looks at which companies are benefiting from what some call slave labor in u.s. prisons and we pop start the broadcast today with breaking news on bilateral trade deal between the united states and mexico from the oval office of the white house u.s. president donald trump announced a proposed new united states mexico trade agreement with mexican president enrique pena nieto mr trump has the mexican president on speakerphone to deal with these to be approved by the u.s. congress mr trump said we are getting rid of nafta because it was a bad deal for the united states president next nato said he hoped that now the canadians could join the price or try party deal while the two leaders seems at odds of the inclusion of canada what was called a framework agreement between mexico and the u.s. is seen as a for middle both feet for war we're joined by our to correspond at manila chan manila thank you for being with us you've been following this all day all day what's the latest well you know you've nailed everything there so far apart and of

course where else did it start but on twitter the president's favorite outlet so the outgoing mexican president enrique pena nieto solidified that vague tweet president trying to put out this morning by joining trump on speakerphone before the press listen to what pena nieto had to say. if you're going to move. we can take a blanket you might be a little. bit what you believe you are if you're going to be. reported. to. you know to marry now it sounds like nafta is effectively dead in the water but not so fast president he's got to get congressional approval to move forward with any sort of replacement deal as of now he's calling this the u.s. met. trade agreement clearly canada not yet

a part of this deal not being named president trump sounding a bit hesitant to bring canada into the fold given the recent terror spat and verbal sparring he's had with canadian pm justin trudeau now chrystia freeland canada's foreign minister said in a statement that canada would only join a new deal if it were quote good for the middle class adding that canada wants to continue working toward a modernization of the existing nafta deal now on this new proposal with mexico so far trump says there will be major changes in joint manufacturing of cars he says for cars to be considered made in north america seventy five percent of the parts must be made in either the u.s. or mexico and that's up from the previous nafta deal which only require them to be sixty two and a half percent of parts made here also the prospective new deal would also require that somewhere between forty and forty five percent of auto workers earn a minimum wage of sixteen dollars per hour so markets are already responding to

this this news but i think it's a little bit too early to celebrate there is no new deal as of yet because congress needs to to see this deal through they need to approve it right now trump plans on sending congress a letter this friday a letter of intent and from there the clock will start on congress they'll have ninety days to make a move and review this matter before we can truly see nafta come to a sunset thank you for the update our correspondent military and thanks manila. and for more on the agreement and what might be in store for a u.s. candidate deal we are joined by our chief correspondent alex my live it from toronto and conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve malzberg from our new york studio german what welcome gentlemen the first of all issues out there trade has been one of the really over ones in markets today is a bit old was just saying but today we saw some pretty positive reaction in light of the news what your take. well yeah every action the russell the. nasdaq

hit new highs s. and p. had a new high and i think that politically speaking you know the president said i could start talking to canada tomorrow or we could have a separate agreement if they're not ready now we could incorporate them into this agreement this is going to affect not only the trade deal of known as nafta with mexico i believe canada will eventually come into this deal but also he talked about china and china has been the big elephant in the room hanging over the economy the market if anything has been hanging over this market and he said china wants to talk not ready just right now to talk to china but we'll get to them soon i think when china sees this deal go down and canada incorporated into it china will be next on the list and i think there is reason for optimism this is what the president promised during the campaign trade was his main thing he didn't like what the u.s. getting you know taken advantage of any longer and i think what we saw today is

a major major step forward and i mean i agree it's definitely a big move forward as bill is say and there is some time to go here and we'll see and i wonder if some of that might not just be negotiating with justin trudeau and with that let's go to canada alex you know autos in particular have been a pretty important part of nafta with all the cross border between canada the u.s. and mexico manila talk a little bit about the agreement but what do we know and how important is this not just to the u.s. but to all three nations. well let's be frank i think auto is probably the heart of nafta as it stands and now this revamped a revamping of nafta so is it important yes it is and president from the very beginning you know this is was a disaster of the deal for american workers when you're talking about american workers well a lot of them are in the auto sector and that includes canadian workers as well as mexican workers so everybody has to play this game now what we've heard from manila at the very beginning i mean these are some big strides forward seventy five

