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EU Leaders Say Putin’s Gas Power Is Weakening

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In Germany and elsewhere, leaders are growing more confident that months of work to stockpile and line up alternate energy sources may help them blunt Russia’s weaponization of exports.BERLIN — Not long after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, another mobilization began. European energy ministers and diplomats started jetting across the world and inking energy deals — racing to prepare for a rough winter should Russia choose to cut off its cheap gas in retaliation for Western sanctions.Since then, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has fiddled with the gas tap to Europe repeatedly. Through Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas monopoly, Russia has vastly reduced supplies or suspended them for days at a time — until last week, when it announced that it would indefinitely halt flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that supplies Germany, and through it, much of Europe.Yet when the blow finally came, it provoked more ridicule than outrage among European leaders, who say that by now they would expect nothing less from Mr. Putin and that they have accepted that the era of cheap Russian gas is over, unimaginable as that might have seemed just months ago.In some corners, even as Europe’s leaders scramble to blunt the blow from lower gas supplies and higher prices, there is a growing sense that perhaps Russia’s weaponizing of gas exports is a strategy of diminishing returns — and that Mr. Putin may have overplayed his hand.“It would have been surprising the other way around,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, said this week of Russia’s announcement that Nord Stream 1 would remain shut. “The only thing from Russia that is reliable is the lies.”Even the markets seemed to take the latest disruption in stride. After rising 5 percent on the heels of Gazprom’s announcement, prices are now lower than they were at the start of last week.That does not mean that European nations are not feeling the pain, or have skirted the risk that the energy crunch could sow social unrest, fracturing their unity against the Kremlin this winter. But a lot of the damage has already been done, with gas prices several times above anything that would be considered normal and pressure mounting on consumers and businesses.The question remains, then, of just how successful the hard pivot from Russian energy actually is — whether Europe has lined up enough new sources, whether its stockpiles can get it through the winter, whether conservation efforts can make a difference and whether governments can help shield consumers from rising prices.“The only thing from Russia that is reliable is the lies,” said Robert Habeck, right, Germany’s economy minister, with Chancellor Olaf Schulz, center, and Christian Lindner, the finance minister.Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRussian officials are watching and waiting for what they believe is the inevitable collapse of European resolve as the economic pain bites.“I think that the coming winter will show how real their belief is in the possibility of refusing Russian gas,” the Russian energy minister, Nikolai Shulginov, said in an interview with the Russian state-run news agency Tass. “This will be a completely new life for the Europeans. I think that, most likely, they will not be able to refuse.”Russian state news outlets are full of reports of protests in Europe. Italians, Russian state media reported, are being told to boil their pasta for just two minutes before turning off the heat, while Germans are forgoing showers.The message: Sooner or later, the Europeans’ unity against Russia will crumble under the weight of high gas prices, while Russia’s standing has been elevated.“We have not lost anything and will not lose anything,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday.But increasingly, Europe’s leaders are signaling that, having spent months preparing for this moment, they are ready for the showdown.“Now our work is paying off!” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday in Brussels. “At the beginning of the war, Russia’s pipeline gas was 40 percent of all imported gas. Today it is now down to only 9 percent of our gas imports.”That is because European leaders — especially those from Italy and Germany, which rely most on Russian energy — have crisscrossed the globe. From Algeria to Qatar, Senegal, Congo and Canada, they have been negotiating deals to replace Russian supplies.Gazprom’s Orenburg gas processing plant in Russia. Steep energy prices netted the company $41.75 billion profit in the first half of the year — $10 billion of which went to the Kremlin.Alexander Manzyuk/ReutersGermany has also leaned heavily on Norway and the Netherlands, which agreed to extend the life of its biggest gas field to combat the energy crisis.As a result, Germany’s dependency on cheap Russian gas — once more than half its overall gas imports — decreased to less than 10 percent in August.In Italy, consumption from Moscow has dropped to 23 percent from 40 percent.