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    As Infrastructure Money Flows, Wastewater Improvements Are Key

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    The new law allocates $11.7 billion for wastewater and stormwater projects. Will it get to the impoverished communities who need it most?HAYNEVILLE, Ala. — What babbles behind Marilyn Rudolph’s house in the rural countryside is no brook.A stained PVC pipe juts out of the ground 30 feet behind her modest, well-maintained house, spewing raw wastewater whenever someone flushes the toilet or runs the washing machine. It is what is known as a “straight pipe” — a rudimentary, unsanitary and notorious homemade sewage system used by thousands of poor people in rural Alabama, most of them Black, who cannot afford a basic septic tank that will work in the region’s dense soil.“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s kind of like living with an outhouse, and I can never, ever get used to it,” said Ms. Rudolph’s boyfriend Lee Thomas, who moved in with her three years ago from Cleveland.“I’ve lived with it all my life,” said Ms. Rudolph, 60.If any part of the country stands to see transformational benefits from the $1 trillion infrastructure act that President Biden signed in November, it is Alabama’s Black Belt, named for the loamy soil that once made it a center of slave-labor cotton production. It is an expanse of 17 counties stretching from Georgia to Mississippi where Black people make up three-quarters of the population.About $55 billion of the infrastructure law’s overall funding is dedicated to upgrading systems around the country that handle drinking water, wastewater and stormwater, including $25 billion to replace failing drinking-water systems in cities like Flint, Mich., and Jackson, Miss.Hayneville’s town square. The infrastructure package targets funding toward “disadvantaged” areas like Hayneville and surrounding towns, part of the Biden administration’s goal of redressing structural racism.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesLess attention has been paid to the other end of the pipe: $11.7 billion in new funding to upgrade municipal sewer and drainage systems, septic tanks, and clustered systems for small communities. It is a torrent of cash that could transform the quality of life and economic prospects for impoverished communities in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan and many tribal areas.In this part of Alabama, the center of the civil rights struggle 60 years ago, the funding represents “a once-in-a-lifetime chance to finally make things right, if we get it right,” said Helenor Bell, the former mayor of Hayneville in Lowndes County, who runs the town’s funeral home.But while the funding is likely to lead to substantial improvements, there are no guarantees it will deliver the promised benefits to communities that lack the political power or the tax base to employ even the few employees needed to fill out applications for federal aid.“I am very worried,” said Catherine Coleman Flowers, a MacArthur fellow whose 2020 book “Waste” highlighted the sanitation crisis in Lowndes County. “Without federal intervention, we would have never had voting rights. Without federal intervention, we will never have sanitation equity.”Mark A. Elliott is an engineering professor at the University of Alabama who works with an academic consortium that is designing a waste system optimized for the region’s dense clay soil. He said he was concerned that more affluent parts of the state might siphon off federal assistance intended for the poor.“My hope is that at least 50 percent of this money goes to the people who are in most desperate need, not for helping to subsidize the water bills of wealthy communities,” Mr. Elliott said. “Sanitation is a human right, and these people need help.”Straight pipes are just one element of a more widespread breakdown of antiquated septic tanks, inadequate storm sewers and poorly maintained municipal systems that routinely leave lawns covered in foul-smelling wastewater after even a light rainstorm.The infrastructure package targets funding toward “disadvantaged” areas like Hayneville and surrounding towns, part of the Biden administration’s goal of redressing structural racism. Yet the infrastructure package gives states broad latitude in how to allocate the funding, and it contains no new enforcement mechanisms once the money is out the door.A PVC pipe behind Ms. Rudolph’s house spews raw wastewater whenever someone flushes the toilet or runs the washing machine.Matthew Odom for The New York TimesThe wastewater funding is moving through an existing federal-state loan program that typically requires partial or complete repayment, but under the new legislation, local governments with negligible tax bases will not have to pay back what they borrow. As an additional enticement, Congress cut the required state contribution from 20 percent to 10 percent.“A lot of people know that the bill isn’t just about drinking water, but the wastewater part is just as important,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, who helped draft the provisions after assisting two small cities in her state, Cahokia Heights and Cairo, upgrade failing sewer systems that flooded neighborhoods with raw sewage.The Environmental Protection Agency, which is administering the program, said in November that the first tranche of funding for drinking water and wastewater projects, $7.4 billion, would be sent to states in 2022, including about $137 million for Alabama.Biden administration officials are confident the scale of the new spending — which represents a threefold increase in clean water funding over the next five years — will be enough to ensure poor communities gets their fair share. “We want to change the way E.P.A. and states work together to ensure overburdened communities have access to these resources,” said Zachary Schafer, an agency official overseeing the implementation of the program. But major questions remain — including whether individual homeowners without access to municipal systems can tap the money to pay for expensive septic systems — and the guidelines will not be ready until late 2022. While the revolving loan fund is generally regarded as a successful program, a study last year by the Environmental Policy Innovation Center and the University of Michigan found that many states were less likely to tap revolving loan funds on behalf of poor communities with larger minority populations.Alabama’s revolving loan fund has financed few projects in this part of the state in recent years, apart from a major wastewater system upgrade in Selma, according to the program’s annual reports.The water funding is not likely to be divvied up in Alabama until later this year. The Republican-controlled state legislature is still negotiating with Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, over what to do with tens of millions of dollars allocated through the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Mr. Biden signed in March.A flooded yard in Hayneville in 2019. Straight pipes are just one element of a more widespread infrastructure breakdown in the area.Julie Bennett/Associated PressEvery member of the state legislature is up for re-election next year, and legislators from bigger, more powerful communities in Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile, eager to deliver to voters, have already begun preparing their applications.The Infrastructure Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 5The bill receives final approval. More

