Raphael Stevens

The U.S. dollar is stronger relative to the euro and other major international currencies than it’s been in years.
That means Americans effectively get a discount versus the recent past on purchases made abroad.
Travelers can best take advantage of favorable exchange rates by paying for hotels, rental cars and other services now instead of deferring payment.

Glowimages | Glowimages | Getty Images

It’s a good time to be an American traveling abroad.
The value of the U.S. dollar has been at its strongest in years relative to many major global currencies of late— meaning travelers can buy more overseas than in the recent past.

Put another way, Americans are effectively getting a discount on hotels, car rentals, tours and other goods and services denominated in many foreign currencies.
But it’s unclear how long the good times will last. Some may wonder: Should I act now to lock in a favorable exchange rate?
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“I’d pull the trigger now,” said Aiden Freeborn, senior editor at travel site The Broke Backpacker.
“You could hedge and wait to see if things improve, but that could backfire,” he added. “Don’t be too greedy; accept the fact this is a very strong position.”

Here’s what to know and how to take advantage.

‘Now is a good time to buy foreign currency’

F.j. Jimenez | Moment | Getty Images

Just how much of a discount are travelers getting right now? Let’s look at the euro as an example.
The euro — the official currency for 19 of the 27 European Union members — has been falling in value over the last year or so and hit parity with the U.S. dollar on July 13, for the first time since 2002. Parity means the two currencies had a 1:1 exchange rate.
Americans were still getting a roughly 13% discount from a year ago as of market close on Tuesday, despite a slight rebound off that multi-decade low.
“The exchange rate right now is ridiculous,” Charlie Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, an advocacy group, said of the euro’s depressed level. “It makes everything in Europe that used to be expensive not that expensive.”
But the dollar’s strength is broader than just the euro.

For example, the Nominal Broad U.S. Dollar Index gauges the dollar’s appreciation relative to currencies of the U.S.’ main trading partners, like the Canadian dollar, British pound, Mexican peso and Japanese yen in addition to the euro. It’s up more than 9% in the last year.
Further, the index is around its highest point dating to at least 1973, according to Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. There’s one exception: the period from March to May 2020, when international travel was largely inaccessible due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I think the big picture is, now is probably a good time to go abroad,” Hunter said. “Now is a good time to buy foreign currency, basically.”

Why the U.S. dollar has strengthened

The strength of the dollar is largely attributable to three factors, Hunter explained.
Perhaps the most consequential is the U.S. Federal Reserve’s campaign to raise interest rates (i.e., borrowing costs). The central bank has been more aggressive than others around the world, Hunter said; the dynamic creates an incentive for international investors to keep funds in dollar-based assets since they can generally earn a higher return.

The dollar could strengthen even further, but it could fall back.

Andrew Hunter
senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics

Further, a surge in oil prices this year hurt the growth prospects in some developed countries (especially in Europe) relative to the U.S. And economic uncertainty (due to factors like inflation and recession fears and the war in Ukraine) has led investors to flock to safe-haven assets like the U.S. dollar.
While the U.S. dollar will likely remain strong for another six months or so, it’s likely at or near its peak relative to other major currencies given prevailing economic dynamics, Hunter said — with the caveat that currency moves are notoriously difficult to predict.
“You’ve always got the uncertainty of what will happen in the future,” he added. “The dollar could strengthen even further, but it could fall back.”

Pay in advance to lock in low exchange rates

Row Houses on Weissgerbergasse in Nuremberg, Germany.
Sakchai Vongsasiripat | Moment | Getty Images

Of course, this isn’t all to say Americans will reap financial rewards the world over.
But tourists planning or considering a trip to a country where the dollar is historically strong can lock in that favorable exchange rate by booking a hotel, rental car or other service today instead of deferring the cost, according to travel experts.
This is especially worthwhile for those with a trip at least three months away, Leocha said.
“You can pay in advance, and sometimes you get a discount for paying in advance — so you get a discount and the low exchange rate,” he said.

Be aware: In some cases, you may owe an additional foreign-transaction fee for a credit-card purchase overseas. Some travel cards eliminate these fees, though, which generally amount to 3% of the purchase price, Leocha said.
Fees may depend on where the company you’re transacting with is based. There isn’t a foreign transaction fee if the purchase is through a third-party U.S. entity like Expedia, but there often is one if booked directly through a foreign entity like the actual hotel, Leocha said.

