Aurelia Butler

It said five officials, including the chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, Zheng Shanjie, would attend the news conference.The topic will be: “systematically implementing a package of incremental policies to solidly promote economic growth, structural optimisation and sustained momentum of development”. The statement gave no further details.Tuesday is the first working day in China after a run of holidays over the past week, including National Day.Before the break, China’s central bank lowered interest rates and injected liquidity into the banking system while regulators eased some property curbs in a package of stimulus measures that sent stocks soaring. More

Indian companies are moving to fill the gap left by the exclusion of Chinese exports from the fast-growing US solar industry, as Washington steps up its crackdown on manufacturers with ties to Beijing.Sumant Sinha, chief executive of ReNew, among India’s largest renewables companies, told the Financial Times that there “will be demand” for solar components from India as Washington reduces reliance on Chinese supplies for its energy transition.“​​There is a need for some diversification, and India can actually become that plus one to China as far as the green tech supply chain is concerned,” Sinha said.He added that ReNew was considering exporting to the US from its solar factories in India pending US tariff rules. “[India] will fill the gap.”Washington is weighing additional tariffs on solar imports to protect the domestic industry after a flood of Chinese-produced panels drove global prices to record lows. Last week, the Department of Commerce released preliminary estimates of duties as high as 293 per cent for solar cell exporters in four countries in south-east Asia, where the US sources the bulk of its solar supplies, often from Chinese companies.The looming decision has driven developers and manufacturers to look beyond the region to markets not subject to tariffs. Wood Mackenzie expects cell manufacturing in countries outside of the main hubs of China and south-east Asia to more than double over the next couple of years, with India making up 40 per cent of new capacity.“There’s no modular manufacturer in India who is not thinking of exporting,” said Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, chief executive of the National Solar Energy Federation of India, a lobbying group that counts big developers such as Adani Group, Tata Power and ReNew among its members.US imports of Indian panels and cells surpassed $1.8bn last year, up from about $250mn the year before, according to BloombergNEF. Indian manufacturers are also investing in US factories following President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which included lucrative subsidies for domestic producers, with Waaree and VSK Energy announcing manufacturing commitments worth at least $1bn each last year.“The main advantage is that they’re not Chinese,” said Martin Pochtaruk, chief executive of Heliene, which operates a solar panel factory in Minnesota. The company used to source its cells from Vietnam and Malaysia, but now purchases primarily from India to insulate itself from new tariffs. In July, Heliene announced a $150mn joint venture with Premier Energies, India’s second-largest solar cell manufacturer, to build a US factory.The Biden administration has raised protections against solar imports with ties to Beijing, doubling the duty rate for Chinese cells, applying anti-circumvention tariffs on Chinese companies in south-east Asia, and banning goods linked to forced labour in Xinjiang. The White House also maintained Trump-era tariffs that applied to solar products from most countries.Despite the efforts, US imports of panels sit at record highs. Several manufacturers, including VSK Energy, have delayed or scrapped their US manufacturing plans despite the availability of federal tax credits.“Tariffs haven’t worked,” said Pol Lezcano, a senior analyst at BloombergNEF.“Manufacturers don’t come to the US. They don’t really find the right business and supply chain environment that they need to scale up manufacturing.”Rapidly declining prices for imported panels have helped transform solar into the leading source of new power on the US grid. The Energy Information Administration expects solar installations this year to grow 42 per cent, reaching 127 gigawatts. In April, the largest US solar manufacturers, First Solar and Qcells, and others filed a petition for tariffs on cells to be applied to four countries in south-east Asia in order to rescue a struggling domestic industry.Luigi Resta, president of rPlus Energies, a developer, warned that the tariffs would slow down the pace of deployment and raise prices for consumers. The company has started to source from Indonesia, another emerging solar manufacturing market, to safeguard it against trade impacts. “The nature of the industry is that we have to be very flexible,” Resta said. The company now sources about 1GW of panels between Indonesia and Vietnam.Industry executives and analysts expressed concern that plans to build production lines in tariff-exempt markets may lead the US government to play a game of “Whac-A-Mole” with tariffs and fine those countries in the future, risking billions in capital expenditure.“If too many people go to one place, it just ruins it for everybody,” said Jim Wood, chief executive of SEG Solar. Last week the company broke ground on a $500mn factory near Jakarta, which will help supply cells to its panel factory in Texas.Climate CapitalWhere climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here More

