Evelyn Reynolds

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    U.S. wraps up fiscal year with a budget deficit near $1.7 trillion, up 23%

    The federal government wound up its fiscal year in September.
    Wrapping up a year in which some thought the shortfall could exceed $2 trillion, the U.S. ended up with an imbalance of $1.695 trillion, up about $320 billion.
    The budget report comes the same week Biden asked Congress to allocate $105 billion for “national security priorities.”

    Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, participates in a global infrastructure and investment forum in New York on Sept. 21, 2023.
    Pool | Via Reuters

    The federal government wound up its fiscal year in September with a deficit just shy of $1.7 trillion, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced Friday.
    Wrapping up a year in which some thought the shortfall could exceed $2 trillion, the U.S. ended up with an imbalance of $1.695 trillion, up about $320 billion, or 23.2%, from fiscal 2022.

    The huge deficit came as revenue fell $457 billion from a year ago and expenses decreased by just $137 billion. Outlays for the year totaled $6.134 trillion.
    The budget shortfall adds to the staggering U.S. debt total, which stood at $33.6 trillion earlier this week. The deficit level was eased somewhat when the Supreme Court voided President Joe Biden’s effort to erase billions in student loan debt.
    That number has swelled by more than $10 trillion since the first quarter of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and pushed the government into a spending spree aimed at making up for the damage done to the economy.
    Of the government outlays last year, some $659 billion went for net interest on the accumulated debt, up from $475 billion in fiscal 2022.
    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the administration is “committed to addressing challenges to our long-term fiscal outlook” and pointed out several measures she said are going to bring down the deficit over the next decade.

    “The U.S. economy remains resilient despite global headwinds,” Yellen said. “Previous expectations that the U.S. would fall into recession over the course of 2023 have not borne out.”
    Financing the debt has gotten significantly more expensive over the past year as the Federal Reserve has jacked up benchmark interest rates in an effort to combat inflation. The central bank has raised its key lending rate by 5.25 percentage points, and Treasury yields have responded in kind. The 10-year Treasury note has been flirting with a 5% yield. It was less than 1% through 2020.
    The budget report comes the same week Biden asked Congress to allocate $105 billion for “national security priorities,” including $61 billion for Ukraine, along with humanitarian assistance in Israel and Gaza.Don’t miss these CNBC PRO stories: More

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    The Multimillion-Dollar Machines at the Center of the U.S.-China Rivalry

