Biden, Joseph R Jr

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    ‘Most Pro-Union President’ Runs Into Doubts in Labor Ranks

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    Many union leaders say the Biden White House has delivered on its promises. But its handling of a freight rail dispute has given rise to detractors.Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” And for the last two years, labor leaders have often lauded him for delivering on that promise.They cite appointees who are sympathetic to unions and a variety of pro-labor measures, like a pandemic relief bill that included tens of billions to shore up union pension funds.But in recent weeks, after Mr. Biden helped impose a contract on railroad workers that four unions had rejected, partly over its lack of paid sick days, many labor activists and scholars have begun to ask: How supportive is the president, really?To those reassessing Mr. Biden, the concern is that the president, by asking Congress to intervene and avert a strike, missed a rare opportunity to improve workers’ bargaining power in ways that could extend beyond the rail sector. They worry that the move essentially validated an employer strategy of waiting out workers in hopes that the pressure would fizzle.“Whether this group of workers has sick days or not on some level was not the issue,” said Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at Columbia University who studies labor. “It was: What can people ask for and expect to win through collective action?”That Mr. Biden did not take a stronger stand, she added, “suggested a political blindness to what was really at stake.”At heart, the railroad episode has stirred a debate over what it means to be a pro-labor president.Defenders see Mr. Biden as unusually outspoken on behalf of workers’ rights. They cite his declaration during a unionization vote at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats” — an unusual if carefully worded gesture of presidential solidarity — and his dismay that Kellogg planned to permanently replace striking workers.“He has helped create a mood in the country as it relates to unions that has helped propel the extraordinary organizing going on,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which organized the unsuccessful drive at the Alabama warehouse and is challenging the result. Mr. Appelbaum added that Mr. Biden’s announcement during the campaign was “beyond what we’d hoped for.”The president’s backers also point to a raft of labor-friendly regulations and legislation. Mr. Biden issued an executive order requiring so-called project labor agreements on federal construction projects above $35 million — agreements with unions that set wages and work rules — and the major climate and health bill he signed created incentives for clean energy projects to pay wages similar to union rates.Celeste Drake, a senior White House labor adviser, said in a statement that Mr. Biden had made “lasting strides for workers and unions” and that many of his achievements were “passed on a razor’s edge of tight margins in Congress, often with Republican votes, where the president’s advocacy for unions as a means to rebuilding the middle class could have jeopardized everything.” (More than 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, according to a recent Gallup poll.)Liz Shuler, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who was the labor federation’s second-ranking official during the Obama presidency, said Mr. Biden’s administration had been far more solicitous of labor than the previous Democratic president, whom labor leaders sometimes criticized for backing free trade deals and contentious changes in education policy.“For the decisions made in the Obama administration, labor was often an afterthought,” Ms. Shuler said. “It’s the polar opposite with Biden. We’re included at the table ahead of time, before decisions are made.”Even the railway labor situation, in which Mr. Biden urged Congress to enact a contract that included significant wage gains and improvements in health benefits, ended up more favorable to workers than it probably would have under another administration, union officials say.The alternative view of Mr. Biden, put forth by many labor historians and activists, is that while the president has in fact been more obliging to unions and maintained better relationships with union leaders than his recent Democratic predecessors, the difference is one of degree rather than kind.They say that like his predecessors, Mr. Biden effectively seeks to manage the long-term decline of labor in a relatively humane way — by making favorable appointments and enacting measures that help at the margins — but has yet to take the sorts of risks that would restore power to workers.Mr. Biden has “gestured in interesting ways in certain moments,” said Gabriel Winant, a labor historian at the University of Chicago. “But it doesn’t seem like he has the stomach to see the gestures through.”For those who subscribe to this view, the rail labor dispute was a telling encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s approach: an instance in which the administration worked closely with many leaders of the dozen unions representing rail workers but angered portions of the rank and file. Members of four unions voted down the deal that the administration had helped broker but were not allowed to strike for a better one.Administration officials say that while Mr. Biden strongly supports the right to strike, the potential costs to the economy, which the industry said could be more than $2 billion per day, were simply too high to allow rail workers to walk off the job. They point out that a strike could have also posed health and safety risks — for example, by halting shipments of chemicals that ensure clean drinking water.But to critics, these risks were in some sense the point: They provided workers with a rare moment of leverage. They say Mr. Biden could have simply refused to sign any legislation that didn’t include paid sick days, then made clear that rail carriers were to blame for any disruption if they refused.Administration officials say the potential costs to the economy were simply too high to allow rail workers to walk off the job.