Biden, Joseph R Jr

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    Trump and Democrats Agree: U.S. Needs a National Wealth Fund for Investments

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    Donald Trump has suggested he wants one, and the White House indicated that it has been quietly working on a proposal to set one up.Former President Donald J. Trump said a sovereign wealth fund would generate so much profit that it would help pay down the national debt.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesA Biden-Harris administration fund would be focused on supply chain resilience, technological pre-eminence and energy security, a White House official said.Eric Lee/The New York TimesFormer President Donald J. Trump and the Biden-Harris administration have little common ground on the policy front, but one unexpected area of agreement is the idea that the United States might be ready for a sovereign wealth fund.Such government investment vehicles are popular in Asia and the Middle East. They allow countries like China and Saudi Arabia to direct their budget surpluses toward a wide range of investments and wield their financial influence around the world.While some individual states have their own versions of wealth funds, the United States, which runs large budget deficits, has never pursued one.Last week, Mr. Trump suggested during a speech at the Economic Club of New York that, if elected, he would like to create an American sovereign wealth fund that could be used “to invest in great national endeavors for the benefit of all of the American people.” After Mr. Trump’s remarks, the White House indicated that senior officials had been quietly working for months on a proposal for a sovereign wealth fund that Mr. Biden and his cabinet could review.Despite the newly bipartisan appeal of a national sovereign wealth fund, creating one might not be so simple. It would need the approval of Congress, where lawmakers are likely to be skeptical about authorizing the creation of a fund that could essentially circumvent its own powers to approve federal spending. And then there is the matter of how a nation with perpetual deficits would fund such an investment vehicle.“Establishing a U.S. S.W.F. would raise highly complex technical and conceptual questions and on its face would appear to be a dubious value proposition for America,” said Mark Sobel, a former Treasury official who is now the U.S. chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. “None of the tough questions has been answered so far.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Expected to Block U.S. Steel Takeover by Nippon

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    The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is expected to raise national security concerns about selling the iconic steel producer to Japan’s Nippon Steel.President Biden is preparing to soon block an attempt by Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel on national security grounds, according to three people familiar with the matter, likely sinking a merger that became entangled in election-year politics in the United States.A decision to block the takeover would come after months of wrangling among lawmakers, business leaders and labor officials over whether a corporate acquisition by a company based in Japan — a key U.S. ally — could pose a threat to national security. A move by Mr. Biden to block the deal on those grounds could roil relations between the two nations at a moment when the United States has been trying to deepen ties with Japan amid China’s growing influence in East Asia.For months, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, has been scrutinizing the deal over potential risks. There has been mounting speculation that the Biden administration could intervene before the November election.A White House official told The New York Times that CFIUS “hasn’t transmitted a recommendation to the president, and that’s the next step in this process.”CFIUS is made up of members of the State, Defense, Justice, Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security Departments, and is led by the Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen.The committee sent a letter to U.S. Steel in recent weeks saying that it had found national security concerns with the transaction, one of the people familiar with the situation said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Gaza Debate Reopens Divisions Between Left-Wing Workers and Union Leaders

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    Last week’s Democratic National Convention surfaced differences over the war in Gaza that could widen fissures between labor activists and union officials.When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations.The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign.“I was disappointed in the resolution on Israel and Palestine because it didn’t call for an end to armed shipments,” said Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher who attended the protest, alluding to a statement that the parent union endorsed at its convention in July.Since last fall, many rank-and-file union members have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and took about 250 hostages. The leaders of many national unions have appeared more cautious, at times emphasizing the precipitating role of Hamas.“We were very careful about what a moral stance was and also what the implications of every word we wrote was,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said of the resolution her union recently adopted.In some ways, this divide reflects tensions over Israel and Gaza that exist within many institutions — like academia, the media and government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Where Does Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan Stand? Here’s What to Know.

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    The Supreme Court refused to allow a key part of President Biden’s student debt plan to move forward. Here’s what’s left of it, and who could still benefit.President Biden’s latest effort to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans is in jeopardy.The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow a key component of the policy, known as the SAVE plan, to move forward after an emergency application by the Biden administration.Until Republican-led states sued to block the plan over the summer, SAVE had been the main way for borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness. The program allowed people to make payments based on income and family size; some borrowers ended up having their remaining debt canceled altogether.Other elements of Mr. Biden’s loan forgiveness plan remain in effect for now. And over the course of Mr. Biden’s presidency, his administration has canceled about $167 billion in loans for 4.75 million people, or roughly one in 10 federal loan holders.But Wednesday’s decision leaves millions of Americans in limbo.Here is a look at what the ruling means for borrowers and what happens next:Who was eligible for SAVE?Most people with federal undergraduate or graduate loans could apply for forgiveness under SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education.But the amount of relief it provided varied depending on factors such as income and family size. More than eight million people enrolled in the program during the roughly 10 months that it was available, and about 400,000 of them got some amount of debt canceled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Care Policies Take Center Stage in Harris’s Economic Message

