Aurelia Butler

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will hold talks with U.S. President Joe Biden next week in Washington where they will discuss improving economic ties and how to sustain military support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.Sunak will be in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday next week and meet Biden, members of Congress and U.S. business leaders, Sunak’s spokesman said on Tuesday.”The visit will be an opportunity to build on the discussions that the prime minister and President Biden have had in recent months about enhancing the level of cooperation and coordination between the UK and U.S. on the economic challenges that will define our future,” the spokesman said.”There will also be an opportunity to discuss issues including sustaining our support for Ukraine.”Sunak wants to forge better relations with the United States after they were strained by Britain’s departure from the European Union at the end of 2020. In April, a White House official was forced to deny Biden was “anti-British” after he spent over half a day in the British province of Northern Ireland before he travelled south to the Irish Republic for two-and-a-half days of meetings.The Biden administration has shown little interest in negotiating a free-trade agreement with the United Kingdom, which British supporters of leaving the EU once touted as one of the main benefits of its departure from the bloc.Discussions had progressed during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, before Biden came to power and then the talks stalled.Sunak’s spokesman said on Tuesday it was unlikely there would be a discussion about a free-trade agreement on this visit and there would instead be a focus on reducing trade barriers in other ways such as agreements with individual states.Britain’s relationship with the United States is partly built on close defence, intelligence, economic and cultural ties and the two sides are largely in lockstep in supporting Ukraine.Sunak accepted Biden’s invitation to visit the White House in March when the two leaders met in San Diego to inaugurate the next phase of a submarine alliance between the United States, Britain, and Australia, known as AUKUS. The two men appeared to get along well on that visit, with Biden noting that Sunak is a graduate of Stanford University and asking for a visit to the home he still owns in Santa Monica. More

The bank is determined to bring annual inflation back to its 4% target in 2024 and sees inflation ending this year at 4.5%-6.5%. Inflation spiked to double-digits in 2022. The bank gradually reversed an emergency rate hike to 20% soon after Russia sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, but has held its key rate at 7.5% since September. Its next meeting is due on June 9. More

The decision comes just days before a meeting of the European Political Community in Moldova on June 1, as the EU seeks to quell pro-Russian sentiments in parts of Moldova. “Moldova can continue to count on the EU. We will continue to support Moldova, also financially. Given the current circumstances, it is appropriate that we double the funds which we make available to Moldova,” Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said in a statement.Moldova, a small, poor state bordering Ukraine and Romania, has denounced Russia’s invasion and accused Moscow of trying to destabilise the administration of President Maia Sandu. However, earlier this month the assembly in a pro-Russian region of Moldova endorsed the election of a local leader intent on improving ties with Moscow.($1 = 0.9084 euros) More

(Reuters) -Alberta’s re-elect conservative leader Danielle Smith has put herself on a collision course with Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over climate policies that would weigh on the province’s massive fossil fuel industry.Smith, leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP), defeated left-leaning New Democratic Party leader Rachel Notley on Monday, and immediately targeted Trudeau, threatening the country’s ambitious climate goals.Smith warned Trudeau’s Liberal climate policies will destroy tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas sector, which contributes more than 20% to Alberta GDP. Trudeau’s government is aiming to cut climate-warming carbon emissions 40-45% by 2030, but will struggle to meet that target without significant reductions from Alberta, Canada’s highest-polluting province. Some analysts have said deep emissions cuts are not possible without reducing oil production, which Smith fiercely opposes.In her victory speech in front of cheering supporters in Canada’s oil capital Calgary, Smith called on Albertans to stand up against policies including the federal government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap and clean electricity regulations, expected to be unveiled within weeks.”Hopefully the prime minister and his caucus are watching tonight,” Smith said. “As premier I cannot under any circumstances allow these contemplated federal policies to be inflicted upon Albertans.”Canada has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, most of which are held in northern Alberta’s vast oil sands. The province produces around 80% of Canada’s 4.9 million barrels per day of crude oil.”Let’s keep working together to deliver results for Albertans – let’s create more good jobs, grow our economy, and continue to position Alberta as a leader in clean energy,” Trudeau said in a tweet on Tuesday, as he congratulated Smith on her victory.The federal government says Canada needs to cut emissions from oil and gas production to stay competitive as the world transitions to net-zero by 2050.”Alberta is obviously heavily invested in a future that involves the oil and gas economy,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of pollster Ipsos Public Affairs. “This is going to be a bone of contention” with Ottawa, he added.’BELLICOSE RHETORIC’ Since becoming premier in October, Smith passed legislation allowing the province to refuse to enforce federal laws it deems unconstitutional, and she has threatened to use it on legislation seen as a potential threat to the province’s energy industry.Smith and Trudeau have also sparred over who should pay for potential increases to tax credits for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects that the oil and gas wants to use to decarbonize its production process.”One of the challenges is there is a political class in Alberta that has decided that anything to do with climate change is going to be bad for them or for Alberta,” Trudeau told Reuters in a January interview. However, some industry leaders seeking public sector funding for CCS are tiring of the combative relationship between the two levels of government and have called for better collaboration.Earlier this year, Alex Pourbaix, the then-CEO of oil producer Cenovus Energy (NYSE:CVE), said he would “like to see the temperature turned down a little bit”.For Trudeau, Smith may be a better political counterpoint than her less controversial rival Notley would have been, Bricker said, as the Liberals can cast her as a western version of federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.That said, provincial leaders of all political stripes tend to work with the federal government when it is beneficial to their electorate, as has been the case recently with federal funding for healthcare and childcare. “Danielle Smith is canny enough to know that she has to be able to work with Ottawa,” said Shachi Kurl, president of pollster Angus Reid Institute. “There is a lot of bellicose rhetoric that comes from the Western premiers sometimes… But at the end of the day, politically, it does none of them any good to not be able to work together.” More

