Economy

(Reuters) – The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) , according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.Musk, the world’s richest person, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected president in November. Removing the crash-disclosure provision would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes – more than 1,500 – to federal safety regulators under the program. Tesla has been targeted in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, including three stemming from the data.The recommendation to kill the crash-reporting rule came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. The group called the measure a mandate for “excessive” data collection, the document seen by Reuters shows.The Trump transition team, Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.Reuters could not determine what role, if any, Musk may have played in crafting the transition-team recommendations or the likelihood that the administration would enact them. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing most major automakers except Tesla, has also criticized the requirement as burdensome.A Reuters analysis of the NHTSA crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15.Among the Tesla crashes NHTSA investigated under the provision were a 2023 fatal accident in Virginia where a driver using the car’s “Autopilot” feature slammed into a tractor-trailer and a California wreck the same year where an Autopiloted Tesla hit a firetruck, killing the driver and injuring four firefighters.NHTSA said in a statement that such data is crucial to evaluating the safety of emerging automated-driving technologies. Two former NHTSA employees said the crash-reporting requirements were pivotal to agency investigations into Tesla’s driver-assistance features that led to 2023 recalls. Without the data, they said, NHTSA cannot easily detect crash patterns that highlight safety problems.NHTSA said it has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency established the rule in 2021. The data has influenced 10 investigations into six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies.In one example, NHTSA fined Cruise, the self-driving startup owned by General Motors (NYSE:GM) , $1.5 million in September for failing to report a 2023 incident in which a vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian who had been struck by another car. GM this week said Cruise will stop development of self-driving technology.CRASH REPORTINGNHTSA’s so-called standing general order requires automakers to report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of impact, among other factors.In addition to ditching the reporting rule, the recommendations call for the administration to “liberalize” autonomous-vehicle regulation and to enact “basic regulations to enable development” of the industry.In an October Tesla earnings call, Musk called for “a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles,” rather than a patchwork of state laws he called “incredibly painful” to navigate. He said he would use his position as a government-efficiency czar, a post Trump had promised him, to push for such regulatory changes.After the election, Trump named Musk to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency to advise from “outside government” on slashing federal staff, spending and regulations.MORE DATA, MORE CRASHESTesla is among the most prominent automakers developing advanced driver-assistance features, which can assist with lane changes, driving speed and steering.Tesla’s Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” systems, which are not fully autonomous, have come under intense scrutiny in lawsuits and a DOJ criminal probe examining whether Tesla exaggerated its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, misleading investors and harming consumers.Tesla despises the crash-notification requirement, believing that NHTSA presents the data in ways that mislead consumers about the automaker’s safety, two sources familiar with Tesla executives’ thinking told Reuters.In recent years, Tesla executives discussed with Musk the need to push for scrapping the crash-reporting requirement, according to one of the sources. But because Biden officials expressed enthusiasm for the program, Tesla executives ultimately concluded that they would need a change in administration to get rid of the requirements, according to the source.Tesla finds the rules unfair because it believes it reports better data than other automakers, which makes it look like Tesla is responsible for an outsized number of crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems, one of the sources said.NHTSA cautions that the data should not be used to compare one automaker’s safety to another because different companies collect information on crashes in different ways.Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who focuses on autonomous driving, said Tesla collects real-time crash data that other companies don’t and likely reports a “far greater proportion of their incidents” than other automakers.Tesla also likely has a greater frequency of crashes involving driver-assistance technologies because it has more vehicles on the road equipped with them and drivers engage the systems more often, Smith said. That means the vehicles may more often get into “situations that they aren’t capable of handling,” he said. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Investors view it as a near given that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its Dec. 17-18 meeting, with more attention focused on policymakers’ new economic projections released alongside the decision.Those projections will include an updated look at how much further Fed officials think they will reduce rates in 2025 and perhaps into 2026, an exercise that will have to account for data in the meantime showing stickier-than-expected inflation, a healthy labor market, a U.S. election result that could shift the global trade and immigration landscape, and ongoing geopolitical risks.With so much to assess, a multitude of new risks, and a lot of uncertainty, many analysts expect the collective messaging from the central bank’s policy statement on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s post-meeting press conference and the updated projections to be somewhat hawkish – with the Fed perhaps closer to a rate-cut stopping point, or at least very reluctant to commit to many more reductions in borrowing costs, than it was just a few months ago.Here are some of the data points Fed policymakers will consider: INFLATION’S STUBBORN DANCEThere hasn’t been much headline improvement in inflation since the Fed’s last economic projections in September or its Nov. 6-7 policy meeting. But some of the components have shifted around in ways that have left policymakers convinced a gradual easing of price pressures, known as disinflation, is underway. Housing cost increases have slowed and the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, which the Fed uses to gauge progress toward its 2% inflation goal, appears headed for a low reading when data for November is released next week. That won’t happen, however, until two days after the end of the Fed’s meeting.HIRING HAS HELD UP  The job market remains one of the central bank’s great surprises. The unemployment rate has risen modestly since the Fed began aggressively raising rates in March of 2022, but at 4.2% remains below the national long-run average and right at the level the median Fed official considers to roughly represent full employment. Absent a bad surprise in December, the jobless rate is likely to end the year below the 4.4% level policymakers had penciled into their September projections.Job creation, meanwhile, has slowed from the fever pitch of recent years, and has caused some policymakers to regard the labor market as running at a sustainable pace right now.Such resilience, though, is one of the reasons policymakers say they want to be careful about future rate cuts, out of concern the economy is actually operating close to potential right now. Cutting the policy rate, currently set in the 4.50%-4.75% range, too far could buoy demand, stretch the economy’s ability to fulfill it, and raise inflation. WAGES OFFSET BY PRODUCTIVITYAnother pleasant surprise in recent data: Workers continue to be more productive over time, and the improvements have been enough to take the edge off of wage increases that otherwise have been a bit too high for the Fed’s inflation comfort zone.Unit labor costs to business, one key to whether a tight job market is feeding into price pressures, have been rising at a more tempered rate as a result.DEMAND DOESN’T QUITAnother sign of economic resilience has been consumer spending, which doesn’t show much sign of cooling beyond its return from the elevated levels of the COVID-19 pandemic to something more like the pre-pandemic trend.As long as people are employed and earning, they will spend, one of the important conditions for the “soft landing” from elevated inflation that Fed officials feel they are close to achieving. More