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and other European leaders are defiantly claiming the end of an era.For decades, dating to the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow had insisted to Germany and others that it was a reliable energy partner, no matter the political context. But now, European leaders say, Mr. Putin has shattered that understanding.“Something that held true throughout the Cold War no longer applies,” Mr. Scholz said last weekend. “Russia is no longer a reliable energy supplier. That is part of the new reality.”That new reality, perhaps, should not have come as such a shock. Mr. Putin’s gas brinkmanship dates to 2004, when Gazprom cut deliveries to Belarus, in a battle for control of a transit pipeline into Western Europe.In 2009, as Ukraine sought NATO membership under a pro-Western president, Mr. Putin ordered a sharp reduction in gas flows through the country; after Ukraine elected a pro-Russian president a year later, the Kremlin rewarded him with a 30 percent cut in natural gas prices.And even before Russia invaded Ukraine, it reduced exports in the summer of 2021, and did not refill Gazprom-owned storage sites in Europe.A compressor station near the German-Polish border for Russian gas through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockSergey Vakulenko, an analyst in Bonn, Germany, who worked for years in Russia’s energy industry, said that over the last two decades Russian officials had seen the geopolitical power that the United States derived from its influence over the global financial system, and sought to harness Russia’s status as a major energy exporter in a similar way.“There was a great desire, as a superpower, to have something similar,” he said. “There was the feeling that oil and gas was the answer.”Yet Russia’s cuts in gas exports to Europe since its invasion of Ukraine are of a different order of magnitude. “This is now just blackmail,” said Mikhail Krutikhin, a Russian energy analyst. “We haven’t seen it on this scale before.”In going so far, Mr. Putin has also invited greater risks. An internal Russian government economic forecast described this week by Bloomberg News estimated that a full cutoff of gas to Europe would cost as much as $6.6 billion in lost tax revenues.But with Gazprom netting a record profit of $41.75 billion in the first half of the year — $10 billion of which it passed on to the Kremlin — that is a cost Mr. Putin has calculated to be acceptable.For Russia, oil is the biggest revenue source, and Mr. Putin may be keen to use gas as a political weapon while he can, said Thomas O’Donnell, an energy expert at the Hertie School, a public policy school in Berlin.“This is where he’s got his biggest leverage to cause the most trouble in the European Union,” Mr. O’Donnell said. He added, “It’s a lever that he knows he’s going to lose in a year — or even maybe after this winter.”And a lot may depend on the severity of the winter. Even if liquid natural gas imports to Europe from other sources continue at their record high rate, a study released this week by the research institute Bruegel estimated that a complete stop to Russian supplies would require all of Europe to cut its consumption by 15 percent.European nations that used to rely on Russian gas imports for big chunks of their domestic energy production have been racing to fill gas storage facilities. Germany’s are now at 86 percent capacity, Italy’s at almost 84 percent.In Germany, large industry players have so far managed to drop their consumption by around 20 percent. A similar amount would have to be shaved off household usage, according to German energy and economy ministry models, should Russian gas remain shut off. If households don’t cut back, Germany’s gas regulator has repeatedly warned, the option could be rationing.Lights switched off in apartments in Frankfurt. German energy officials have repeatedly warned that households must conserve energy or face rationing.Michael Probst/Associated PressEurope is aiming to have enough liquid natural gas solutions in place by next year. Germany recently signed a deal for a fifth floating L.N.G. terminal, while terminals in Belgium, France and the Netherlands are fully booked.The key to surviving this winter in the face of a Nord Stream shutdown will be how well European states work together.So far, only Hungary has signed a deal for additional supplies with Gazprom.France and Germany, in contrast, agreed this week that Paris would send any excess gas to Germany, where it is badly needed, and in return Berlin promised to send its extra electricity.The tricky issue will be what happens should more critical German industry have to cut back, and voters begin to insist supplies not be diverted to neighbors — like the Czech Republic, where 70,000 people already came out in protest of soaring prices. It is a challenge many European leaders may face this winter, warned Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister.“That will be the central question that will really put us to the test in the coming months,” Ms. Baerbock said, at a meeting of German ambassadors in Berlin this week. “Will we be able to secure our energy supply for all people in Europe together in solidarity, or not?”Gaia Pianigiani More