When to convert cash for a trip abroad

Travelers can also convert cash ahead of a trip but should generally only do so if the trip is several months away, according to travel experts.
That’s because providers like banks typically offer less generous exchange rates — meaning a customer may be better served by waiting until arriving at their destination country and making purchases with a credit card, especially if it doesn’t carry a foreign transaction fee.
While abroad, merchants may offer travelers the choice of making a purchase “with or without conversion” or according to some similarly worded prompt. Travelers should decline that conversion offer — meaning they should opt to do the transaction in the destination currency instead of convert that price into dollars —in order to get the best exchange rate, experts said.
Travelers who’d prefer to convert to cash can hedge their exchange-rate bets by converting half their estimated expenditure now and waiting until later (or their arrival) to covert the rest, Freeborn said.

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GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra addresses investors Oct. 6, 2021 at the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan.
Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors

DETROIT — In September 2017, General Motors CEO Mary Barra and her top executives visited the automaker’s design dome, considered hallowed ground within the company for its role in creating GM’s most iconic vehicles.
Displayed under the showroom lights were about 10 true-to-size clay models of electric vehicles, including designs like the automaker’s Chevy Corvette and a host of crossovers and SUVs. At the time, much of Wall Street’s attention was on the $70-a-share price of Tesla, whose celebrity CEO, Elon Musk, was promising to lead the world’s transition to more sustainable energy.

The showcase at GM’s sprawling tech campus in suburban Detroit gave executives a glimpse at how they might outpace Tesla and longtime rivals such as Ford Motor, which were also eyeing the buzzy electric vehicle market. The clay models were examples of the range of electric vehicles GM could build through a new platform the automaker was developing.

Mary Barra’s electric vision

GM’s strategy for an “all-electric” future was forged over meetings in September 2017, according to executives who were present.

Underpinning the plans was a new platform, now known as Ultium, dedicated to electric vehicles the company was developing.

Production from GM’s first plant with the new technology started late last year.

GM’s work on EVs had accelerated after executives in 2015 traveled to Silicon Valley to research emerging trends and meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google officials and others.

In the following days, executives met multiple times to discuss the platform’s potential and to hash out a strategy on electric vehicles, according to several people who were at the previously unreported meetings. That was the week GM’s path was decided, said the people, who declined to be named because the discussions were confidential.
The following week, GM publicly declared its belief in an “all-electric future,” marking a pivotal moment that would start the legacy automaker on its most ambitious shift since its founding in 1908.
GM’s stock that week jumped more than 11% to about $45 a share — marking the largest weekly increase at the time under Barra’s tenure as CEO. The gains would last only a few months but deepened executives’ conviction that they had picked the right path.
Last year, GM said it planned to invest $30 billion in electric vehicles by 2025, including to revamp existing plants, build U.S. battery plants and launch 30 electric models globally, such as the GMC Hummer EV.
“No one has as many vehicles as we are going to have by 2025,” Barra said in an interview with CNBC in January. GM has repeatedly stood by the goal.

It is almost five years since GM made its big declaration, yet the numbers still aren’t in GM’s favor — at least not for the moment. Tesla still has a dominant 66% of the small but rapidly growing U.S. electric vehicle market, according to LMC Automotive, while GM has just 6%, as production has been slow to ramp up. It’s also being outsold by Ford and Hyundai Motor.
Overall, only 8% of GM’s sales are estimated to be electric vehicles. That’s including vehicles produced with Chinese joint ventures such as SAIC-GM-Wuling, which produces a small car that was the best-selling electric vehicle last year in China.
But Barra, who in 2014 became the first woman to lead a Detroit automaker, remains convinced that’s set to change, and her legacy will arguably hinge on whether she can transform the automaker into an electric leader.

Growing in a different way

Electric vehicles weren’t always the priority for Barra, who started at the company as an 18-year-old machinist in the now-defunct Pontiac division in 1980. In her early days as CEO, she was busy putting out fires from the company’s past.
At first, it was fallout from a disastrous recall that came after faulty ignitions made people lose control of their older-model cars, resulting in more than 120 deaths. Then Barra — haunted by the automaker’s near-death experience in 2009 during the financial crisis — focused on making the company leaner.