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Concerns about housing and crime are dominating San Francisco’s mayoral race, an election that gives voters a chance to choose which path they trust to pull their city out of a slump.San Francisco has come to represent the challenges faced by many large U.S. cities that have struggled with an uneven economic recovery and rising cost of living since the COVID-19 pandemic. To critics of its leadership, the city has become caught in what they call a doom loop, characterized by street homelessness and open-air drug markets. Downtown recovery has been slow, with many empty storefronts and low street traffic.Among major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the highest office vacancy rate at about 32%, according to March 2024 data from real estate company JLL.Against this backdrop, the famously liberal city has begun a political shift, including ballot measures passed this year that put in place new police surveillance technology and mandatory drug screening for recipients of city public assistance.Observers widely expect the upcoming mayoral race to reflect the growing popularity of the moderate-centrist wing of the local Democratic party, which saw gains in March elections.“What voters care about right now are not currently the kind of issues that progressives tend to do well on,” Jason McDaniel, political science professor at San Francisco State University told Reuters.Starting with early voting on Oct. 7, voters will choose from 13 candidates in an instant-runoff, ranked-choice voting system. Incumbent Mayor London Breed, who has been leading the city since a 2018 special election, has four major opponents, all Democrats. Breed has won the endorsement of the San Francisco Democrats.An August poll by the San Francisco Chronicle showed Breed leading, followed by moderate Democrats, former interim Mayor Mark Farrell and philanthropist and heir to the Levi’s fortune Daniel Lurie. Two progressive-left candidates, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safai, trailed. The poll showed the top issues among voters were crime and public safety, ahead of housing affordability and homelessness.’STARTING TO FEEL BETTER’A delay in the election may have helped Breed.A ballot measure passed in 2022 moved local elections in San Francisco to even-numbered years, in part in hopes that linking them to presidential elections will increase turnout.That meant rather than running for reelection last November, Breed had an extra 12 months to improve perceptions of her leadership.“Pushing the election back a year, people are starting to feel better about the city”, said McDaniel. Crime rates have fallen 32% year-over-year, according to the San Francisco Police Department. The drop is partly due to increased police resources and better deployed surveillance technologies, Breed said.“We have the systems. It’s working the way it should,” Breed said in an interview.Farrell says far more needs to be done. He promised to hire a new police chief in his first 100 days and said in a debate that he would declare a “fentanyl state of emergency” to access more state and federal resources to fight the scourge of the deadly drug.Breed’s critics also have taken aim at the slow pace of permitting and building new housing under her administration.The city is far behind the state mandated housing goals of adding 82,000 new units between 2023 and 2031. Only around 500 new units had received permits by July, according to the U.S. Housing Department, triggering a state law to streamline the approval process.“Many of our policies have made it very difficult to build, more expensive, and easier for people to oppose housing opportunities when they come to neighborhoods that are traditionally not used to building more housing,” Breed acknowledged. She said she wants to focus on underutilized areas for new construction while maintaining the fabric of the city. San Francisco is famous for its colorful and quaint Victorian homes.In a town where the median household income of the more than 800,000 residents is highest among major U.S. cities, homelessness remains intractable. The latest study showed around 8,000 people in the city are homeless, a figure some advocates say undercounts the population.Breed’s administration has been employing homeless tent sweeps since a June Supreme Court ruling found banning encampments constitutional. Breed has said the sweeps are part of a variety of solutions, including increasing shelter capacity and busing homeless people to family or networks outside the city.Peskin, one of the progressive-left candidates, said people are simply being moved from one neighborhood to another.Lurie, who founded a nonprofit aimed at reducing poverty, said Breed hasn’t done enough to keep people off the streets.Lurie has so far outspent all other candidates, contributing more than $6 million from his own wealth. Contributors to a committee supporting his run include Jan Koum, founder of messaging app WhatsApp, and other tech executives and venture capitalists.Homelessness is “against the law,” Lurie said, “and it’s not compassionate, and it’s not humane to allow people to stay on our streets.” More