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    Toyota Topped G.M. in U.S. Car Sales in 2021

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    After struggling to produce cars because of a global computer chip shortage, automakers are trying to move quickly to making electric vehicles.Toyota Motor unseated General Motors as the top-selling automaker in the United States last year, becoming the first manufacturer based outside the country to achieve that feat in the industry’s nearly 120-year history.That milestone underlines the changes shaking automakers, which face strong competition and external forces as they move into electric vehicles. And it came in a tumultuous and strange year in which automakers contended with an accelerating shift to electric vehicles and struggled with profound manufacturing challenges. New car sales have been damped by a severe shortage of computer chips that forced automakers to idle plants even though demand for cars has been incredibly robust.G.M., Ford Motor and Stellantis, the automaker created by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, produced and sold fewer cars than they had hoped to in 2021 because they were hit hard by the chip shortage. Toyota was not hurt as much.In addition to that shortage, the coronavirus pandemic and related supply-chain problems depressed sales while driving up the prices of new and used cars, sometimes to dizzying heights. Auto manufacturers sold just under 15 million new vehicles in 2021, according to estimates by Cox Automotive, which tracks the industry. That is 2.5 percent more than in 2020 but well short of the 17 million vehicles the industry usually sold in a year before the pandemic took hold.G.M. said on Tuesday that its U.S. sales slumped 13 percent in 2021, to 2.2 million trucks and cars. Toyota had access to more chips because it set aside larger stockpiles of parts after an earthquake and tsunami in Japan knocked out production of several key components in 2011. Its 2021 sales rose more than 10 percent, to 2.3 million.“The dominance of the U.S. automakers of the U.S. market is just over,” said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who follows the auto industry. “Toyota might not beat G.M. again this year, but the fact that they did it is symbolic of how the industry changed. No U.S. automaker can think of themselves as entitled to market share just because they’re American.”Ford is expected to finish third when the company releases sales data on Wednesday.The shortage of chips stems from the beginning of the pandemic, when auto plants around the world closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, sales of computers and other consumer electronics took off. When automakers resumed production, they found fewer chips available to them.Despite weak new-vehicle sales, automakers and dealers alike have been ringing up hefty profits because they have been able to raise prices.“Sales volumes are down but our margins are up and expenses are down,” said Rick Ricart, whose family owns Ford, Hyundai, Kia and other dealerships around Columbus, Ohio. “We barely had any inventory cost now. Cars arrive on the truck and they’re already sold. They’re gone within 24 to 48 hours.”Automakers are also contending with the transition to electric cars and trucks. Many companies are spending tens of billions of dollars designing battery-powered models and building plants to produce them. They are racing to catch up to Tesla, which sells a large majority of electric vehicles now.But most established automakers are unlikely to gain ground in U.S. electric vehicle sales this year because they are not in a position to produce many tens of thousands of such cars for at least another year or two.And Tesla, which was founded in 2003, is not standing still. After reporting a nearly 90 percent jump in global sales last year, to just shy of one million, the company plans to start mass production at two new factories this year, near Austin, Texas, and Berlin. It has been less affected by the chip shortage because it was able to switch to types of chips that are more readily available.The electric-car maker does not break out sales by country, but Cox Automotive estimated that it sold more than 330,000 in the United States, or roughly as many vehicles as Mercedes-Benz and BMW each sold here.Ford is perhaps the only major automaker that could pose a serious competitive threat to Tesla this year. This spring, Ford plans to start selling an electric version of its F-150 pickup truck, the top-selling vehicle in the United States. The company has taken more than 200,000 reservations for that truck, the F-150 Lightning, and hopes to produce more than 50,000 this year. It is increasing production at a plant near Detroit to build 80,000 in 2023 and up to 150,000 in 2024.