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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.This article is an on-site version of our Europe Express newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every weekday and Saturday morningGood morning. There are seven short days left until the last EU leaders’ summit of the year, and no sign of a compromise deal on any of the key issues that will be discussed there. The bloc’s diplomats will earn their Christmas break over the coming week.Today, our excellent new finance and economy correspondent walks you through the crunch decision on debt and deficit rules facing EU ministers tonight over supper, while our Athens correspondent previews the first visit by Turkey’s president to Greece in six years.Main courseFinance ministers are due to chew on a reform of EU fiscal rules at dinner this evening, but a compromise digestible to all is proving hard to serve up, writes Paola Tamma.Context: Rules governing debt and deficits in the EU, known as the Stability and Growth Pact, are considered too strict and were haphazardly enforced. The European Commission in spring proposed an overhaul in favour of multiannual, custom-made spending plans, essentially giving countries more time to bring down excessive debt.But the proposals were considered too lax by a group of countries led by Germany, who successfully pushed for tighter requirements or “safeguards”.The latest compromise that’s in front of ministers today further accedes to German demands by setting numerical targets for annual debt cuts and limiting annual spending.“We see that as a big success in the negotiations,” a senior German official said, rating the chances of a deal at 50/50, “if not better”.This in turn roils others, including France and Italy, who fear they have little to gain from swapping the status quo, imperfect as it is, for a reform that would curtail public investments and constrain spending at a time of rising interest costs.The commission is also afraid that the safeguards grafted on its proposal fundamentally undermine the goal of having simpler rules that would not deepen an economic contraction.“The goal of simplification is out of the window. That of creating a countercyclical system is at risk,” said an EU official.Still, for many if not all, a bad deal is better than no deal.“I think we still will be arriving at a system that will preserve the basic parameters of the commission’s proposal, even though maybe with some substantial deviations,” EU executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis told the Financial Times.Spain’s goal is to get ministers to back a deal by Friday. It would then be up to Belgium, who’s taking over the rotating EU Council presidency from Spain in January, to negotiate a compromise with parliament, which still needs to vote on its own position. The final goal is to wrap this up before EU elections next June. Bon appétit.Chart du jour: Taking on ElonYou are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.As Tesla’s battle with Swedish unions spreads to Denmark, the FT’s editorial board argues that Elon Musk should adapt to the European social model, not the other way around. FrenemiesTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visits Athens today for the first time since 2017 to meet Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, aiming to reinforce the recently warming climate between the two leaders, writes Eleni Varvitsioti. Context: Relations between Athens and Ankara have been rocky for years, with tensions heightening in 2020 when Turkey sent warships alongside a survey ship to look for possible oil and gas reserves in disputed waters in the Aegean. The two leaders have not had direct, bilateral contact since May 2022, when Mitsotakis lobbied against Ankara’s efforts to buy F-16 fighter jets from Washington. “There’s no longer anyone called Mitsotakis in my book,” Erdoğan said back then.Erdoğan yesterday explicitly linked Washington’s approval for that F-16 purchase to Turkey’s approval of Sweden’s membership of Nato — another issue that the two leaders are likely to discuss.The visit follows Greece’s response to a devastating earthquake in Turkey last February, which left thousands dead and millions displaced. Athens saw it as an opportunity to unfreeze the diplomatic relations between the two countries and was one of the first countries to send humanitarian aid.One of the main items on the agenda today will be migration and improving communication channels between the two countries’ coast guards. There is also an expected announcement of an initiative to grant Turkish citizens one-year visas to visit the East Aegean Islands.What to watch today European Council president Charles Michel and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen are in Beijing for the EU-China summit.French President Emmanuel Macron hosts Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for a working dinner in Paris.Eurogroup finance ministers meet.EU industry ministers meet.Now read theseRecommended newsletters for you Free lunch — Your guide to the global economic policy debate. Sign up hereTrade Secrets — A must-read on the changing face of international trade and globalisation. Sign up hereAre you enjoying Europe Express? Sign up here to have it delivered straight to your inbox every workday at 7am CET and on Saturdays at noon CET. Do tell us what you think, we love to hear from you: [email protected]. Keep up with the latest European stories @FT Europe More