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    The Democratic nominee says she wants to make raising a family more affordable. But she has provided few details on her proposals.The “care economy” — a broad set of policies aimed at helping parents and other caregivers — was the great unfinished work of President Biden’s domestic agenda. Vice President Kamala Harris has made it a central aspect of her campaign to succeed him.Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee, has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about making it more affordable to raise children. She chose a running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whose signature policy accomplishments include the creation of a paid family leave program.In the first major economic speech of her campaign, she proposed restoring an expanded child tax credit and called for a new $6,000 benefit for parents of newborns. She also laid out policies that aim to reduce housing costs, such as providing up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers.In her speech accepting the Democratic nomination on Thursday, Ms. Harris said she would not let conservatives end programs like Head Start that “provide preschool and child care for our children.”But Ms. Harris has not yet offered specific proposals on child care, paid family leave or early childhood education. That has surprised some progressive policy experts, and brought flashbacks of the Biden administration’s inability to enact more sweeping policies.Mr. Biden also initially made the care economy a central piece of his domestic policy agenda, putting it alongside proposed investments in roads and bridges, domestic manufacturing and green energy. His aides often argued that care was a form of infrastructure — that affordable child care, like highways, was essential to a well-functioning economy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris and Trump Offer a Clear Contrast on the Economy

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    Both candidates embrace expansions of government power to steer economic outcomes — but in vastly different areas.Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump flew to North Carolina this week to deliver what were billed as major speeches on the economy. Neither laid out a comprehensive policy plan — not Ms. Harris in her half-hour focus on housing, groceries and prescription drugs, nor Mr. Trump in 80 minutes of sprinkling various proposals among musings about dangerous immigrants.But in their own ways, both candidates sent voters clear and important messages about their economic visions. Each embraced a vision of a powerful federal government, using its muscle to intervene in markets in pursuit of a stronger and more prosperous economy.They just disagreed, almost entirely, on when and how that power should be used.In Raleigh on Friday, Ms. Harris began to put her own stamp on the brand of progressive economics that has come to dominate Democratic politics over the last decade. That economic thinking embraces the idea that the federal government must act aggressively to foster competition and correct distortions in private markets.The approach seeks large tax increases on corporations and high earners, to fund assistance for low-income and middle-class workers who are struggling to build wealth for themselves and their children. At the same time, it provides big tax breaks to companies engaged in what Ms. Harris and other progressives see as delivering great economic benefit — like manufacturing technologies needed to fight global warming, or building affordable housing.That philosophy animated the policy agenda that Ms. Harris unveiled on Friday. She pledged to send up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance to every first-time home buyer over four years, while directing $40 billion to construction companies that build starter homes. She said she would permanently reinstate an expanded child tax credit that President Biden temporarily established with his 2021 stimulus law, while offering even more assistance to parents of newborns.She called for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries and for new federal enforcement tools to punish companies that unfairly push up food prices. “My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules,” she said, adding: “We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris Will Back Federal Ban on Price Gouging, Campaign Says

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    Vice President Kamala Harris will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries in a speech laying out her economic agenda on Friday, campaign officials said late Wednesday, in an effort to blame big companies for persistently high costs of American consumer staples.The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.It also follows through on what people familiar with Ms. Harris’s forthcoming economic agenda said this week would be a centerpiece of her plans: an aggressive rhetorical attempt to shift the blame for high inflation onto corporate America. Polls show that argument resonates strongly with voters, including independent voters who could decide the November election.Progressive groups have urged President Biden, and now Ms. Harris, to fully embrace that argument.In a release announcing the policy, Harris campaign officials did not detail how a price-gouging ban would be enforced or what current corporate behaviors would be outlawed if it were enacted. They said Ms. Harris would work in her first 100 days to put in place a federal ban “setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”The officials also said Ms. Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” on corporations that fix prices. They said that she would direct more resources toward investigating price-gouging in the supply chain for meat and that she would push federal officials to closely scrutinize proposed grocery mergers.They also said that Ms. Harris would unveil plans on Friday related to housing costs and prescription drug prices. Many states ban price gouging, but the federal government does not.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    From Tips to TikTok, Trump Swaps Policies With Aim to Please Voters

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    The former president’s economic agenda has made some notable reversals from the policies he pushed while in the White House.At his convention speech last month, former President Donald J. Trump declared that his new economic agenda would be built around a plan to eliminate taxes on tips, claiming that the idea would uplift the middle class and provide relief to hospitality workers around the country.“Everybody loves it,” Mr. Trump said to cheers. “Waitresses and caddies and drivers.”While the cost and feasibility of the idea has been questioned by economists and tax analysts, labor experts have noted another irony: As president, Mr. Trump tried to take tips away from workers and give the money to their employers.The reversal is one of many that Mr. Trump has made in his bid to return to the presidency and underscores his malleability in election-year policymaking. From TikTok to cryptocurrencies, the former president has been reinventing his platform on the fly as he aims to attract different swaths of voters. At times, Mr. Trump appears to be staking out new positions to differentiate himself from Vice President Kamala Harris or, perhaps, just to please crowds.To close observers of the machinations of Mr. Trump’s first term, the shift on tips, a policy that has become a regular part of his stump speech, has been particularly striking.“Trump is posing as a champion of tipped restaurant workers with his no-tax-on-tips proposal, but his actual record has been to slash protections for tipped workers at a time when they were struggling with a high cost of living,” said Paul Sonn, the director of National Employment Law Project Action, which promotes workers’ rights.In 2017, Mr. Trump’s Labor Department proposed changing federal regulations to allow employers to collect tips that their workers receive and use them for essentially any purpose as long as the workers were paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In theory, the flexibility would make it possible for restaurant owners to ensure that cooks and dishwashers received part of a pool of tip money, but in practice employers could pocket the tips and spend them at their discretion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More