The Bank of Thailand will hold a press conference tomorrow on the monetary policy and baht exchange rate situation, amid concerns of the baht remaining strong.

Last week, the baht moved within a tight range early in the week before hitting a one-month low of Bt30.37 to the US dollar in line with weak regional currencies amid concerns over rising tensions in the Middle East, after Iran attacked US troops in Iraq in response to the US airstrike on January 3, according to KBank report.

However, the baht pared losses somewhat later in the week, as US announced economic sanctions instead of military actions against Iran, which helped calm market concerns over the situation in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the market shifted its focus to preparations for the signing of the first phase of the US-China trade deal around mid-January.

On Friday (January 10), the baht closed at Bt30.23 to the dollar, versus Bt30.15/USD reported on Friday (January 3).

During the week January 13-17, KBank expects the baht will move within a range of Bt30.00-30.40/USD. Key factors to be monitored closely include signals for subsequent phases of the US-China trade talks, issues surrounding Brexit and the situation in the Middle East. The US economic data to be released during the week include consumer price index, producer price index, retail sales, housing starts, and industrial production data for December 2019, plus the NAHB Housing Market Index, NY Fed Empire State Manufacturing survey, Philly Fed Business Outlook survey and Preliminary Consumer Sentiment survey for January 2020. In addition, market participants may monitor China’s fourth-quarter GDP report for 2019 and December 2019 economic data.

The federal government, though, is calling its employees back to the office.

After a big push toward telework in the Obama administration, President Donald Trump’s government is scaling it back at multiple agencies on the theory that a fanny in the seat prevents the kind of slacking off that can happen when no one’s watching.

The about-face began at the Agriculture Department in 2018, after Secretary Sonny Perdue was angry to discover that an employee he needed to meet with was working from home, according to three administration officials. In response, he slashed by half a robust program used by tens of thousands of employees.

A USDA spokesperson, who acknowledged the program had been dialed back, said the Perdue story was “inaccurate” but would not elaborate.

The Education and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as parts of Commerce and Health and Human Services departments, soon followed.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, where telework is popular in the benefits division, is pushing for restrictions in contract talks. The Social Security Administration abruptly canceled a 6-year-old pilot program for 12,000 operations employees in November, citing “increased wait times and unacceptable delays” to customer service.

Trump’s war on telework represents a milestone in how his administration is changing the culture of the federal government as it seeks more accountability from employees – and moves to weaken their unions. Employees are chafing at their lost freedom, but the managers reining them in say that, in the long run, taxpayers benefit. Overall, data on productivity is inconclusive, workplace experts say.

“Agencies have been digging deep to say, ‘The way of work in our agency – is it achieving mission, service and stewardship objectives?’ Particularly when it comes to service, we have to ask the question, ‘What is the best modality for delivering service?’ ” Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. “Telework is not proving the most effective way of delivering.”

Employees report they are more productive at home and suspect the administration of other motives. Scaling back telework is “a subtle way of getting rid of old-timers,” said Uylaine Barringer, 69, a compliance assistance coordinator for the EPA’s hazardous waste program in Chicago.

Barringer lives on three acres in the small town of Princeton, Illinois, 120 miles from the city, where she also cares for retired Chicago police horses.

For years she worked four 10-hour days each week – home two days, trekking downtown two others and taking off Fridays, which she reserved for grooming the horses and seeing the veterinarian, as well as for her own medical appointments after surviving cancer.

But last summer, the EPA scaled back telework to two days a month for employees with her schedule. She made the difficult decision to move up her planned retirement by a year, to Jan. 20. It will cost her several hundred dollars a month in pension credits. “It’s a job that I really enjoy,” she said. “I know the program inside and out. But it wasn’t tenable.”

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The Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey found that 24 percent of private-sector employees teleworked at least some of the time in 2018, a steadily growing share despite retreats in recent years by companies such as Yahoo and IBM.

Alexander Alonso, chief knowledge officer for the Society for Human Resource Management, which tracks workplace trends, said the option to work from home is a “huge” tool in recruiting and maintaining talent.

In the government, though, “I think they want to discourage federal employment and make it less attractive,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., co-sponsor of a 2010 law that prods agencies to allow telework to save on energy and commuting costs. “It’s sort of a Neanderthal move by the administration.”

Working from home has grown steadily in the past decade and is a go-to alternative on snow days.

About 43 percent of the 2.1 million civil servants were eligible for one or more days a week of remote work in fiscal 2017, the last year for which data is available from the Office of Personnel Management. That’s down from 44 percent in fiscal 2015. An OPM spokesperson said telework has remained stable in the Trump administration, but the agency’s annual report to Congress notes that agencies have trouble collecting accurate data.

