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    U.S. Blacklists 6 Chinese Entities Involved in Spy Balloon Programs

    The action to cut off five Chinese companies and a research institute from American parts and technologies is part of the Biden administration’s response to the balloon it shot down last week.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration clamped down on Friday on sales of some U.S. technology to several Chinese aviation and technology companies, as part of its response to a Chinese spy balloon that traversed U.S. airspace last week.The Commerce Department added five Chinese companies and one research institute to its so-called entity list, which will prevent companies from selling them American parts and technologies without a special license. Officials said the six entities had supported Chinese military programs related to airships and balloons used for intelligence and reconnaissance.Alan Estevez, the under secretary of commerce for industry and security, said the action was a direct response to the Chinese government’s use of high-altitude balloons for surveillance.“Today’s action makes clear that entities that seek to harm U.S. national security and sovereignty will be cut off from accessing U.S. technologies,” he said.The restrictions mark the Biden administration’s first economic retaliation over the balloon, which the United States shot down last Saturday off the coast of South Carolina after it had floated across much of the country. The administration has mostly registered its anger through diplomatic channels, including the cancellation of a trip by the secretary of state to Beijing.Republicans have condemned the administration for not responding more forcefully, including by not shooting the balloon down before it moved out to sea. The White House said it was following the advice of the Pentagon, which feared the debris could hurt people on the ground.The Chinese government has tried to downplay the incident, arguing that the balloon was a civilian device for monitoring weather.The entities that the United States targeted Friday were Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology Company, Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology Company, Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Company, Guangzhou Tian-Hai-Xiang Aviation Technology Company, Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Company and China Electronics Technology Group Corporation 48th Research Institute.The Commerce Department did not specify whether the companies and the institute had played a direct role in developing or operating the balloon that flew across the United States. But the Biden administration said earlier this week that it would consider taking action against any entities that had aided the balloon’s flight.The government has not yet publicized information about parties involved in the balloon’s manufacture or voyage. But it has said the machine was part of a global surveillance fleet directed by China’s military and was capable of collecting electronic communications.The United States has steadily ramped up its use of the entity list over the last few years, using it to cut off the flow of advanced technologies to rivals like China and Russia. In October, it added a crop of Chinese companies involved in advanced semiconductors to the list, arguing that such technologies were aiding the Chinese military.On Friday, the U.S. government shot down another unidentified object near Alaska. It was not immediately clear which country or company was responsible for it. More

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    What Recession? Some Economists See Chances of a Growth Rebound.

    The Federal Reserve has raised rates rapidly. But instead of cracking, some data point to an economy that’s thriving.Many economists and investors had a clear narrative coming into 2023: The Federal Reserve had spent months pushing borrowing costs rapidly higher in a bid to tame inflation, and those moves were expected to slow growth and the labor market so much that the economy would be at risk of plunging into a downturn.But the recession calls are now getting a rethink.Employers added more than half a million jobs in January, the housing market shows signs of stabilizing or even picking back up, and many Wall Street economists have marked down the odds of a downturn this year. After months of asking whether the Fed could pull off a soft landing in which the economy slows but does not plummet into a bruising recession, analysts are raising the possibility that it will not land at all — that growth will simply hold up.Not every data point looks sunny: Manufacturing remains glum, consumer spending has been cracking, and some analysts still think a mild recession this year remains likely. But there have been enough surprises pointing to continued momentum that Fed officials themselves seem to see a better chance that the nation will avoid a painful downturn. That resilience could even be a problem.While a gentle landing would be a welcome development, economists are beginning to ask whether growth and the job market will run too warm for inflation to slow as much as central bankers are hoping — eventually forcing the Fed to respond more aggressively.