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“Biden in this case revealed that I’m your friend, but I won’t risk anything for you,” said Joseph A. McCartin, a historian at Georgetown University who has written extensively about transportation labor disputes.And if taking a more forceful stand on behalf of rail workers was high risk, Mr. McCartin said, it was also high reward: Because transportation infrastructure touches almost every part of the country, labor relations in that sector tend to reverberate widely.“Everybody sees it, everybody watches, everybody’s affected,” he said. An open letter to Mr. Biden last month, signed by Mr. McCartin and more than 400 other scholars, said federal interventions in transportation labor disputes “can set the tone for entire eras.”The letter cited the government’s move to grant rail workers an eight-hour workday to avoid a strike during World War I, which paved the way for similar gains by other workers in the 1930s. By contrast, the letter said, President Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers in the early 1980s helped undermine the leverage of workers across the economy for decades.The contention among critics is that by effectively depriving rail workers of the right to strike, Mr. Biden has made it more difficult for other workers to use that tool — and, ultimately, to reverse the movement’s long-term decline.Strikes with strong backing from union membership “are the only way to win standard-setting contracts, and winning standard-setting contracts is the only way to rebuild the labor movement,” said Jane McAlevey, a scholar and longtime organizer. Her coming book, “Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations,” documents the importance of aggressive labor actions in improving pay and working conditions.Workers and organizers at the forefront of recent union campaigns at companies like Starbucks and Amazon said they worried that Mr. Biden’s intervention in the rail labor dispute sent employers a message that the federal government would not punish them for anti-union behavior.“Everyone understands the significance of the president getting involved,” said Christian Smalls, the president of the Amazon Labor Union, which won an election to represent workers at a Staten Island warehouse in April. “To claim you’re the most pro-union president in history and do something like this contradicts everything.” (Amazon has challenged the union’s victory.)In some respects, it may have been unrealistic for labor activists to expect that Mr. Biden, who has carried himself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat for much of his career, would depart from the basic model of labor relations that has long prevailed in his party.But during the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden and some of his senior advisers discussed ways in which they hoped to break with longstanding economic orthodoxy in Washington, with its emphasis on free markets and a small role for government.Those who support more populist-minded policies say Mr. Biden has delivered in certain ways: enacting subsidies for domestic manufacturing and restrictions on trade with China and appointing regulators who have frequently gone to court to block large mergers.“There obviously has been progress made,” said Oren Cass, a former Republican policy aide and the founder of American Compass, which seeks to make conservatism more supportive of workers.Yet when it comes to labor, some say Mr. Biden has been less willing to rethink the reigning economic model.“If Biden had intervened in a way that was more favorable and sympathetic to the rail workers, that would have been a sign of him really breaking with that model, and the model itself no longer seeming to fit the current moment,” said Ms. Phillips-Fein, the Columbia historian. “That it didn’t happen suggests the limits of his political imagination.” More

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    Why It’s Hard to Predict What the Economy Will Look Like in 2023

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    Historical data has always been critical to those who make economic predictions. But three years into the pandemic, America is suffering through an economic whiplash of sorts — and the past is proving anything but a reliable guide.Forecasts have been upended repeatedly. The economy’s rebound from the hit it incurred at the onset of the coronavirus was faster and stronger than expected. Shortages of goods then collided with strong demand to fuel a burst in inflation, one that has been both more extreme and more stubborn than anticipated.Now, after a year in which the Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s to slow growth and bring those rapid price increases back under control, central bankers, Wall Street economists and Biden administration officials are all trying to guess what might lie ahead for the economy in 2023. Will the Fed’s policies spur a recession? Or will the economy gently cool down, taming high inflation in the process?With typical patterns still out of whack across big parts of the economy — including housing, cars and the labor market — the answer is far from certain, and past experience is almost sure to serve as a poor map.