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    The Long Road to Driverless Trucks

    Self-driving eighteen-wheelers are now on highways in states like California and Texas. But there are still human “safety drivers” behind the wheel. What will it take to get them out?This article is part of our series on the Future of Transportation, which is exploring innovations and challenges that affect how we move about the world.In March, a self-driving eighteen-wheeler spent more than five straight days hauling goods between Dallas and Atlanta. Running around the clock, it traveled more than 6,300 miles, making four round trips and delivering eight loads of freight.The result of a partnership between Kodiak Robotics, a self-driving start-up, and U.S. Xpress, a traditional trucking company, this five-day drive demonstrated the enormous potential of autonomous trucks. A traditional truck, whose lone driver must stop and rest each day, would need more than 10 days to deliver the same freight.But the drive also showed that the technology is not yet ready to realize its potential. Each day, Kodiak rotated a new team of specialists into the cab of its truck, so that someone could take control of the vehicle if anything went wrong. These “safety drivers” grabbed the wheel multiple times.Tech start-ups like Kodiak have spent years building and testing self-driving trucks, and companies across the trucking industry are keen to reap the benefits. At a time when the global supply chain is struggling to deliver goods as efficiently as businesses and consumers now demand, autonomous trucks could alleviate bottlenecks and reduce costs.Now comes the most difficult stretch in this quest to automate freight delivery: getting these trucks on the road without anyone behind the wheel.Companies like Kodiak know the technology is a long way from the moment trucks can drive anywhere on their own. So they are looking for ways to deploy self-driving trucks solely on highways, whose long, uninterrupted stretches are easier to navigate than city streets teeming with stop-and-go traffic.“Highways are a more structured environment,” said Alex Rodrigues, chief executive of the self-driving-truck start-up Embark. “You know where every car is supposed to be going. They’re in lanes. They’re headed in the same direction.”Restricting these trucks to the highway also plays to their strengths. “The biggest problems for long-haul truckers are fatigue, distraction and boredom,” Mr. Rodrigues explained on a recent afternoon as one of his company’s trucks cruised down a highway in Northern California. “Robots don’t have a problem with any of that.”It’s a sound strategy, but even this will require years of additional development.Part of the challenge is technical. Though self-driving trucks can handle most of what happens on a highway — merging into traffic from an on-ramp, changing lanes, slowing for cars stopped on the shoulder — companies are still working to ensure they can respond to less common situations, like a sudden three-car pileup.As he continued down the highway, Mr. Rodrigues said his company has yet to perfect what he calls evasive maneuvers. “If there is an accident in the road right in front of the vehicle,” he explained, “it has to stop itself quickly.” For this and other reasons, most companies do not plan on removing safety drivers from their trucks until at least 2024. In many states, they will need explicit approval from regulators to do so.But deploying these trucks is also a logistical challenge — one that will require significant changes across the trucking industry.In shuttling goods between Dallas and Atlanta, Kodiak’s truck did not drive into either city. It drove to spots just off the highway where it could unload its cargo and refuel before making the return trip. Then traditional trucks picked up the cargo and drove “the last mile” or final leg of the delivery.In order to deploy autonomous trucks on a large scale, companies must first build a network of these “transfer hubs.” With an eye toward this future, Kodiak recently inked a partnership with Pilot, a company that operates traditional truck stops across the country. Today, these are places where truck drivers can shower and rest and grab a bite to eat. The hope is that they can also serve as transfer hubs for driverless trucks.“The industry can’t afford to build this kind of infrastructure from scratch,” said Kodiak’s chief executive, Don Burnette. “We have to find ways of working with the existing infrastructure.”They must also consider the impact on truck drivers: They aim to make long-haul drivers obsolete, but they will need more drivers for the short haul.Executives like Mr. Burnette and Mr. Rodrigues believe that drivers will happily move from one job to the other. The turnover rate among long-haul drivers is roughly 95 percent, meaning the average company replaces nearly its entire work force each year. It is a stressful, monotonous job that keeps people away from home for days on end. If they switch to city driving, they can work shorter hours and stay close to home.But a recent study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan questions whether the transition will be as smooth as many expect. Truck drivers are typically paid by the mile. A shift to shorter trips, the study says, could slash the number of miles traveled and reduce wages.Certainly, some drivers fear they cannot make as much money driving solely in cities. Others are loath to give up their time on the highway.“There are many drivers like me,” said Cannon Bryan, a 28-year-old long-haul trucker from Texas. “I wasn’t born in the city. I wasn’t raised in the city. I hate city driving. I enjoy picking up a load in Dallas and driving to Grand Rapids, Mich.”Building and deploying self-driving trucks is far from easy. And it is enormously expensive — on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. TuSimple, a self-driving truck company, has faced concerns that the technology is unsafe after federal regulators revealed that one of its trucks had been involved in an accident. Aurora, a self-driving technology company with a particularly impressive pedigree, is facing challenging market conditions and has floated the possibility of a sale to big names like Apple or Microsoft, according to a report from Bloomberg News.If these companies can indeed get drivers out of their vehicles, this raises new questions. How will driverless trucks handle roadside inspections? How will they set up the reflective triangles that warn other motorists when a truck has pulled to the shoulder? How will they deal with blown tires and repairs?Eventually, the industry will also embrace electric trucks powered by battery rather than fossil fuel, and this will raise still more questions for autonomous trucking. Where and how will the batteries get recharged? Won’t this prevent self-driving trucks from running 24 hours a day, as the industry has promised?“There are so many issues that in reality are far more complex than they might seem on paper,” said Steve Viscelli, an economic and political sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in trucking. “Though the developers and their partners are putting a lot of effort into thinking this through, many of the questions about what needs to change cannot yet be answered. We are going to have to see what reality looks like.”Some solutions will be technical, others logistical. The start-up Embark plans to build a roaming work force of “guardians” who will locate trucks when things go wrong and call for repairs as needed.The good news for the labor market is that this technology will create jobs even as it removes them. And though experts say that more jobs will ultimately be lost than gained, this will not happen soon. Long-haul truckers will have years to prepare for a new life. Any rollout will be gradual.“Just when you think this technology is almost here,” said Tom Schmitt, the chief executive of Forward Air, a trucking company that just started a test with Kodiak’s self-driving trucks, “it is still five years away.” More

