Biden, Joseph R Jr

More stories

  • 138 Shares109 Views

    in Economy

    Biden Orders Ban on New Investments in China’s Sensitive High-Tech Industries

    by

    The new limits, aimed at preventing American help to Beijing as it modernizes its military, escalate a conflict between the world’s two largest economies.President Biden escalated his confrontation with China on Wednesday by signing an executive order banning new American investment in key technology industries that could be used to enhance Beijing’s military capabilities, the latest in a series of moves putting more distance between the world’s two largest economies.The order will prohibit venture capital and private equity firms from pumping more money into Chinese efforts to develop semiconductors and other microelectronics, quantum computers and certain artificial intelligence applications. Administration officials stressed that the move was tailored to guard national security, but China is likely to see it as part of a wider campaign to contain its rise.“The Biden administration is committed to keeping America safe and defending America’s national security through appropriately protecting technologies that are critical to the next generation of military innovation,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. The statement emphasized that the executive order was a “narrowly targeted action” complementing existing export controls and that the administration maintained its “longstanding commitment to open investment.”Narrow or not, the new order comes at perhaps the most fraught moment in the U.S.-China relationship since President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger opened a dialogue with Beijing in the early 1970s. A series of expanding export controls on key technologies to China has already triggered retaliation from Beijing, which recently announced the cutoff of metals like gallium that are critical for the Pentagon’s own supply chain.Mr. Biden has stressed that he wants to stabilize relations with China following a Cold War-style standoff over a spy balloon shot down after crossing through American airspace and the discovery of a broad Chinese effort to put malware into power grids and communications systems. He has sent Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other officials to renew talks with Chinese officials in recent months. Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, is expected to go to China in coming weeks.Indeed, the president seemed intent on not antagonizing Beijing with Wednesday’s order, making no comment about his action and leaving it to be announced through written material and background briefings by aides who declined to be identified.Still, China declared that it was “very disappointed” by the order, which it said was designed to “politicize and weaponize trade,” and it hinted at retaliation.“The latest investment restrictions will seriously undermine the interests of Chinese and American companies and investors, hinder the normal business cooperation between the two countries and lower the confidence of the international community in the U.S. business environment,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy, said in a statement.Administration officials said the president’s order is part of their effort to “de-risk” the relationship with China but not to “decouple” from it. Wednesday’s announcement, though, takes that effort to a new level. While export bans and concerns about Chinese investment in the United States have a long history, the United States has never before attempted such limits on the flow of investment into China.In fact, for the past few decades, the United States has encouraged American investors to deepen their ties in the Chinese economy, viewing that as a way to expand the web of interdependencies between the two countries that would gradually integrate Beijing into the Western economy and force it to play by Western rules.U.S. government reviews in recent years, however, concluded that investments in new technologies and joint ventures were fueling China’s military and its intelligence-collection capabilities, even if indirectly. American officials have been actively sharing intelligence reports with allies to make the case that Western investment is key to China’s military modernization plans — especially in space, cyberspace and the kind of computer power that would be needed to break Western encryption of critical communications.Administration officials cast the effort as one motivated entirely by national security concerns, not an attempt to gain economic advantage. But the order itself describes how difficult it is to separate the two, referring to China’s moves to “eliminate barriers between civilian and commercial sectors and military and defense industrial sectors.’’ It describes China’s focus on “acquiring and diverting the world’s cutting-edge technologies, for the purpose of achieving military dominance.”(The text of Mr. Biden’s order refers only to “countries of concern,” though an annex limits those to “the People’s Republic of China” and its two special administrative areas, Hong Kong and Macau.)Mr. Biden and his aides discussed joint efforts to limit high-tech investment with their counterparts at the recent Group of 7 summit meeting in Hiroshima, Japan. Several allies, including Britain and the European Union, have publicly indicated that they may follow suit. The outreach to other powers underscores that a U.S. ban may not be that effective by itself and would work only in conjunction with other major nations, including Japan and South Korea.The executive order, which also requires firms to notify the government of certain investments, coincides with a bipartisan effort in Congress to impose similar limits. An amendment along those lines by Senators Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, was added to the Senate version of the annual defense authorization bill.Several Republicans criticized the president’s order as too little, too late and “riddled with loopholes,” as Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it.