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    Child Tax Credit’s Extra Help Ends, Just as Covid Surges Anew

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    A pandemic benefit that many progressives hoped to make permanent has lapsed in a congressional standoff. Researchers say it spared many from poverty.For millions of American families with children, the 15th of the month took on a special significance in 2021: It was the day they received their monthly child benefit, part of the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic.The payments, which started in July and amounted to hundreds of dollars a month for most families, have helped millions of American families pay for food, rent and child care; kept millions of children out of poverty; and injected billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, according to government data and independent research.Now, the benefit — an expansion of the existing child tax credit — is ending, just as the latest wave of coronavirus cases is keeping people home from work and threatening to set off a new round of furloughs. Economists warn that the one-two punch of expiring aid and rising cases could put a chill on the once red-hot economic recovery and cause severe hardship for millions of families already living close to the poverty line.“It’s going to be hard next month, and just thinking about it, it really makes me want to bite my nails to the quick,” said Anna Lara, a mother of two young children in Huntington, W.Va. “Honestly, it’s going to be scary. It’s gong to be hard going back to not having it.”Ms. Lara, 32, lost her job in the pandemic, and with the cost of child care rising, she has not been able to return to work. Her partner kept his job, but the child benefit helped the couple make ends meet at a time of reduced income and rising prices.“Your children watch you, and if you worry, they catch on to that,” she said. “With that extra cushion, we didn’t have to worry all the time.”The end of the extra assistance for parents is the latest in a long line of benefits “cliffs” that Americans have encountered as pandemic aid programs have expired. The Paycheck Protection Program, which supported hundreds of thousands of small businesses, ended in March. Expanded unemployment benefits ended in September, and earlier in some states. The federal eviction moratorium expired last summer. The last round of stimulus payments landed in Americans’ bank accounts last spring.Relative to those programs, the rollback in the child tax credit is small. The Treasury Department paid out about $80 billion over six months in the form of checks and direct deposits of up to $300 per child each month. That is far less than the more than $240 billion in stimulus payments issued on a single day last March.Unlike most other programs created in response to the pandemic, the child benefit was never intended to be temporary, at least according to many of its backers. Congress approved it for a single year as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, but many progressives hoped that the payments, once started, would prove too popular to stop.That didn’t happen. Polls found the public roughly divided over whether the program should be extended, with opinions splitting along partisan and generational lines. And the expanded tax credit failed to win over the individual whose opinion mattered most: Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who cited concerns over the cost and structure of the program in his decision to oppose Mr. Biden’s climate, tax and social policy bill. The bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, cannot proceed in the evenly divided Senate without Mr. Manchin’s support.To supporters of the child benefit, the failure to extend it is especially frustrating because, according to most analyses, the program itself has been a remarkable success. Researchers at Columbia University estimate that the payments kept 3.8 million children out of poverty in November, a nearly 30 percent reduction in the child poverty rate. Other studies have found that the benefit reduced hunger, lowered financial stress among recipients and increased overall consumer spending, especially in rural states that received the most money per capita.Congress last spring expanded the existing child tax credit in three ways. First, it made the benefit more generous, providing as much as $3,600 per child, up from $2,000. Second, it began paying the credit in monthly installments, usually deposited directly into recipients’ bank accounts, turning the once-yearly windfall into something closer to the children’s allowances common in Europe.Finally, the bill made the full benefit available to millions who had previously been unable to take full advantage of the credit because they earned too little to qualify. Poverty experts say that change, known in tax jargon as “full refundability,” was particularly significant because without it, a third of children — including half of all Black and Hispanic children, and 70 percent of children being raised by single mothers — did not receive the full credit. Mr. Biden’s plan would have made that provision permanent.