Mary Barra, chief executive officer of General Motors Co., presents the new Silverado elective vehicle during a live-streamed event at the CES 2022 trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022.
Bridgett Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Under her tenure, Barra would ultimately slash headcount by 27% to 157,000 employees and dramatically shrink the company’s global footprint by exiting markets including Australia, Europe and Russia. The moves, made over several years, would prove to be deeply unpopular with politicians and the United Auto Workers.
“All that was about getting the company in better financial shape, in better operational shape, to be in a position to actually start then on the next journey,” said Patricia Russo, independent lead director of GM’s board of directors. She added that the board supports the changes Barra and her team have been making.
The cuts laid the groundwork for GM to grow in a different way.
As GM worked to become nimbler, Barra became increasingly sensitive to the signs of change bubbling up across the industry. Tesla — which by 2015 was trading at around $50 a share, higher than GM’s stock price, which was stalled at under $40 a share — was grabbing more attention and threatening to make the gas-guzzling fleets of legacy automakers look like relics. Others believed popular ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft could further diminish the relevance of the Big Three automakers.
“We started to say, OK, we don’t want to be disrupted. We want to lead the transformation,” said Barra, now 60.
In 2015, Barra took a team of executives on a field trip to Silicon Valley to identify potential disruptions on the horizon. The leadership team met with people including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google officials, venture capital investors and officials from Stanford University, where Barra earned her master’s degree in business administration.

GM President Mark Reuss announces a $2.2 billion investment in the automaker’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant in Michigan for new all-electric trucks and autonomous vehicles on Jan. 27, 2020.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

“We needed a fundamental change in some of the businesses we participated in,” GM President Mark Reuss, who led product development from 2014 to 2018, said in an interview.
GM executives decided to focus on the areas they felt could transform the way people get around, including self-driving vehicles and car sharing. Another major category: electric vehicles.
After the trip, GM moved to act on the potential disruptions it had identified. That included working to race ahead of Tesla, which was promising to deliver the first affordable, mass-market electric vehicle.
In late 2016, GM beat Tesla to the punch with its Chevrolet Bolt, which went on sale with a price tag of $37,500. But like GM’s similarly named Volt plug-in hybrid introduced several years earlier, the Bolt didn’t have the same cachet of Tesla’s cars, and its sales remain minimal.

A new platform

As GM ramped up production of the Bolt in 2017, the company was intensifying work on a secret project that executives believed could supercharge the company’s push into electric vehicles.
The new platform — now known as Ultium — was essentially a base that could be used to produce a range of electric vehicles, with the company’s batteries built into the frame. Until then, GM and other legacy automakers were pushing out EVs by essentially stuffing battery packs into modified vehicle frames. It was a clunky process that could get cars and trucks out quickly but didn’t unlock the full potential of the vehicles.
“When we started architecting Ultium, we really took a big leap,” Reuss said. “That was the beginning of how to put together a plan to do it and transform to an all-electric future.”
By fall 2017, GM executives were in the design dome looking at the clay models of electric vehicles, many for the first time. They are an early step in sculpting a vehicle’s potential design.

Electric Chevrolet Silverado shown at the New York Auto Show, April, 2022.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

One was similar to a souped-up Corvette. Another was a crossover like the Chevrolet Blazer. Also present were SUVs like the Cadillac Escalade. A bubbly-looking vehicle didn’t resemble any of GM’s products but would eventually become the Cruise Origin self-driving shuttle.
Nearly five years later, Barra still believes the Ultium platform and supporting technologies, including its batteries and its software system, Ultifi, are the foundation for doubling the company’s revenue by 2030. Production from GM’s first plant with the new technology started last year, with the Hummer EV pickup.
“We realized to really get scale with EVs, we needed to have a dedicated EV platform,” Barra said. “That’s what’s enabling us to go so fast and have this broad portfolio of vehicles.”
Other legacy automakers including Ford, BMW and Toyota aren’t expected to start production with dedicated EV platforms for another few years because of the time it takes to develop and build out plants. Tesla and other EV startups, meanwhile, don’t have the same scale as legacy automakers.
“We already have what other people are just now talking about that they’re going to do, and I don’t think the world quite realizes that yet,” said Barra, who is pushing to make GM a “platform innovator” and leverage its Ultium technologies across industries including aviation and autonomous ride-sharing.
Mark Wakefield, co-leader of the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners, said having a dedicated EV platform is crucial to lowering production costs and growing scale, as Tesla has done.
“For hitting that mass market, it absolutely needs to be a ground-up EV design,” Wakefield said.
Already, GM’s Ultium platform has helped power the launch of the Cadillac Lyriq crossover and a commercial van, as well as the GMC Hummer pickup. Production of the new models has moved at a snail’s pace, however, as the company works on streamlining operations and battles supply constraints, including limited availability of semiconductor chips.

