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Biden Looks to Thwart Surge of Chinese Imports
  + stars: | 2024-05-08 | by ( Jim Tankersley | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
President Biden is warning that a new surge of cheap Chinese products poses a threat to American factories. China’s lavish subsidies, including loans from state-run banks, have helped sustain companies that might otherwise have folded in a struggling domestic economy. The result is, in many cases, a significant cost advantage for Chinese manufactured goods like steel and electric cars. The U.S. solar industry is already struggling to compete with those Chinese exports. Chinese exports are washing over the continent, to the chagrin of political leaders and business executives.
Persons: Biden Locations: United States, China, Europe, U.S
A crucial question is hanging over the American economy and the fall presidential election: Why are consumer prices still growing uncomfortably fast, even after a sustained campaign by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy by raising interest rates? Some are essentially quirks of the current economic moment, like a delayed, post-pandemic surge in the cost of home and auto insurance. Others are long-running structural issues, like a lack of affordable housing that has pushed up rents in big cities like New York as would-be tenants compete for units. That borrowing is a result of a federal budget deficit that has been elevated by tax cuts and spending increases. It is helping to fuel demand for goods and services by channeling money to companies and people who then go out and spend it.
Organizations: Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund Locations: New York
President Biden’s trillion-dollar effort to invigorate American manufacturing and speed a transition to cleaner energy sources is colliding with a surge of cheap exports from China, threatening to wipe out the investment and jobs that are central to Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. Mr. Biden is weighing new measures to protect nascent industries like electric-vehicle production and solar-panel manufacturing from Chinese competition. On Wednesday in Pittsburgh, the president called for higher tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products and announced a new trade investigation into China’s heavily subsidized shipbuilding industry. “I’m not looking for a fight with China,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m looking for competition — and fair competition.”Unions, manufacturing groups and some economists say the administration may need to do much more to restrict Chinese imports if it hopes to ensure that Mr. Biden’s vast industrial initiatives are not swamped by lower-cost Chinese versions of the same emerging technologies.
Persons: Biden’s, Biden, , ” Mr Organizations: Locations: China, Pittsburgh
President Biden on Wednesday will call on his trade representative to more than triple some tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, as part of a series of moves meant to help cushion American manufacturers from a surge of low-cost imports. Speaking to the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh, Mr. Biden will ask the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, to increase tariffs to 25 percent on certain Chinese products that currently face tariffs of 7.5 percent — or no tariffs at all — U.S. officials said. Mr. Biden will also announce a new trade representative investigation into China’s aggressive support for shipbuilders and other related industries, in response to a union complaint. And he will announce new initiatives to work with Mexican officials to block China from evading American steel tariffs by routing its exports through Mexico. The moves represent an escalating effort by Mr. Biden and his aides to stop a flood of low-cost Chinese exports from undermining made-in-America products — and jeopardizing a central focus of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda.
Persons: Biden, Katherine Tai, Mr Organizations: United Steelworkers Union, U.S Locations: China, Pittsburgh, U.S, Mexico, America
President Biden on Wednesday called for major increases to some tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, speaking to members of a national steelworkers union in Pittsburgh as he vies with former President Donald J. Trump for votes in Northern industrial states. “These are strategic and targeted actions that are going to protect American workers and ensure fair competition,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of about 100 union members at the United Steelworkers, which endorsed him last month. “Meanwhile, my predecessor and the MAGA Republicans want across-the-board tariffs on all imports, from all countries, that could badly hurt American consumers.”The Biden administration has argued that a flood of low-cost exports from China is undermining American-made products — jeopardizing Mr. Biden’s push to expand U.S. manufacturing, a central focus of his economic agenda. In his speech, Mr. Biden said he would ask the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, to increase tariffs to what White House officials said would be 25 percent on certain Chinese products that now face tariffs of 7.5 percent, or none at all, pending the outcome of an administration review of the China tariffs initially imposed under Mr. Trump.
Persons: Biden, Donald J, Trump, ” Mr, MAGA, , Biden’s, Katherine Tai Organizations: steelworkers union, United Steelworkers, MAGA Republicans, White, Mr Locations: China, Pittsburgh, Northern, American, U.S
The Federal Reserve is likely to wait longer than initially expected to cut interest rates given stubborn inflation readings in recent months, the central bank’s top two officials said Tuesday. Policymakers came into 2024 looking for evidence that inflation was continuing to cool rapidly, as it did late last year. Instead, progress on inflation has stalled or even reversed by some measures. But he stopped short of saying he expected rates will need to stay at their current levels, 5.3 percent, deep into this year. Last month, Fed officials indicated that they expect to cut rates three times by the end of 2024.