“What we’ve seen with the child tax credit is a policy success story that was unfolding, but it’s a success story that we risk stoping in its tracks just as it was getting started,” said Megan Curran, director of policy at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. “The weight of the evidence is clear here in terms of what the policy is doing. It’s reducing child poverty and food insufficiency.”But the expanded tax credit doesn’t just go to the poor. Couples earning as much as $150,000 a year could receive the full $3,600 benefit — $3,000 for children 6 and older — and even wealthier families qualify for the original $2,000 credit. Critics of the policy, including Mr. Manchin, have argued that it makes little sense to provide aid to relatively well-off families. Many supporters of the credit say they’d happily limit its availability to wealthier households in return for maintaining it for poorer ones.Mr. Manchin has also publicly questioned the wisdom of unconditional cash payments, and has privately voiced concerns that recipients could spend the money on opioids, comments that were first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a person familiar with the discussion. But a survey conducted by the Census Bureau found that most recipients used the money to buy food, clothing or other necessities, and many saved some of the money or paid down debt. Other surveys have found similar results.For one of Mr. Manchin’s constituents, Ms. Lara, the first monthly check last year arrived at an opportune moment. Her dishwasher had broken days earlier, and the $550 a month that she and her family received from the federal government meant they could replace it.Ms. Lara, who has a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son and whose partner earns about $40,000 a year, said the family had long lived “right on the edge of need” — not poor, but never able to save enough to withstand more than a modest setback.The monthly child benefit, she said, let them step a bit further back from the edge. It allowed her to get new shoes and a new car seat for her daughter, stock up on laundry detergent when she found it on sale and fix the brakes on her car.A line at a Covid testing site in Atlanta on Friday. The child tax benefit is ending just as the latest wave of coronavirus cases is keeping people home from work.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“None of the dash lights are on, which is amazing,” she said.Some researchers have questioned the policy’s effectiveness, particularly over the long term. Bruce D. Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago who studies poverty, said that whatever the merits of direct cash payments at the height of the pandemic-induced disruptions, a permanent policy of providing unconditional cash to parents could have unintended consequences. He and several co-authors recently published a working paper finding that the child benefit could discourage people from working, in part because it eliminated the work incentives built into the previous version of the tax credit.“Early on, we just wanted to get cash in people’s hands — we were worried about a recession, we were worried about people being able to pay for their groceries,” Mr. Meyer said. Now, he said, “we certainly should be more focused on the longer-term effects, which include likely larger effects on labor supply.”Analyses of the data since the new child benefit took effect, however, have found no evidence that it has done much to discourage people from working, and some researchers say it could actually lead more people to work by making it easier for parents of young children to afford child care.“There’s every reason to believe that in the current labor market, the child tax credit is work-enabling, and no evidence to the contrary has been presented,” said Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center, a research organization in Washington.Mr. Hammond said the child benefit should also have broader economic benefits. In a report last summer, he estimated that the expansion would increase consumer spending by $27 billion nationally and create the equivalent of 500,000 full-time jobs. The biggest impact, on a percentage basis, would come in rural, mostly Republican-voting states where families are larger and incomes are lower, on average.Some Republican critics of the expanded child tax credit, including Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, have argued that it has essentially done too much to increase spending — that by giving people more money to spend when the supply chain is already strained, the government is contributing to faster inflation.But many economists are skeptical that the tax credit has played much of a role in causing high inflation, in part because it is small compared with both the economy and the earlier rounds of aid distributed during the pandemic.“That’s a noninflationary program,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting firm RSM. “That’s dedicated toward necessities, not luxuries.”For those receiving the benefit, inflation is an argument for maintaining it. Ms. Lara said she had noticed prices going up for groceries, utilities and especially gas, stretching her budget even thinner.“Right now, both of my vehicles need gas and I can’t put gas in the car,” she said. “But it’s OK, because I’ve got groceries in the house and the kids can play outside.”Emily Cochrane More

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    U.S. Effort to Combat Forced Labor Targets Corporate China Ties

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    The Biden administration is expected to face scrutiny as it decides how to enforce a new ban on products made with forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.A far-reaching bill aimed at barring products made with forced labor in China became law after President Biden signed the bill on Thursday.But the next four months — during which the Biden administration will convene hearings to investigate how pervasive forced labor is and what to do about it — will be crucial in determining how far the legislation goes in altering the behavior of companies that source products from China.While it is against U.S. law to knowingly import goods made with slave labor, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act shifts the burden of proof to companies from customs officials. Firms will have to proactively prove that their factories, and those of all their suppliers, do not use slavery or coercion.The law, which passed the House and Senate nearly unanimously, is Washington’s first comprehensive effort to police supply chains that the United States says exploit persecuted minorities, and its impact could be sweeping. A wide range of products and raw materials — such as petroleum, cotton, minerals and sugar — flow from the Xinjiang region of China, where accusations of forced labor proliferate. Those materials are often used in Chinese factories that manufacture products for global companies.“I anticipate that there will be many companies — even entire industries — that will be taken by surprise when they realize that their supply chains can also be traced back to the Uyghur region,” said Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in Britain.If the law is enforced as written, it could force many companies to rework how they do business or risk having products blocked at the U.S. border. Those high stakes are expected to set off a crush of lobbying by companies trying to ease the burden on their industries as the government writes the guidelines that importers must follow.