“It is long overdue, but the Biden administration finally recognized there is a serious problem with U.S. dollars funding China’s rise at our expense,” Mr. Rubio said. “However, this narrowly tailored proposal is almost laughable.”Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the new order should go after existing investments as well as sectors like biotechnology and energy.“We need to stop the flow of American dollars and know-how supporting” China’s military and surveillance apparatus “rather than solely pursuing half measures that are taking too long to develop and go into effect,” Mr. McCaul said.The United States already prohibits or restricts the export of certain technologies and products to China. The new order effectively means that American money, expertise and prestige cannot be used to help China to develop its own versions of what it cannot buy from American companies.It was unclear how much money would be affected. American investors have already pulled back dramatically over the past two years. Venture capital investment in China has plummeted from a high of $43.8 billion in the last quarter of 2021 to $10.5 billion in the second quarter of this year, according to PitchBook, which tracks such trends. But the latest order could have a chilling effect on investment beyond the specific industries at stake.In a capital where the goal of opposing China is one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement, the only sounds of caution in Washington came from the business community. While trade groups praised the administration for consulting them, there was concern that the downward spiral in relations could speed a broader break between the world’s two largest economies.“We hope the final rules allow U.S. chip firms to compete on a level playing field and access key global markets, including China, to promote the long-term strength of the U.S. semiconductor industry and our ability to out-innovate global competitors,” the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a statement.Gabriel Wildau, a managing director at the consulting firm Teneo who focuses on political risk in China, said the direct effect of the executive order would be modest, given its limited scope, but that disclosure requirements embedded in the order could have a chilling effect.“Politicians increasingly regard corporate investments in China as a form of collusion with a foreign enemy, even when there is no allegation of illegality,” he said.The Treasury Department, which has already consulted with American executives about the forthcoming order, will begin formally taking comments before drafting rules to be put in place next year. But American firms may alter their investment strategies even before the rules take effect, knowing that they are coming.A series of expanding export controls on key technologies to China has already triggered retaliation from Beijing.Florence Lo/ReutersChina’s own investment restrictions are broader than the new American rules — they apply to all outbound investments, not just those in the United States. And they reflect a technology policy that in some ways is the opposite of the new American restrictions.China discouraged or halted most low-tech outbound investments, like purchases of real estate or even European soccer clubs. But China allowed and even encouraged further acquisitions of businesses with technologies that could offer geopolitical advantages, including investments in overseas businesses involved in aircraft production, robotics, artificial intelligence and heavy manufacturing.The latest move from Washington comes at a rare moment of vulnerability for the Chinese economy. Consumer prices in China, after barely rising for the previous several months, fell in July for the first time in more than two years, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Wednesday.While Chinese cities and some businesses have declared 2023 a “Year ›of Investing in China” in hopes of a post-Covid revival of their local economies, President Xi Jinping has created an environment that has made many American venture capital firms and other investors more cautious.Western companies that assess investment risk, like the Mintz Group, have been investigated and in some cases their offices have been raided. A Japanese executive was accused of espionage, and a new anti-espionage law has raised fears that ordinary business activities would be viewed by China as spying.The Biden administration’s previous moves to restrain sensitive economic relationships have taken a toll. China’s telecommunications champion, Huawei, has been almost completely blocked from the U.S. market, and American allies, starting with Australia, are ripping Huawei equipment out of their networks. China Telecom was banned by the Federal Communications Commission, which said it “is subject to exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government.”At the same time, the United States — with the somewhat reluctant help of the Dutch government, Japan and South Korea — has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent China from building up its own domestic capability to manufacture the most high-end microelectronics by itself.Washington has banned the export of the multimillion-dollar lithography equipment used to produce chips in hopes of limiting China’s progress while the United States tries to restore its own semiconductor industry. Taken together, it is an unprecedented effort to slow an adversary’s capabilities while speeding America’s own investment.Keith Bradsher More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    Biden to Restrict Investments in China, Citing National Security Threats