    The United States is taking unusual action to clamp down on sales of chip-making machinery to China, even as Chinese firms are racing to stockpile the equipment.They are smooth white boxes, roughly the size of large cargo vans, and they are now at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese technology conflict.As the United States tries to slow China’s progress toward technological advances that could help its military, the complex lithography machines that print intricate circuitry on computer chips have become a key choke point.The machines are central to China’s efforts to develop its own chip-making industry, but China does not yet have the technology to make them, at least in their most advanced forms. This week, U.S. officials took steps to curb China’s progress toward that goal by barring companies globally from sending additional types of chip-making machines to China, unless they obtain a special license from the U.S. government.The move could be a significant blow to China’s chip-manufacturing ambitions. It is also an unusual flexing of American regulatory power. American officials took the position that they could regulate equipment manufactured outside the United States if it contains even just one American-made part.That decision gives U.S. officials new sway over companies in the Netherlands and Japan, where some of the most advanced chip machinery is made. In particular, U.S. rules will now stop shipments of some machines that use deep ultraviolet, or DUV, technology made mainly by the Dutch firm ASML, which dominates the lithography market.Vera Kranenburg, a China researcher at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank, said that while ASML had made clear that it would follow the regulations, the company was already chafing under earlier regulations that barred it from exporting a more sophisticated lithography machine to China.“They’re of course not happy about the export controls,” she said.After being thrust into geopolitics yet again, ASML has been careful in its response, saying in a statement this week that it complies with all laws and regulations in the countries where it operates. Peter Wennink, the chief executive, said the company would not be able to ship certain tools to “just a handful” of Chinese chip factories. But “it is still sales that we had in 2023 that we’ll not have in 2024,” he added.In a statement, the Dutch foreign trade minister, Liesje Schreinemacher, said that the Netherlands shared U.S. security concerns and continuously exchanges information with the United States, but that “ultimately, every country decides for itself what export restrictions to impose.” She pointed to more permissive restrictions announced by the Dutch government in June.A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Commerce declined to comment.ASML’s technology has enabled leaps in global computing power. The increasing precision of its machines — which have tens of thousands of components and cost as much as hundreds of millions of dollars each — has allowed circuitry on chips to get progressively smaller, letting companies pack more computing power into a tiny piece of silicon.The technology has also given the United States and its allies an important source of leverage over China, as governments compete to turn technological gains into military advantages. Although Beijing is pouring money into the semiconductor industry, Chinese chip-making equipment remains many years behind the prowess of ASML and other key machine suppliers, including Applied Materials and Lam Research in the United States and Tokyo Electron and Canon in Japan.But U.S. efforts to weaponize this technological advantage against China appear to be straining alliances. In Europe, government officials increasingly agree with the United States that China poses a geopolitical and economic threat. But they are still wary of undercutting their own companies by blocking them from China, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant tech markets.Dutch technology, in particular, has been the focus of a multiyear pressure campaign from the United States. In 2019, the Trump administration persuaded the Dutch to block shipments to China of ASML’s most state-of-the-art machine, which uses extreme ultraviolet technology.After months of diplomatic pressure from the Biden administration, the governments of the Netherlands and Japan agreed in January that they would also independently curb sales of some deep ultraviolet lithography machines and other types of advanced chip-making equipment to China.The United States and its allies have viewed sales of the deep ultraviolet lithography machines as less of a national security risk. The chips they produce are considerably less advanced than those built with the most cutting-edge machines, which now power the latest smartphones, supercomputers and A.I. models.But that position was tested this summer when a Chinese firm used ASML’s deep ultraviolet lithography technology along with other advanced machines to blow past a technological barrier that U.S. officials had hoped to keep China from reaching.In August, the Chinese telecom giant Huawei unexpectedly released a new smartphone containing a Chinese-made chip with transistor dimensions rated at seven nanometers, just a couple of technology generations behind the latest chips made in Taiwan. Analysts have concluded that China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation made the chip with the use of the Dutch deep ultraviolet lithography machinery.Gregory C. Allen, a technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said the new export control rules had been in the works long before the Huawei announcement. But, he said, the development “helped leaders throughout the U.S. government understand that there was no more time to waste and that updated controls were urgently needed.”Mr. Allen said the controls would not necessarily break China’s most advanced chip-makers immediately, since they had already stockpiled a lot of advanced machinery. But it would “dramatically restrict” their ability to manufacture the most advanced kinds of semiconductors, like seven-nanometer chips, he said.For now, ASML is still doing brisk business with China. In its earnings report this week, ASML said sales to China had surged in the third quarter to account for 46 percent of the company’s global total, far above historical levels.Analysts at TD Cowen estimated that ASML’s China sales would reach 5.5 billion euros (about $5.8 billion) this year, more than double the total last year. Next year, the new export controls could cut 10 to 15 percent off the company’s China revenues, they projected.Roger Dassen, ASML’s chief financial officer, said in the earnings call that most of the orders that ASML was completing this year had been placed in 2022 or even the year before, and were largely for machines that would make slightly older types of chips.All the shipments were “very much within the limits of export regulation,” Mr. Dassen said.For the machines that face new U.S. restrictions, the Dutch company will now be barred from supplying replacement parts and helping to service those systems. That will mean Chinese companies are likely to have manufacturing problems at some point.These hugely expensive machines rely on regular software and maintenance support to continue churning out chips, said Joanne Chiao, a semiconductor analyst at TrendForce, a market research firm.ASML is not the only equipment supplier caught up in the latest restrictions. Other kinds of advanced machines that are essential to produce the most advanced chips, like those from the U.S. companies Applied Materials and Lam Research, are detailed in the latest restrictions.Lam, in a conference call on Wednesday, said revenue from China jumped 48 percent in its first fiscal quarter as companies stocked up on machines to make both mature chips and advanced products. It had already estimated that restrictions on sales to China would hold down revenue this year by $2 billion; executives added that the expanded rules issued this week wouldn’t materially change that estimate.An Applied Materials spokesman said the company was still reviewing the new rules to gauge their potential impact.John Liu More