“Genuine, effective enforcement will most likely mean there will be pushback by corporations and an attempt to create loopholes,” said Cathy Feingold, the international director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “So the implementation will be key.”Behind-the-scenes negotiations before the bill’s passage provided an early indication of how consequential the legislation could be for some of America’s biggest companies, as business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and brand names like Nike and Coca-Cola worked to limit the bill’s scope.The Biden administration has labeled the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang — including the detention of more than a million Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, as well as forced conversions, sterilization and arbitrary or unlawful killings — as genocide.Human rights experts say that Beijing’s policies of moving Uyghurs into farms and factories that feed the global supply chain are an integral part of its repression in Xinjiang, an attempt to assimilate minorities and strip them of their culture and religion..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In a statement last week, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Biden welcomed the bill’s passage and agreed with Congress “that action can and must be taken to hold the People’s Republic of China accountable for genocide and human rights abuses and to address forced labor in Xinjiang.” She added that the administration would “work closely with Congress to implement this bill to ensure global supply chains are free of forced labor.”Yet some members of the administration argued behind closed doors that the bill’s scope could overwhelm U.S. regulators and lead to further supply chain disruptions at a time when inflation is accelerating at a nearly 40-year high, according to interviews with more than two dozen government officials, members of Congress and their staff. Some officials also expressed concerns that an aggressive ban on Chinese imports could put the administration’s goals for fighting climate change at risk, given China’s dominance of solar panels and components to make them, people familiar with the discussions said.John Kerry, Mr. Biden’s special envoy for climate change, and Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, separately conveyed some of those concerns in calls to Democratic members of Congress in recent months, according to four people familiar with the discussions.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and one of the bill’s lead authors, criticized those looking to limit its impact, saying that companies that want to continue to import products and officials who are reluctant to rock the boat with China “are not just going to give up.” He added, “They’re all going to try to weigh in on how it’s implemented.”A solar farm near Wenquan, China. The Xinjiang region’s substantial presence in the solar supply chain has been a key source of tension in the Biden administration.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesOne reason the stakes are so high is because of the critical role that Xinjiang may play in many supply chains. The region, twice the size of Texas, is rich in raw materials like coal and oil and crops like tomatoes, lavender and hops; it is also a significant producer of electronics, sneakers and clothing. By some estimates, it provides one-fifth of the world’s cotton and 45 percent of the world’s polysilicon, a key ingredient for solar panels.Xinjiang’s substantial presence in the solar supply chain has been a key source of tension in the Biden administration, which is counting on solar power to help the United States reach its goal of significantly cutting carbon emissions by the end of the decade.In meetings this year, Biden administration officials weighed how difficult it would be for importers to bypass Xinjiang and relocate supply chains for solar goods and other products, according to three government officials. Officials from the Labor Department and the United States Trade Representative were more sympathetic to a far-reaching ban on Xinjiang goods, according to three people familiar with the discussions. Some officials in charge of climate, energy and the economy argued against a sweeping ban, saying it would wreak havoc on supply chains or compromise the fight against climate change, those people said.Ana Hinojosa, who was the executive director of Customs and Border Protection and led the government’s enforcement of forced labor provisions until she left the post in October, said that agencies responsible for “competing priorities” like climate change had voiced concerns about the legislation’s impact. Companies and various government agencies became nervous that the law’s broad authorities could prove “devastating to the U.S. economy,” she said.“The need to improve our clean energy is real and important, but not something that the government or the U.S. should do on the backs of people who are working under conditions of modern-day slavery,” Ms. Hinojosa added.In a call with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California this year, Mr. Kerry conveyed concerns about disrupting solar supply chains while Ms. Sherman shared her concerns with Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, according to people familiar with the conversations.Mr. Merkley, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, said in an interview that Ms. Sherman told him she was concerned the legislation was not duly “targeted and deliberative.” The conversation was first reported by The Washington Post.“I think this is a targeted and deliberative approach,” Mr. Merkley said. “And I think the administration is starting to see how strongly Republicans and Democrats in both chambers feel about this.”A State Department official said that Ms. Sherman did not initiate the call and did not express opposition to the bill. Whitney Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry, said any accusations he lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act were “false.” Ms. Pelosi declined to discuss private conversations.Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American lawyer who is the vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the United States must “tackle both genocide and ecocide.”“Policymakers and climate activists are making it a choice between saving the world and turning a blind eye to the enslavement of Uyghurs,” he said. “It is false, and we cannot allow ourselves to be forced into it.”Administration officials have also argued that the United States can take a strong stance against forced labor while developing a robust solar supply chain. Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that Mr. Biden “believes what is going on in Xinjiang is genocide” and that the administration had taken a range of actions to combat human rights abuses in the region, including financial sanctions, visa restrictions, export controls, import restrictions and a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics in February.“We have taken action to hold the P.R.C. accountable for its human rights abuses and to address forced labor in Xinjiang,” Ms. Horne said, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. “And we will continue to do so.”Farm workers picking cotton near Qapqal, China, in 2015. By some estimates, Xinjiang produces one-fifth of the world’s cotton.Adam Dean for The New York TimesThe law highlights the delicate U.S.-China relationship, in which policymakers must figure out how to confront anti-Democratic practices while the United States is economically dependent on Chinese factories. China remains the largest supplier of goods to the United States.One of the biggest hurdles for U.S. businesses is determining whether their products touched Xinjiang at any point in the supply chain. Many companies complain that beyond their direct suppliers, they lack the leverage to demand information from the Chinese firms that manufacture raw materials and parts.Government restrictions that bar foreigners from unfettered access to sites in Xinjiang have made it difficult for many businesses to investigate their supply chains. New Chinese antisanctions rules, which threaten penalties against companies that comply with U.S. restrictions, have made vetting even more difficult.The Chinese government denies forced labor is used in Xinjiang. Zhao Lijian, a government spokesman, said U.S. politicians were “seeking to contain China and hold back China’s development through political manipulation and economic bullying in the name of ‘human rights.’” He promised a “resolute response” if the bill became law.Lawmakers struggled over the past year to reconcile a more aggressive House version of the legislation with one in the Senate, which gave companies longer timelines to make changes and stripped out the S.E.C. reporting requirement, among other differences.The final bill included a mechanism to create lists of entities and products that use forced labor or aid in the transfer of persecuted workers to factories around China. Businesses like Apple had lobbied for the creation of such lists, believing they would provide more certainty for businesses seeking to avoid entities of concern.Lisa Friedman More

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    As Humanitarian Disaster Looms, U.S. Opens Door for More Afghanistan Aid

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    The Treasury Department and the United Nations offered new protection for aid from sanctions meant to pressure the Taliban.Facing pressure to prevent a humanitarian and economic catastrophe in Afghanistan, the Biden administration on Wednesday took steps to allow more aid to flow into the Taliban-led country.The measures exempt aid groups from stringent economic sanctions that were imposed against the Taliban before they seized control of the government and have been strangling Afghanistan’s economy under its leadership. But diplomats and activists said that easing the restrictions might not be enough to rescue the country from what one U.N. official on Wednesday called “shocking” need and suffering.At the same time, some Republicans said the Biden administration risked legitimizing and even funding Taliban leaders.The U.S. actions and mixed response underscore the challenge that Afghanistan continues to pose for the Biden administration four months after the last American troops withdrew from the country. Administration officials have been struggling to address the dire humanitarian needs without empowering the Taliban.The United States fought a 20-year war against the Taliban and does not recognize them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. After the group’s takeover in August, the Biden administration halted most aid to Afghanistan, froze $9.5 billion of its foreign reserves and pressured the International Monetary Fund to delay emergency support.A combination of the coronavirus pandemic, a severe drought, the loss of foreign aid and frozen currency reserves have left Afghanistan’s fragile economy on the brink of collapse, with aid groups warning that the harsh winter could lead to mass starvation and a refugee crisis.After weeks of calls for swifter action, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday that it was issuing new “general licenses” that would make it easier for nongovernmental organizations, international aid groups and the U.S. government to provide relief to Afghans while maintaining economic leverage over the Taliban to prevent human rights abuses and terrorist activity..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The actions came soon after the United Nations Security Council passed a related resolution, sponsored by the United States, that exempts humanitarian activities in Afghanistan from international sanctions for a year.Biden administration officials note that the United States remains the world’s top provider of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, even after it cut off most assistance after the Taliban takeover.“We are committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said in a statement.The department’s general licenses allow financial transactions involving the Taliban and members of the Haqqani network, who share power in the new Afghan government, as long as the money is used for purposes such as projects to meet basic human needs, civil society development, environmental and natural resource protection and similar efforts. The United States considers both groups terrorist organizations.The Treasury move expands the type of relief activity that can take place in Afghanistan and broadens the level of contact that international groups can have with the Taliban. It also allows the Taliban to collect taxes related to that assistance.Alex Zerden, the Treasury Department’s financial attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from 2018 to 2019, called the move “absolutely a step in the right direction,” saying it addressed requests for clarity from private sector and nongovernmental organizations about how to operate in Afghanistan without violating U.S. sanctions and providing the Taliban with illegal revenue.But many close observers said far more remained to be done.