Finance

There were more than 1 million new U.S. Covid-19 cases on Monday, a single-day record, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Americans who get Covid and miss work aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits. That wasn’t the case earlier in the pandemic due to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
However, the same may not be true for people exposed (but not infected with) the virus.

A healthcare worker administers a Covid-19 swab test at the Boulder County Fairgrounds testing site in Longmont, Colorado, on Dec. 14, 2021.
Chet Strange/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Covid-19 infections are ballooning, and sick Americans who miss work due to the virus may wonder if they qualify for unemployment benefits.
The short answer: They don’t.

There were more than 1 million new U.S. Covid cases reported Monday, a single-day record, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average of daily new cases is over 480,000.
The dramatic rise in caseloads, fueled by the highly contagious omicron and delta virus strains, is causing worker shortages and disrupting businesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently shortened the Covid isolation period to five days for people without symptoms, down from 10 days.

Individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and stay home to recover and isolate from others aren’t eligible for jobless benefits, according to Michele Evermore, a senior policy advisor for unemployment insurance at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Unemployment benefits are a type of social insurance paid on a weekly basis. The law requires Americans to be “able and available” for work to qualify for the assistance.

An individual who has Covid-19 doesn’t meet this core requirement, Evermore said.

“[Unemployment insurance] is not intended to be used as paid sick leave,” the Labor Department wrote to state workforce agencies, which administer benefits, in March 2020.

Not always the case

This wasn’t always the case during the pandemic. The CARES Act relief law created a temporary unemployment program offering jobless aid to sick individuals and others (like gig workers) who typically don’t qualify for unemployment insurance.
The federal program, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, expired on Labor Day. (Many Republican-led states opted out of the program early, in June or July.)
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While those who test positive for Covid-19 no longer qualify for jobless benefits, that’s not necessarily true of people who isolate due to a potential Covid exposure and must miss work, Evermore said.
They may be eligible because they’re technically able and available to work, she said.
For example: Someone with an outdoor job (perhaps a lumberjack or construction worker) who must quarantine due to potential Covid exposure can technically do a few weeks of online work while they isolate. They can work, just not their customary job.

“An individual may be quarantined or otherwise affected by Covid-19 but still eligible for [unemployment compensation], depending on state law,” according to the Labor Department memo.
Americans with Covid-19 may get paid sick leave through their workplace, in which case they wouldn’t need unemployment benefits.
However, temporary federal laws that increased the availability of paid leave earlier in the pandemic have expired. (One required certain businesses to offer paid sick leave, but expired at the end of 2020; another offered tax credits to employers to reimburse them for the cost of offering leave, but expired Sept. 30.)

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Take a look at some of the biggest movers in the premarket:
Foot Locker (FL) – The athletic footwear and apparel retailer dropped 3.9% in the premarket after J.P. Morgan Securities downgraded it to “underweight” from “neutral,” pointing to cost pressures and tougher competition.

Under Armour (UAA) – Under Armour rose 2.5% in premarket trading after a Baird upgrade to “outperform” from “neutral.” Baird said the athletic apparel maker’s stock would benefit from a cyclical recovery in earnings.
Warner Music (WMG) – Warner Music slid 4% in premarket action following news of an 8.6 million share sale by affiliates of stakeholder Access Industries. Warner Music will not receive any proceeds from the sale.
Apple (AAPL) – Apple remains on watch after becoming the first U.S. company to exceed $3 trillion in market value, reaching that milestone on Monday before pulling back. Apple straddled the $3 trillion price of $182.86 per share during premarket trading.
Ford Motor (F) – Ford will start accepting purchase orders this week for its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. It had previously shut down its reservation system for the truck due to an overwhelming response. Ford added 1.4% in the premarket.
Coca-Cola (KO) – The beverage giant’s stock rose 1% in the premarket after Guggenheim upgraded the stock to “buy” from “neutral,” citing a number of factors including strong emerging market performance and a faster-than-expected recovery in on-premises sales.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) – Hewlett Packard Enterprise was upgraded to “overweight” from “equal weight” at Barclays, which points to a number of factors including an attractive valuation for the enterprise technology company. Hewlett Packard Enterprise gained 2.3% in the premarket.
Toyota Motor (TM) – Toyota plans to launch its own automotive operating system by 2025, according to a report by Japan’s Nikkei news service. The system would be able to handle advanced operations such as autonomous driving. Toyota rose 2.5% in premarket action, with shares benefiting as the dollar rose to a nearly five-year high against the Japanese yen.
General Electric (GE) – GE gained 1.4% in premarket trading after it was upgraded to “outperform” from “neutral” at Credit Suisse, with a price target of $122. Credit Suisse said a recent sell-off in GE shares gives investors the opportunity to benefit from a cyclical aerospace industry recovery.
BlackBerry (BB) – A judge ruled against BlackBerry’s bid to have a more than eight-year-old investor lawsuit thrown out. The suit claims BlackBerry – which no longer makes smartphones and now focuses on cybersecurity software – inflated the success and profitability of its BlackBerry 10 smartphone. The class-action suit could go to trial later this year.
Blackbaud (BLKB) – The cloud software provider announced a deal to acquire social impact technology company EVERFI in a deal worth $750 million in cash and stock. Blackbaud expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to its earnings.