After staving off collapse by cutting costs, many young tech companies are out of options, fueling a cash bonfire.WeWork raised more than $11 billion in funding as a private company. Olive AI, a health care start-up, gathered $852 million. Convoy, a freight start-up, raised $900 million. And Veev, a home construction start-up, amassed $647 million.In the last six weeks, they all filed for bankruptcy or shut down. They are the most recent failures in a tech start-up collapse that investors say is only beginning.After staving off mass failure by cutting costs over the past two years, many once-promising tech companies are now on the verge of running out of time and money. They face a harsh reality: Investors are no longer interested in promises. Rather, venture capital firms are deciding which young companies are worth saving and urging others to shut down or sell.It has fueled an astonishing cash bonfire. In August, Hopin, a start-up that raised more than $1.6 billion and was once valued at $7.6 billion, sold its main business for just $15 million. Last month, Zeus Living, a real estate start-up that raised $150 million, said it was shutting down. Plastiq, a financial technology start-up that raised $226 million, went bankrupt in May. In September, Bird, a scooter company that raised $776 million, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because of its low stock price. Its $7 million market capitalization is less than the value of the $22 million Miami mansion that its founder, Travis VanderZanden, bought in 2021.“As an industry we should all be braced to hear about a lot more failures,” said Jenny Lefcourt, an investor at Freestyle Capital. “The more money people got before the party ended, the longer the hangover.”Getting a full picture of the losses is difficult since private tech companies are not required to disclose when they go out of business or sell. The industry’s gloom has also been masked by a boom in companies focused on artificial intelligence, which has attracted hype and funding over the last year.But approximately 3,200 private venture-backed U.S. companies have gone out of business this year, according to data compiled for The New York Times by PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. Those companies had raised $27.2 billion in venture funding. PitchBook said the data was not comprehensive and probably undercounts the total because many companies go out of business quietly. It also excluded many of the largest failures that went public, such as WeWork, or that found buyers, like Hopin.Carta, a company that provides financial services for many Silicon Valley start-ups, said 87 of the start-ups on its platform that raised at least $10 million had shut down this year as of October, twice the number for all of 2022.This year has been “the most difficult year for start-ups in at least a decade,” Peter Walker, Carta’s head of insights, wrote on LinkedIn.Venture investors say that failure is normal and that for every company that goes out of business, there is an outsize success like Facebook or Google. But as many companies that have languished for years now show signs of collapse, investors expect the losses to be more drastic because of how much cash was invested over the last decade.From 2012 to 2022, investment in private U.S. start-ups ballooned eightfold to $344 billion. The flood of money was driven by low interest rates and successes in social media and mobile apps, propelling venture capital from a cottage financial industry that operated largely on one road in a Silicon Valley town to a formidable global asset class akin to hedge funds or private equity.During that period, venture capital investing became trendy — even 7-Eleven and “Sesame Street” launched venture funds — and the number of private “unicorn” companies worth $1 billion or more exploded from a few dozen to more than 1,000.But the advertising profits gushing from the likes of Facebook and Google proved elusive for the next wave of start-ups, which have tried untested business models like gig work, the metaverse, micromobility and cryptocurrencies.Now some companies are choosing to shut down before they run out of cash, returning what remains to investors. Others are stuck in “zombie” mode — surviving but unable to grow. They can muddle along like that for years, investors said, but will most likely struggle to raise more money.Convoy, the freight start-up that investors valued at $3.8 billion, spent the last 18 months cutting costs, laying off staff and otherwise adapting to the difficult market. It wasn’t enough.As the company’s money ran low this year, it lined up three potential buyers, all of whom backed out. Coming so close, said Dan Lewis, Convoy’s co-founder and chief executive, “was one of the hardest parts.” The company ceased operations in October. In a memo to employees, Mr. Lewis called the situation “the perfect storm.”Such port-mortem assessments, where founders announce their company is closing and reflect on lessons learned, have become common.One