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    Women Could Fill Truck Driver Jobs. Companies Won’t Let Them.

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    Three women filed a discrimination complaint against a trucking company over its same-sex training policy, which they say prevented them from being hired.The trucking industry has complained for years that there is a dire shortage of workers willing to drive big rigs. But some women say many trucking companies have made it effectively impossible for them to get those jobs.Trucking companies often refuse to hire women if the businesses do not have women available to train them. And because fewer than 5 percent of truck drivers in the United States are women, there are few female trainers to go around.The same-sex training policies are common across the industry, truckers and legal experts say, even though a federal judge ruled in 2014 that it was unlawful for a trucking company to require that female job candidates be paired only with female trainers.Ashli Streeter of Killeen, Texas, said she had borrowed $7,000 to attend a truck driving school and earn her commercial driving license in hopes of landing a job that would pay more than the warehouse work she had done. But she said Stevens Transport, a Dallas-based company, had told her that she couldn’t be hired because the business had no women to train her. Other trucking companies turned her down for the same reason.“I got licensed, and I clearly could drive,” Ms. Streeter said. “It was disheartening.”Ms. Streeter and two other women filed a complaint against Stevens Transport with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday, contending that the company’s same-sex training policy unfairly denied them driving jobs. The commission investigates allegations made against employers, and, if it determines a violation has occurred, it may bring its own lawsuit. The commission had brought the lawsuit that resulted in the 2014 federal court decision against similar policies at another trucking company, Prime.Critics of the industry said the persistence of same-sex training nearly a decade after that ruling, which did not set national legal precedent, was evidence that trucking companies had not done enough to hire women who could help solve their labor woes.“It’s frustrating to see that we have not evolved at all,” said Desiree Wood, a trucker who is the president and founder of Real Women in Trucking, a nonprofit.Ms. Wood’s group is joining the three women in their E.E.O.C. complaint against Stevens, which was filed by Peter Romer-Friedman, a labor lawyer in Washington, and the National Women’s Law Center.Companies that insist on using women to train female applicants generally do so because they want to avoid claims of sexual harassment. Trainers typically spend weeks alone with trainees on the road, where the two often have to sleep in the same cab.Critics of same-sex training acknowledge that sexual harassment is a problem, but they say trucking companies should address it with better vetting and anti-harassment programs. Employers could reduce the risk of harassment by paying for trainees to sleep in a hotel room, which some companies already do.Women made up 4.8 percent of the 1.37 million truck drivers in the United States in 2021, according to the most recent government statistics, up from 4 percent a decade earlier.Long-haul truck driving can be a demanding job. Drivers are away from home for days. Yet some women say they are attracted to it because it can pay around $50,000 a year, with experienced drivers making a lot more. Truck driving generally pays more than many other jobs that don’t require a college degree, including those in retail stores, warehouses or child care centers.Women made up 4.8 percent of truck drivers in 2021, according to the most recent government statistics.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesThe infrastructure act of 2021 required the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to set up an advisory board to support women pursuing trucking careers and identify practices that keep women out of the profession.Robin Hutcheson, the administrator of the agency, said requiring same-sex training would appear to be a barrier to entry. “If that is happening, that would be something that we would want to take a look at,” she said in an interview.Ms. Streeter, a mother of three, said she had applied to Stevens because it hired people straight out of trucking school. She told Stevens representatives that she was willing to be trained by a man, but to no avail.Bruce Dean, general counsel at Stevens, denied the allegations in the suit. “The fundamental premise in the charge — that Stevens Transport Inc. only allows women trainers to train women trainees — is false,” he said in a statement, adding that the company “has had a cross-gender training program, where both men and women trainers train female trainees, for decades.”Some legal experts said that, although same-sex training was ruled unlawful in only one federal court, trucking companies would struggle to defend such policies before other judges. Under federal employment discrimination law, employers can seek special legal exemptions to treat women differently from men, but courts have granted them very rarely.“Basically, what the law says is that a company needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Deborah Brake, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in employment and gender law. “They need to be able to give women equal employment opportunities and prevent and remedy sexual harassment.”Ms. Streeter said she had made meager earnings from infrequent truck driving gigs while hoping to get a position at Stevens. Later this month, she will become a driver in the trucking fleet of a large retailer.Kim Howard, one of the other women who filed the E.E.O.C. complaint against Stevens, said she was attracted to truck driving by the prospect of a steady wage after working for decades as an actor in New York.“It was very much a blow,” she said of being rejected because of the training policy. “I honestly don’t know how I financially made it through.”Ms. Howard, who is now employed at another trucking company, said she had worked briefly at a company where she was trained by two men who treated her well. “It’s quite possible for a woman to be trained by a man, and a man to be a professional about what the job is,” she said.Other female drivers said they had been mistreated by male trainers who could be relentlessly dismissive and sometimes refused to teach them important skills, like reversing a truck with a large trailer attached.Rowan Kannard, a truck driver from Wisconsin who is not involved in the complaint against Stevens, said a male trainer had spent little time training her on a run to California in 2019.At a truck stop where she felt unsafe, Ms. Kannard said, the trainer demanded that she leave the cab — and then locked her out. She asked to stop the training and was flown back to Wisconsin. Yet she said she did not believe that same-sex training for women was necessary. “Some of these men that are training, they should probably go through a course.”Desiree Wood, the president of Real Women in Trucking, says the trucking industry has not evolved to hire and train more women.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesMs. Wood, of Real Women in Trucking, said trucking companies’ training policies were misguided for another reason — there is no guarantee that a woman will treat another woman better than a male trainer. She said a female trainer had once hurled racist abuse at her and told her to drive dangerously.“I’m Mexican — she hated Mexicans and wanted to tell me all about it the whole time I was on the truck,” Ms. Wood said, “She screamed at me to speed in zones where it was not safe.”Still, some women support same-sex training policies.Ellen Voie, who founded the nonprofit Women in Trucking, said truck driving should be treated differently from other professions because trainers and trainees spent so much time together in close quarters.“I do not know of any other mode of transportation that confines men and women in an area that has sleeping quarters,” Ms. Voie said.Lawyers for Prime, the company that lost the E.E.O.C. suit in 2014 challenging its same-sex training policy, called Ms. Voie as an expert witness to defend the practice. In her testimony, she contended that women who were passed over by companies that didn’t have female trainers available could have found work at other trucking companies. She still believes that.But Ms. Voie added that trucking companies also needed to do more to improve training for women, including placing cameras in cabs to monitor bad behavior and paying for hotel rooms so trainers and trainees can sleep separately.Steve Rush, who recently sold his New Jersey trucking company, stopped using sleeper cabs over a decade ago, sending drivers to hotels. He said fewer of his drivers quit compared with the rest of the industry, as a result.“What woman in her right mind wants to go out and learn how to drive a truck and have to jump into the sleeper that some guy’s just crawled out of,” he said.Ben Casselman More

