Biden, Joseph R Jr

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    U.S. Added 216,000 Jobs in December, Outpacing Forecasts

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    Hiring has throttled back from 2021 and 2022, but last year’s growth was still impressive by longer-term standards.The U.S. labor market ended 2023 with a bang, gaining more jobs than experts had expected and buoying hopes that the economy can settle into a solid, sustainable level of growth rather than fall into a recession.Employers added 216,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent.Although hiring has slowed in recent months, layoffs remain near record lows. The durability of both hiring and wage gains is all the more remarkable in light of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive series of interest rate increases in the past couple of years. But a range of analysts warns that the coast is not yet clear and says the effects of those higher rates will take time to filter through business activity.“The real test for the labor market begins now, and so far it is passing the test,” said Daniel Altman, the chief economist at Instawork, a digital platform that connects employers with job seekers.Financial commentary in the past year has been dominated by dueling narratives about the economy. Most economists warned that the Fed’s driving up borrowing costs at a historically rapid pace would send the economy into a downturn. Heading into 2023, over 90 percent of chief executives surveyed by the Conference Board said they were expecting a recession. And many leading analysts thought that price increases could soften only if workers experienced significant job losses.But the resilience of the overall economy and consumer spending has so far defied that outlook: In June 2022, inflation was roughly 9 percent. Inflation has since tumbled to 3 percent while the unemployment rate has been largely unmoved.The economy gained 2.7 million jobs in 2023.Annual change in jobs More

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    High Housing Prices May Pose a Problem for Biden

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    Buying a home is a less attainable goal for many young people, and rents are expensive. Could that dog Democrats in the 2024 election?Cameron Ambrosy spent the first weekend of December going to 10 open houses — purely for research purposes. The 25-year-old in St. Paul, Minn., has a well-paying job and she and her husband are saving diligently, but she knows that it will be years before they can afford to buy.“It is much more of a long-term goal than for my parents or my grandparents, or even my peers who are slightly older,” said Ms. Ambrosy, adding that for many of her friends, homeownership is even farther away. “There’s a lot of nihilism around long-term goals like home buying.”As many people pay more for rent and some struggle to save for starter homes, political and economic analysts are warning that housing affordability may be adding to economic unhappiness — and is likely to be a more salient issue in the 2024 presidential election than in years past.Many Americans view the economy negatively even though unemployment is low and wage growth has been strong. Younger voters cite housing as a particular source of concern: Among respondents 18 to 34 in a recent Morning Consult survey, it placed second only to inflation overall.Wary of the issue and its political implications, President Biden has directed his economic aides to come up with new and expanded efforts for the federal government to help Americans who are struggling with the costs of buying or renting a home, aides say. The administration is using federal grants to prod local authorities to loosen zoning regulations, for instance, and is considering executive actions that focus on affordability. The White House has also dispatched top officials, including Lael Brainard, who leads the National Economic Council, to give speeches about the administration’s efforts to help people afford homes.“The president is very focused on the affordability of housing because it is the single most important monthly expense for so many families,” Ms. Brainard said in an interview.Housing is “the single most important monthly expense for so many families,” noted Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesHousing has not traditionally been a big factor motivating voters, in part because key market drivers like zoning policies tend to be local. But some political strategists and economists say the rapid run-up in prices since the pandemic could change that.Rents have climbed about 22 percent since late 2019, and a key index of home prices is up by an even heftier 46 percent. Mortgages now hover around 7 percent as the Federal Reserve has raised rates to the highest level in 22 years in a bid to contain inflation. Those factors have combined to make both monthly rent and the dream of first-time homeownership increasingly unattainable for many young families.“This is the singular economic issue of our time, and they need to figure out how to talk about that with voters in a way that resonates,” said Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, a tenant union in Kansas City, Mo., referring to the White House. The housing affordability crush comes at a time when many consumers are facing higher prices in general. A bout of rapid inflation that started in 2021 has left households paying more for everyday necessities like milk, bread, gas and many services. Even though costs are no longer increasing so quickly, those higher prices continue to weigh on consumer sentiment, eroding Mr. Biden’s approval ratings.While incomes have recently kept up with price increases, that inflationary period has left many young households devoting a bigger chunk of their budgets to rental costs. That is making it more difficult for many to save toward now-heftier down payments. The situation has spurred a bout of viral social media content about the difficulty of buying a home, which has long been a steppingstone into the middle class and a key component of wealth-building in the United States.That’s why some analysts think that housing concerns could morph into an important political issue, particularly for hard-hit demographics like younger people. While about two-thirds of American adults overall are homeowners, that share drops to less than 40 percent for those under 35.“The housing market has been incredibly volatile over the last four years in a way that has made it very salient,” said Igor Popov, the chief economist at Apartment List. “I think housing is going to be a big topic in the 2024 election.”Yet there are reasons that presidential candidates have rarely emphasized housing as an election issue: It is both a long-term problem and a tough one for the White House to tackle on its own.“Housing is sort of the problem child in economic policy,” said Jim Parrott, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and former Obama administration economic and housing adviser. America has a housing supply shortfall that has been years in the making. Builders pulled back on construction after the 2007 housing market meltdown, and years of insufficient building have left too few properties on the market to meet recent strong demand. The shortage has recently been exacerbated as higher interest rates deter home-owning families who locked in low mortgage rates from moving.Some analysts think concerns about housing affordability could morph into an important political issue, particularly for hard-hit demographics like younger people.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesConditions could ease slightly in 2024. The Federal Reserve is expected to begin cutting borrowing costs next year as inflation eases, which could help to make mortgages slightly cheaper. A new supply of apartments are expected to be finished, which could keep a lid on rents.And even voters who feel bad about housing might still support Democrats for other reasons. Ms. Ambrosy, the would-be buyer in St. Paul, said that she had voted for President Biden in 2020 and she planned to vote for the Democratic nominee in this election purely on the basis of social issues, for instance.But housing affordability is enough of a pain point for young voters and renters — who tend to lean heavily Democrat — that it has left the Biden administration scrambling to emphasize possible solutions.After including emergency rental assistance in his 2021 economic stimulus bill, Mr. Biden has devoted less attention to housing than to other inflation-related issues, like reducing the cost of prescription drugs. His most aggressive housing proposals, like an expansion of federal housing vouchers, were dropped from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.Still, his administration has pushed several efforts to liberalize local housing laws and expand affordable housing. It released a “Housing Supply Action” plan that aims to step up the pace of development by using federal grants and other funds to encourage state and local governments to liberalize their zoning and land use rules to make housing faster and easier to build. The plan also gives governments more leeway to use transportation and infrastructure funds to more directly produce housing (such as with a new program that supports the conversion of offices to apartments).The administration has also floated a number of ideas to help renters, such as a blueprint for future renters’ legislation and a new Federal Trade Commission proposal to prohibit “junk fees” for things like roommates, applications and utilities that hide the true cost of rent.Some affordable housing advocates say the administration could do more. One possibility they have raised in the past would be to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which help create a more robust market for mortgages by buying them from financial institutions, invest directly in moderately priced rental housing developments. Ms. Raghuveer, the tenant organizer, has argued that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could unilaterally impose a cap on annual rent increases for landlords whose mortgages are backed by the agencies.But several experts said that White House efforts would only help on the margins. “Without Congress, the administration is really limited in what they can do to reduce supply barriers,” said Emily Hamilton, an economist at the Mercatus Center who studies housing.Republicans control the House and have opposed nearly all of Mr. Biden’s plans to increase government spending, including for housing. But aides say Mr. Biden will press the case and seek new executive actions to help with housing costs.While it could be valuable to start talking about solutions, “nothing is going to solve the problem in one year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and a frequent adviser to Democrats.“This problem has been developing for 15 years, since the financial crisis, and it’s going to take another 15 years to get out of it.” More