GM this year is expected to become the first automaker after Tesla to mass-produce lithium-ion batteries for EVs in the U.S., giving it another advantage for nimbly scaling electric vehicles. Other automakers such as Ford and Volkswagen are just putting shovels in the ground for their battery factories.
To unlock value that investors have awarded some EV startups, Wall Street has pressured GM to spin off its electric vehicle business, including Ultium. Barra has remained steadfast in her belief that the assets are better under one company.
The market hasn’t agreed so far. Following a runup to more than $65 a share early this year, GM’s stock has been nearly cut in half to under $35 a share. The price once again marks a 14% decline under Barra’s tenure.
Other factors weighing on the stock include recession fears and rivals Ford and Hyundai outselling the company in electric vehicles. Some analysts also believe GM’s most profitable days may be in the past.

‘Our time will come’

Despite the public fanfare around them, electric vehicles still account for well under 10% of sales in the U.S. It’s why many experts and analysts predict that Tesla’s dominance will wane as legacy automakers and newcomers such as Rivian and Lucid aggressively ramp up production.
“It’s almost like a feeding frenzy on Tesla as the market ramps up,” said Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting and the Americas at research firm LMC Automotive.
The firm expects GM to be the first Detroit automaker to top Tesla in electric vehicle sales, in part because of the company’s scale and Ultium platform. But LMC doesn’t forecast that to happen until 2029.
John Murphy, lead analyst at BofA Securities, expects GM to overtake Tesla by mid-decade, in line with Barra’s own prediction.

“Our time will come,” Barra said during an interview early this year at Detroit’s historic Fox Theater. At the time, GM was unveiling an electric version of its popular Chevrolet Silverado.
The pickup truck is slated to roll out next year, along with electric versions of the Chevrolet Equinox and Chevrolet Blazer. As the company’s first mainstream EVs designed with the Ultium platform, their sales performance will be key in signaling the company’s fate in coming years.
GM executives say the company’s fleet of EVs could position it to overtake Tesla by 2025. So far, the company has announced about half of its 30 EVs planned by then. Nearly all are based on the Ultium platform, and many trace their roots back to the models displayed in the company’s design dome in 2017.
Executives also say their efforts are about to begin paying major dividends for the company and its shareholders, as it plans to double annual revenue to $280 billion by 2030.
Next year could also bring another milestone for GM. If Barra, who lives in suburban Detroit with her husband, continues to lead the automaker through next summer, she would make history again by becoming its longest-serving CEO since Alfred Sloan, GM’s first CEO, who served for 13 years.
It’s another goal Barra seems confident she’ll hit.
“This is some of the most exciting times, and we’ve done all the legwork. So, I’m committed,” she said.

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President Joe Biden likely has the BA.5 Covid-19 variant but his symptoms “continue to improve,” according to the White House.
His primary symptoms are sore throat, rhinorrhea, loose cough and body aches, said the White House physician.

President Joe Biden, who tested positive today for Covid-19 this morning, posts on Twitter “Folks, I’m doing great. Thanks for your concern. Just called Senator Casey, Congressman Cartwright, and Mayor Cognetti (and my Scranton cousins!) to send my regrets for missing our event today.”
Courtesy: White House

President Joe Biden likely has the BA.5 Covid-19 variant but his symptoms “continue to improve,” according to the White House.
“His primary symptoms, though less troublesome, now include sore throat, rhinorrhea, loose cough and body aches,” White House physician Kevin O’Connor said in a memorandum on Saturday.

The president on Friday completed his second full day of Pfizer’s Paxlovid, an antiviral pill that can reduce the risk of hospitalization for Covid-19 patients, O’Connor said.
While the president is responding to the therapy “as expected,” he has likely contracted the Covid-19 BA.5 variant, which is currently responsible for 70% to 85% of U.S. infections.
Biden, who is fully vaccinated and received two booster shots, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday and has reported “very mild symptoms.”

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The WHO declared monkeypox a global health emergency.
The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed.
The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Europe is the epicenter of the outbreak. Right now, men who have sex with men are the community at highest risk.
The WHO chief said the global risk is moderate, but the threat is high in Europe.
Monkeypox is unlikely to disrupt international trade or travel right now, the WHO chief said.

Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

The World Health Organization has activated its highest alert level for the growing monkeypox outbreak, declaring the virus a public health emergency of international concern.
The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed to prevent the virus from spreading further and potentially escalating into a pandemic.