“I don’t think anyone knows whether we’re going to have a recession or not, and if we do, whether it’s going to be a deep one or not,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said during a news conference last week. “It’s not knowable.”Doubt about what comes next is one reason the Fed is reorienting its monetary policy approach. Officials are now nudging borrowing costs up more gradually, giving them time to see how their policies are affecting the economy and how much more is needed to ensure that inflation returns to a slow and steady pace.As policymakers try to guess what lies ahead, the markets that have been most disrupted in recent years illustrate how big changes — some spurred by the pandemic, others tied to demographic shifts — continue to ricochet through the economy and make forecasting an exercise in uncertainty.Housing is strange.The pandemic era has repeatedly upended the housing market. The virus’s onset sent urbanites rushing for more space in suburban and small-city homes, a trend that was reinforced by rock-bottom mortgage rates.Then, reopenings from lockdown pulled people back toward cities. That helped push up rents in major metropolitan areas — which make up a big chunk of inflation — and, paired with the Fed’s rate increases, it has helped to sharply slow home buying in many markets.The question is what happens next. When it comes to the rental market, new lease data from Zillow and Apartment List suggests that conditions are cooling. The supply of available apartments and homes is also expected to climb in 2023 as long-awaited new residential buildings are finished.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A New Primary Calendar: President Biden’s push to reorder the early presidential nominating states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its effects on global markets, in the months and years to come could determine Mr. Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.“The frame I would put on 2023 is that we’re really going to enter the year back in a demand-constrained environment,” said Igor Popov, chief economist at Apartment List. “We’re going to see more apartments competing for fewer renters.”Mr. Popov expects “small growth” in rents in 2023, but he said that outlook is uncertain and hinges on the state of the labor market. If unemployment soars, rents could fall. If workers do really well, rents could rise more quickly.At the same time, existing leases are still catching up to the big run-up that has happened over the past year as tenants renew at higher rates. It is hard to guess both how much official inflation will converge with market-based rent data, and how long the trend will take to fully play out.“It could resolve in months, or it could take a year,” said Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group.Then there’s the market for owned housing, which does not count into inflation but does matter for the pace of overall economic growth. New home sales have fallen off a cliff as surging mortgage costs and the recent price run-up has put purchasing a house out of reach for many families. Even so, new mortgage applications have ticked up at the slightest sign of relief in recent months, evidence that would-be buyers are waiting on the sidelines.Demographics explain that underlying demand. Many millennials, the roughly 26- to 41-year-olds who are America’s largest generation, were entering peak home-buying ages right around the onset of the pandemic, and many are still in the market — which could put a floor under how much home prices will moderate.Plus, “sellers don’t have to sell,” said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, who expects home prices to be “flattish” next year as demand wanes but supply, which was already sharply limited after a decade of under-building following the 2007 housing crash, further pulls back.Given all the moving parts, many analysts are either much more optimistic or very pessimistic.“It’s almost comical to see the house price growth forecasts,” Mr. Popov said. “It’s either 3 percent growth or double-digit declines, with almost nothing in between.”The car market remains weird, too.The car market, a major driver of America’s initial inflation burst, is another economic puzzle. Years of too little supply have unleashed pent-up demand that is spurring unusual consumer and company behavior.Used cars were in especially short supply early in the pandemic, but are finally more widely available. The wholesale prices that dealers pay to stock their lots have plummeted in recent months.But car sellers are taking longer to pass those steep declines along to consumers than many economists had expected. Wholesale prices are down about 14.2 percent from a year ago, while consumer prices for used cars and trucks have declined only 3.3 percent. Many experts think that means bigger markdowns are coming, but there’s uncertainty about how soon and how steep.The new car market is even stranger. It remains undersupplied amid a parts shortages, though that is beginning to change as supply chain issues ease and production recovers. But both dealers and auto companies have made big profits during the low-supply, high-price era, and some have floated the idea of maintaining leaner production and inventories to keep their returns high.Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, thinks the normal laws of supply and demand will eventually reassert themselves as companies fight to retain customers. But getting back to normal will be a gradual, and perhaps halting, process.Still, “we’re at an inflection point,” Mr. Smoke said. “I think new vehicles are going to be less and less inflationary.”Labor markets are the most important question mark.Perhaps the most critical economic mystery is what will happen next in America’s labor market — and that is hard to game out.Part of the problem is that it’s not entirely clear what is happening in the labor market right now. Most signs suggest that hiring has been strong, job openings are plentiful, and wages are climbing at the fastest pace in decades. But there is a huge divergence between different data series: The Labor Department’s survey of households shows much weaker hiring growth than its survey of employers. Adding to the confusion, recent research has suggested that revisions could make today’s labor growth look much more lackluster.