including drip and sprinkler irrigation systems, and solar-powered pumps which can help increase yield by about a third, Warren said.

As a social venture, Proximity is better placed to help farmers than businesses with a purely profit motive, he said.

“Some areas are not viable or are hard to get to. Since we are supported by some funding, it allows us to subsidize our products and go the extra mile to reach farmers,” he said.

Proximity started giving micro loans to farmers in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Myanmar’s worst natural disaster which killed nearly 140,000 people and affected some 2.4 million people.

About two years back, based on feedback from its clients, Proximity began “on-the-go” loans to help families during the dry season from November to April, when many men move to cities in search of factory or construction jobs.

A loan of about 200,000 kyat ($130) helps the family in the village until they receive remittances from the city, and also pays for the initial trip to the city, Warren said.

While on-the-go loans are a small part of Proximity’s portfolio now, they could grow because of demand, Warren said.

“Seasonal migration is an annual occurrence in nearly every rural family. With a loan from a reliable source, they can do it without worry,” he said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he could let the March 1 deadline for a trade agreement with China “slide for a little while,” but that he would prefer not to and expects to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to close the deal at some point.

Trump’s top trade negotiator and Treasury secretary arrived in the Chinese capital on Tuesday for high-level talks later in the week as the world’s two largest economies attempt to hammer out a deal to protect American trade secrets and avoid another escalation of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods after March 1.

If negotiators are coming close to a complete deal, Trump said he could see pushing off that deadline.

“We’re doing very well over in China,” Trump told reporters at a cabinet meeting, adding that the negotiating team is big.

“If we’re close to a deal where we think we can make a real deal and it’s going to get done, I could see myself letting that slide for a little while,” Trump said. “But generally speaking I’m not inclined to do that.”

U.S. advisers have previously called March 1 a “hard deadline” for the talks.

Trump’s comments on the China trade talks helped fuel a broad rally in the U.S. stock market, along with the president’s comments that he did not anticipate another government shutdown despite not being “happy” with a tentative congressional deal for border security funding.

The S&P 500 was up 1.35 percent in mid-afternoon trading, on track for its best day since Jan. 30.

If the United States and China cannot reach a deal by March 1, U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent.

China would likely respond by raising tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S goods that it announced last year in retaliation.

A recent resumption of Chinese soybean purchases also would likely end.

‘Several important days of talks’

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday and are scheduled to hold talks Thursday and Friday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, top economic adviser to President Xi Jinping.

“We’re looking forward to several important days of talks,” Mnuchin told reporters after arriving at a Beijing hotel.

Lighthizer, who arrived at the hotel earlier in the day, did not answer reporters’ questions.

Washington is expected to keep pressing Beijing on long-standing demands that it make sweeping structural reforms to protect American companies’ intellectual property, end policies aimed at forcing the transfer of technology to Chinese companies, and curb industrial subsidies.

The latest round of talks in Beijing kicked off Monday with discussions among deputy-level officials to try to work out technical details, including a mechanism for enforcing any trade agreement. A round of talks at the end of January ended with some progress reported — but no deal and U.S. declarations that much more work was needed.
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Greenland could start to export sand in a rare positive spinoff from global warming that is melting the island’s vast ice sheet and washing large amounts of sediment into the sea, scientists said Monday.

Mining of sand and gravel, widely used in the construction industry, could boost the economy for Greenland’s 56,000 population who have wide powers of self-rule within Denmark but rely heavily on subsidies from Copenhagen.

By mining sand, “Greenland could benefit from the challenges brought by climate change,” a team of scientists in Denmark and the United States wrote in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The study, headlined “Promises and perils of sand exploitation in Greenland,” said the Arctic island would have to assess risks of coastal mining, especially to fisheries.

Rising global temperatures are melting the Greenland ice sheet, which locks up enough water to raise global sea levels by about seven meters (23 ft) if it ever all thawed, and carrying ever more sand and gravel into coastal fjords.

“You can think of it [the melting ice] as a tap that pours out sediment to the coast,” said lead author Mette Bendixen, a researcher at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Worldwide demand for sand totaled about 9.55 billion tons in 2017 with a market value of $99.5 billion and is projected to reach almost $481 billion in 2100, driven by rising demand and likely shortages, the study said.

That meant a rare opportunity for the island.

“Normally the Arctic peoples are among those who really feel climate change — the eroding coast, less permafrost,” said Bendixen. “This is a unique situation because of the melting ice sheet.”

David Boertmann of Aarhus University, who was not involved in the study, said there was already some local mining of sand for the domestic construction industry in Greenland.

Drawbacks for Greenland, common to other mining projects on the island ranging from uranium to rare earth minerals, include the distance to markets in Europe and North America, he said.

Still, Bendixen said sand was already often transported long distances, such as to Los Angeles from Vancouver or from Australia to Dubai.

“At the moment it is an inexpensive resource, but it will become more expensive,” she said.

The study said that sand and gravel might also be used in the future to reinforce beaches and coastlines at risk of rising sea levels, caused in part by Greenland’s thaw.
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Fewer Americans appear to be celebrating Valentine’s Day now as opposed to a decade ago.

The National Retail Federation says that 10 years ago, more than 60 percent of adults planned to celebrate the day that’s dedicated to love, but that number has dropped to just over half in 2019.

Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated every Feb. 14, is a day when people show their affection for another person or people by gifting them with cards, flowers, sweets or some other expression of love or appreciation.

In 2009, 72 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 said they expected to celebrate Valentine’s Day, while 65 percent of people ages 35 to 54 planned to mark the day with their sweetheart.

Today, just over half of people in those age brackets — between 52 and 53 percent — plan to do something for Valentine’s.

The main reasons people don’t want to celebrate Valentine’s Day is because they think it’s over-commercialized, don’t have anyone to celebrate with, or have just lost interest, according to a 2017 poll conducted by NRF.

Some of those who expect to mark Valentine’s Day will give sweets to their sweetie. It’s a tradition to indulge in candy on Valentine’s, to give and receive it. Americans are expected to spend over $1.8 billion on Valentine’s Day candy in 2019.

Those who do celebrate Valentine’s Day will be spending more, according to the NRF, an average of $162 per person, more than $20.7 billion overall.

That could be because more younger people are increasingly interested in giving the gift of an “experience” rather than the traditional flowers, candy or jewelry.

Scroll over each state to see favorite candy

About one-fourth of people who plan to mark Valentine’s Day will say “I love you” with an experience such as concert tickets or a day at the spa. They’re interested in creating a special memory or simply want to be unique.

Memories can be expensive to make. The biggest Valentine’s Day spenders, people between the ages of 35 and 44, will spend an average of $279.14 each, while those ages 25 to 34 will spend about $239.07.

People who are often recognized by others on Valentine’s Day include spouses, significant others, children, parents, friends, co-workers and teachers.

And pets. Americans are expected to spend $886 million on their furry companions this Valentine’s Day.
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