percent of the parts being made in this is where the language is kind of interesting being made in the nafta zone up from sixty two point five but this is a bilateral agreement between mexico and the u.s. so what does that really mean is canada included are we expecting to see canada step in soon i think a lot of people are because really canada has to step in this is a system that has worked a certain way for many many years and that system is that all three countries are reliant on each other for parts and putting cars together and crossing the border with parts each and every day so that we have the automobiles that we drive it's a big issue there as well as the other issue that manila raised with the forty to forty five percent of workers being paid a minimum salary of sixteen dollars and that is a good thing for the states especially seeing that that so many jobs are going south of the border because the labor is cheaper so this is interesting you know the way it's being done and it really looks like donald trump is spearheading it but at the same time there were concessions made in the whole of sunlight or the

sun down cause where we were talking about the possibility of the agreement coming to an end when. when it just basically at the end of this cause we're looking now at a sixteen year with every few years of being checked to see if this agreement is working for everybody so i you know the concessions were made on behalf of donald trump as well but the big picture is for the auto industry this seems to be a positive thing in the word is that canada by jump in as soon as by the end of this week so we'll see we'll have to see if this is actually going to happen that way yeah and i a lot of the auto companies have taken. sort of a nosedive and stock slightly so we'll have to check and see how those turn around steve i'm just curious i mean and i've looked at these numbers a lot on whether or not now if there was a good thing or a bad thing from the u.s. and quite frankly it's not like convincing either way i can give you the spin from it's been good there was an initial two hundred fifty thousand jobs were created during the clinton ministration right after it was signed in ninety four and then every single year they say a half a percent of g.d.p.

was due to nafta but who knows and you can argue it either way so i don't think it's a big boon or a big bust speaking of the program either way but how has nafta become sort of a whipping boy for not just donald trump but as we recall us senator bernie sanders when he was running for president what's behind that sort of politically steve well i think the one thing in common here the one name in common is hillary clinton they both ran against bernie first and donald trump second and of course it was bill clinton who pushed through nafta hillary originally supported nafta before she didn't support nafta so i think they were aiming at her donald trump as you know during the campaign made after the centerpiece along with china but nafta was the main issue and i think that's because he could pin it on the clintons and having said that i think bernie's objections that you know there are groups on the left bernie sanders included in some radical left wing groups that radical in my view that are against nafta for different reasons more on environmental issues and and

getting rid of arbitration between labor and corporations and government you know governmental arbitration they want different vehicles to decide disputes so they have their own agenda and it's not necessarily donald trump's agenda but i think they all agree that too many jobs went south overall and too many workers lost their jobs and donald trump's main thing also was we were taking in more products from mexico than ever before and we were getting shortchanged so again another promise k. . apt apparently or at least on the way to being kept by the president. i agree that i think you have a really intuitive and great explanation i do wonder though steve whether or not i mean a lot of this just plays into sort of the boogeyman for we lost all these manufacturing jobs they're gone and thank gosh i appreciate the president trying to get them back and it looks like we are getting some back so. but i wonder both from the left and

the right if maybe some of this was somebody else's to blame for why you don't have a job but alex before we go i want to ask you one quick question energy has been a big deal with mexico on low andres manuel lopez obrador the president elect said he didn't want anything in here on energy because he's against foreign investment in the energy sector and he said that won't continue and he was worried it would be solidified that is foreign investment in mexico what do we know if anything i haven't seen anything on t.v. or anyplace else what do we know about that he's stepping in december so others a lot of time to you know twist and turn and do interesting things with that he obviously have of coming from the left the socialist president elect he wants to keep as much as possible nationalized that nation when it comes to energy and we haven't really seen anything with this agreement between mexico and the u.s. and even mentioning that so we know that a bunch of companies have gone in there have long term leases and some are as much like one hundred years to tap into the energy down in mexico but the nafta or