“It’s a huge mystery,” said Mr. Ozimek from the Economic Innovation Group. “You have to figure out which data are wrong.”That confusion makes guessing what comes next even more difficult. If, like most economists, one accepts that the labor market is hot right now, Fed policy is clearly poised to cool it down: The central bank has raised interest rates from near zero to about 4.4 percent this year, and expects to lift them to 5.1 percent in 2023.Those moves are explicitly aimed at slowing down hiring and wage growth, because central bankers believe that inflation for many types of services will remain elevated if pay gains remain as strong as they are now. Dentist offices and restaurants will, in theory, try to pass climbing labor costs along to consumers to protect their profits. But it is unclear how much the job market needs to slow to bring pay gains back to the more normal levels the Fed is looking for, and whether it can decelerate sufficiently without plunging America into a painful recession.Companies seem to be facing major labor shortages, partly as a wave of baby boomers retires, and Fed officials hope that will make firms more inclined to hang onto their workers even if the broader economy slows drastically. Some policymakers have suggested that such “labor hoarding” could help them achieve a soft landing that bucks historical precedent: Unemployment could rise notably without spiraling higher, cooling the economy without tipping it into a painful downturn.Typically, when the unemployment rate rises by more than 0.5 percentage points, like the Fed forecasts it will do next year, the jobless rate keeps rising. Loss of economic momentum feeds on itself, and the nation plunges into a recession. That pattern is so established it has a name: the Sahm Rule, for the economist Claudia Sahm.Yet Ms. Sahm herself said that if the axiom were to break down, this wacky economic moment would be the time. Consumers are sitting on unusual savings piles that could help sustain middle-class spending even through some job losses, preventing a downward spiral.“The thing that has never happened would have to happen,” she said. “But hey, things that have never happened have been happening left and right.” More

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    US Cracks Down on Chinese Companies for Security Concerns

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    The Biden administration placed severe restrictions on trade with dozens of Chinese entities, its latest step in a campaign to curtail access to technology with military applications.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday stepped up its efforts to impede China’s development of advanced semiconductors, restricting another 36 companies and organizations from getting access to American technology.The action, announced by the Commerce Department, is the latest step in the administration’s campaign to clamp down on China’s access to technologies that could be used for military purposes and underscored how limiting the flow of technology to global rivals has become a prominent element of United States foreign policy.Administration officials say that China has increasingly blurred the lines between its military and civilian industries, prompting the United States to place restrictions on doing business with Chinese companies that may feed into Beijing’s military ambitions at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, especially over Taiwan.In October, the administration announced sweeping limits on semiconductor exports to China, both from companies within the United States and in other countries that use American technology to make those products. It has also placed strict limits on technology exports to Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.“Today we are building on the actions we took in October to protect U.S. national security by severely restricting the PRC’s ability to leverage artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and other powerful, commercially available technologies for military modernization and human rights abuses,” Alan Estevez, the under secretary of commerce for industry and security, said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.Among the most notable companies added to the list is Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation, a company that was said to be in talks with Apple to potentially supply components for the iPhone 14.Congress has been preparing legislation that would prevent the U.S. government from purchasing or using semiconductors made by Y.M.T.C. and two other Chinese chip makers, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation and ChangXin Memory Technologies, because of their reported links to Chinese state security and intelligence organizations.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A New Primary Calendar: President Biden’s push to reorder the early presidential nominating states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its effects on global markets, in the months and years to come could determine Mr. Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The U.S. government added the companies to a so-called entity list that will severely restrict their access to certain products, software and technologies. The targeted companies are producers and sellers of technologies that could pose a significant security risk to the United States, like advanced chips that are used to power artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons, and components for Iranian drones and ballistic missiles, the Commerce Department said.In an emailed statement, Liu Pengyu, the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said that the United States “has been stretching the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, engaging in discriminatory and unfair treatment against enterprises of other countries, and politicizing and weaponizing economic and sci-tech issues. This is blatant economic coercion and bullying in the field of technology.”