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EV makers face money squeeze amid hovering battery, manufacturing prices

EV makers face cash squeeze amid soaring battery, production costs

Production of electric Rivian R1T pickup trucks on April 11, 2022 at the company’s plant in Normal, Ill.

Michael Wayland/CNBC

In the transition from gas-powered vehicles to electric, the fuel every automaker is after these days is cold hard cash.

Established automakers and startups alike are rolling out new battery-powered models in an effort to meet growing demand. Ramping up production of a new model was already a fraught and expensive process, but rising material costs and tricky regulations for federal incentives are squeezing coffers even further.

Prices of the raw materials used in many electric-vehicle batteries — lithium, nickel and cobalt — have soared over the last two years as demand has skyrocketed, and it may be several years before miners are able to meaningfully increase supply.

Complicating the situation further, new US rules governing EV buyer incentives will require automakers to source more of those materials in North America over time if they want their vehicles to qualify.

The result: new cost pressures for what was already an expensive process.

Automakers routinely spend hundreds of millions of dollars designing and installing tooling to build new high-volume vehicles — before a single new car is shipped. Nearly all global automakers now maintain hefty cash reserves of $20 billion or more. Those reserves exist to ensure that the companies can continue to work on their next new models if and when a recession (or a pandemic) takes a bite out of their sales and profits for a few quarters.

All that money and time can be a risky bet: If the new model doesn’t resonate with customers, or if manufacturing problems delay its introduction or compromise quality, the automaker might not make enough to cover what it spent.

For newer automakers, the financial risks to designing a new electric vehicle can be existential.

Take Tesla. When the automaker began preparations to launch its Model 3, CEO Elon Musk and his team planned a highly automated production line for the Model 3, with robots and specialized machines that reportedly cost well over a billion dollars. But some of that automation didn’t work as expected, and Tesla moved some final-assembly tasks to a tent outside its factory.

Tesla learned a lot of expensive lessons in the process. Musk said later called the experience of launching the Model 3 “production hell” and said it nearly brought Tesla to the brink of bankruptcy.

As newer EV startups ramp up production, more investors are learning that taking a car from design to production is capital-intensive. And in the current environment, where deflated stock prices and rising interest rates have made it harder to raise money than it was just a year or two ago, EV startups’ cash balances are getting close attention from Wall Street.

Here’s where some of the most prominent American EV startups of the last few years stand when it comes to cash on hand:

Rivian

Production of electric Rivian R1T pickup trucks on April 11, 2022 at the company’s plant in Normal, Ill.

Michael Wayland/CNBC

Rivian is by far the best-positioned of the new EV startups, with over $15 billion on hand as of the end of June. That should be enough to fund the company’s operations and expansion through the planned launch of its smaller “R2” vehicle platform in 2025, CFO Claire McDonough said during the company’s earnings call on Aug. 11.

Rivian has struggled to ramp up production of its R1-series pickup and SUV amid supply chain snags and early manufacturing challenges. The company burned about $1.5 billion in the second quarter, but it also said it plans to reduce its near-term capital expenditures to about $2 billion this year from $2.5 billion in its earlier plan to ensure it can meet its longer-term goals.

At least one analyst thinks Rivian will need to raise cash well before 2025: In a note following Rivian’s earnings report, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said that his bank’s model assumes Rivian will raise $3 billion via a secondary stock offering before the end of next year and another $3 billion via additional raises in 2024 and 2025.

Jonas currently has an “overweight” rating on Rivian’s stock, with a $60 price target. Rivian ended trading Friday at roughly $32 per share.

Lucid

People test drive Dream Edition P and Dream Edition R electric vehicles at the Lucid Motors plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, September 28, 2021.

Caitlin O’Hara | Reuters

Luxury EV maker Lucid Group doesn’t have quite as much cash in reserve as Rivian, but it’s not badly positioned. It ended the second quarter with $4.6 billion in cash, down from $5.4 billion at the end of March. That’s enough to last “well into 2023,” CFO Sherry House said earlier this month.

Like Rivian, Lucid has struggled to ramp up production since launching its Air luxury sedan last fall. It’s planning big capital expenditures to expand its Arizona factory and build a second plant in Saudi Arabia. But unlike Rivian, Lucid has a deep-pocketed patron — Saudi Arabia’s public wealth fund, which owns about 61% of the California-based EV maker and would almost certainly step in to help if the company runs short of cash.

For the most part, Wall Street analysts were unconcerned about Lucid’s second-quarter cash burn. Bank of America’s John Murphy wrote that Lucid still has “runway into 2023, especially considering the company’s recently secured revolver [$1 billion credit line] and incremental funding from various entities in Saudi Arabia earlier this year.”

Murphy has a “buy” rating on Lucid’s stock and a price target of $30. He’s compared the startup’s potential future profitability to that of luxury sports-car maker Ferrari. Lucid currently trades for about $16 per share.

fisherman

People gather and take pictures after the Fisker Ocean all-electric SUV was revealed at Manhattan Beach Pier on November 16, 2021 in Manhattan Beach, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

Unlike Rivian and Lucid, Fisker isn’t planning to build its own factory to construct its electric vehicles. Instead, the company founded by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker will use contract manufacturers — global auto-industry supplier Magna International and Taiwan’s Foxconn — to build its cars.

That represents something of a cash tradeoff: Fisker won’t have to spend nearly as much money up front to get its upcoming Ocean SUV into production, but it will almost certainly give up some profit to pay the manufacturers later on.

Production of the Ocean is scheduled to begin in November at an Austrian factory owned by Magna. Fisker will have considerable expenses in the interim — money for prototypes and final engineering, as well as payments to Magna — but with $852 million on hand at the end of June, it should have no trouble covering those costs.

RBC analyst Joseph Spak said following Fisker’s second-quarter report that the company will likely need more cash, despite its contract-manufacturing model — what he estimated to be about $1.25 billion over “the coming years.”

Spak has an “outperform” rating on Fisker’s stock and a price target of $13. The stock closed Friday at $9 per share.

Nikola

Nikola Motor Company

Source: Nikola Motor Company

Nikola was one of the first EV makers to go public via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company has begun shipping its battery-electric Tre semitruck in small numbers, and plans to ramp up production and add a long-range hydrogen fuel-cell version of the Tre in 2023.

But as of right now, it probably doesn’t have the cash to get there. The company had a tougher time raising funds, following allegations from a short-seller, a stock price plunge and the ouster of its outspoken founder Trevor Milton, who is now facing federal fraud charges for statements made to investors.

Nikola had $529 million on hand as of the end of June, plus another $312 million available via an equity line from Tumim Stone Capital. That’s enough, CFO Kim Brady said during Nikola’s second-quarter earnings call, to fund operations for another 12 months — but more money will be needed before long.

“Given our target of keeping 12 months of liquidity on hand at the end of each quarter, we will continue to seek the right opportunities to replenish our liquidity on an ongoing basis while trying to minimize dilution to our shareholders,” Brady said. “We are carefully considering how we can potentially spend less without compromising our critical programs and reduce cash requirements for 2023.”

Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner estimates Nikola will need to raise between $550 million and $650 million before the end of the year, and more later on. He has a “hold” rating on Nikola with a price target of $8. The stock trades for $6 as of Friday’s close.

Lordstown

Lordstown Motors gave rides in prototypes of its upcoming electric endurance pickup truck on June 21, 2021 as part of its “Lordstown Week” event.

Michael Wayland/CNBC

Lordstown Motors is in perhaps the most precarious position of the lot, with just $236 million on hand as of the end of June.

