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☆ The Floating Traffic Jam That Freaked Us All Out
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-02 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Southern California appeared to be under siege from a blockade. Rubberneckers flocked to the water’s edge with binoculars, trying to count the ships that stretched to the inky horizon. This was what it looked like when the global economy came shuddering to a halt. It was October 2021, and the planet had been seized by the worst pandemic in a century. Basic geography itself seemed reconfigured, as if the oceans had stretched wider, adding to the distance separating the factories of China from the superstores of the United States.

Locations: Southern California, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif, China, United States

☆ How the High Cost of Borrowing May Skew the Presidential Race
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-30 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Kimberly Jolasun, a 32-year-old entrepreneur in Atlanta, has never voted for the Republican candidate for the presidency. Not yet profitable, her company needs financing to grow. Banks want to charge her interest as high as 14 percent for business loans. The interest rate on the credit card debt she used to start the company has spiked to 25 percent, tripling her monthly payments. But she assumes that his Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, is more in tune with the needs of business owners.

Persons: Kimberly Jolasun, Banks, Jolasun, Biden, Donald J, Trump Organizations: Republican, Technology, Federal Reserve Locations: Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Austin , Texas, Georgia

☆ Even With Gaza Under Siege, Some Are Imagining Its Reconstruction
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-28 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

They were there to plan for the reconstruction and long-term economic development of Gaza. Gaza was under relentless bombardment by Israeli military forces in response to terrorist attacks launched by Hamas in October. Communities throughout the territory were being reduced to rubble, and tens of thousands of people had been killed. The group included senior officials from American and European economic development agencies, executives from Middle Eastern finance and construction companies, two partners from the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and a managing director of the World Economic Forum. Officially, they were attending only as individuals, not as representatives of their institutions.

Organizations: Middle, McKinsey & Company, Economic Locations: London, East, Europe, United States, Gaza

☆ Why It’s So Expensive to Live in Phoenix
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-29 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the five years since they began their life together in the desert sprawl of greater Phoenix, Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza have bounced from one itinerant home to another. They have camped alongside a freeway off-ramp, using a gas station sink as their bath and a plastic tarp as their refuge from the relentless sun. For the last two years, they have crammed into rooms at motels, paying as much as $650 a week. Ms. Mendoza and Mr. Lawrence are both 32, and both have jobs. Yet they have been stymied in their reach for a modest dream: They cannot find an affordable home in a safe neighborhood in Phoenix, where rents have roughly doubled over the last decade.

Persons: Devon Lawrence, Eren Mendoza, Mendoza, Lawrence, Ms, “, ” Organizations: Mr Locations: Phoenix

☆ Another Wayward Container Ship Shows World Trade’s Fragility
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Between swirling geopolitical winds, the variables of climate change and continued disruptions resulting from the pandemic, the risks of depending on ships to carry goods around the planet were already conspicuous. The pitfalls of relying on factories across oceans to supply everyday items like clothing and critical wares like medical devices were at once vivid and unrelenting. Off Yemen, Houthi rebels have been firing missiles at container ships in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In Central America, a dearth of rainfall, linked to climate change, has limited passage through the Panama Canal. That has impeded a crucial link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, delaying shipments to the East Coast of the United States from Asia.

Organizations: Atlantic, Pacific Locations: Baltimore, Patapsco, American, Yemen, Gaza, Suez, Asia, Europe, Africa, Central America, Panama, East Coast, United States

☆ For Michigan’s Economy, Electric Vehicles Are Promising and Scary
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-19 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That yielded a pay raise of 25 percent over the next four years, easing the pain of reductions that she and other union workers swallowed more than a decade ago. But as Ms. Simmons, 38, contemplates prospects for the American auto industry in the state that invented it, she worries about a new force: the shift toward electric vehicles. The Biden administration has embraced electric vehicles as a means of generating high-paying jobs while cutting emissions. It has dispensed tax credits to encourage consumers to buy electric cars, while limiting the benefits to models that use American-made parts. But autoworkers fixate on the assumption that electric cars — simpler machines than their gas-powered forebears — will require fewer hands to build.