    by

    The measure to clamp down on investments in certain industries deemed to pose security risks, set to be issued Wednesday, appears likely to open a new front in the U.S.-China economic conflict.The Biden administration plans on Wednesday to issue new restrictions on American investments in certain advanced industries in China, according to people familiar with the deliberations, a move that supporters have described as necessary to protect national security but that will undoubtedly rankle Beijing.The measure would be one of the first significant steps the United States has taken amid an economic clash with China to clamp down on outgoing financial flows. It could set the stage for more restrictions on investments between the two countries in the years to come.The restrictions would bar private equity and venture capital firms from making investments in certain high-tech sectors, like quantum computing, artificial intelligence and advanced semiconductors, the people said, in a bid to stop the transfer of American dollars and expertise to China.It would also require firms making investments in a broader range of Chinese industries to report that activity, giving the government better visibility into financial exchanges between the United States and China.The White House declined to comment. But Biden officials have emphasized that outright restrictions on investment would narrowly target a few sectors that could aid the Chinese military or surveillance state as they seek to combat security threats but not disrupt legitimate business with China.“There is mounting evidence that U.S. capital is being used to advance Chinese military capabilities and that the U.S. lacks a sufficient means of combating this activity,” said Emily Benson, the director of project on trade and technology at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.The Biden administration has recently sought to calm relations with China, dispatching Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other top officials to talk with Chinese counterparts. In recent speeches, Biden officials have argued that targeted actions taken against China are aimed purely at protecting U.S. national security, not at damaging the Chinese economy.At the same time, the Biden administration has continued to push to “de-risk” critical supply chains by developing suppliers outside China, and it has steadily ramped up its restrictions on selling certain technologies to China, including semiconductors for advanced computing.The Chinese government has long restricted certain foreign investments by individuals and firms. Other governments, such as those of Taiwan and South Korea, also have restrictions on outgoing investments.But beyond screening Chinese investment into the United States for security risks, the U.S. government has left financial flows between the world’s two largest economies largely untouched. Just a few years ago, American policymakers were working to open up Chinese financial markets for U.S. firms.In the past few years, investments between the United States and China have fallen sharply as the countries severed other economic ties. But venture capital and private equity firms have continued to seek out lucrative opportunities for partnerships, as a way to gain access to China’s vibrant tech industry.The planned measure has already faced criticism from some congressional Republicans and others who say it has taken too long and does not go far enough to limit U.S. funding of Chinese technology. In July, a House committee on China sent letters to four U.S. venture capital firms expressing “serious concern” about their investments in Chinese companies in areas including artificial intelligence and semiconductors.Others have argued that the restriction would mainly put the U.S. economy at a disadvantage, because other countries continue to forge technology partnerships with China, and China has no shortage of capital.Nicholas R. Lardy, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the United States was the source of less than 5 percent of China’s inbound direct investment in 2021 and 2022.“Unless other major investors in China adopt similar restrictions, I think this is a waste of time,” Mr. Lardy said. “Pushing this policy now simply plays into the hands of those in Beijing who believe that the U.S. seeks to contain China and are not interested in renewed dialogue or a ‘thaw.’”Biden officials have talked with allies in recent months to explain the measure and encourage other governments to adopt similar restrictions, including at the Group of 7 meetings in Japan in May. Since then, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has urged the European Union to introduce its own measure.The administration is expected to give businesses and other organizations a chance to comment on the new rules before they are finalized in the months to come.Claire Chu, a senior China analyst at Janes, a defense intelligence company, said that communicating and enforcing the measure would be difficult, and that officials would need to engage closely with Silicon Valley and Wall Street.“For a long time, the U.S. national security community has been reticent to recognize the international financial system as a potential warfighting domain,” she said. “And the business community has pushed back against what it considers to be the politicization of private markets. And so this is not only an interagency effort, but an exercise in intersectoral coordination.” More