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A filing Tuesday showed Evergrande’s contracted sales of properties totaled 443.02 billion yuan ($69.22 billion) last year, down 38.7% from the 723.25 billion yuan in contracted sales reported for 2020.
The figures show how demand is drying up for the developer’s main line of business.
Evergrande shares reopened higher in Hong Kong on Tuesday afternoon, after trading was halted Monday morning.

An exterior view of China Evergrande Centre in Hong Kong, China March 26, 2018.
Bobby Yip | Reuters

BEIJING — Indebted property developer China Evergrande’s contracted sales plunged last year as the real estate giant struggled to repay creditors.
A filing Tuesday showed the company’s contracted sales of properties totaled 443.02 billion yuan ($69.22 billion) last year, down 38.7% from the 723.25 billion yuan in contracted sales reported for 2020.

Evergrande shares reopened higher in Hong Kong on Tuesday afternoon, with shares trying to hold gains of about 3%.
Trading was halted as of 9 a.m. Monday, with shares at 1.59 Hong Kong dollars (20 cents) each. That’s just above the all-time intraday low of 1.42 Hong Kong dollars per share set on Dec. 24, according to FactSet.
Shares have plunged more than 88% over the last 250 trading days. The company missed payments to creditors in December, Fitch Ratings said, sending the developer into default.
Evergrande, China’s second-biggest developer by sales in 2020, is the largest Chinese real estate developer by issuance of offshore, U.S. dollar-denominated debt, which stood at $19 billion last year. The developer had a total of $300 billion in liabilities as of last year.

The company said Tuesday it “will continue to actively maintain communication with creditors, strive to resolve risks and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of all parties.”

The developer added that a demolition order for its Ocean Flower Island project only applied to 39 buildings, according to Tuesday’s filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Evergrande’s public statements have tried to assure investors the company is completing and delivering apartments to customers. But demand is drying up for the developer’s future projects.
The full-year figures indicate contracted sales of only 720 million yuan in just over two months, between Oct. 21 and Dec. 31. In contrast, contracted sales in August totaled 38.08 billion yuan, and stood at 3.65 billion yuan between the beginning of Sept. and Oct. 20.
S&P Global Ratings warned in November that an Evergrande default “is highly likely” since the company is no longer able to sell new homes. Like other Chinese real estate developers, Evergrande’s business model relies heavily on sales of apartments to customers before the units are completed.

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

Evergrande’s troubles have raised concerns about the health of China’s massive real estate industry overall.
Chinese authorities have called the company a “unique case.” Analysts have pointed out that in contrast with other developers, Evergrande made little progress toward complying with new regulations aimed at restricting the industry’s reliance on debt.
However, a prominent Chinese developer that met government requirements on debt, has also warned of falling sales.
Shanghai Shimao told investors in late December it would be difficult to hit its full-year contracted sales target of 38 billion yuan since sales in the first 11 months of the year were 28.2 billion yuan, according to a filing. In addition to stock declines, the company’s bonds have plunged in the last few months.