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    Crypto’s Wild D.C. Ride: From FTX at the Fed to a Scramble for Access

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    FTX’s demise and its leader’s upcoming trial haven’t stopped a major lobbying push by the industry this week, but the events have changed its tone.Cryptocurrency lobbyists were riding so high in early 2022 that an FTX executive felt comfortable directly emailing Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, to ask him to meet with Sam Bankman-Fried, the soon-to-be-disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange.It worked.“The day that would work for me is February 1,” Mr. Powell replied to a Jan. 11 email from Mark Wetjen, an FTX policy official and former commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Mr. Powell’s public calendar shows that he and Mr. Bankman-Fried met as planned. And Mr. Wetjen went on to send the Fed chair two policy papers that FTX had recently published, according to emails obtained through a public records request. “Hope you’re finding these useful!” Mr. Wetjen wrote. “Great to have people like you serving our country.”Mr. Powell has long been cautious about the digital currency industry, but, like many in Washington, he was trying to learn more. FTX was eager to do the teaching. According to newly released records, Mr. Wetjen managed to gain access to a range of federal officials. The records show that Mr. Bankman-Fried secured a virtual meeting in October 2021 with another top Fed official, Lael Brainard, who is now the director of the White House National Economic Council. And public calendars show that Mr. Bankman-Fried went on to meet with another top financial regulator, Martin Gruenberg, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.The crypto industry faces a more difficult landscape in Washington after last fall’s collapse of FTX. Mr. Bankman-Fried was arrested on fraud charges in December, and his trial is set to start on Tuesday. The industry has also faced a wide-ranging government crackdown that has sent some crypto entrepreneurs abroad in search of friendlier governments.The companies that have survived crypto’s downturn are still pouring millions of dollars into lobbying, but they are having a harder time gaining access to the halls of power. Some congressional offices have become reluctant to meet with industry representatives. Crypto lobbyists appear less frequently on the public calendars of key officials at the regulatory agencies, and companies have had to shift strategy, straining to distinguish themselves from FTX.“There are a bunch of people who’ve had trouble having meetings,” said Sheila Warren, who runs the Crypto Council for Innovation, an advocacy group. “I have heard from some offices that they will not meet with certain people anymore.”With Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trial approaching, the crypto industry is scrambling to change the subject from FTX.Stand With Crypto, a nonprofit backed by the giant digital currency exchange Coinbase, is planning to hold a “fly-in” on Wednesday, bringing in industry players from around the country to talk with lawmakers.“It has been quieter — and more circumspect, in some respects — but the push from the industry hasn’t abated,” said Mark Hays, who tracks cryptocurrency regulation at Americans for Financial Reform. “The crypto industry knows that its star has been tarnished on Capitol Hill, to some extent.”The mood in Congress was friendlier to the industry in early 2022, when FTX was at its zenith: Mr. Bankman-Fried had been positioned as a sort of wunderkind, eccentric and brilliant. But since its collapse, many lawmakers have argued that the industry should be overseen more strictly.“The tone has certainly changed among Democrats — they’re much more skeptical,” said Bart Naylor at Public Citizen, a government watchdog that has been tracking cryptocurrency lobbying.Regulators were more hesitant to embrace crypto firms even in 2022. It was unusual that FTX directly landed a meeting with the Fed chair.Read the emailsA selection of correspondence between FTX and the Federal Reserve, pulled from a series of Freedom of Information Requests submitted by The New York Times.Read DocumentMr. Powell’s only other listed private-sector meetings in February 2022 were with Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup; David Solomon from Goldman Sachs; Suzanne Clark from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; James Gorman, the chief executive, and Tom Wipf, a vice chair, from Morgan Stanley; Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; the Business Council, a group of chief executives; and the head of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.Mr. Powell has met with other financial technology companies — he talked with a representative from the payment processor Stripe in March 2022, for example. But he has not listed similar meetings in 2023, based on his calendars released to date.At the meeting with Mr. Bankman-Fried, Mr. Powell and the FTX officials discussed stablecoins as well as central bank digital currencies, a form of electronic cash backed by the government, a person familiar with the matter said.Mr. Powell has met with other financial technology companies in the past. But he has not listed similar meetings in 2023, based on his calendars released to date.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMr. Wetjen knew many of the agency officials with whom he was setting up meetings from his previous policy role in Washington. He and Mr. Powell had worked on regulatory issues together while Mr. Powell was a Fed governor, for instance.Dennis Kelleher, the head of the regulatory watchdog Better Markets, said FTX had exercised an extensive web of influence in broader regulatory circles, partly through Mr. Wetjen’s connections.“This is the problem: These relationships, which are not visible to the public, pay dividends year after year after year once these guys swing through the revolving door,” Mr. Kelleher said. FTX also flooded Washington with money, which helped it gain a foothold in congressional offices and at think tanks, he and several lobbyists said.The Fed did not provide a comment for this article, nor did Mr. Wetjen. The White House had no comment on Ms. Brainard’s meeting with Mr. Bankman-Fried. An F.D.I.C. spokesman noted that chairs of the agency often held courtesy visits with financial firm leaders.Back in 2022, FTX was trying to shape how the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulated it, as Mr. Wetjen made clear to Mr. Powell in one email from that May.“We have an application before the C.F.T.C. that lays out for the agency how to do so,” Mr. Wetjen wrote of regulating FTX. “All the C.F.T.C. has to do is approve it.”The Fed had little control over such matters, but Mr. Powell does sit on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, an interagency regulatory body that includes the director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Mr. Wetjen continued: “To the extent the crypto industry comes up in discussions” at the Financial Stability Oversight Council, “we wanted you to have this context and our views at FTX.”The company clearly failed to make much headway with the Fed chair. Mr. Powell supported an October decision by the Financial Stability Oversight Council to further study the kind of setup that FTX and other trading platforms wanted for crypto asset exchanges, rather than greenlighting it.Now, FTX’s demise has only bolstered the arguments of regulators who wanted to approach crypto firms carefully. This year, the Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Coinbase and Binance, FTX’s two largest competitors, amid a broader government crackdown. With Mr. Bankman-Fried out of the picture, other financial technology companies are spending millions to make sure that the future of regulatory oversight favors them.Mr. Hays of Americans for Financial Reform said the industry was hardly being shunned in Washington, because “money talks.”“I still think they’re getting doors opened.” More