“They should be worried about how strong the U.S. labor market is,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, the global chairman of research at Barclays. “So far, the U.S. economy has proved unexpectedly resilient.”The Fed has lifted rates from near zero early last year to above 4.5 percent as of last week — the fastest series of policy adjustment in decades. Those higher borrowing costs have translated into pricier car loans and mortgages, and for a while they seemed to be clearly slowing the economy.But as the central bank has shifted toward a more moderate pace of rate moves — it slowed the speed of its increases first in December, then again this month — markets have relaxed. Rates on mortgages, for example, have come down slightly.That’s showing up in the economy. Mortgage applications have been bouncing around, but in general they have ticked back up. New home sales are now hovering around the same level as before the pandemic. Used car prices had been declining, but they have begun to rise at a wholesale level — which some economists see as a response to some returning demand for those vehicles.And while retail sales and other measures of household spending have been pulling back, according to recent data, several nascent forces could help to shore up consumer demand into 2023 — with potentially big implications for the Fed’s battle against inflation.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said some of the drag on inflation from goods could be “transitory,” meaning that it will fade away.Lexey Swall for The New York TimesSocial Security recipients just received a sizable cost-of-living adjustment in their first check of 2023, putting more money in the pockets of older Americans. More than a dozen states, including Virginia, California, New York and Massachusetts, sent tax rebates or stimulus checks late last year. And while Americans have been working their way through the excess savings that were amassed during the early pandemic, many still have some cushion left.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    President Biden Is Not Backing Off His Big-Government Agenda

    In his first appearance before a Republican House, the president renewed calls for large new economic programs and offered no concessions on federal spending.WASHINGTON — There were no economic pivots in President Biden’s first State of the Union address to a Republican House. He did not pare back his push to raise taxes on high earners or to spend big on new government programs. He offered no olive branches to conservatives who have accused him of running the country into crisis with government borrowing.It was a shift from Mr. Biden’s two most recent Democratic predecessors in the White House, who tacked toward a more conciliatory and limited-government approach to economic policy after losing at least one chamber of Congress. But on Tuesday night, Mr. Biden barreled ahead. The president renewed his calls for trillions of dollars of new federal programs, including for child care and community college, over the sometimes raucous objections of Republicans who have centered their fight with Mr. Biden on the issue of spending and debt. He did not name a single federal spending program he was willing to cut. He said he would work to reduce budget deficits, but by raising taxes on high earners and corporations, a position anathema to Republicans.The speech was not a blueprint to pass any of those proposals, which have little chance of becoming law during his first term.Instead, it was a defiant opening bid for a high-stakes clash over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. It was a no-quarter recommitment to a campaign theme aimed squarely at blue-collar voters in 2024 swing states, centered on expanding government in pursuit of what Mr. Biden calls “middle-out” economic policy.Aides say the choice to defy Republicans’ calls for Mr. Biden to change course on economic policy was deliberate, reflecting both the president’s deeply held convictions on policy and his belief that he has found a winning political message.It was also a bet that the economy, which has so far been a drag on Mr. Biden’s popularity, will ultimately prove to be a tailwind in his widely expected re-election campaign. Rapid price gains are beginning to ease, and jobs are plentiful, with the unemployment rate at its lowest point since 1969.Biden’s State of the Union AddressChallenging the G.O.P.: In the first State of the Union address of a new era of divided government, President Biden delivered a plea to Republicans for unity but vowed not to back off his economic agenda.State of Uncertainty: Mr. Biden used his speech to portray the United States as a country in recovery. But what he did not emphasize was that America also faces a lot of uncertainty in 2023.Foreign Policy: Mr. Biden spends his days confronting Russia and China. So it was especially striking that in his address, he chose to spend relatively little time on America’s global role.A Tense Exchange: Before the speech, Senator Mitt Romney admonished Representative George Santos, a fellow Republican, telling him he “shouldn’t have been there.”To that end, Mr. Biden spent much of the speech proclaiming that the American economy is faring better on his watch than his critics — or even many of his voters — concede. He dived into details about laws he has signed to invest in water pipes, semiconductor factories, electric vehicles and more, while promising those plans would bring high-paying jobs to workers without college degrees. He promised consumer-friendly crackdowns on credit card fees, social media companies and more. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden was headed to Wisconsin to promote his economic legislation, while his cabinet secretaries fanned out across the country to do the same.“We’re building an economy where no one’s left behind,” Mr. Biden said in his speech. “Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back, because choices we made in the last several years. You know, this is, in my view, a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives at home.”