Like Nikola, Lordstown saw its stock price collapse after its founder was forced out following a short-seller’s allegations of fraud. The company shifted away from a factory model to a contract-manufacturing arrangement like Fisker’s, and it completed a deal in May to sell its Ohio factory, a former General Motors plant, to Foxconn for a total of about $258 million.

Foxconn plans to use the factory to manufacture EVs for other companies, including Lordstown’s Endurance pickup and an upcoming small Fisker EV called the Pear.

Despite the considerable challenges ahead for Lordstown, Deutsche Bank’s Rosner still has a “hold” rating on the stock. But he’s not sanguine. He thinks the company will need to raise $50 million to $75 million to fund operations through the end of this year, despite its decision to limit the first production batch of the endurance to just 500 units.

“More importantly, to complete the production of this first batch, management will have to raise more substantial capital in 2023,” Rosner wrote after Lordstown’s second-quarter earnings report. And given the company’s difficulties to date, that won’t be easy.

“Lordstown would have to demonstrate considerable traction and positive reception for the endurance with its initial customers in order to raise capital,” he wrote.

Rosner rates Lordstown’s stock a “hold” with a price target of $2. The stock closed Friday at $2.06.

Categories
Business

In a World Let Free, Video Sport Makers Are ‘Doubling Down’

In a World Let Loose, Video Game Makers Are ‘Doubling Down’

At the height of the pandemic, people stuck indoors spent the time playing tons of video games.

Now that countries are slowly opening up again, this behavior will change. And video game makers have warned that when people go outside, their sales will fall and game spending could fall for the first time in at least a decade.

But the companies do not reduce the anticipation. Far from it.

Consider Riot Games, which makes League of Legends. “We’re doubling up,” said Nicolo Laurent, the company’s managing director. “We’re hiring like crazy.”

Then there is Microsoft’s Xbox. “Our gaming investment has never been higher,” said Phil Spencer, who runs the business.

Video game companies are among the pandemic winners saying they continue to plan to move at full steam even after the coronavirus bans that have propelled their businesses over the past 15 months have largely been lifted. Other tech companies that thrived while supplying an out-of-the-way society – including Zoom and Peloton – have also announced they will continue to spend, expand operations and hire new staff.

It’s a counter-intuitive bet. However, some of the companies said they could use the cash they had in store from the gust of wind of the year to return to the growth path they were on before the pandemic accelerated it.

“This is a great time for the industry,” said Strauss Zelnick, general manager of Take-Two Interactive, which makes the NBA 2K and Grand Theft Auto video games. He said the pandemic has made gambling more accessible to a wider audience, and rather than pulling back, “we are investing to grow to meet that demand.”

When industry predicted a slowdown in growth in the past, companies often cut costs, but those downturns and rallies were usually unpredictable due to falling stock markets and recessions, said Bill Pearce, assistant dean at the Haas School of Business from the University of California, Berkeley.

As the pandemic subsides, coronavirus vaccines and predictions of how people will react when the world opens up means companies have “more clarity and more confidence in investing,” Pearce said. Some industries that followed conventional wisdom and slowed down, such as car dealerships, are now kneeling on their knees for failing to meet increasing demand, he said.

However, John Paul Rollert, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said that moving forward in the face of changing behavior is a risky and rewarding approach.

“They really play high-stakes poker,” said Mr. Rollert. Still, as the economy recovered and money sloshed around, he added, “You can see why these companies might think, ‘Covid has been good to us, but maybe post-Covid will be great for us.'”

Newzoo, a gaming analytics firm, has forecast that people will spend $ 175.8 billion on games this year, down 1 percent from 2020. This would be the first drop since Newzoo began tracking spending in 2012.

In business today

Updated

May 28, 2021 at 12:54 p.m. ET

Take-Two announced earlier this month that sales will decrease 30 percent year over year for the next quarter and 8 percent for the fiscal year. Activision Blizzard, which makes the war game Call of Duty, forecast an 11 percent year-on-year revenue decline for the next quarter.

“It’s hard to imagine that there will be as much money or game time or as many players as the industry has benefited over the last year, at least in the immediate future,” said Matthew Ball, managing partner at Epyllion Industries, which operates a company Capital fund that invests in gambling.

Other challenges, such as a global chip shortage that is limiting the availability of new video game consoles from Microsoft and Sony, and a lack of blockbuster games after a year of remote work made game development even more difficult than normal.

However, game makers said they were not concerned, especially after such huge pandemic growth.

In January, Microsoft reported quarterly sales of $ 5 billion with games for the first time, partly due to a new generation of Xbox consoles. The company bought ZeniMax Media, which publishes games like Skyrim and Fallout, in September for $ 7.5 billion.

Microsoft’s gaming business is now aiming to expand in countries like Africa by promoting the cloud gaming service xCloud, Spencer said. In cloud gaming, games are hosted in a company’s data center and broadcast to consumers’ devices so they don’t have to install the games or use expensive hardware.

“If you look at the last decade, gaming has seen a double-digit growth pattern,” said Spencer. “The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated.”

At Take-Two, based in New York, profits rose 46 percent last year. The company has hired around 700 game developers in the past 12 months, expanded its workforce by 10 percent, and invested heavily in technology and marketing, Zelnick said.

“In many ways, it’s an investment year where we’re building for the future,” he said.

Niantic, the San Francisco-based company that produced the mobile game Pokemon Go, expects to increase its workforce by about 25 percent to nearly 900 employees this year, said John Hanke, its managing director. The company was preparing to launch two new games, one based on the Settlers of Catan board game and the other based on the Pikmin franchise. Eight more are in development.

At Riot in Los Angeles, a post-pandemic downturn was “not even an issue for discussion,” Laurent said. Revenue for the privately held company rose 20 percent last year.

(Mr. Laurent has dealt with allegations and complaints from employees that Riot is a sexist workplace. He was sued in January for sexual harassment and retaliation. He has denied the allegations.)

Riot plans to hire 1,000 employees this year, increasing its workforce by 33 percent, Laurent said. In addition to expanding its flagship League of Legends title, Riot is investing in esports leagues for its first-person shooter game Valorant and for Wild Rift, a modified version of League of Legends played on mobile phones. The company is also building two new studios in Shanghai and Seattle this year and plans to open five more locations over the next three years.

“Gambling will be the center of influence,” said Laurent in the 21st century. “The pandemic is just giving us a small boost.”

Categories
Health

Sweet Makers Sue THC Lookalikes

Candy Makers Sue THC Lookalikes

Auf den ersten Blick scheint das Skittles-Paket genau so zu sein wie das, das im Süßigkeitengang eines Supermarkts verkauft wird: Es enthält Blockbuchstaben, die mit Weiß gefüllt sind, einen fließenden Regenbogen und eine rote Süßigkeit, die den Punkt über dem Buchstaben „i“ ersetzt.

Ein genauerer Blick zeigt einige kleine Unterschiede: ein Hintergrundmuster aus kleinen, stilisierten Marihuana-Blättern; ein Warnschild; und Zahlen, die die Menge an THC, der berauschenden Substanz in Cannabis, in jedem Stück Süßigkeiten offenbaren.

Die Bilder sind in einer Klage enthalten, die der Wm. Die Wrigley Jr. Company, im Besitz des Süßigkeiten-Giganten Mars Inc., hat im Mai gegen fünf Unternehmen Klage wegen des Verkaufs von mit Cannabis infundierten Lebensmitteln eingereicht, die wie unsere alten Freunde Skittles, Starburst und Life Savers aussehen. Obwohl sich die Klage auf Rechte an geistigem Eigentum konzentriert, argumentieren die Kläger auch, dass die Nachahmerprodukte dazu führen könnten, dass Menschen, insbesondere Kinder, fälschlicherweise Drogen einnehmen.