“The F-150 is the most important franchise in our company,” Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford’s Americas and international markets group, said in an interview. “The F-150 Lightning shows how serious our commitment is to the E.V. market.”Ford has been selling a popular electric sport-utility vehicle, the Mustang Mach E, for nearly a year. It said Tuesday that it aimed to increase production of the Mach E to 200,000 vehicles a year by 2023.Other automakers are planning to produce relatively modest numbers of electric cars this year because they and their suppliers are still gearing up to build factories and produce batteries and other components. G.M. has set a goal of producing only electric vehicles by 2035, and on Wednesday it will unveil a battery-powered Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck at the Consumer Electronics Show. But the electric Silverado isn’t expected to go into production until 2023.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3The global surge. More

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    Supply Chain Problems Have Small Retailers Gambling on Hoarding

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    Megan Searfoss has been hoarding sneakers in Connecticut.Ms. Searfoss, the owner of two running stores in Darien and Ridgefield, Conn., would normally have about 3,000 pairs of shoes in stock ahead of the holiday season. But as she watched supply chain concerns in Vietnam mount this summer and into the fall, she secured a new storage facility and is now carrying around 4,100 pairs.It’s a costly gamble for Ms. Searfoss, who said she is extended about $165,000 more than she would typically be in November because of worries about potential shortages.“It’s placing a big bet and anticipating that what all the analysts are saying is correct,” Ms. Searfoss said. “Usually, we get through the New York City Marathon and then we stop buying shoes — we sell off what we have and go into January super, super lean. But we’re being told not to do that because there’s just not going to be any shoes.”The buildup of running shoes in Connecticut is just one example of how supply chain woes and pandemic-related shortages are affecting thousands of small businesses around the United States this holiday season. While the widespread availability of vaccines is translating into a busier shopping season than last year, businesses of all sizes are grappling with the impact from factory shutdowns overseas, backups at ports, and trucking and other labor shortages.For many small businesses, the unpredictability this year has forced them to make buying decisions months or weeks earlier than they normally would and to tie up more of their cash in inventory, which can be risky.“The big thing is you really have to order in advance,” said Dan Quinn, an owner of What We Make, a furniture business in Algonquin, Ill., which sells tables and other wares through Etsy. “I’ve got 14 weeks of projects. I need to get most of that material in house as fast as possible and keep buying it until you have a stockpile basically.”Angela Arnold owns Playmatters Toys in Ohio with her husband.Angelo Merendino for The New York TimesThey ordered some toys in mid-May but still haven’t been able to stay ahead of the supply chain issues.Angelo Merendino for The New York TimesWhile many small businesses are affected by manufacturing issues overseas, some have used this moment to their advantage. Etsy, which powers online stores for millions of sellers, said that more than half of its U.S. vendors source materials from within their own states, allowing them to bypass many of the supply chain problems that are impacting the global economy. Etsy stores “don’t have the complex supply chains that are vulnerable to single points of failure,” Josh Silverman, Etsy’s chief executive, said in an interview.Still, the range of shortages can manifest themselves in unusual ways.Isabel Amigon, owner of the online store Sololi, is still waiting on an order of Christmas tree ornaments she placed in April. The manufacturer alerted her that the order would be delayed because of a shortage in strings to tie on top of the decorated orbs.Ms. Amigon, who is based in Westchester County, N.Y., said that she was worried that if she didn’t get them in time for the holiday season, she would have to wait until next year to make use of the inventory. The string shortage has also led her to remove specific home goods items from her website, such as table runners and washcloths.“Even if I get them by the end of November, I won’t be able to sell all of them because most people have already bought their ornaments,” Ms. Amigon said. “I placed the orders early and I still have to face this situation.”Other missing items are more traditional than string.“Some things we ordered in June and July are still coming in,” Sean Arnold, an owner of Playmatters Toys, said.Angelo Merendino for The New York TimesEarlier this year, Angela and Sean Arnold were planning to order another set of Disney princess dolls to fill some shelves in their toy store, Playmatters Toys, in Pepper Pike, Ohio. But they got a notification in September from the distributor alerting them and other toy store owners that the items were “indefinitely out of stock” because the factory in Vietnam where the dolls are manufactured was shut down because of a Covid-19 outbreak.Even though they anticipated shipping delays and ordered some toys in mid-May instead of August, they could not get ahead of the global disruption.And it’s not only dolls. The couple has been missing out on other toys and electronics because of shipping delays or disruptions in manufacturing plants in Vietnam. The couple has also been forced to raise prices on some products as they face higher transportation and wholesale costs from toy vendors.