“Here’s my message to all of you out there,” he added later. “I have your back.”Mr. Biden’s approach underscored how he has not regarded the Republican House takeover as a rebuke of his policies..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.It defied the example set by Mr. Biden’s Democratic predecessors after they lost House control in their first midterms. President Bill Clinton promised a new era of smaller government in 1995. President Barack Obama vowed in 2011 “to take responsibility for our deficit” and proposed what he called “painful cuts” to domestic spending.Mr. Biden offered no apology for his policies. He cast himself as more fiscally responsible than his immediate predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, in claiming credit for a $1.7 trillion decline in the federal budget deficit last year. That improvement was largely the product of expiring pandemic aid programs, but Mr. Biden suggested he would take steps to keep winnowing the shortfall between what the government spent and what it earned through taxes and other revenue. He said his next budget, which will be released on March 9, would further reduce deficits by $2 trillion over a decade.In a sharp contrast with Republicans, he called for raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy as a way to show a commitment to deficit reduction in spite of his spending plans. His proposals included an expanded tax on stock buybacks and what would effectively be a sort of wealth tax on billionaires.He baited Republicans on a pair of politically cherished programs, Social Security and Medicare, drawing sustained jeers when he said some of his opponents wanted to sunset the programs. While hundreds of Republican lawmakers have signed on to plans to reduce spending on the safety net by raising retirement ages and other reductions in future benefits, Mr. Biden’s “sunset” accusation rests on the possible effects of a plan to reauthorize spending programs every five years, advanced by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, which has gained little traction among party leaders.Republicans called the speech a departure from Mr. Biden’s previous calls for unity and a disconnect on major economic issues.“While the president is busy taking a premature and undeserved victory lap, lauding legislation that Democrats passed on a party-line basis, families in West Virginia and America are struggling at every turn because many of the policies and priorities of this administration have made the American dream harder to attain,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said in a release after the address.Mr. Biden’s allies cheered. The president “delivered a bold blueprint for an economy that, at long last, puts working people first,” Liz Shuler, the president of the powerful A.F.L.-C.I.O. labor organization, said in a news release on Tuesday evening.Mr. Biden fashions himself a congressional deal maker, and on Tuesday, he outlined a handful of smaller-scale initiatives on other issues, like curbing the flow of fentanyl and regulating big tech, that might plausibly win bipartisan support in the new Congress. But the speech was not a recipe for economic compromise.The president re-upped calls for big new federal investments in child care and assistance for the elderly, community college, prekindergarten and health insurance. But he offered no plausible road to finishing the job, as he put it, on that long list of proposals, which he was unable to include in the wide array of economic legislation he signed in his first two years because of opposition from centrist Democrats in the Senate.What he did outline was a defiant negotiating posture, as he and Republican lawmakers battle over raising the $31.4 trillion federal borrowing limit, which the United States hit last month. That cap, which limits the government’s ability to borrow funds to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized, must be suspended or lifted later this year in order for the United States to continue paying its bills and avoid a financial crisis.Republicans are refusing to raise the limit unless Mr. Biden agrees to deep spending cuts. Mr. Biden has said he will refuse to bargain over the borrowing cap and on Tuesday night reminded Republicans that they had agreed to effectively increase the debt limit three times when Mr. Trump was president. Despite what both sides called a productive meeting at the White House last week between the president and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, Mr. Biden did not waver in that position on Tuesday.“We’re not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt,” Mr. Biden said.Mr. McCarthy, seated behind him, did not look pleased. More

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    As Biden Prepares to Tout Economy, Fed Chair Powell Takes a Cautious Tone

