United States

Latest story

125 Shares65 Views

Gaza Debate Reopens Divisions Between Left-Wing Workers and Union Leaders

by

Last week’s Democratic National Convention surfaced differences over the war in Gaza that could widen fissures between labor activists and union officials.When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations.The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign.“I was disappointed in the resolution on Israel and Palestine because it didn’t call for an end to armed shipments,” said Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher who attended the protest, alluding to a statement that the parent union endorsed at its convention in July.Since last fall, many rank-and-file union members have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and took about 250 hostages. The leaders of many national unions have appeared more cautious, at times emphasizing the precipitating role of Hamas.“We were very careful about what a moral stance was and also what the implications of every word we wrote was,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said of the resolution her union recently adopted.In some ways, this divide reflects tensions over Israel and Gaza that exist within many institutions — like academia, the media and government.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

More stories

  • 113 Shares125 Views

    in Economy

    What Across-the-Board Tariffs Could Mean for the Global Economy

    by

    Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has floated the idea of a 10 percent tariff on all U.S. imports, a plan that economists say could badly damage trade.Former President Donald J. Trump blames the global trading system for inflicting a long list of ills on the American economy including lost jobs, closed foreign markets and an overvalued dollar.The remedy, he insists, is simple: tariffs. Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has repeatedly said he would raise tariffs if elected. China, a geopolitical and economic rival, would face an additional 50 or 60 percent tariff on its exports to the United States. He has also floated the idea of a 10 to 20 percent surcharge on exports from the rest of the world.Although smaller than the percentage proposed for Chinese exports, an across-the-board tariff has the potential to deliver a much more devastating jolt to world trade, many economists warn.Such a surcharge would not distinguish between rivals and allies, critical necessities and nonessentials, ailing industries and superstars, or countries adhering to trade treaties and those violating them. (Democrats have also embraced tariffs as a policy tool, but Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has criticized Mr. Trump’s universal approach as inflationary.)Here is what you need to know about the idea of a universal tariff on all imports.In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon levied a 10 percent surcharge on all taxable imports.Associated PressWhat are the historical precedents?Mr. Trump’s broad-brush tariffs frequently evoke comparisons with the destructive global trade war that the United States helped to initiate in the 1930s with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs passed by Congress. The Senate Historical Office has called that law “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.”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 Shares153 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Tightens Technology Controls to Target Russian War Machine

    by

    The Biden administration announced new penalties on shell companies and suppliers that were feeding Russia’s war against Ukraine.The Biden administration said on Friday that it would add more than 100 companies and organizations in Russia, China and several other countries to a restricted trade list and take other measures, as it widens its net to try to capture more advanced technology that is flowing to the Russian military.The new rules aim to disrupt the procurement networks that are funneling semiconductors and other technology to Russian forces, who then use them to wage war against Ukraine. They will give the U.S. government expanded authority to prevent products made with U.S. technology from being shipped to Russia, even if those products are manufactured in countries outside of the United States.The penalties also included the addition of 123 entities in Russia, Crimea, China, Turkey, Iran and Cyprus to a so-called entity list. Suppliers are barred from sending companies on the entity list certain products without first obtaining a government license.The government also added certain addresses in Hong Kong and Turkey to the list that were known to set up shell companies, meaning any further shell companies registered to those addresses would face trade restrictions.The entity list additions include several uncovered in a recent investigation by The New York Times, including an office at 135 Bonham Strand in Hong Kong’s financial district that specialized in setting up shell companies. The office was the place of registration for at least four companies that funneled millions of restricted chips and sensors to military technology companies in Russia, the investigation found.The additions bring the number of organizations that the Biden administration has added to the entity list in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine to more than 1,000.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

  • 138 Shares76 Views

    in Economy

    What a Prolonged Rail Shutdown in Canada Would Mean for Trade

    by

    Rail labor disruptions in Canada tend to be brief, but a prolonged stoppage could have hurt farmers, automakers and other businesses.Late Thursday, the Canadian government ordered arbitration between the railroads and the rail workers’ union, a move that will end the shutdown. Read the latest coverage here.Canada’s two main railroads shut down for several hours on Thursday after contract talks with a labor union failed to reach a deal, forcing businesses in North America to grapple with another big supply chain challenge after several years of disruptions.The sprawling networks of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City are crucial to Canada’s economy and an important conduit for exports to the United States, Mexico and other countries. Had it lasted, the stoppage would have forced companies to find other modes of transport, but for some types of cargo, like grains, there are no practical alternatives to railroads.Canadian National’s network extends into the United States, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City has operations in the United States and Mexico. The companies’ networks outside Canada are still operating because their American and Mexican workers are covered by different labor agreements.What would a shutdown mean?Canada has recent experience with rail labor disruptions. Strikes in 2015 and 2019 ended in days. The country’s federal government has the power to press the rail workers union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, and management to accept an arbitrated settlement.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