“Some things we ordered in June and July are still coming in,” Mr. Arnold said.Because of these kind of delays, Etsy has viewed this moment as one in which small businesses can provide gift options that are not reliant on overseas factories and shipping. Extra consumer interest in small businesses, whether online or offline, would likely be welcome after the pandemic dealt a crippling blow to so many last year.Etsy said it had seen searches for living room furniture soar by 1,572 percent and less dramatic but significant jumps for dining tables, checkers or chess boards, suggesting that some shoppers are coming to the site rather than going to chain stores.The bookstore owner Jeannine Cook said customers have canceled orders because publishers have had trouble delivering books.Mark Makela for The New York TimesEtsy learned how to better handle large surges in demand after face masks exploded as a category on the site during the onset of the pandemic and it has made improvements designed to mitigate shipping issues it experienced then. Mr. Silverman said that now, virtually all items from sellers in the U.S. have an expected delivery date, which was not the case a year ago, and shoppers can filter products by geography to shop from vendors in their area, which can help accelerate shipping.The company also said it checks in with sellers to ensure they have enough raw materials and supplies when its technology observes jumps in demand for specific items.Mr. Quinn, the owner of the furniture seller What We Make, has seen his business boom as Americans grapple with long wait times and lack of availability for furniture from chains. Customers have been willing to wait 10 weeks for a dining table from him, particularly after seeing 20-week waits at chains like West Elm.“The big box stores don’t have a lot of things they normally have so the positive for us is that people are sort of forced to look at other options whereas before they’d settle for the simplest option,” he said.Still, he has seen his business disrupted in other ways, including a sharp increase in material prices and a scramble for reclaimed wood, which typically comes from old barns.“The people who take down the barns for the material we use, a lot of them ended up getting laid off or going on unemployment,” Mr. Quinn said. “So we have had to try to stockpile material and order well in advance of what we used to do.”“It makes me nervous because I don’t want folks to feel like they can’t get what they need or want,” Ms. Cook said.Mark Makela for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Quinn has been thriving in spite of competition from major furniture sellers, the country’s biggest retailers are often better equipped to handle supply chain issues than small businesses. Companies like Walmart and Amazon are massive enough that they can charter airplanes to obtain certain goods.Jeannine Cook doesn’t have that luxury. Ms. Cook, the owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in Philadelphia, noticed during the summer that publishers were having trouble delivering her book orders, with some unable to even provide a timeline for when orders would arrive. The problem became more widespread in late August.Ms. Cook, who opened a second location in Collingswood, N.J., in July, said that more customers were canceling their orders from the bookshop.“It makes me nervous because I don’t want folks to feel like they can’t get what they need or want,” Ms. Cook said. “It’s hard because we’re already up against the big-box companies that have so much more infrastructure than we do.”Ms. Searfoss said she sometimes got nervous thinking, “look at all that I’ve bought.”Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesA recent study by Adobe showed that out-of-stock messages in October more than quadrupled compared with October 2019. That’s one reason that the retail industry, including small businesses, have urged the public to shop early this year to secure gifts for the holiday season.“I hate that we have now gone right from Halloween to Christmas,” said Ms. Searfoss, the proprietor of the running stores, who said that she began holiday marketing on Nov. 1 for the first time. “I don’t want people to feel frantic but I do think it’s pretty serious that they’re not going to get what they want this year.”She anticipated that shipping delays and out-of-stock issues at bigger chains might drive business to her stores. “People, those days before Christmas, will be buying whatever they can from whatever local store they can,” she said.“It’s just a little bit stressful for me, thinking, ‘OK, look at all that I’ve bought,’” Ms. Searfoss said. “If I buy it, will they come?” More