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    Inflation Has Hit Tenants Hard. What About Their Landlords?

    Publicly traded corporate landlords are reporting some of their highest margins ever, while smaller operators say rent increases are eaten up by costs.Of all the categories driving inflation in recent months, among the largest — and most persistent — is rent.In buildings with more than 50 units, tenants in one-bedroom apartments have been handed new leases costing about 17 percent more on average than they did in March 2020, according to CoStar Group, a Washington-based real estate data company. The Labor Department’s rent indicator — which includes ongoing leases, not just renewals — has steadily risen, to 6.7 percent last month over the previous August.So while tenants absorb rent increases that often exceed their income gains, are landlords minting money? It depends on the landlord.Publicly traded owners of sprawling real estate portfolios, like Invitation Homes, have enjoyed some of their best returns over the past few quarters. Things look very different, however, for Neal Verma, whose company manages 6,000 apartments in the Houston area.Earlier this year, Mr. Verma experimented with raising rents enough to cover the cost of spiking wages, property taxes, insurance and maintenance. Turnover doubled in the properties where he tried it, as people left for nearby buildings.“It’s crushing our margins,” Mr. Verma said. “Our profits from last year have evaporated, and we’re running at break-even at a number of properties. There’s some people who think landlords must be making money. No. We’ve only gone up 12 to 14 percent, and our expenses have gone up 30 percent.”Overall, the ferocious run-up in rents has been driven by tenants’ desire for more space and location flexibility created by remote work; rising interest rates that have locked would-be buyers out of the for-sale market; and cost increases on delayed maintenance. But the one factor landlords track most closely is their customers’ ability to absorb higher rents.Higher-earning tenants, who flock to newer buildings with more amenities, have been more willing to accept rent increases. Low-income renters, while seeing faster wage growth, have borne the brunt of higher prices for necessities like groceries and gasoline, and rents in older buildings are rising at a slower rate than in newer, nicer ones.“The reality is that rents can only rise as incomes rise,” said Jay Parsons, chief economist at the real estate data firm RealPage, noting that rent averages 23 percent of the monthly incomes across the apartments that RealPage tracks. “If people can’t afford it, you can’t lease it.”Geography also matters. Even among the largest landlords, those with a presence in Sun Belt cities such as Miami, Tampa, Nashville and Phoenix saw far faster rent growth than high-cost coastal markets like San Francisco, where rents fell substantially during the pandemic lockdowns as white-collar workers fled for remote locations.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Larry Summers blasts UK tax cuts as 'utterly irresponsible' and warns of possible contagion