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    White House Hits Back on Fitch Credit Downgrade, Protecting Biden

    by

    The president’s team has mobilized to counter the downgrade of Treasury debt by the Fitch Ratings agency, rushing to defend the story of an improving economic outlook.When the Fitch Ratings agency announced this week that it was downgrading its long-term credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+, Biden administration officials were ready — and angry.Administration officials had been lobbying Fitch against the downgrade, which bewildered many economists but became immediate fodder for congressional Republicans and nonpartisan budget hawks to criticize the nation’s current fiscal direction.When the ratings agency went through with the move anyway, President Biden’s team mobilized a rapid response, with economic heavyweights inside and outside the administration criticizing the timing and substance of the announcement.The swift pushback was an effort to keep the downgrade from tarnishing Mr. Biden’s economic record amid a run of good news in key measures of the health of the American economy. And its aggressiveness reflected the critical importance of an improving economic outlook to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.“What was important to the president was to point out not only was the Fitch decision arbitrary and outdated, but his administration has taken action to accomplish things that go in the exact opposite of the markdown,” Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview, citing a bipartisan deal to raise the debt limit and modestly reduce federal spending.“One reason why we punched back hard is because Fitch completely ignored accomplishments under this president, both on fiscal policy and on economic growth,” he said.The White House got lucky in one respect. Coverage of the downgrade was immediately swamped by the third criminal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump.It was an extension of a trend that has both helped and hurt Mr. Biden so far this year: Over the past six months, according to a Stanford University database, television networks have focused as much on news about his predecessor as on news about Mr. Biden.Also helping Mr. Biden was that investors largely shrugged off the Fitch Ratings move. Researchers at Goldman Sachs wrote on Wednesday that “the downgrade should have little direct impact on financial markets.”The downgrade came just after 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Fitch released a statement that attributed the move to “the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden and the erosion of governance” in the United States over the past two decades.Most notably, Fitch officials cited a series of high-stakes showdowns over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. “The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management,” they wrote.The agency also expressed concerns over the rising costs of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more Americans retire, which are predicted to be the largest drivers of rising federal debt in the decade to come. Fitch predicted that the nation was headed for a mild recession by the end of the year. It was the second credit downgrade in American history, both directly linked to debt limit fights.Moments after the release, Biden administration officials hit back.Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement that she strongly disagreed with a ratings change that she called “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”Soon after, administration officials organized a call with reporters to criticize the move in more detail. They questioned why Fitch had not downgraded the rating when Mr. Trump was president, based on Fitch’s own ratings models, and why it had done so now, soon after a compromise with Republicans in Congress that had averted a fiscal crisis.They rejected the agency’s recession prediction, citing strong recent economic data. They said the president was committed to further spending cuts — along with tax increases on corporations and the wealthy — to further reduce budget deficits in the future.Officials also pointed reporters to a range of outside economists and analysts who criticized the decision.Republicans quickly used the downgrade to criticize Mr. Biden.“With annual deficits projected to double and interest costs expected to triple in just 10 years, our nation’s financial health is rapidly deteriorating and our debt trajectory is completely unsustainable,” said Representative Jodey C. Arrington of Texas, the chairman of the House Budget Committee. “This is a wake-up call to get our fiscal house in order before it’s too late.”Fiscal hawks have been warning for more than a decade that America’s debt could grow unsustainable. Those calls grew as lawmakers borrowed trillions to help people, businesses and governments endure the Covid-19 pandemic. The cost of federal borrowing rose sharply over the past year as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat inflation. More