“We need a bigger humanitarian response, but without a functioning economy and banking system, we are facing terrible odds,” David Miliband, the president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, wrote on Twitter. “Need massive economic stabilization package to stop the rip current.”The United States provided Afghanistan with $3.95 billion in foreign aid last year, about two-thirds of which was security assistance for the former government’s fight against the Taliban. U.S. humanitarian aid for the country and for Afghan refugees in the region has totaled nearly $474 million so far this year.“We’re very conscious of the fact that there is an incredibly difficult humanitarian situation right now, one that could get worse as winter sets in,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a news conference on Tuesday.He added that the United States was determined to ensure “that the Taliban make good on the expectations of the international community,” including by respecting women’s rights, not carrying out reprisals against political enemies and denying safe haven to international terrorist groups.Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration, condemned the U.S. actions as “extremely dangerous.” She said on Twitter that the Treasury Department licenses “send the signal that if you take over enough territory with enough people in it, you too can gain legitimacy.”The Security Council resolution, which was adopted unanimously, seeks to reduce the legal and political risks of delivering aid to Afghanistan. It exempts humanitarian activities such as payments and delivery of goods and services from U.N. sanctions for a one-year period, and requires updates to ensure that aid is not diverted to the Taliban.China on Monday blocked a narrower version drafted by the United States that would have allowed only case-by-case exemptions.After passage of the broader measure, China’s U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, said on Twitter that the new resolution “can only fix the faucet, but to keep the water running, the international community need to make joint efforts.”Citing “shocking levels of need and suffering,” the top U.N. official for emergency humanitarian efforts, Martin Griffiths, said the effect that the 160 aid organizations working in Afghanistan could have “depends on the cooperation of the de facto authorities in the country and on the flexibility of the funding we receive.”Governments and international organizations have been accelerating their efforts to provide assistance in recent weeks.The World Bank has said that the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund donors would transfer $280 million to UNICEF and the World Food Program by the end of the year to provide humanitarian aid.The Treasury Department this month issued a license allowing personal remittance payments to be sent to people in Afghanistan. And the United States on Wednesday announced that it would donate another million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Afghanistan, bringing the total U.S. contribution to 4.3 million doses.But the need remains enormous. Three former U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan and several former ambassadors and other officials this month signed a letter, published by the Atlantic Council, calling on the Biden administration to show “the courage to act” and expedite creative steps to prop up the Afghan economy and feed the hungry without benefiting the Taliban.“We believe the United States has a reputational interest and a moral obligation in vigorously joining efforts to help the Afghan people preserve at least some of the social and economic gains made over the last 20 years,” the authors wrote. “We believe that ways to do so can be found, while erecting barriers to assistance being diverted to purposes other than those for which it is intended.”Such admonitions came as Taliban officials pleaded for swift international relief, which they said was also in the West’s self-interest.“The impact of the frozen funds is on the common people and not Taliban authorities,” the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, said on Sunday, according to Reuters.Mr. Stanikzai warned that if “the political and economic situation doesn’t change,” Afghan refugees would pour into neighboring countries and Europe.Rick Gladstone More

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    Why Janet Yellen’s Signature Is Not on U.S. Currency

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    Until a new treasurer is selected, currency will continue to bear the autograph of former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.WASHINGTON — At a now infamous 2017 ceremony inside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary at the time, and his wife, Louise Linton, posed for the cameras with an uncut sheet of $1 bills, the first to bear his signature.The images went viral, prompting comparisons of Mr. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker, to a Bond villain.More than four years later, America has a new Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen. But the U.S. currency continues to bear Mr. Mnuchin’s signature.The reason has to do with the vagaries of Washington bureaucracy and the fact that, despite having a Treasury secretary in place since January, President Biden has yet to appoint a United States treasurer. The two signatures must be added to new series of currency in tandem, meaning that the process of adding Ms. Yellen’s signature to the greenback is frozen for the foreseeable future.Ms. Yellen sat for her currency signing in March, meeting with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing director, Leonard Olijar, and providing her official signature for printing on the new 2021 series of paper currency. At the time, the Treasury Department said in a statement that it would “reveal her signature in the coming weeks.” Nine months later, Ms. Yellen’s signature is nowhere to be seen on America’s bank notes, depriving the first woman to be Treasury secretary of one of the job’s prized perks.