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    Meet the Man Making Big Banks Tremble

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    Michael Barr, whom President Biden appointed as the Federal Reserve’s top bank cop, has drawn blowback for his bank regulation push.Yelling at Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, has never been particularly effective, his friends and co-workers will tell you. That hasn’t stopped America’s biggest banks, their lobbying groups and even his own colleagues, who have reacted to his proposal to tighten and expand oversight of the nation’s large lenders with a mix of incredulity and outrage.“There is no justification for significant increases in capital at the largest U.S. banks,” Kevin Fromer, the president of the Financial Services Forum, said in a statement after regulators released the draft rules spearheaded by Mr. Barr. The proposal would push up the amount of easy-access money that banks need to have at the ready, potentially cutting into their profits.Even before its release, rumors of what the draft contained triggered a lobbying blitz: Bank of America’s lobbyists and those affiliated with banks including BNP Paribas, HSBC and TD Bank descended on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers sent worried letters to the Fed and peppered its officials with questions about what the proposal would contain.The Bank Policy Institute, a trade group, recently rolled out a national ad campaign urging Americans to “demand answers” on the Fed’s new capital rules. On Tuesday, the organization and other trade groups appeared to lay the groundwork to sue over the proposal, arguing that the Fed violated the law by relying on analysis that was not made public.Some of Mr. Barr’s own colleagues have opposed the proposed changes: Two of the Fed’s seven governors, both Trump appointees, voted against them in a stark sign of discord at the consensus-oriented institution.“The costs of this proposal, if implemented in its current form, would be substantial,” Michelle Bowman, a Fed governor and an increasingly frequent critic of Mr. Barr’s, wrote in a statement.The reason for all of the drama is that the proposal — which the Fed released alongside two other banking agencies — would notably tighten the rules for both America’s largest banks and their slightly smaller counterparts.Michelle Bowman, a Fed governor, has become increasingly critical of Mr. Barr. Ann Saphir/ReutersIf adopted, it would mark both the completion of a process toward tighter bank oversight that started in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the government’s regulatory response to a series of painful bank blowups this year.For the eight largest banks, the new proposal could raise capital requirements to about 14 percent on average, from about 12 percent now. And for banks with more than $100 billion in assets, it would strengthen oversight in a push that has been galvanized by the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank in March. Lenders of its size faced less oversight because they were not viewed as a huge risk to the banking system if they collapsed. The bank’s implosion required a sweeping government intervention, proving that theory wrong.Mr. Barr does not seem, at first glance, like someone who would be the main character in a regulatory knife fight.The Biden administration nominated him to his role, and Democrats tend to favor tighter financial rules — so he was always expected to be harder on banks than his predecessor, a Trump nominee. But the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, who was confirmed to his job in July 2022, has a knack for coming off as unobtrusive in public: He talks softly and has a habit of smiling as he speaks, even when challenged.If the proposal is adopted, it would mark both the completion of a process toward tighter bank oversight that started in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the government’s regulatory response to a series of bank blowups earlier this year.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesAnd Mr. Barr came into his job with a reputation — correct or not — for being somewhat moderate. As a top Treasury official, he helped design the Obama administration’s regulatory response to the 2008 financial crisis and then negotiated what would become the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.The changes that he and his colleagues won drastically ramped up bank oversight — but the Treasury Department, then led by Secretary Timothy Geithner, was often criticized by progressives for being too easy on Wall Street.That legacy has, at times, dogged Mr. Barr. He was in the running for a seat on the Fed’s Board of Governors in 2014, but progressive groups opposed him. When he was floated as the likely candidate to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2021, a similar chorus objected, with powerful Democrats including Senator Sherrod Brown, the chair of the Banking Committee, lining up behind another candidate.Mr. Barr’s chance to break back into Washington policy circles came when Sarah Bloom Raskin, a law professor nominated for vice chair for supervision at the Fed, was forced to drop out. In need of a new candidate, the Biden administration tapped Mr. Barr.Suddenly, the fact that he had just been accused of being too centrist to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was a boon. He needed a simple majority in the 100-seat Senate to pass, and received 66 votes.By then, the idea that he would have a mild touch had taken hold. Analysts predicted “targeted tweaks” to regulation on his watch. But banks and some lawmakers have found plenty of reasons to complain about him in the 14 months since.Wall Street knew that Mr. Barr would need to carry out the U.S. version of global rules developed by an international group called the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Banks initially expected the American version to look similar to, perhaps even gentler than, the international standard.But by early this year, rumors were swirling that Mr. Barr’s approach might be tougher. Then came the collapse this spring of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders — whose rules had been loosened under the Trump administration. That seemed destined to result in even tighter rules.In one of his first acts as vice chair, Mr. Barr wrote a scathing internal review of what had happened, concluding that “regulatory standards for SVB were too low” and bluntly criticizing the Fed’s own oversight of the institution and its peers.Mr. Barr’s conclusions drew some pushback: Ms. Bowman said his review relied “on a limited number of unattributed source interviews” and “was the product of one board member, and was not reviewed by the other members of the board prior to its publication.”But that did little to stop the momentum toward more intense regulation.When Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, gave his regular testimony on the economy before Congress in June, at least six Republicans brought up the potential for tighter regulation, with several warning against going too far.After Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders collapsed this spring, Mr. Barr wrote a scathing internal review concluding that “regulatory standards for SVB were too low.” Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAnd when the proposal was finally released in July, it was clear why banks and their allies had worried. The details were meaningful. One tweak would make it harder for banks to game their assessments of their own operational risks — which include things like lawsuits. Both that and other measures would prod banks to hold more capital.The plan would also force large banks to treat some — mostly larger — residential mortgages as a riskier asset. That raised concerns not just from the banks but from progressive Democrats and fair housing groups, who worried that it could discourage lending to low-income areas. News of the measure came late in the process — surprising even some in the White House, according to people familiar with the matter.Representative Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, said that aspects of the proposal went beyond the international standard, which “caught a lot of people off guard,” and that the Fed had not provided a clear cost-benefit analysis.“Vice Chair Barr is using some of the bank failures as a pretext,” he said.The banks “feel like he’s being obstinate,” said Ian Katz, an analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm in Washington. “They feel like he’s the guy making the decisions, and there are not a lot of workarounds.”Andrew Cecere, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp, said of Mr. Barr, “We may not agree on everything, but he tries to understand.”Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBut he does have fans. Andrew Cecere, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp and a member of a Fed advisory council, said Mr. Barr was “quite collaborative” and “a good listener.”“We may not agree on everything, but he tries to understand,” Mr. Cecere said.The Fed did not provide a comment for this article.The question now is whether the proposal will change before it is final: Bankers have until Nov. 30 to offer suggestions for how to adjust it. Colleagues who worked with Mr. Barr the last time he was reshaping America’s bank regulations — in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse — suggested that he could be willing to negotiate but not when he viewed something as essential.Amias Gerety, a Treasury official during the Obama administration, joined him and other government policymakers for those discussions over consumer protection and big bank oversight. He watched Mr. Barr leave some ideas on the cutting-room floor (such as an online marketplace that would allow consumers to compare credit card terms), while fighting aggressively for others (such as a powerful structure for the then-nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).When people disagreed with Mr. Barr, even loudly, he would politely listen — often before forging ahead with the plan he thought was best.“Sometimes to his detriment, Michael is who he is,” Mr. Gerety said. “He is very willing to sacrifice small-p interpersonal politics to achieve policy goals that he thinks are good for people.”Some tweaks to the current proposal are expected: The residential mortgage suggestion is getting a closer look, for instance. But several analysts said they expected the final rule to remain toothy.In the meantime, Mr. Barr appears to have shaken his reputation for mildness. Dean Baker, an economist at a progressive think tank who, in 2014, was quoted in a news article saying Mr. Barr could not “really be trusted to go after the industry,” said his view had shifted.“I definitely have had a better impression of him over the years,” Mr. Baker said. More