Eine Sprecherin von Mars Inc. schrieb in einer E-Mail, dass das Unternehmen von den Produkten „zutiefst gestört“ sei.

Amerika befindet sich an einem interessanten Scheideweg: Big Candy, der in der Wellness-Ära als Hauptquelle für raffinierten Zucker verunglimpft wurde, ist zu einem unwahrscheinlichen Sheriff im Wilden Westen des Marihuana-Freizeitkonsums geworden, der von Erwachsenen mit Pandemiestress durchstreift wird.

In den letzten Jahren hat die Hershey Company (gegen TinctureBelle für Produkte, die Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Heath Riegeln, Almond Joy Riegeln und Yorker Pfefferminzpastetchen ähneln), Mondelez International (gegen ein Unternehmen, das Stoney feilscht) Klagen eingereicht, die denen von Wrigley ähneln Patch Kids) und Ferrara Candy Company (gegen ein Geschäft, das Medicated Nerds Rope verkauft). Diese Klagen wurden alle beigelegt, und die kleineren Unternehmen stimmten zu, die Produktion und den Verkauf der beanstandeten Produkte einzustellen.

Viele Beamte des öffentlichen Gesundheitswesens befürchten, dass Fälle von versehentlicher Einnahme bei Kindern ohne angemessene Regulierung weiter zunehmen werden, wenn die Verfügbarkeit von Lebensmitteln zunimmt. Einige Giftnotrufzentralen haben diesen Trend bereits in ihren Daten beobachtet.

Beispielsweise gab es in den ersten neun Monaten des Jahres 2020 in Washington State 122 Fälle von THC-Exposition bei Kindern unter 5 Jahren, verglichen mit 85 im gleichen Zeitraum des Jahres 2019. Die häufigsten berichteten Nebenwirkungen waren Erbrechen, Lethargie und Brustschmerzen .

Während viele essbare Unternehmen, die in Staaten tätig sind, in denen medizinisches Cannabis oder Freizeit-Cannabis legal ist, sich bemühen, ihre lokalen Vorschriften einzuhalten, blüht der illegale Markt immer noch.

“Wenn Unternehmen wie diese Schlagzeilen machen, um das zu tun, was wir bei Wana absichtlich vermieden haben, bin ich wütend und frustriert”, sagte Joe Hodas, Chief Marketing Officer bei Wana Brands, einem Unternehmen in Colorado, das mit Cannabis infundierte Produkte verkauft.

Eine kürzlich durchgeführte Überprüfung der Websites von Angeklagten im Wrigley-Anzug ergab mit Cannabis infundierte Angebote wie Stoner Patch Dummies, die Worlds Dankest Gushers, Gasheads Xtremes Sourfuls, Trips Ahoy, Buttafingazzz und Caribo Happy Cola.

“Die Situation ist immer ungeheuerlicher geworden”, sagte Christopher Gindlesperger, ein Sprecher der National Confectioners Association, einer Handelsorganisation in DC mit 350 Mitgliedern, darunter Mars Inc., Hershey’s, Ferrara und Mondelez. „Die Cannabisunternehmen dürfen und sollten bestehende Marken nicht nach Belieben trüben dürfen. Das schafft Verwirrung bei den Verbrauchern. “

Eine Mehrheit der Staaten erlaubt jetzt die Verwendung von medizinischem Marihuana (Alabama ist gerade der Liste beigetreten), und 18 von ihnen, einschließlich New York, haben auch Freizeitmarihuana legalisiert. Obwohl der Verkauf in New York voraussichtlich frühestens 2022 beginnen wird, beeilen sich die Unternehmen, Immobilien zu kaufen und sich auf die Marktöffnung vorzubereiten. Einige verkaufen bereits aus Hanf gewonnenes Delta-8-THC in Süßigkeitenform.

Die Verbreitung der Legalisierung hat mehr Akteure und Verbraucher auf den Lebensmittelmarkt gebracht. „Essbares ist einfach. Sie sind tragbar. Sie müssen keinen Platz finden, um beiseite zu treten und zu rauchen “, sagte Sean Arnold, Gründer von Terradigm Consulting, das Cannabisunternehmen in Bezug auf Lizenzierung, Infrastruktur und Produktentwicklung berät.

Esswaren haben einen langen Weg von den Tagen der Pot Brownies zurückgelegt, als ein halbes Gebäck zu Stunden geschwächter Funktion oder zu gar nichts führen konnte. “Vor zehn Jahren war es das Glück der Auslosung, wenn Sie einen Brownie gekauft haben”, sagte Henry Wykowski, ein Anwalt, der sich seit 17 Jahren auf das Cannabisrecht konzentriert. “Du wusstest nicht, wo du landen würdest.”

Heutzutage sind lizenzierte Hersteller von Staaten verpflichtet, ihre Produkte auf ihre Wirksamkeit zu testen und Verpackungen mit der Menge an THC in jeder Dosis und in der gesamten Verpackung zu kennzeichnen. Einige Lebensmittelhersteller stellen Produkte mit geringen Mengen an THC her, so dass Unerfahrene mit Dosierungen experimentieren können.

Die Zugänglichkeit von Lebensmitteln und die Diskretion, die sie sich leisten, haben sie laut Surfside, einem Cannabis-Datenanalyseunternehmen in New York, zur am schnellsten wachsenden Kategorie bei Cannabis gemacht. Surfside schätzt, dass Lebensmittel das Wachstum des restlichen Cannabismarktes in den letzten drei Monaten um 29 Prozent gegenüber dem gleichen Zeitraum im Jahr 2020 übertroffen haben.

Herr Wykowski sagte, dass Übertretungen, die in der Vergangenheit großen Unternehmen wie Mars oder Hershey entgangen sein könnten, heute auf dem Radar stehen, “weil Cannabis jetzt ein großes Geschäft ist”.

Er unterrichtet einen Kurs über Cannabisrecht am Hastings College of the Law der Universität von Kalifornien, und eine der Sitzungen befasst sich mit Gesetzen in Bezug auf Ähnlichkeiten mit anderen Produkten. “Vor fünf oder zehn Jahren, als Cannabis anfing zu starten, war es ein Witz, so etwas wie Cap’n Punch zu haben, ein Müsli, das hineingegossen wurde”, sagte Wykowski. “Aber die Branche ist gereift, und die Leute, die wissen, was sie tun, verhalten sich nicht mehr so.”

Trotzdem arbeitet er regelmäßig mit Lebensmittelunternehmen zusammen, die Unterlassungserklärungen von Süßwarenunternehmen erhalten. Die meisten dieser Fälle erreichen die Gerichte nicht. “Neunzig Prozent der Zeit werden die Leute auf den Brief schauen und aufhören”, sagte Wykowski.

Die meisten legalen Cannabisunternehmen bemühen sich, die Vorschriften genau zu befolgen.

Lightshade, das neun Apotheken in der Region Denver betreibt, verfügt über ein achtköpfiges Compliance- und Auditteam unter der Leitung von Charisse Harris. Frau Harris sagte, dass es vier Kontrollpunkte gibt, an denen ein Produkt bewertet wird, und dass ihre Prüfer jede Woche stichprobenartige Kontrollen in den Geschäften durchführen.

Einige rote Fahnen enthalten Produkte, die eine Wiederholung des Wortes „Süßigkeiten“ enthalten (z. B. „Kandy“ oder „Süßigkeiten“), und solche, die nicht in Verpackungen geliefert werden, die den staatlichen Anforderungen in Bezug auf die Sicherheit von Kindern entsprechen, sagte Frau Harris. “Ich sage nicht viel”, fügte sie hinzu.