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Britain’s economy contracted unexpectedly in October, according to data from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.
GDP fell by 0.1%, the latest print showed, marking the second consecutive monthly downturn.
The British pound was trading lower against the dollar Friday morning.

Bank of England in the City of London on 6th November 2024 in London, United Kingdom. The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the primary central business district CBD of London. The City of London is widely referred to simply as the City is also colloquially known as the Square Mile. (photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Mike Kemp | In Pictures | Getty Images

The U.K. economy contracted unexpectedly in October amid uncertainty from businesses and consumers ahead of the newly elected government’s budget announcement.  
Gross Domestic Product fell by an estimated 0.1% on a monthly basis, the ONS said Friday, with officials attributing the downturn to a decline in production output. Economists polled by news agency Reuters had projected a 0.1% rise in GDP in October.

It marked the country’s second consecutive economic downturn, following a 0.1% GDP decline in September.
Real GDP is estimated to have grown 0.1% in the three months to October, the ONS said, compared to the previous three months ending in July.
Sterling declined on the back of the disappointing print, trading 0.3% lower against the U.S. dollar at $1.2627 by 7:45 a.m. London time.
In a statement on Friday, U.K. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves conceded that the October figures were “disappointing,” but defended the government’s divisive economic strategies.
“We have put in place policies to deliver long term economic growth,” she said, citing changes such as a cap on corporation tax and the launch of a 10-year infrastructure strategy.

In late October, Reeves unveiled the government’s first budget since replacing the longstanding Conservative government in July.
The budget included plans from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to raise taxes by £40 billion ($50.5 billion). Reeves said at the time that this would be achieved through a raft of new policies, including a hike in employer National Insurance payments — a tax on earnings — as well as a rise in capital gains tax and the scrapping of winter fuel payments to pensioners.
Some of the policies have been met with widespread criticism. The national insurance payroll tax hike, for example, has prompted warnings from businesses that they will be less likely to take on new workers, with a report from recruitment site Indeed this week suggesting the policy had already had an effect on British job openings.

Interest rate impact

The October GDP print marked a fresh blow to the U.K. economy, which is still struggling to keep inflation in check and also saw weak consumer confidence data in a new reading published Friday.
However, market watchers are not convinced the latest data will alter the Bank of England’s commitment to a “gradual” lowering of interest rates.
The central bank cut rates by 25 basis points at its most recent meeting in November, and is expected to hold rates steady at 4.75% at its subsequent meeting next week, according to overnight index swap data.
Thomas Pugh, U.K. economist at RSM, said the fresh round of data — coupled with inflation in Britain creeping back up toward 3% — indicated a risk that the U.K. was “slipping back into stagflation territory.”
“We still expect the economy to reaccelerate into 2025 — that said, our forecast of 0.3% quarter-on-quarter growth in the fourth quarter now looks too ambitious,” he said.
“In any case, we doubt that today’s data is bad enough to push the Bank of England into surprising markets with an early Christmas present of a rate cut at its meeting on Dec. 19th.”
Meanwhile, Suren Thiru, economics director at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, agreed a Christmas rate cut was “doubtful.”
“Despite these gloomy figures, the likelihood of a rate cut this month remains low with some policymakers likely to be concerned enough by the recent pick-up in inflation to defer relaxing policy again until February,” Thiru said in a note. More

