'State of emergency' in Panama
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Let's talk bananas, blockades and a multi-million dollar strike. Hello, this is the Marketplace Morning Report and we're live from the BBC World Service. I'm Leanna Byrne. Good morning. So we start today in Central America and a blow to a $100 million banana market. The past year,

The BBC's Vanessa Bush-Luther has been following this. Hello.

Hello, how are you? Vanessa, let's start with the basics. What triggered the strike and why has it dragged on for so long? The strike was triggered at the end of last month, at the end of April, by a law that was passed by the conservative president of Panama, who was trying to fight a shortfall in the country's pension system. So he, with the help of Congress, passed this law which will reform the system of pensions in the country.

And the unions, not just the union of the banana workers, but also the teachers unions and unions representing other workers, think that this reform is a privatization through the back door. So they have taken to the streets and protested against this law.

Now, a tribunal declared the strike illegal and that's when Chiquita decided to sack 5,000 banana workers, which of course has made the situation worse. Why has the Panamanian government declared a state of emergency? As you can imagine, the strike has now gone on for a month and what...

union members tend to do in Panama is they tend to block the Pan-American Highway, which is a very effective means of protest. That means that transport companies can't get food and water and other essentials into that region. And of course, this makes the

the situation escalate quite rapidly. So the government has taken the decision to declare the state of emergency in order to give it more powers to circumvent the strike. Although they have said, it has to be said, that they will not remove the barriers erected, these roadblocks that the protesters have erected by force.

The reason for that is that when the government in the past has tried to remove roadblocks by force, the situation has really blown up. So for now, they want to avoid that situation, but they want to be able to, for example, have the security forces bring in food, bring in essentials. Have we heard from Chiquita on this at this point? Yes. Chiquita said that the strike was an unjustified abandonment of work.

And that's the reason it gave for sacking those 5,000 workers. It also said that it had lost $75 million by the strike. So that's the reasons it is giving for this sacking of those thousands of banana workers. OK, Vanessa Bush-Luther, thank you so much for joining us on Marketplace. You're welcome. Now let's do the numbers. ♪

U.S. listed shares and PDD holdings, the Chinese e-commerce giant behind Timu, closed down more than 13% yesterday after the company reported a near 50% drop in profits. It's facing pressure at home and abroad, including from President Trump's crackdown on duty-free imports. Meanwhile, European markets were flat as investors watched for movement on U.S. trade talks and regional economic data.

And in Brazil, its prosecutors are suing the Chinese EV giant BYD, accusing it and two contractors of human trafficking and slave-like conditions at a factory site. 220 Chinese workers were rescued. BYD hasn't commented on the case, but has previously said it has zero tolerance for rights violations.

Smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines, they all rely on rare earth minerals. On Monday, we looked at concerns that the processing of these materials is heavily dominated by China. Like the US, Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on Beijing. But right now, it only has two processing plants. The biggest is in France, owned by chemicals giant Solvay. The BBC's Jonathan Josephs has been given exclusive access.

Welcome to the historic port city of La Rochelle. The old limestone buildings are part of the attraction for tourists, but it's some very different materials that are putting it on the map for Western politicians.

Well, we're in the car now on the way to Solvay's rare earths processing facility. They don't let very many people in here. Now, this is the largest plant of its kind outside of China. Let's go and take a look inside. Good morning. I'm Florian Gounod. I'm a production site manager here in La Rochelle. Basically, what we do here in La Rochelle is we separate and we purify rare earths elements.

It's basically like if you have a multi-fruit juice with orange juice, apple juice, pineapple juice. The objective of the liquid separation unit will be to separate apple juice on one side, orange juice on the other side, and so on. We're stepping inside to a huge room.

must be almost the size of a football pitch here. It's row after row of conjoined metal vats and this is where a lot of that separation happens.

I'm Sébastien Scarsi. I'm the site director of Olvé La Rochette. At the end of the separation stage, we have liquid. For this liquid, finished product is a powder. So we need to transform the liquid, the rare earth nitrates, into rare earth oxide, which is a powder. So that's how the rare earths go from recycled and unfiltered materials to ready for use in the latest tech.

Today, Belgium's Solvay is run by Philippe Queren. I asked him how important it is that Europe becomes self-sufficient and expands its own mining of rare earths. I think it's important to also be independent. Keep in mind that we can use recycled material. So, of course, today it's still the beginning because you don't have a lot of energy.

end-of-life electric motors and so on. But this will develop and by 2030, 35, you will have more and more material and this can represent a big part of the sourcing. I think the recycling can probably represent 30% or maybe even a bit more, but never 100%. That was Solvay's CEO, Philippe Caron, finishing that report from Jonathan Josephs. And I'm Leanna Byrne with the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

This Old House has been America's most trusted source for all things DIY and home improvement for decades. And now we're on the radio and on demand. I think you're breaking into this wall regardless. I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I need to go and get some whiskey, I think. I would get the whiskey for sure. Subscribe to This Old House Radio Hour from LAist Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.