By private-sector standards, the recent federal retreat would hinder the government’s ability to participate in a knowledge-based economy in which collaboration among far-flung employees is now the norm. Some technology companies have abandoned the bricks-and-mortar office altogether.

The backtrack has upended child-care schedules, raised commuting costs and led some like Barringer to quit because their office is too far to drive to daily. It also could make the government less competitive in recruiting and keeping employees. And with many federal offices redesigned to fit fewer people, it’s unclear if there’s room for them now.

The rollback comes as the White House advances a crackdown on federal employee unions after a successful court battle last year over a series of executive orders. They give management an upper hand in collective bargaining and limit union duties on the job.

Agencies are reopening and renegotiating contracts that in the Obama era had renewed automatically. Restricting telework is a high priority.

“It’s doctrinal. It’s punitive,” said David Cann, director of field services and education at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union.

“When Trump came in, federal employees understood they were the ‘swamp’ to this administration and it would be tough on them,” Cann said. “But we have yet to hear from any agency that telework is imparting any harm.”

Some agencies have continued to support telework, including the Patent and Trademark Office and the Defense Department, where a third of the 366,000 civilians eligible used the option in fiscal 2017, the last year data was collected.

The General Services Administration, which shrunk its Washington headquarters during a 2013 renovation, continues to shed leased office space and requires employees to reserve desks when they come in.

GSA “relies on telework to attract and retain a talented workforce,” a spokesperson said in an email, touting the agency’s continuity of operations during a disaster or bad weather. About 85 percent of GSA employees telework multiple days a week.

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Those on either side of the divide have little data to back up their case, workplace experts say. Most research does not account for whether employees were strong or weak performers to begin with, skewing results. Studies tend to lump multiple jobs together.

The Government Accountability Office found similar obstacles in a 2016 report that found few quantifiable results from expanding telework. Agencies could not back up their claims that it benefited them.

Today they do not back up claims that it’s hurting them, but they appear to be changing course based on a gut feeling that productivity is suffering.

At the USDA, where multiple days a week of remote work were common, employees now must show up at the office four days a week.

“USDA’s telework policy is designed to be responsible to the taxpayers and responsive to the customers who depend on our services,” a spokesperson said in a statement, citing “longstanding concerns about the previous policy.” In cases where offices do not have enough space to accommodate employees, supervisors can approve more work from home.

Social Security set off a furor in the fall when Commissioner Andrew Saul canceled a popular telework pilot program that let employees work remotely up to three days a week.

Spokesman Mark Hinkle said the program had “little or no controls to ensure” that it was properly evaluated and that front-line employees were needed in the office to stanch growing wait times and delays to service.

“Given our current service challenges and lack of data on [the policy’s] impact on public service, now is not the time to experiment with working at home,” Hinkle said in an email.

But employees and unions, backed by Democratic lawmakers, mounted a successful campaign on Capitol Hill to restore the program, blaming management for failing to track its effectiveness.

“If you’re data driven, why would you come back years later and say, ‘We’re not gauging if we’re successful in this pilot?’ ” asked James Muhammad-Mason, a debt specialist in the Chicago office who worked from home one day a week.

He said he was more focused that day and not distracted by “office banter.”

“The real reason they took it away? ‘Federal employees are lazy. Why would you let them work more from home?’ ” Muhammad-Mason said, mocking a popular attack on government workers. “If you have a problem with certain employees, you need to address it.”

The pushback worked. The spending deal that Trump signed in December requires the agency to come up with a plan within 60 days to reinstate the program.

The Education Department, where 94 percent of the workforce was eligible for multiple telework days a week, surveyed employees last summer, nine months after slashing telework to one day a week.

The results were universally negative, according to a copy of the survey obtained by The Washington Post.

Sick leave and vacation requests grew. A majority of employees reported no increased productivity, collaboration or communication with colleagues when they returned to the office – the stated reason telework was cut. And two-thirds of employees said they were considering leaving.

The department acknowledged that “a significant number of employees and managers are still adjusting to the change.” But Secretary Betsy DeVos decided to continue the agency’s “efforts to achieve the intended outcomes of improved collaboration and productivity” and limit working from home.

Despite the shadow of a drought, a large fruit output is expected this year, said Whichai Phochanakij, director-general of the Internal Trade Department.

The department will facilitate trade in Thai fruits such as durian, mangosteen, longan, longkong, lychee and rambutan with a budget of Bt396 million, he said.

