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Biden Cements TSMC Grant Before Trump Takes Over

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The White House is racing to finish grant agreements for chip manufacturers, but some of its biggest successes might be credited to the Trump administration.The Biden administration said on Friday that it had completed an agreement to award Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company up to $6.6 billion in grants, as federal officials race to put in place their plans to boost U.S. chip manufacturing before the end of President Biden’s term.The administration struck a preliminary agreement in the spring to provide TSMC with the funding, which will support three new factories in Phoenix. The government will give TSMC the money in tranches as the company meets milestones.In a statement, Mr. Biden said that the foreign direct investment in the facilities was the largest for a new factory project in U.S. history, and that the announcement on Friday was “among the most critical milestones yet” in the rollout of his chips program.The agreement “demonstrates how we are ensuring that the progress made to date will continue to unfold in the coming years, benefiting communities all across the country,” Mr. Biden said.The administration is expected to finish more grant awards in the coming weeks. But the projects might come too late for Mr. Biden to receive much credit. Chip factories take years to build, and many of these projects will not break ground — or produce chips — until well into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s term.Mr. Biden’s administration is working to cement its legacy with the grants as part of a $39 billion program to revitalize U.S. technology manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign nations for critical semiconductors. The program is a pillar of the president’s economic policy, which has largely focused on bolstering American manufacturing.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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    With $32 Billion in Aid, Native Americans Push Against History of Neglect

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    Cortez, a Colorado town of about 9,000 people tucked near the San Juan Mountains, has the trappings of a humble but healthy small-town economy: bustling businesses, congenial single-family homes, a park with grassy fields, a public pool, playgrounds, a pond and skate ramps.A couple of hours southwest is Tuba City, Ariz., the largest community on Navajo Nation tribal lands. It has roughly the same population as Cortez, and it is surrounded by the same sandstone and mesa-filled terrain. But despite the area’s rich history of trade, and its proximity to thriving cities like Flagstaff and tourist sites like the Grand Canyon, widespread poverty and a lack of public services are notably entrenched — the stark reality across many reservations throughout the country.Gas stations, dollar stores and fast-food chains fill most of the skinny commercial strips. R.V. trailers and other mobile homes make up much of the housing stock. One in three Navajo households has income below the federal poverty line. Red dust whiffling in from desert winds tends to be more common than the dust stirred up by builders.Gas stations, dollar stores and fast-food chains fill most of Tuba City’s skinny commercial strips. Sharon Chischilly for The New York TimesAt the town’s center, though, is a recent exception: the construction of a 5,500-square-foot senior center, whose $5 million cost is partly financed with about $1 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, passed in 2021.That package, primarily meant to address the economic and public health crises caused by Covid-19, included $32 billion in short- and longer-term assistance for tribes and reservations: aid for households and tribal government coffers, community development grants, health services and infrastructure; as well as access to the $10 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative program, which previously excluded tribal nations.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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    Poverty Increased in 2023 as Prices Rose and Pandemic Aid Programs Expired

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    More faced hardship in the United States last year, the Census Bureau said, as inflation and the end of subsidies outweighed higher incomes.The nation’s poverty rate rose last year even as incomes improved, the government reported on Tuesday, reflecting higher prices and the expiration of the last pandemic relief programs.The share of Americans living in poverty as defined by the Census Bureau’s “supplemental” measure, which takes into account a broader range of benefits and expenses than the official poverty rate, rose to 12.9 percent in 2023, from 12.4 percent in 2022. The median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose to $80,610, finally regaining its prepandemic level.Poverty levels have risen anew in recent years after a wave of pandemic relief aid — and an exceptionally strong labor market that lifted the wages of many at the bottom of the pay spectrum — collided with the most rapid inflation in a generation.Stimulus checks, extra unemployment insurance and expanded tax credits for low-income families cut child poverty in half in 2021, to the lowest rate since record keeping began, in 1967. But the expiration of those supports, along with the jump in prices for food and other necessities, reversed the gains in 2022.“You need two kinds of strategies to keep poverty down: One is the economic strategy, and one is the investments in core programs and the safety net,” said Olivia Golden, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a progressive advocacy group. “To me, the idea that policies have high stakes in terms of the lives of families and their material hardship is very vivid as you look over the last few years.”The income gains were particularly pronounced for low-wage households, rural households and men, with the gap between male and female earnings rising for the first time since 2003. Census officials say that may have been because of an increase in the labor force participation of Hispanic women, who tend to earn less.Poverty Rebounded Sharply in 2022 and 2023As pandemic aid expired and prices rose, the share of Americans living below the poverty threshold went back up.

