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    World’s Five Leading Chipmakers Have Now Promised U.S. Investment

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    The announcement of CHIPS Act funding for a plant in Indiana means the United States will have attracted investment from the world’s top chipmakers.The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would award up to $450 million in grants to a South Korean chipmaker, SK Hynix, to help build its new chip facility in Indiana, in what officials described as a milestone in rebuilding the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry.With the announcement, the United States now has commitments from all five of the world’s leading-edge semiconductor manufacturers to construct chip plants in the United States with financial assistance from the administration, Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo said in a call with reporters on Monday. The Biden administration previously announced that it had reached agreements with Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Samsung and Micron to help fund investments in the United States.“These are the only companies in the world capable of producing leading-edge chips at scale,” she said.SK Hynix announced in April that it had committed to investing $3.87 billion in a facility in West Lafayette, Ind. Ms. Raimondo called that investment a “huge deal” because it meant that the United States would “have the most secure and diverse supply chain in the world for the advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence.” SK Hynix makes advanced memory chips that are an essential component for creating A.I.Commerce Department officials said that, with the SK Hynix grant, the United States had now allocated more than $30 billion of a $39 billion pot of funding that stems from the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law aimed at building up domestic chip manufacturing and reducing America’s dependence on Asia for vital semiconductors.Only about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors are manufactured in the United States, down from about 37 percent in 1990. Reversing the nation’s declining share of global chip manufacturing has been a major priority for President Biden and a key component of his economic policy agenda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Vance Pioneered ‘New Right’ Economics. Trump May Not Embrace It.

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    The vice-presidential nominee favors economic policies that help advance a socially conservative vision of American society — and that sometimes clash with Trump’s own plans.Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is a pioneer in what friends and critics alike call a new form of Republican economic thinking. It’s a vision to steer the economy toward advancing socially conservative goals, even when those policies defy conservative orthodoxy about government intervention in private markets.Those who know him well say Mr. Vance’s economic views have evolved to match his deepening commitment to social conservative causes, along with his growing anger at the role large companies play in shaping American society and politics.Mr. Vance has built his brief political career on that new brand of economic populism.He has championed efforts to reward families for having children, with tax breaks that some Republican economists say discourage people from working. He has also pushed to disempower large businesses, particularly tech companies that Mr. Vance and his allies say have used their market power to silence conservatives and hurt workers and children, through support for aggressive antitrust enforcement and even some corporate tax increases.“He’s a social conservative first,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington who has known Mr. Vance and discussed policy with him for years, well before he decided to enter politics.“The economic policy is in service of this broader social vision, where you don’t have to go to college to earn a middle-class wage,” Mr. Strain said. “Where your kids are safe from the tech companies. And where these big businesses, run by elites, are not a threat to local companies.”Since taking office in 2023, Mr. Vance has supported raising the minimum wage for people authorized to work in the United States, cast doubt on the virtues of corporate tax cuts and privately expressed admiration for some of the economic stances of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, whom he has joined to push legislation cracking down on big banks. He has also called Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair whose aggressive antitrust agenda has angered business groups and many Republicans, one of the few Biden administration officials who is doing a “pretty good job.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

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    Opportunity Zones, Lauded by Trump, Don’t Always Help Poor

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

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    in Economy

    Trump Promises Lower Interest Rates, but the President Doesn’t Control Those

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    The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, and it operates independently of the White House. But rates could come down as inflation cools.Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race, promised lower interest rates — which a president does not actually control — if he is elected.Asked on Wednesday what he would do on “Day 1” of a new presidency during a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, Mr. Trump said one priority would be to “drill, baby, drill,” the shorthand tagline he has adopted for promoting oil and gas production in the United States.“I bring energy way down, I bring, interest rates are down, I bring inflation way down,” Mr. Trump expanded.The president exerts no direct control over interest rates. The Federal Reserve sets a key policy rate, which then trickles out to influence borrowing costs across the economy, and the Fed is independent from the White House.Mr. Trump has at times implied that the Fed will lower rates because inflation is likely to be lower on his watch, which could have been what he meant on Wednesday. Economists have suggested that some of his proposed policies may in fact speed up inflation.Still, the candidate’s comments underscore how politically salient both price increases and high interest rates remain as the Nov. 5 election nears, even after years in which inflation has been gradually cooling. And they make it clear that the coming months are likely to be politically fraught for the Fed as the technocratic institution tries to stay outside the political fray.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    With Kamala Harris, U.S. Free Trade Skepticism May Continue