Die Einhaltung wird für Unternehmen, die in verschiedenen Bundesstaaten tätig sind, komplizierter, da es keine bundesstaatlichen Vorschriften für Cannabis gibt.

“In Florida sind unsere Verpackungen schwarzweiß und es gibt keine Bilder”, sagte Hodas über Wana, das in 11 Bundesstaaten und in Kanada tätig ist. Die Gummis haben eine schlichte, cremefarbene Farbe. In Colorado hingegen zeigt der Wana-Behälter ein Bild von rosa Wassermelonenscheiben, und die Gummis haben einen reichen Korallenfarbton.

Es gibt drei Hauptaspekte einer Süßigkeit, die durch Marken- und Urheberrechtsgesetze geschützt werden können, sagte Nancy J. Mertzel, eine auf das Recht des geistigen Eigentums spezialisierte Anwältin.

Nimm Hersheys Küsse. “Sie haben den Namen Kisses, der eine Marke ist, die Form der Süßigkeiten selbst, die sowohl eine Marke als auch ein Handelskleid ist, und die Verpackung, die urheberrechtlich geschützt ist”, sagte Frau Mertzel.

Frau Mertzel sagte, andere mögliche Schutzmaßnahmen für geistiges Eigentum seien Patente – zum Beispiel hat Mars Patente für seine Schokolade beantragt, die widerstandsfähiger gegen Schmelzen ist als andere Formulierungen – und Gesetze über Geschäftsgeheimnisse. Das bekannteste Beispiel für ein Geschäftsgeheimnis ist die Coca-Cola-Formel. eine andere ist Hellmanns Mayonnaise.

Der Fall, den Wrigley gegen die Cannabis-Nachahmer gebracht hat, ist unkompliziert, sagte Frau Mertzel. “Ich verstehe zweifellos Wrigleys Bedenken, sein geistiges Eigentum von Dritten nutzen zu lassen, und diese Bedenken verschärfen sich, wenn es sich um ein Produkt handelt, das Kinder wirklich nicht bekommen sollten”, sagte Frau Mertzel.

Sie verglich die Bedenken hinsichtlich der öffentlichen Gesundheit mit denen, die viel diskutiert wurden, als die Tabakindustrie in den 1960er Jahren Cartoons verwendete, um Kinder anzusprechen. Sogar die Flintstones waren dabei, und Fred und Barney bewarben Winston-Zigaretten in einem berüchtigten Werbespot.

Andrew Brisbo, der Exekutivdirektor der Marihuana Regulatory Agency in Michigan, sagte, dass die Verhinderung des Zugangs von Jugendlichen zu Cannabis eine der Hauptfunktionen des von ihm überwachten Programms ist. Und Lebensmittel sind oberstes Gebot.

“Wenn wir uns den versehentlichen Konsum ansehen, sind Lebensmittel ein Hauptproblem”, sagte Brisbo. “Ein junger Mensch wird nicht versehentlich eine Marihuana-Zigarette rauchen.”

Gillian Schauer, eine Beraterin für öffentliche Gesundheit und Politik, die mit einer Reihe von Staaten in Fragen der Cannabispolitik zusammengearbeitet hat, sagte, dass es aus Sicht der öffentlichen Gesundheitspolitik zwei potenzielle Probleme mit Lebensmitteln gibt: Überkonsum und versehentlicher Konsum.

Da es eine Weile dauern kann, bis essbare Produkte eingesetzt werden, beeilen sich die Menschen manchmal, mehr zu essen, ohne auf die ersten Effekte zu warten. Einige unerfahrene Konsumenten wissen nicht, wie viel THC sie konsumieren sollen, und sind nicht über die möglichen Auswirkungen von Cannabis informiert. Eine niedrig dosierte Menge wird als 1 bis 2 Milligramm THC angesehen, aber die Auswirkungen hängen von vielen Faktoren ab, wie dem Körpergewicht und der Menge an Lebensmitteln, die der Verbraucher an diesem Tag gegessen hat.

Der versehentliche Verzehr kann jeden betreffen, aber Dr. Schauer sagte: “Er hat vor allem Kinder betroffen, weil sie essbare Cannabisprodukte mit anderen essbaren Produkten verwechseln können, weil die meisten Lebensmittel wie Süßigkeiten, Kekse oder Kuchen aussehen.” Sie wies auf Berichte hin, die 2012 von Giftnotrufzentralen in Colorado und Washington, den beiden frühesten Staaten zur Legalisierung des Cannabiskonsums in der Freizeit, erstellt wurden.

Zwischen 2014 und 2018 verdreifachten sich die jährlichen Aufrufe an das Washington Poison Center, wonach Kinder unter 5 Jahren unbeabsichtigt Cannabis ausgesetzt waren, fast von 34 auf 94. 2017 forderte der Bundesstaat Washington, dass alle Lebensmittel ein Logo mit der Aufschrift „Not for Kids“ (Nicht für Kinder) haben müssen ( nicht, dass dies einem 2-Jährigen viel bedeuten würde).

In Colorado sind Lebensmittel die führende Methode, mit der Kinder unter 5 Jahren versehentlich Cannabis konsumieren. Im Jahr 2019 waren in Colorado 108 Personen unter 19 Jahren versehentlich Cannabis ausgesetzt. Im Jahr 2011, dem Jahr vor der Legalisierung der Freizeitnutzung durch den Staat, waren es 16.

Wie in Washington erfordert Colorado jetzt die Verpackung von Lebensmitteln mit einem Warnsymbol. Der Staat verbietet auch die Verwendung des Wortes „Süßigkeiten“ auf Marihuana-Verpackungen und den Verkauf von Lebensmitteln, die wie Menschen, Tiere oder Obst aussehen.

Dr. Schauer sagte, dass andere Möglichkeiten, das Risiko einer versehentlichen Einnahme zu verringern, darin bestehen, kindersichere Verpackungen vorzuschreiben, dass jedes essbare Produkt in einer Verpackung einzeln verpackt werden muss, die Wirksamkeit jedes einzelnen essbaren Gegenstands zu begrenzen und Verbraucher, die mit Kindern leben, über die Aufbewahrung ihrer Produkte aufzuklären Cannabisprodukte.

Es sei wichtig, Pakete zu machen, die einem Kind nicht auffallen, sagte sie. In Kanada beispielsweise, wo Cannabis legal ist, schreibt das Bundesgesetz vor, dass Verpackungen eine einheitliche Farbe und eine glatte Textur haben müssen und keine ausgeschnittenen Fenster, Düfte, Geräusche oder Einsätze (unter anderem).

Trotz der strengen kanadischen Gesetze wurde erst Mitte Mai ein Kind in der Provinz New Brunswick ins Krankenhaus eingeliefert, nachdem es nach Angaben der Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Stoneo-Kekse gegessen hatte, die wie Oreos aussehen sollten.

In Amerika sind die staatlichen Gesetze weit weniger streng; Zum größten Teil verbieten sie die Aufnahme von Zeichentrickfiguren und geben allgemeine Aussagen darüber ab, wie die Verpackung ein Kind nicht ansprechen sollte.

“Die Risiken können viel begrenzter sein, als wir sie bisher gesehen haben”, sagte Dr. Schauer.

Herr Hodas hat drei Kinder im Alter von 12, 17 und 19. Er ist seit mehr als sieben Jahren in der Cannabisindustrie tätig. Wenn er Produkte zu Hause hat, bewahrt er sie in Taschen von StashLogix auf. Es mag einen motivierten 15-Jährigen nicht verlangsamen, aber es wird ein Kleinkind aufhalten, sagte er.

