Mozambique central bank cuts main interest rate to 11.00%
MAPUTO, May 30 (Reuters) - Mozambique's central bank cut its main interest rate (MZMIMO=ECI), opens new tab to 11.00% from 11.75% in a decision announced on Friday.
The Bank of Mozambique has now lowered its main lending rate for nine policy meetings in a row.
The Southern African country's annual inflation rate slowed to 3.99% in April (MZCPIY=ECI), opens new tab from 4.77% in March, reversing a trend where inflation had been on the rise since October's disputed election.
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The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
AP PHOTOS: The Black hair industry imports products from China. Here's what tariffs mean
Black women are starting to pay more for their hair care because of the Trump administration's tariffs on goods imported from China. Many Black women have hair types and workplace-favored styles that require careful attention. They can spend hundreds of dollars at salons each month on extensions, weaves, wigs and braids. Most hair salon tools and packaging is imported from China. Stylists are considering raising their prices while the the U.S. and China negotiate new trade agreements. But many dread what price increases will do for clients who are lower income and already strained by months of inflation on virtually everything else. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
The Independent
8 hours ago
- The Independent
The Black hair industry imports products from China. Here's what tariffs mean for braids and wigs
Before the oppressive summer heat descends on Atlanta, therapist Brittanee Sims usually gets her thick, curly hair braided at a salon to preserve her healthy mane. But it's more expensive this year. So she'll only pay for her teenage daughter and son to get their summer hairdos. Not having braided hair 'creates more of a hassle for everything,' said Sims, who counts herself among the tens of millions of women that regularly spend on the Black hair care industry. Now, she said, she has to 'go home and figure out what I'm gonna do to my hair in the morning, after I went to the gym and it's messed up with sweating and frizz.' President Donald Trump's tariffs are driving up prices for products many Black women consider essential, squeezing shoppers and stylists even more as they grapple with inflation and higher rents. Much of the synthetic braiding hair, human hair for extensions, wigs and weaves, styling tools, braiding gel and other products is imported from or has packaging from China, which was subject to a combined 145% tariff in April. Many Black women have hair types and workplace-favored styles that require careful attention, and they can spend hundreds of dollars at salons each month on extensions, weaves, wigs and braids. The Associated Press spoke with several Black hair industry experts, beauty supply store owners, and wholesale companies, as well as nearly two dozen Black stylists and braiders, some of whom may have to raise prices even as business has slowed. On Thursday, a federal appeals court reinstated most of Trump's tariffs on imported goods after they were blocked the day before by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade. Earlier this month, the United States agreed to drop the 145% tax on goods imported from China to 30% while the two economic superpowers negotiate new trade agreements. Imports from most other countries face baseline tariff rates at 10%. Regardless, the next few months 'are already shot' for many items, said Marty Parker, a University of Georgia business professor and supply chain expert who worked in the hair care industry. The costs companies have been facing at ports are making their way down to consumers, supply shortages are getting worse, and it's unclear what will happen if negotiations break down. 'Prices go up very fast and come down very slow,' Parker said. Costs go up for Atlanta stylists Some stylists said they're seeing fewer clients because prices are going up for virtually everything. Atlanta stylists are paying more for hair from China. Atlanta stylist Yana Ellis, who also sells products like wigs, paid an extra $245 in shipping for 52 bundles of hair in March compared to 40 bundles in December. AaNiyah Butler said her shipping costs for human hair more than doubled from February to May. And Dajiah Blackshear found in early May that a beauty supply store raised the cost of the kind of hair she's used for years by $100. The store owner said he may have to stop selling that brand of hair because it went up so much. Similarly, some wholesale hair stores have seen higher costs or are expecting them in the coming weeks. Even the typical $6 to $10 cost of a pack of synthetic hair has crept up. Blackshear doesn't want clients to bring hair because she likes to vet the quality. But if expenses continue to mount, she may have to raise her prices. 'It's going to be extremely difficult,' she said, especially for clients who are "having to make those hard decisions, between 'do I get my hair done or do I pay my bills?'' Janice Lowe, who runs 5 Starr Salon in a lower-income neighborhood southeast of Atlanta, has started asking clients to bring hair and is unable to purchase certain products. 'I'm falling behind on my obligations,' she said. The industry braces for uncertainty Consultants vary on how much prices will rise, when they'll go up and for how long — and the full harm to stylists and consumers could be months away. The global Black hair care industry was worth about $3.2 billion in 2023, according to and Black women spend six times more on hair care than other ethnicities. Stylists often purchase some harder-to-get professional products from door-to-door distributors that buy from wholesale companies or larger distributors that purchase directly from other countries. Lowe has seen some of her distributors vanish altogether, making it harder to get professional lines such as Black-owned leading professional hair care brand Design Essentials, manufactured in Atlanta at McBride Research Laboratories. Design Essentials is trying to delay big price increases until 2026 or 2027, and may turn to layoffs or pause promotions to save money, said president Cornell McBride Jr. Most packaging plastics come from China, but ingredients can come from many places. 'Nobody wants to put it to the consumer but the person who pays is the consumer in the end,' McBride Jr. said. Hawa Keita and her mother usually charge customers between $160 and $250 for braiding at their shop, Eve's African Hair Braiding in College Park southwest of Atlanta. Keita is determined to take losses because their customers 'can't afford the Atlanta prices,' Keita said. The cost of a box of 100 packs of braiding hair from China went up for the first time in two years, from $250 to $300, Keita said. They order weekly, often multiple boxes. Some companies say they'll soon raise prices or run out of stock. Making customers happy is ultimately what will keep the business afloat, Keita said. She smiled as she recounted braiding a young woman's hair for her birthday with a style she suggested. 