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NOVA SCOTIA’S largest city is known for a few things: a big national-security conference that takes place every autumn; a huge explosion that took place in 1917, causing immense devastation; and a small but impressive wine industry. It may soon be known for something else. Since December 2019 house prices in Halifax have risen by nearly 50%, according to Knight Frank, a property firm—a boom that only a tiny number of cities have bettered. Sit down with a Haligonian and before long they will express bafflement at how their city became so pricey.Some local factors are at play. People who had moved to distant Alberta to work in the oil industry lost their jobs in 2020 and moved back home. Out-of-towners are investing in local property in the expectation that eastern Canada will become a more desirable place to live as the climate changes. Nevertheless, the broader trend is mirrored across much of the world (see chart). The IMF’s global house-price index, expressed in real terms, is well above the peak reached before the 2007-09 financial crisis. American housebuilders’ share prices are up by 44% over the past year, compared with 27% for the overall stockmarket. Estate agents from Halifax’s mom-and-pop shops to the supermodel lookalikes on Netflix’s “Selling Sunset”, in Los Angeles, have never had it so good.Now people are wondering whether the party is about to end. Governments are winding down stimulus. People no longer have so much spare cash to splurge on property, now that foreign holidays are back and restaurants are open. Central banks, worried about surging inflation, are tightening monetary policy, including by raising interest rates. In its latest financial-stability report the IMF warned that “downside risks to house prices appear to be significant”, and that, if these were to materialise, prices in rich countries could fall by up to 14%. In New Zealand, where prices have risen by 24% in the past year, the central bank is blunter. The “level of house prices”, it says, is “unsustainable”. But is it? Certainly there is little evidence so far that the recent tightening in fiscal and monetary policy is provoking a slowdown. In the third quarter of 2021 global house-price growth rose to an all-time high. Although New Zealand’s central bank has raised interest rates by 0.5 percentage points since October, there is only the mildest indication that house-price growth there is slowing. In 2021 the Czech National Bank repeatedly raised interest rates but prices are still moving up.Perhaps it is just a matter of time before the house of cards collapses. But as a new paper by Gabriel Chodorow-Reich of Harvard University and colleagues explains, what might appear to be a housing bubble may in fact be the product of fundamental economic shifts. The paper shows that the monumental house-price increases in America in the early to mid-2000s were largely a consequence of factors such as urban revitalisation, growing preferences for city living and rising wage premia for educated workers in cities. By 2019 American real house prices had pretty much regained their pre-financial-crisis peak, further evidence that the mania of the mid-2000s was perhaps not quite so mad after all.Fundamental forces may once again explain why house prices today are so high—and why they may endure. Three reasons stand out: robust household balance-sheets; people’s greater willingness to spend more on their living arrangements; and the severity of supply constraints.Take households first. In contrast with some previous housing booms, well-off folk with stable jobs have driven the surge in prices. In America the average credit score for someone taking out a government-backed mortgage is around 750—considered pretty good by most people’s standards and far higher than before the financial crisis. In the euro area banks significantly tightened credit standards for mortgages in 2020 (though they have undone that a little since then). For many people getting a mortgage has become harder, not easier. People are also less vulnerable to rising interest rates—and thus less likely to be foreclosed on, which often leads to fire-sales and drags down prices—than you might think. In part this is because rates are rising from a low base. In America mortgage-debt-service payments take up about 3.7% of disposable income, the lowest figure on record. But it is also because other countries are following America down the fixed-rate-mortgage path, which in the short term protects people against increases in borrowing costs. In Germany long-term fixed products are twice as popular as they were a decade ago. In Britain almost all new mortgages are fixed-rate, with five-year deals now more common. According to UK Finance, a trade body, nearly three-quarters of all mortgage borrowers will in the near term be unaffected by the Bank of England’s recent rate rise.Shifting preferences are the second reason why global house prices may stay high. More people are working remotely, meaning greater demand for at-home offices. Others want larger gardens. This race for space explains about half of the rise in British house prices during the pandemic, according to analysis by the Bank of England. Transactions involving detached homes have increased, for instance, while those of flats have declined. Across the rich world household-saving rates still remain unusually high. That may have allowed people to invest more in property.The third and most important reason why house prices could remain high is housing supply. The Economist’s analysis of national statistics and archival records finds that in the years before the pandemic, housebuilding in the rich world, once adjusted for population, had fallen to half its level of the mid-1960s. Housing supply has become ever more “inelastic”: increases in demand for homes have translated more into higher prices, and less into additional construction.In many places the pandemic has dealt a further blow to supply. During the first wave of covid-19 some governments forced builders to down their tools. In the second quarter of 2020 Italian housing starts dropped by around 25%; in Britain they fell by half. Even in places where stay-at-home orders were milder and zoning laws are loose, such as Texas, the pace of extra demand was so rapid that builders could not keep up, slowed down, for instance, by the limited number of carpenters.Shortages of materials and labour have added to the constraints. Builders are grappling with higher costs and delays for raw materials such as cement, copper, lumber and steel, and a scarcity of tradespeople is pushing wages higher. The bumper earnings and improved margins of some housebuilders suggests that many have been able to pass on the increases in costs to buyers. DR Horton, America’s largest homebuilder, said the average sales price of its homes shot up by 14% in 2021, contributing to 78% growth in earnings per share.Some supply bottlenecks may now be easing. In October the IMF noted that global housing starts per person had begun to pick up, though they were still “considerably below the levels of the early 2000s”. But the world has a long way to go. In May 2021 researchers at Freddie Mac, a “government-sponsored enterprise” which subsidises much of American mortgage finance, estimated that the world’s largest economy faced a shortage of nearly 3.8m homes, up from 2.5m in 2018. Other estimates put the shortfall closer to 5.5m. In England an estimated 345,000 new homes per year are needed to meet demand, but builders are further away from the target than they have ever been. Unless something profound changes, pricey property may be around for a while yet. For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