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    U.S. Debates How Much to Sever Electric Car Industry’s Ties to China

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    Some firms argue that a law aimed at popularizing electric vehicles risks turning the United States into an assembly shop for Chinese-made technology.The Biden administration has been trying to jump-start the domestic supply chain for electric vehicles so cleaner cars can be made in the United States. But the experience of one Texas company, whose plans to help make an all-American electric vehicle were upended by China, highlights the stakes involved as the administration finalizes rules governing the industry.Huntsman Corporation started construction two years ago on a $50 million plant in Texas to make ethylene carbonate, a chemical that is used in electric vehicle batteries. It would have been the only site in North America making the product, with the goal of feeding battery factories that would crop up to serve the electric vehicle market.But as new facilities in China came online and flooded the market, the price of the chemical plummeted to $700 a ton from $4,000. After pumping $30 million into the project, the company halted work on it this year. “If we were to start the project up today, we would be hemorrhaging cash,” said Peter R. Huntsman, the company’s chief executive. “I’d essentially be paying people to take the product.”The Biden administration is now finalizing rules that will help determine whether companies like Huntsman will find it profitable enough to participate in America’s electric vehicle industry. The rules, which are expected to be proposed this week, will dictate the extent to which foreign companies, particularly in China, can supply parts and products for American-made vehicles that are set to receive billions of dollars in subsidies.The administration is offering up to $7,500 in tax credits to Americans who buy electric vehicles, in an effort to supercharge the industry and reduce the country’s carbon emissions. The rules will determine whether electric vehicle makers seeking to benefit from that program will have the flexibility to get cheap components from China, or whether they will be required instead to buy more expensive products from U.S.-based firms like Huntsman.After pumping $30 million into the project, Huntsman halted work on it. “If we were to start the project up today, we would be hemorrhaging cash,” said Peter R. Huntsman, the company’s chief executive.Callaghan O’Hare for The New York TimesCan the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China?From mines to refineries and factories, China began investing decades ago. Today, most of your electric car batteries are made in China and that’s unlikely to change soon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    Even Most Biden Voters Don’t See a Thriving Economy