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    U.S. Blasts Google Over Paying $10 Billion a Year to Cut Out Search Rivals

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    The Justice Department and 38 states and territories on Tuesday laid out how Google had systematically wielded its power in online search to cow competitors, as the internet giant fiercely parried back, in the opening of the most consequential trial over tech power in the modern internet era.In a packed courtroom at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, the Justice Department and states painted a picture of how Google had used its deep pockets and dominant position, paying $10 billion a year to Apple and others to be the default search provider on smartphones. Google viewed those agreements as a “powerful strategic weapon” to cut out rivals and entrench its search engine, the government said.“This feedback loop, this wheel, has been turning for more than 12 years,” said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s lead courtroom lawyer. “And it always turns to Google’s advantage.”Google denied that it had illegally used agreements to exclude its search competitors and said it had simply provided a superior product, adding that people can easily switch which search engine they use. The company also said that internet search extends more broadly than its general search engine and pointed to the many ways that people now find information online, such as Amazon for shopping, TikTok for entertainment and Expedia for travel.“Users today have more search options and more ways to access information online than ever before,” said John E. Schmidtlein, the lawyer who opened for Google.The back-and-forth came in the federal government’s first monopoly trial since it tried to break up Microsoft more than two decades ago. This case — U.S. et al. v. Google — is set to have profound implications not only for the internet behemoth but for a generation of other large tech companies that have come to influence how people shop, communicate, entertain themselves and work.Over the next 10 weeks, the government and Google will present arguments and question dozens of witnesses, digging into how the company came to power and whether it broke the law to maintain and magnify its dominance. The final ruling, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, could shift the balance of power in the tech industry, which is embroiled in a race over artificial intelligence that could transform and disrupt people’s lives.A government victory could set limits on Google and change its business practices, sending a humbling message to the other tech giants. If Google wins, it could act as a referendum on increasingly aggressive government regulators, raise questions about the efficacy of century-old antitrust laws and further embolden Silicon Valley.“It is a test of whether our current antitrust laws — the Sherman Act, written in 1890 — can adapt to markets that are susceptible to monopolization in the 21st century,” said Bill Baer, a former top antitrust official at the Justice Department, adding that Google was “indisputably powerful.”The case is part of a sweeping effort by the Biden administration and states to rein in the biggest tech companies. The Justice Department has filed a second lawsuit against Google over its advertising technology, which could go to trial as early as next year. The Federal Trade Commission is separately moving toward a trial in an antitrust lawsuit against Meta. Investigations remain open in efforts that could lead to antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and Apple.The Justice Department filed the case accusing Google of illegally maintaining its dominance in search in October 2020. Months later, a group of attorneys general from 35 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and the District of Columbia filed their own lawsuit arguing that Google had abused its monopoly over search. Judge Mehta is considering both lawsuits during the trial.The case centers on the agreements that Google reached with browser developers, smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers to use Google as the default search engine on their products. Since the lawsuit was filed, more than five million documents and depositions of more than 150 witnesses have been submitted to the court. Last month, Judge Mehta narrowed the scope of the trial, while allowing the core claims of monopoly abuse in search to remain.The trial unfolded on Tuesday in Courtroom 10 at Washington’s federal courthouse, a complex minutes from Capitol Hill. It drew a large crowd, with some people standing in line to enter as early as 4:30 a.m. Officials from the Google rivals Yelp and Microsoft also attended, as did dozens of attorneys and staff from the Justice Department, states and Google after years of work on the case.Judge Mehta began the proceedings punctually. In the government’s opening statement, Mr. Dintzer focused on the search agreements Google had struck with Apple and others. He referenced internal company documents that described how Google would not share revenue with Apple without “default placement” on its devices and how it worked to ensure that Apple couldn’t redirect searches to its Siri assistant.“Your honor, this is a monopolist flexing,” Mr. Dintzer said.In blunt language, Mr. Dintzer also argued that Google had tried to hide documents from antitrust enforcers by including lawyers on conversations and marking them as subject to attorney-client privilege. He showed a message from Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, asking for the chat history to be turned off in one conversation.“They turned history off, your honor, so they could rewrite it here in this courtroom,” Mr. Dintzer said.William Cavanaugh, a lawyer for the states, echoed Mr. Dintzer’s concerns about Google’s agreements to become the default search engines on smartphones. He added that Google had limited a product used to place ads on other search engines to hurt Microsoft, which makes the Bing search engine.In response, Mr. Schmidtlein, Google’s lawyer, argued that the company’s default agreements with browser makers don’t lock up the market the way that the Justice Department said. Browser makers such as Apple and Mozilla both promote other search engines, he said, and it was easy for users to switch their default search engine.Using a slide show, Mr. Schmidtlein demonstrated the number of taps or clicks required to change the default on popular smartphones. People who wished to switch their search engine but did not know how could search Google for instructions or watch a video tutorial on YouTube, which Google owns, he said.The government’s evidence was coming from “snippets and out-of-context” emails, he said.The lawyers also sparred over whether Google was as dominant as the government claimed. The Justice Department and the states said Google competes primarily with broad search engines that act as a single place to look for multiple types of information. But Mr. Schmidtlein said Google’s universe of competitors was wider, including online retailers like Amazon, food delivery apps like DoorDash and travel booking sites like Expedia.In the afternoon, the Justice Department called Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, as its first witness to establish that the company had long been aware of its power in search and deliberately tried to sidestep antitrust scrutiny.In more than three hours of testimony, Mr. Varian was asked about views that he shared with other Google employees on the power of defaults, the threat of Microsoft’s entry into search and his awareness of language that could invite the attention of antitrust regulators. The Justice Department drew from Mr. Varian’s emails and memos from as far back as the early 2000s.Mr. Varian is scheduled to return to the witness stand on Wednesday.Nico Grant More

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    Huawei Phone Is Latest Shot Fired in the U.S.-China Tech War