whatever might turn into an offer because really when you think about it look the sunset clause that i mentioned that's also a kind of a thumbs up to canada because canada was really against it so you know the big picture here is most likely we're going to see something that looks like nafta and when it comes to energy like that you know what it does is really not mentioned because it is a very sensitive thing it seems from mexico so why drag that into a process that everybody wants done and over with conservative t.v. and radio commentators. steve malzberg an r.t. correspondent alex what hyla bench thanks for the impressive in attributing analysis guys we'll see later thanks but are you. and in the on again off again test what twists and turns now c.e.o. elon musk says the company will not go private it remains unclear if the company could have raised enough resources to do so anyway the news comes on the heels of the u.s. korean exchange commission investigating the circumstances surrounding the we will

go public tweet and it may as it may have violated u.s. securities laws time now for a quick break but stick around because when we get back we'll look at the world's largest companies saudi aramco and the apparently ill fated or at least stalled initial public offering and we look at oil prices and more with david greenberger of greenberg capital plus national trial lawyers magazine's molly barrows our legal journalist friend looks at which companies are benefiting from what's on all slave labor in u.s. prisons as we go to break another good day in the markets in the wake of the record setting the nasdaq and s. and p. five hundred highs on friday global industrial names like boeing and caterpillar made the move north of two point speech today as a some of the financials here are the numbers at the closing bell back in a flash. venezuela

has got a lot of oil but there are many refineries and this is bank to oil you know they're trying to levers are well positioned through the machinations of a trip to a currency you know my suggestion is you know maybe build a few refineries you know sell a higher end product and put that money back into the economy in this way may take ten or fifteen years but you're not going to be now taken over by some cia operative. four men are sitting in a car when the fifth gets shot in the hand. for different versions of what happened one of them is on the death row there's

no way he could have done it there's no possible way because the list did not shoot around a corner. and welcome back turning to north korea a recent report from a washington think tank is highlighting a little known but growing aspect of their economy solve called money masters or dong ju in korea who have official permission to run lucrative semi-private marketplaces wall street journal cites the recent report from the center for strategic and international studies here in washington which work with a research group in seoul run by defectors from the north to find four hundred thirty six officially sanctioned markets in north korea the sanction markets along

with black markets called job are used by an increasing number of north koreans to supplement purchasing selections which are limited in explicitly state run stores the. joint think tank study found that john to markets netted fifty six point eight million dollars last year inspiring north korean officials to tax the markets the move is seen as a small but notable liberalization previously quos and restricted consumer markets in north korea. and last week we reported on the efforts of texas officials to secure billions of dollars to build sea walls to protect oil and gas processing and refinery plants along the gulf coast from climate change even as texas unless elected officials and many in the oil industry deny the facts of climate science well now voters in houston have approved and issuance of a two point five billion dollar bond for the city and county for flood control projects on the anniversary of hurricane harvey's landfall as

a category four storm eighty five percent of voters supported the initiative harvey killed thirty five people in houston a city of well over six million and inflicted one hundred twenty five billion dollars worth of damage mostly by flooding houston is barely above sea level and twenty five percent of the county it sits in is a in a hundred year flood plain the vote suggests that while texas politicians and others are in public denial about the cause voters are demanding investments to protect areas at risk due to climate change. the iranian economy minister has been removed from office by a vote of the consult of assembly as iran's troubles in engaging world markets and investors are having political consequences at home after a boisterous the vag one hundred thirty seven lawmakers of the two hundred sixty member body voted to remove the minister from the post he was appointed to by reformist president hassan rouhani mr rouhani made a big political and economic bet on making a deal over nuclear issues with the u.s.

european powers and china in order to achieve the removal of crippling international economic sanctions while criticizing united states efforts to reimpose those sanctions which are hurting iran's economy and the minister calling it an all out economic war even iranian reformist members of the assembly have little patience for the minister's explanation. and saudi arabia has reduced the amount of time the amount of time that saudi aramco the world's largest company has exclusivity to the kingdom's oil and gas fields the move has generated some queries about aramco longer term production and what seems like a struggle between the state sponsored energy company and governmental officials this comes in the wake of the postponing of the saudi aramco initial public offering the i.p.o. which was going to be this year then it was pushed off to early next year and now it seems indefinitely stalled some question if the i.p.o. will ever transpire and here to tell us what it all means add more is david

