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    Bharat Ramamurti, a Senior Biden Aide Who Helped Shape Economic Agenda, Is Leaving

    Bharat Ramamurti supported the president’s competition agenda and pushed the administration to do more for student borrowers and salaried workersBharat Ramamurti, the last original senior member of President Biden’s National Economic Council, will leave the White House at the end of the month. His departure closes a chapter in Mr. Biden’s tenure that included a flurry of economic legislation directing large sums of federal money toward infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and other initiatives.Mr. Ramamurti, an N.E.C. deputy, has been a key player in Mr. Biden’s efforts to boost the economy through both legislation and executive action. That included Mr. Biden’s attempts to increase corporate competition — an initiative outlined in an executive order in 2021 — and his plan to forgive a wide swath of student loans, which the Supreme Court struck down.Mr. Ramamurti was a candidate to lead the N.E.C. when its first director under Mr. Biden, Brian Deese, stepped down in February. The position instead went to a former top Federal Reserve official, Lael Brainard.In an interview, Ms. Brainard praised Mr. Ramamurti for “outstanding judgment, collegiality, strategic sense, policy chops and communications.”Before joining Mr. Biden’s transition team after the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Ramamurti was a policy aide to Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and the first member of the Congressional Oversight Commission charged with tracking some of the $2 trillion of economic stimulus approved by President Donald J. Trump amid the Covid-19 pandemic.Many observers expected Mr. Ramamurti to help link Mr. Biden’s economic team with Ms. Warren and other progressive Democrats in Congress on issues like student debt relief, where Mr. Biden’s plans called for less expansive action than the more liberal wing of his party had urged.Mr. Deese recalled that Mr. Ramamurti, in developing the ill-fated student debt proposal, was influential and pragmatic in expanding on Mr. Biden’s original promise of $10,000 in loan relief for lower-income and middle-class borrowers.Mr. Ramamurti was among those pushing for more expanded relief that could help Black students and other students of color with particularly large debt levels. He suggested several different ways to expand forgiveness in a targeted manner, at the request of Mr. Deese and Susan Rice, who was then the head of Mr. Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. The team eventually settled on a plan that offered an additional $10,000 in relief for students who had been eligible for federal Pell Grants, which benefit lower-income families.“In all of our work on college affordability, he was very conscious of racial equity and distributional impacts,” said Jared Bernstein, the chairman of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. In the student debt debate, he said, Mr. Ramamurti “brought a level of both policy expertise and emotion — which is a nice way of saying ‘pissed off’ — to those meetings.”Some of Mr. Ramamurti’s influence on policy was more durable — if less visible. Mr. Bernstein said he had successfully pushed other administration officials to be more aggressive in setting a Labor Department rule that expands the number of salaried workers who automatically qualify for time-and-a-half overtime pay after working 40 hours in a week.He coordinated the administration’s efforts to broker an agreement in early 2022 between the nation’s telecom giants and leading airlines over the deployment of 5G wireless towers near airports, which could have caused crippling disruptions in air travel.He also helped lead much of Mr. Biden’s competition agenda, including his efforts to crack down on so-called junk fees charged by banks, airlines and online ticketing agencies. That effort spanned cabinet agencies and several parts of the West Wing, and colleagues repeatedly praised Mr. Ramamurti’s coordination skills.It was a “major undertaking that could not have happened without Bharat’s ability to run good process and communicate so clearly and distill things down for people, including at all levels of the White House,” said Hannah Garden-Monheit, who now leads Mr. Biden’s competition council.Mr. Biden has seen significant turnover from his original economic team. Along with Mr. Deese and Ms. Rice, he lost his first C.E.A. chair, Cecilia Rouse, and several senior deputies across the White House. His first labor secretary, Marty Walsh, stepped down to become the head of the National Hockey League players’ union. More

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    Restaurants Agree to Raise Pay to $20 an Hour in California