“Wenn Sie es verschlossen haben und an einem Ort aufbewahren, an dem sie es nicht erreichen oder sehen können, ist dies der beste Weg, um die Einnahme zu verhindern”, sagte Hodas.

Für Eltern eines bestimmten Alters könnte die Situation an die öffentliche Bekanntmachung „Wir sind keine Süßigkeiten“ aus dem Jahr 1983 erinnern, in der ein Barbershop-Quartett aus Gesangstabletten im Fernsehen Kindern rät, „eine gesunde Angst vor uns zu haben“.

Dass die Produkte, die jetzt geprüft werden, eine Form von Süßigkeiten sind, die nur verbessert wurden – und dass niemand mehr denselben Bildschirm sieht -, macht es schwierig, sich ein Marihuana-Mem so unvergesslich vorzustellen.

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Business

In Antitrust Trial, Tim Cook dinner Argues Apple Doesn’t Harm App Makers

In Antitrust Trial, Tim Cook Argues Apple Doesn’t Hurt App Makers

Tim Cook, who testified on Friday in a lawsuit that could undermine Apple’s efforts to stave off growing control of its power, defended his company on allegations that it harmed app makers looking to increase their profits.

Mr. Cook, who took the stand for the first time as CEO of Apple, answered friendly questions from an Apple attorney and faced targeted questions from both an opposing attorney and the federal judge who will rule the case.

The results of the study could maintain or improve Apple’s dominance in the $ 100 billion app market. Epic Games, creator of the popular game Fortnite, is suing Apple, claiming the iPhone maker created a monopoly on its App Store and is using that power to take an unfair cut from other companies that rely on the App Store to Reach customers.

An epic win would enliven a growing cartel war against Apple. Federal and state regulators are scrutinizing Apple’s control over the App Store, and the European Union recently accused Apple of violating antitrust laws over its app rules and fees. Apple is facing two more federal lawsuits over its App Store fees – one from developers and one from iPhone owners – that are seeking class action lawsuit status.

Mr. Cook’s testimony came towards the end of a three-week lawsuit in federal court in Oakland, Calif., Dealing with the performance Apple gets from its App Store and 30 percent commission on the sale of most digital goods and subscriptions.

He entered the courthouse on Friday morning from an underground parking garage rather than the main entrance, which enabled him to avoid photographers gathering in front of the building. At around 7:30 am, journalists noticed he was going through security checks and shouted questions. Mr. Cook, wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, and gray tie, held up his hand in a peace sign.

For over an hour, an Apple attorney led Mr. Cook through complaints against Apple, allowing him to explain why Apple did business in certain ways – and why it did no harm to app developers.

Mr Cook testified that Apple faced stiff competition and said commissions Apple collected from app developers helped fund better security in the App Store. “There’s a conflict between what the developer wants and what the consumer wants,” he said. He added that Apple has cut app store fees for many developers who are much smaller than Epic.

In a cross-examination, an epic attorney targeted Mr Cook’s credibility and asked why Mr Cook said he was unaware of some of the details of Apple’s business, including the App Store profit margins, which an outside expert testified on behalf of Epic said , could be up to 80 percent.

Mr. Cook said that was wrong. He said the App Store was profitable, but Apple hadn’t tried to pinpoint exactly how profitable it was, partly because it would be difficult to structure Apple’s costs.

Epic’s attorney denied this claim, showing internal Apple documents from Mr. Cook showing that the company could calculate the profitability of the App Store. Mr. Cook countered that the documents showed incomplete figures.

Epic’s attorney then moved on to an issue affecting the lawsuit, but it seemed to illustrate Apple’s hypocrisy: The way the company operates in China undermines Apple’s public enthusiasm for consumer privacy. The New York Times reported this week that Apple had compromised its Chinese users’ data and supported the Chinese government’s censorship by proactively removing apps.

While Mr Cook said Apple must obey laws in China, Epic’s attorney noted that other companies dissatisfied with Chinese policies had left the country. “I don’t know anyone in the smartphone business who doesn’t sell to China,” replied Cook.

The most worrying moment for Mr. Cook and Apple was the end of his testimony when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California participated in Mr. Cook’s questioning.

Throughout the trial, Judge Gonzalez Rogers posed specific questions to Apple and Epic witnesses, and her back and forth with Mr. Cook on Friday resulted in a particularly intense scrutiny of Apple’s arguments. Why couldn’t Apple allow iPhone owners to have more options to buy apps, she asked, especially if that meant lower prices for consumers?

“If you let people leak like this, we would essentially be giving up our total return on our intellectual property,” replied Mr. Cook.

The judge asked if Apple’s decision last year to reduce commission on app sales for developers making less than $ 1 million a year was aimed at distracting the review of Apple’s App Store policies. Mr Cook admitted that testing was a factor, but added that Apple primarily wanted to help small developers who were hit by a weak economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers then launched a poll that found 39 percent of app developers were dissatisfied with Apple’s management of the App Store. “It doesn’t seem to me that you are again feeling any real pressure or competition to actually change the way you act to address developer concerns,” she said.

The judge’s biggest challenge in ruling the case may be to define the market that Epic and Apple are contending over.

Epic lawyers have argued that these are iPhone apps and that a game maker needs to walk through Apple’s “walled garden” to reach the more than one billion people who use the devices. This stifles innovation, Epic claims, and allows Apple to enforce strict rules and harm app developers by charging excessive fees. The company wants to host its own digital storefront within Apple.

Mr Cook said on Friday that “I am not a gamer,” but he argued that Epic distributes its games in a number of ways, including web browsers, game consoles and personal computers. Many of these platforms charge a commission similar to that of the App Store. If gaming is the market, Apple has argued, then there are a lot of competitors – like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo – and Apple cannot have a monopoly.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers expressed frustration with the market semantics. “One side will say it’s black, the other say it’s white – usually it’s somewhere in the gray,” she said last week.

At the beginning of the study, Trystan Kosmynka, Apple’s senior director, testified that the company rejected 40 percent of all app submissions in 2020. Apple cannot effectively monitor which apps get onto iPhones when Epic has its own app store. Said Kosmynka.

Epic responded with a flurry of internal Apple emails showing times when malicious apps got past Mr. Kosmynka’s team. An app released during the summer protests against Black Lives Matter was a game that allowed users to shoot cannons at protesters.

Apple tried to show why allowing an app store on an app store can be problematic. Lawyers criticized Epic’s digital business for not keeping controls tight enough, saying companies managed to use it to sell games they described as “offensive and sexualized.”

In an attempt to tie Epic to inappropriate content, Richard Doren, an Apple attorney, brought up Peely, a comic banana in Fortnite who is sometimes wearing a tuxedo and sometimes naked. Mr Doren implied that it would have been inappropriate to show Peely in federal court without a tuxedo. Matthew Weissinger, Vice President Marketing at Epic, made it clear that Peely, naked or suitable, wasn’t scandalous.

“It’s just a banana man,” he said.

The battle between the companies began in August when Epic broke Apple’s rules by bypassing Apple’s payment system in the Fortnite app. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, and Epic immediately sued the company and launched an advertising campaign around the suit.

On the first day of the trial, Epic’s chief executive Tim Sweeney testified that his company filed a lawsuit because he wanted to show the world the consequences of Apple’s policies. Judge Gonzalez Rogers cut him off and asked if Mr. Sweeney knew of another developer lawsuit against Apple.

Mr. Sweeney said he did.

“And you just ignored that and went alone,” replied the judge.

The trial will complete on Monday, but Judge Gonzalez Rogers said a decision would likely take months. “Hopefully before August 13th,” she said. She also said her decision would likely be challenged, meaning the process could only be the first chapter of a lengthy battle.

