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Antony Blinken Visits China

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Tensions over economic ties are running high, threatening to disrupt a fragile cooperation between the U.S. and China.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cheered on the sidelines at a basketball game in Shanghai on Wednesday night, and spent Thursday chatting with students at New York University’s Shanghai campus and meeting American business owners. It all went to emphasize the kind of economic, educational and cultural ties that the United States is pointedly holding up as beneficial for both countries.But hanging over those pleasantries during his visit to China this week are several steps the U.S. is taking to sever economic ties in areas where the Biden administration says they threaten American interests. And those will be the focus of greater attention from Chinese officials, as well.Even as the Biden administration tries to stabilize the relationship with China, it is advancing several economic measures that would curb China’s access to the U.S. economy and technology. It is poised to raise tariffs on Chinese steel, solar panels and other crucial products to try to protect American factories from cheap imports. It is weighing further restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors to try to keep Beijing from developing sophisticated artificial intelligence that could be used on the battlefield.This week, Congress also passed legislation that would force ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to sell its stake in the app within nine to 12 months or leave the United States altogether. The president signed it on Wednesday, though the measure is likely to be challenged in court.Mr. Blinken’s visit, which was expected to take him to Beijing on Friday for high-level government meetings, had a much more cordial tone than the trip he made to China last year. That trip was the first after a Chinese spy balloon traveled across the United States, tipping the American public into an uproar.Mr. Blinken talking with Ambassador Burns while attending a basketball game between the Shanghai Sharks and the Zhejiang Golden Bulls in Shanghai on Wednesday.Pool photo by Mark SchiefelbeinWe 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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    The Global Turn Away From Free-Market Policies Worries Economists

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    More countries are embracing measures meant to encourage their own security and independence, a trend that some say could slow global growth.Meeting outside Paris last week, top officials from France, Germany and Italy pledged to pursue a coordinated economic policy to counter stepped-up efforts by Washington and Beijing to protect their own homegrown businesses.The three European countries have joined the parade of others that are enthusiastically embracing industrial policies — the catchall term for a variety of measures like targeted subsidies, tax incentives, regulations and trade restrictions — meant to steer an economy.More than 2,500 industrial policies were introduced last year, roughly three times the number in 2019, according to a new study. And most were imposed by the richest, most advanced economies — many of which could previously be counted on to criticize such tactics.The measures are generally popular at home, but the trend is worrying some international leaders and economists who warn that such top-down economic interventions could end up slowing worldwide growth.The sharpened debate is sure to be on display at the economic lollapalooza that opens Wednesday in Washington — otherwise known as the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.From left, Adolfo Urso of Italy, Bruno Le Maire of France and Robert Habeck of Germany vowed to coordinate their economic policies.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockWe 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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    Yellen Sees ‘More Work to Do’ as China Talks End With No Breakthrough

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    Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was warmly received in China, but it was evident that the level of trust between the two sides does not run deep.Four days of top-level economic meetings between the United States and China concluded in Beijing on Monday with no major breakthroughs, but the world’s two largest economies agreed to hold more discussions to address rising friction over trade, investment and national security.The conversation is poised to become even more difficult, however, as hopes of greater economic cooperation collide with a harsh political reality: It is an election year in the United States, and antipathy toward China is running high. At the same time, Chinese officials appeared unmoved by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s urging that China scale back its recent surge of green energy technology exports, which could threaten American jobs.Despite a warm welcome on her second trip to China as Treasury secretary, which included meetings with the premier and with senior economic and finance officials, it was evident that the level of trust between the two sides does not run deep.“There is much more work to do,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference in Beijing on Monday. “And it remains unclear what this relationship will endure in the months and years ahead.”The Treasury secretary added that she believed that China was engaging in the discussions in good faith and that progress was being made. “I do not want to see the U.S. economic relationship, or the overall relationship with China, deteriorate and fray,” she said.The most pressing matter that is likely to divide them in the coming months is how the Biden administration plans to address concerns that Chinese exports of electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels pose a threat to the very industries that the United States is spending trillions of dollars to develop domestically.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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    Happy-Go-Lucky Australia Is Feeling Neither Happy, Nor Lucky