U.S. stock futures were steady in overnight trading on Monday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 notched new record closes on the first trading day of 2022.
Dow futures fell just 20 points. S&P 500 futures slid 0.05% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.05%.

On Monday, the major averages rose, lifted by the technology sector. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 246 points to close at a record. The S&P 500 also registered a gain, climbing 0.6% to close at an all-time high.
The Nasdaq Composite was the relative outperformer, gaining 1.2% as Meta Platforms, Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet all closed in the green.
Tesla and Apple were bright spots of the trading day Monday. Tesla added 13.5% after the firm beat fourth-quarter and full-year delivery expectations. Apple became the first ever $3 trillion market capitalization company after rising 2.5% to a new record.
Reopening plays like airlines and cruise lines also rose on Monday. A jump in bond yields lifted bank stocks.
“Optimism on global economic growth and earnings momentum reviving since mid-December continued to grow in the first day of the New Year,” said Jim Paulsen, Leuthold Group chief investment strategist. “Those stocks most closely tied to better economic growth did the best [Monday] but were joined by new-era sectors including technology and communications.”     

On Tuesday, November’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey will be released at 10:00 a.m. The JOLTS report is closely watched at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere for signs of labor market tightness.
December’s ISM manufacturing PMI is also set to release Tuesday morning.
Monday’s records moves come after markets closed out a strong 2021 last week. The S&P 500 rose nearly 27% for the year, with the Nasdaq Composite and Dow also posting strong gains.
“The well-known Santa Claus Rally ends on Tuesday. The good news is stocks look like they’ll be higher during these bullish 7 days,” said Ryan Detrick of LPL Financial. “It is when these days have been down when we need to worry, so that’s one less worry at least.”
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The Federal Reserve in a little over two months is expected to enact its first rate increase in three years.
As officials prep for a return to more conventional monetary policy, Wall Street is watching closely.
The Fed is responding to inflation pressures that are running — by some measures — at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years.

The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington.
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If everything goes according to plan, the Federal Reserve in a little over two months will enact its first rate increase in three years, a move policymakers deem necessary and that markets and the economy are grudgingly coming to accept.
The Fed last raised rates in late 2018, part of a “normalization” process that happened in the waning period of the longest-lasting economic expansion in U.S. history.

Just seven months later, the central bank retreated as the expansion looked increasingly fragile. Eight months after that initial cut in July 2019, the Fed was forced to roll back its benchmark borrowing rate all the way to zero as the nation confronted a pandemic that threw the global economy into a sudden and shocking tailspin.