    The sudden sell-off in the pound and U.K. bond markets led economists to anticipate more aggressive interest rate hikes from the Bank of England.
    In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, Harvard professor Summers said that although he was “very pessimistic” about the potential fallout from the “utterly irresponsible” policy announcements, he did not expect markets to capitulate so quickly.
    The likening of the U.K. to an emerging market economy has become more prevalent among market commentators in recent days.

    Larry Summers
    Cameron Costa | CNBC

    LONDON — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Tuesday warned that the U.K. has lost sovereign credibility after the new government’s fiscal policy sent markets into a tailspin.
    The British pound hit an all-time low against the dollar in the early hours of Monday morning, before recovering slightly on Tuesday, while the U.K. 10-year gilt yield rose to its highest level since 2008 as markets recoiled at Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s so-called “mini-budget” on Friday.

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    In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, Harvard professor Summers said that although he was “very pessimistic” about the potential fallout from the “utterly irresponsible” policy announcements, he did not expect markets to capitulate so quickly.
    “A strong tendency for long rates to go up as the currency goes down is a hallmark of situations where credibility has been lost,” Summers said.
    “This happens most frequently in developing countries but happened with early (Former French President) Mitterrand before a U turn, in the late Carter Administration before Volcker and with Lafontaine in Germany.”
    The policy announcement from Prime Minister Liz Truss’s administration last week included a volume of tax cuts not seen in Britain since 1972, funded by borrowing, and an unabashed return to the “trickle-down economics” promoted by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Truss and Kwarteng maintain that the policies are focused on driving economic growth.
    The sudden sell-off in the pound and U.K. bond markets led economists to anticipate more aggressive interest rate hikes from the Bank of England. The central bank said Monday night that it would not hesitate to act in order to return inflation toward its 2% target over the medium term, but would appraise the impact of the new economic policy at its November meeting.

    Summers noted that British credit default swaps — contracts in which one party acquires insurance against the default of a borrower from another party — still suggest “negligible default probabilities,” but have risen sharply.
    “I cannot remember a G10 country with so much debt sustainability risk in its own currency. The first step in regaining credibility is not saying incredible things. I was surprised when the new chancellor spoke over the weekend of the need for even more tax cuts,” Summers said on Twitter.
    “I cannot see how the BOE, knowing the government’s plans, decided to move so timidly. The suggestions that seem to have emanated from the Bank of England that there is something anti- inflationary about unbounded energy subsidies are bizarre. Subsidies affect whether energy is paid for directly or through taxes now and in the future, not its ultimate cost.”
    ‘Global consequences’
    Summers, who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010 under the Obama administration, added that the scale of Britain’s trade deficit emphasized the challenges the economy faces. The U.K. current account deficit sat at more than 8% of GDP, as of the first quarter of 2022 — well before the government’s announcement.
    Summers predicted that the pound will fall below parity with both the dollar and the euro.
    “I would not be amazed if British short rates more than triple in the next two years and reach levels above 7 percent. I say this because U.S. rates are now projected to approach 5 percent and Britain has much more serious inflation, is pursuing more aggressive fiscal expansion and has larger financing challenges,” he said.
    U.K. inflation unexpectedly fell to 9.9% in August, and analysts recalibrated their eye-watering expectations after the government stepped in to cap annual household energy bills. However, many see the new fiscal policies driving higher inflation over the medium term.
    “Financial crisis in Britain will affect London’s viability as a global financial center so there is the risk of a vicious cycle where volatility hurts the fundamentals, which in turn raises volatility,” Summers added.
    “A currency crisis in a reserve currency could well have global consequences. I am surprised that we have heard nothing from the IMF.”
    His warnings of global contagion echo those of U.S. Federal Reserve official Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Fed, who told The Washington Post on Monday that Kwarteng’s £45 billion in tax cuts had increased economic uncertainty and raised the probability of a global recession.
    Chicago Fed President Charles Evans told CNBC on Tuesday that the situation was “very challenging,” given an aging population and slowing growth, adding that the global economy would need to increase growth of labor input and technological infrastructure in order to secure long-term stability.
    ‘Emerging market currency crisis’
    Sterling has fallen by roughly 7-8% on a trade-weighted basis in less than two months, and strategists at Dutch bank ING noted Tuesday that traded volatility levels for the pound are “those you would expect during an emerging market currency crisis.”
    ING Developed Markets Economist James Smith suggested that mounting pressure, potentially coupled with comments from ratings agencies in the coming weeks, may lead investors to look for signs of a policy U-turn from the government.
    “Ministers may emphasize that tax measures will be coupled with spending cuts, and there are hints at that in today’s papers,” Smith noted.
    “We also wouldn’t rule out the government looking more closely at a wider windfall tax on energy producers, something which the prime minister has signaled she is against. Such a policy would materially reduce the amount of gilt issuance required over the coming year.”
    The likening of the U.K. to an emerging market economy has become more prevalent among market commentators in recent days.