Although the declaration does not impose requirements on national governments, it serves as an urgent call for action. The WHO can only issue guidance and recommendations to its member states, not mandates. Member states are required to report events that pose a threat to global health.
The U.N. agency declined last month to declare a global emergency in response to monkeypox. But infections have increased substantially over the past several weeks, pushing WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to issue the highest alert.
Before a global health emergency is declared, the WHO’s emergency committee meets to weigh the evidence and make a recommendation to the director general. The committee was unable to reach a consensus on whether monkeypox constitutes an emergency. Tedros, as the WHO’s chief, made the decision to issue the highest alert based on the rapid spread of the outbreak around the world.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little,” Tedros said. “For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.” 
More than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported across more than 70 countries so far this year, and the number of confirmed infections rose 77% from late June through early July, according to WHO data. Men who have sex with men are currently at highest risk of infection.

Five deaths from the virus have been reported in Africa this year. No deaths have been reported outside Africa so far.
Most people are recovering from monkeypox in two to four weeks, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus causes a rash that can spread over the body. People who have caught the virus said the rash, which looks like pimples or blisters, can be very painful.
The current monkeypox outbreak is highly unusual because it is spreading widely in North American and European nations where the virus is not usually found. Historically, monkeypox has spread at low levels in remote parts of West and Central Africa where rodents and other animals carried the virus.
Europe is currently the global epicenter of the outbreak, reporting more than 80% of confirmed infections worldwide in 2022. The U.S. has reported more than 2,500 monkeypox cases so far across 44 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Tedros said the risk posed by monkeypox is moderate globally, but the threat is high in Europe. There’s clearly a risk that the virus will continue to spread around the world, he said, though it’s unlikely to disrupt global trade or travel right now.
In early May, the United Kingdom reported a case of monkeypox in a person who recently returned from travel to Nigeria. Several days later, the U.K. reported three more cases of monkeypox in people who appeared to have become infected locally. Other European nations, Canada and the U.S. then also began confirming cases. It’s unclear where the outbreak actually began.
The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and two months later declared it a pandemic. The WHO has no official process to declare a pandemic under its organizational laws, which means the term is loosely defined. In 2020, the agency declared Covid a pandemic in an effort to warn complacent governments about the “alarming levels of spread and severity” of the virus.
The WHO’s lead expert on monkeypox, Dr. Rosamund Lewis, told reporters in May that the U.N. health agency was not concerned about monkeypox causing a global pandemic. She said public health authorities had a window of opportunity to contain the outbreak.
But infectious disease experts are concerned that health authorities have failed to contain the outbreak, and monkeypox will permanently take root in countries where the virus wasn’t previously found with the exception of isolated cases linked to travel.

Monkeypox is not a new virus

In contrast to Covid-19, monkeypox is not a new virus. Scientists first discovered monkeypox in 1958 in captive monkeys used for research in Denmark, and confirmed the first case of a human infected with the virus in 1970 in the nation of Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Monkeypox is in the same virus family as smallpox, though it causes milder disease. The WHO and national health agencies have decades of experience fighting smallpox, which was declared eradicated in 1980. The successful fight against smallpox, and the tools developed against it, will provide health officials with important knowledge to combat monkeypox.

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Transmission of monkeypox between people was relatively rare in the past, and the virus normally jumped from animals to humans. But monkeypox is now spreading more efficiently between people. The WHO has said the international community did not invest enough resources in fighting monkeypox in Africa before the global outbreak.
“This transmission has been occurring in African countries in two particular zones over a large number of years, and we don’t fully understand what’s driving transmission in those countries,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s health emergencies program, earlier this week. “There’s a lot more investigation to do and a lot more investment to make in understanding that problem.”

Gay, bisexual men at highest risk

Monkeypox is primarily spreading through skin-to-skin contact during sex. Men who have sex with men are at the highest risk right now, as the majority of transmission has occurred in the gay community. However, the WHO and the CDC have emphasized that anyone can catch monkeypox regardless of sexual orientation.
Scientists in Spain and Italy detected monkeypox virus DNA in semen from positive patients, though it’s still unclear whether whether the virus can spread through semen during sex. The Spanish scientists also detected monkeypox DNA in saliva samples.
It’s also unclear whether the virus can spread when people are infected but don’t have symptoms, known as asymptomatic transmission.
Lewis, the WHO’s monkeypox expert, said 99% of cases reported outside Africa are among men and 98% of infections are among men who have sex with men, primarily those who have had multiple, recent anonymous or new sexual partners. The virus has been detected outside the gay community, but transmission has been low so far. The CDC confirmed monkeypox in two children on Friday.
The WHO and CDC have repeatedly warned against stigmatizing gay and bisexual men, while at the same time stressing the importance of communicating the reality of how the virus is currently spreading so people in communities at highest risk can take action to protect their health.
“People want the information to know how to protect themselves, in what circumstances are people perhaps at risk or getting infected,” Lewis said earlier this week. It’s crucial for health agencies and community organizers to broadly disseminate information on how to reduce the risk of infection ahead of major celebrations and festivals this summer, she said.
Tedros warned stigma and discrimination are violations of human rights that will undermine the public health response to the outbreak. He called on national governments to protect individuals’ fundamental rights as they respond to the virus.
“We seek your strong commitment to uphold human dignity, human rights so that we can control this outbreak,” Tedros said.