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    After enjoying decades of prosperity, the country has hit stubborn economic turbulence.For nearly three decades, Australia seemed to have a sort of get-out-of-jail card that allowed it to glide through the dot-com bust and the global financial crisis without a recession, while its citizens mostly enjoyed high wages, affordable housing and golden prospects.When a recession did arrive, in 2020, it was because of the Covid-19 pandemic.But four years later, Australia has been unable to shake off some of the headwinds, including a high cost of living — the price of bread has risen 24 percent since 2021 — a choppy labor market and rising inequality. While these and similar issues are also troubling nations like Britain and the United States, they are particularly stinging to many in Australia, which has long seen itself as the “lucky country.”Australia is among the wealthiest, most resource-rich and stable countries in the world. But millions of residents are experiencing levels of hardship not seen in many decades. They say they are struggling to put food on the table, pay for housing and health care and cover their utility bills. And many young Australians are confronting a reality that their ancestors never had to: that they will be worse off than their parents or grandparents.Robyn Northam, 28, once dreamed of becoming a hairdresser. But rising rent and exorbitant child care costs for her two children have put training out of reach. Just two generations ago, she said, her grandmother raised a family in her own home as a single parent, while working part-time as a nurse.“If you’re an average Australian, that’s virtually impossible,” said Ms. Northam, a content creator in Cairns who, with her partner, pays 600 Australian dollars, or about $400, a week in rent. “It’s a totally different world now.”A residential neighborhood in Melbourne’s inner north suburbs. Rents in some Melbourne neighborhoods are up almost 50 percent year-over-year.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesWe 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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    ‘Strike Madness’ Hits Germany While Its Economy Stumbles

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    A wave of strikes by German workers, feeling the sting of inflation and stagnant growth, is the latest sign of the bleak outlook for Europe’s economic powerhouse.For those striking at the gates of the SRW scrap metal plant, just outside Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig, time can be counted not just in days — 136 so far — but in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee imbibed and the armfuls of firewood burned.Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for two decades. Wearing his red union baseball cap and tending the blaze inside an oil drum, Mr. Bohne, 56, looks like a scruffy Santa Claus.The dozens of workers at the SRW recycling center say their strike has become the longest in postwar German history — a dubious honor in a nation with a history of harmonious labor relations. (The previous record, 114 days, was held by shipyard workers in the northern city of Kiel who struck in the 1950s.)Jonny Bohne has vowed not to shave while on strike. It’s been awhile.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesWhile monthslong strikes may be commonplace in some other European countries like Spain, Belgium or France, where workers’ protests are something of a national pastime, Germany has long prided itself on nondisruptive collective bargaining.A wave of strikes this year has Germans asking whether that is now changing. By some measures, the first three months of 2024 have had the most strikes in the country in 25 years.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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    California’s Economy Pinched by Unemployment

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    Tech layoffs, fallout from Hollywood strikes and an uptick in rural joblessness challenge a state with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.For decades, California’s behemoth economy has outpaced those of most nations, holding an outsize role in shaping global trends in tech, entertainment and agriculture.While that reputation remains, the state has a less enviable distinction: one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.Nationwide, the rate is 3.7 percent, and in January, the country added 353,000 jobs. California’s job growth has been slower than the nationwide average over the last year, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high — 5.1 percent in the latest data, a percentage point higher than a year earlier and outpaced only by Nevada’s 5.4 percent.With layoffs in the tech-centered Bay Area, a slow rebound in Southern California from prolonged strikes in the entertainment industry and varying demand for agricultural workers, California is facing economic headwinds in the new year. And residents feel it.The state has historically had higher unemployment than the U.S. average because of a work force that is younger and fast growing, said Sarah Bohn, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Still, she noted, the labor force shrank in California in the past six months — a troubling trend.“When looking at this shrinking, are there less opportunities and people have just stopped looking for work?” Ms. Bohn asked. “What will this mean for consumers and businesses?”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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    This Arctic Circle Town Expected a Green Energy Boom. Then Came Bidenomics.