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    A majority of those who backed President Biden in 2020 say today’s economy is fair or poor, ordinarily a bad omen for incumbents seeking re-election.Presidents seeking a second term have often found the public’s perception of the economy a pivotal issue. It was a boon to Ronald Reagan; it helped usher Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush out of the White House.Now, as President Biden looks toward a re-election campaign, there are warning signals on that front: With overall consumer sentiment at a low ebb despite solid economic data, even Democrats who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 say they’re not impressed with the economy.In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six battleground states, 62 percent of those voters think the economy is only “fair” or “poor” (compared with 97 percent for those who voted for Donald J. Trump).What the Economy Looks Like to Biden Voters in Swing StatesPercent of President Biden’s 2020 supporters who …

    Notes: Respondents of other races were omitted because of low sample sizes. The figures may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding.Source: New York Times/Siena College polls of 3,662 registered voters conducted Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and WisconsinBy The New York TimesThe demographics of Mr. Biden’s 2020 supporters may explain part of his challenge now: They were on balance younger, had lower incomes and were more racially diverse than Mr. Trump’s. Those groups tend to be hit hardest by inflation, which has yet to return to 2020 levels, and high interest rates, which have frustrated first-time home buyers and drained the finances of those dependent on credit.But if the election were held today, and the options were Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, it’s not clear whether voter perceptions of the economy would tip the balance.“The last midterm was an abortion election,” said Joshua Doss, an analyst at the public opinion research firm HIT Strategies, referring to the 2022 voting that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling. “Most of the time, elections are about ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ Republicans lost that because of Roe. So we’re definitely in uncharted territory.”There are things working in Mr. Biden’s favor. First, Mr. Doss said, the economic programs enacted under the Biden administration remain broadly popular, providing a political foundation for Mr. Biden to build on. And second, social issues — which lifted the Democrats in the midterms — remain a prominent concern.Take Oscar Nuñez, 27, a server at a restaurant in Las Vegas. Foot traffic has been much slower than usual for this time of year, eating into his tips. He’d like to start his own business, but with the rising cost of living, he and his wife — who works at home answering questions from independent contractors for her employer — haven’t managed to save much money. It’s also a tough jump to make when the economy feels shaky.Mr. Nuñez expected better from Mr. Biden when he voted blue in 2020, he said, but he wasn’t sure what specifically the president should have done better. And he is pretty sure another Trump term would be a disaster.“I’d prefer another option, but it seems like it will once again be my only option again,” Mr. Nuñez said of Mr. Biden. For him, immigrants’ rights and foreign policy concerns are more important. “That’s why I was picking him over Trump in the first place — because this guy’s going to do something that’s real dangerous at some point.”Mr. Nuñez isn’t alone in feeling dissatisfied with the economy but still bound to Mr. Biden by other priorities. Of those surveyed in the six battleground states who plan to vote for Mr. Biden in 2024, 47 percent say social issues are more important to them, while 42 percent say the economy is more important — but that’s a closer split than in the 2022 midterms, in which social issues decisively outweighed economic concerns among Democratic voters in several swing states. (Among likely Trump voters, 71 percent say they are most focused on the economy, while 15 percent favor social issues.)Kendra McDowell thinks President Biden is doing the best he can given the continuing challenges of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” she said.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDour sentiment about the economy also isn’t limited to people who’ve been frustrated in their financial ambitions.Mackenzie Kiser, 20, and Lawson Millwood, 21, students at the University of North Georgia, managed to buy a house this year. Mr. Millwood’s income as an information-technology systems administrator at the university was enough to qualify, and they worried that affordability would only worsen if they waited because of rising interest rates and prices. Still, the experience left a bitter taste.“The housing market is absolutely insane,” said Ms. Kiser, who wasn’t old enough to vote in 2020 but leans progressive. “We paid the same for our one-story, one-bedroom cinder-block 1950s house as my mom paid for her three-story, four-bedroom house less than a decade ago.”Ms. Kiser doesn’t think Mr. Biden has done much to help the economy, and she worries he’s too old to be effective. But Mr. Trump isn’t more appealing on that front.