So as officials prep for a return to more conventional monetary policy, Wall Street is watching closely. The first trading day of the new year indicated the market is willing to keep pushing higher, in the midst of the gyrations that have greeted the Fed since it indicated a policy pivot a month ago.
“When you look back historically on the Fed, it’s usually multiple tightenings before you get in trouble with the economy and the markets,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group.
Paulsen expects the market to take the initial hike – likely to be enacted at the March 15-16 meeting – without too much fanfare, as it’s been well telegraphed and will still only bring the benchmark overnight rate up to a range of 0.25%-0.5%.
“We’ve developed this attitude on the Fed based on the last couple decades where the economy was growing at 2% per annum,” Paulsen said. “In a 2% stall-speed economy world, if the Fed even thinks about tightening it’s damaging. But we don’t live in that world anymore.”

Fed officials at their December meeting penciled in two additional 25-basis-point hikes before the end of the year. A basis point is equal to one one-hundredth of 1 percentage point.
Current pricing in the fed funds futures market points to about a 60% likelihood of a hike in March, and a 61% probability that the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee will add two more by the end of 2022, according to the CME’s FedWatch Tool.
Those subsequent hikes are where the Fed could see some blowback.
The Fed is hiking rates in response to inflation pressures that are running by some measures at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years. Chairman Jerome Powell and most other policymakers spent much of 2021 insisting that prices would ease soon, but conceded toward the end of the year that the trend was no longer “transitory.”

Engineering a landing

Whether the Fed can orchestrate an “orderly coming down” will determine how markets react to the rate hikes, said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz and chair of Gramercy Fund Management.
In that scenario, “the Fed gets it just right and demand eases a little bit and the supply side responds. That is sort of the Goldilocks adjustment,” he said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

However, he said the danger is that inflation persists and rises even more than the Fed anticipates, prompting a more aggressive response.
“The pain is already there, so they are having to play massive catch-up, and the question is at what point do they lose their nerve,” El-Erian added.
Market veterans are watching bond yields, which are expected to indicate advanced clues about the Fed’s intentions. Yields have stayed largely in check despite expectations for rate hikes, but Paulsen said he expects to see a reaction that ultimately could take the benchmark 10-year Treasury to around 2% this year.
At the same time, El-Erian said he expects the economy to do fairly well in 2022 even if the market hits some headwinds. Likewise, Paulsen said the economy is strong enough to withstand rate hikes, which will boost borrowing rates across a wide swath of consumer products. However, he said he figures a correction will come in the second half of the year as rate increases continue.
But Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said she thinks market turbulence would be more pronounced even as the economy grows.
Markets are coming off a prolonged period of “a long decline in real interest rates, which allowed stocks to break free from economic fundamentals and their price/earnings multiples to expand,” Shalett said in a report for clients.
“Now, the period of declining fed funds rates which began in early 2019 is ending, which should allow real rates to rise from historic negative lows. This shift is likely to unleash volatility and prompt changes in market leadership,” she added.
Investors will get a closer look at the Fed’s thinking later this week, when minutes of the December FOMC meeting are released Wednesday. Of particular interest for the market will be discussions not only about the pace of rate hikes and the decision to taper asset purchases, but also when the central bank will start reducing its balance sheet.
Even as the Fed intends to halt the purchases in the spring, it will continue to reinvest the proceeds of its current holdings, which will maintain the balance sheet around its current $8.8 trillion level.
Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst expects balance sheet reduction to start in the first quarter of 2023.

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The logo marks the showroom and service center for the US automotive and energy company Tesla in Amsterdam on October 23, 2019.
John Thys | AFP | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.
Tesla — Shares of the electric vehicle company soared 13.5% to lead the Nasdaq Composite higher after the firm beat fourth-quarter and full-year delivery expectations. Tesla delivered 308,600 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2021, better than an estimate of 267,000. Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales reported by Tesla.

Wells Fargo — Shares jumped 5.7% after Barclays upgraded the bank to overweight. Barclays said Wells Fargo could outperform due to its positive exposure to rising interest rates and potential relief from regulators.
Retailers — Reopening plays gained on Monday, lifting large retailers. Gap rose 4.3%, while Nordstrom climbed 6%. Macy’s popped 4.6%.
Advanced Micro Devices — Shares of AMD rose 4.4% after Goldman Sachs named the stocks one of its top picks in the semiconductor industry. The firm said the chip stock is among the companies that will see continued strength as sector outperformance becomes more muted in 2022.
Airlines — Shares rose as investors looked past the rise in Covid-19 cases. American Airlines and United Airlines gained more than 4%, while Delta Air Lines and Alaska Air Group added more than 3%.
Cruise lines — Cruise operators gained with Carnival adding 6.45%. Norwegian Cruise Line popped 6.9% and Royal Caribbean rose 5.1%.