    The White House has embraced signs that the economy is strong. For the Fed, that strength could prolong its fight against inflation.WASHINGTON — Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, underscored that the central bank has more work to do when it comes to slowing the economy and that officials remain determined to wrestle rapid inflation under control, even if that means pushing rates higher than expected.Mr. Powell, speaking on Tuesday in a question-and-answer session at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., called a recent slowdown in price increases “the very early stages of disinflation.” He added that the process of getting inflation back to normal was likely to be bumpy.“There has been an expectation that it will go away quickly and painlessly — and I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed; that’s not the base case,” Mr. Powell said. “The base case for me is that it will take some time, and we’ll have to do more rate increases, and then we’ll have to look around and see whether we’ve done enough.”The Fed chair’s comments came hours before President Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address, which offered a contrasting tone.Democrats are embracing a historically strong economy with super-low unemployment and rapid wage growth, cheering a report last week that showed employers added more than half a million jobs in January. But Fed officials have met the news with more caution. The central bank is supposed to foster both full employment and stable inflation, and policymakers have been concerned that the strength of today’s job market could make it harder for them to return wage and price increases to historically normal levels.Mr. Powell said that the Fed had not expected the jobs report to be so strong, and that the robustness reinforced why the process of lowering inflation “takes a significant period of time.”While he said it was good that the disinflation so far had not come at the expense of the labor market, he also underscored that further interest rate moves would be appropriate and that borrowing costs would need to remain high for some time. And he embraced how markets have adjusted in the wake of the strong hiring numbers: Investors had previously expected the Fed to stop adjusting policy very soon, but now see rate increases in both March and May.The biggest inflation challenge facing the Fed is in the services sector of the economy, which includes restaurants, travel and health care.Jim Wilson/The New York Times“We anticipate that ongoing rate increases will be appropriate,” Mr. Powell said. He said that in the wake of the jobs report, financial conditions were “more well aligned” with that view than they had been previously.To try to slow the economy and choke off inflation, policymakers raised interest rates from near zero early last year to more than 4.5 percent at their last meeting, the quickest pace of adjustment in decades. Higher borrowing costs weigh on demand by making it more expensive to fund big purchases or business expansions. That in turn tempers hiring and wage growth, with further cools the economy. Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Bed Bath & Beyond’s Stock Offering Is Backed by Hudson Bay Capital

    Hudson Bay Capital has essentially agreed to make sure the troubled retailer will sell roughly $1 billion in shares as it tries to avoid bankruptcy.Bed Bath & Beyond’s plan to use a public stock offering as a way to raise more than $1 billion and avoid bankruptcy will be backed by the investment firm Hudson Bay Capital Management, two people familiar with the situation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the terms of the deal have not been made public.Bed Bath & Beyond disclosed the deal on Monday without naming Hudson Bay. It hopes that raising enough cash will restore the confidence of suppliers, preserve jobs and allow the company to pursue a turnaround plan it announced in August.The retailer said on Tuesday that it had already underwritten the initial $225 million worth of shares it was selling. It plans to sell an additional $800 million over time, assuming “certain conditions are met.” The company did not disclose what those conditions were.Hudson Bay, though, has essentially agreed to buy the stock, assuming Bed Bath & Beyond sells the additional shares.Hudson Bay is a multibillion-dollar fund based in Greenwich, Conn. It often acts as a mergers specialist, either betting passively on whether company deals go through or fall apart or, at other times, pushing for such moves.The firm is likely looking to take advantage of Bed Bath & Beyond’s rising share price, with hopes of selling when it goes even higher. Retail investors helped drive the price up nearly 100 percent on Monday, before Bed Bath & Beyond announced its plan to offer stock. Shares fell nearly 50 percent in trading on Tuesday, to around $3.“This transformative transaction will provide runway to execute our turnaround plan,” Sue Gove, Bed Bath & Beyond’s chief executive, said in a statement. “As we make important strategic and operational changes, we will continue to take disciplined steps to enhance our cost base and improve our financial position.”The Downfall of Bed Bath & BeyondThe home goods retailer, which was founded in New Jersey in 1971, faces an uncertain future amid worsening financial woes.Few Options: After a disappointing holiday season, Bed Bath & Beyond is said to be in discussions to sell pieces of its business and has warned investors of a potential bankruptcy.A Warning Sign: The disclosure that the retailer had defaulted on certain debt payments was the most salient sign of financial strain yet for the company.Turnaround Plan: The company laid out an aggressive plan in August to turn itself around that included store closings, cost cuts and layoffs. But it needs cash to execute its strategy.Selling Stock: Bed Bath & Beyond announced plans for a public offering, saying that it hoped the move would help it raise more than $1 billion and pay off its debts.A spokesperson for Hudson Bay did not respond to request for comment. Bed Bath & Beyond did not respond to a request for additional comment on the transaction. The deal between the hedge fund and the retailer was reported earlier by Bloomberg.Some analysts doubt whether the deal will be enough to help the struggling home goods retailer.