site.btaMedia Review: April 11

US TARIFFS

“The Great Faceoff over Tariffs,” caps the main story in the Capital weekly covering the trade war between the United States and much of the rest of the world. The magazine says that the tariffs will push up prices for US consumers and will possibly trigger a recession in the US. The EU is trying to put up joint resistance against the tariffs as it fears their adverse impact on the region’s economic growth. If President Donald Trump carries through with his plan, it may cause the global trade system to collapse, the magazine says. Every sector of the economy, from shoes and clothes to cars, will be affected. The tariffs are set to increase business costs. Transport companies have warned of disruptions in the world economy. The US is the largest market for EU exports, absorbing one-fifth of the bloc’s sales beyond its boundaries, the publication goes on to say. It notes that Europe is reluctant to engage in a trade war and is willing to revise world trade rules to make them fairer.

Interviewed for the video channel of SegaBG.com, automobile sector analyst Petar Zahariev says that although the Trump administration has announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs, those on cars from Europe remain. This will affect Bulgarian manufacturers of auto equipment, electronics and components, because it applies to the whole chain of supply for the industry. Zahariev says that, for now, it is hard to predict whether car prices in Bulgaria will go up due to the tariffs, but a rise is not very likely. “There will be a period of several months during which it should transpire how things will develop, what will happen with these tariffs, how long they will stay, how big they are, how much it will all cost. My personal opinion is that vehicle prices will not increase dramatically, they are high enough already,” the expert says.

On the morning talk show of BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, economist Georgi Vuldzhev of the Economics and Politics Expert Club said the US administration is working for a massive re-industrialization of the nation. Vuldzhev said: “Over the last few decades, particularly since the beginning of the 21st century, when China joined the World Trade Organization, the US has incurred huge damage in terms of loss of industrial jobs, industrial production, which is outsourced to many other places, above all China, at least initially. By the year two thousand, 25% of the world’s industrial output was generated in the US, but at present, it is 16%, whereas China accounts for about one-third of it. An even greater problem for the US is that in the last few decades its military-industrial complex has grown dependent on such countries as China. [...] Obviously, if you are in a situation as that of the US, and if the trajectory of economic development continues in the same direction, at some point you will find yourself dependent militarily on your biggest competitor on a global level.”

ROAD SAFETY

A deadly traffic accident in the northern Pleven Region on March 31, which claimed the life of a 12-year-old girl, has put road safety on the public agenda again.

Capital says that traffic safety problems are due to unfulfilled obligations, continuous failings and possible misappropriation of resources. It is necessary to bring the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) to light and get a clear picture of how road funding is spent. Over the last 10 years, public officials’ resignations have changed nothing about the way institutions go about addressing road safety issues. Roads have been neglected for years, and although traffic casualties have been decreasing steadily, the compromised quality of roads and insufficient control over drivers are a recipe for danger, the weekly magazine says. It has interviewed Malina Krumova, President of the State Agency for Road Safety, who says that even when a traffic accident is to blame on a driver, the road infrastructure played a part in it.

The main story in Duma quotes the Road Safety Institute (RSI) as saying that over the course of three years RIA spent BGN 2.5 billion on road repairs and maintenance, and yet Bulgaria’s road infrastructure has not improved. High traffic accident rates are mainly due to poor or no organization of traffic, uneven road surfaces and low friction between tyres and paving, RSI said. According to the institute, the RIA administrators do not have the competence to manage the resources for road management and repairs, and the agency is plagued by corruption. Maya Dimitrova, Deputy Floor Leader of BSP-United Left, commented: “There is full consensus in the National Assembly that road carnage should be stopped. Many human lives have been lost to speeding and bad roads.”

Interviewed by Bulgarian National Radio, Sofia Traffic Police Director Nikolai Krusharski said that 80,000 speeding offences have been registered in the capital so far this year. Speeding is one of the most common causes of traffic accidents, along with violations of the requirement for a safe distance between cars and left-turn rules. Despite the large number of speeding cases, traffic accidents decreased compared with the like period of last year, and so did the number of fatalities and injuries, Krusharski said.