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    In Mo i Rana, a small Norwegian industrial town on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, a cavernous gray factory sits empty and unfinished in the snowy twilight — a monument to unfulfilled economic hope.The electric battery company Freyr was partway through constructing this hulking facility when the Biden administration’s sweeping climate bill passed in 2022. Perhaps the most significant climate legislation in history, the Inflation Reduction Act promised an estimated $369 billion in tax breaks and grants for clean energy technology over the next decade. Its incentives for battery production within the United States were so generous that they eventually helped prod Freyr to pause its Norway facility and focus on setting up shop in Georgia.The start-up is still raising funds to build the factory as it tries to prove the viability of its key technology, but it has already changed its business registration to the United States.Its pivot was symbolic of a larger global tug of war as countries vie for the firms and technologies that will shape the future of energy. The world has shifted away from decades of emphasizing private competition and has plunged into a new era of competitive industrial policy — one in which nations are offering a mosaic of favorable regulations and public subsidies to try to attract green industries like electric vehicles and storage, solar and hydrogen.Mo i Rana offers a stark example of the competition underway. The industrial town is trying to establish itself as the green energy capital of Norway, so Freyr’s decision to invest elsewhere came as a blow. Local authorities had originally hoped that the factory could attract thousands of employees and new residents to their town of about 20,000 — an enticing promise for a region struggling with an aging population. Instead, Freyr is employing only about 110 people locally at its testing plant focused on technological development.“The Inflation Reduction Act changed everything,” said Ingvild Skogvold, the managing director of Ranaregionen Naeringsforening, a chamber of commerce group in Mo i Rana. She faulted the national government’s response.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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    Maui Economy, 6 Months After Wildfire, Is Still Reeling

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    Twisted and charred aluminum mixed with shards of glass still lines the floor of the industrial warehouse where Victoria Martocci once operated her scuba diving business. After a wildfire tore through West Maui, all that remained of her 36-foot boat, the Extended Horizons II, were a pair of engines.That was six months ago, but Ms. Martocci and her husband, Erik Stein, who are weighing whether to rebuild the business, which he started in 1983, said the same questions filled their thoughts. “What will this island look like?” Ms. Martocci asked. “Will things ever be close to being the same?”In early August, what began as a brush fire burst into the town of Lahaina, a popular tourist destination, all but leveling it, destroying large swaths of West Maui and killing at least 100 people in the nation’s deadliest wildfire in more than a century.The local economy remains in crisis.Rebuilding the town, according to some estimates, will cost more than $5 billion and take several years. And tense divisions still remain over whether Lahaina, whose economy long relied almost entirely on tourism, should consider a new way forward.Debates about the ethics of traveling to decimated tourist destinations played out on social media after an earthquake in Morocco and wildfires in Greece last year. But the situation is particularly dire for Maui.State and federal officials scrambled last summer to find shelter for thousands of residents who had lost their homes, relocating people to local hotels and short-term rentals where many still live, often sharing a wall with vacationing families whose realities feel far from their own. Other displaced residents live in tents on the beach, and some restaurant owners pivoted to working out of food trucks.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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    How Nevada Is Pushing to Generate Jobs Beyond the Casinos

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    Before the pandemic brought everyday life to a halt, Joe Kiele supported himself through the industry that dominates Nevada’s economy. He waited tables at a steakhouse inside a casino in Reno.Four years later, Mr. Kiele, 49, remains in Reno, yet he now spends his workday inside a factory. In place of worrying about the doneness of a customer’s rib-eye, he trains people on the proper handling of industrial chemicals.His employer, Redwood Materials, is constructing an enormous complex across a lonely stretch of desert. There, the company has begun recycling batteries harvested from discarded smartphones and other electronics. It extracts critical minerals like nickel, lithium, copper and cobalt, and uses them to manufacture components for electric vehicle batteries.Not coincidentally, the plant sits only eight miles from a major customer — a Tesla auto factory.Mr. Kiele’s shift from restaurant server to chemical operator parallels a transformation long championed by Nevada’s leaders seeking to make their economy more diverse, reducing its reliance on the hospitality industry for jobs. In recent years, they have tried to secure investment from companies engaged in the transition toward green energy.The Redwood Materials plant, which occupies roughly 300 acres and is expected to require some $2 billion in investment over the next decade, looms like a monument to Nevada’s aspirations. For the employees, the factory is evidence that there are ways to pay bills besides dealing cards and delivering food.“We’re not based on consumerism,” Mr. Kiele said. “We’re dealing with industry.”This is not the first time that Nevada has sought to broaden its economy. The state has a history of betting its fate on the bounty flowing from a single industry.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