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    The release of a homegrown Chinese smartphone during a visit by the Biden official in charge of regulating such technology shows the U.S.-China tech conflict is alive and well.In the midst of the U.S. commerce secretary’s good will tour to China last week, Huawei, the telecom giant that faces stiff U.S. trade restrictions, unveiled a smartphone that illustrated just how hard it has been for the United States to clamp down on China’s tech prowess.The new phone is powered by a chip that appears to be the most advanced version of China’s homegrown technology to date — a kind of achievement that the United States has been trying to prevent China from reaching.The timing of its release may not have been a coincidence. The Commerce Department has been leading U.S. efforts to curb Beijing’s ability to gain access to advanced chips, and the commerce secretary, Gina M. Raimondo, spent much of her trip defending the U.S. crackdown to Chinese officials, who pressed her to water down some of the rules.Ms. Raimondo’s powerful role — as well as China’s antipathy toward the U.S. curbs — was reflected online, where more than a dozen vendors cropped up on Chinese e-commerce sites to sell phone cases for the new model with Ms. Raimondo’s face imprinted on the back. Doctored images showed Ms. Raimondo holding the new phone, next to phrases like “I am Raimondo, this time I endorse Huawei” and “Huawei mobile phone ambassador Raimondo.”Chinese media have referred to the phone as a sign of the country’s technological independence, but U.S. analysts said the achievement still most likely hinged on the use of American technology and machinery, which would have been in violation of U.S. trade restrictions.Beginning in the Trump administration and continuing under President Biden, the United States has steadily ramped up its restrictions on selling advanced chips and the machinery needed to make them to China, and to Huawei in particular, in an attempt to shut down China’s mastery of technologies that could aid its military.For the past several years, those restrictions have curtailed Huawei’s ability to produce 5G phones. But Huawei appears to have found a way around those restrictions to make an advanced phone, at least in limited quantities. Though detailed information about the phone is limited, Huawei’s jade-green Mate 60 Pro appears to have many of the same basic capabilities as other smartphones on the market.An examination of the phone by TechInsights, a Canadian firm that analyzes the semiconductor industry, concluded that the advanced chip inside was manufactured by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation of China and was operating beyond the technology limits that the United States has been trying to enforce. Douglas Fuller, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School, said SMIC appeared to have used equipment stockpiled before restrictions went into effect, equipment licensed to it for the purpose of producing chips for companies other than Huawei, and spare parts acquired through third-party vendors to cobble together its production.“The official line in China of a heroic breaking of the technology blockade of the American imperialists is incorrect,” Mr. Fuller said. “Instead, the U.S. has allowed SMIC continued significant access to American technology.”Huawei and SMIC did not respond to a request for comment. The Commerce Department also did not respond to a request for comment.Chinese social media commentators and news sites celebrated the smartphone’s release as evidence that U.S. restrictions could not hold China back from developing its own technology.“Regardless of Huawei’s intentions, the launch of the Mate 60 Pro has been imbued by many Chinese netizens with a deeper meaning of ‘rising up under US pressure,’” the state-run Global Times said in an editorial.The phone was released during a week when both American and Chinese officials had issued numerous statements about renewed cooperation and communication. Chinese officials had asked for the United States to roll back its restrictions on chip exports. But Ms. Raimondo — whose email, along with other U.S. officials, was targeted this year by Chinese hackers — told reporters that she had taken a hard line on the technology controls in her meetings, saying the United States was not willing to remove restrictions or compromise on issues of national security.During the trip, Ms. Raimondo and her advisers set up a dialogue to share information about how the United States was enforcing its technology controls. She said the step would lead to better Chinese compliance but was not an invitation to the Chinese to try to water down export controls.Ms. Raimondo also met directly with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, during her visit. The week before, Mr. Li had visited Huawei during a visit to southern China, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, and met with the company founder Ren Zhengfei.Phone cases in China displaying doctored photos of the U.S. commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo.MengyanThe release of the Huawei phone raises questions about whether Ms. Raimondo’s department will continue trying to build good will with Chinese officials — or potentially take a more aggressive stance toward cracking down on China’s access to American technology.The Biden administration is preparing to issue a final version of the technology restrictions it first put out last October, and the revised rules could come within weeks.Huawei’s development of the phone does not necessarily demonstrate a huge leap forward for Chinese technological prowess — or the total failure of U.S. export controls, analysts said.Because Chinese firms no longer have access to the most cutting-edge machines for making semiconductors, they have developed novel workarounds that use older machinery to create more powerful chips. But these methods are both relatively time-consuming for manufacturers, and produce a higher proportion of faulty chips, limiting the scale of production.“This does not mean China can manufacture advanced semiconductors at scale,” said Paul Triolo, an associate partner for China and technology policy at Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy. “But it shows what incentives U.S. controls have created for Chinese firms to collaborate and attempt new ways to innovate with their existing capabilities.”“It is the first major salvo in what will be a decade or more struggle for China’s semiconductor industry to essentially reinvent parts of the global semiconductor supply chain without U.S. technology included,” he added.Nazak Nikakhtar, a partner at Wiley Rein and a former Commerce Department official, said Huawei’s progress was “a result of longstanding U.S. policy” — specifically U.S. licenses that allow companies to continue selling advanced technologies to firms that the Commerce Department placed on a so-called entity list, like Huawei and SMIC.From Jan. 3 to March 31, 2022, the Commerce Department approved licenses for the sale of $23 billion of tech products to companies on the entity list, according to information released in February by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.“Where gaps exist in licensing policies, exports will get funneled through the gaps,” Ms. Nikakhtar said. “The U.S. government needs to close the gaps if its intention is to limit exports of critical technologies to China.”In a statement on Wednesday, Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who heads a congressional committee on China, called for ending all U.S. technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC. U.S. chip makers such as Qualcomm and Intel have received exporting licenses.Claire Fu More

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    Pork Industry Grapples With Whiplash of Shifting Regulations