Persons: ” Jerome H, Powell, Philip N, Jefferson Organizations: Federal Locations: Washington
Biden’s Plan B on Inflation: Turn It Against Trump
  + stars: | 2024-04-12 | by ( Jim Tankersley | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
President Biden and his economic team had high hopes about how two years of rapid inflation would play out in the months leading to the November presidential election. Price growth would continue to cool. The Federal Reserve would cut interest rates. Investors are recalibrating their expectations for when — or even if — interest rates might start to come down this year. Mr. Biden is recalibrating as well, as both a Fed forecaster and a politician.
Persons: Biden, Price, Biden’s Organizations: Federal, White
The unexpected re-acceleration in price growth across the economy is at least a temporary setback for President Biden, who has been banking on cooling inflation to lift his re-election prospects. Mr. Biden and his aides have publicly cheered the retreat of annual inflation rates over the last year, after watching the fastest price growth in 40 years dent the president’s approval ratings earlier in his tenure. Mr. Biden has been particularly focused on home buyers, including young voters who are key to his electoral coalition, and who are struggling to afford high housing prices as mortgage rates remain around 7 percent. Wall Street analysts saw Wednesday's surprise pickup in the inflation rate as a sign that the Fed could leave rates on hold for months longer than expected. That could mean no cuts before the November election, a campaign where Mr. Biden’s Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, has slammed Mr. Biden for both rapid price increases and high borrowing costs.
Persons: Biden, Biden’s, Donald J, Trump Organizations: Federal Reserve, Wall Street, Biden’s Republican
President Biden has intensified efforts to shield American industries from foreign competition in an election year, as he courts blue-collar workers and attempts to avoid being outflanked on trade by his Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump. The moves have strained Mr. Biden’s relationships with international allies and rivals alike, drawing charges of protectionism from diplomats and some economists, including top Chinese officials during Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s recent trip to Beijing. But the measures have cheered labor unions, environmental groups and other key members of Mr. Biden’s political support base, particularly in the swing states of the industrial Midwest. Mr. Biden and his administration have recently signaled they are preparing new tariffs and other measures to block cheap electric vehicles and other clean-energy imports from China. Those efforts, combined with new limits on American investment in China, restrictions on exports of advanced technology and subsidies for the U.S. semiconductor industry, fueled major tensions during Ms. Yellen’s visit.
Persons: Biden, Donald J, Trump, Janet L, Yellen’s Organizations: Republican, Mr Locations: Beijing, China, U.S
An aerial view of the cargo ship that hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last month. The announcement comes ahead of President Biden’s scheduled visit to the site of the wreckage on Friday. The channel will allow one-way traffic of vessels at a time to and from the port, according to the statement. The Biden administration said last week that it was allocating $60 million in emergency federal highway funds, the initial costs of what will likely be a far more costly operation. Mr. Biden has pledged that the federal government would pay for the bridge to be rebuilt.
Persons: Francis Scott Key, Biden’s, Biden Organizations: U.S . Army Corps of Engineers, Army Locations: Baltimore, Port of Baltimore, Patapsco
In the hours before delivering his State of the Union speech last month, President Biden called the chief executives of General Motors and Cisco Systems to ask their advice on the state of the American economy and share how he planned to talk about it. Then he rode to Capitol Hill and, in his address, promised to raise the rate on a new minimum tax his administration has levied on big companies “so every big corporation finally begins to pay their fair share.”“I also want to end tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, private jets, massive executive pay,” Mr. Biden continued, adding: “End it now.”The sequence epitomizes Mr. Biden’s alternatively cozy and combative relationship with America’s business leaders, which has rippled through the national economy, federal policy and now the 2024 campaign for the White House.
Persons: Biden, ” “, Mr Organizations: General Motors, Cisco Systems, Capitol, Big Pharma, Big Oil, White
The climate law that President Biden signed in 2022 has created a large and growing market for companies to buy and sell clean-energy tax credits, new Treasury Department data suggests, creating opportunities for start-ups to raise money for projects like wind farms and solar panel installations. The market also provides new opportunities for large companies and financial firms to make money. The projects registered with Treasury vary widely in size. They could be as small as a single wind turbine or as large as a new advanced battery factory. The numbers reflect both the wide scope of the climate law and the novel mechanisms it created for companies to cash in on its incentives.
Persons: Biden Organizations: Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, Treasury, District of Columbia
Should China Own TikTok?