    Timothy Ash, senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said in a Politico editorial on Tuesday that rising inflation, falling living standards and a potential wage price spiral, combated by tax cuts that will exacerbate “already bloated” budget and current account deficits and increase public debt, mean the U.K. is now resembling an emerging market.
    “Predictably, the market has been unconvinced by the new government’s dash-for-growth economic policy. Borrowing costs for the government have risen, making its macro forecasts now appear unsustainable. Everything is unraveling, and talk of crisis is in the air,” Ash said.
    “All of the above sounds like a classic emerging market (EM) crisis country. And as an EM economist for 35 years, if you presented me with the above fundamentals, the last thing I would now recommend is a program of unfunded tax cuts.”

    However, not all strategists are sold on the emerging market narrative. Julian Howard, investment director at GAM Investments, told CNBC on Tuesday that the bond sell-off was a global phenomenon and that lower taxes and deregulation could be “very helpful” over the medium term, but that the market had “chosen to completely ignore it.”
    “I think really what’s happened is that sterling and gilts have been swept up in a wider global phenomenon … In the meantime, I think the U.K. might quietly get some growth going over the next six to nine months, and that has been studiously ignored,” he said.
    “There is a more general inflation panic going on around the world, and I think if that eases off then we may see some more stabilization in the U.K.”
    Howard said talk of an “emerging market” economy was premature and “too harsh,” and suggested the Bank of England should hold off on raising rates any further.

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    Strong Dollar Is Good for the US but Bad for the World

    The Federal Reserve may have no choice but to wage a relentless inflation fight, but countries rich and poor are feeling the pain of plunging currencies.The Federal Reserve’s determination to crush inflation at home by raising interest rates is inflicting profound pain in other countries — pushing up prices, ballooning the size of debt payments and increasing the risk of a deep recession.Those interest rate increases are pumping up the value of the dollar — the go-to currency for much of the world’s trade and transactions — and causing economic turmoil in both rich and poor nations. In Britain and across much of the European continent, the dollar’s acceleration is helping feed stinging inflation.On Monday, the British pound touched a record low against the dollar as investors balked at a government tax cut and spending plan. And China, which tightly controls its currency, fixed the renminbi at its lowest level in two years while taking steps to manage its decline.Weakening CurrenciesHow the values of global currencies have changed against the U.S. dollar from three months ago