“It’s not that I think that anybody of a different party could do better, but more that someone with their mental faculties who’s not retirement age could do a better job,” Ms. Kiser said. “Our choices are retirement age or retirement age, so it’s rock and a hard place right now.”Generally, voters don’t think Republicans are fixing the economy, either. In a poll conducted this month by the progressive-leaning Navigator Research, 70 percent of voters in battleground House districts, including a majority of Republicans, said they thought Republicans were more focused on issues other than the economy.The health of the economy is still a major variable leading up to the election. A downturn could fray what the president cites as a signal accomplishment of Bidenomics: low unemployment. A study of the 2016 election found that higher localized unemployment made Black voters, an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency, less likely to vote at all.“I think the likelihood that they would choose Trump is not the threat,” Mr. Doss said. “The threat is that they would choose the couch and stay home, and enough of them would stay home for an electoral college win for Trump.”But in the absence of a competitive Democratic primary, the campaigning — and television spots — have yet to commence in earnest. When they do, Mr. Doss has some ideas.So far, Mr. Biden’s messaging has focused on macroeconomic indicators like the unemployment rate and tackling inflation. “The truth is, that’s not the economy to most people,” Mr. Doss said. “The economy to most people is gas prices and food and whether or not they can afford to throw a birthday party for their kid.”Mr. Millwood supports a higher federal minimum wage, and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.Audra Melton for The New York TimesIt’s difficult for presidents to directly control inflation in the short term. But the White House has addressed a few specific costs that matter for families, by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain surging oil prices in late 2022, for example. The Inflation Reduction Act reduced prescription drug prices under Medicare and capped the cost of insulin for people with diabetes. The administration is also going after what it calls “junk fees,” which inflate the prices of things like concert tickets, airline tickets and even birthday parties.The more the administration talks about its concrete efforts to lower prices, the more Mr. Biden will benefit, Mr. Doss said. At the same time, Mr. Biden can lessen the blowback from persistent inflation by deflecting blame — an out-of-control pandemic was the original cause, he could plausibly argue, and most other wealthy countries are worse off.That’s how it seems to Kendra McDowell, 44, an accountant and single mother of four in Harrisburg, Pa. She feels the sting of inflation every time she goes to the grocery store — she spent $1,000 on groceries this past month and didn’t even fill her deep freezer — and in the health of her clients’ balance sheets. Despite her judgment that the economy is poor, however, she still has enough confidence to start a business in home-based care, a field in greater demand since Covid-19 ripped through nursing homes.“When I talk about the economy, it’s just inflation, and to me inflation is systemic and coming from the Trump administration,” Ms. McDowell said. If the pandemic had been contained quickly, she reasoned, supply chains and labor disruptions wouldn’t have sent prices soaring in the first place.Moreover, she sees the situation healing itself, and thinks Mr. Biden is doing the best he can given the challenges of the wars in Ukraine and now Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” Ms. McDowell said. “God forbid, today or tomorrow, if I had to go find a job, it’s easier than it was before.”Ms. McDowell is what’s known in public opinion research as a high-information voter. Polls have shown that those less apt to stay up on the news tend to change their views when provided with more background on what the Biden administration has both accomplished and attempted.Ms. McDowell, a mother of four, said that she felt the sting of inflation every time she went to the grocery store, but that she didn’t blame Mr. Biden.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesThe 15-month-old Inflation Reduction Act is still little known, for example. But this past March, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 68 percent of respondents supported it when filled in on its main components.A frequent theme of conversations with Democratic voters who see the economy as poor is that large corporations have too much power and that the middle class is being squeezed.Mr. Millwood, Ms. Kiser’s partner, said that he was concerned that society had grown more unequal in recent years, and that he didn’t see Mr. Biden doing much about it.“From what I see, it really doesn’t look like the working class is benefiting from many things recently,” said Mr. Millwood, who supports a higher federal minimum wage and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.After the phone conversation ended, Mr. Millwood texted to say that upon reflection, he would also like to see Mr. Biden push to lower taxes for low-income families and make it more difficult for the wealthiest to dodge them. After being sent news articles about Mr. Biden’s support for the extension of the now-expired Child Tax Credit and the appropriation of $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, in part to pursue tax evaders, he seemed surprised.“That is absolutely what I had in mind,” Mr. Millwood texted. “It’s been so noisy in the media lately I haven’t seen much that is covering things like that,” adding, “Biden doesn’t seem so bad after all haha.”Ruth Igielnik More

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    In Biden’s Climate Law, a Boon for Green Energy, and Wall Street