  • 125 Shares135 Views

    in Economy

    What Kalamazoo (Yes, Kalamazoo) Reveals About the Nation’s Housing Crisis

    by

    A decade ago, the city — and all of Michigan — had too many houses. Now it has a shortage. The shift there explains today’s costly housing market in the rest of the country.For years, when Michigan politicians talked about the state’s housing problem, they were referring to a surplus: too many run-down houses, stripped of valuable copper, sitting empty and blighting neighborhoods. Now the message has flipped. In her State of the State address this year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lamented the housing shortage and landed one of her biggest applause lines with, “The rent is too damn high, and we don’t have enough damn housing. So our response is simple: ‘Build, baby, build!”If you want to know what the housing crisis for middle-income Americans looks like in 2024, spend some time in Michigan. The surplus-to-shortage whipsaw here is a mitten-shaped miniature of what the entire country has gone through.I’ve been writing about housing and the economy for two decades, and have watched as the nation’s housing market has made the journey from boom to bust to deficit, seemingly without pausing for a normal middle. There are lots of reasons this happened, but they center on a big one: the late-2000s housing bust, which the country has never fully recovered from. Or as Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, a data and consulting firm, put it: “The Great Recession broke the U.S. housing market.”At first, rapidly rising housing costs seemed like a regional problem. It made sense that places like San Francisco, which was already expensive, filled with well-paid tech workers and hamstrung by stringent building regulations, would be in crisis. Much of the rest of the country was still affordable, however, so high-cost “superstar cities” were seen as an exception instead of a warning.Now California’s problem is everywhere. Double-income couples with good jobs are priced out of homeownership in Spokane, Wash. Homeless encampments sprawl in Phoenix. The rent is too damn high in Kalamazoo.The housing crisis has moved from blue states to red states, and large metro areas to rural towns. In a time of extreme polarization, the too-high cost of housing and its attendant social problems are among the few things Americans truly share. That and a growing rage about the country’s inability to fix it.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

  • 138 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Vies With Allies and Industry to Tighten China Tech Controls

    by

    The Biden administration must navigate the interests of U.S. companies and allied governments as it tries to close off China’s access to advanced chipsThe Biden administration is fighting to overcome opposition from allied nations and the tech industry as it prepares to expand restrictions aimed at slowing China’s ability to make the most advanced semiconductors, which could be used to bolster Beijing’s military capacity.The administration has drafted new rules that would limit shipments to China of the machinery and software used to make chips from a number of countries if they are made with American parts or technology, as well as some types of semiconductors, according to people who have seen or were briefed on a draft version of the rules.The rules are aimed at blocking off some of the newer routes that Chinese chipmakers have found to acquire technology, despite international restrictions.The United States has been pushing allies like Japan and the Netherlands to toughen their restrictions on technology shipments to China, during visits to those countries as well as a Japanese state visit to Washington in April. Those nations are home to companies that produce chip-making machinery, like ASML Holding N.V. and Tokyo Electron Limited. But industry in the United States and other countries has argued the rules could hurt them, and it remains unclear when or if foreign governments will issue limitations.In the meantime, some of the rules that the United States plans to impose would have significant carve-outs, the people said. The rules blocking shipments of equipment to certain semiconductor factories in China would not apply to more than 30 allied countries, including the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan.That has sparked pushback from U.S. firms, who argue that the playing field will be further tilted against them if the U.S. government stops their sales but not those of their competitors.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

  • 238 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Fed Rate Cuts Are Expected Soon, as Inflation Cools. But Will They Be Early Enough to Avoid a Recession?