“It is a little odd,” said Franklin Noll, the president of the Treasury Historical Association.Previous Treasury secretaries have had their signatures added to money, a process which takes several months, within their first year on the job.The delay owes to the slow pace of White House nominations across the federal government, including at the Treasury Department. By tradition, the treasurer must also sign the money along with the secretary, and both signatures are engraved on plates, printed and submitted to the Federal Reserve, which determines what currency will be added to circulation.Since the Treasury secretary has the ultimate say over currency design, in theory Ms. Yellen could do away with the tradition and incorporate her signature right away.The treasurer post, which oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, does not require Senate confirmation. But even if Mr. Biden appointed someone before year-end, it could take until mid-2022 before the new series of notes was in circulation.The White House appears to be in no rush. A spokesman said that while Mr. Biden is actively considering treasurer candidates, the administration’s priority has been on filling Senate-confirmed positions that are important for protecting national security and combating the pandemic.The Treasury Department declined to comment and referred an inquiry to the White House.The history of who gets to sign the money dates to 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill allowing the Treasury secretary to delegate the treasurer of the United States to sign Treasury notes and bonds. According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, 1914 was the first year that the Treasury secretary and the treasurer started signing the currency together.In recent years, the signature of the secretary has captured the nation’s attention, as changes to America’s currency are relatively rare.Former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner acknowledged in 2012 that handwriting was not his strong suit and that he polished his penmanship when President Barack Obama offered him the job.“I didn’t try for elegance,” Mr. Geithner said. “I tried for clarity.”Clarity was an Achilles’ heel for Jacob J. Lew, Mr. Geithner’s successor whose loopy autograph was laughed at for being illegible. Mr. Obama joked in 2013 that Mr. Lew, who had been his chief of staff, nearly did not get the job out of concern that his scrawl would debase America’s currency.Early versions of Mr. Mnuchin’s signature on personal documents were not easy to read. But ultimately, former President Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary broke with tradition and wrote his name in print rather than cursive.The signatures are closely watched by collectors and students of financial history.Mr. Noll said that during events or lectures at the Treasury Department with former secretaries, attendees would often bring money to be “countersigned” next to their name on the note.“It was kind of cool to get the real signature,” Mr. Noll said.Ms. Yellen’s signature on the money is not the only change to America’s currency that has been delayed. Soon after Mr. Biden took office this year, White House officials said the administration would accelerate efforts to have Harriet Tubman’s portrait grace the front of the $20 bill, a process that stalled under Mr. Mnuchin.However, at a congressional hearing in September, Ms. Yellen indicated that doing so would take some time, saying that redesigning the note is a lengthy process given the need to develop robust anti-counterfeiting features.Rosie Rios, who served as Treasurer under Mr. Geithner and Mr. Lew during the Obama administration, said that it was a privilege to have her signature on nearly $2 trillion worth of currency that is in circulation. Having helped to lead the effort to get images of women added to U.S. currency, she said, she will find it meaningful to have Ms. Yellen’s name on the money.“I’m very excited to see Secretary Yellen’s signature on there,” she said. More

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    The Path Ahead for Biden: Overcome Manchin’s Inflation Fears

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    A key Democrat’s decision to pull support from the president’s sprawling climate and social agenda is rooted in the scope of the bill.WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia Democrat, effectively killed President Biden’s signature domestic policy bill in its current form on Sunday, saying he was convinced the spending and tax cuts in the $2.2 trillion legislation will exacerbate already hot inflation.Economic evidence strongly suggests Mr. Manchin is wrong. A host of economists and independent analyses have concluded that the bill is not economic stimulus, and that it will not pump enough money into consumer pocketbooks next year to raise prices more than a modest amount.The reason has to do with the pace at which the bill spends money and how much it raises through tax increases that are intended to pay for that spending. The legislation spends funds over a decade, allowing the taxes it raises on wealthy Americans and businesses, which will siphon money out of the economy, to help counteract the boost from spending and tax cuts.The bill also does not provide the type of direct stimulus included in the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package Mr. Biden signed in March — and which Mr. Manchin supported. Some of its provisions would give money directly to people, like a continued expanded child tax credit, but others would fund programs that would take time to ramp up, like universal prekindergarten.Economists say the net result is likely to be at most a tenth of a percentage point or two increase in the inflation rate. That would be a relatively small effect at a time when supply chain crunches, surging global oil demand and a pandemic shift among consumers away from travel and dining out and toward durable goods have combined to raise the annual inflation rate to 6.8 percent, its fastest pace in nearly 40 years.For months, Mr. Manchin has warned the president and congressional leaders that he was uncomfortable with the breadth of what had become a $2.2 trillion bill to fight climate change, continue monthly checks to parents, establish universal prekindergarten and invest in a wide range of spending and tax cuts targeting child care, affordable housing, home health care and more. He has cited both the risks of inflation and his fear that the package could further balloon the federal budget deficit, saying several programs that are now estimated to end in a few years would likely be made permanent.Over the past week, he has insisted that the bill shrink to fit the framework of less than $2 trillion that Mr. Biden announced this fall, and that — crucially — the legislation not use budget gimmicks to artificially lower the bill’s effect on the budget deficit.In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Manchin said Democrats “continue to camouflage the real cost of the intent behind this bill.”White House officials have tried to promote the idea that the bill would reduce price pressures right away — an outcome economists have not entirely bought into. But the general economic consensus finds little evidence to suggest the bill risks exacerbating rising food, gasoline