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    The law has effectively created a new marketplace that helps smaller companies gain access to funding, with banks taking a cut.The 2022 climate law has accelerated investments in clean-energy projects across the United States. It has also delivered financial windfalls for big banks, lawyers, insurance companies and start-up financial firms by creating an expansive new market in green tax credits.The law, signed by President Biden, effectively created a financial trading marketplace that helps smaller companies gain access to funding, with Wall Street taking a cut. Analysts said it could soon facilitate as much as $80 billion a year in transactions that drive investments in technologies meant to reduce fossil fuel emissions and fight climate change.The law created a wide range of tax incentives to encourage companies to produce and install solar, wind and other low-emission energy technologies. But the Democrats who drafted it knew those incentives, including tax credits, wouldn’t help companies that were too small — or not profitable enough — to owe enough in taxes to benefit.So lawmakers have invented a workaround that has rarely been employed in federal tax policy: They have allowed the companies making clean-energy investments to sell their tax credits to companies that do have a big tax liability.That market is already supporting large and small transactions. Clean-energy companies are receiving cash to invest in their projects, but they’re getting less than the value of the tax credits for which they qualify, after various financial partners take a slice of the deal.Clean-energy and financial analysts and major players in the marketplace say big corporations with significant tax liability are currently paying between 75 and 95 cents on the dollar to reduce their federal tax bills. For example, a buyer in the middle of that range might spend $850,000 to purchase a credit that would knock $1 million off its federal taxes.The cost of those tax credits depends on several factors, including risk and size. Larger projects command a higher percentage. The seller of a tax credit will see its value diluted further by fees for lawyers, banks and other financial intermediaries that help broker the sale. Buyers are also increasingly insisting that sellers buy insurance in case the project does not work out and fails to deliver its promised tax benefits to the buyer.The prospect of a booming market and the chance to snag a piece of those transaction costs have raised excitement for the Inflation Reduction Act, or I.R.A., in finance circles. A new cottage industry of online start-up platforms that seeks to link buyers and sellers of the tax credits has quickly blossomed. An annual renewable energy tax credit conference hosted by Novogradac, a financial firm, drew a record number of attendees to a hotel ballroom in Washington this month, with multiple panels devoted to the intricacies of the new marketplace. The entrepreneurs behind the online buyer-seller exchanges include a former Biden Treasury official and some people in the tech industry with no clean-energy or tax credit experience.After President Biden signed the climate law last year, it effectively created a new financial marketplace.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTax professionals and clean-energy groups say the marketplace has widely expanded financing abilities for companies working on emissions-reducing technologies and added private-sector scrutiny to climate investments.But those transactions are also enriching players in an industry that Mr. Biden has at times criticized, while allowing big companies to reduce their tax bills in a way that runs counter to his promise to make corporate America pay more.“I wouldn’t call it irony. I would call it, sort of, this unexpected brilliance,” said Jessie Robbins, a principal of structured finance at the financial firm Generate Capital. “While it may be full of friction and transaction costs, it does bring sophisticated financial interests, investors” and corporations into the world of funding green energy, she said.Biden administration officials say many clean-tech companies will save money by selling their tax credits to raise capital, instead of borrowing at high interest rates. “The alternative for many of these companies was to take a loan, and taking that loan was going to be far more costly” than using the credit marketplace, Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said in an interview.Some backers of the climate law wanted an even more direct alternative for those companies: government checks equivalent to the tax benefits their projects would have qualified for if they had enough tax liability to make the credits usable. It was rejected by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a moderate Democrat who was the swing vote on the law. A modest federal marketplace of certain tax credits, like those for affordable housing, existed before the climate law passed. But acquiring those credits was complicated and indirect, so annual transactions were less than $20 billion — and large banks dominated the space. The climate law expanded the market and attracted new players by making it much easier for a company with tax liability to buy another company’s tax credit.“There weren’t brokers in this space, you know, a year ago or 14 months ago before the I.R.A. came out,” said Amish Shah, a tax lawyer at Holland & Knight. “There are lots of brokers in this space now.” Mr. Shah said he expected his firm to be involved in $1 billion worth of tax credits this year.Mr. Biden’s signature climate law has spawned a growth industry on Wall Street and across corporate America.Gabby Jones for The New York Times“The discussion goes like this,” said Courtney Sandifer, a senior executive in the renewable energy tax credit monetization practice at the investment bank BDO. “‘Are you aware that you can buy tax credits at a discount, as a central feature of the I.R.A.? And how would that work for you? Like, is this something that you’d be interested in doing?’”Financial advisers say they have had interest from corporate buyers as varied as retailers, oil and gas companies, and others that see an opportunity to reduce their tax bills while making good on public promises to help the environment.Experts say large banks are still dominating the biggest transactions, where projects are larger and tax credits are more expensive to buy. For the rest of the market, entrepreneurs are working to create online exchanges, which effectively work as a Match.com for tax credits. Companies lay out the specification of their projects and tax credits, including whether they are likely to qualify for bonus tax breaks based on location, what wages they will pay and how much of their content is made in America. Buyers bid for credits.In order to sell tax benefits under the law, companies have to register their credits with the Treasury Department, which created a pilot registry website for those projects this month. The online platforms to connect buyers and sellers of the credits are not regulated by the government.Alfred Johnson, who previously worked as deputy chief of staff under Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, co-founded Crux, one of the online exchanges, in January. The company has raised $8.85 million through two rounds of funding.Mr. Johnson said his business helped replace the “low-margin” administrative work that happens to facilitate deals. Lawyers and advisers will still be brought in for the more complicated parts of the deal.“It just requires more companies coming into the market and participating,” he said. “And if that doesn’t happen, the law will not work.”Seth Feuerstein created Atheva, a transferable credit exchange, last year. He has no clean-tech experience, but he has brought in green-energy experts to help get the exchange started.Atheva already has tens of millions of dollars in projects available for tax-credit buyers to peruse on the site, with hundreds of millions more in the pipeline, he said. On the site, buyers can browse credits by their estimated value and download documentation to help assess whether the projects will actually pay off. Mr. Feuerstein said that transparency helped to assure taxpayers that they were supporting valid clean-energy investments.“It’s a new market,” Mr. Feuerstein said. “And it’s growing every day.” More