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Business

Covid vaccine makers’ shares seesaw after U.S. says it would again patent waivers

Covid vaccine makers' shares seesaw after U.S. says it will back patent waivers

A healthcare worker fills a syringe with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. At the Giorgio Companies site in Blandon, PA where the CATE Mobile Vaccination Unit was on site to deliver Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to workers on Wednesday morning April 14, 2021.

Ben Hasty | MediaNews Group | Getty Images

Stocks of two Covid vaccine makers fluctuated Thursday after the Biden government announced it would support a motion before the World Trade Organization to forego patent protection for the mRNA technology used to manufacture the vaccines.

Pfizer was down as much as 5% on Thursday from Wednesday’s close of trading, while Moderna fell nearly 12% before both stocks made up for most of those losses. The companies use the same mRNA technology to make their recordings.

Pfizer, which makes its Covid-19 vaccine with German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, closed about 1% that day, while Moderna lost about 1.4% that day.

South Africa and India are urging US officials and the WTO to temporarily forego patent protection so developing countries can manufacture life-saving vaccines until world leaders can bring the pandemic under control. Human rights organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Amnesty International have all signed letters in support of the proposal.

US sales representative Katherine Tai released a statement Wednesday evening in support of the waiver.

“This is a global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” she said. “The government firmly believes that protecting intellectual property, but in the service of ending this pandemic, supports the removal of this protection for COVID-19 vaccines.”

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told investors on a earnings call Thursday that he had “not lost a minute of sleep” on the news and said traders’ concerns were false.

Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca both use an adenovirus, a common type of virus that typically causes mild cold symptoms, to make their Covid vaccines. The stocks of these two companies barely changed on Thursday.

President Joe Biden made an election promise last year to “absolutely positively” renounce vaccination patents. The waiver of patent protection can take months or even years.

Critics of the move say that developing countries do not have the infrastructure to produce the vaccines, others disagree.

Analysts largely shook off the news.

“We believe a new manufacturing operation can take 6 to 9 months to scale up, effectively limiting the impact of other manufacturers. While we expect the headlines to put pressure on MRNA, we don’t see any significant practical impact from this news,” said the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a research report Thursday.

Bank of America analysts cited “obstacles to vaccine development, including sourcing raw materials, developing manufacturing and engineering know-how.” They also note that “US support does not mean approval when WTO decisions require consensus and other members such as the EU, UK, Japan and Switzerland are currently opposed to surrendering intellectual property.”

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against the exemptions together with these countries on Thursday. “The limiting factor in the manufacture of vaccines is the production capacity and high quality standards, not the patents,” a Merkel spokeswoman said in a statement.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, did not accept the waiver plan and stated in a speech that she was “ready to discuss proposals that would address the crisis in an effective and pragmatic way”.

Both Pfizer and Moderna already have plans to produce billions of cans in the meantime, leaving essentially all competitors far behind in the manufacturing process.

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World News

Chinese language electrical automotive makers goal Europe as competitors heats up

Chinese electric car makers target Europe as competition heats up

Nio plans to begin delivering its ET7 electric sedan from 2022.

Evelyn Cheng | CNBC

SHANGHAI – After the final year of growth in the world’s largest auto market, China’s electric car startups are ramping up their plans to take over Europe.

The Chinese authorities have only begun lifting restrictions on full foreign ownership of local automobile production in the last few years. More than a decade ago, Beijing spent billions of dollars developing its own electric vehicles.

This has helped local players get a head start in making battery powered cars that they are now looking to sell overseas. Goldman Sachs analysts predict that in four years’ time, due to new government guidelines, electric cars will have a larger share of auto sales in Europe and the US than in China, despite the fact that this is the largest market.

The US-listed company Nio has announced that it will enter Europe in the second half of the year. And on Monday, co-founder and president Lihong Qin said the company expected to make an official announcement of such an expansion within a month.

He did not name a specific country and stated that after Europe, Nio still intended to enter the US market.

Amid tensions with the US and attempts to secure an investment deal with Europe, China exported 63,500 all-battery electric vehicles in the first eleven months of last year. This comes from a January report by the China Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products. While Saudi Arabia and Egypt were the top travel destinations for Chinese cars overall last year, the report saw significant growth in vehicle exports to the UK, Belgium and Germany.

The US-listed company Xpeng is already testing the waters in Norway, where the start-up delivered 100 units of its G3 electric SUV in December.

Later this year, Xpeng hopes to see how customers in Northern Europe react to its P7 electric sedan, said He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO. He is recruiting new employees and planning to start a business in the region before venturing into Western and Eastern Europe.

Another Chinese electric car startup, Aiways, said it exported more than 1,000 vehicles to Israel and Europe in the first three months of this year.

“It’s no secret that most Chinese EV startups have global ambitions,” said Tu Le, founder of Beijing-based consulting firm Sino Auto Insights. “This will continue as these companies pursue growth and value and see opportunities because there are no viable electric vehicle products in the region.”

He said that with enough local research, some of the Chinese companies in Europe could thrive.

However, the growth in Chinese electric car sales to Europe remains a tiny part of the market.

China accounted for less than 2% of the EU’s car imports in 2019, and the value of 865 million euros means a year-on-year growth of 79%, according to the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers.

In contrast, EU-owned automakers produced nearly 6 million passenger cars in China in 2018, accounting for nearly a quarter of total Chinese automobile production, the association said.

Increasing competition in China

The overseas Chinese startup company comes in when the home market warms up. Nios Qin said the entry of tech companies like Apple and Huawei into the industry creates fierce competition for the automaker.

Tesla is the market leader in the automotive sector and is expanding local production. According to the China Passenger Car Association, the Model 3 was the top-selling electric car in China last year.

With the exception of two mini-electric cars, the association said the next best vehicle in this category would be Aion’s S model, a new energy brand that was spun off from Chinese state-owned automaker GAC. A more expensive model from Nio took ninth place, while Xpeng did not make the top ten list.

“Chinese consumers are increasingly understanding new energy vehicles,” said Qiu Liangping, Aion’s planning director, according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks. In addition to making battery charging easier, Chinese buyers are looking for a better driving experience than fossil-fuel cars with internet-enabled features.

The brand also has its eye on the international market, said Qiu. Prior to the spin-off, Aion and GAC’s Trumpchi brand were already selling cars in Israel, the Middle East and South America.

As the automotive industry continues to move into the electrical space, traditional US and German auto companies are launching their own electric vehicles – many in the Chinese market first.

For example, General Motors’ Cadillac brand presented its Lyriq electric car at the Shanghai Auto Show. According to the company, pre-orders in China will start later this year.

Ford also used the show to unveil its locally made version of the Mustang Mach-e electric car, as well as an Evos SUV developed largely in China that will only be available in the country.

Volkswagen unveiled a third electric car for China, the ID.6, in Shanghai. The German automaker aims to have at least 70% of its cars sold in Europe and at least 50% in North America and China by 2030.

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Business

Taiwan’s Drought Pits Chip Makers In opposition to Farmers

Taiwan's Drought Pits Chip Makers Against Farmers

HSINCHU, Taiwan – Chuang Cheng-deng’s humble rice farm is a stone’s throw from the nerve center of Taiwan’s computer chip industry, whose products power much of the world’s iPhones and other devices.

This year, Mr. Chuang pays the prize for the economic importance of his high-tech neighbors. Taiwan has been hit by drought and crawling to save water for homes and factories, and has stopped irrigation on tens of thousands of acres of farmland.