entrepreneur, Ishita Arora, wrote this week that she had to “confront reality” that Dayslice, her scheduling software start-up, was not attracting enough customers to satisfy investors. She returned some of the cash she had raised. Gabor Cselle, a founder of Pebble, a social media start-up, wrote last month that despite feeling that he had let the community down, trying and failing was worth it. Pebble is returning to investors a small portion of the money it had raised, Mr. Cselle said. “It felt like the right thing to do.”Amanda Peyton was surprised by the reaction to her blog post in October about the “dread and loneliness” of shutting down her payments start-up, Braid. More than 100,000 people read it, and she was flooded with messages of encouragement and gratitude from fellow entrepreneurs.Ms. Peyton said she had once felt that the opportunity and potential for growth in software was infinite. “It’s become clear that that’s not true,” she said. “The market has a ceiling.”Venture capital investors have taken to gently urging some founders to consider walking away from doomed companies, rather than waste years grinding away.“It might be better to accept reality and throw in the towel,” Elad Gil, a venture capital investor, wrote in a blog post this year. He did not respond to a request for comment.Ms. Lefcourt of Freestyle Ventures said that so far, two of her firm’s start-ups had done exactly that, returning 50 cents on the dollar to investors. “We’re trying to point out to founders, ‘Hey, you don’t want to be caught in no man’s land,’” she said.One area that is thriving? Companies in the business of failure.SimpleClosure, a start-up that helps other start-ups wind down their operations, has barely been able to keep up with demand since it opened in September, said Dori Yona, the founder. Its offerings include helping prepare legal paperwork and settling obligations to investors, vendors, customers and employees.It was sad to see so many start-ups shutting down, Mr. Yona said, but it felt special to help founders find closure — both literally and figuratively — in a difficult time. And, he added, it is all part of Silicon Valley’s circle of life.“A lot of them are already working on their next companies,” he said.Kirsten Noyes More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The long-predicted weaponisation of trade has, it seems, finally arrived. The US-China rivalry and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have politicised commerce to an extent not seen since the cold war. It’s not just that governments are increasingly blocking geopolitical rivals’ access to militarily sensitive technology. The big trading powers have also restricted exports of vital materials and tried to prevent adversaries selling their own commodities abroad.  But just because governments are keen on export curbs and trade sanctions doesn’t mean they work. Beijing’s imposition of controls on critical minerals, the US-led G7 club of rich countries’ sanctions on Russian oil, Russia’s own attempted coercion of western Europe by cutting off gas supply: all have caused alarm, but none has yet succeeded in crippling its target. Governments cannot muster enough control over global demand to choke off trade, supply chains are agile, sometimes illicitly so, and end users have found alternatives.China caused much talk of weaponising commodities in July by restricting exports of gallium and germanium, two minerals used in chips and other high-tech applications, of which it produces most of the world’s supply. European manufacturers in particular were genuinely alarmed, but so far it turns out to be a less-than-devastating move. Prices jumped, but not to historically stratospheric levels. The two minerals are only a tiny part of manufacturers’ input costs — the US Geological Service says just $36mn worth of germanium was used in the US in 2021 — and can if necessary be made elsewhere. Perhaps mindful of this, China started lifting the curbs in late September.Similarly Vladimir Putin last year failed to disable western European manufacturing and freeze its households into submission over Ukraine by restricting gas supply. Germany surprisingly swiftly switched to LNG and cut energy consumption. It has had an unpleasant energy shock, but not enough to bully Olaf Scholz’s government out of supporting Kyiv’s war effort. Putin’s ability to use energy for blackmail has been permanently weakened and indeed backfired: as a pipeline fuel, natural gas cannot easily be diverted elsewhere. Europe lost its main supplier, but Putin lost his best customer. You come at your monopsonist, you’d best not miss.The G7’s and EU’s attempts to throttle Russia’s oil export revenues by imposing a $60 price cap a year ago were initially somewhat successful, pushing down the international price of Russian oil by $30-$40 a barrel. But as the Financial Times has reported, its effectiveness has diminished over time as Russia has developed a “dark fleet” of traders to evade controls. The Kyiv School of Economics reckons 99 per cent of seaborne Russian crude exports fetched above $60 a barrel in October, more than 70 per cent using non-G7 vessels and service providers.The G7 and EU simply aren’t big enough parts of the global economy to strangle Russia’s