    The deal will avoid a ballot fight over a law passed last year that could have resulted in higher pay and other changes opposed by restaurant companies and franchisees.Labor groups and fast-food companies in California have reached an agreement that will pave the way for workers in the industry to receive a minimum wage of $20 per hour.The deal, which will result in changes to Assembly Bill 1228, was announced by the Service Employees International Union on Monday, and will mean an increase to the minimum wage for California fast-food workers by April. In exchange, labor groups and their allies in the Legislature will agree to the fast-food industry’s demands to remove a provision from the bill that could have made restaurant companies liable for workplace violations committed by their franchisees.The agreement is contingent on the withdrawal of a referendum proposal by restaurant companies in California that would have challenged the proposed legislation in the 2024 ballot. Businesses, labor groups and others have often used ballot measures in California to block legislation or advance their causes. The proposed legislation would also create a council for overseeing future increases to the minimum wage and enact workplace regulations.Mary Kay Henry, the president of the S.E.I.U., said the measure in California would be a model for other states. “California fast-food workers’ fight for a seat at the table has reshaped what working people believe is possible when they join together,” she said.Sean Kennedy, the executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association, said the deal also benefited restaurants. “This agreement protects local restaurant owners from significant threats that would have made it difficult to continue to operate in California,” he said. “It provides a more predictable and stable future for restaurants, workers and consumers.”Even so, some franchisees said they did not support the deal.“The real issue is who is this impacting the most? It’s the franchisees,” said Keith Miller, a Subway franchisee in Northern California who has become an advocate for the interests of others like him. “There was a lot of back-room dealing that made this happen and no time for anyone to really voice opposition.”Willie Armstrong, the chief of staff for Assemblyman Chris Holden, a Democrat, who is the sponsor of A.B. 1228, said the lawmaker expected the measure to be approved by the Legislature before its session ended on Thursday.Last year, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 257, a measure Mr. Holden also sponsored, which would have created a council with the authority to raise the minimum wage to $22 per hour for restaurant workers. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it on Labor Day last year.But the bill met fierce opposition from business interests and restaurant companies, and a petition received enough signatures to put a measure on the November 2024 ballot to stop the law from going into effect.Other business groups in California have successfully used that tactic to change or reverse legislation they opposed.In 2020, ride-sharing and delivery companies like Uber and Instacart campaigned for and received an exemption from a key provision of Assembly Bill 5, which was signed by Mr. Newsom and would have made it much harder for the companies to classify drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.Those companies collected enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot as Proposition 22, which passed in November 2020. More than $200 million was spent on that measure, making it the costliest ballot initiative in the state at the time.And in February, oil companies received enough signatures for a measure that aims to block legislation banning new drilling projects near homes and schools. That initiative will be on the 2024 ballot.In response to calls from advocacy groups who have said the referendum process unfairly benefits wealthy special-interest groups, and in an effort to demystify a system that many Californians say is confusing, Mr. Newsom signed legislation on Sept. 8 that aims to simplify the referendum process.Kurtis Lee More

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    Europe Rushes to Build Defenses But With Little Consensus on How