    Data through 3 p.m. Eastern time MondaySource: FactSetBy The New York TimesIn Nigeria and Somalia, where the risk of starvation already lurks, the strong dollar is pushing up the price of imported food, fuel and medicine. The strong dollar is nudging debt-ridden Argentina, Egypt and Kenya closer to default and threatening to discourage foreign investment in emerging markets like India and South Korea.“For the rest of the world, it’s a no-win situation,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell and author of several books on currencies. At the same time, he said, the Fed has no choice but to act aggressively to control inflation: “Any delay in action could make things potentially even worse.”Policy decisions made in Washington frequently reverberate widely. The United States is a superpower with the world’s largest economy and hefty reserves of oil and natural gas. When it comes to global finance and trade, though, its influence is outsize.That is because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency — the one that multinational corporations and financial institutions, no matter where they are, most often use to price goods and settle accounts. Energy and food tend to be priced in dollars when bought and sold on the world market. So is a lot of the debt owed by developing nations. Roughly 40 percent of the world’s transactions are done in dollars, whether the United States is involved or not, according to a study done by the International Monetary Fund.And now, the value of the dollar compared with other major currencies like the Japanese yen has reached a decades-long high. The euro, used by 19 nations across Europe, reached 1-to-1 parity with the dollar in June for the first time since 2002. The dollar is clobbering other currencies as well, including the Brazilian real, the South Korean won and the Tunisian dinar.One reason is the string of crises that have rocked the globe including the coronavirus pandemic, supply chain chokeholds, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the series of climate disasters that have imperiled the world’s food and energy supply. In an anxious world, the dollar has traditionally been a symbol of stability and security. The worse things get, the more people buy dollars. On top of that, the economic outlook in the United States, however cloudy, is still better than in most other regions.In Britain, the pound touched a record low against the dollar.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMillions are at risk of famine in Somalia, which is facing extreme drought and a jump in food prices.Ed Ram/Getty ImagesChina set its currency at the lowest point in two years on Monday.Mark R Cristino/EPA, via ShutterstockRising interest rates make the dollar all the more alluring to investors by ensuring a better return. That, in turn, means they are investing less in emerging markets, which puts further strains on those economies.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s