    by

    The Federal Reserve was about to cut interest rates, turning the corner after a long fight with inflation. But now, its soft landing is in question.The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation was going almost unbelievably well. Price increases were coming down. Growth was holding up. Consumers continued to spend. The labor market was chugging along.Policymakers appeared poised to lower interest rates — just a little — at their meeting on Sept. 18. Officials did not need to keep hitting the brakes on growth so much, as the economy settled into a comfortable balance. It seemed like central bankers were about to pull off a rare economic soft landing, cooling inflation without tanking the economy.But just as that sunny outcome came into view, clouds gathered on the horizon.The unemployment rate has moved up meaningfully over the past year, and a weak employment report released last week has stoked concern that the job market may be on the brink of a serious cool-down. That’s concerning, because a weakening labor market is usually the first sign that the economy is careening toward a recession.The Fed could still get the soft landing it has been hoping for — weekly jobless claims fell more than expected in fresh data released on Thursday, a minor but positive development. Stocks rallied in the wake of that report, with the S&P 500 rising 2.3 percent by the end of the day.Given the possibility that everything will turn out fine, central bank officials are not yet ready to panic. During an event on Monday, Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, suggested that officials were closely watching the job market to try to figure out whether it was cooling too much or simply returning to normal after a few roller-coaster years.“We’re at the point of — is the labor market slowing a lot, or slowing a little?” Ms. Daly said, as she pointed to one-off factors that could have muddled the latest report, like Hurricane Beryl and a recent inflow of new immigrant workers that left more people searching for jobs.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

  • 75 Shares169 Views

    in Economy

    World Bank Sees Rosier Growth Outlook

    by

    But rising trade barriers pose a long-term threat to global output as protectionist policies spread, the bank said.The World Bank on Tuesday raised its outlook for the world economy this year but warned that the rise of new trade barriers and protectionist policies posed a long-term threat to global growth.In its latest Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank projected global growth to hold steady at 2.6 percent this year, an upgrade from its January forecast of 2.4 percent, and predicted that output would edge higher to 2.7 percent in 2025. The forecasts showed the global economy stabilizing after being rocked in recent years by the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.“Four years after the upheavals caused by the pandemic, conflicts, inflation and monetary tightening, it appears that global economic growth is steadying,” Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, said in a statement accompanying the report.However, sluggish growth continues to haunt the world’s poorest economies, which are still grappling with inflation and the burdens of high debt. The bank noted that over the next three years, countries that account for more than 80 percent of the world’s population would experience slower growth than in the decade before the pandemic.The slightly brighter forecast was led by the resilience of the U.S. economy, which continues to defy expectations despite higher interest rates. Overall, advanced economies are growing at an annual rate of 1.5 percent, with output remaining sluggish in Europe and Japan. By contrast, emerging market and developing economies are growing at a rate of 4 percent, led by China and Indonesia.Although growth is expected to be a bit stronger than previously forecast, the World Bank said prices were easing more slowly than it projected six months ago. It foresees global inflation moderating to 3.5 percent in 2024 and 2.9 percent next year. That gradual decline is likely to lead central banks to delay interest rate cuts, dimming prospects for growth in developing economies.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

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Bans Imports From 3 Chinese Companies Over Ties to Forced Labor

    by

    The government targeted companies involved in making seafood, aluminum and footwear, citing their links to labor programs affecting Chinese minorities.The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday added three Chinese companies to a list of firms whose products can no longer be exported to the United States, as part of what it described as an escalating crackdown on companies that aid in forced labor programs in Xinjiang.The companies include a seafood processor, Shandong Meijia Group, that an investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project identified as a business employing laborers brought to eastern China from Xinjiang — a far-western region of China where the government has detained and surveilled large numbers of minorities, including Uyghurs.Another firm, Xinjiang Shenhuo Coal and Electricity, is an aluminum processor whose metal can be found in cars, consumer electronics and other products, a U.S. official said. The third, Dongguan Oasis Shoes, brought Uyghurs and people from other persecuted groups to its footwear factory in Guangdong, the U.S. government said.With those additions, 68 companies now appear on the so-called entity list of firms that the U.S. government says participate in forced labor programs, nearly double the number at the beginning of the year.Robert Silvers, an under secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who is chair of a committee overseeing the list, said that the government was accelerating the pace of additions to the list, and that the public should expect that to continue.“We are going to hold companies to account if they engage in forced labor practices,” he said.Industries using cotton and tomatoes were among the first to reckon with links in their supply chains to fields in Xinjiang. But in more recent years, companies making solar panels, flooring, cars, electronics, seafood and other goods have discovered that they, too, use components that were made in Xinjiang.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