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    U.S. to Press China to Stop Flow of Fentanyl

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    President Biden pressed the Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday to crack down on the Chinese firms that are helping to produce fentanyl, a potent drug that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.A plan to curb China’s illicit exports of fentanyl and, particularly, the chemicals that can be combined to make the drug was hoped to be one of the more significant achievements for the United States out of Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi’s meeting, which took place as leaders from Pacific nations gathered for an international conference in San Francisco.A summary of the meeting published by China’s CCTV News said that Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi had agreed to establish an anti-drug working group.China is home to a thriving chemical industry that pumps out compounds that are made into pharmaceuticals, fragrances, textile dyes and fertilizers. Some of those same compounds can also be combined to create fentanyl, an opioid that can be 100 times as potent as morphine.U.S. officials argue that this vast chemical industry is playing a key role in the American fentanyl crisis by supplying the bulk of materials used in illegal drug labs, including in Mexico, which is now the largest exporter of fentanyl to the United States.The Chinese government denies that its country plays such a pivotal role and instead blames the United States for harboring a culture of drug use.“All-out marketing by pharmaceutical companies, over-prescription by doctors, ineffective government crackdowns and the negative implications of marijuana legalization are among the combination of factors behind an ever-growing market for narcotics,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement last year.U.S. officials say they have stopped more fentanyl from coming into the United States in the past two years than in the previous five years combined. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids may have resulted in more than 77,000 overdose deaths in the United States between May 2022 and April 2023. The problem with fentanyl overdoses is particularly acute in San Francisco, where Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi are meeting.Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that getting China to agree to do something about fentanyl would resonate more with average Americans than the typical “deliverables” from international meetings.“For Biden, that would be nice to have to show to the heartland of the United States that relations with China are more than just some esoteric matter, but can actually bring something to ordinary people,” Mr. Johnson said in a briefing held by the council last week. Republicans have made fentanyl-related deaths a central piece of their campaign against Mr. Biden and Democrats in the 2024 elections.Red stained pollen grain sample at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Chicago, last year.Lyndon French for The New York TimesCollecting pollen samples at a Customs and Border Protection facility. The extent to which an agreement with China would curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States is unclear.Lyndon French for The New York TimesStill, given the difficulties with policing an illicit industry, the extent to which an agreement would curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States is unclear.Roselyn Hsueh, an associate professor of political science at Temple University, said that an agreement between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi could lead the Chinese central government to provide more oversight and invest more resources into inspection and monitoring. But she said Beijing had run into difficulty in the past clamping down on fentanyl and precursor chemicals.Before 2019, China was the primary source of fentanyl coming into the United States, typically through the mail and other commercial couriers. As a part of trade talks with President Donald J. Trump, the Chinese government in 2019 agreed to prohibit the production, sale and export of all fentanyl-related drugs except through special licenses.But that resulted in Chinese companies rerouting to Mexico and India’s emergence as a new production site, Ms. Hsueh said. The main source of U.S. fentanyl became Mexican criminal organizations, which used Chinese-made components and Chinese money-laundering services.Today, online sales that mask the identities of sellers and buyers further complicate enforcement. The regulation and enforcement of fentanyl and precursor chemicals remain “fragmented and decentralized” among Chinese local governments, industry associations and firms with vested interests in the chemical trade, Ms. Hsueh said.U.S. officials have said that problem is compounded because many of the ingredients used to make fentanyl are legal chemicals that can be used for legitimate purposes in other industries. The United States has issued sanctions against dozens of people in China and Hong Kong for their role in fentanyl trafficking. In September, Mr. Biden added China to the U.S. list of the world’s major drug-producing countries, a move that the Chinese government denounced as “a malicious smear.”Last month, the U.S. customs department released an updated strategy to combat fentanyl and synthetic drugs, including through the enhanced use of data and counterintelligence operations to track drug manufacturing and distribution networks, and target suspicious locations and recipients that demonstrate patterns of illicit activity. “In my 30 years as a customs official, the trafficking of synthetic illicit drugs like fentanyl is one of the toughest, most daunting challenges I have ever seen,” said Troy Miller, the acting commissioner for Customs and Border Protection.U.S. officials say they have stopped more fentanyl from coming into the United States in the past two years than in the previous five years combined.Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated PressU.S. officials believe China’s dominance as a chemical producer makes Beijing’s cooperation key for enforcement. Administration officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo, have raised the issue with top Chinese officials during recent trips to China.When six lawmakers, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, had a chance to talk to Mr. Xi during a visit to China last month, the main issue they brought up was not trade or military coordination or climate change, but the harm that fentanyl had caused in their home states.“Everyone told stories, personal stories about how, you know, friends of ours, family, have died from fentanyl, and how this was a really important issue, and I think that you could tell that made an impression on him, how deeply we felt about it,” said Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat.Fentanyl precursors from China have become a bipartisan issue in Congress, and the six senators who spoke with Mr. Xi were three Democrats and three Republicans.“China needs to enforce laws that prevent the export of fentanyl precursors to international drug markets,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana.Despite the scale of the problem, there is hope that greater coordination between the United States and China could improve the situation. Cooperation between the countries on preventing shipments of the precursor chemicals stalled several years ago after the United States placed sanctions on a Chinese government entity for its alleged involvement in human rights abuses in China’s westernmost region, Xinjiang.That entity was located at the same address in Beijing as the National Narcotics Laboratory of China, which plays a key role in China’s law enforcement effort on drug-related chemicals.Chinese officials deeply resent American sanctions on their institutions, and U.S. officials have taken the position that because of the risk of confusion among the two institutes at the same address, neither institute can work with the United States.China then broadened its position in August 2022 when it halted any counternarcotics coordination with the United States as one of a series of measures taken in response to a visit to Taiwan by Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House. Beijing claims Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy, as part of its territory.Eileen Sullivan More