Symptoms and risk factors

The U.S. CDC recommends that people avoid intimate physical contact with individuals who have a rash that looks like monkeypox, and consider minimizing sex with multiple or anonymous partners. People should also consider avoiding sex parties or other events where people aren’t wearing a lot of clothing.
Individuals who do decide to have sex with a partner who has monkeypox should follow CDC guidance on lowering their risk, according to the health agency.
In the past, monkeypox normally began with symptoms similar to the flu, including fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion and swollen lymph nodes. The disease then progressed into a rash that can spread over the body. Patients are considered most infectious when the rash develops.
But in the current outbreak the symptoms have been atypical. Some people are developing a rash first, while others are showing a rash without any flu-like symptoms at all. Many patients have developed a localized rash on their genitals and anus.
The CDC and WHO have said the rash is easily confused with common sexually transmitted diseases. They have told health care providers that they should not rule out monkeypox simply because a patient tests positive for a sexually transmitted disease.
Although monkeypox can spread through respiratory droplets, that method requires prolonged face-to-face interaction, according to the CDC. Health officials do not believe monkeypox is spreading through small aerosol particles like Covid. Respiratory droplets are heavier so they do not stay airborne for as long, while Covid is an airborne virus, which is one of the reasons it’s so contagious.
Monkeypox can also spread through contact with contaminated materials, such as bedsheets and clothing.
“This disease is transmissible, but it’s not that transmissible. It’s a disease in which transmission can be contained,” Ryan said. “Like we said in Covid, don’t be the person to pass this disease on.”

Vaccines

Because monkeypox is not a new virus, there are already vaccines and antivirals to prevent and treat the disease it causes, though they are in short supply. The U.S. is already distributing tens of thousands of doses of a vaccine called Jynneos in an effort to quash the outbreak. The Food and Drug Administration approved the two-dose vaccine in 2019 for adults ages 18 and older who are at high risk of monkeypox or smallpox infection.
The Biden administration has distributed more than 300,000 Jynneos doses to states and cities since May and another 786,000 doses are being delivered to the U.S. The Health and Human Services Department has ordered another 5 million doses through 2023.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the demand for monkeypox vaccines is outstripping the available supply in the U.S., which has led to long lines in places such as New York City — an epicenter of the outbreak.
Jynneos is manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, a biotech company based in Denmark. Right, now Bavarian Nordic has up to 5 million doses available for the rest of the world excluding the U.S., a company spokesperson said. But Bavarian Nordic has the capacity to fill 40 million liquid frozen and 8 million freeze dried doses a year, the spokesperson said.
The U.S. also has more than 100 million doses of an older generation smallpox vaccine called ACAM2000, made by Emergent BioSolutions, that is also likely effective at preventing monkeypox. But ACAM2000 can have serious side effects and is not recommended for people who have weak immune systems, including HIV patients, people who have certain skin conditions and pregnant women.
ACAM2000 uses a mild virus strain in the same family as monkeypox and smallpox to confer immunity. But the mild strain used by the vaccine can replicate, which means people who receive ACAM2000 have to take precautions to make sure they do not give the virus to others or spread a rash from the injection site to other parts of their body. The Jynneos vaccine does not have this risk because it does not use a replicating virus strain.
There is no data yet on the effectiveness of the vaccines against monkeypox in the current outbreak, according to the CDC.
The WHO is not recommending mass vaccination at this time, and the U.S. is currently reserving the vaccines in its stockpile for people who have confirmed or presumed monkeypox exposures. Unlike Covid, vaccines against smallpox and monkeypox can be administered after exposure due to the viruses’ long incubation period. But the vaccines need to be administered within four days of exposure for the best chance of preventing onset of the disease, according to the CDC.