The authorities compensate the producers for the loss of income. However, 55-year-old Chuang fears that the thwarted harvest will lead customers to seek other suppliers, which could mean years of poor revenue.

“The government uses money to shut the farmers’ mouths,” he said, studying his parched brown fields.

Officials call Taiwan’s drought the worst in more than half a century. And it depicts the tremendous challenges associated with hosting the island’s semiconductor industry, which is an increasingly indispensable hub in the global supply chains for smartphones, automobiles, and other cornerstones of modern life.

Chip makers use a lot of water to clean their factories and wafers, the thin silicon disks that form the basis of the chips. And with global semiconductor supplies already being weighed down by soaring demand for electronics, the added uncertainty about Taiwan’s water supply is unlikely to allay concerns about the tech world’s reliance on the island, and particularly on a chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

More than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing capacity is in Taiwan and operated by TSMC, which makes chips for Apple, Intel, and other big names. The company announced last week that it would invest $ 100 billion over the next three years to increase capacity, which is likely to further strengthen its preeminent market presence.

The drought has not affected production so far, according to TSMC. With Taiwan’s rainfall becoming unpredictable despite the growth of the tech industry, the island must make ever greater efforts to maintain the flow of water.

For the past few months the government has flown planes and burned chemicals to sow the clouds over the reservoirs. A seawater desalination plant has been built in Hsinchu to house TSMC’s headquarters, as well as a pipeline connecting the city to the rainier north. It has directed the industry to reduce usage. In some places it has lowered the water pressure and cut the supply for two days a week. Some companies, including TSMC, have been pulling in truckloads of water from other areas.

The most comprehensive measure, however, has been to stop irrigation, which affects 183,000 acres of arable land, roughly one-fifth of Taiwan’s irrigated land.

“TSMC and these semiconductors don’t feel it at all,” said Tian Shou-shi, 63, a rice farmer in Hsinchu. “We farmers just want to be able to earn an honest living.”

In an interview, Taiwan Water Resources Agency’s assistant director Wang Yi-feng defended the government’s policies, saying the dry spell means crops will be poor even with access to irrigation. Redirecting scarce water to farms instead of factories and homes would be “lose-lose,” he said.

When asked about farmers’ water problems, a TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said it was “very important for every industry and business” to use water efficiently and noted TSMC’s involvement in a project to improve irrigation efficiency .

That Taiwan, one of the rainiest places in developed countries, should not have water is a paradox that borders on tragedy.

Much of the water used by the residents is deposited by the summer typhoons. But the storms also pour soil from Taiwan’s mountainous terrain into its reservoirs. This has gradually reduced the amount of water that reservoirs can hold.

The rains are also very different from year to year. Not a single typhoon landed in the rainy season last year, the first time since 1964.

Taiwan last stopped large-scale irrigation in 2015 and 2004 to save water.

“If the same conditions reappear in two or three years, we can say, ‘Ah, Taiwan has definitely entered an era of great water scarcity,” said You Jiing-yun, professor of civil engineering at National Taiwan University wait and see. “

In 2019, the TSMC facilities in Hsinchu used 63,000 tons of water per day, or more than 10 percent of the supply from two local reservoirs, Baoshan and Baoshan Second Reservoir, according to the company. TSMC recycled more than 86 percent of the water from its manufacturing processes this year, saving 3.6 million tons more than last year by stepping up recycling and taking other new measures. But that amount is still small next to the 63 million tons consumed at the Taiwanese plants in 2019.

Mr. Chuang’s business partner at his Hsinchu farm, Kuo Yu-ling, does not like demonizing the chip industry.

“If Hsinchu Science Park wasn’t as developed as it is today, we wouldn’t be in business,” said Ms. Kuo, 32, referring to the city’s main industrial area. TSMC engineers are important customers for their rice, she said.

But it is also wrong, said Ms. Kuo, to accuse farmers of devouring water while contributing little economically.

“Can’t we account fairly and precisely how much water farms use and how much water industry uses, and not constantly stigmatize agriculture?” She said.

The “biggest problem” behind Taiwan’s water problems is that the government is keeping water tariffs too low, said Wang Hsiao-wen, a professor of hydraulic engineering at National Cheng Kung University. This encourages waste.

Households in Taiwan use around 75 gallons of water per person every day, government figures show. Most Western Europeans use less than that, although Americans use more, according to the World Bank.

Mr. Wang of the Water Resources Agency said, “Adjusting water prices is having a major impact on more vulnerable groups in society. So we are extremely cautious about adjustments. ”Taiwan’s prime minister said last month that the government would consider adding fees to 1,800 water-intensive factories.

Lee Hong-yuan, a professor of hydraulic engineering who previously served as Taiwanese interior minister, also blames a bureaucratic quagmire that makes it difficult to build new wastewater recycling plants and modernize the pipeline network.

“Other small countries are all extremely flexible,” said Lee, “but we have the operating logic of a big country.” He believes this is because Taiwan’s government was established decades ago after the Chinese Civil War with the aim of ruling all of China. It has since lost that ambition, but not the bureaucracy.

Taiwan’s southwest is both an agricultural heartland and an emerging industrial hub. TSMC’s most modern chip facilities are located in the southern city of Tainan.

The nearby Tsengwen Reservoir has shrunk to a swampy stream in some places. Along a scenic strip known as Lovers’ Park, the bottom of the reservoir has become a vast moonscape. According to the government, the water volume is around 11.6 percent of the capacity.

In farming towns near Tainan, many growers said they were content, at least for the time being, to live on the government cent. They clear the weeds from their fallow fields. They drink tea with friends and go on long bike rides.

But they also count on their future. The Taiwanese public appears to have decided that growing rice is less important than semiconductors to both the island and the world. Heaven – or at least greater economic forces – seem to be telling farmers that it is time to find other work.

“Fertilizer is getting more and more expensive. Pesticides are getting more and more expensive, ”said Hsieh Tsai-shan, 74, a rice farmer. “Being a farmer really is the worst.”

Quiet farmland surrounds the village of Jingliao, which became a popular tourist spot after a documentary film about the changing lives of farmers.

There’s only one cow left in town. It spends its days attracting visitors and not plowing fields.

“Here, 70 counts as young,” said Yang Kuei-chuan, 69, a rice farmer.

Both of Mr. Yang’s sons work for industrial companies.

“If Taiwan had no industry and relied on agriculture, we might all have starved to death by now,” said Yang.

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Business

How Brexit Ruined Easter for Britain’s Chocolate Makers

How Brexit Ruined Easter for Britain’s Chocolate Makers

“We were told the product would arrive in France, so we set Calais as the entry point. It went to Rotterdam, where it stood for six weeks, ”he said. “Chocolate. Sitting in a warehouse. For six weeks.”

Through a freight forwarder, he managed to drop the import duty. He’s learned a lesson about filling out forms, but that expertise isn’t going to help him much.

“It is impossible to find shippers delivering to Europe,” he said, “because there is an inventory in the pipeline.”

At Coco Caravan, a chocolate maker in the Cotswolds, stasis has seen Europe jump from 15 percent of the company’s sales to zero. This has resulted in Jacques Cop, the owner, disappointing old customers and discouraging new customers. In the past few months, potential buyers in the Netherlands, France and Germany have expressed interest.

“They say,” We found you online and we love everything you do to be ethical and vegan. But how are you going to fight the import-export problem that we will have with the European Union? “Cop said.” We can’t give you a straight answer except, ‘Yes, there is an additional charge.’ “

Mr. Cop also faces a challenge that small UK chocolate makers have in common: importing raw materials from Europe. He stored cocoa from his preferred source in Amsterdam in 2020. Now that it is time to buy more, obstacles have emerged. Transportation costs have doubled, which is bad enough. But Mr Cop says his shipper is refusing to take new orders because he is concerned that a shipment between Amsterdam and the UK will be blocked.