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    Fed’s Raphael Bostic doesn’t foresee rate cuts coming until ‘late 2024’

    Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic on Friday said he doesn’t envision interest rate cuts happening until well into 2024.
    “We’re going to have to be cautious, we’re going to have to be patient, but we’re going to have to be resolute,” he told CNBC.

    Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic on Friday said he doesn’t envision interest rate cuts happening until well into 2024.
    Though he cited progress on inflation and a slowing economy, the central bank official told CNBC that there’s still a lot of work to be done before the Fed reaches its inflation goal of 2% annually.

    “I would say late 2024,” Bostic replied when asked for a time frame when the first decrease could come.
    The Fed has raised its key borrowing rate 11 times since March 2022 for a total of 5.25 percentage points. While Bostic said he doesn’t see policymakers easing anytime soon, he has been explicit in insisting that rates have hit a “sufficiently restrictive” level where they don’t need to be raised anymore.
    However, he cautioned that the road back to acceptable levels of inflation could be a long one.
    “There’s still a lot of momentum in the economy. My outlook says that inflation is going to come down but it’s not going to like fall off a cliff,” Bostic said during the “Squawk Box” interview. “It’ll be sort of a progression that’s going to take some time. And so we’re going to have to be cautious, we’re going to have to be patient, but we’re going to have to be resolute.”
    Bostic is not a voting member this year of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, but will get a vote in 2024.

    He said he does not expect “that we will be cutting rates before the middle of next year, at the earliest.”
    “I really do try to keep people focused on what inflation is, still at 3.7%. Our target is 2,” he said. “They’re not the same, and we have to get a lot closer to the 2% before we’re going to consider … any kind of relaxation of our posture.”
    Following a slew of Fed speakers in recent days, including Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday, market pricing has removed any chance of a rate increase when the FOMC next meets Oct. 31-Nov. 1. The probability for an increase in December is just 25%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, which gauges pricing in the fed funds futures market.
    Markets are anticipating two or three quarter-point cuts by the end of 2024.
    One reason the Fed could consider easing rates would be a deceleration or recession in economic growth. While Bostic said he does not anticipate a recession ahead, he does see conditions changing. Business contacts have been telling him they are preparing for a slowdown, he said.
    “We are not going to see recession, that is not in my outlook,” he said. “We are going to see a slowdown, and inflation will get down to 2%.”
    Bostic spoke following some significant move in financial markets, particularly in Treasury yields. After breaching the psychologically important 5% level earlier in the session, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield eased somewhat, most recently trading around 4.97%.
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    Powell Says Strong Economic Data ‘Could Warrant’ Higher Rates