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In 1993, the Dutch port complex in Rotterdam became the first to introduce machine automation and has since become the model for a fully automated terminal, most of which have emerged since the 2010s in Asia and Europe.
There are near 1,000 container ports in the world, yet last year, according to a report by the International Transport Forum, only around 53 were automated, representing 4% of the total global container terminal capacity.
The argument about the economic efficiency of automating port work is a key one in the current labor union contract dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA).

Shipping containers are transported by automated guided vehicles (AGV) beside gantry cranes on the dockside at the Delta Terminal, operated by Europe Container Terminals BV (ECT), at the Port of Rotterdam in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
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The sight last year of dozens of gigantic container vessels anchored for weeks off the coast of Los Angeles rocked the shipping industry and magnified the worldwide disruption of supply chains. Most of the ships, mainly bound from Asia, were waiting to enter the already backed-up ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and offload tens of thousands of multicolored containers jam-packed with everything from toys to Toyotas. More than 30% of all containerized U.S. maritime imports pass through the two facilities, which together comprise the nation’s largest port complex.
Hoisting that cargo, from ship to shore and onto anxiously awaiting destinations near and far, is the job of dockworkers belonging to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) — and who presently are embroiled in a logjam of their own. The union represents more than 22,000 longshoremen in 29 ports and terminals up and down the West Coast; about 13,000 are employed at 12 ports along Southern California’s San Pedro Bay. Since early May, the ILWU has been deadlocked in contract negotiations with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents 70 shipping companies and port and terminal operators.

The current ILWU contract, enacted in 2015, expired on July 1. While talks continue, both sides have at least allayed fears of a potential work slowdown or stoppage — which would only exacerbate the ports’ persistent backlogs — by jointly stating in mid June that “neither party is preparing for a strike or a lockout.”
Typical of labor negotiations, wages are an issue, though ILWU members are among the best-paid union workers in the country, averaging $195,000 a year plus benefits, according to the PMA. More contentious is the matter of automation of container-handling machinery, an emerging trend at ports and terminals throughout the world.
The PMA wants to expand the previously agreed-to use of remotely controlled cranes, which lift containers off of and onto ships and transfer them to and from landside stacks, and yard tractors that shuttle containers around the terminals, including on and off tractor trailers and railcars. The association released a related study in May, claiming that “increasing automation will enable the largest West Coast ports to remain competitive, facilitate both cargo and job growth, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to meet stringent local environmental standards.”

ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – OCTOBER 27: A general view shipping containers and cranes which move them at the Port of Rotterdam on October 27, 2017 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe covering 105 square kilometres or 41 sqaure miles and stretches over a distance of 40 kilometres or 25 miles. Its one of the busiest ports in the world handling thousands of cargo containers on a daily basis. (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Dean Mouhtaropoulos | Getty Images News | Getty Images

A report prepared by the Economic Roundtable and underwritten by the ILWU’s Coast Longshore Division, released on June 30, disputes many of the points in the PMA study, stating in particular that port automation eliminates jobs. “We often think that technology and automation are synonymous with progress, but after looking at evidence from ports around the world, this is not a win-lose issue, but rather a lose-lose issue for both workers and the American public,” said Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable and co-author of the report, in an email to CNBC. “Automation of shipping terminals isn’t cost-effective or more productive, but it enables foreign shipping giants to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with American workers and the union that represents them.”
The divergent reports not only document the ongoing ILWU-PMA contract negotiations, but more broadly rehash arguments for and against automation dating back to the dawn of America’s industrial revolution in the late 1700s, when mechanized textile mills opened, purging scores of laborers. Three centuries on, the matter of machines replacing human workers continues to impact most every business sector, from auto manufacturing to zookeeping.