    At Saab’s sprawling combat production center in Karlskoga, Sweden, the 84-millimeter shells that can take out a battle tank in a single stroke are carefully assembled by hand. One worker stacked tagliatelle-shaped strips of explosive propellant in a tray. Another attached the translucent sheafs around the rotating fins of a guiding system.Outside the squat building, one of hundreds in the guarded industrial park, construction is underway on another factory. Capacity at this plant — a few minutes’ drive from the home of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and founder of the peace prize — is scheduled to more than double in the next two years.The enlargement is part of a titanic expansion in military spending that every country in Europe has undertaken since Russia invaded Ukraine 18 months ago. Yet the mad dash by more than 30 allied countries to stockpile arms after years of minimal spending has raised concerns that the massive buildup will be disjointed, resulting in waste, supply shortages, unnecessary delays and duplication.“Europeans have not addressed the deeply fragmented and disorganized manner in which they generate their forces,” a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. “Investing more in an uncoordinated manner will only marginally improve a dysfunctional status quo.”The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which sets overall defense strategy, and the European Union have pushed for greater cooperation and integration, creating several new initiatives, including one to coordinate weapons procurement.Manufacturing shells at a Saab facility in Karlskoga, Sweden.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesAnother step in the production at the Karlskoga facility.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesCleaning the main charges on the production line.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesStill, a growing chorus of weapons manufacturers, political figures and military experts warn the efforts fall far short of what is needed. “There needs to be some clarity since we’re not the United States of Europe,” Micael Johansson, the president and chief executive of Saab, explained from the company’s headquarters in Stockholm. “Every country decides themselves what type of capabilities they need.”Each country has its own strategic culture, procurement practices, specifications, approval processes, training and priorities.Alliance members may sometimes use the same aircraft but with different encryption systems and varying instruments. As Ukrainian soldiers have discovered, 155-millimeter shells produced by one manufacturer do not necessarily fit into a howitzer made by another. Ammunition and parts are not always interchangeable, complicating maintenance and causing more frequent breakdowns.The European Union does not “have a defense planning process,” said Mr. Johansson. This summer, he was appointed vice chairman of the board at the Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe, a trade association representing 3,000 companies. “NATO has to rethink how do we create resilience in the whole system,” including supply chains that produce the munitions soldiers use on the battlefield.Saab’s president and chief executive, Micael Johansson, at the company’s headquarters in Stockholm.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesCrucial raw materials like titanium and lithium, as well as sophisticated electronics and semiconductors, are in great demand.And there is a shortage of explosives, particularly powder, which manufacturers across the entire weapons industry depend on. But there has been little detailed discussion about which systems should get priority or how the supply of powder as a whole could be increased.“I suggested it,” Mr. Johansson said, “but it hasn’t happened yet.”The discussions are taking place at a time when the resilience of far-flung supply chains of all kinds are being re-examined. Memories are still fresh of interruptions in the flow of natural gas and grain resulting from the war in Ukraine, not to mention the severe backlogs in the production and delivery of goods and materials caused by the Covid pandemic.The big trend now, said Michael Hoglund, head of business area ground combat at Saab, is to bring supply chains closer to home and to create reliable backups. “We’re no longer buying the cheapest,” he said. “We’re paying a fee to feel safer.”Workers on the production line.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesAssembling a weapon.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesCoordinating supplies is just one element. Getting a jumble of varying weapons systems, practices and technologies to smoothly perform in concert has always been a challenge. NATO has set standards so that the different systems are compatible — what is known as interoperability.The practice, though, can be less than harmonious.The European Defense Agency’s annual review last year found that only 18 percent of defense investments are done together, half of the targeted amount. “The degree of cooperation among our armies is very low,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, said at the time.Sweden is on the cusp of joining NATO, but it has partnered with the military alliance before, and Saab, which produces a range of weapons systems including the Gripen fighter jet, sells to scores of countries around the world.Managers there have seen some of the challenges to coordination up close in large and small ways.A Gripen aircraft at the Saab test center in Linkoping.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesJakob Hogberg, a Gripen test pilot, discussing the aircraft.Loulou d’Aki for The New York Times“The whole system in each army is built up in a special way,” said Gorgen Johansson, who oversees the Karlskoga operation. (He is not related to the chief executive.) Behind him sat an empty green tube used to launch Saab’s shoulder-fired NLAW anti-tank missile. It was signed by Ukraine’s former minister of defense and returned to its maker as a token of appreciation.Some customers, he said, want two launchers packed in a single box, another wants four, or six, because they have bought vehicles and equipment that can hold different numbers of launchers.Mr. Johansson said that until very recently, it was impossible to get the players to even talk about standardizing where labels were positioned or what color they should be.Bigger problems remain. After the Cold War ended, there was an enormous consolidation of defense companies as military spending shrank. Still, like varying brands of cereal, there is a wide range of each major weapons system. Europe has 27 different types of howitzers, 20 types of fighter jets and 26 types of destroyers and frigates, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Company.In building a unified fighting force, Europe must balance competition, which can result in improvements and innovation, with the need to eliminate waste and streamline operations, by ordering or even designing weapons in concert.Underlying the once-in-a-generation military expansion is that the continent is still primarily dependent on the United States for its safety. President Trump’s complaints in 2018 of insufficient spending in Europe and veiled threats to withdraw from NATO profoundly shook the region.A staff member collecting equipment from a tank used as a target at a test center.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesHolding up shrapnel that hit the target after a firing exercise.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesBut the view that Europe has to take more financial responsibility for its own defense is now widespread, urgently ratcheting up the pressure to better unify Europe’s defenses.Coordination, though, faces several built-in hurdles. As the center’s report concluded, integrating European defense “will be a slow laborious process and a generational effort.”Governments are already funneling millions or billions of dollars to defense and, naturally, every one wants to support its own industries and workers.And whatever Europe’s overall defense needs may be, each nation’s first priority is protecting their borders. There is limited trust even among alliance members.“We think we are friends,” said Gorgen Johansson in Karlskoga. But he noted that during the pandemic when there was a shortage of ventilators, Germany, which had a surplus, stopped supplying them to Sweden, Italy and other countries in need.“The talks have started,” Mr. Johansson said of efforts to improve coordination. “Do I think it will go quickly? No.”Working on a plane at Saab’s fighter production facility in Linköping.Loulou d’Aki for The New York TimesWorkers assembling an aircraft in Linköping.Loulou d’Aki for The New York Times More