    The Federal Reserve may need to do more if growth remains hot or if the labor market stops cooling, Jerome H. Powell said in a speech.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, reiterated the central bank’s commitment to moving forward “carefully” with further rate moves in a speech on Thursday. But he also said that the central bank might need to raise interest rates more if economic data continued to come in hot.Mr. Powell tried to paint a balanced picture of the challenge facing the Fed in remarks before the Economic Club of New York. He emphasized that the Fed is trying to weigh two goals against one another: It wants to wrestle inflation fully under control, but it also wants to avoid doing too much and unnecessarily hurting the economy.Yet this is a complicated moment for the central bank as the economy behaves in surprising ways. Officials have rapidly raised interest rates to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent over the past 19 months. Policymakers are now debating whether they need to raise rates one more time in 2023.The higher borrowing costs are supposed to weigh down economic activity — slowing home buying, business expansions and demand of all sorts — in order to cool inflation. But so far, growth has been unexpectedly resilient. Consumers are spending. Companies are hiring. And while wage gains are moderating, overall growth has been robust enough to make some economists question whether the economy is slowing sufficiently to drive inflation back to the Fed’s 2 percent goal.“We are attentive to recent data showing the resilience of economic growth and demand for labor,” Mr. Powell acknowledged on Thursday. “Additional evidence of persistently above-trend growth, or that tightness in the labor market is no longer easing, could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy.”Mr. Powell called recent growth data a “surprise,” and said that it had come as consumer demand held up much more strongly than had been expected.“It may just be that rates haven’t been high enough for long enough,” he said, later adding that “the evidence is not that policy is too tight right now.”Economists interpreted his remarks to mean that while the Fed is unlikely to raise interest rates at its upcoming meeting, which concludes on Nov. 1, it was leaving the door open to a potential rate increase after that. The Fed’s final meeting of the year concludes on Dec. 13.“It didn’t sound like he was anxious to raise rates again in November,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan, explaining that he thinks the Fed will depend on data as it decides what to do in December.“He definitely didn’t close the door to further rate hikes,” Mr. Feroli said. “But he didn’t signal anything was imminent, either.”Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist for Nationwide Mutual, said the comments were “balanced, because there is so much uncertainty.”The Fed chair had reasons to keep his options open. While growth has been strong in recent data, the economy could be poised for a more marked slowdown.The Fed has already raised short-term interest rates a lot, and those moves “may” still be trickling out to slow down the economy, Mr. Powell noted. And importantly, long-term interest rates in markets have jumped higher over the past two months, making it much more expensive to borrow to buy a house or a car.Those tougher financial conditions could affect growth, Mr. Powell said.“Financial conditions have tightened significantly in recent months, and longer-term bond yields have been an important driving factor in this tightening,” he said.Mr. Powell pointed to several possible reasons behind the recent increase in long-term rates: Higher growth, high deficits, the Fed’s decision to shrink its own security holdings and technical market factors could all be contributing factors.“There are many candidate ideas, and many people feeling their priors have been confirmed,” Mr. Powell said.He later added that the “bottom line” was the rise in market rates was “something that we’ll be looking at,” and “at the margin, it could” reduce the impetus for the Fed to raise interest rates further.The war between Israel and Gaza — and the accompanying geopolitical tensions — also adds to uncertainty about the global outlook. It remains too early to know how it will affect the economy, though it could undermine confidence among businesses and consumers.“Geopolitical tensions are highly elevated and pose important risks to global economic activity,” Mr. Powell said.Stocks were choppy as Mr. Powell was speaking, suggesting that investors were struggling to understand what his remarks meant for the immediate outlook on interest rates. Higher interest rates tend to be bad news for stock values.The S&P 500 ended almost 1 percent lower for the day. The move came alongside a further rise in crucial market interest rates, with the 10-year Treasury yield rising within a whisker of 5 percent, a threshold it hasn’t broken through since 2007.The Fed chair reiterated the Fed’s commitment to bringing inflation under control even at a complicated moment. Consumer price increases have come down substantially since the summer of 2022, when they peaked around 9 percent. But they remained at 3.7 percent as of last month, still well above the roughly 2 percent that prevailed before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.“A range of uncertainties, both old ones and new ones, complicate our task of balancing the risk of tightening monetary policy too much against the risk of tightening too little,” Mr. Powell said. “Given the uncertainties and risks, and given how far we have come, the committee is proceeding carefully.”Joe Rennison contributed reporting. More

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    American Household Wealth Jumped in the Pandemic