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    G.M.’s Contract Deal With U.A.W. Faces Surprisingly Stiff Opposition

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    Many longstanding General Motors workers have been voting against the tentative accord, which they feel insufficiently improves retirement benefits.A United Automobile Workers union vote on a tentative contract agreement with General Motors that provides record wage increases has run into unexpectedly strong resistance from veteran workers.Voting at most union locals has been completed and the final result, due as early as Thursday evening, will very likely be decided by a narrow margin. A majority of workers at several large plants in Michigan, Indiana and Tennessee rejected the contract, though union members at a large sport utility plant in Arlington, Texas, voted in favor of it.G.M., Ford Motor and Stellantis agreed to similar contracts with the union after U.A.W. members went on strike at select plants and warehouses. Workers walked off the job at the first three plants on Sept. 15 and stayed on strike for more than 40 days. It was the first time the union has struck all three automakers at the same time, though it did not shut down all of the factories of any company.The agreement appears to be headed for ratification at Ford and Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, by comfortable margins, according to running tallies the U.A.W. published online.At G.M., many veteran workers have opposed the contract because they want the company to contribute more money to retirement plans and the cost of health care for retirees.“I’ve heard from some traditional workers who said there wasn’t enough in there for them,” said David Green, director of the U.A.W. Region 2B, which includes Ohio, Indiana and a small part of Michigan. “The post-retirement health care is an issue for some people. For some people, it’s the pension contributions.”Mr. Green himself thinks the contract represents a big victory for union members. “This is the best contract I’ve seen since I started in 1989,” he said. “So I was happy with it.”General Motors declined to comment on the contract vote.The tentative contract raises the top wage by 25 percent, from $32 to more than $40 over four and a half years. The increase is more than the combined wage increases the union has won over the past 22 years, according to U.A.W. officials.Newer hires who are lower on the pay scale will see larger increases that take them to the new top wage. And workers who were recently hired will see their hourly pay double.The agreement also provides for cost-of-living adjustments that will nudge wages higher if inflation persists as well as enhanced company contributions to pensions and retirement plans, more paid time off and the ability to strike if any plant is closed during the term of the contract.The contract negotiations with G.M., Ford and Stellantis were led by the United Automobile Workers president, Shawn Fain, center, who was elected this year.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo be ratified, the agreement must secure a simple majority. More than 46,000 U.A.W. workers work at G.M., although not all of them are likely to turn in ballots. More than 14,000 company employees took part in the targeted strikes.As of Wednesday afternoon, an online vote tally that the union maintains showed that just over 54 percent of the votes were in favor of the contract, but that tally did not include numbers from some big plants.If the tentative agreement is voted down, it would represent a big setback for the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, who was elected this year and promised to take a more aggressive approach in the contract talks in hopes of winning significant pay increases and reversing some of the concessions the union accepted in past contracts.He appeared to deliver that in what was widely regarded as a record deal. President Biden, who joined striking workers on the picket line in September at a G.M. site in Belleville, Mich., hailed Mr. Fain’s efforts. The president joined Mr. Fain last week at a plant in Belvidere, Ill., that Stellantis agreed to keep open after halting production this year.“I don’t think it diminishes Shawn Fain’s luster that much because of a close ratification vote,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “It just means expectations were high, and had he not delivered as much as he did, it wouldn’t have passed.”After the contracts with the three Detroit automakers are ratified, Mr. Fain hopes to try to organize workers at nonunion plants in the South owned by Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers, and the nonunion plants that Tesla operates in California and Texas.Since the terms of the U.A.W. agreements were announced, some of those companies have increased wages of factory workers. Toyota has told workers that it will raise hourly rates by 9 percent in January. Honda and Hyundai will lift wages 11 percent and 14 percent next year. Hyundai plans to increase wages 25 percent by 2028.“Everybody at those companies should say, ‘Thank you, U.A.W.,’” Mr. Wheaton said. “Those increases wouldn’t have happened without the new U.A.W. contract.” More