oil sales. Middle-income countries have largely ignored Washington’s exhortation to adopt the price cap. Nor, contrary to hopes in Europe and the US, do the cap and other sanctions seem significantly to have damaged Putin’s standing among the Russian public.Export controls contain the seeds of their own destruction just like producer cartels and attempts to interdict narcotics. Market mechanisms and highly motivated governments work to undermine them, particularly for generic commodities such as oil. Higher prices encourage smuggling and cheating and spur more supply and innovation. Beijing’s implied threat to cut off rare earths exports to Japan over a diplomatic dispute in the early 2010s — though it’s not clear it actually did — initially pushed up prices, but was undermined by smuggling out of China and mines opened elsewhere. Export controls encourage rival research and development in specialised proprietary technology as well as commodities. The current shortages of lithium for electric batteries have stimulated progress in creating sodium ion technology. In August, the Chinese telecoms company Huawei surprised and dismayed the US by releasing a mobile phone model using advanced chips it apparently developed domestically despite American tech sanctions. (Some of the smarter trade-watchers predicted this might happen.)Governments might have learnt from history that trade restrictions often only partially work, and frequently fail to turn public opinion against the sanctioned regime. The US trade embargo since 1962 on Cuba has undoubtedly damaged Cuba’s growth, but has also provided the Communist regime with a ready-made excuse for persistent economic underperformance. The controls on Iraqi oil exports after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait did not end his grip on the country. Sanctions on apartheid South Africa may have had some effect in precipitating the financial crisis that began the end of that evil regime, but the evidence is ambiguous.Now, this is not to say that all export restrictions are pointless. Blocks on defence technology exports to Russia have undoubtedly hampered its military capability, and US control of the global dollar payments system is a powerful tool. But attempts to govern the supply of commodities are battling against a fractured geopolitical landscape where many middle-income countries are happy to trade with anyone, and supply-chain operatives are sinuous and secretive enough to evade controls. Governments are certainly trying to weaponise global trade, but their ordnance has so far inflicted few fatal [email protected] More

China’s vice-premier He Lifeng told Hong Kong’s elite last month that he had “some suggestions” for the territory — a list that included building closer ties with the Middle East.Hong Kong should “further expand its circle of friends” by developing relationships in the region, he said. This week, it is taking an important step in its effort to do so. Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative Institute, which hosts the Gulf state’s so-called Davos in the Desert conference in Riyadh, opened its first Asia gathering in Hong Kong on Thursday.John Lee, the city’s chief executive, said in a speech he was “very delighted” that Hong Kong was hosting the event, adding it was “yet another significant step forward in deepening ties between Hong Kong and the Middle East, particularly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”. Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s $700bn Public Investment Fund, is in Hong Kong for the conference.The event, which comes a year after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia on a trip Beijing hailed as an “epoch-making milestone”, is the latest sign of growing economic ties between the two countries as they seek to reduce their reliance on the west.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, greets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Riyadh in December 2022 More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an adviser to Allianz and GramercySomething peculiar is unfolding once again in the relationship between financial markets and the US Federal Reserve.A disagreement has emerged over the interest rates that the Fed will set in 2024. The more investors disregard the signals emitted by the world’s most influential central bank, the more likely they will find themselves on the losing side of this debate. And the longer this phenomenon persists, the more intriguing the related complexities.This situation became vividly evident in the lead-up to the current “quiet period” for officials on public comments slated to end on December 13 with the conclusion of the Fed’s policy meeting. In this period marked by dovish interpretations — or selective hearing — by markets of several Federal Reserve speeches, all attention was focused on whether chair Jay Powell’s remarks at the end of that week would push back against the market consensus predicting rate cuts starting in early 2024.Powell attempted to do so in two lines of argument. First, he emphasised that “it was premature to conclude with any confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease”. Second, he reminded markets that he and his colleagues on the Fed’s policy-setting