    Pandemic stimulus, a strong job market and climbing stock and home prices boosted net worth at a record pace, Federal Reserve data showed.American families saw the largest jump in their wealth on record between 2019 and 2022, according to Federal Reserve data released on Wednesday, as rising stock indexes, climbing home prices and repeated rounds of government stimulus left people’s finances healthier.Median net worth climbed 37 percent over those three years after adjusting for inflation, the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances showed — the biggest jump in records stretching back to 1989. At the same time, median family income increased 3 percent between 2018 and 2021 after subtracting out price increases.While income gains were most pronounced for the affluent, the data showed clearly that Americans made nearly across-the-board financial progress in the three years that include the pandemic. Savings rose. Credit card balances fell. Retirement accounts swelled.Other data, from both government and private-sector sources, hinted at those gains. But the Fed report, which is released every three years, is considered the gold standard in data about the financial circumstances of households. It offers the most comprehensive snapshot of everything from savings to stock ownership across racial, wealth and age groups.This is the first time the Fed report has been released since the onset of the coronavirus, and it offers a sense of how families fared during a tumultuous economic period. People lost jobs in mass numbers in early 2020, and the government tried to soften the blow with multiple relief packages.More recently, the job market has been booming, with very low unemployment and rapid wage growth that has helped to bolster incomes. At the same time, rapid inflation has eroded some of the gains by making everyday life more expensive.Without adjusting for inflation, median income would have risen 20 percent, for instance, based on the report released Wednesday.The job market has been booming, and at the same time, rapid inflation has eroded some of the gains by making everyday life more expensive.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe financial progress, particularly for poorer families, is especially remarkable when compared with the aftermath of the last recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009. It took years for household wealth to rebound fully after that crisis, and for some families it never did.Income climbed across all groups between 2019 and 2022, though gains were biggest toward the top — meaning that income inequality widened.That made for a big difference between median income — the number at the midpoint among all households — and the average, which tallies all earnings and divides them by the number of households. Average income climbed 15 percent, one of the largest three-year pops on record.Wealth inequality was more complicated. Because the rich hold such a large share of financial assets in America, wealth gaps tend to grow in absolute terms when stocks, bonds and houses are climbing in price. True to that, wealth climbed much more in dollar terms for rich families.But in the three years covered by the survey, growth in wealth was actually the largest in percentage terms for poorer families. People in the bottom quarter had a net worth of $3,500 in 2022, up from $400 in 2019. Among families in the top 10 percent, median net worth climbed to $3.79 million, up from $3.01 million three years earlier.Because of the way the data is measured, it is difficult to break out just how much pandemic-related payments would have mattered to the figures. To the extent that families saved one-time checks and other help they received during the pandemic, those would have been included in the measures of net worth.Families were also still receiving some pandemic payments when the income measures were collected in 2021, which means that things like enhanced unemployment insurance probably factored into the data.Some Americans appear to have taken advantage of their improved financial positions to invest in stocks for the first time: 21 percent of families owned stocks directly in 2022, up from 15 percent in 2019, the largest change on record. Many of those new stock owners appear to have been relatively small investors, likely reflecting at least in part Americans’ enthusiasm for “meme stocks” like GameStop during the pandemic.The Fed’s newly released figures show that significant gaps in income and wealth persist across racial groups, although Black and Hispanic families saw the largest percentage gains in net worth during the pandemic period.Black families’ median net worth climbed 60 percent, to $44,900. That was a bigger jump than the 31 percent increase for white families, which lifted their household wealth to $285,000. Hispanic families saw a 47 percent increase in net worth.At the same time, racial and ethnic minorities saw slower income gains in the period through 2021. Black and Hispanic households saw small declines in earnings after adjusting for inflation, while white families saw a modest increase.For the first time, the report included data on Asian families, who had the highest median net worth of any racial or ethnic group.While the data in the report is slightly dated, it underscores what a strong position American families were in as they exited the pandemic. Solid net worth and growing incomes have helped people to continue spending into 2023, which has helped to keep the economy growing at a solid pace even when the Fed has been lifting interest rates to cool it down.That resilience has stoked hope that the Fed might be able to pull off a “soft landing,” one in which it slows the economy gently without crushing consumers so much that it plunges America into a recession. More

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    For Bill Ford, ‘Every Negotiation Is a Roller Coaster’