  + stars: | 2024-03-13 | by ( David Leonhardt | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +2 min
After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, TikTok flooded users with videos expressing extreme positions from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tilted toward the Palestinian side, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. On Monday, the top U.S. intelligence official released a report saying that the Chinese government had used TikTok to promote its propaganda to Americans and to influence the 2022 midterm elections. TikTok is also owned by a company, ByteDance, that’s based in a country that is America’s biggest rival for global power: China. ByteDance executives say that they operate separately from China’s government and that they regularly remove misleading content from TikTok. The most likely scenario, experts say, is that officials aligned with the Chinese government shape TikTok’s algorithm to influence what content Americans see.
Persons: Jeanna Smialek, Jim Tankersley, , Sapna Maheshwari, China’s, Xi Jinping, Xi Organizations: Rutgers University, Rutgers, Communist Party, Soviet NBC Locations: U.S, Tibet, Hong Kong, United States, China, Soviet
President Biden proposed a $7.3 trillion budget on Monday packed with tax increases on corporations and high earners, new spending on social programs and a wide range of efforts to combat high consumer costs like housing and college tuition. The proposal includes only relatively small changes from the budget plan Mr. Biden submitted last year, which went nowhere in Congress, though it reiterates his call for lawmakers to spend about $100 billion to strengthen border security and deliver aid to Israel and Ukraine. Most of the new spending and tax increases included in the fiscal year 2025 budget again stand almost no chance of becoming law this year, given that Republicans control the House and roundly oppose Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for. Instead, the document will serve as a draft of Mr. Biden’s policy platform as he seeks re-election in November, along with a series of contrasts intended to draw a distinction with his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.
Persons: Biden, Donald J, Trump Organizations: Republicans, Democrats, Republican Locations: Israel, Ukraine
The new spending and tax increases included in the fiscal 2025 budget stand almost no chance of becoming law this year, given that Republicans control the House and roundly oppose Mr. Biden’s fiscal agenda. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for. Mr. Biden has sought to reclaim strength on economic issues with voters who have given him low marks amid rapid inflation. Mr. Biden’s budget proposes to more than offset the cost of those priorities through increased taxes on large companies and the wealthy. The president has already begun trying to portray Mr. Trump as the opposite: a supporter of further tax cuts for corporations.
Persons: Biden, Donald J, Trump Organizations: Republicans, Democrats, Republican
Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for. Mr. Biden has sought to reclaim strength on economic issues with voters who have given him low marks amid rapid inflation. But Mr. Biden has been unwavering in his core economic-policy strategy, and the budget is not expected to deviate from that plan. White House officials, previewing the budget release, said Mr. Biden would propose about $3 trillion in new measures to reduce the budget deficit over the next decade. House Republicans released a budget last week that seeks to reduce deficits much faster — balancing the budget by the end of the decade.
Persons: Biden, Donald J, Trump, , , ” Mr, ” Shalanda Young, Trump’s, Mr, Biden’s, . Young, Jared Bernstein Organizations: Republicans, Democrats, Republican, Tax, White, Budget, Mr, White House Council, Economic Advisers Locations: Israel, Ukraine
You got 0 out of 0 right. Share your resultQuestion Your choice NYT readers Data based on reader responses through 7 a.m. Eastern on March 8, 2024. As they hurtle toward a rematch in November, Biden and Trump both have compelling stories to tell about the economy’s performance on their watch. But like so much in politics, those stories can be strengthened or undermined by which data points the candidates emphasize — and which ones they omit entirely.
Persons: Biden Organizations: Trump
The corporate tax cuts that President Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017 have boosted investment in the U.S. economy and delivered a modest pay bump for workers, according to the most rigorous and detailed study yet of the law’s effects. Those benefits are less than Republicans promised, though, and they have come at a high cost to the federal budget. The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to paying for themselves, as conservatives insisted they would. The study is the first to use vast data from corporate tax filings to draw conclusions about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed with only Republican support. Its findings could help shape debate on renewing parts of the law that are set to expire or have begun to phase out.
Persons: Donald J, Trump Organizations: Republicans, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Treasury Department, Trump Locations: U.S
President Biden and his economic team, concerned that elevated mortgage rates and housing costs are hurting Americans and hindering his re-election bid, are searching for new ways to make housing more available and affordable. Mr. Biden’s forthcoming budget request will call on Congress to pass a raft of initiatives to build more affordable housing and help certain Americans afford to purchase a home. The president is also expected to address housing affordability for both homeowners and renters in his State of the Union address next week, according to people familiar with the speech planning. On Thursday, administration officials announced a handful of relatively modest executive actions, including steps to increase the supply of manufactured homes. White House officials said this week that they would announce “additional actions we are taking to lower housing costs.”The increased focus on housing affordability comes as congressional Republicans assail Mr. Biden over high mortgage rates and housing costs, and as allies of the president warn that those costs are hurting working-class voters he needs to win in November.