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    Retailers in California, and pig farmers and processors thousands of miles away, are bracing for the impact of a state ban on some sources of the meat.These were supposed to be boom times for Pederson’s Natural Farms.In the days this spring after the Supreme Court upheld a California law banning the sale of certain pork products made from pigs raised in small gestation pens, the phones were ringing off the hook at Pederson’s headquarters in Hamilton, Texas.California grocery stores and restaurants were desperate to line up supplies of bacon and pork chops that met the new state standards by a July 1 deadline. Pederson’s products filled the bill, and the company was happy to help send them to California, which consumes about 15 percent of the nation’s pork.“We were going to have a good year,” said Neil Dudley, the vice president at Pederson’s. “We were putting it in the budget. We were going to put pressure on us to grow, but the extra income would help fund that growth.”But a couple of weeks later, some of those new orders were canceled as California regulators pushed back the full force of the law, known as Proposition 12, to early next year, allowing grocery stores and restaurants to use up pork they had already boughtBrined pork bellies ready for removal from a vacuum tumbler and then hanging in a smoker at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times“We were going to have a good year,” said Neil Dudley, a Pederson’s executive. Then California pushed back its timeline, and some orders were canceled.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe normally orderly pork industry has been thrown into upheaval as pig farmers in the Midwest, major pork processors and California businesses have reacted to the changing legal and regulatory landscape in recent months. Further confusion could come if Congress passes pending legislation that would effectively nullify the California act.“There is so much murky water here,” said Todd Davis, the meat and seafood coordinator for Oliver’s Markets, which operates four grocery stores in Sonoma County, Calif., and has lined up pork products that meet the new state requirements.“You are supposed to be compliant as of July 1, but I don’t think the state has any teeth on the enforcement side of things,” Mr. Davis continued. “Companies aren’t taking it as seriously as they should, and at some point the state will make an example out of one of them,” which he said could include costly fines.Already, farmers are facing hog prices that have been depressed since fall while feed costs have remained high, leading to average losses of $30 to $50 a hog for much of this year in Iowa, according to estimated livestock returns from Iowa State University. A pound of bacon costs an average of $6.20 at grocery stores across the country, down from $7.60 last fall, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank at St. Louis.Nationally, pork prices are influenced by everything from feed cost to demand from China to the shifting mood in commodities markets, but some retailers are already raising prices in California, to pass on the higher cost to hog farmers of meeting the state’s more stringent standards. With other farmers opting not sell in the state, short supply could also push the prices of bacon and pork chops higher.Piglets are kept with their sows at A-Frame Acres in Elliott, Iowa, which is part of the Niman Ranch network.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFeeding time at A-Frame Acres, which is run by Ron Mardesen, above.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesPig farmers say making changes for California is costly. Along with his partners, Dwight Mogler, a fourth-generation farmer in Iowa who sells about 200,000 hogs each year, spent $8.7 million in 2022 building a new facility and modifying an existing one to meet the new standards. A packing company pays him a small premium over market price for his pigs — he declined to provide details of the deal — but Mr. Mogler estimates that it will take 10 years to recoup his outlay.Other farmers say they’re simply not going to modify how they raise pigs.“We’re losing money in the pig industry,” said Trish Cook, the president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, who, along with her family, raises pigs near Winthrop in eastern Iowa. “The idea of having a large capital expenditure with no clear payback on it doesn’t make business sense to us. We don’t know what sort of premium those pigs will get.”For California, questions about whether consumers will have enough bacon and pork chops and how much they will cost also remain unclear.Ronald Fong, the chief executive of the California Grocers Association, which pushed for an extension of the deadline, said stores were able to make it through Labor Day with the product that they had already bought. However, Mr. Fong said that soon “we’ll be faced with some shortages and price hikes.”Mr. Davis of Oliver’s Markets said he already bought pork from Niman Ranch, a producer that exceeds the California criteria, but had also always offered customers less-expensive pork options. Now, the cheaper pork that meets the new state criteria, from Open Prairie Natural Meats, a brand owned by Tyson, costs Oliver’s $1 to $1.50 a pound more, which Mr. Davis is passing along to customers, he said.“Chicken and pork are still very affordable options, especially when compared to beef prices,” Mr. Davis said. “So we’ve seen very little pushback from consumers.”Loading brined pork bellies into the smokehouse at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhen voters passed Proposition 12 five years ago, it was a blow to the industrial meat producers, requiring that any veal calves, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens sold in California be housed in systems that allow freedom of movement. Under the rule, pigs must be born to sows housed in spaces that provide at least 24 square feet per sow. California produces very few of its own pigs, but the new rule also applies to pigs raised in other states.The law was supposed to go into effect in 2022, but the new pork standards were put on pause after the National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation filed a lawsuit challenging California’s ability to dictate pig operations in other states. They argued that if other states adopted different restrictions, the result would be a patchwork of rules and regulations. Massachusetts, for instance, passed its own gestation pen rule, called Question 3, in 2016, but it has been on hold, awaiting various court proceedings.In May, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Proposition 12 was legal. It said the pork industry had not proved that the law imposed a substantial burden on interstate commerce. California officials began working through how to regulate and enforce the rule, but a state court delayed enforcement until the end of the year.And the pork industry isn’t done fighting. In June, senators from largely agricultural Midwestern states introduced the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, which would limit the ability of states to regulate agriculture in other states.In early August, attorneys general from several states, including Texas, New Hampshire and Utah, signed a letter urging Congress to pass the EATS Act.