The most rudimentary — and universally adopted — type of automation at seaport and terminal operations is the computerization and digitization of forms, data, record-keeping and other administrative functions. This innovation has supplanted clerks who manually wrote or typed such information, but also has created new IT jobs. Much as electronic medical records have become ubiquitous in the health-care industry, process automation is standard in shipping.
The implementation of automated container-handling and transporting equipment, including operating software and, more recently, augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, is comparatively nascent. In 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development stated there were 939 container ports in the world. Yet last year, according to a report by the International Transport Forum, only around 53 were automated, representing 4% of the total global container terminal capacity. Most of them have emerged since the 2010s and more than half are located in Asia and Europe.
There is a distinction between fully and semi-automated terminals. Fully automated refers to the various equipment that handles containers, principally cranes and yard tractors. They don’t require human operators onboard, and instead are remotely operated by humans in control towers, monitoring screens and cameras. Although dockworkers may be needed to manually secure a crane’s hooks to a container or a container to a truck chassis or railcar. A semi-automated terminal generally has remote-controlled cranes and human-driven yard tractors.
In 1993, the Dutch port complex in Rotterdam became the first to introduce machine automation and has since become the model for a fully automated terminal. Today, several of the busiest foreign ports in the world have some degree of machine automation, including those in Shanghai, Singapore, Antwerp and Hamburg.
Operators in the U.S. have been slower to automate, for numerous reasons, but union resistance remains a primary one. In its 2002 contract, after the PMA authorized a 10-day lockout, the ILWU agreed to computerized process automation. In 2008, in exchange for a nearly $900-million addition to its pension fund and other retirement benefits, the union agreed that operators, at their discretion, could implement machine automation.
The West Coast longshoremen also have a significant financial safety net. The current labor contract includes a pay-guarantee plan that ensures up to 40 hours of weekly income if an eligible ILWU member is unable to obtain full-time work for any reason, including automation. This weekly income is guaranteed until retirement.
In 2016, the TraPac terminal in Los Angeles became the first U.S. port to fully automate. More recently, a portion of the APM Terminal facility in Los Angeles and the Long Beach Container Terminal (LBCT) also were fully automated. 

In this latest round of talks, the ILWU is asking operators to hold off on further automation in the San Pedro Bay ports. Its objections are laid out in the Economic Roundtable report, and are countered in the PMA’s. To date, neither side has conceded, and have mutually initiated a media blackout during negotiations.
Meanwhile, there are three semi-automated ports on the Eastern Seaboard — two in Norfolk, Virginia, and one at the Port of New York and New Jersey terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey. Dockworkers at those facilities are members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), which represents nearly 65,000 members at ports along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. The ILA is not part of the ILWU negotiations, but is similarly opposed to further automation.
It is perfectly normal for the dockworkers’ unions to protect the jobs of their members. “A conservative analysis of job loss shows that automation eliminated 572 full-time-equivalent jobs annually at LBCT and TraPac in 2020 and 2021,” the ILWU-funded study said.
Likewise, port and terminal operators want to boost efficiency and productivity through automation, especially at high-volume ports that have limited future cargo capacities and where truckers are frustrated by long wait times to load and unload containers. Operators contend that job losses can be offset by reskilling and upskilling current workers to run automated systems, leading to increased pay and improved safety. In fact, the PMA is building a 20,000-square-foot training center for ILWU workers. Plus, new tech-related jobs, such as data analysts and software developers, will need to be filled.
“The fear that automation will hurt union workers is understandable, but it’s not the case that it leads to a big loss in jobs,” said Michael Nacht, a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and co-author of the PMA report. “A direct comparison of the data shows the same number of workers at automated and non-automated facilities,” he said, citing separate reports on automation from McKinsey and Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On the other hand, not every port is a candidate for automation, in terms of cost-benefit analyses. Up-front capital expenditures can run into the billions for new equipment and infrastructure, whether retrofitting an existing terminal or building a new one from scratch. And depending on the geographic location of the port, the type cargo it handles and the volume of containers moving in and out, improving manually operated systems might be more cost-effective.
Automation, across all global industries, has historically proven to be an inexorable force, so its expansion at ports and terminals over the next five to 10 years seems inevitable. “One thing that the Covid-19 pandemic revealed is how fragile some of the supply chains are in and out of the ports,” said an executive for a terminal operations company, who requested anonymity because of relationships with unions and operators. “For us to be responsible service providers, we need to find more resilience, and automation can do that. Hopefully we can find our way through [the ILWU-PMA contract negotiations] collectively and make things better for everybody. That would be a good outcome.” More

The Covid-19 pandemic caused chaos in the U.S. housing market, with prices skyrocketing, inventories dwindling and intense bidding wars.
Then came record inflation, which drove the price of everything higher.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, though, is waging an intense fight against rising prices, using interest rates as its primary weapon.
A side effect of raising interest rates, though, is higher mortgage rates.
What’s more, the Fed now owns $2.7 trillion of mortgage bonds, part of its plan to prop up the financial system when Covid first started. And it began selling them in June.
So what does the Fed’s fight against inflation mean for the red-hot housing market? Watch the video above to find out more about how the Fed’s interest rate tools affect the housing market, and how the Fed plans to unload the trillions of dollars worth of mortgage debt on its balance sheet.

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