committee “are prepared to tighten policy further if it becomes appropriate to do so”. However, these attempts proved unsuccessful, judging by the market reactions.One would expect these signals to partially reverse the eye-catching movement in yields observed in November — a fall of more than 0.60 percentage points for the 10-year Treasury bond and more than 0.40 points lower for the rate-sensitive two-year note. Instead, yields fell by another 10 basis points on the day of Powell remarks, leading to markets pricing in a total by the end of that week a total of five cuts in 2024, with a notable probability of the first one coming as early as March.What adds to the peculiarity is that this is not the first time markets have challenged the Powell-led Fed view on the monetary policy outlook. Just a year ago, a similar scenario unfolded, with markets pricing in cuts for 2023 that never materialised. Consequently, government bonds had a bumpy year and, until November’s robust rally in yields, faced the prospect of a third consecutive year of negative returns.There is a third peculiarity: the more markets diverge from the Fed’s signals, the more likely they are to push the central bank to adopt the path that is detrimental to them. This is because markets’ affinity for rate cuts loosens financial conditions and heightens the Fed’s concerns about inflationary pressures, thereby delaying the rate cuts that the markets are betting on. Indeed, according to a Goldman Sachs index, November was among the largest monthly loosenings in financial conditions on record.As to the why, markets may be willing to risk another beating from the Fed because they are more concerned about a possible recession in 2024. This would align with developments in gold and oil prices but appears inconsistent with a surge in stock prices.Alternatively, the markets might believe that while the Fed officially targets a 2 per cent inflation rate, it might understandably tolerate a slightly higher figure (3 per cent). This aligns with the notion that, having grappled with insufficient aggregate demand in the previous decade, the global economy has entered a multiyear period of less flexible aggregate supply. Factors such as the energy transition, fragmented globalisation, corporate emphasis on resilient supply chains, and less adaptable labour markets contribute to such a shift. Pursuing too low an inflation target in this environment would result in unnecessary sacrifices in growth and livelihoods, as well as a worsening of inequality.The third explanation centres on the Fed’s loss of credibility. This is due to its mischaracterisation of inflation, delayed policy measures, supervisory lapses, poor communication, repeated forecasting errors, questions over the trading of some officials, and weak accountability.Based on the market’s own consensus forecast of the economy and the levels of equity valuations, interest rates could well remain unchanged for longer than what the futures market currently implies. To avoid another potential setback, investors should either prepare for the possibility of higher yields in 2024 or adjust stock valuations accordingly. More

EU leaders met President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a summit during which they plan to press China on industrial overcapacity, amid signs it is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of new funding into the manufacturing of products targeted at European markets.The EU delegation for the annual EU-China summit — the first in-person since the pandemic — is led by European Council president Charles Michel and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. During a meeting on Thursday morning, Xi urged his guests to maintain the “momentum” of the relationship in remarks that sought to differentiate the EU from the US, which Beijing sees as its main strategic rival. “As the two major forces promoting multipolarity, the two major markets that support globalisation . . . China-EU relations are related to world peace, stability, and prosperity,” state media reported Xi as saying.But the EU leaders, who are scheduled to have lunch with Xi before meeting his number two Li Qiang, in the afternoon, are expected to deliver a blunt message to their Chinese counterparts about trade and other issues, such as the Ukraine war.The EU is worried China is increasing its industrial capacity, particularly in renewable energy products, at a time when Chinese domestic demand is weak and other trading partners such as the US are limiting access to their markets. This leaves Europe as an important target for an overflow of China’s exports.Valdis Dombrovskis, EU trade commissioner, told the Financial Times that Chinese overcapacity was “a cause for concern”, adding many countries’ markets were more protected against cheap Chinese exports.