    U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a rebound, with companies adding workers amid high consumer demand for products.WASHINGTON — Ever since American manufacturing entered a long stretch of automation and outsourcing in the late 1970s, every recession has led to the loss of factory jobs that never returned. But the recovery from the pandemic recession has been different: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed — and then some.The resurgence has not been driven by companies bringing back factory jobs that had moved overseas, nor by the brawny industrial sectors and regions often evoked by President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump and other champions of manufacturing.Instead, the engines in this recovery include pharmaceutical plants, craft breweries and ice-cream makers. The newly created jobs are more likely to be located in the Mountain West and the Southeast than in the classic industrial strongholds of the Great Lakes.American manufacturers cut roughly 1.36 million jobs from February to April of 2020, as Covid-19 shut down much of the economy. As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above prepandemic levels.Data suggest that the rebound is largely a product of the unique circumstances of the pandemic recession and recovery. Covid-19 crimped global supply chains, making domestic manufacturing more attractive to some companies. Federal stimulus spending helped to power a shift in Americans’ buying habits away from services like travel and restaurants and toward goods like cars and sofas, helping domestic factory production — and with it, job growth — to bounce back much faster than it did in the previous two recessions.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said that the recovery of manufacturing jobs was a result of the unique nature of the recession, which was induced by the pandemic, and the robust federal response, including legislation like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021.“We had a huge shift away from services and into goods that spurred production and manufacturing and very rapid recovery in the U.S. economy,” Ms. Yellen told reporters during a trip to Detroit this month. The support for local economies and small businesses included in Mr. Biden’s rescue plan, she said, “has been tremendously helpful in restoring the health of the job market and given the shifting in spending patterns, I think that’s been to the benefit of manufacturing.”American manufacturers, like many industries, have struggled to find raw materials, component parts and skilled workers. And yet, they have continued to create jobs at a rate that has surprised even some longtime promoters of American factory employment.“We have 67,000 more workers today than we had in February 2020,” said Chad Moutray, the chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers. “I didn’t think we would get there, to be honest with you.”In recessions over the last half century, factories have typically laid off a greater share of workers than other employers in the economy, and they have been slower to add jobs back in recoveries. Often, companies have used those economic inflection points to accelerate their pace of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, where wages are significantly lower, and to invest in technology that replaces human workers.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.August Jobs Report: Job growth slowed in August but stayed solid, suggesting that the labor market recovery remains resilient, even as companies pull back on hiring.Job Market Trends: The labor market appears hot, but the supply of labor has fallen short, holding back the economy. Here is why.Gig Workers: Labor activists hoped President Biden would tackle gig worker issues aggressively. But a year and a half into his presidency, little has been done at the federal level.Black Employment: Black workers saw wages and employment rates go up in the wake of the pandemic. But as the Federal Reserve tries to tame inflation, those gains could be eroded.This time was different. Factory layoffs roughly matched those in the services sector in the depth of the pandemic recession. Economists attribute that break in the trend to many U.S. manufacturers being deemed “essential” during pandemic lockdowns, and the ensuing surge in demand for their products by Americans.Manufacturing jobs quickly rebounded in the spring of 2020, then began to climb at a much faster pace than has been typical for factory job creation in recent decades. Since June 2020, under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, factories have added more than 30,000 jobs a month.Sectors that hemorrhaged employment in recent recessions have fared much better in this recovery. Furniture makers, who eliminated a third of their jobs in the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, have nearly returned to their prepandemic employment levels. So have textile mills, paper products companies and computer equipment makers.Manufacturers say the numbers could be even stronger, if not for their continued difficulties attracting and hiring skilled workers amid 3.7 percent unemployment.Fernando Torres, vice president of operations for Greene Tweed, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of materials and components used by the aerospace and semiconductor industries, said his company has had to become more flexible to attract new workers and offer more attractive salaries and benefits. He has been looking for employees with different backgrounds that the company can train to develop the skills to fill open jobs, and said that it has been hard to retain staff because competitors are aggressively trying to lure them away.But Mr. Torres said that Greene Tweed, which employs just fewer than 2,000 workers, did not plan to give up, considering the demand for his company’s products.“We are looking for lots of employees,” Mr. Torres said. “We are not looking at slowing down.”Chuck Wetherington, president of BTE Technologies, a manufacturer of medical devices based in Maryland, said that he was trying to expand his work force of around 40 by 10 percent. A lack of workers, he said, has become a bigger problem than supply chain disruptions.“Our backlog continues to grow,” Mr. Wetherington said at a National Association of Manufacturers briefing. “I just can’t find the employees.”Mr. Biden has pushed a variety of legislative initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing, including direct spending on infrastructure, tax credits and other subsidies for companies like battery makers and semiconductor factories, and new federal procurement requirements that benefit manufacturers located in the United States. Biden administration officials say those policies could play a decisive role in further encouraging factory job growth in the coming months and years, in hopes of continuing the expansion and possibly pushing factory employment back to pre-2008 levels.Other factors could help hasten more American manufacturing. Delayed deliveries, sky-high shipping prices and other supply chain issues during the pandemic have encouraged some chief executives to think about moving production closer to home. The average price to ship a 40-foot container internationally has fallen sharply in recent months, but it is still three times higher than it was before the pandemic, according to tracking by the freight booking platform Freightos.A container ship at the Port of Los Angeles. As Covid-19 crimped global supply chains, domestic manufacturing became more attractive to some companies.Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesBusinesses are also beginning to question the wisdom of producing so many goods in China, amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology. The Chinese government’s insistence on a zero-Covid policy, despite the severe disruptions it has caused for the economy, has especially shaken many executives’ confidence in their ability to operate in China. Mr. Biden has also maintained many tariffs on Chinese imports imposed by Mr. Trump.“The pandemic response by China has definitely prompted more than a rethink on where to put new money. I think we are actually beginning to see action,” said Mary Lovely, a professor of economics at Syracuse University and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. How much of that investment came to the United States was unclear. “I don’t think anyone really knows,” she added.Ed Gresser, the vice president of trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said that the United States had seen a noticeable uptick in new manufacturing establishments since 2019, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, which might be a response to the pandemic. Food and beverage establishments have also continued to grow.But while growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector was strong last year, so were imports of manufactured goods, Mr. Gresser said. That suggests, he said, that the growth of manufacturing probably reflects strong consumer demand in the United States through the pandemic, rather than a shift to production in the United States.While attitudes toward doing business in China have quickly soured, patterns of production have been slower to change. A survey of 117 leading companies released in August by the U.S. China Business Council found that business optimism had reached record lows, but U.S. corporations remained overwhelmingly profitable in China, which is still home to the world’s most expansive ecosystem of factories and a lucrative consumer market.Eight percent of the surveyed companies reported moving segments of their supply chain out of China to the United States in the past year, while another 16 percent had moved some operations to other countries. But 78 percent of the companies said they had not shifted any business away from China.The Biden administration is hopeful that new policies — including a manufacturing competitiveness law and a climate law the president signed this summer — will encourage more companies to leave China for the United States, particularly cutting-edge industries like clean energy and advanced computing.Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview that the laws were already changing the calculus for investment and job creation in the United States. In recent weeks, White House officials have promoted factory announcements from automakers, battery companies and others, directly linked to the climate bill.“One of the most striking things that we are seeing now,” Mr. Deese said, “is the number of companies — U.S. companies and global companies — that are committing to build and expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States, and doing so based on their view that not only did the pandemic highlight the need for more resilience in their supply chains, but that the United States is creating a policy environment that makes long term investment here in the United States more attractive.” More