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    Fears over access to credit hit highest level in more than a decade, New York Fed survey shows

    Respondents indicating that the ability to get credit is harder now than it was a year ago rose to nearly 60%, the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations for August showed.
    The survey showed that the mean expectation of losing one’s job in the next year rose by 2 percentage points to 13.8%, the highest since April 2021.

    Choochart Choochaikupt | Istock | Getty Images

    American consumers are worried about access to credit amid persistently higher interest rates and tighter standards at banks, according to a New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday.
    Respondents indicating that the ability to get loans, credit cards and mortgages is harder now than it was a year ago rose to nearly 60%, the highest level in a data series that goes back to June 2013. The results were part of the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations for August.

    Fears of credit access have been rising steadily since early 2022, around the same time that the Fed began raising interest rates. Since March of last year, the central bank has hiked its key borrowing rate 11 times totaling 5.25 percentage points as it seeks to tame inflation.
    While the Fed worries over higher prices, the inflation outlook was mixed.
    Expectations for inflation one year and five years out rose just 0.1 percentage point on the month, taking them respectively to 3.6% and 3%. The three-year outlook nudged down 0.1 point to 2.8%. The Fed targets inflation at 2%.
    However, the outlook was mostly different on commodity inflation.
    The survey showed that respondents’ expectations for gas prices rose 0.4 percentage point to 4.9%, 0.8 point for medical care to 9.2%, 0.1 point for food to 5.3%, and 0.2 point apiece for college education and rent, to 8.2% and 9.2%, respectively.
    Worries also are rising about employment: The survey showed that the mean expectation of losing one’s job in the next year rose by 2 percentage points to 13.8%, the highest since April 2021. That comes with an unemployment rate of just 3.8%, or 0.1 percentage point above its year-ago level. More

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    Automakers and U.A.W. Remain Far Apart as Contract Deadline Nears