“It’s to the point where I think about renting a Renault van and just driving to the Netherlands myself,” said Cop. “It’s a 10 hour drive at a time. But I’m not sure I have any other choice. “

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Business

Organizing Gravediggers, Cereal Makers and, Perhaps, Amazon Staff

Organizing Gravediggers, Cereal Makers and, Maybe, Amazon Employees

A group of gravedigger in Columbus, Ohio who just negotiated a 3 percent increase. The poultry factory that processes chicken nuggets for McDonald’s. The workers who make Cap’n Crunch in Iowa. The women’s shoe department on Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union is not the largest union in the United States, but it is possibly one of the most diverse. The total membership of around 100,000 workers seems to reach into every conceivable area of ​​the American economy and ranges from the cradle (they make tanner baby food) to the grave (these cemetery workers in Columbus).

And now it may be on the brink of breaking into Amazon, one of the world’s most dominant companies that has fought back any attempt to organize any part of its massive workforce in the US since its inception.

This month, a group of 5,800 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, votes to join RWDSU. It’s the first large-scale union vote in Amazon’s history, and a workers’ decision to organize would have an impact on the labor movement across the country, especially as retail giants like Amazon and Walmart gained power and added workers during the pandemic.

The Amazon campaign, said Stuart Appelbaum, union president, “is about the future of work and how working people will be treated in the new economy.”

For some labor activists, the union and its early success in the Bessemer camp are the avant-garde of modern organizing campaigns. It’s social downright and social media savvy – posting a TikTok video with the assistance of rapper Killer Mike, and tweeting a recommendation from the National Football League Players Association during the Super Bowl.

“It’s a bit of a weird duck union,” said Joshua Freeman, professor emeritus of labor history at Queens College, City University of New York. “They continue to transform over the years and have been very inventive in their tactics.”

The union is also racially, geographically and politically diverse. Founded during the heyday of organized labor in New York City in 1937 – and perhaps best known for representing workers at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s – most of its members now work in legal states in the South and the rural Midwest.

While the union’s overall membership has stagnated over the past decade, the membership in its office in the Middle South, which includes Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana, has nearly doubled from 4,700 in 2011 to about 9,000, reflecting aggressive recruitment efforts The poultry, storage and health industries can be traced back to the Union. More than half of the members across the country are paint workers.

In the Mid-South office that runs the organization at Amazon, local officials start almost every meeting with a prayer, lean in for gun rights, and say that about half of their members support Donald J. Trump’s re-election bid. (Unlike the national union, which President Biden publicly supported, the southern office did not issue endorsement for either candidate.)

“We are known as a church union,” said Randy Hadley, president of the Mid-South Council. “We put God first, family second, and then our work.”

The retail and wholesale workers union is led nationally by Mr. Appelbaum, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Democratic Party employee from Hartford, Connecticut, who has written about his identity as a gay Jewish labor leader.

Since becoming union president in 1998, Mr. Appelbaum has carved out a niche by organizing workers from a variety of professions: airline caterers, clerks in fast fashion stores, and gardeners in a cannabis grow house. “When you buy a joint, look for the union label,” Mr Appelbaum said jokingly.

The strategy has helped the union continue to thrive, even though its core workforce in brick and mortar retail stores continues to shrink when shopping goes online.

The union often links its organizing campaigns to the wider struggle to promote the rights of vulnerable workers, such as the predominantly gay, lesbian, trans, and non-binary clerks in sex toy stores in New York and undocumented immigrants working in the city’s car washes.

After World War II, the union campaigned for black soldiers who became unemployed at Macy’s, who paid the highest commissions. “It has a history of being a militant, lively, left-wing crowd,” said Professor Freeman.

Even the Alabama office, which has leaned further to the right on some issues, has advocated workers in locally unpopular ways.

Mr Hadley said one of his greatest accomplishments was negotiating a paid leave on Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan at a Tyson poultry factory in Tennessee that employs large numbers of Somali immigrants.

“We had Muslims in the facility, they said, ‘We’ll look like Christmas this day,’ and I thought, ‘Who should I judge? “Recalled Mr. Hadley, a former meat cutter.” I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ “

Recognition…Retail, wholesale and department store union

The Muslim holiday, ratified in 2008, replaced the working day as one of the paid holidays allowed to workers in the facility and has been criticized by some as un-American.

Over the years the union has faced some powerful enemies. In the 1960s, the black organizers were threatened – one was even shot at – as they tried to recruit workers in the food industry across the south.

Johnny Whitaker, a former dairy worker who started out as a union organizer in the 1970s, said he grew up in a white family in Hanceville, Alabama, without much money. Even so, he was shocked by the working conditions and the racism he experienced when he started organizing in the poultry factories years ago.

Black workers were classified differently than their white counterparts and paid much less. Women were expected to engage in sexual acts with managers for hours in exchange, he said. Many workers could neither read nor write.

Despite threats that if they organized themselves they would lose their jobs, thousands of poultry workers have joined RWDSU over the past three decades, even though the industry is still largely non-unionized.

When a small group of Amazon workers reached out to the union in late August about their interest in organizing the Bessemer camp, Whitaker admitted that there were “great internal doubts” about the idea.

RWDSU had attempted to lay the foundations for organizing the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island in 2019, but efforts failed when the company announced its plans to build a second headquarters in New York, known as HQ2, in part because of the political pressure on allow organization in its facilities.

“What we learned from HQ2 was that Amazon would do anything to avoid a union at any of its workplaces,” said Appelbaum.

At the time, Amazon said it canceled its plans after “a number of state and local politicians made it clear that they will oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the kind of relationships that are required to.” move the project forward. ”

But the more the workers in Alabama talked to the union about their working conditions, the more Mr. Appelbaum and others believed the camp was fertile ground for the organization.

Employees described the controls Amazon has over their work lives, including tracking their time in the bathroom or other time spent in the warehouse outside of their primary job. Some workers have stated that they can be punished for spending too much time on specific tasks.

“We’re talking about bathroom breaks,” said Whitaker, the union’s executive vice president. “It’s 2021 and workers are being punished for peeing.”

In an email, an Amazon spokeswoman said the company was not punishing workers for taking toilet breaks. “These are not our guidelines,” she said. “People can take bathroom breaks.”

The campaign in Bessemer produced some strange political bedfellows. Mr. Biden expressed support for Alabama workers to be free to vote in the Mail-In election ending later this month. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio went a step further and encouraged Bessemer workers to join union organizations to protect themselves from the “guard culture” at Amazon.

If the union wins the election in Bessemer, efforts to recruit court workers will continue. In a right to work, workers are not required to pay union dues even if they are represented by a union.

At a Quaker Oats plant in Iowa, which is also a right to work, RWDSU is finding ways to encourage workers to join the union by posting the names of workers who have not yet joined on a bulletin board.

“Always organize in a right to work,” said Mr. Hadley.

In the early afternoon of October 20th, Mr. Hadley met with about 20 organizers before going to Bessemer’s camp to begin their labor enrollment campaign. The organizers should stand in front of the camp gates and speak to the workers early in the morning and in the evening when their shift changes. In an encouraging conversation with the group, Mr. Hadley referred to the story of David and Goliath.

“We’re going to punch David in the nose twice a day,” he told the group, referring to Amazon. “He’ll see our union every morning when he comes to work and I want him to think of us when he closes his eyes at night.”

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World News

EU calls for vaccine makers ‘ship’ provides

EU demands vaccine makers 'deliver' supplies

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.