Wolfspeed — Shares of the semiconductor company soared 8.4% after Piper Sandler upgraded the stock to overweight from neutral. The Wall Street firm called Wolfspeed a leader in the electric vehicle space with “a clear growth profile for 2022.”
ODP Corp. — Shares rose 6.2% after announcing the sale of its CompuCom unit in a deal valued at up to $305 million. The Office Depot and OfficeMax parent also added $200 million to its stock buyback program.
PayPal — PayPal shares rose 3.4% after BMO Capital Markets upgraded the stock to outperform from market perform, saying the payment giant’s slide has gone too far. The firm said that PayPal still faces uncertainty regarding competition and macroeconomic trends, adding its “valuation risks are now skewed to the upside.”
— with reporting from CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Yun Li, Tanaya Macheel and Hannah Miao.

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After the Jan. 6 riot, corporations and trade groups combined to give over $8 million to Republican lawmakers who objected to the 2020 presidential election, according to a study from watchdog group Accountable.US.
The American Bankers Association has since contributed over $200,000 to Republican objectors, including to the campaign of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Motors have contributed over $650,000 to a batch of GOP election objectors since Jan. 6 after declaring their pause in contributions.

Pro-Trump protesters storm into the U.S. Capitol during clashes with police, during a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, in Washington, U.S, January 6, 2021.
Shannon Stapelton | REUTERS

Since the deadly Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers who objected to the results of the 2020 presidential election received over $8 million in campaign donations from corporations and trade groups, according to a new study first shared with CNBC.
More than 140 Republicans in the House and Senate continued to object to the results of the election in which President Joe Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump, even after the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol. Trump, who was then the president, urged his supporters at a rally that day to march on Congress as lawmakers were in the process of confirming Biden’s electoral victory.

Data compiled by watchdog group Accountable.US shows a handful of corporations that chose to pause contributions or push back on what took place on Jan. 6 later moved ahead with financing the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who objected to the election results. A study by the Public Affairs Council published last month says more than  80% of corporate PACs did pause their contributions to federal candidates following Jan. 6. 

The new report by Accountable.US shows that political action committees of top corporations and trade groups — including the American Bankers Association, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Motors — continued to give to the Republican election objectors.
“Major corporations were quick to condemn the insurrection and tout their support for democracy — and almost as quickly, many ditched those purported values by cutting big checks to the very politicians that helped instigate the failed coup attempt,” Accountable.US President Kyle Herrig said in a statement. “The increasing volume of corporate donations to lawmakers who tried to overthrow the will of the people makes clear that these companies were never committed to standing up for democracy in the first place.”
Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Motors are among the corporations that said they would pause their campaign contributions to all federal candidates after the attack on the Capitol but later opted to resume their donations, including to lawmakers who objected to the results of the 2020 election.
After the riot, the American Bankers Association said that “we will meet with all of our stakeholders in the coming weeks to review our political activities from the last campaign cycle before making any decisions about future plans. The troubling events of the last week will certainly be a consideration in those discussions.” The ABA is responsible for lobbying on behalf of the U.S. banking industry.

The American Bankers Association has since contributed over $200,000 to Republican objectors, including to the campaigns of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

CNBC Politics

Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:

Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Motors have contributed over $650,000 to a batch of GOP election objectors since Jan. 6 after declaring their pause in contributions.
Of the over $8 million that came from trade groups and corporations to the election objectors, Accountable.US’ new research says about $1 million went to some of these Republican lawmakers in November.
Accountable.US’ campaign finance data from November shows that Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy and United Parcel Service are among the corporations that have combined to donate over $100,000 to some of the Republicans who objected to 2020’s election results.
Corporate donations from the month of December will not be made public until later in January.
The trade group and corporations named in this story did not return CNBC’s requests for comment.

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