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Strong Economic Data Buoys Biden, but Many Voters Are Still Sour

    by

    Voters continue to rate the president poorly on economic issues, but there are signs the national mood is beginning to improve.President Biden and his aides are basking in what is arguably the best run of economic data to date in his presidency. Inflation is cooling, business investment is rising, job growth is powering on and surveys suggest rising economic optimism among consumers and voters.Polls still show Mr. Biden remains underwater on his handling of the economy, with voters more likely to disapprove of his performance than approve of it. Yet there are signs that voters may be brightening their assessment of the economy under Mr. Biden, in part thanks to the mounting effects of the infrastructure, manufacturing and climate bills he has signed into law.The run of positive economic news comes as his administration looks to credit “Bidenomics” for a sustained run of positive data.The economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter of the year, handily beating economists’ expectations, the Commerce Department reported last week. Price growth slowed in June even as consumer spending picked up. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of year-over-year inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, has now fallen to 3 percent this year from about 7 percent last June — easing the pressure on Mr. Biden from the economic problem that has bedeviled his presidency thus far.And in less visible but significant ways, there are signs that Mr. Biden’s signature economic policies may be starting to bear fruit, most notably in a steep rise in factory construction. Government data released Tuesday showed that boom continued in June, with spending on manufacturing facilities up nearly 80 percent over the previous year. The manufacturing sector as a whole has added nearly 800,000 jobs since Mr. Biden took office and now employs the most people since 2008.“The public policy changes that have been put in place over the past two years are now starting to show up in the data,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. He said the increased investment was “undoubtedly linked” to government policies, in particular the CHIPS Act, which aimed to promote domestic manufacturing, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which targeted low-emission energy technologies to combat climate change.As Mr. Biden gears up for his re-election campaign, perhaps what is most encouraging to him is that consumer confidence is rising to levels not seen since the early months of his tenure in the White House, before inflation surged. Measures by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board suggest consumers have grown happier with the current state of the economy and more hopeful about the year ahead.That change in attitude may reflect an underlying economic reality: The combination of cooling inflation, low unemployment and rising pay means that American workers are seeing their standard of living improve. Hourly wages outpaced price gains in the spring for the first time in two years, giving consumers more purchasing power.National opinion polls still show a sour economic mood — but it appears to be improving slightly.In a new New York Times/Siena College poll, 49 percent of respondents rated the economy as “poor,” compared with 20 percent who called it “excellent” or “good.” That’s an improvement from last summer, when 58 percent of Americans in another Times/Siena poll called the economy “poor” and just 10 percent rated it “excellent” or “good.”Administration officials attribute the economy’s strength, particularly in the labor market, to the direct aid to individuals, businesses and state and local governments that was included in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Mr. Biden signed into law in 2021.Economists generally blame that same stimulus package for some of the rapid spike in inflation that ensued largely after its passage. But the recent moderation in price growth is emboldening officials to cite the bill as more of a positive factor, saying it helped keep consumers spending and businesses operating, speeding the return to a low unemployment rate.“The American Rescue Plan was designed for both getting the economy back up and running but making sure there was enough wiggle room to deal with challenges that could come down the pipeline,” Heather Boushey, a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “And that has been, I think, very, very successful in getting people back to work. This has been the sharpest recovery in decades, in terms of job creation. We have outperformed our economic competitors.”Economic officials inside and outside the administration warn that risks remain as policymakers seek to achieve a so-called soft landing, bringing down sky-high inflation without triggering a recession. And many Republicans dispute the president’s claims that his policies have bolstered the economy. They note that inflation remains well above historical averages and that for many American workers, wage gains under Mr. Biden have failed to keep pace with rising prices.“Even if inflation ‘is less,’ those prices are not going down,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, told Fox News this week. For a middle-class family, “affording a home is prohibitive,” he said. “If you look at the median income compared to the median home price, there’s a bigger gap than there was when the financial crisis hit after the big housing increase in 2006 and 2007. Cars are becoming less affordable; people feel that squeeze.”Some forecasters, including at the Conference Board, continue to predict the economy will fall into recession by the end of the year. They cite indicators that have frequently signaled downturns in the past, most notably the rapid decline in lending from both small and large banks.Tightening credit conditions, as reported this week by the Fed, “are consistent with G.D.P. growth slowing to recession territory in coming quarters,” researchers at BNP Paribas wrote this week.Yet most independent economists agree that the U.S. recovery has been stronger than expected. They are less united on how much credit Mr. Biden’s policies deserve for it. The decline in inflation, they say, is mostly the result of the Fed’s aggressive efforts to combat it, helped along by some good luck as oil prices have fallen and the pandemic’s disruptions have faded.Consumer confidence is rising to levels not seen since the early months of Mr. Biden’s presidency.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe resilience of the labor market — and the strength of the broader economy — is almost certainly the result, at least in part, of the trillions of dollars of aid that the federal government pumped into the economy in 2020 and 2021, which helped prevent the widespread bankruptcies, foreclosures and business failures that stymied the recovery from the Great Recession a decade and a half ago. But much of that came under President Donald J. Trump, and economists disagree about how much Mr. Biden’s stimulus package specifically helped the recovery.Still, recent economic developments have seemed to bear out one of the arguments that Democrats made early in Mr. Biden’s term: that the risks of doing too little to help the economy outweighed the risks of doing too much. Too little aid could leave the U.S. economy facing another “lost decade” of slow growth similar to the one that followed the last recession. Too much aid might cause inflation — but that, unlike slow growth, is a problem the Fed knows how to solve.Risks remain in the months to come. Inflation could pick back up, particularly if oil prices continue to rise, as they have in recent weeks. The job market could deteriorate, leading to a sharp rise in unemployment. Many forecasters still expect a recession to begin this year or early next.Drawing a straight line from government policies to economic outcomes is always difficult, especially in real time. But recent economic data has, at the very least, looked consistent with the Biden administration’s theory of how its policies would affect the economy.Administration officials point in particular at what they have begun referring to as the “hockey-stick graph”: a steep upward climb in investment in factory construction over the past two years, which they attribute to spending and tax incentives in several bills that Mr. Biden championed and signed into law. Those include bipartisan measures to boost infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, and a bill passed last year by Democrats when they controlled Congress that focused heavily on spurring new development in low-emission energy technologies to combat climate change.Private-sector analysts have largely agreed that policies have played a significant — though hard to quantify — role in the manufacturing construction boom in recent months. That, in turn, has helped to fuel a surprising increase in business investment more broadly, which helped lift economic growth in the spring even as consumer spending slowed.Even Treasury officials acknowledge significant risks to the economy in the months to come. Privately, many of Mr. Biden’s aides express at least some uncertainty about whether a soft landing is now assured.But the combination of solid growth, low unemployment and cooling inflation has made forecasters increasingly optimistic that the United States can avoid a recession that many of them once thought was inevitable.“You’ve got to look at that and say the probability of a soft landing has gone up,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo. More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Economy Adds 209,000 Jobs in June as Pace of Hiring Cools