    As a 25-year-old junior executive at the car company that bears his last name, William Clay Ford Jr. had a bracing introduction to labor negotiations when a union official demanded that he stand up and vouch that he was made of the same stuff as his great-grandfather Henry Ford.Mr. Ford, now the company’s executive chair, harked back to the moment in an interview this week about how he and his company are navigating one of their most difficult labor negotiations in decades.The United Automobile Workers union has shut down three Ford plants, including its largest, and other plants and distribution centers at General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler. The union’s new president, Shawn Fain, has said he is prepared to call workers out at more plants if his demands for big raises, better benefits and job security are not met. He has referred to the companies as “the enemy,” and has said the union is fighting “corporate greed” and standing up to the “billionaire class.”In a speech this week, Mr. Ford said the strikes were helping nonunion automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda. Mr. Fain responded that workers at those companies were future U.A.W. members.In an interview after his speech, Mr. Ford said he had been counseling his executives not to let Mr. Fain’s words get to them and focus on getting a deal done. Mr. Ford also recalled his first difficult conversation with a union official.In 1982, Mr. Ford said, his father invited him to sit in the room for talks with the U.A.W. As a newcomer, he was not allotted a seat at a table where about 50 union negotiators sat on one side and an equal number of Ford executives on the other.Sitting against the wall, he was approached by an older union representative. “You, stand up,” the man said. “What are you made of? I knew your great-grandfather and your grandfather. I knew what they were made of. What the hell are you made of?”Mr. Ford said he had replied sheepishly that he had never known his great-grandfather and grandfather but that he shared their values. Similar confrontations followed daily — “I lived in terror of going to work,” Mr. Ford said.Then about a week later, the union officials invited him to a local bar. “Come with us,” Mr. Ford said they had told him. “You passed the test.”This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.Have you been involved in any talks that are comparable to the current negotiations?No, but every negotiation is different, and every leader is different. What I keep saying to our executives is: ‘Don’t take this personally. A lot of it is theater. The most important thing is get the deal done. The rhetoric doesn’t matter.’ Every negotiation is a roller coaster. Some are not pleasant, and some sting. Don’t overreact. And when it’s all over, we are still one team again, and have to go forward.Are you going to be on the same team at the end of these talks?I believe we will. I know many on their negotiating team personally, and some of them, I play hockey with them and consider them very close friends.You’ve said the real competition is not U.A.W. vs. Ford but the U.A.W. and Ford against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the Chinese automakers. Do you think the union’s leadership agrees with that?I hope so, because if they don’t, it will be catastrophic. They can have disagreements with us and bargain hard, but we are not the enemy. I will never consider our employees the enemy. I think the employees know who the real competition is, and they will come together with us when this is over. We made a conscious decision to add jobs here in America when our competitors were moving production to Mexico.Would the offer you have on the table now put Ford at a significant disadvantage to other automakers?It certainly won’t be an advantage. We could live with the deal we have proposed, but just barely. If you go beyond that, we are going to have to start making hard decisions in terms of investments and future products.Shawn Fain has said the workers have fallen behind while the automakers and executives like Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, and Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, have prospered. How do you respond?Everyone’s going to have their own viewpoint on executive compensation, and I totally get that. But I also know what the market is for top talent. You have entertainers and athletes who are making more than Jim Farley and Mary Barra. But that’s what the market is, and the company with the best talent wins, period.There were some years in the lean years when I took no pay, and I would do it again if I had to.You have three plants shut down by the strike. How is that affecting your operations?It’s messy, and it’s going to become messier. The most immediate effects will be on the suppliers. The supply base is very fragile. It barely survived Covid, and is not all the way back, so a prolonged strike will start collapsing the supply base, and then making anything in this country will be difficult.Manufacturing is a matter of national security, and we saw that during Covid. And I hope with all my heart we never get into another war, but if we did, this industry would be critical to defending our nation, as it was in World War I and World War II. Other industries can make small numbers of things. The auto companies can turn that into tens of thousands of things.“I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.” — William Clay Ford Jr.What’s your outlook on the U.S. economy?I think it’s fragile. Inflation is taking its toll. The consumer is still spending, but we’re watching it very carefully. On the other hand, there’s still strong employment, and we are seeing our sales hold up. There are conflicting signals, for sure.Let’s talk about electric vehicles. About 18 months ago, you launched the F-150 Lightning pickup. It seemed like electric vehicle sales were going to take off. But now Ford is slowing production of that truck. What happened?E.V. sales are still up 50 percent this year, so sales are growing very fast. But we’ve also seen a politicization of E.V.s. Blue states say E.V.s are great and we need to adopt them as soon as possible for climate reasons. Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it. I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.The other is prices. Electric vehicles are expensive. We know prices will come down, and as that happens, we will have a bigger ramp-up of E.V.s. Keep this in mind: The most valuable company that our industry has ever seen is Tesla, and it’s growing. That’s a very instructive point when people say E.V.s are not desired.Are you concerned about some of Donald Trump’s comments? He just came into Michigan and said that the transition to electric vehicles is going to result in almost all auto production moving to China.I don’t want to personalize this, because, frankly, we have to pick a path forward and our lead times are longer than political lead times. So we can’t overreact to one bit of rhetoric or another. We have to deal with the most likely scenario, and how we can create the most value for our company, so we are pushing ahead with E.V.s because we do believe they have great application for a lot of people. And once people drive E.V.s, they will see that it’s a great experience.Electric vehicles are expensive. Did Tesla’s price cuts have a big effect on your business?That’s what we have seen with every new technology that has been adapted. You come down the cost curve pretty quickly as batteries get better.With our first-generation E.V.s, the Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, they were done with a lot of internal combustion engineering in them. The next generation, which will start coming quite quickly, was developed with a clean sheet of paper. When you do that you can really start taking cost out, and then you can start pricing them accordingly.Tesla has been leading the price cuts, because they can with their scale. That’s something we are actually counting on in the future. And we will have products that compete and make money in that world. More