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    Biden Bolsters Union Support in Illinois

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    The trip, including a meeting with the president of the United Automobile Workers, offered the president a chance to celebrate a landmark labor deal.President Biden pulled a red United Automobile Workers T-shirt over his button-down on Thursday and celebrated a landmark labor deal that kept a Stellantis manufacturing plant in business, using an appearance in Illinois to shore up crucial union support.“I’ve worn this shirt a lot, man,” Mr. Biden told a man in the crowd, one month after he walked a picket line to support autoworkers in their strike for higher wages. “I’ve been involved in the U.A.W. longer than you’ve been alive,” the 80-year-old president said.The speech before the boisterous crowd was a victory lap for Mr. Biden after the union reached an agreement with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis late last month on a contract that included pay increases and reopened the plant in Belvidere, Ill.Mr. Biden made the case for clean energy even as many workers fear the president’s climate change agenda could endanger their jobs. He also drew a contrast with his likely Republican opponent in the 2024 presidential race, former President Donald J. Trump.“When my predecessor was in office, six factories closed across the country. Tens of thousands of auto jobs were lost nationwide, and on top of that he was willing to cede the future of electric vehicles to China,” Mr. Biden said. He added that Mr. Trump has insisted that electric vehicles will lead to the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs.“Well, like almost everything else he said, he’s wrong,” Mr. Biden added. “And you have proved him wrong. Instead of lower wages, you won record gains. Instead of fewer jobs, you won a commitment for thousands of more jobs.”During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, the National Labor Relations Board often took pro-corporate stances and was actively hostile to unions. While Mr. Biden in September became the first president to appear on a picket line, Mr. Trump visited a nonunion plant in Michigan and said union members “were being sold down the river by their leadership.”The Biden administration has proposed the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations yet, which would ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars are all-electric by 2032 — up from just 5.8 percent today. The rules, if enacted, could sharply lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse emissions.But they also come with costs for autoworkers, because it takes fewer than half the laborers to assemble an all-electric vehicle as it does to build a gasoline-powered car. Union leaders also fear that many of the new manufacturing plants for electric vehicle batteries and other parts are being built in states that are hostile to unions.On Thursday, Mr. Biden showered praise on union leaders, particularly Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., saying the strike that Mr. Fain led saved the automobile industry. “You’ve done a hell of a job, pal,” Mr. Biden told him.Mr. Fain did not offer Mr. Biden the endorsement of his powerful union with about 400,000 active members, including a major presence in the swing state of Michigan. In the past, the union boss has been vocally critical of some administration decisions around its push for electric vehicles, writing in a memo to union members in May that “the E.V. transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom.” He wrote that the union wanted to see “national leadership have our back on this” before making a decision on an endorsement.“His view was: We’re two guys from working-class backgrounds,” Gene Sperling, Mr. Biden’s liaison to the U.A.W., said of the president’s view shortly before he invited Mr. Fain to the Oval Office in July. The two have spoken on the phone several times since, including once when Mr. Biden called Mr. Fain to wish him a happy birthday.Administration officials said the tenor of the relationship changed when Mr. Biden joined striking autoworkers in Michigan in September. When word came down that the union had struck a deal with the automakers, Mr. Biden stepped away during a state dinner welcoming the Australian prime minister and called Mr. Fain, a senior administration official said.David Popp, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University, noted that while new factories will be needed to build electric vehicle batteries, the vehicles will require fewer suppliers producing parts. Many assembly workers will also need to be retrained.“We may also need fewer workers,” Mr. Popp said in an email. But, he said, “there doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on whether that is the case.”Kristine Lynn, who spent 17 years on the assembly line at the Belvidere manufacturing plant before it shuttered eight months ago, said she had “mixed emotions” about the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles.Ms. Lynn, 49, said she was unsure what job she was returning to, but knew she would face changes in the long run. Her last position involved putting gas tanks into automobiles.“That job isn’t going to exist anymore,” she said. More