Persons: Tiffanie Simmons, S.U.V.s, Simmons, President Biden, Biden, Mr Organizations: Ford Motor, United Automobile Workers Locations: Detroit

Toni Irizarry recognizes that the economy has improved. Compared with the first wave of the pandemic, when Las Vegas went dark, and joblessness soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression, these are days of relative normalcy. Ms. Irizarry, 64, oversees a cafe at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, a property just off the Las Vegas Strip that caters mostly to locals. Guests have returned, filling the blackjack and roulette tables amid the cacophony of jingling slot machines — the sound of money. Her paychecks have allowed her to purchase a home, raise three children and buy each of them their first car.

Persons: Toni Irizarry, Irizarry Organizations: Las Vegas, Orleans, Vegas Locations: Casino

☆ How Nevada Is Pushing to Generate Jobs Beyond the Casinos
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Before the pandemic brought everyday life to a halt, Joe Kiele supported himself through the industry that dominates Nevada’s economy. Four years later, Mr. Kiele, 49, remains in Reno, yet he now spends his workday inside a factory. In place of worrying about the doneness of a customer’s rib-eye, he trains people on the proper handling of industrial chemicals. It extracts critical minerals like nickel, lithium, copper and cobalt, and uses them to manufacture components for electric vehicle batteries. In recent years, they have tried to secure investment from companies engaged in the transition toward green energy.

Persons: Joe Kiele, Kiele, Nevada’s Organizations: Reno ., Redwood Locations: Reno

☆ The Rise and Fall of the World’s Most Successful Joint Venture
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-14 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | More About Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For more than a quarter century, the fortunes of the United States and China were fused in a uniquely monumental joint venture. Americans treated China like the mother of all outlet stores, purchasing staggering quantities of low-priced factory goods. Major brands exploited China as the ultimate means of cutting costs, manufacturing their products in a land where wages are low and unions are banned. As Chinese industry filled American homes with electronics and furniture, factory jobs lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese from poverty. China’s leaders used the proceeds of the export juggernaut to buy trillions of dollars of U.S. government bonds, keeping America’s borrowing costs low and allowing its spending bonanza to continue.

Persons: Niall Ferguson, ” Organizations: Communist Party Locations: United States, China

☆ How Columbia Sportswear Is Loosening Its Ties to Asia
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | More About Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

His company, Columbia Sportswear, had long relied on plants in Asia to make its clothing, but that appeared increasingly precarious. A trade war undermined the benefits of using Chinese factories to keep Americans stocked with windbreakers and fleece pullovers. As Columbia’s head of apparel manufacturing, Mr. Burton, 52, was responsible for diminishing the risks. He visited Zuntex Apparel, a factory in Guatemala City that was already making modest quantities of Columbia’s hooded sweatshirts and button-down fishing shirts. When Mr. Burton reached the back of the cavernous plant, he gawked at an array of Italian-made machines capable of printing elaborate designs that could be pressed onto clothing.

Persons: Stan Burton, Burton Organizations: Apparel Locations: Guatemalan, Columbia, Asia, Central America, United States, Guatemala City

For most of his 57 years on the island of Sulawesi, Jamal was accustomed to scarcity, modest expectations and a grim shortage of jobs. The factory was built by a company called PT Dragon Virtue Nickel Industry, a subsidiary of a Chinese mining giant, Jiangsu Delong Nickel. Indonesia had recently banned exports of raw nickel to attract investment into processing plants. They were eager to secure nickel for factories at home that needed the mineral to make batteries for electric vehicles. They were intent on moving the pollution involved in the nickel industry away from Chinese cities.

Persons: Jamal, Jiangsu Delong Organizations: Industry Locations: Sulawesi, Kendari, Jiangsu, Indonesia

Nickel is a central component of the transition away from fossil fuels, making access to Indonesia’s stocks an objective of greatest urgency. “It’s frustrating.”Money and PowerAt 76, Mr. Luhut remains wiry, spry and prone to nationalist pique. He vehemently rejects the notion that Indonesia — a country of nearly 280 million people — must pick a side or imperil its business with the United States. The animosity between the United States and China was not the only issue causing him angst. Since the ban was introduced in 2014, Indonesia’s exports of nickel products have multiplied more than tenfold, exceeding $30 billion last year, according to government data.