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    New minimum tax could hit Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon hardest, study shows

    The UNC Tax Center used 2021 financials to predict the effect of the Inflation Reduction Act’s minimum corporate tax.
    The 15% minimum tax would impact around 78 companies, with Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon paying the most.
    President Joe Biden signed the tax into law, along with the rest of the Inflation Reduction Act, in August.

    Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett seen at the annual Berkshire shareholder shopping day in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., May 3, 2019.
    Scott Morgan | Reuters

    Researchers applied the Inflation Reduction Act’s new 15% corporate minimum tax onto 2021 company earnings and found that the burden would only be felt by about 78 companies, with Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon paying up the most.
    The study from the University of North Carolina Tax Center used past securities filings to map the tax, which goes into effect in January, onto companies’ 2021 earnings.

    The researchers found that the 15% minimum would have taken a total of $31.8 billion from 78 firms in 2021. Berkshire led the estimated payout with $8.33 billion, and Amazon follows behind with $2.77 billion owed based on its 2021 earnings.
    The study notes the limitations of looking solely at public company data within a single year. The researchers recognized that these estimates may be subject to change, especially as company operations change under the tax in 2023.
    President Joe Biden signed the minimum book tax into law, along with the rest of the Inflation Reduction Act, in August. The tax is specifically meant to target companies earning more than $1 billion per year.
    The Joint Committee on Taxation had previously estimated that it would affect around 150 firms, with the costs falling specifically on the manufacturing industry. The bipartisan JCT also predicted $34 billion in revenue in the first year of the tax, slightly more than the theoretical 2021 revenue estimated at UNC.
    According to the study, the next-highest taxes would be paid by Ford, AT&T, eBay and Moderna, all of which would owe more than $1.2 billion in payments based on their 2021 financials.

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    Atlanta Fed President Bostic expects job losses but says there’s a really good chance to get to 2% inflation without killing the economy

    Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, signaled optimism for the Fed’s policies to temper inflation in a “Face the Nation” interview Sunday morning.
    He said that job losses could be “smaller than what we’ve seen in other situations.”
    Noting strong employment, he believes in the “ability for the economy to absorb” rate hikes.

    President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Raphael W. Bostic speaks at a European Financial Forum event in Dublin, Ireland February 13, 2019.
    Clodagh Kilcoyne | Reuters

    Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, appeared on CBS’ “Face The Nation” Sunday morning with a continued commitment to the 2% inflation target and a cautiously optimistic outlook on the path to get there.
    The nation’s central bank hiked the targeted federal funds rate by 75 basis points to between 3 and 3 1/4 Wednesday. Bostic believes that the Federal Reserve can achieve its goal of 2% inflation without severely damaging the economy.

    “I do think that we’re going to do all that we can at the Federal Reserve to avoid deep, deep pain.” Bostic told “Face the Nation.”
    The most recent report clocked inflation at 8.3% through the past year. The Fed is aiming to temper demand in the economy so prices can stabilize, but some fear that the strict policies might initiate further economic turmoil.
    Bostic recognized that there will likely be job losses as a result of the Fed’s actions. However, compared to prior Fed tightening, Bostic believes that “there is a really good chance that if we have job losses it will be smaller than what we’ve seen in other situations,” he said on “Face the Nation.”
    Bostic sees “positive momentum” in the economy despite two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, a signifier used by some to identify a recession.
    “We’re still creating lots of jobs on a monthly basis. And so I actually think that there is some ability for the economy to absorb our actions,” Bostic said, noting “considerable job growth” in his bank’s hometown of Atlanta. “My expectation is that as we move along and we start to get inflation more under control.”

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