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    The vice president has been critical of past trade deals. But her record suggests she could push for trade measures that address environmental issues.In a 2019 presidential debate, Kamala Harris insisted, “I am not a protectionist Democrat.”But Ms. Harris is not a free-trade Democrat, either. She has said she would have opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1992, which President Biden voted for while serving in the Senate, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement supported by the Obama administration. And in 2020, she was one of only 10 senators to vote against the deal to replace NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.As she pursues the presidential nomination, Ms. Harris’s views on trade and economic issues are likely to become a focal point. Yet unlike former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, trade has never been a major focus for Ms. Harris. As a result, her positions on trade issues are not entirely known.William A. Reinsch, the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Ms. Harris “a bit of a blank slate, but one most likely to be filled in with trade skepticism.”In part that is because of her no vote on the U.S.M.C.A., which Mr. Reinsch said “leads me to assume she is part of the progressive wing of the party which is skeptical of trade agreements in general, and particularly of those that involve market access.” But, he said, “there’s not a lot out there to go on.”Still, in her time as a senator from California and as the vice president, Ms. Harris has adopted some recurring positions that hint at what trade policy might look like if she wins the White House. For example, on several occasions, her objection to trade deals revolved around a common issue: their impact on the environment, and their lack of measures to address climate change.While the U.S.M.C.A. was negotiated by the Trump administration, it won over many Democrats by including tougher protections for workers and the environment. But Ms. Harris concluded that the deal’s environmental provisions were “insufficient — and by not addressing climate change, the U.S.M.C.A. fails to meet the crises of this moment.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Economy

    On Economic Policy, Harris Has Played Limited Role

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    President Biden has not given his vice president an expansive economic portfolio. But she has engaged on issues of small-business lending, help for parents and more.Shortly after the Biden administration took office in 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris started calling the chief executives of large banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.The federal government was making hundreds of billions of dollars available for banks to lend to small businesses to keep them afloat during the pandemic recession. Ms. Harris told the executives they needed to be lending more, faster, particularly to minority-owned businesses that data suggested were struggling to gain access to the money.The calls represented one of the earliest and most visible forays Ms. Harris made in devising and carrying out the Biden administration’s economic agenda, and illustrated the sort of economic policy niche that she has filled as vice president.Current and former administration officials, progressive leaders outside the White House and allies of Ms. Harris roundly agree that the vice president, who is now the leading candidate to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, did not play a major role in the creation of the sweeping economic legislation that has defined President Biden’s time in office.Ms. Harris was rarely a loud voice in major economic debates, like the ones over how to counter soaring inflation in 2021 and 2022. She did sometimes attend economic briefings, but was not always a big contributor in them. One attendee recalled her coming to an economic briefing, but simply listening to the presentation while Mr. Biden asked questions.Other officials say Ms. Harris largely focuses her questions for economists on how certain policies affect workers and families at a personal level — a trait she shares with the president.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Harris Economy Could Prove More Progressive Than ‘Bidenomics’

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    At the first Democratic presidential debate in 2019, Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, unleashed a scathing critique of the Trump economy.The future vice president billed President Donald J. Trump’s tax cuts as a giveaway to the rich, argued that the booming stock market was leaving the middle class behind and warned that his reckless trade agenda was hurting farmers in the heartland.“Frankly, this economy is not working for working people,” Ms. Harris said. “For too long the rules have been written in the favor of the people who have the most and not in favor of the people who work the most.”As Ms. Harris prepares to potentially replace President Biden atop the Democratic ticket, she now faces the challenge of articulating her own vision for steering a U.S. economy that is still grappling with inflation while drawing sharp distinctions with Mr. Trump, who has promised more tax cuts and tariffs.Ms. Harris has been an ardent defender for the White House’s economic agenda during the Biden administration, promoting the benefits of legislation such as the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. But as an attorney general and a senator, she was at times more progressive than the president, pushing for universal health care while calling for more generous tax benefits for working-class Americans and paying for them with bigger tax increases on companies.In recent weeks, Ms. Harris has embarked on an economic “opportunity tour,” making the case that wage increases have been outpacing inflation, that manufacturing jobs are growing and that Democrats have been fighting to forgive student loan debt. Those arguments now foreshadow the case she will be making to voters as she runs against Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Rent Cap Proposal Reignites Housing Policy Debate

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    A proposal to make landlords’ tax breaks contingent on rent limits has drawn industry pushback, progressive applause and some alternative approaches.When the Biden administration laid out a suite of plans this week to address housing affordability, it added a bold update to previous proposals — and sent the housing industry and the economics world buzzing.The White House called on Congress to pass legislation giving “corporate landlords” — defined by the White House as those with over 50 rental units — a choice to cap annual rent increases on existing units at 5 percent annually or lose federal tax breaks based on property depreciation.The proposal is expected to go largely unaddressed this year, with Congress in campaign mode. But public reaction has been lively.Tenant organizations and progressive leaders generally allied with the administration’s economic team cheered the news. Yet a range of economists, Wall Street analysts, real estate groups and landlord associations responded with forceful critiques, assailing the limits as counterproductive.“Increasing the supply of affordable rental housing nationwide — not politically motivated and self-defeating rent control proposals floated during election campaigns — is the best way to alleviate affordability constraints for renters,” Robert D. Broeksmit, the president of Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a statement.The policy would affect about 20 million units in the country, roughly half of all rental properties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More