    The United Auto Workers has said it is prepared to strike at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis if a deal is not reached before current contracts end on Thursday.The United Auto Workers union and the three established U.S. automakers remain far apart on wages and other issues with less than a week to go before contracts covering 150,000 union workers expire.So far, the companies — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler — have offered to raise pay by 14 percent to 16 percent over four years. Their offers include lump sum payments to help ease the impact of inflation, and policy changes that would lift the pay of recent hires and temporary workers, who typically earn about a third less than veteran union members.But the union’s combative new president, Shawn Fain, has dismissed the offers as “insulting,” noting that the three manufacturers have been making near-record profits for almost a decade, and that pay packages of top executives have increased substantially. He has been seeking pay increases of about 40 percent and repeatedly warned that workers were ready to leave assembly lines when the current collective bargaining agreements with the automakers expire on Thursday.Mr. Fain has said the union is willing to strike at all three automakers simultaneously, a step it has never taken before. An across-the-board stoppage would deal a big blow to the economies of Michigan and other states.“We aren’t going to stand by and allow them to drag out the negotiations like they’ve done in the past,” Mr. Fain said Friday in a video on Facebook. “If we hit 11:59 on Thursday without a deal at any of the Big Three automakers, there will be a strike — at all three if need be.”A Summer of StrikesSee how a wave of labor activity in the United States this summer compares with decades past.The talks are taking place during a sweeping shift from combustion engine cars and trucks to electric vehicles, which require fewer parts and less labor to produce. U.A.W. leaders and members are increasingly worried that the transition will eliminate jobs and, over time, reduce wages and benefits.The automakers are also worried about the transition. G.M., Ford and Stellantis are spending tens of billions of dollars to build new factories and scour the world for battery raw materials like lithium. Company executives have argued that offering the U.A.W. members big raises could leave them at a significant cost disadvantage to Tesla, which dominates the U.S. electric car market and employs nonunion workers.The auto industry is the largest U.S. manufacturing sector, and accounts for about 3 percent of the nation’s economic output. The three Detroit automakers operate dozens of plants that make about 500,000 cars a month.The Anderson Economic Group, a research firm in East Lansing, Mich., estimated that a 10-day strike against the three companies would reduce the companies’ profits by $1 billion and wages by $900 million for U.A.W. members and workers employed by other companies that depend on the automakers.Aside from wages, the union and the companies remain far apart on several other matters, including measures to preserve jobs and discourage the closing of U.S. plants, increases in retirement benefits and cost-of-living adjustments, which were once standard in U.A.W. contracts.The union has made some progress in its discussions with Ford. In response to Mr. Fain’s demands, the automaker offered to increase wages by about 15 percent, through a 9 percent increase in base wages and one-time lump sum payments of $11,000 per worker. While Mr. Fain rejected that, the two sides have continued bargaining. He was scheduled to update U.A.W. members later on Friday about Ford’s latest offer.Talks with G.M. and Stellantis have proceeded more slowly. The U.A.W. filed a complaint last week with the National Labor Relations Board, saying the two manufacturers had refused to offer proposals in response to the union’s demands and were not negotiating in good faith.G.M. responded by offering a combination of base wage increases and lump sum payments that would lift worker pay by about 16 percent. “We have already said we want to reward and recognize our employees with wage increases,” Gerald Johnson, G.M.’s executive vice president for global manufacturing, said this week.Agreeing to all of the union’s demands would threaten G.M.’s ability to compete, he added.Mr. Fain said the wage offer didn’t go far enough to make up for the impact of inflation on workers’ take-home pay over the last decade, and was too little in light of the profits G.M. was making. The automaker reported profits of $7 billion in the first half of the year. Mr. Fain also complained that G.M. had rejected the union’s proposals on job security, retiree pay, cost-of-living adjustments and other issues.Stellantis submitted its proposal to the union Friday morning, offering a 14.5 percent rise in base wages with no lump-sum payments.“This is a responsible and strong offer that positions us to continue providing good jobs to our employees,” Mark Stewart, the chief operating officer of Stellantis’s North American operations, said in a statement. “With this offer, we are seeking a timely resolution to our discussions.”Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam and was created by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot in 2021, earned 11 billion euros ($12 billion) in the first half of the year, a record. More

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    Taylor Swift is single-handedly giving a boost to hotel industry revenue

    Taylor Swift’s high-flying stadium tour has helped boost hotel revenue in the cities she’s visited, according to Bernstein.
    Revenue generated per room was higher in cities in the months Swift visited them compared with the national average and the same months a year ago.
    Hotels around the globe could feel a similar lift with her international tour, the firm said.

    Taylor Swift performs in Cincinnati, Ohio, June 30, 2023, during her Eras tour.
    Taylor Hill/tas23 | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

    Taylor Swift is providing a gold rush for the hotel industry.
    The “Cruel Summer” singer’s attention-grabbing “Eras” tour has pushed up revenue for hotels in cities across the U.S., according to data from investment firm Bernstein. And the so-called Swift-lift could be seen around the globe as the tour goes international.

    “This has been a notable boost to the hotel industry,” Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke wrote in a note to clients Friday, using the term “Swiftonomics.”
    Average revenue generated per room was more than 4 percentage points above the national benchmark in U.S. states during the months of Swift’s visits, Bernstein data shows. These states saw revenue per room up about 7% on average in the months of her stops compared with the same periods a year prior. (Revenue generated per room is calculated by dividing the total hotel revenue by number of available rooms, regardless of whether they were occupied.)
    Much of the revenue jump can be attributed to higher prices for rooms, Clarke said, but the number of bookings also improved in many cases. In the most extreme example, Nashville saw hotel occupancy rise more than 30% and room rates increase more than 50% on concert nights. Revenue per room more than doubled the weekend Swift was in town.
    Swift’s aid also buoyed U.S. hotels amid a boom among Americans in international tourism, Clarke noted. But he said other countries will have their chance at feeling the Swift-induced bump given the tour has an international leg.
    Meanwhile, Bernstein found a relatively muted — though still notable — impact on hotels from Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” tour.