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Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe writer is a faculty member at Yale, formerly chair of Morgan Stanley Asia, and is the author of ‘Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives’A tit-for-tat between China and the US on trade this month hints at what could well lie ahead if Donald Trump delivers on campaign promises to up the ante on Chinese tariffs when he returns to the White House. In a long overdue move, the US has just updated its export sanctions on China, focusing on high-bandwidth memory chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Washington also added another 140 Chinese companies to the commerce department’s so-called “entity list”, effectively making it very difficult for those US companies to supply technology to them.As has been the case since 2018, China has been quick to counterpunch, in this case by banning or limiting US purchases of several critical minerals while tightening controls on graphite. China’s retaliatory action is a surgical strike with important strategic consequences for key US industries, ranging from semiconductors and satellites to infrared technology and fibre optic cables, to lithium batteries and solar cells. These actions are comparable to what Washington is seeking with its “small yard, high fence” strategy aimed at restricting access to critical US technologies. It is a reminder that retaliation is the high-octane fuel of conflict escalation. This is not well understood in US policy circles that seem to harbour the mistaken notion of a one-way dependency — that China is uniquely beholden to external demand and new technologies from the US. This leaves out the other half of the equation. The US is also heavily reliant on low-cost Chinese goods to make ends meet for income-constrained consumers; the US needs Chinese surplus saving to help fill its void of domestic saving; and US producers rely on China as America’s third-largest export market. This codependency means the US depends on China just as much China depends on America.Trump doesn’t buy this logic. During Trump 1.0, US tariffs on Chinese products were raised from 3 per cent in 2016 to 19 per cent by 2020. Trump held the mistaken view that there was a bilateral China fix for a multilateral trade deficit with 106 countries.That backfired. Over the subsequent years, the overall US merchandise trade deficit widened from $879bn 2018 to $1.06tn in 2023. Predictably, in response to tariffs, the Chinese share of the overall US trade deficit fell from 47 to 26 per cent over this same five-year period.  However, the Chinese portion was simply diverted to Mexico, Vietnam, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, India, Ireland and Germany. And it turns out more than 70 per cent of the trade diversion away from China went to higher-cost or comparable-cost nations, underscoring that trade diversion is the equivalent of a tax rise on US companies and consumers. Expect more of the same in a second Trump administration. And as US actions escalate, retaliation from China will probably broaden. For example, China’s latest actions on critical minerals open up the possibility of wide-ranging constraints on rare earths, which are of enormous strategic importance to the US.Then, of course, there is the ultimate financial weapon — Greater China’s $1tn in direct holdings of US Treasury securities (including $772bn by the PRC and $233bn by Hong Kong as of September 2024). Cavalier Americans typically dismiss this possibility, claiming China wouldn’t dare flirt with this nuclear option because it would hurt them more than us.Oh really? There are a couple of “bad dream” options to consider: China could go on a buyer’s strike during upcoming Treasury auctions, or, even more extreme, it could start to unload its outsize position as America’s second-largest foreign creditor. Either option would be devastating for America’s deficit-prone economy and would unleash havoc in the US bond market, with wrenching collateral damage in world financial markets. While it seems far-fetched, almost suicidal, for China to spark such a financial meltdown, it is equally reckless to dismiss the “tail risk” consequences of a trapped adversary. Much of the post-election policy discussion has focused on tariff initiatives likely to be forthcoming in Trump 2.0. Sino-American codependency urges us to think less about unilateral actions and more about the retaliatory responses to those actions. Trump’s nationalistic view of “America First” ignores how much a saving-short US economy depends on China for goods and financial capital. China has plenty of “Trump cards” to send a very different message.  More

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese big manufacturers’ sentiment improved slightly in the three months to December, a quarterly survey showed on Friday, boding well for the central bank’s plans to gradually raise interest rates from near-zero levels.The data comes ahead of the Bank of Japan’s two-day policy meeting next week, when the board will debate whether to lift rates from the current 0.25%.The headline index measuring big manufacturers’ business confidence stood at +14 in December, up from +13 three months ago and marking the highest reading since March 2022, the BOJ’s “tankan” quarterly survey showed on Friday. It compared with a median market forecast for +12.”Companies seem to be weathering headwinds from China’s economic weakness. This is good news for the BOJ and shows things are on track for the economy and prices,” said Saisuke Sakai, chief economist at Mizuho (NYSE:MFG) Research & Technologies.”But the outlook is highly uncertain due partly to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff policies, which could weigh on automakers’ profits ahead,” he said.An index gauging big manufacturers’ sentiment declined slightly to +33 from +34 in September, compared with a median market forecast for a reading of +32.Big manufacturers and non-manufacturers expect conditions to worsen in the three months ahead, the survey showed.Big companies expect to increase capital expenditure by 11.3% in the fiscal year ending in March, compared with a 10.6% gain projected in the previous survey in September. The increase was bigger than market forecasts for a 9.6% rise.The BOJ ended negative interest rates in March and raised its short-term policy rate to 0.25% in July on the view Japan was making steady progress towards sustainably achieving its 2% inflation target.BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has said the central bank will continue to raise rates if companies keep hiking prices and wages due to optimism over the outlook, and help keep inflation durably around its 2% target.The tankan’s sentiment diffusion indexes are derived by subtracting the number of respondents who say conditions are poor from those who say they are good. A positive reading means optimists outnumber pessimists. More