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    Remittances to Mexico near a record but ‘super peso’ crimps spending power

    Mexico is the second-largest recipient of remittances from abroad after India.
    The soaring peso this year has forced many in the United States to increase the amounts they are sending back to Mexico.
    Remittances’ buying power this year in Mexico is on track to fall for the first time in a decade.

    A board displays the exchange rates for Mexican Peso and U.S. Dollar in Mexico City, Mexico March 13, 2023.
    Raquel Cunha | Reuters

    People sending money back to Mexico this year have faced a new challenge: the “super peso.”
    The Mexican currency reached the strongest levels against the U.S. dollar in almost eight years over the summer.

    The skyrocketing peso has eroded the purchasing power of households in Mexico who rely on remittances from abroad. The currency’s rise means every dollar sent home yielded fewer pesos than before.

    Lea este artículo en español aquí.

    Coupled with inflation at home, the buying power of remittances is set to fall this year over last for the first time in a decade, according to Gabriela Siller Pagaza, chief economist at Banco Base.
    “What is truly important for recipients of remittances is not the amount they receive in dollars but the how much they can buy with that in Mexico,” Siller Pagaza said.
    In the 12 months ended in August, people sent more than $62 billion in remittances to Mexico, according to Banco Base. Over the same period, the peso advanced more than 15.6% and annual inflation came in at 4.64%.
    Siller Pagaza estimates that the spending power of remittances in Mexico will decline 9.9% this year, the first drop in a decade and the largest percentage fall in 13 years.

    The peso is down from its highs of less than 17 pesos per U.S. dollar in July, recently at around 18 pesos per dollar this week. At the start of the year, each U.S. dollar was worth 19.46 pesos.

    The currency’s surge has drawn more from the pockets of those sending U.S dollars to Mexico. People looking to send money to the country from the U.S. have found themselves forced to increase the amount to try to keep up.
    For example, at the peso’s peak in July, a person who wanted to get 1,000 pesos to someone in Mexico would have to send about $60. A year earlier, it took around $49.
    Eric Vasquez, a 44-year-old busboy at a New York City diner, is one of those people who has had to increase his contributions for his wife and three children who live in Mexico City.
    “Before I used to send $100,” Vasquez said outside of a money transfer business in the Corona section of Queens, New York. “Now I have to send $130, $140 to cover expenses.”
    Those money transfers include fees for school for his children, food and transportation.
    Vasquez said he has lately been sending closer to $200 a week back home: “The more my children grow, the more money I have to send.”