“The fundamental story for Bed Bath & Beyond is so broken at this point,” David Silverman, retail analyst at Fitch Ratings, said. “I don’t know that a short-term cash infusion that could buy them a few months, a couple of quarters, is going to change their fate.”The deal with Hudson Bay came together within the past several weeks, the two people familiar with the matter said. Late last month, JPMorgan Chase, which helped give Bed Bath & Beyond a lifeline this summer by expanding its credit line, froze the retailer’s credit accounts after notifying it that it was in breach of the terms of its debt. As Bed Bath & Beyond raced to find cash to pay its debts, tensions built over the amount information it was sharing with its banks and other creditors and how quickly it was relaying it to them, the people said..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.The retailer’s lenders had dealt with a great deal of turbulence over the past few months. In early September, weeks after Bed Bath & Beyond secured rescue financing from JPMorgan and the investment firm Sixth Street, the company’s chief financial officer died in what was ruled a suicide. Industry executives have questioned whether the retailer had the right management in place to weather its challenges.On Monday, Bed Bath & Beyond said Holly Etlin had been hired as the interim chief financial officer. Ms. Etlin has experience with restructurings and company turnarounds.Rising interest rates have also made lenders warier of plowing more money into distressed companies like Bed Bath & Beyond. But equity may prove to be a new alternative.Bed Bath & Beyond’s move echoes what appears to be a new playbook for distressed retailers. Another indebted company favored by meme traders, AMC Entertainment, sold investors preferred shares in August after common shareholders balked at its efforts to issue more stock, which dilutes the value of shares that are already held. Both sets of AMC shares have remained volatile. In 2020, Hertz tried to sell shares after filing for bankruptcy, but the Securities and Exchange Commission squashed those efforts.“For those who are in this situation, for those who are desperate, this will be one instrument that they can use,” said Douglas Chia, the head of Soundboard Governance, a corporate governance consultancy. “Every couple years there’s a new instrument that investment bankers come up with, and it’s creative and it becomes the flavor of the month and everyone starts to use that. This could be the same thing.”The question for Bed Bath & Beyond and the roughly 30,000 people it employed as of last February is whether it will be enough. Even if this financing goes through, the company faces the same challenges that have plagued it the past couple of months. The retailer is contending with low inventory in its stores as vendors hold back on shipping items because of worries about its finances. It also has a less sophisticated e-commerce operation than many of its competitors and a dwindling customer base.The stock offering “by itself doesn’t change the business model or any of those tough decisions that they need to make,” said Patrick Collins, a partner who works on bankruptcies and restructurings at the law firm Farrell Fritz.The deal could give Bed Bath & Beyond only a few more quarters of financial runway, said Seth Basham, a retail analyst at the investment firm Wedbush Capital.The company is ramping up the number of stores it’s closing to more than 400, including Harmon stores. That’s a significant chunk of the 950 stores that it had when the closings began in August.Sales keep sliding as well. Bed Bath & Beyond has said it expects comparable sales in the first quarter to decline 30 to 40 percent from a year earlier, but expects to see quarterly sales improving afterward.It projects that its ability to have goods in stock will return to normal levels by the important back-to-college shopping season.Not everyone is convinced.“It is very difficult to see where they could be able to reverse those trends quickly, particularly given we’re in a somewhat challenging environment for retail goods,” Fitch’s Mr. Silverman said. “You’ve got competitors like Target, Amazon, Walmart and low- and mid-tier department stores that aren’t relinquishing market share.” More

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    U.S. Trade Deficit Surged in 2022

    The gap between what the United States imports and what it exports hit a record as more foreign goods came into the country.WASHINGTON — The overall U.S. trade deficit rose 12.2 percent last year, nearing $1 trillion as Americans purchased large volumes of foreign machinery, medicines, industrial supplies and car parts, according to data released Tuesday by the Commerce Department.The goods and services deficit reached $948.1 billion, its largest total on record, after rising $103 billion from the previous year.The data showed evidence of the U.S. economy’s continuing recovery from the pandemic, which had held down spending on services like travel and entertainment and pushed up purchases of imported goods. Rapid inflation and higher energy prices were responsible for some of the growth, because the trade data is not adjusted for inflation.The numbers also showed signs that global supply chains appear to be reshuffling somewhat, as the U.S. government erects more barriers to trade with China and businesses seek to diversify where they get materials and goods. The Biden administration has identified the nation’s reliance on China for materials like solar panels and electric vehicle batteries as a security risk, and introduced incentives and penalties to try to persuade companies to change supply chains that proved vulnerable to pandemic disruptions.The U.S. trade deficit in goods with Mexico, Canada, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan all grew strongly last year as manufacturers sought new sources of foreign products.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Immigration Rebound Eases Shortage of Workers, Up to a Point

