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Politics

Tim Scott Will Ship the Republican’s Rebuttal to Biden

After President Biden delivered his first joint address to Congress on Wednesday night, the task of countering the president’s vision rests with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Scott, 55, offers a kind of unapologetic conservatism that has helped him rise from a seat on Charleston County Council to national notoriety in the Republican Party.

More than a decade ago, Mr Scott raised his profile as a vocal critic of the Obama administration and brought a wave of tea party support to Washington, winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 2010 and endearing himself to conservative groups with a strong little government philosophy .

As the only black Republican in the Senate, Mr. Scott has also become a pioneer within his party breaking a number of historical barriers and rising in an environment that was often hostile to black politicians.

In the primary election for his first House campaign, Mr. Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, the son of former Senator Strom Thurmond, who for years helped lead the Republican Party’s resistance to racial integration. And in 2013, when then-Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Mr. Scott to fill a position left by former Senator James DeMint. He entered the Senate as the first black politician since the reconstruction to represent a southern state.

Mr Scott was tapped by Republican leaders – Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California – to provide the counter-argument at a time when the GOP was keen to increase its support for people of color. And during his years in the Senate, Mr. Scott has often advised colleagues on racial issues.

More recently, as the debate about police brutality has intensified, Mr Scott has had his own candid experience in the Senate of police profiling against racism. He has also positioned himself as an informed voice on the challenges of working families, referring to his early years growing up poor with a single working mother.

While many of the policy proposals Mr Biden is due to discuss Wednesday have met with stiff opposition from Republicans, Mr Scott has stated that he does not intend his rebuttal to constitute an excoriation of the President’s agenda similar to the highly charged rhetoric that has become common on Capitol Hill.

“We face serious challenges on several fronts, but I am more confident than ever about America’s promise and potential,” said Scott in a statement anticipating his remarks. “I look forward to having an honest conversation with the American people and sharing the Republicans’ optimistic vision of expanding opportunities and empowering working families.”

Categories
Business

Pfizer CEO says firm can ship 10% extra doses to the U.S. by the tip of Might than beforehand agreed

The bottles for the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine can be prepared prior to the opening of a mass vaccination site in Queens, New York City on February 24, 2021.

Seth Little | Pool | Reuters

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said Tuesday that his company had ramped up production of its two-shot coronavirus vaccine and could ship a total of 300 million doses to the U.S. ahead of schedule.

According to Bourla, Pfizer can deliver 10% more cans to the US by the end of May than previously agreed. The company will be able to bring the full 300 million into the US two weeks early, he said.

The announcement came when dozen of states temporarily stopped giving Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine after the Food and Drug Administration recommended it after six women in the United States developed a rare bleeding disorder in which one woman died and another died in critical condition.

Some states, like New York, said they would use Pfizer’s vaccine instead of the J&J shot for appointments that were already scheduled.

President Joe Biden set a goal last month to get enough Americans vaccinated in time for them to safely gather in small groups for July 4th. He also vowed that every adult in the US would have access to the vaccine by the end of May.

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Categories
Business

Xpeng predicts it’ll ship fewer electrical vehicles than Nio

Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng stands next to the company’s P7 electric sedan speaking to the media at the 2020 Beijing Auto Show.

Evelyn Cheng | CNBC

BEIJING – Chinese electric car maker Xpeng predicts that it will deliver far fewer cars in the first three months of the year than competing start-up Nio.

Xpeng, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, announced overnight that it is expected to deliver around 12,500 vehicles in the first quarter. That implies deliveries of 4,250 cars for March, based on January’s 6,015, down to 2,223 in February.

Even with the weeklong New Year holidays in mid-February, these numbers lag behind Nio’s.

Last week, Nio forecast deliveries of 20,000-25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, implying deliveries of at least 7,197 cars in March. The company currently only ships SUVs and sells them in a higher price range than Xpeng’s cars.

While Nio plans to deliver a sedan to customers early next year, Xpeng launched its P7 sedan last year, which accounts for a growing proportion of deliveries compared to its G3 SUV. Xpeng plans to bring out another sedan later this year.

Li Auto, another US-listed Chinese electric car company, issued the lowest forecast of the three startups with 10,500 to 11,500 deliveries for the first quarter.