    by

    Hiring slowed last month, a sign that the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting campaign is taking hold. But with rising wages and low unemployment, the labor market remains resilient.The U.S. labor market showed signs of continued cooling last month but extended a two-and-a-half-year streak of job growth, the Labor Department said Friday.U.S. employers added 209,000 jobs, seasonally adjusted, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent from 3.7 percent in May as joblessness remained near lows not seen in more than half a century.June was the 30th consecutive month of job growth, but the gain was down from a revised 306,000 in May and was the lowest since the streak began.Wages, as measured by average hourly earnings for workers, rose 0.4 percent from the previous month and 4.4 percent from June 2022. Those increases matched the May trend but exceeded expectations, a potential point of concern for Federal Reserve officials, who have tried to rein in wages and prices by ratcheting up interest rates.Still, the response to the report from economists, investors and labor market analysts was generally positive. The resilience of the job market has bolstered hopes that inflation can be brought under control while the economy continues to grow.The year-over-year gain in wages exceeded that of prices for the first time since 2021Year-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

  • 125 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Yellen’s China Visit Aims to Ease Tensions Amid Deep Divisions

    by

    Mutual skepticism between the United States and China over a wide range of economic and security issues has festered in recent years.The last time a U.S. Treasury secretary visited China, Washington and Beijing were locked in a trade war, the Trump administration was preparing to label China a currency manipulator, and fraying relations between the two countries were roiling global markets.Four years later, as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen prepares to arrive in Beijing, many of the economic policy concerns that have been festering between the United States and China remain — or have even intensified — despite the Biden administration’s less antagonistic tone.The tariffs that President Donald J. Trump imposed on Chinese goods are still in effect. President Biden has been working to restrict China’s access to critical technology such as semiconductors. And new restrictions curbing American investment in China are looming.Treasury Department officials have downplayed expectations for major breakthroughs on Ms. Yellen’s four-day trip, which begins when she arrives in Beijing on Thursday. They suggest instead that her meetings with senior Chinese officials are intended to improve communication between the world’s two largest economies. But tensions between United States and China remain high, and conversations between Ms. Yellen and her counterparts are likely to be difficult. She met in Washington with Xie Feng, China’s ambassador, on Monday, and the two officials had a “frank and productive discussion,” according to the Treasury.Here are some of the most contentious issues that have sown divisions between the United States and China.Technology and trade controlsChinese officials are still smarting at the Biden administration’s 2022 decision to place significant limitations on the kinds of advanced semiconductors and chip-making machinery that can be sent to China. Those limits have hampered China’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence and other kinds of advanced computing that are expected to help power each country’s economy and military going forward.The government of the Netherlands, which is home to semiconductor machinery maker ASML, on Friday announced new restrictions on machinery exports to China. On Monday, China placed restrictions on exports of germanium and gallium, two metals used to make chips.The Biden administration is mulling further controls on advanced chips and on American investment into cutting-edge Chinese technology.Semiconductors have always been one of the biggest and most valuable categories of U.S. exports to China, and while the Chinese government is investing heavily in its domestic capacity, it remains many years behind the United States.The Biden administration’s subsidy program to strengthen the U.S. semiconductor industry has also rankled Chinese officials, especially since it includes restrictions on investing in China. Companies that accept U.S. government money to build new chip facilities in the United States are forbidden to make new, high-tech investments in China. And while Chinese officials — and some American manufacturers — were hopeful that the Biden administration would lift tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports, that does not seem to be in the offing. While Ms. Yellen has questioned the efficacy of tariffs, other top officials within the administration see the levies as helpful for encouraging supply chains to move out of China.The administration is employing both carrots and sticks to carry out a policy of “de-risking” or “friend-shoring” — that is, enticing supply chains for crucial products like electric vehicle batteries, semiconductors and solar panels out of China.President Biden during a visit to a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant under construction in Phoenix. The Biden administration’s efforts to assist the U.S. semiconductor industry has rankled Chinese officials.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesDeteriorating business environmentsCompanies doing business in China are increasingly worried about attracting negative attention from the government. The most recent target was Micron Technology, a U.S. memory chip maker that failed a Chinese security review in May. The move could cut Micron off from selling to Chinese companies that operate key infrastructure, putting roughly an eighth of the company’s global revenue at risk. In recent months, consulting and advisory firms in China with foreign ties have faced a crackdown.American officials are growing more concerned with the Chinese government’s use of economic coercion against countries like Lithuania and Australia, and they are working with European officials and other governments to coordinate their responses.Businesses are also alarmed by China’s ever-tightening national security laws, which include a stringent counterespionage law that took effect on Saturday. Foreign businesses in China are reassessing their activities and the market information they gather because the law is vague about what is prohibited. “We think this is very ill advised, and we’ve made that point to several members of the government here,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, in an interview in Beijing.In the United States, companies with ties to China, like the social media app TikTok, the shopping app Temu and the clothing retailer Shein, are facing increasing scrutiny over their labor practices, their use of American customer data and the ways they import products into the United States.CurrencyChina’s currency, the renminbi, has often been a source of concern for American officials, who have at times accused Beijing of artificially weakening its currency to make its products cheaper to sell abroad.The renminbi’s recent weakness may pose the most difficult issue for Ms. Yellen. The currency is down more than 7 percent against the dollar in the past 12 months and down nearly 13 percent against the euro. That decline makes China’s exports more competitive in the United States. China’s trade surplus in manufactured goods already represents a tenth of the entire economy’s output.The renminbi is not alone in falling against the dollar lately — the Japanese yen has tumbled for various reasons, including rising interest rates in the United States as the Federal Reserve tries to tamp down inflation.Chinese economists have blamed that factor for the renminbi’s weakness as well. Zhan Yubo, a senior economist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the decline in the renminbi was the direct result of the Fed’s recent increases in interest rates.At the same time, China has been cutting interest rates to help its flagging economy. The interest rate that banks charge one another for overnight loans — a benchmark that tends to influence all other interest rates — is now a little over 5 percent in New York and barely 1 percent in Shanghai. That reverses a longstanding pattern in which interest rates were usually higher in China.The Fed’s rate increases have made it more attractive for companies and households to send money out of China and invest it in the United States, in defiance of Beijing’s stringent limits on overseas money movements.China pledged as part of the Phase 1 trade agreement with the United States three years ago not to seek an advantage in trade by pushing down the value of its currency. But the Biden administration’s options may be limited if China lets its currency weaken anyway.Global debtChina has provided more than $500 billion to developing countries through its lending program, making it one of the world’s largest creditors. Many of those borrowers, including several African nations, have struggled economically since the pandemic and face the possibility of defaulting on their debt payments.The United States, along with other Western nations, has been pressing China to allow some of those countries to restructure their debt and reduce the amount that they owe. But for more than two years, China has insisted that other creditors and multilateral lenders absorb financial losses as part of any restructuring, bogging down the loan relief process and threatening to push millions of people in developing countries deeper into poverty.In June, international creditors including China agreed to a debt relief plan with Zambia that would provide a grace period on its interest payments and extend the dates when its loans are due. The arrangement did not require that the World Bank or International Monetary Fund write off any debts, offering global policymakers like Ms. Yellen hope for similar debt restructuring in poorer countries.Human rights and national security issuesTensions over national security and human rights have created an atmosphere of mutual distrust and spilled over into economic relations. The flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the United States this year deeply unsettled the American public, and members of Congress have been pressing the administration to reveal more of what it knows about the balloon. Mr. Biden’s recent labeling of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, as a “dictator” also rankled Chinese officials and state-run media.American officials continue to be concerned about China’s human rights violations, including the suppression of the democracy movement in Hong Kong and the detention of mainly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. A senior Treasury Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity before Ms. Yellen’s trip, said the United States had no intention of shying away from its views on human rights during the meetings in China.Chinese officials continue to protest the various sanctions that the United States has issued against Chinese companies, organizations and individuals for national security threats and human rights violations — including sanctions against Li Shangfu, China’s defense minister. The Chinese government has cited those sanctions as a reason for its rejection of high-level military dialogues. More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Economy