greenberg of greenberg capital who joins us from fort lauderdale david welcome back thanks for being with us what's your take on this this thing david. well as mel brooks once said it's good to be the king. had a final say in this and you know this is a father son issue the crown prince wanted to bring saudi into a more progressive and international form had the idea of putting the five percent out in the long run you know as a business owner and that's what the can really looks at himself as is that why do you want to ever allow to have anybody look underneath the scar kind of say oh you know on the need to books and you know the real question is is what does this really do for saudi in general i don't really think it affects it that much i'm so i'm sure the crown prince has many other ideas and will do to bring new money into saudi and they do have the bank behind them so it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out m.b.a.'s has this twenty thirty plan and i guess they need some

lender money now because they were hoping to get some of this money i guess from the aramco i.p.o. and by the way for our viewers who don't know i mean it's a look world's largest company but the i.p.o. was only going to be on what david five percent of it and everybody was still i think it was great yeah well five percent on a company of that size was going to one hundred billion dollar i.p.o. which is the time if it happened would have been the largest i.p.o. ever done but with that being you know said it doesn't mean it was a good thing you know it just means it was it got all the news it got all the headlines it got people talking about how saudi was coming into the forefront and being a financial you know force but do you think it in your in your first answer i sort of got this a little bit that when you said it's good to be king you think there's maybe a conflict between the king and mohamed bin solomon i mean m.b.'s was you know over here met with everybody in mexico in canada went out to hollywood and you know do you think maybe the king saying not so fast the prince and particularly on the

exclusivity thing that seemed like a big deal. you know i'm just you know just like every father is a son of the you know growing up sometimes you need to you know. pulled the reins a little bit and you know is get a little high profile and sometimes when you're a little too high profile specially with an older generation you know they just want to taper down a little but i do believe from what i've read and what i've heard that the relationship is sound he's the heir apparent this will happen in time it could be you know five years and ten years whatever it might be but i think there's a generational mix going on right now but at the end of the day the king a still the king and you know he's going to make the final choice and he didn't feel that the risk reward on this for the country was worth it the ask about prices a little bit. up a little bit before we went to air is sixty eight ninety two brett was seventy six and and changing and i just wonder if your thought is it's on this potential deal

with mexico or do you think the rig count which i guess it dropped a little bit is impacting prices what's your opinion. well i think everybody was kind of trading the rangers for the past few weeks and everybody was caught by surprise last week what your viewers need to understand is that when a number comes out when you know when the a.p.i. numbers come out if it's expected just for argument's sake of a seven million draw and it comes out of the seven million drove the market those that move if it's expected at a one point three million for and it surprises everybody and comes out at a five million for that's what you get because it catches everybody a little short in surprise so what happened last week was that there was an unexpected drawdown the market you know need knee jerked off and i think what you're doing is you're seeing the continuation of that if you didn't have the new natural sellers coming in right now and you still have some of the shorts buy and buy in the shorts back david will only have a little bit of time here but and i think i know the answer but do you think the saudis and the russians are going to perhaps fill that void we just spoke about

iran a little bit with iran not be able to sell as much oil as they have been. well in the past when iran has not been able so much as much oil they found the way to sell the oil it was always a way to get it out either in the black market or otherwise but of course saudi and russia will always take up some of the slack you know they've always going to sell more and then everybody cheats on opec on everything else so it's going to be there's going to be no shortage the always impressive david greenberg of greenberg capital thank you david breashears your time. always glad to be here part. and shifts in the relative values of international currencies can often create nice bargains for savvy travelers and this time the balkan region is benefiting from that well known cycle the wall street journal reports that tiny montenegro for example a nation of nearly six hundred fifty thousand people sorry year over year increase of nearly twenty percent or twenty seventeen and the number of tourists visiting the former yugoslavia and territory travel agents say the strength of the u.s.