and other prices.Today’s inflationary surge stems from a confluence of factors, many of them related to the pandemic. The coronavirus has caused factories to shutter and clogged ports, disrupting the supply of goods that Americans stuck at home have wanted to buy, like electronics, televisions and home furnishings.That high demand has been fueled in part by consumers who are flush with cash after months of lockdown and repeated government payments, including stimulus checks. Research from the Federal Reserve has shown that inflation is most likely getting a temporary increase from the coronavirus relief package in March, which included $1,400 direct checks to families and generous unemployment benefits. But Mr. Biden’s social policy bill would do relatively little to spur increased consumer spending next year and not enough to offset the loss of government stimulus to the economy as pandemic aid expires.White House aides have tried to make that case to Mr. Manchin — and the public — in recent weeks, pointing to a series of analyses that have dismissed inflationary fears pegged to the bill. That includes analysis from a pair of Democratic economists who warned about rising inflation earlier this year — Harvard’s Lawrence H. Summers and Jason Furman — and from the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania. All of those analyses conclude that the bill would add little or nothing to inflation in the coming year.The disconnect between economic reality and Mr. Manchin’s stated concerns has exasperated the White House, which is struggling with voter discontent toward Mr. Biden over rising prices, as well as an unyielding pandemic.In a scathing statement about Mr. Manchin on Sunday, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, noted that the Penn Wharton analysis found Mr. Biden’s bill “will have virtually no impact on inflation in the short term, and in the long run, the policies it includes will ease inflationary pressures.”White House officials, who along with party leaders have spent weeks trying to bring Mr. Manchin to a place of comfort with Mr. Biden’s bill, registered a sense of betrayal after the senator’s declaration.Ms. Psaki said Mr. Manchin had last week personally submitted to the president an outline for a bill “that was the same size and scope as the president’s framework, and covered many of the same priorities.” He had also promised to continue discussions toward an agreement, she said.Republicans celebrated Mr. Manchin’s statement as evidence that the bill, which Democrats were attempting to pass along party lines, was full of inflationary policies that even the president’s own party could not get behind.Biden’s ​​Social Policy and Climate Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 7The centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. 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    Biden Assails Kellogg’s Plan to Replace Striking Workers

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    President Biden on Friday waded into a strike involving 1,400 employees at four Kellogg plants, whom the company said it planned to permanently replace after workers voted down a proposed contract this week.“I am deeply troubled by reports of Kellogg’s plans to permanently replace striking workers,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that “permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”The strike began on Oct. 5 and has largely focused on the company’s two-tier compensation system, in which employees hired after 2015 typically receive lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. Many veteran Kellogg workers, who the company says earn about $35 per hour on average, believe that adding lower-paid workers puts downward pressure on their wages.Kellogg raised the possibility of hiring permanent replacements in November. The company and the union last week reached a tentative agreement in which the company would lift a cap on the number of workers in the lower tier, which was 30 percent under the previous contract. In exchange, the company agreed to move all workers with four or more years experience into the veteran tier, as well as an amount equivalent to 3 percent of workers at its plants in each of the five years of the contract.On Tuesday, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which represents the workers, said its members had “overwhelmingly voted” against the deal. In response to the result, Kellogg said that it would “hire permanent replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers.”A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Bahner, said Friday that the company had posted job listings for permanent replacement roles in each of its four locations and that its hiring process was “fully operational.” The statement added: “Interest in the roles has been strong at all four plants, as expected. We expect some of the new hires to start with the company very soon.”After Mr. Biden’s statement, Ms. Bahner said that the company was “ready, willing and able to negotiate with the union” and that it agreed with the president “that this needs to be solved at the bargaining table.” Ms. Bahner indicated that the company had moved ahead with permanent replacements out of an obligation to consumers and other employees.Permanently replacing workers who are striking over economic issues like wages and benefits is legal, but Democrats, including Mr. Biden, have sought to outlaw the practice through the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act. The House approved the bill in March but it has stalled in the Senate.“I have long opposed permanent striker replacements and I strongly support legislation that would ban that practice,” Mr. Biden said in his statement Friday. “Such action undermines the critical role collective bargaining plays in providing workers a voice and the opportunity to improve their lives.”The statement is not the first time Mr. Biden has appeared to weigh in on a prominent labor action. The president appeared in a video during a union campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year warning that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda” — an unusual interjection by a president during a union election.Mr. Biden has made no secret of his support for unions over the years. He quickly ousted government officials disliked by unions, reversed Trump-era rules that softened worker protections and signed legislation that allocated tens of billions of dollars to stabilize union pension plans.His $2 trillion climate and social policy bill, pending in the Senate, includes numerous pro-labor measures, including incentives for employers to offer union-scale wages on wind and solar projects. More