“China will resolutely safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies and institutions,” he added.On Monday, China filed a formal challenge to the Biden administration’s chip controls at the World Trade Organization, criticizing the restrictions as a form of “trade protectionism.”The administration said that some companies, including Y.M.T.C. and its Japanese subsidiary, were added to the list because they posed a significant risk of transferring sensitive items to other companies sanctioned by the U.S. government, including Huawei Technologies and Hikvision.The Commerce Department said that another entity, Tianjin Tiandi Weiye Technologies, was added for its role in aiding China’s campaign of repression and surveillance of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region of China, as well as providing U.S. products to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. U.S.-based firms will now be forbidden from shipping products to these companies without first obtaining a special license.Twenty-three of the entities — in particular, those supplying advanced chips used for artificial intelligence with close ties to the Chinese military and defense industry, and two Chinese companies that were found to be supporting the Russian military — were hit with even tougher restrictions.The companies will be subject to what is known as the foreign direct product rule, which will cut them off from buying products made anywhere in the world with the use of American technology or software, which would encompass most global technology companies.The administration also said it would lift restrictions on some companies that had successfully undergone U.S. government checks that ensured their products weren’t being used for purposes that the government deemed harmful to national security.As part of the restrictions unveiled in October, the Biden administration placed dozens of Chinese firms on a watch list that required them to work with the U.S. government to verify that their products were not being used for activities that would pose a security risk to the United States.A total of 25 entities completed those checks, in cooperation with the Chinese government, and thus have been removed from the list. Nine Russian parties that were unable to clear those checks were added to the entity list, the department said.A spokesperson for the Commerce Department said that the actions demonstrated that the United States would defend its national security but also stood ready to work in cooperation with companies and host governments to ensure compliance with U.S. export controls.In a separate announcement Thursday morning, a government board that oversees the audits of companies listed on stock exchanges to protect the interests of investors said that it had gained complete access for the first time in its history to inspect accounting firms headquartered in mainland China and Hong Kong.The agency, called the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, said this was just an initial step in ensuring that Chinese companies are safe for U.S. investors. But the development marked a step toward a potential resolution of a yearslong standoff between the United States and China over financial checks into public companies. It also appeared to decrease the likelihood that major Chinese companies will be automatically delisted from U.S. exchanges in the years to come.Congress passed a law in 2020 that would have required Chinese companies to delist from U.S. stock exchanges if U.S. regulators were not able to inspect their audit reports for three consecutive years.Erica Y. Williams, the chair of the board, said the announcement should not be misconstrued as a “clean bill of health” for firms in China. Her staff had identified numerous potential deficiencies with the firms they inspected, she said, though that was not an unexpected outcome in a jurisdiction being examined for the first time.“I want to be clear: this is the beginning of our work to inspect and investigate firms in China, not the end,” Ms. Williams said. More

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    Biden Devotes $36 Billion to Save Union Workers’ Pensions

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    The money comes from last year’s Covid-19 relief package and will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for 350,000 Teamster truck drivers, warehouse and construction workers and food processors.WASHINGTON — President Biden announced Thursday that he was investing $36 billion in federal funds to save the pensions of more than 350,000 union workers and retirees, a demonstration of commitment to labor just a week after a rupture over an imposed settlement of a threatened rail strike.Mr. Biden gathered top union leaders at the White House to make the commitment, described by the White House as the largest ever award of federal financial support for worker and retiree pension security. The money, coming from last year’s Covid-19 relief package, will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for Teamster truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction workers and food processors, mainly in the Midwest.“Thanks to today’s announcement, hundreds of thousands of Americans can feel that sense of dignity again knowing that they’ve provided for their families and their future, and it’s secure,” Mr. Biden said, joined by Sean M. O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, and Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., as well as Marty Walsh, the U.S. secretary of labor.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A New Primary Calendar: President Biden’s push to reorder the early presidential nominating states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its effects on global markets, in the months and years to come could determine Mr. Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The pension investment came just a week after Mr. Biden prodded Congress to pass legislation forcing a settlement in a long-running dispute between rail companies and workers, heading off a strike that could have upended the economy just before the holidays. While the agreement included wage increases, schedule flexibility and an additional paid day off, several rail unions had rejected it because it lacked paid sick leave. A move to add seven days of paid sick leave failed in Congress before Mr. Biden signed the bill.The showdown over the rail settlement left Mr. Biden in the awkward position of forcing a deal over the objections of some union members even though he had promised to be the “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” The pension rescue plan announced on Thursday put him back in the more comfortable stance of allying himself with organized labor, a key constituency of the Democratic Party.The $36 billion, drawn from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last year, will go to the Central States Pension Fund, which is largely made up of Teamster workers and retirees. The fund has been the largest financially distressed multi-employer pension plan in the nation. As a result of shortfalls, pensioners were facing 60 percent cuts over the next few years, but the White House said the federal funding will now ensure full benefits through 2051.Many of the affected workers and retirees are clustered in Midwestern states that have been battlegrounds in recent elections, including Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as other states like Missouri, Illinois, Florida and Texas.In his remarks, Mr. Biden expressed sympathy for workers and retirees facing cuts not of their own making. “For 30, 40, 50 years you work hard every single day to provide for your family. You do everything right,” he said. “But then imagine losing half of that pension or more through no fault of your own. You did your part. You paid in. Imagine what it does financially to your peace of mind, to your dignity.”Mr. O’Brien hailed Mr. Biden’s move. “Our members chose to forgo raises and other benefits for a prosperous retirement, and they deserve to enjoy the security and stability that all of them worked so hard to earn,” he said in a statement. While much of public policy is determined by big corporations, “it’s good to see elected officials stand up for working families for once.”Republicans called it a politically inspired payoff. Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, dubbed the rescue plan “the largest private pension bailout in American history,” saying it rewarded those who mismanaged their pensions.“Despite years of bipartisan negotiations and recommendations, Democrats rejected protections for union workers in other underfunded multi-employer plans that are not as politically connected as the Teamsters’ Central States plan,” Mr. Brady said. “Now, American taxpayers are being forced to cover promises that pension trustees never should have been allowed to make.” More

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    David Lipton, Economic Diplomat, Will Step Down From Treasury

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    Mr. Lipton, who served in senior roles in the Clinton and Obama administrations and at the I.M.F., is retiring.WASHINGTON — David A. Lipton, a longtime figure in the field of international economics, is stepping down on Wednesday from his job as international affairs counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, according to two Treasury Department officials familiar with his plans.Mr. Lipton, one of Ms. Yellen’s closest aides, is departing at a critical moment for the global economy. He has become a key negotiator in some of Ms. Yellen’s biggest policy issues. He was deeply involved in international discussions about a global minimum tax last year and has been at the center of the talks among the Group of 7 nations to impose a cap on the price of Russian oil.An economist by training with a doctoral degree from Harvard, Mr. Lipton, 69, has held senior economic policymaking positions in the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. He was also a top official at the International Monetary Fund, where he served as the deputy managing director.Last year, Ms. Yellen recruited Mr. Lipton to return to the federal government to help steer the Treasury Department’s international portfolio while President Biden’s nominees to lead the international affairs division were awaiting Senate confirmation.In a statement, Ms. Yellen described Mr. Lipton as one of her closest advisers and lauded his career.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.Beating the Odds: President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The ‘Trump Project’: With Donald J. Trump’s announcement that he is officially running for president again, Mr. Biden and his advisers are planning to go on the offensive.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.“He will be irreplaceable for the department, but I feel incredibly fortunate to have had his counsel in my first two years,” Ms. Yellen said. “During that time, David has helped shape our international agenda across a wide set of challenges — from the recovery from the pandemic to our response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.”Mr. Lipton first met Ms. Yellen while a graduate student at Harvard, where he took her introductory course in macroeconomics. Lawrence H. Summers, who would serve as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, was also in the class, and he and Mr. Lipton became friends.After graduating from Harvard with a Ph.D. in economics in 1982, Mr. Lipton joined the I.M.F., where he worked for eight years on assignments that involved stabilizing the economies of poor countries.In 1993, after a stint working with the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs advising Russia, Poland and Slovenia on their transitions to capitalism, Mr. Lipton joined the Clinton