Crypto News: Supply Lines: Fearing foreign competition

France is intensifying its opposition to a trade deal between the European Union and the South American Mercosur bloc as farmers protest across the country partly on concern about foreign competition.

President Emmanuel Macron contacted European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen last week with a plea to end the current round of negotiations, Bloomberg News reports this week.

A big sticking point: Agricultural producers in four South American nations ought to be subjected to the same environmental rules as those in Europe.

A commission spokesman said talks with Mercosur countries are ongoing at a technical level, including a Jan. 25-26 session in Brazil, and some important issues remain unresolved. Brussels remains focused on ensuring the deal meets EU sustainability goals, while respecting the bloc's sensitivities in the agricultural sector, the spokesman said.

Last week Von Der Leyen opened a so-called strategic dialog with farmers to ease their concerns. EU officials fear the protests could widen because of Mercosur, green-transition policies, subsidy cuts and an extension of liberalized trade of Ukrainian agri-food products.

The EU and the Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay — have been in talks to clinch a trade accord for more than two decades. An agreement was announced in 2019 but never implemented amid new EU environmental demands.

France's farmers have been blocking roadways across the country to protest higher production costs, stringent regulations imposed from Brussels and what they call unfair competition from abroad.

In neighboring Germany, farm workers continued protests, focusing on the city of Hamburg and disrupting traffic to and from the country's biggest port.

Farmers in Belgium also continued their protests, blocking several key access roads to Antwerp and Ghent.

In Poland, farmers plan to block roads in as many as 250 locations to protest EU plans to curb carbon emissions, as well as what organizers have described as uncontrolled food imports from neighboring Ukraine.

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—Brendan Murray in London

Source: Descartes Systems Group Inc.

People Shortages | Supply-chain disruptions prevalent during the pandemic have subsided but labor shortages remain a concern, Descartes Systems Group says in a survey released Tuesday. About three-quarters of respondents are still experiencing worker shortages, according to the survey of 1,000 industry specialists in North America and Europe. "Transportation and warehousing operations are most impacted" but "knowledge workers are the hardest to hire and becoming increasingly important as supply chain and logistics operations become more technology-enabled and data-driven," the report stated. For more on the labor market and logistics industry, CS Recruiting's CEO and founder Charlie Saffro speaks on the latest episode of Bloomberg Intelligence's Talking Transports podcast.

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