    Biden’s Debt Ceiling Strategy: Win in the Fine Print

    by

    The president and his negotiators believe they worked out a deal that allowed Republicans to claim big spending cuts even as the reality was far more modest.Shalanda Young couldn’t sleep.A small team of Biden administration officials had spent the past two days in intense negotiations with House Republicans in an attempt to avert a catastrophic government default. Ms. Young, the White House budget director, had been trading proposals on federal spending caps with negotiators deputized by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose Republican caucus was refusing to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit without deep cuts.Now, as she scrolled Netflix in search of “bad television” to distract her racing mind, Ms. Young had a sinking feeling. What if she cut a deal to reduce spending and raise the debt limit, only to see Republicans attempt to force through much deeper cuts when it came time to pass annual appropriations bills this fall?At work the next morning, Ms. Young asked her staff how to stop that from happening. They settled on a plan, which in essence would penalize Republicans’ most cherished spending programs if they failed to follow the contours of the agreement. Then they forced Republicans to include that plan in the legislative text codifying the deal.That approach reflected a broader strategy President Biden’s team followed in the debt limit negotiations, according to interviews with current and former administration officials, some Republicans and other people familiar with the talks.On Saturday, that strategy reached its conclusion as Mr. Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 into law, just days before a potential default and following weeks of talks and a revolt from right-wing lawmakers in the House that put an agreement at risk of collapse.In pursuit of an agreement, the Biden team was willing to give Republicans victory after victory on political talking points, which they realized Mr. McCarthy needed to sell the bill to his conference. They let Mr. McCarthy’s team claim in the end that the deal included deep spending cuts, huge clawbacks of unspent federal coronavirus relief money and stringent work requirements for recipients of federal aid.But in the details of the text and the many side deals that accompanied it, the Biden team wanted to win on substance. With one large exception — a $20 billion cut in enforcement funding for the Internal Revenue Service — they believe they did.The way administration officials see it, the full final agreement’s spending cuts are nothing worse than they would have expected in regular appropriations bills passed by a divided Congress. They agreed to structure the cuts so they appeared to save $1.5 trillion over a decade in the eyes of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But thanks to the side deals — including some accounting tricks — White House officials estimate that the actual cuts could total as little as $136 billion over the two enforceable years of the spending caps that are central to the agreement.Much of the $30 billion in clawed-back Covid-19 money was probably never going to be spent, Biden officials say, including dollars from an aviation manufacturing jobs program that had basically ended.At one point in the talks, administration officials offered to include in the deal more than 100 relief programs from which they were willing to rescind money. The final list spanned 20 pages of a 99-page bill, and Mr. McCarthy championed it on the House floor. But because much of the money was repurposed for other spending, the net savings added up to only about $11 billion over two years. One of the programs had a remaining balance of just $40.Many Democrats remain furious that the deal included new work requirements that could push 750,000 people off food stamps, which the Biden team begrudgingly concluded it had to accept.That measure alone could have tanked Democratic support for the deal in Congress, officials knew. So they sought to counterbalance it with efforts to expand food stamp eligibility for veterans, the homeless and others, which Republicans agreed to do. The budget office concluded that the changes would actually add recipients to the program, on net.Some Democrats and progressive groups have sharply criticized Mr. Biden for negotiating over the debt limit at all, denouncing the spending cuts and work requirements and saying he cemented Republicans’ ability to ransom the borrowing limit whenever a Democrat occupies the White House.Republican negotiators sold the deal as a game-changing blow to Mr. Biden’s spending ambitions. “They absolutely have tire tracks on them in this negotiation,” Representative Garret Graves of Louisiana said before the House vote on Wednesday.Mr. Biden views it differently. As the Senate prepared to pass the agreement on Thursday evening, he huddled with his chief of staff, Jeffrey D. Zients, along with Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, and other aides, in Mr. Zients’s office in the West Wing of the White House. Mr. Biden asked them what you might call a scorecard question: What percentage of Democrats in the House had voted for the deal, and what share were expected to in the Senate?When Mr. Ricchetti told him the number of Democrats would be larger, in both chambers, than the share of Republicans supporting the deal, Mr. Biden was pleased. It was validation, in his view, that he had cut a good deal.Mr. Zients referred to that vote share in an interview on Friday. “If you go back a few months ago, no one would have thought this was possible,” he said.It was not an assured outcome. The negotiating teams came to the table with divergent views of the drivers of federal debt in recent years. White House negotiators blamed Republican tax cuts. Republicans blamed Mr. Biden’s economic agenda, including a debt-financed Covid relief bill in 2021 and a bipartisan infrastructure bill later that year.The dispute occasionally grew profane. At one point, after Mr. Biden’s negotiators criticized the 2017 Republican tax cuts, a “very mild-mannered” aide to Mr. McCarthy stood up, shook his finger at the Biden team and hotly responded that their argument was nonsense, using a vulgarity, Mr. Graves recounted.Mr. Biden had insisted for months that he would not negotiate over raising the borrowing limit. But privately, many aides had been planning on talks all along — though they refused to admit those talks were linked to the debt limit. The Biden team reasoned that it would have to negotiate fiscal issues this year anyway, both on appropriations bills and on programs like food stamps that are included in a regularly reauthorized farm bill.Mr. Biden’s economic advisers, including Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, were warning of catastrophic damage to the economy if the government could no longer pay its bills on time.The president appeared to score wins before the talks even started. He goaded Republicans into agreeing, in the midst of his State of the Union address, that Social Security and Medicare would be off limits in the talks — thanks to a spontaneous riff that grew out of a passage in his speech that he had worked on extensively in the days beforehand. He proposed a budget filled with tax increases on the rich and corporations that were meant to reduce debt, but he refused to engage Mr. McCarthy in serious talks until Republicans offered a spending plan of their own.In late April, the House passed a bill that included $4.7 trillion in savings from spending cuts, canceling clean-energy tax breaks and clawing back money for Covid relief and the I.R.S. It featured work requirements and measures to speed fossil fuel projects, and it raised the debt limit for one year.Mr. Biden, under fire from business groups and others who feared the standoff could result in the United States running out of money before the debt limit was raised, soon agreed to designate a team of negotiators. The White House team was led by officials including Ms. Young and one of her top aides, Michael Linden, who delayed his departure from the White House to help negotiate along with Louisa Terrell, the legislative affairs director, and Mr. Ricchetti.Mr. McCarthy’s negotiators gave Biden officials the impression that to reach agreement, they needed at least one talking point from every major aspect of the House Republican debt limit bill.The talks took a few surprising turns. Multiple White House officials say the Republican team briefly entertained relatively modest proposals to raise tax revenue, including closing loopholes that benefit some real-estate owners and people who trade cryptocurrency. Those discussions stalled quickly.Democrats agreed to fast-track a natural gas pipeline, in what officials concede was making good on a promise to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, for backing Mr. Biden’s signature climate law last year.The spending caps ended up roughly where many Biden aides had predicted they would in private discussions months ago. But few White House officials believed they would have to give up $20 billion of the $80 billion that Democrats approved last year to help the I.R.S. crack down on tax cheats. Mr. Biden hammered out the amount in a final call with Mr. McCarthy.Ms. Young said that cut was painful. “And not just for me,” she added. “It’s something we talked to the president about many times. He cares deeply about this.”On Thursday evening in Mr. Zients’s office, the president and his team were focused on upsides. They had beaten back Republican attempts to cancel the climate law, to add new work requirements on Medicaid recipients and to impose binding spending caps for a decade. Mr. Biden was particularly pleased to spare key veterans’ programs from cuts.On Friday morning, Mr. Zients gathered core officials in his office, as he had every day, seven days a week, for several weeks running. Ms. Brainard and the economic team were relieved to have cleared the threat of default not just for this year, but through the next presidential election. Aides worked on honing Mr. Biden’s planned remarks in an Oval Office address on Friday evening.The speech started at 7:01 p.m., unusually promptly for Mr. Biden. By then, his staff was already celebrating. An hour earlier, happy hour had begun in Mr. Zients’s office.Catie Edmondson More