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    Global Shortages During Coronavirus Reveal Failings of Just in Time Manufacturing

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    Global shortages of many goods reflect the disruption of the pandemic combined with decades of companies limiting their inventories.In the story of how the modern world was constructed, Toyota stands out as the mastermind of a monumental advance in industrial efficiency. The Japanese automaker pioneered so-called Just In Time manufacturing, in which parts are delivered to factories right as they are required, minimizing the need to stockpile them. More

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    Amid Shortfalls, Biden Signs Executive Order to Bolster Critical Supply Chains

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmid Shortfalls, Biden Signs Executive Order to Bolster Critical Supply ChainsThe order is intended to help insulate the economy from future shortages of critical imported components by making the United States less reliant on foreign supplies.President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order requiring his administration to review critical supply chains with the aim of bolstering American manufacturing.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJim Tankersley and Feb. 24, 2021Updated 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Automakers have been forced to halt production because of a lack of computer chips. Health care workers battling the coronavirus pandemic had to make do without masks as the United States waited on supplies from China. And pharmaceutical executives worried that supplies of critical drugs could dry up if countries tried to stockpile key ingredients and block exports.Deep disruptions in the global movement of critical goods during the pandemic prompted President Biden on Wednesday to take steps toward reducing the country’s dependence on foreign materials. He issued an executive order requiring his administration to review critical supply chains with the aim of bolstering American manufacturing of semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and other cutting-edge technologies.In remarks at the White House, the president cast the move as an important step toward creating well-paying jobs and making the economy more resilient in the face of geopolitical threats, pandemics and climate change.“This is about making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in the new era,” he said.But the effort, which has bipartisan support, will do little to immediately resolve global shortages, including in semiconductors — a key component in cars and electronic devices. A lack of those components has forced several major American auto plants to close or scale back production and sent the administration scrambling to appeal to allies like Taiwan for emergency supplies.Administration officials said the order would not offer a quick fix but would start an effort to insulate the American economy from future shortages of critical imported components.Mr. Biden discussed the issue in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon with nearly a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, called for the crafting and passage of a bill this spring to address supply chain vulnerabilities.“Right now, semiconductor manufacturing is a dangerous weak spot in our economy and in our national security,” Mr. Schumer said. “Our auto industry is facing significant chip shortages. This is a technology the United States created; we ought to be leading the world in it. The same goes for building-out of 5G, the next generation telecommunications network. There is bipartisan interest on both these issues.”Republicans emerged from the White House meeting optimistic that such efforts could soon move forward. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said he was pleased to see that the White House made the issue a top priority and that the president was receptive. “His words were, ‘Look, I’m all in,’” he said.Mr. McCaul said that much of the conversation revolved around legislation that Congress had passed last year to incentivize the chips industry — but which still needs funding for research grants and a refundable investment tax credit — as well as the current chips shortage and possible looming job losses in the auto industry.“China is looking at investing $1 trillion in their digital economy,” Mr. McCaul said. “If we’re going to be competitive, we have to incentivize these companies to manufacture these advanced chips in the United States.”Mr. Biden called the meeting one of the best of his presidency so far. “It was like the old days,” he said. “People were actually on the same page.”A global semiconductor shortage has led to production delays for American automakers.Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York TimesThe president ordered yearlong reviews of six sectors and a 100-day review of four classes of products where American manufacturers rely on imports: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals and their active ingredients, and critical minerals and strategic materials, like rare earths.The Coronavirus Outbreak More