    Arrows pointing outwards

    Buying power of remittances in Mexico
    Banco de Mexico, Grupo Financiero Base

    Melchor Magdaleno, 33, said for the last three to four months, he’s been sending $120 a month back to his wife and five children in Tlapa de Comonfort, in the southern Guerrero state of Mexico. He used to send $100 every two weeks, he said, but this year increased the amount due to the exchange rate and higher costs in Mexico.
    Mexico’s inflation has eased in recent months but is still up 4.45% on the year, according to the latest read.
    Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank who focuses on remittances, noted that money transfers into Mexico have soared in recent years, driven in large part by the strong U.S. economy.

    Arrows pointing outwards

    Remittances to Mexico

    But the peso’s appreciation, tied in part to near-shoring of manufacturing from Asia to Mexico and economic strength in both the U.S. and Mexico, could hurt Mexican households that use remittances for household budgets.
    Ratha said some families could cut back on certain spending to handle fixed costs like rent or mortgages.
    “People will continue to send money but the fact that economies are slowing, inflation is up, their purchasing power is eroding,” said Ratha. “The welfare effects of the situation will be quite significant.”
    Mexico is the second-largest recipient of remittances worldwide after India. The transfers make up around 4% of the country’s gross domestic product.
    While remittances are likely to reach a record again this year, the rate of growth will likely slow, economists said, as senders and recipients grapple with inflation, squeezing household budgets.
    And the impacts could be felt in both the U.S. and Mexico.
    “Mexicans in the U.S. and their relatives back home are both facing higher inflation, and wage growth has not kept up in both places,” Ratha said. “Consumption has to adjust.” More

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    in Economy

    Retail sales rose 0.7% in September, much stronger than estimate

    Consumers showed surprising strength in September, boosting retail sales well above expectations despite high interest rates and worries over a weakening economy.
    Retail sales rose 0.7% on the month, well above the 0.3% Dow Jones estimate, according to the advance report the Commerce Department released Tuesday. Excluding autos, sales were up 0.6%, also well ahead of the forecast for just 0.2%.

    The numbers are not adjusted for inflation, so they indicate that consumers more than kept up with price increases. The consumer price index, released last week, showed headline inflation up 0.4% in September.
    On a year-over-basis, sales rose 3.8%, compared to the 3.7% increase for CPI.
    Treasury yields moved higher following the report while stock market futures added to losses.
    Sales gains were broad-based on the month, with the biggest increase coming at miscellaneous store retailers, which saw an increase of 3%. Online sales rose 1.1% while motor vehicle parts and dealers saw a 1% increase and food services and drinking places grew by 0.9%, good for a yearly increase of 9.2%, which led all categories.
    There were only a few categories that showed a decline; electronics and appliances stores as well as clothing retailers both saw decreases of 0.8% on the month.

    The retail report is considered an important factor for the Federal Reserve as officials contemplate the future of monetary policy. While markets largely expect the Fed is done raising rates for this cycle, an unexpectedly strong consumer complicates the equation.
    Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks Thursday in New York, an event that markets will be watching closely for some indication about where he thinks rates are headed. The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee next meets Oct. 31-Nov. 1. Market pricing assumes a near-certainty that the FOMC will not hike then, but it could choose to do so at future meetings if economic data remains strong.
    Consumers face growing headwinds going into the end of the year.
    Employment growth is expected to slow though it, too, has defied expectations. Credit card balances are rising, and the resumption of student loan payments also is expected to impact spending.
    Still, third-quarter economic growth is likely to be strong, with the Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker showing a potential annualized gain of 5.1%.
    This is breaking news. Please check back here for updates. More