“Our trade relations are imbalanced. Last year we had an almost €400bn trade deficit,” Dombrovskis said. “On Chinese electrical vehicles there is a 25 per cent tariff in the US. We have seen tariffs in India and Turkey and the EU is now the largest market which is open.” European business said the deficit stemmed in part from China’s state subsidies and barriers to foreign companies. The EU this year launched an anti-subsidy investigation into imports of electric vehicles from China. On Wednesday, Brussels announced €3bn in subsidies to encourage electric vehicle battery production in an attempt to reduce reliance on China.Beijing has accused Brussels of “a naked protectionist act” over the anti-subsidy inquiry and criticised EU efforts at “de-risking”, in which the trading bloc is seeking to cut its dependency on some Chinese goods.But EU member states vary in their stances towards Beijing and the union has stressed it wants to reach compromise on trade disagreements with China, rather than resort to unilateral measures.Concern about Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is being fuelled by data showing state banks have cut new lending to China’s debt-stricken property sector and are instead targeting industries such as electric vehicles.While bond issuance by Chinese industry has slowed, outstanding bank loans to the sector were up about 31 per cent, or Rmb5tn, in the third quarter of this year, compared with a year earlier. Lending to the manufacturing sector was up 38 per cent.You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.During earnings calls this year, executives of China’s largest banks cited manufacturing as a priority, in line with Beijing’s strategic objectives of moving industry up the value chain into more valuable production and reducing its dependence on foreign inputs.“We fully support the construction of national critical equipment like domestically produced large aircraft, . . . high-speed trains, manned space flight, and new energy sources,” state-owned lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China said at its analyst conference in June.You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.Agricultural Bank of China, another large state lender, said it was “intensifying its credit support” for the “high-end, intelligent and green transformation of the manufacturing industry”. China Merchants, a medium-sized bank, said at its third-quarter analyst conference that manufacturing loans comprised 46 per cent of its corporate loan disbursements this year.“I am very concerned about some of the lending practices that I see,” said one senior EU official, who said the bloc estimated China lost €30,000 on each electric vehicle it produced. Chinese policymakers wanted to stimulate economic activity while supporting longer-term economic and strategic goals, analysts said. Robin Xing, chief China economist for Morgan Stanley, said Beijing preferred to stimulate the economy by funding green industries, in line with decarbonising goals, rather than by making fiscal transfers directly to households, which could fuel inflation.“I think they will continue to do so next year, doubling down on the green transition capex investment,” Xing added. Other areas would be advanced manufacturing, such as semiconductors and data centres, to serve not just economic goals but security objectives. “What does that mean for the rest of the world? Does that bring more deflation or overcapacity pressure? I think it is plausible,” Xing said. “In many sectors including batteries, green products [and] capital goods, it may be challenging especially for global pricing.” Others said that, while loans were flowing into manufacturing, fixed asset investment in the sector as a whole was growing only about 7 per cent, implying not all companies were investing. The exception was renewable industries, but unless there was a bigger push around the world to meet renewable energy targets, even this industry could struggle to maintain rapid investment growth, they said. “My impression is that the overcapacity comes from the fact that both China and the rest of the world have not installed renewables at the speed that would have been required to fulfil their [climate] targets,” said Alicia García-Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis.She predicted the EU-China summit would disappoint. China was unlikely to change its domestic policies and needed the large trade surplus to help offset capital outflows.The EU, meanwhile, was not likely to yield on issues such as EVs, analysts said.Xi Jinping and Ursula von der Leyen at an EU-China summit in April 2022 More

“Preliminary investigation information indicates a potential materiel failure caused the mishap, but the underlying cause of the failure is unknown at this time,” U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) said in a statement. Eight American service members were aboard the tilt-rotor aircraft when it crashed during a routine training mission last week off Yakushima Island, about 1,040 km (650 miles) southwest of the capital, Tokyo.After the crash, the U.S. military unit that the V-22 Osprey aircraft belonged to suspended flight operations. But the U.S. military had said other aircraft would continue to fly after undergoing safety checks.Tokyo has voiced concern about Osprey flights. The deployment of the aircraft in Japan has been controversial, with critics of the U.S. military presence in the country’s southwest islands saying it is prone to accidents.”The standdown will provide time and space for a thorough investigation to determine causal factors and recommendations to ensure the Air Force CV-22 fleet returns to flight operations,” AFSOC said. More