dollar relative to the euro is inspiring more u.s. travelers to take a look at europe and the balkans specifically while montenegro was second behind iceland in terms of growth and tourist traffic it was notably followed on a list by three countries carved out of the former yugoslavia serbia of slovenia and croatia. the other day we told you about american prisoners in more than a dozen states protesting war labor conditions among other issues and prison labor is a billion dollar a year business and many inmates say it amounts to modern day slavery as the debate goes on some businesses big businesses are making a profit on the circumstances here with more is molly barrows legal journalist with the national trial lawyer magazine who joins us from beautiful pensacola florida molly thank you for being with us i mean what sparked this whole thing. well it was

the riots as deadly riots at leat correctional institution in south carolina earlier this year seven inmates were dead dozens more well actually about seventeen more were severely injured and inmates now through the jailhouse lawyers speak it's a group of inmates that are basically leading this strike and an organized group and they say enough's enough that the conditions the living conditions are poor in prisons across the country that violence like what they saw in south carolina is committed other prisons across the country and they also want to bring attention to the fact that not only are living conditions in prisons terrible sentencing structure is terrible unfair sentencing racial discrimination and one of the big ones is they basically feel like modern day slaves that they're being forced to work for pennies on the dollar lake make some making less than a dollar a day or right around a dollar a day and federal law says they have to work federal law says federal prisoners in fact have to work so a lot of times they're doing men menial or custodial type jobs that a lot of times companies are hiring them as well and using some of this labor to

profit so these inmates are saying hey give us what's fair if we're going to be serving our time don't treat us like modern day slaves yeah i mean they have to have basic human rights but the other hand is they are prisoners but i am curious and i'm going to write this when we first covered this story as a headline you know which businesses are profiting from inmate labor and how are they doing so molly. well it's really interesting i did a lot of online searching and looked at a lot of other articles that have covered this peculiar issue and career addict which is a web site that basically house people job searches had an article that listed the seven companies as of last year that we're making the most or we're also profiting off prison labor and again these are companies that are making you know lots of money and they're getting labor at a discount for a lot of smaller services and some of the companies they listed including mcdonald's which was making uniforms and things like straws they talked about other companies including american airlines hiring prisoners that would answer their call service centers or call center microsoft wal-mart there are

a whole list of companies and some of them do business directly i mean you've heard in recent years companies like victoria's secret and whole foods received a little criticism in the press about doing business with prison labor in order to you know cut down on their labor costs but there's another way that they go about that these business go about doing business with these prisoners as well or with these prisons i should say the american legislative exchange council i had not heard of this group before but i guess it is. it's an organization a volunteer that's made up of voluntarily of state legislators and they influence everything from sentencing laws to you know that have impact inmates as well as they help with legislation that allows them and inmates to manufacture these products and these services so they have a direct hand in passing legislation that makes it easier for these companies to use these prisoners for their labor and going back to your point i mean they are prisoners they are required to work i don't think anybody would disapprove of them making the most of their time while they're there but the other side of prison

which often gets neglected and ignored is that it's supposed to be about rehabilitation and a lot of these jobs that they're using these inmates for not giving them skills or compare that are going to prepare them for life on the outside so ideally most of these inmates are going to be back outside again and they're already be in nickeled and dimed and charged for everything inside those prison walls in order to get you know food from the commissary in order to him. all their relatives all sorts of services that obviously we take for granted on the outside are available on the inside for a fee and then they're getting paid pennies on the dollar by corporations or by the state that they're working that they're living in and in essence they come out either in debt or at zero or and without a lot of money and they can't rebuild their lives like that so far going to put it to work at least let's put them to work doing something that's going to be of value so intriguing insightful molly burrows a little journalist for the national trial lawyers magazine thanks molly let's and that's wrist did this tell you can always catch us at youtube dot com slash both post r.t. later.

facts geysers financial survival guide. housing bubble. oh you mean there's a downside to artificially low mortgage rates don't get carried away that's cause report. forman are sitting in a car when the phipps gets shot in the head. all four different versions of what happened one of them is on the death row there's no way you could have done it there's no possible way because the list did not shoot around a corner. not

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the last rebel and terrorist stronghold in syria is so wrong. ended as all parties involved in conflict prepare for what could be a final showdown in this seven year long war. twenty people have been left injured after thousands of anti and pro migrant protesters clashed in the german city of candidates for a second day the only rest was filled by the stopping of a local on sunday. hopes of the smoking gun in the trump russia collusion probe on dashed after the attorney of trump's former lawyer backtracks on claims his client has evidence of illicit contacts.