Persons: Biden, ”, “, spry Organizations: National Security Council, Everything, European Union Locations: Jakarta, America, Indonesia, United States, China

☆ China’s Stalling Economy Puts the World on Notice
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | More About Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For more than a quarter-century, China has been synonymous with relentless development and upward mobility. As its 1.4 billion people gained an appetite for the wares of the world — Hollywood movies, South Korean electronics, iron ore mined in Australia — the global economy was propelled by a seemingly inexhaustible engine. Long the centerpiece of a profit-enhancing version of globalization, China has devolved into the ultimate wild card in a moment of extraordinary uncertainty for the world’s economy. First came word that China’s economy had slowed substantially in the spring, extinguishing hopes of a robust expansion following the lifting of extreme Covid restrictions. This week brought data showing that China’s exports have declined for three months in a row, while imports have dropped for five consecutive months — another indicator of flagging prospects.

Locations: China, South Korean, Australia

☆ Uruguay Saw Opportunity in China. It Got Schooled in the Hazards of Trade.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | More About Peter S. Goodman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In April, Mr. Lula traveled to China, where he received red carpet treatment, including a visit with the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping. “No one is going to prohibit Brazil from improving its relationship with China,” Mr. Lula said. Yet despite the Brazilian president’s avowed interest in brokering a trade deal, prospects for an agreement between Mercosur and China appeared somewhere between minimal and nonexistent. A notoriously slow-moving organization rife with internal discord, Mercosur has spent more than 20 years trying to complete negotiations on a trade deal with the European Union. That alone rendered all but unthinkable the possibility of a deal between Mercosur and China.

Persons: Lula, Xi, ” Mr Organizations: European Union Locations: China, Brazil, Uruguay, South, Mercosur, Paraguay, Beijing, Taiwan

☆ Mexico replaced China as America's top trade buddy — and it shows how the global economy is rapidly transforming
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Cork Gaines | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Trade between the US and Mexico reached $263 billion during the first four months of this year. That pushed Mexico past China and Canada as the top trade partner since the start of the pandemic. China was the top partner for much of the 2010s and again at the start of the pandemic. Trade with Mexico accounted for 15.4% of all the goods exported and imported by the US, just ahead of America's trade totals with Canada (15.2%) and China (12.0%). Trucks carrying shipping containers line up as they are flagged for a secondary inspections at the Port of Manzanillo, Mexico.

Persons: Luis Torres, Donald Trump's, Torres, Nearshoring, Peter S, Goodman, Michael Burns, Salwan Georges, Shannon O'Neil's, Greg Rosalsky, O'Neil, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Xi Jinping, Janet Yellen, Xi, Yellen Organizations: Service, Federal Reserve Bank of, Canada, Dallas Fed, New York Times, Walmart, Murray Hill Group, Trucks, Washington, Getty, NPR Locations: Mexico, China, Canada, Wall, Silicon, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Pacific, Port, Manzanillo, USA, United States

☆ The U.S.-China Rivalry Is Complicating the World’s Debt Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-26 | by ( Peter S. Goodman | Adriana Loureiro Fernandez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

and its most influential participant, the United States, also wanted something else: They were adamant that Chinese creditors restructure $545 million in debt — loans Suriname had used to build roads and housing. As scores of middle- and lower-income countries grapple with an intensifying debt crisis, assistance is often held up by conflict between traditionally dominant Western institutions and a significant rising player: China. Its financial institutions dispense loans accompanied by few demands, providing an alternative to the austerity prescribed by the I.M.F. and the Biden administration have balked at providing relief until Chinese financial institutions participate. Otherwise, they assert, Chinese lenders are free-riding on debt forgiveness extended by others.

Persons: —, Biden Organizations: International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Locations: Washington, Suriname, United States, China, Asia, Africa, Latin America

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