    While the Biden administration has accelerated processing after Trump-era restrictions and a pandemic slowdown, visa backlogs remain large.The flow of immigrants and refugees into the United States has ramped up over the past year, helping to replenish the American labor force after a decline that began with restrictions imposed under the Trump administration and that was compounded by the pandemic.The Biden administration has been accelerating visa processing and broadly using humanitarian parole programs for migrants fleeing war and economic instability. Those efforts have driven a rebound in the foreign-born population — welcome news for the Federal Reserve, which has been concerned that a persistent shortage of workers could send wages higher and lead inflation to become entrenched.Friday’s employment report for January, showing a blockbuster gain of 517,000 jobs, confirms that the economy continues to demand more labor. Moderating wage growth, however, suggests that enough workers are arriving to keep costs in check.“When the unemployment rate goes down, you would normally expect wage inflation to go up, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “So there must be something else moving in the labor force, and there is a very likely explanation here that immigrants are coming in and taking jobs.”But despite the resurgence in the foreign-born labor force — about four-fifths of it are people legally allowed to work in the United States, by one calculation — there are bottlenecks.Legal immigration remains below pre-Trump levels. Hundreds of thousands of people await interviews with U.S. consular officials to obtain immigrant visas. Millions of asylum cases are pending, and getting work authorization for those already here can take years.The uneasy state of immigration policy, a contentious political issue for years, is felt every day by Al Flores, the general counsel at a group of Tex-Mex restaurants in the Houston area and a restaurant owner himself.When the restaurants reduced staffing during the pandemic, many of their workers went to places that were hiring — like the construction industry — and rehiring was a challenge given the sharp immigration slowdown of 2020.The company now employs about 2,500 people, at least 12 percent of whom are able to work under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has been in jeopardy since Mr. Trump decided to terminate it; challenges are winding their way through the courts. Another 10 percent have temporary protected status, a designation granted to people who have fled from countries in turmoil, which often allows them to stay in the United States for years.Alma Moreno, a cook at Hacienda Tacos y Tamales in Houston, is a Salvadoran who has temporary protected status in the United States.Callaghan O’Hare for The New York Times“It’s gotten a little bit better, but we’re seeing a drop in permanent visas and an increase in temporary ones,” Mr. Flores said. “At some point those folks have to move on, sometimes to other countries where there’s more open arms. And that’s tough for us, because we need the labor.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Job Trends: The Labor Department reported that the nation’s demand for labor only got stronger in December, as job openings rose to 11 million.Burrito Season: Chipotle Mexican Grill, the fast-casual food chain, said that it planned to hire 15,000 workers ahead of its busiest time of year, from March to May.Retail Industry: With consumers worried about inflation in the prices of day-to-day necessities like food, retailers are playing defense and reducing their work forces.Tech Layoffs: The industry’s recent job cuts have been an awakening for a generation of workers who have never experienced a cyclical crash.The path of immigration policy will have a substantial bearing on the nation’s supply of workers, which has been expanding more slowly as native-born workers have fewer children. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2042, net immigration will be the nation’s only source of population growth.The dip in immigration occurred in multiple ways, beginning with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president in 2017. The cap on refugees allowed to enter the United States dropped to 15,000 in 2020, the lowest level in decades. Measures like a ban on immigrants from Muslim countries, even though the courts eventually overturned it, deterred people from trying to come.Some of Mr. Trump’s changes were more subtle. The Department of Homeland Security slow-walked visas by asking for more evidence and interviews, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, head of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and then it shut down processing — which is largely paper-based, not electronic — during the pandemic.Even when lockdowns eased, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had a difficult time ramping back up because with no processing fees, it lacked the funds to rehire staff who had left. Staffing at U.S. embassies, which conduct visa interviews in other countries, had also atrophied.