Aurelia Butler

European business groups and lawmakers have hit out at the White House after it announced fresh measures aimed at promoting investment in homegrown green technology. The support for American-made electric vehicle chargers, unveiled by the administration on Wednesday, comes after the US in August passed the $369bn Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, containing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits for US-manufactured clean technology.“Our most important trading partner decides things in their own interest,” said Luisa Santos, deputy director-general of BusinessEurope, which represents companies across the EU. “They keep doing this. But they want us to support them on China.”A spokesperson for DigitalEurope, which represents the continent’s technology sector, described the latest support as “like déjà vu”. Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, its director-general, said: “The way to achieve our common climate goal is not through more ‘Buy American’ but through joint action and common standards.” The European Commission said it would seek talks with the US over the subsidies. “We must look for synergies and work to avoid trade barriers in the transatlantic relationship,” a spokesperson for the commission said last week. “We will continue to raise concerns about discrimination or local content requirements with our US counterparts.”The latest package, part of the US’s Infrastructure Law, will see the US government invest $7.5bn in EV charging, $10bn in clean transportation and more than $7bn in EV battery components, critical minerals and raw materials. The White House last week described the support as “a tool to promote domestic production”. To qualify, products must have at least 55 per cent content manufactured domestically from next year. While business groups and lawmakers attacked Washington’s repeated reluctance to consult with its big trading partners on green subsidies, European companies with large US operations welcomed the additional support. Swiss-based technology company ABB, which is one of Europe’s leading EV charger makers and counts the US as its biggest market, said the measures were “expected to be beneficial”. “With our new manufacturing operations in South Carolina and our focus on the US market, we are looking forward to continuing to work with our partners and federal and state governments to deploy reliable and high-quality public chargers,” a spokesperson for the group said.German chemicals manufacturer BASF, which employs more than 16,000 workers on more than 150 sites in North America, said it would “look at what opportunities there are through the framework of the IRA and the Infrastructure Law”. “Such incentives can help support the advancement of electromobility in the US and North America and otherwise help to reduce emissions in the transportation sector,” a spokesperson said. The commission and White House have convened a task force to find ways to implement the Inflation Reduction Act to allow better treatment of EU manufacturers. But it has made little progress in the face of US congressional opposition, with Brussels instead allowing member states to subsidise domestic clean technology industries by relaxing state aid rules. Brussels has already threatened to complain to the World Trade Organization, whose rules forbid tying state support to domestic manufacturing, over the Inflation Reduction Act. Officials have also claimed the US is trying to lure companies away from the EU. BASF has said it will make about 15 per cent of its capital expenditure in North America over the next four years. The latest US move also raises questions about the Trade and Technology Council, a forum set up 18 months ago to harmonise transatlantic rules. The forum has delivered little despite being led by commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, secretary of state Antony Blinken and trade representative Katherine Tai on the US side and the EU’s trade and competition commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Margrethe Vestager.

“The EU and US should work together to promote resilient supply chains and support the transition to low carbon economies on both sides of the Atlantic,” the commission said last week. “This is one of the main purposes of our co-operation with the US in the framework of the TTC.” Before this week’s White House announcement, both sides said they were preparing a joint recommendation for state-funded EV charging networks and a common standard for truck chargers. Officials say they wanted to prevent China, the biggest market for electric vehicles, from setting global standards. Business groups are also keen for the TTC to take on a greater role in shaping trade relations. “We have the forum to discuss these issues and align with allies — the TTC,” said a spokesperson for DigitalEurope. “Let’s use it or lose it.” “The TTC needs to be on a higher political level,” Santos said. “Does the [US] president understand there is a logic behind it, that it should not be a talking shop but a place to discuss the consequences of US actions for Europe?” More

Datawatch showcases statistical insights that have grabbed the attention of our data journalists — anywhere and on any topic.At least 67 journalists and media support workers were killed around the world last year, the highest number since 2018 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.The war in Ukraine was a big factor: 15 journalists were killed in the country, the highest number among the nations tracked by the committee. Mexico recorded almost as many killings as Ukraine: 13, the highest number for a single year in the Latin American nation, highlighting the dangers involved in reporting on topics such as corruption and gang violence.In Haiti, which recorded the third largest number of killings last year, journalists covering gang violence and civil unrest after the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse in 2021 “have faced an alarming upsurge in violent attacks”, the committee said.

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Between 2000 and 2021, a total of 1,689 journalists and media support workers were killed globally. The largest number of killings — 282 — were in Iraq. Syria, the Philippines and Mexico also recorded many deaths.Shotaro TaniOur other charts of the week . . . 

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The global art market last year returned to pre-pandemic price levels and some of the biggest increases were recorded by contemporary artworks created by women, according to research by Artsy, an online marketplace for art.The median price for an existing work by a female artist increased 663 per cent, from $48,000 for art sold between 2019 and 2021 to $738,000 in 2022. Work by male artists experienced a median price increase of 332 per cent from $17,000 to $323,000.Anna Weyant’s “Falling Women” sold for $1.6mn, up from its previous sale price of $37,800 in 2021. The largest price increase was logged by Rachel Jones’ “Splice Structure (7)” which sold for $1.2mn, up 6,157 per cent from its previous sale price of $19,000 in 2021.Justine Williams

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The number of fatalities per 100mn miles travelled in the US was 1.46 in 2020, down from 1.58 two decades ago. Although this is significantly less than it has been throughout the past century, fatalities were up year on year to their highest level since 2007. In 1923, the first year in the data set collated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the rate was more than 21. However, the opposite is true in low-income countries according to separate data from the World Bank. The mortality caused by road traffic injuries per 100,000 people has increased over the past decade from 27 to 28.Dan Clark

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Almost one in five teenagers in the US say they use YouTube “almost constantly” and three-quarters use it daily according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. TikTok is also popular with just under half saying they use it at least several times a day.A much smaller share use Facebook and more than two-thirds of teens said they never used it. This is a shift from 2015 when Facebook was the most used; at the time, 71 per cent said they used the platform on a regular basis.Dan ClarkThe number of people living in extreme poverty rose sharply in 2020, according to World Bank projections — the first increase since 1998. Globally, people in extreme poverty — defined as an income below $2.15 a day in 2017 prices — rose 11 per cent to 719mn, the Bank estimated. The rise was due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as disruption to economic activity slowed growth around the globe. Before that, the number of people living in extreme poverty had fallen from 1.86bn in 1998 to 648mn in 2019. Until the pandemic struck, the long decline had been forecast to continue. Yet despite this, the world was not on course to achieve the World Bank’s goal of a global poverty rate of 3 per cent by 2030. The effect of the pandemic, as well as food price inflation due to the war in Ukraine, mean the extreme poverty rate will be 6.8 per cent by 2030, equivalent to 574mn people, the bank forecasts.Oliver HawkinsWelcome to Datawatch — regular readers of the print edition of the Financial Times might recognise it from its weekday home on the front page. Do you have thoughts on any of the charts featured this week — or any other data that has caught your eye in the past seven days? Let us know in the commentsKeep up to date with the latest visual and data journalism from the Financial Times:Data Points. The weekly column from the FT’s chief data reporter John Burn-MurdochClimate Graphic of the Week is published every week on our Climate Capital hub page.Sign up to The Climate Graphic: Explained newsletter, free for FT subscribers. Sent out every Sunday, a behind the scenes look at the most topical climate data of the week from our specialist climate reporting and data visualisation team.Follow the Financial Times on Instagram for charts and visuals from key storiesFollow FT Data on Twitter for news graphics and data-driven stories from across the Financial Times More