  • 113 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    Biden Praises Debt-Ceiling Deal in Address to the Nation

    by

    President Biden hailed a rare example of bipartisan cooperation in Washington on Friday, saying in his first prime-time address from the Oval Office that this week’s legislative budget deal averts economic calamity from a default on the nation’s debt.The legislation, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, passed the Senate late Thursday after receiving broad support in the House earlier in the week. The bill suspends the debt ceiling for two years and cuts back on spending.Seated behind the Resolute Desk, Mr. Biden said he would soon sign the measure into law and sought to reassure Americans that robust job growth — the economy added 339,000 jobs in May alone — would not be sidetracked by global fears about whether the United States is willing to pay its bills.“Essential to all the progress we’ve made in the last few years is keeping full faith and credit of the United States,” Mr. Biden said, adding: “Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher.”The speech was designed to double down on Mr. Biden’s longtime brand as a political deal-maker who is able to reach compromise with his rivals. His advisers believe that reputation is critical to his ability to win a second term in the White House.But Mr. Biden also used his remarks, which lasted about 12 minutes, to highlight achievements by his administration that are fiercely opposed by Republicans, and vowed to continue pushing a Democratic agenda that includes higher taxes on the wealthy, more spending on climate change and veterans and no cuts to health care or the social safety net.“No one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed,” he said. He added that “we protected important priorities from Social Security to Medicare to Medicaid to veterans to our transformational investments in infrastructure and clean energy.”Mr. Biden went out of his way to praise House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his chief Republican rival.“He and I, we and our teams, we were able to get along, get things done,” Mr. Biden said. “We were straightforward with one another, completely honest with one another and respectful with one another. Both sides operated in good faith.”The president said he would sign the bill on Saturday, two days before the so-called X-date, when the Treasury secretary said the government would run out of cash to pay its bills, a situation that economists have predicted would cause global uncertainty and turmoil.Presidents often reserve the Oval Office for addresses to the nation about war, economic crises or natural disasters. President Ronald Reagan delivered somber remarks from there after the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. President Donald J. Trump announced pandemic restrictions from the Oval Office in early 2020.Mr. Biden’s decision to use the same venue on Friday underscores how close he believes the nation veered toward economic disaster.Mr. Biden and lawmakers had expressed optimism for weeks that they would reach an accord to avoid that outcome, but the deep disagreements between Democrats and Republicans kept the country — and the rest of the world — on edge until the votes were cast in both chambers.In the House, conservative Republicans initially revolted against Mr. McCarthy for failing to win more spending concessions from the president. Several threatened Mr. McCarthy’s speakership, but backed down amid robust support for the speaker from other Republicans.Some Democrats in the House and Senate also resisted the compromise, but the White House made the decision to largely keep quiet as the votes proceeded this week, hoping to avoid inflaming the conservative opposition and making Mr. McCarthy’s job harder.Mr. Biden has said on several occasions that he hoped to find a way to avoid a similar crisis over the debt ceiling in the future and has mentioned the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says the debt of the United States “shall not be questioned.”Some legal experts believe that a president could use that passage to ignore the statutory debt limit, thereby avoiding the regular clashes between the parties. Mr. Biden said last month that he hoped to “find a rationale to take it to the courts to see whether or not the 14th Amendment is, in fact, something that would be able to stop it.”On Sunday, he said, “That’s another day.”Before the Oval Office speech, Mr. Biden was faced with anger among some progressives in his party that he had agreed to too many Republican demands during the negotiations.Some Democratic lawmakers voted against the debt ceiling legislation because of new work requirements that it imposes on some recipients of food assistance. White House officials have argued that the legislation removes work requirements for others, including the homeless and veterans.The president also angered some environmentalists by agreeing to approve construction of a natural gas pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia. Critics say the 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline will hurt wildlife and the environment as it cuts across the Appalachian Trail.For Mr. Biden, the debt ceiling deal helps to avoid undercutting the strong economy, which is a key selling point for his campaign.But his political advisers also have to be concerned about maintaining support from the coalition of voters who put him in office in 2020, some of whom have been disappointed with his achievements in climate, criminal justice and other areas. More