“They’ve had to play catch-up with that for a long, long time,” said Ms. Dalal-Dheini, who left the immigration agency in 2019. “Once the Biden administration came in, they reset some of those policies designed to slow down the process, and then were focused on building back up their work force.”The result has been that visas for visitors, temporary workers and permanent immigrants rose to 7.3 million in 2022, up from 3.1 million the previous year but still down from the more than 10 million issued annually in the three years before Mr. Trump took office. President Biden also granted humanitarian parole and temporary protected status to migrants from several more countries, including Ukraine and Afghanistan, allowing hundreds of thousands more people to stay and the opportunity to work in the United States.The number of new citizens hit a 15-year high in 2022. And the cap on refugees was raised to 125,000 in 2022, although the administration managed to process only about 25,000.Those measures increased net immigration to about a million people last year, the highest level since 2017, according to the Census Bureau. The foreign-born work force grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born work force, Labor Department figures show. (According to an analysis by FWD.us, a business-backed group that favors more immigration, 78 percent of the foreign-born labor force has legal work status.)The growth in immigration has helped power the job recoveries in leisure and hospitality and in construction, where immigrants make up a higher share of employment, and where there were bigger increases in wages and job vacancies. More

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    January Jobs Report Contained Hopeful and Worrying News for the Fed

    The Federal Reserve is tracking incoming labor figures as it decides how high interest rates need to go and how long they should stay elevated.WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials have said they are looking for the labor market to cool as they assess how much more they need to do to slow the economy, and the job report on Friday underscored that policymakers may still have a ways to go.Employers hired ravenously in January, adding 517,000 workers. The jobless rate dipped to a level not seen since 1969, and revisions to last year’s data showed that job growth was even stronger in 2021 and 2022 than previously understood — all signs that the demand for labor is booming.Yet at the same time, wage growth continued to moderate. Average hourly earnings climbed 4.4 percent over the year, more than forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists but less than the 4.8 percent year-over-year increase in December. Pay growth has been decelerating for months, though it remains faster than is typical and notably quicker than the pace that Fed officials have at times suggested would be consistent with their 2 percent inflation goal.For central bankers who are trying to bring down the fastest inflation in decades, the report offered both encouraging and worrying news. On one hand, the continued slowdown in pay increases was a welcome sign that, if it persists, could pave the way for slower price increases down the road. But Fed policymakers who spoke on Friday focused more intently on the fresh evidence that demand for workers remains intense despite their efforts, suggesting that they have more work to do before they will be able to feel confident that rapid inflation will fade fully.“The biggest surprise — and the thing to take the most signal from — is the combination of the job gains over the past month and the restatement over the past year,” Thomas Barkin, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said in an interview with The New York Times. “We still have more to do. Inflation is the guidepost.”Fed officials have already lifted rates from near zero a year ago to more than 4.5 percent, ushering in a quarter-point move just this week. While they have signaled more to come, investors and economists had been betting that they might stop moving after their next meeting, in March.The strong job numbers upended that expectation. Investors on Friday penciled in another rate move in May, and stocks fell in response to the jobs data as Wall Street braced for a more aggressive central bank. Higher rates weigh on demand by making it more expensive to borrow to buy a house or expand a business.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Job Trends: The Labor Department reported that the nation’s demand for labor only got stronger in December, as job openings rose to 11 million.Burrito Season: Chipotle Mexican Grill, the fast-casual food chain, said that it planned to hire 15,000 workers ahead of its busiest time of year, from March to May.Retail Industry: With consumers worried about inflation in the prices of day-to-day necessities like food, retailers are playing defense and reducing their work forces.Tech Layoffs: The industry’s recent job cuts have been an awakening for a generation of workers who have never experienced a cyclical crash.Fed officials themselves underlined that further rate adjustments are coming.“The number today on the jobs report was a ‘wow’ number,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said on Fox Business. She added that it did not change the economic narrative: It was just additional confirmation that the labor market is strong.She said the Fed’s December forecast — which called for two more quarter-point rate increases, pushing rates just above 5 percent — remained “a good indicator of where policy is at least headed,” adding that she is “prepared to do more than that if more is needed.”Wage growth is slowing along with inflationYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More