    Bernstein’s analysis follows months of anecdotal reports about the economic boost from the tours, as well as other popular culture events this summer. The concerts have caught the attention of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, which specifically noted high hotel bookings during Swift’s stop in Philadelphia.
    “Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic,” Fed officials wrote in the July beige book, which summarizes economic activity. That’s “in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city.”
    Indeed, Clarke said occupancy was 11% higher in Philadelphia during the nights of Swift’s tour, while revenue per available room was up 59% on average.
    Swift announced last week that a filmed version of her tour would premiere in theaters in October. More

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    Bill Gates, Marie Kondo and World Bank Head Will Speak at Times Climate Event

    Sign up to watch the livestream and connect with online attendees about solutions to the climate crisis on Thursday, Sept. 21.Climate change is an issue that stretches across borders, touching every facet of our lives. Addressing it likewise requires shifts in almost every industry and institution. On Sept. 21, The New York Times will bring together newsmakers, including innovators, activists, scientists and policymakers, for an all-day event examining the actions needed to confront climate change.The livestream is available for Times subscribers.Sessions will include:Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank GroupAl Gore, former vice president of the United StatesBill Gates, founder of Breakthrough Energy and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationEbony Twilley Martin, executive director of Greenpeace USAEleni Myrivili, global chief heat officer to U.N. Habitat and the Arsht-Rock Resilience CenterMarie Kondo, tidying expert and founder of KonMari MediaMichael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg PhilanthropiesRobin Wall Kimmerer, scientist and authorTimes journalists, including the managing correspondent for the Climate Forward newsletter, David Gelles, and domestic correspondent, Somini Sengupta, and national food correspondent, Kim Severson, will drive the conversation.Signing up for the livestream will also give you an opportunity to connect with other online attendees on the messaging platform Slack. Each day will feature a different topic and guests, along with prompts from Times editorial staff.Details about the Slack channel and event schedule will be shared after registering. More

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    Huawei Phone Is Latest Shot Fired in the U.S.-China Tech War