administration’s Treasury Department. He was recruited by Mr. Summers, who was then the deputy Treasury secretary under Robert E. Rubin. He initially focused on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union before turning his attention to easing turmoil stemming from the Asian financial crisis in 1997.While President George W. Bush was in office, Mr. Lipton worked at Citigroup and at the hedge fund Moore Capital Management. He joined the Obama administration as an economic adviser. In 2011, Christine Lagarde named him her top deputy at the I.M.F. when the fund was spending billions of dollars to prop up Greece’s economy and as the economic tension between the United States and China was intensifying.Mr. Lipton’s second term at the monetary fund was cut short in 2020 when Kristalina Georgieva reshuffled its senior leadership. His position at the fund, which is usually decided by the United States, was filled by Geoffrey Okamoto, a former Trump administration official.A longtime proponent of the benefits of a global economy and multilateralism, Ms. Yellen persuaded Mr. Lipton to join her team as the Biden administration sought to mend international relationships that had been frayed during the Trump era.“David Lipton has been an insufficiently sung hero of the international financial system for the last 30 years,” Mr. Summers said in a text message. “His quiet strength and wisdom both prevented and resolved numerous crises.”Mr. Lipton, who grew up in Wayland, Mass., was a star wrestler in high school, serving as a co-captain for two years. At Harvard, he and Mr. Summers bonded over squash and economics.During remarks introducing Mr. Lipton at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 2016, Mr. Summers described his former classmate as an economic “fireman in chief” who maintained a “keep hope alive” attitude when economic diplomacy got tough.Known for a dry wit that belies his earnest demeanor, Mr. Lipton expressed appreciation for the high praise but recalled that when he met Mr. Summers on the first day of school he initially had his doubts.“After talking to Larry for about 15 minutes, my reaction was, ‘If they’re all like that, I’m really in trouble,’” Mr. Lipton joked. More

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    Leaders in Congress Say They Will Act to Prevent Rail Strike

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    Democratic and Republican leaders prepared to intercede as President Biden warned the prospect of a December strike put the U.S. economy “at risk.”After a meeting with President Biden, Democratic and Republican leaders pledged to pass legislation that would avert a planned nationwide rail strike in December.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress vowed on Tuesday to pass legislation averting a nationwide rail strike, saying they agreed with President Biden that a work stoppage during the holidays next month would disrupt shipping and deal a devastating blow to the nation’s economy.The rare bipartisan promise to act came as some of the nation’s largest business groups warned of dire consequences from a rail shutdown. Mr. Biden, who had promised to be the most pro-union president in the country’s history, said the federal government must short-circuit collective bargaining in this case for the good of the country as a whole.“It’s not an easy call, but I think we have to do it,” he told the top four lawmakers from both parties during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday morning, as the Dec. 9 strike deadline loomed. “The economy is at risk.”Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would vote Wednesday on a tentative agreement that Mr. Biden’s administration had helped negotiate between rail companies and the unions earlier this year. The agreement raised wages but lacked provisions for paid medical or family leave.Late Tuesday, facing substantial frustration among progressives who demanded that the offer include paid leave, Ms. Pelosi said she would also bring up a separate proposal to add seven days of paid sick leave to the agreement. It is unclear whether Republicans in the Senate would agree to such an addition, but the plan to hold a vote illustrated the degree of discontent among pro-union liberals about the agreement Mr. Biden had struck.“They demand the basic dignity of paid sick days. I stand with them,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. “If Congress intervenes, it should be to have workers’ backs and secure their demands in legislation.”Senate leaders said they would work to pass legislation to avert the strike quickly after it passes the House, as expected. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told reporters that “we’re going to need to pass a bill,” suggesting that Republicans did not intend to try to block such a move. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, said, “I think it will pass.”If it does, it will be bittersweet for Mr. Biden, who has built a decades-long political career by stressing his support for unions in their battles against management. Aides said the president had been reluctant to override the will of union workers, but ultimately changed his mind when three of his cabinet secretaries told him that negotiations had broken down and a strike seemed inevitable.Officials said Mr. Biden concluded that the effects of a strike, including hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, would be too damaging. Frozen train lines would snap supply chains for commodities like lumber, coal and chemicals, and delay deliveries of automobiles and other consumer goods, driving up prices even further.The American Trucking Associations, an industry group, recently estimated that relying on trucks to work around a rail stoppage would require more than 450,000 additional vehicles — a practical impossibility given the shortage of equipment and drivers.Understand the Railroad Labor TalksCard 1 of 5Averting a shutdown. More