A bipartisan deal to raise the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling now faces a series of votes in Congress, with both Democratic President Joe Biden and the top Republican in Congress, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, predicting they will get enough votes to pass it into law before Monday.Yields on Treasury bills that are due in early June had risen sharply on concerns that they will be a risk of not being repaid if the Treasury runs out of cash.Yields on bills that are due on June 1 fell to 5.09%, after reaching 7.47% last Thursday. Yields on bills due on June 6 fell to 5.43%, from a high of 7.49% last week. More

The writer is director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel UniversityOne of the tantalising questions about US president Joe Biden’s muscular industrial policy is whether it can reverse decades of economic decline in cities and metropolitan areas that bore the brunt of deindustrialisation. Older parts of the US, like much of Britain and Europe, are littered with hundreds of communities that collapsed under the weight of offshoring, outsourcing and globalisation at any cost. But today, America is undergoing a remarkable industrial transition. Market dynamics, geopolitical tensions and unprecedented federal investments are catalysing a reshoring of advanced manufacturing in the defence and civilian sectors, as well as an accelerated decarbonisation of the US economy. These macro forces have metro effects. Advanced manufacturing values places that can provide industry with the platforms and tools it needs. Large companies and smaller firms alike require suitable sites for production activity, properly assembled, prepared and zoned. They need access to a steady stream of qualified workers who can master the complex nature of advanced production; applied researchers who can continuously assist with product and process innovation; quality housing that is affordable to workers of all incomes; and infrastructure of all types that enables the efficient movement of ideas, goods, services, workers and energy, within and across metropolitan areas.Many older industrial cities and metropolitan areas retain legacy assets that are central to this manufacturing future. These assets have been dormant and undervalued for decades. But they did not disappear and they are now available for industrial purposes.Some lesser-known federal programmes are beginning to unlock this potential. Last autumn, the Biden administration announced winners of the $1bn Build Back Better Regional Challenge, initially appropriated in the American Rescue Plan Act, to advance national competitiveness by scaling advanced industry clusters. The programme was flexibly structured, asking communities to define and then leverage their distinctive competitive advantages through an array of investments. It essentially challenged locations to embrace Dolly Parton’s maxim, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”The results are promising. Manchester, New Hampshire, once home to the largest cotton mill in the world, received funds to scale its BioFabrication Cluster to produce and distribute regenerative tissues and organs. Buffalo, New York is expanding a highly regarded workforce development centre to serve a regional network of manufacturing firms. St Louis, Missouri is establishing an Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center to serve the needs of Boeing and its suppliers in the defence aerospace sector, explicitly modelled on an applied research campus perfected in Sheffield, England.Significantly, Buffalo and St Louis are locating their facilities in the most disadvantaged parts of their cities, ensuring that the benefits of re-industrialisation accrue to low-income residents and communities.These and other efforts are being watched closely by cities and metropolitan areas from coast to coast. They are likely to become models that are adapted throughout the country as federal industrial policy takes full effect.For decades, cities were told to plan the post-industrial city, driven by service rather than production economies. Now, almost overnight, they are being challenged, across sectors and jurisdictions, to deliver the industrial metropolis.The stakes are high. Deindustrialisation in the US exacerbated persistent inequalities, roiled national politics and helped stoke populist outrage. The revival of older industrial locations is as much about restoring national cohesion as driving economic competitiveness. More