    The release of a homegrown Chinese smartphone during a visit by the Biden official in charge of regulating such technology shows the U.S.-China tech conflict is alive and well.In the midst of the U.S. commerce secretary’s good will tour to China last week, Huawei, the telecom giant that faces stiff U.S. trade restrictions, unveiled a smartphone that illustrated just how hard it has been for the United States to clamp down on China’s tech prowess.The new phone is powered by a chip that appears to be the most advanced version of China’s homegrown technology to date — a kind of achievement that the United States has been trying to prevent China from reaching.The timing of its release may not have been a coincidence. The Commerce Department has been leading U.S. efforts to curb Beijing’s ability to gain access to advanced chips, and the commerce secretary, Gina M. Raimondo, spent much of her trip defending the U.S. crackdown to Chinese officials, who pressed her to water down some of the rules.Ms. Raimondo’s powerful role — as well as China’s antipathy toward the U.S. curbs — was reflected online, where more than a dozen vendors cropped up on Chinese e-commerce sites to sell phone cases for the new model with Ms. Raimondo’s face imprinted on the back. Doctored images showed Ms. Raimondo holding the new phone, next to phrases like “I am Raimondo, this time I endorse Huawei” and “Huawei mobile phone ambassador Raimondo.”Chinese media have referred to the phone as a sign of the country’s technological independence, but U.S. analysts said the achievement still most likely hinged on the use of American technology and machinery, which would have been in violation of U.S. trade restrictions.Beginning in the Trump administration and continuing under President Biden, the United States has steadily ramped up its restrictions on selling advanced chips and the machinery needed to make them to China, and to Huawei in particular, in an attempt to shut down China’s mastery of technologies that could aid its military.For the past several years, those restrictions have curtailed Huawei’s ability to produce 5G phones. But Huawei appears to have found a way around those restrictions to make an advanced phone, at least in limited quantities. Though detailed information about the phone is limited, Huawei’s jade-green Mate 60 Pro appears to have many of the same basic capabilities as other smartphones on the market.An examination of the phone by TechInsights, a Canadian firm that analyzes the semiconductor industry, concluded that the advanced chip inside was manufactured by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation of China and was operating beyond the technology limits that the United States has been trying to enforce. Douglas Fuller, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School, said SMIC appeared to have used equipment stockpiled before restrictions went into effect, equipment licensed to it for the purpose of producing chips for companies other than Huawei, and spare parts acquired through third-party vendors to cobble together its production.“The official line in China of a heroic breaking of the technology blockade of the American imperialists is incorrect,” Mr. Fuller said. “Instead, the U.S. has allowed SMIC continued significant access to American technology.”Huawei and SMIC did not respond to a request for comment. The Commerce Department also did not respond to a request for comment.Chinese social media commentators and news sites celebrated the smartphone’s release as evidence that U.S. restrictions could not hold China back from developing its own technology.“Regardless of Huawei’s intentions, the launch of the Mate 60 Pro has been imbued by many Chinese netizens with a deeper meaning of ‘rising up under US pressure,’” the state-run Global Times said in an editorial.The phone was released during a week when both American and Chinese officials had issued numerous statements about renewed cooperation and communication. Chinese officials had asked for the United States to roll back its restrictions on chip exports. But Ms. Raimondo — whose email, along with other U.S. officials, was targeted this year by Chinese hackers — told reporters that she had taken a hard line on the technology controls in her meetings, saying the United States was not willing to remove restrictions or compromise on issues of national security.During the trip, Ms. Raimondo and her advisers set up a dialogue to share information about how the United States was enforcing its technology controls. She said the step would lead to better Chinese compliance but was not an invitation to the Chinese to try to water down export controls.Ms. Raimondo also met directly with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, during her visit. The week before, Mr. Li had visited Huawei during a visit to southern China, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, and met with the company founder Ren Zhengfei.Phone cases in China displaying doctored photos of the U.S. commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo.MengyanThe release of the Huawei phone raises questions about whether Ms. Raimondo’s department will continue trying to build good will with Chinese officials — or potentially take a more aggressive stance toward cracking down on China’s access to American technology.The Biden administration is preparing to issue a final version of the technology restrictions it first put out last October, and the revised rules could come within weeks.Huawei’s development of the phone does not necessarily demonstrate a huge leap forward for Chinese technological prowess — or the total failure of U.S. export controls, analysts said.Because Chinese firms no longer have access to the most cutting-edge machines for making semiconductors, they have developed novel workarounds that use older machinery to create more powerful chips. But these methods are both relatively time-consuming for manufacturers, and produce a higher proportion of faulty chips, limiting the scale of production.“This does not mean China can manufacture advanced semiconductors at scale,” said Paul Triolo, an associate partner for China and technology policy at Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy. “But it shows what incentives U.S. controls have created for Chinese firms to collaborate and attempt new ways to innovate with their existing capabilities.”“It is the first major salvo in what will be a decade or more struggle for China’s semiconductor industry to essentially reinvent parts of the global semiconductor supply chain without U.S. technology included,” he added.Nazak Nikakhtar, a partner at Wiley Rein and a former Commerce Department official, said Huawei’s progress was “a result of longstanding U.S. policy” — specifically U.S. licenses that allow companies to continue selling advanced technologies to firms that the Commerce Department placed on a so-called entity list, like Huawei and SMIC.From Jan. 3 to March 31, 2022, the Commerce Department approved licenses for the sale of $23 billion of tech products to companies on the entity list, according to information released in February by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.“Where gaps exist in licensing policies, exports will get funneled through the gaps,” Ms. Nikakhtar said. “The U.S. government needs to close the gaps if its intention is to limit exports of critical technologies to China.”In a statement on Wednesday, Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who heads a congressional committee on China, called for ending all U.S. technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC. U.S. chip makers such as Qualcomm and Intel have received exporting licenses.Claire Fu More