Persons: Biden, assail Mr Organizations: Union
Biden’s Energy Balancing Act
  + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Jim Tankersley | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: 1 min
A junior White House economist made a chart last year — the sort of chart that previous presidents might have put in a campaign ad. It shows that U.S. energy production, from wind and solar to oil and gas, has boomed under President Biden. The nation is closer than ever to a goal that presidents have pursued for decades: true energy independence. The Times has recreated the chart, using the same data:
Persons: Biden Organizations: White House, Times
President Biden took steps on Thursday toward blocking Chinese electric vehicles from entry to the American auto market, saying internet-connected cars and trucks from China posed risks to national security because their operating systems could send sensitive information to Beijing. The immediate action was the opening of a Commerce Department investigation into security threats, which could lead to new regulations or restrictions on Chinese vehicles. But administration officials made clear it was the first step in what could be a wide range of policy responses meant to stop low-cost Chinese electric vehicles — either manufactured in China or assembled by Chinese companies in countries like Mexico — from flooding the U.S. market and potentially driving domestic automakers out of business. China has rapidly scaled up its production of electric vehicles in recent years, setting it on a collision course with Mr. Biden’s industrial policy efforts that seek to help American automakers dominate that market at home and abroad. Some of its smaller cars sell for less than $11,000 each — significantly less than a comparable American-made electric vehicle.
Persons: Biden Organizations: Commerce Department Locations: China, Beijing, Mexico
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit on Monday, joined by several state attorneys general, to challenge a merger between the supermarket giants Kroger and Albertsons. The agency’s rationale in many ways echoed Mr. Biden’s renewed attempts to blame corporate greed for rising prices and shrinking portions in grocery aisles. Because grocery prices have risen significantly in recent years, they added, “the stakes for Americans are exceptionally high.”That is true for consumers, and it is true for the president. More Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy than approve of it. Consumer confidence, while improved in recent months, remains relatively weak for an economy with low unemployment and solid growth like the one Mr. Biden is presiding over.
Persons: Biden’s, Biden Organizations: White, Federal Trade Commission, Kroger, Albertsons
Biden Targets a New Economic Villain: Shrinkflation
  + stars: | 2024-02-26 | by ( Jim Tankersley | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
“I’ve had enough of what they call shrinkflation,” Mr. Biden declared. The video lit up social media and delighted a consumer advocate named Edgar Dworsky, who has studied “shrinkflation” trends for more than a decade. He has twice briefed Mr. Biden’s economic aides, first in early 2023 and again a few days before the video aired. The second clearly informed Mr. Biden’s new favorite economic argument — that companies have used a rapid run-up in prices to pad their pockets by keeping those prices high while giving consumers less. The products arrayed in the president’s video, like Oreos and Wheat Thins, were all examples of the shrinkflation that Mr. Dworsky had documented on his Consumer World website.
Persons: Biden, “ I’ve, Mr, Edgar Dworsky, Biden’s, Dworsky Organizations: Super, Sunday
In the fall of 2022, two top Biden administration officials met in New York with a key European diplomat. Over dinner outdoors, they strategized about how best to throttle Russia’s oil revenues in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. Europe, Mr. Seibert said, had big problems with President Biden’s sweeping new climate law. They were worried the president was trying to ensure the future of U.S. manufacturing at the expense of some of America’s closest allies. The exchange set off months of behind-the-scenes talks, a major regulatory concession from the Treasury Department and high-level negotiations between Mr. Biden and fellow world leaders, all meant to soothe those concerns.
Persons: Bjoern Seibert, Mike Pyle, Wally Adeyemo, Seibert, Biden’s, Mr, Biden Organizations: Biden, National Security Council, European Commission, European Union, Treasury Department, Mr Locations: New York, European, Ukraine, United States, America
President Biden is facing new pressure to block Nippon Steel’s acquisition of the iconic manufacturer U.S. Steel, this time from environmental groups that say the tie-up would set back America’s efforts to curb climate change. In interviews, environmental activists working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions say the merger would bring together two steel giants that are laggards on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Researchers at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit pushing to decarbonize steel and other heavy industries, drew on both companies’ public disclosures to calculate that Nippon and U.S. Steel are relatively high emitters of heat-trapping gases from steel production. Three U.S. Steel facilities — in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois — combine to emit more greenhouse gases in a year than a comparable number of coal-fired power plants, the researchers estimate. Officials from Nippon and U.S. Steel say they are pursuing multiple strategies to decarbonize by 2050, including high-grade steel production in more efficient electric-powered furnaces and using hydrogen-injecting technology in blast furnaces, and that their merger will advance those efforts.
Persons: Biden Organizations: Nippon, U.S . Steel, U.S, Steel Locations: Pennsylvania , Indiana, Illinois
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