The department will match major buyers with 20,000 farmers and will collaborate with retailers, department stores and Blue Flag chain stores to sell at least 50,000 tonnes of fruit.

The department would hold promotion sales of fruit in both the domestic and overseas markets, aiming to sell more than 20,000 tonnes of fruit, he noted.

They would also arrange total loans of Bt1.5 billion at 3 per cent interest to provide liquidity to traders for six months. Another 3 per cent interest subsidy would be allocated to support funding for upgrading their factories and facilitating organic farm certification, he said. Each trader could get a loan of up to Bt10 million.

The department will also help farmers to select middlemen from China who come to Thailand to buy fruits for sale later in the Chinese market.

The farmers and labourers would be trained in post-harvest handling to maintain the high quality of farm products and reduce losses.

Middlemen from China found cheating farmers as in the previous years will be put on the blacklist.

The department will also collaborate with four airliners to allow each passenger to take up to 20 kilograms of fruit on board without fee, he added.

+++The latest U.S. sanctions will target Iran’s metal industries, as well as eight senior military and national security officials. The new penalties came after the U.S. killing of a top Iranian commander in Baghdad last week, which triggered retaliatory Iranian strikes Wednesday on bases housing U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

Within three years, cautious hopefulness on improving U.S.-Iranian relations has turned into escalating hostility – with ordinary Iranians saying they once again will bear the brunt of a U.S. return to sanctions.

“Every single day, as soon as people open their eyes, they face a dark and vague future,” wrote Iranian musician Mehdi Rajabian, 30, an independent protest artist and frequent critic of the Iranian regime, in a text message in response to the latest U.S. sanctions announced on Friday.

When the Iran nuclear deal was reached in 2015, then-President Barack Obama welcomed it as being “not built on trust,” but rather “on verification.” The agreement – one of his signature foreign policy achievements – was implemented in early 2016.

Suddenly and largely unconstrained by international sanctions, foreign companies flocked into the country. Whereas Iran’s real gross domestic product growth rate stood at -1.3% in 2015, it surged to +13.4% in 2016.

But President Donald Trump’s election in November 2016 and his new policy directives upended that. Iran’s real GDP growth rate tumbled.

Throughout his campaign, Trump had argued the United States should leave the Iran agreement, calling it a “terrible one for the United States and the world. It does nothing but make Iran rich and will lead to catastrophe,” he tweeted in 2015.

On May 8, 2018, Trump followed through, announcing that the United States would abandon the deal. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will,” he said. Trump’s supporters argued that Iran had deceived the international community and that it continued to destabilize the Middle East undeterred, via proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and other parts of the region.

Other Western parties to the deal – Germany, France and Britain – countered that stopping Iran’s regional interference was never its aim and that their own intelligence suggested Iran was in compliance with the agreement. All signatories apart from the U.S. stuck to the agreement. Europe announced it would establish a mechanism to shield companies willing to continue trading with Iran from reinstated U.S. sanctions.

Once key U.S. sanctions were reinstated by November 2018, however, the Europeans’ announcement had little impact. The Iranian rial continued to rapidly lose value against the dollar.

The Trump administration’s threat to also impose sanctions on countries that purchased Iranian oil hit Iran especially hard. Iran’s oil exports plummeted after the sanctions took effect.

Initially, the United States agreed to grant some of Iran’s customers a six-month waiver, meaning they could continue to import Iranian oil without fear of U.S. sanctions. In the following months, Iranian oil exports began to increase as a result of the exemptions.

Once the waivers expired in May 2019, Iranian exports fell to new lows.

There have been signs of recent frustration between Tehran and the European Union, too. Iranian officials have blamed their European counterparts for supposedly being too slow in implementing measures to shield companies from U.S. sanctions.

In response to the U.S. killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Tehran doubled down by announcing on Sunday that it was suspending its commitments under the nuclear deal.

For now, the European Union has resisted U.S. pressure to declare the nuclear deal dead, saying instead that it will “spare no effort” to keep it alive.

A key question, however, is whether additional sanctions would even have a significant impact. Analysts say existing U.S. sanctions have left little leeway for Iran, which saw the cost of basic goods skyrocket over the past year.

Over the course of one year, the price of beef and veal has risen from the equivalent of $5.20 per kilogram to $7.70, and the cost of milk has gone up from $0.3 per liter to $0.5.

Iranian government leaders “keep telling us to be strong and endure the pressures, but we can already hear the sound of our bones breaking,” Shiva Keshavarz, a 22-year-old accountant, told the Associated Press last summer.

Since then, living conditions have only gotten harsher for many Iranians, who “struggle to survive,” wrote Rajabian, the musician.