    Data is the “supplemental” poverty rate, which accounts for taxes and subsidies. Gaps in data are due to changes in Census Bureau methodology.Source: Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy analysis of U.S. Census Bureau dataBy 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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    The Report Card on Guaranteed Income Is Still Incomplete

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    A three-year analysis of unconditional cash stipends concluded that the initiative has had some success, but not the transformational impact its proponents hoped for.Silicon Valley billionaires and anti-poverty activists don’t have a lot in common, but in recent years they’ve joined forces around a shared enthusiasm: programs that guarantee a basic income.Tech entrepreneurs like Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, have promoted direct cash transfers to low-income Americans as a way to cushion them from what the entrepreneurs anticipate could be widespread job losses caused by artificial intelligence. Some local politicians and community leaders, concerned about growing wealth inequality, have also put their faith in these stipends, known as unconditional cash or, in their most ambitious form, a universal basic income.Dozens of small pilot projects testing unconditional cash transfers have popped up in communities around the country, from Alaska to Stockton, Calif. Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, put the idea of $1,000 monthly payments for all adults at the center of his 2020 presidential campaign. The idea of cash transfers gained broader popularity during the pandemic, as the federal government introduced stimulus checks and child tax credits, and child poverty declined.While some pilot projects have shown encouraging results, they have been small scale. That changed this summer, when a research project involving several thousand people, backed by Mr. Altman and called OpenResearch, released findings from what is so far the country’s largest experiment with unconditional cash transfers.If proponents of unconditional cash hoped the findings of the OpenResearch study would prove its benefits once and for all, their hopes were at least partly dashed. People gained flexibility to spend on basic needs, but the cash didn’t transform their net worth or their mental or physical health. Some researchers and guaranteed income proponents argue that the study shows that cash transfers are only a small piece of the larger puzzle of how to improve the financial well-being of low-income people.“Cash transfers probably do less to improve people’s lives than the proponents of them thought that they would,” said Sarah Miller, an author of the study and economist at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “The flip side is that they probably don’t have the harmful effects that detractors were concerned about.”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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    Opportunity Zones, Lauded by Trump, Don’t Always Help Poor

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    A tax incentive, with bipartisan roots, aims to foster development in poor areas. It has fueled building, but it hasn’t always aided local residents.On an Alabama day so oppressive that the sweat pools on your face in the shade, Alex Flachsbart talks almost too rapidly to understand and drives around central Birmingham with similar velocity. Every few minutes, he pulls over to expound on a victory: neglected public housing, a long-empty factory, a crumbling department store, all being transformed into shiny apartments or airy office and retail space.“This was one of Birmingham’s white-whale buildings,” Mr. Flachsbart said of a former Red Cross office that had been renovated into 192 rental residences. The development happened with the help of a powerful tax break created in 2017 to lure investors toward poorer neighborhoods, an idea championed by Democrats and Republicans and cited by former President Donald J. Trump as among his proudest economic policy achievements. (“One of the greatest programs ever for Black workers and Black entrepreneurs,” he called the incentive in an appearance this week at a National Association of Black Journalists conference.)But the relatively low-income areas covered by the incentive, known as opportunity zones, didn’t benefit equally. On Mr. Flachsbart’s tour of new projects in downtown Birmingham, the stops dry up in the historically African American northwest quadrant. There, developable lots and vacant buildings haven’t received as much of the capital flowing toward the buzzier parts of downtown.“O.Z. was a nudge there because it was already at a tipping point,” said Mr. Flachsbart, who has put together several of those deals as chief executive of a nonprofit organization called Opportunity Alabama. “There is a wall at about 17th Street.”Alex Flachsbart, chief executive of Opportunity Alabama, in the Burger-Phillips Lofts in Birmingham, a building being renovated with opportunity zone financing.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesBirmingham and the rest of Alabama are a window into how money has and hasn’t soaked into the ground designated as opportunity zones over the past six years. Congress is taking a closer look as it considers extending the incentive, which expires in 2026 along with most of the 2017 tax law. More

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    Biden’s Stimulus Juiced the Economy, but Its Political Effects Are Muddled

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    Some voters blame the American Rescue Plan for fueling price increases. But the growth it unleashed may be helping the president stay more popular than counterparts in Europe.The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package that President Biden signed shortly after taking office has become both an anchor and a buoy for his re-election campaign.The American Rescue Plan, which the Biden administration created and Democrats passed in March 2021, has fueled discontent among voters, in sometimes paradoxical ways. Some Americans blame the law, which included direct checks to individuals, for helping to fuel rapid inflation.Others appear upset that its relief to people, businesses and school districts was short-lived. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported recently that several business contacts in its district “expressed concern about the winding down of American Rescue Plan Act dollars and whether nonprofits and K-12 schools will be able to sustain certain programs without that funding.”Polls show that Americans continue to favor Mr. Biden’s opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on economic issues. Often, they indicate that only relatively small slices of the electorate believe Mr. Biden’s policies have helped them or their family financially.At the same time, though, the stimulus may be lifting Mr. Biden’s chances for November in ways that pollsters rarely ask about.Economists say the relief package, along with stimulus measures Mr. Trump signed into law in 2020, has helped accelerate America’s recovery from the pandemic recession. The United States has grown and added jobs in a way that no other wealthy nation has experienced after the pandemic.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