'When we finished, she gave me the biggest hug, and she was in here screaming and just yelling because she just really loved her hair,' Keita said. Priced-out consumers face unfair beauty standards For many Black Americans, especially women, affording their hair care also means confronting unfavorable beauty standards. Georgia State University law professor Tanya Washington said recent discoveries about dangerous chemicals in synthetic hair and hair straightening products have sparked conversations among Black women looking for hairstyles that don't require as much imported products. But embracing natural hairdos can be daunting for women like the soon-to-be lawyers and clerks Washington advises who face pressure to straighten their hair. 'That puts everyone who does not have organically, naturally derived straight hair at a disadvantage in these spaces,' she said. 'I think that a definition of professionalism that favors one phenotype — European phenotype — over all others, is inappropriate." Longstanding income disparities between Black and white American women can also make higher hair care prices untenable. According to the U.S. Census, as of 2023, the median household income in Atlanta is $131,319 for white households and $47,937 for Black households. It's an inequality issue that professional hairstylists are aware of nationwide. Stylist Mitzi Mitchell, owner of PIC ONE Beauty Services in Pennsylvania, said she has stocked up on certain products and tools for another year in anticipation of price increases. She wants to avoid 'bootleg' products, which are made illegally and often aren't as safe, but became much more prevalent in the marketplace during economic downturns. 'I'm really conscientious about my Black minority clients because we make a heck of a lot less than other nationalities,' said Mitchell, who is Black. 'I try to keep prices low so we can continue to have the same services, but I know I will have to raise it.' ___
Telegraph
12 hours ago
- Telegraph
Politicians got used to cheap money. Now they're paying the price
Almost without exception, governments in advanced economies face an uneasy combination of high public debt and growth rates that are far too slow to fund rising public spending without resorting to even more borrowing or further anti-growth tax increases. Set against these serious policy challenges, it is no wonder that the surge in government borrowing costs that followed the gas-related inflation spike in 2022 has become a major source of concern for financial markets. In the UK and the US, 10-year government borrowing costs – a key market benchmark – have fluctuated in the 4pc-5pc range since the start of the year. Whenever borrowing costs edge towards 5pc, genuine panic seems to take hold. The commonly held view is that higher benchmark interest rates are a temporary issue that will disappear once inflation is under control, or that they are mostly a symptom of fiscal sustainability worries and can be resolved with sufficient budget discipline. But this is wrong. I am not arguing that governments and central banks should not take serious measures to improve policy discipline. Quite the opposite – this matters more than ever. Instead, my point is that even if we achieved both monetary and fiscal sustainability across the advanced world, my guess is that interest rates would fall only slightly. Why? Because the global economic forces that pushed interest rates to rock-bottom levels for more than a decade after the global financial crisis have gone into reverse. First, the global balance of savings and investment has shifted to a state that more closely resembles the pre-2008 era. In the wake of the crisis, demand for borrowing in Western economies collapsed. Along with a global rush to safety and excess savings in places like China, Japan and Germany, lower interest rates were required to balance global saving and investment. But Western debt demand is less depressed today, and the global savings glut is shrinking. In turn, the interest rates that balance these markets have risen. Second, global trade is flowing less freely as trade barriers increase and the geopolitical order fragments. US isolationism, the war in Ukraine and trouble in the Middle East put upward pressure on goods prices and increase the threat of conflict-related commodity price shocks. These inflation fears are reflected in interest rates. Third, a decades-long global demographic tailwind has turned into a headwind that will only worsen over time. As societies age, labour shortages push up wage costs and structural inflationary pressures. Fourth, with the return of inflation and the rise in global interest rates, central banks have ended their massive purchases of government debt — or quantitative easing (QE). In some cases, including the UK, central banks have been actively selling off their government debt portfolios. During the financial crisis, the argument against bailing out institutions was that it would foster moral hazard. Banks, betting on future bailouts, would take on much more risk than they otherwise would if they had to bear responsibility for their decisions. This rationale was partly behind the tragic decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fail. But, in a strange twist of fate, it was governments themselves that fell prey to moral hazard. We knew back in 2008 that government debt was at risk of spiralling out of control and that excessive deficits needed to be curtailed. That is why the UK and US both embarked on belt-tightening once the recession ended, and why parts of peripheral Europe were forced to endure excruciating austerity. But after a while, those fears about fiscal sustainability faded as structural forces drove down government borrowing costs and QE tranquillised bond investors. By the time Covid hit in 2020 – when borrowing costs reached their nadir and governments had convinced themselves that inflation would never return, and that interest rates would stay low forever – they had no misgivings whatsoever about ramping up borrowing. A German economist named Rüdiger Dornbusch, who spent most of his career in the US, said: 'Crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.' This roughly captures the story of fiscal policy in advanced economies over the past two decades. After interest rates stayed low for much longer than anyone imagined, they normalised faster than anyone thought they could. The maths behind massive debt-financed green transitions, generous welfare states and rising defence spending – all while financing rising state pension costs and increased public healthcare demands – never really added up. But the era of ultra-low interest rates allowed policymakers to kick any hard policy choices into the long grass. Not any more.