“The industry lost in the court of public opinion in terms of California voters adopting this law, they lost in the courts, and now they’re trying to get something through with this legislative act,” said Chris Oliviero, the general manager of Niman Ranch, which pays its network of 600 farmers in 20 states premium prices to raise the beef, pork and lamb used in its products in conditions that exceed the California standards.“The ultimate goal is to prevent Prop. 12 from going into effect,” Mr. Oliviero added.Bacon slabs cooling after being smoked at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesAs for Pederson’s, much of the pork it produces is already committed to a handful of longtime customers, including Whole Foods. The company did, however, have excess bacon that met the new standards.That is, until one of the farmers who supplied half of the pigs used by Pederson’s received a better offer from a larger company. Suddenly, Pederson’s pig supply was at risk.“Farmers, who are struggling to make money, are getting calls from the big guys, saying they want to contract with them,” Mr. Dudley said. “The big players can’t lose market share, not in a market as big as California. Instead of a boom year, we’re now looking at diminishing sales.” More

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    Labor Dept. Proposes Vast Expansion of Overtime Eligibility

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    The Biden administration seeks a threshold of about $55,000 in annual pay under which salaried workers must receive overtime, up from $35,500.In a move that could affect millions of workers, the Biden administration announced Wednesday that it was proposing to substantially increase the cutoff below which most salaried workers automatically receive time-and-a-half overtime pay.Under the proposed rule, issued by the Labor Department, the cutoff for receiving overtime pay after 40 hours a week would rise to about $55,000 a year from about $35,500, a level that was set during the Trump administration.About 3.6 million salaried workers, most of whom fall between the current cutoff and the new one, would effectively gain overtime pay eligibility under the proposed rule, the department said.Julie Su, the department’s acting secretary, said in a statement that the rule “would help restore workers’ economic security by giving millions more salaried workers the right to overtime protections.”The department estimated that the rule would result in a transfer of $1.2 billion from employers to employees in its first year.Some industry groups, particularly in retail, dining and hospitality businesses, have argued that expanded overtime eligibility could lead many employers to convert some salaried workers to hourly workers and set their base wage so that their overall pay, with the usual overtime hours, would be unchanged.These groups argue that vastly expanding overtime eligibility could also discourage employers from promoting workers to junior management positions that provide a path to well-paying careers, because more employers would be compelled to pay junior managers overtime when they worked long hours.“To prevent these employees from triggering new overtime costs, many small businesses will be forced to demote them back to hourly wage earners, reversing their hard-earned career progression,” Alfredo Ortiz, the president and chief executive of Job Creators Network, a group that promotes the interests of small businesses, said in a statement.The proposal follows a similarly ambitious move by the Obama administration in 2016, which sought to raise the overtime cutoff for most salaried employees to about $47,500 from about $23,500. But just before Donald J. Trump took office as president, a federal judge in Texas suspended the Obama rule, concluding that the Labor Department lacked the legal authority to raise the overtime cutoff so substantially.The Trump administration later installed the $35,500 limit.Under the Biden administration’s proposal, the overtime limit would automatically adjust every three years to keep pace with rising earnings. The Labor Department will accept public comments for 60 days before issuing a final version of the rule.Advocates of a higher cutoff argue that one key benefit would be to prevent employers from misclassifying workers as managers to avoid paying them overtime.Under the law, employers do not need to pay overtime to workers who make above the salary cutoff if they are bona fide executives or managers, meaning that their primary job is management and that they have real authority.But research has shown that many companies illegally deny workers overtime by raising their salaries just above the overtime cutoff and simply labeling them managers, even if they do little managerial work.Because the legal definition of an overtime-exempt manager can be somewhat subjective, and because many salaried workers aren’t aware that they are eligible for overtime pay if they make more than the cutoff, they typically do not challenge employers who game the system in this way. The result is that many assistant managers at fast food restaurants or retail outlets have been denied overtime pay even though the law typically required that they receive it.Raising the salary threshold would make this practice less common by eliminating the subjectivity in determining which workers should receive overtime pay. Instead, many workers — like assistant managers in restaurants — would become eligible for overtime automatically, no matter their job responsibilities.The proposal is the latest effort by the Biden administration to increase pay and protections for workers. President Biden has been outspoken in his support of labor unions, and issued an executive order requiring contractors on federal construction projects worth more than $35 million to reach agreements with unions that determine wages and work rules.The major climate bill that Mr. Biden signed last year included incentives for clean energy projects to pay wages that are similar to union scale.But the proposed overtime rule could face legal challenges like the ones that derailed the Obama-era rule, suggesting that the president’s rationale for the proposal may be as much about communicating his support for workers during the 2024 presidential campaign as it is about significantly expanding eligibility for overtime.In an interview this year, Seth Harris, a former deputy labor secretary who recently served as a senior labor adviser to Mr. Biden, said some administration officials worried that a judge would set aside the rule, but added, “There are others whose offices are physically closer to the president who say, ‘No, no, no, this District Court judge doesn’t tell us how we do our business.’” More