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Interviewed about slow justice in traffic accident cases, lawyer Nadezhda Kovacheva tells 24 Chasa that Bulgaria does not have enough trained court experts in all forensic disciplines. A court expert in medicine or automotive engineering, for example, takes 10 years to train, Kovacheva notes. “Regulating the work of expert witnesses is an overriding task of the lawmakers,” she says. According to her, fewer than 20 automotive engineers in Bulgaria are qualified to serve as expert witnesses, and they have a backlog of unfinished work on traffic accident cases since 2018. Kovacheva calls for a pay rise for court experts. Discussing a Justice Ministry proposal to enable courts to question expert witnesses through videoconference, the lawyer notes that while in court, expert witnesses can coordinate matters among themselves to reach a common conclusion, and this may be unfeasible by videoconference.

ECONOMY

Many young people sink deep into debt and are unable to repay it, and therefore their liabilities have to be collected forcibly, Trud says on page one. The observation is about people between 18 and 30 years old, according to Siika Anadolieva of the Bulgarian Chamber of Private Enforcement Agents. Even before finishing school, adolescents take out loans which they cannot pay back. They often spend the money on expensive mobile phones, computers or holidays. Overall, about half of Bulgarians are making loan or lease payments, shows a poll conducted by the Trend Research Centre. Approximately 23% of respondents in the poll took out a consumer loan, and 13% borrowed money from a family member or a friend.

Discussing people’s well-being in general, Dimitar Ganev of Trend says that huge disparities exist between the largest cities, including the capital Sofia, and the rest of the country. “There are two different Bulgarias,” he says. Latest surveys show that the problem of rising prices is perceived as four times more serious than corruption, which is ranked second, Ganev says.

POLITICS

The clash between Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning leader Delyan Peevski and the Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) coalition continued on Friday with disclosures about meeting arrangements and alleged threats, MediaPool.bg reports. The exchange was fuelled by Peevski’s remarks about former regional development and public works minister Andrei Tsekov, who is currently an MP of CC-DB. The scandal broke out a few days ago, when Peevski, who is sanctioned for corruption under the US Global Magnitsky Act, blamed Tsekov and his family for brokering “all road deals.” Tsekov threatened to file a defamation lawsuit, the website recalls.

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The advocates of tolerance, who acted as if they opposed hatred, now heap hatred upon religion and everyone who professes it, Trud says in a signed comment. The author, Viktor Blaskov, notes that it is OK to be opposed to introducing religion as a school subject, but recently, commentators have hurled particularly vile accusations and used very aggressive language, and all this has come from people who will turn around tomorrow to oppose hatred against the LGBT community. They favour tolerance, but only for their own opinions. They are against hatred, but they are the first to express hatred for you who think differently.

So many personal attacks, indeed, Blaskov says. If you are religious, you are stupid, you don’t understand anything, they say. Christianity is evil, they say, it is intended to enslave people, it is bogus. Keep it to your home. Now, imagine telling them that if they are LGBT, there is something wrong, LGBT is evil and is intended to manipulate children, it is bogus, and they should keep a low profile. These same people will burst with anger, accuse you of hatred, threaten you. They even wrote themselves a law to enable them to sue you if you say it. The good thing about it is that, as long as they are such hypocrites, no one will buy it, except for those who just look for a reason to hate, the comment concludes.

SCIENCE

A new study has identified a brain circuit that correlates with how intensely people engage in politics, regardless of their political beliefs, 24 Chasa says in its main story. It quotes the journal Brain as reporting that researchers examined data from 124 male military veterans with penetrating brain injuries and found that lesions in certain brain areas affected levels of political involvement. Higher engagement was linked to damage in regions associated with cognitive control, while lower engagement corresponded with areas tied to fear and empathy. The findings suggest a shared neurological basis for political intensity that spans the ideological spectrum.