Despite the attention of startups like Nio and Xpeng, older automakers Tesla and BYD are already selling electric cars on a far larger scale in China. In January alone, Tesla sold more than 14,500 China-made Model 3s and BYD more than 7,200 of its Han model, according to the China Passenger Car Association released on Tuesday.

After rising in 2020, the stocks of US-listed electric car companies have fallen in the past two months due to the volatile start of the year in the US stock market.

  • Xpeng’s shares fell nearly 4% overnight and are down more than 35% year-to-date.
  • Nio fell 7.6% overnight and is down more than 25% since the start of the year.
  • Li Auto shares fell 5% earlier in the week and fell 26% year-to-date.
  • Tesla shares fell more than 5% on Monday and fell 20% year-to-date.

Autonomous driving software

As Nio, Tesla, and other automakers race to develop self-driving technologies, Xpeng started rolling out its autonomous driving software to some premium P7 sedan customers this year. With this technology, users can automate tasks such as changing lanes and entering and exiting highways.

Around a fifth of the more than 20,100 P7 sedans that were delivered from February onwards have activated the latest self-driving software, the management announced in a call for profits.

Xpeng reported that total revenue increased 43% from the third quarter to 2.85 billion yuan ($ 437 million) in the fourth quarter. The company expects first quarter sales to decrease slightly to 2.6 billion yuan.

Net losses decreased to 787.4 million yuan in the last three months of the year from 1.15 billion yuan in the previous quarter.

Categories
World News

EU calls for vaccine makers ‘ship’ provides

Employee Jessica Mueller brings the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine into a freezer in the vaccine warehouse, where the cans will be stored in Irxleben near Magdeburg, eastern Germany, before being distributed on January 8, 2021.

RONNY HARTMANN | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday called on coronavirus vaccine makers to deliver on their pledges to deliver millions of doses to the block and beyond.

Your comments face an unprecedented challenge for the EU when it comes to introducing vaccines in each of the 27 Member States. The EU’s vaccination campaign began on December 27, a later start than the UK or US, and the patchy, slow rollouts in many of its members have worried officials and the public.

“Europe has invested billions to support the development of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines. To create a truly global common good,” said von der Leyen at the virtual Davos Agenda summit. “And now companies have to deliver. They have to meet their obligations.”

“Europe is determined to contribute to this global common good, but it also means business,” she said

“We were turned inwards”

A few hours later and at the same time, Chancellor Angela Merkel called for more cooperation and multilateralism in the life-saving blows.

She told the World Economic Forum: “It has become even clearer to me than before that we have to take a multilateral approach, that a self-isolating approach will not solve our problems.”

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the high level of interdependence and networking in the world, and Germany initially made the mistake of looking inward to defeat the pandemic instead of working with others.

“We looked inward and cut ourselves off from each other, but very quickly we learned the lesson (not to do that),” she said.

Lack of vaccine

With the increase in infections and related bans, the EU is now faced with the challenge of vaccine shortages. Both Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca have warned of production issues that will either mean a temporary cut in production and the supplies the EU is receiving, and in the case of AstraZeneca, could mean it cannot meet a commitment to deliver 80 million Cans until the end of March.

An unnamed official told Reuters last week that AstraZeneca announced that the supply would instead be around 31 million doses, around 60% less than envisaged by the EU, which is expected to use the vaccine for emergencies later this week.

The news, understandably, enraged the bloc, which threatened to restrict exports of vaccines from the EU. The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is made in Belgium.

Talks between the EU and AstraZeneca are due to resume on Wednesday. The former asked the pharmaceutical company to provide detailed plans for the manufacture and sale of vaccines. EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a statement on Monday that an “export transparency mechanism” would be put in place to assess vaccine exports from the EU.

Haves vs. have-nots

The supply of vaccines is also a hot topic of conversation outside of Europe, which like other wealthy nations has at least started its vaccination campaigns. The poorer countries say they are at the bottom when it comes to access to life-saving footage.

Last week, the World Health Organization head said the equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines was at “serious risk” and warned of “catastrophic moral failure” if vaccines were not distributed fairly.

This point was repeated on Tuesday by Angel Gurria, Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“This is the biggest test for all of humanity, and especially for OECD countries, as most of those countries bought three, five or even ten times as many vaccines as their entire population,” Gurria told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe “. “”

These vaccines are “badly needed” in developing countries and could “be a very important source of overseas aid support and international cooperation,” he added. “We won’t get rid of this pandemic until it’s gone everywhere,” he said.