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    Amazon to Meet Regulators as U.S. Considers Possible Antitrust Suit

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    Amazon’s meetings with the Federal Trade Commission, known as “last rites” meetings, are typically a final step before the agency votes on filing a lawsuit.Amazon is scheduled to meet with members of the Federal Trade Commission next week to discuss an antitrust lawsuit that the agency may be preparing to file to challenge the power of the retailer’s sprawling business, according to a person with knowledge of the plans.The meetings are set to be held with Lina Khan, the F.T.C. chair, and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, who are F.T.C. commissioners, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential.The meetings signal that the F.T.C. is nearing a decision on whether to move forward with a lawsuit alleging that Amazon has violated antimonopoly laws. Such discussions are sometimes known as “last rites” meetings, named after the prayers some Christians receive on their deathbed. The conversations, which are usually one of the final steps before the agency’s commissioners vote on a lawsuit, give the company a chance to make its case.If the F.T.C. files suit, it would be one of the most significant challenges to Amazon’s business in the company’s nearly 30-year history. Amazon, a $1.4 trillion behemoth, has become a major force in the economy. It now owns not just its trademark online store, but the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the primary care practice One Medical and the high-end grocery chain Whole Foods. It is also one of the world’s largest provider of cloud computing services.The F.T.C. has investigated Amazon’s business for years. The company’s critics and competitors have argued that the once-upstart online bookstore has used its retailing clout to squeeze the merchants that use its platform to sell their wares. U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about the influence and reach of giant tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The Justice Department has filed several antitrust lawsuits against Google, with two scheduled to go to trial next month. The F.T.C. has also sued Meta over accusations that it snuffed out young competitors by buying Instagram and WhatsApp.Some of those efforts have stumbled in the courts. Federal judges declined this year to stop Meta from acquiring a virtual reality start-up and Microsoft from buying the video game powerhouse Activision Blizzard, dooming F.T.C. challenges to both deals. In 2022, the Justice Department also lost its bid to challenge UnitedHealth Group’s plan to buy a health tech company.Stacy Mitchell, a co-executive director of the advocacy organization Institute for Local Self-Reliance and an Amazon critic, said she hoped the F.T.C. would pursue a sweeping case against the tech giant. She said the agency should focus on how Amazon’s control of the retail business — from its store to its logistics network that delivers packages — let it hurt competitors and merchants.“It’s a watershed moment,” she said. “What we need to see from the F.T.C. is a case that targets the core of Amazon’s monopolization strategy.”Amazon has said that it competes aggressively with other retailers and that efforts to regulate its business would only hurt consumers and the businesses that sell products through its site.Under the leadership of Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, the retailer has recently been in retrenchment mode. The company has cut costs, laying off thousands of workers as growth slumped after a soaring period fueled by the pandemic. Last week, Amazon announced that its revenue in the second quarter of the year had increased 11 percent, to $134.4 billion, beating analysts’ expectations.In June, the F.T.C. sued Amazon in a separate case that accused the company of tricking users into subscribing to its Prime fast-shipping membership program and then making it difficult for them to cancel.Amazon has also faced scrutiny from states and regulators in other countries. The District of Columbia’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the company in 2021, arguing that it had used unfair pricing policies against merchants on its site. The lawsuit was thrown out by a judge, though the attorney general has tried to revive the case. California filed a similar lawsuit last year that is moving forward. In December, Amazon also reached a deal to end a European Union antitrust investigation by agreeing to change some of its practices.If the F.T.C. sues, it would formally pit Ms. Khan — who has been one of Amazon’s most prominent detractors — against the company.While a law student at Yale, Ms. Khan had argued that Amazon’s growth represented a failure of American antitrust laws, which she said had become myopically focused on consumer prices as a measure of whether businesses were violating the law. Amazon’s prices were often low, she wrote in a widely read 2017 paper, but that failed to account for other ways it could bully players across the economy.The paper’s success supercharged a debate in Washington about the power of the tech giants. In 2019, federal antitrust regulators decided to investigate some of the companies. In keeping with a longstanding practice of dividing responsibilities, the Justice Department agreed to look at Google and Apple while the F.T.C. examined Facebook and Amazon.President Biden named Ms. Khan chair to oversee the F.T.C. — giving her control of the Amazon investigation — roughly two years later. More