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Business

Inventory Markets Rise Amid Hopes for Fiscal Stimulus: Stay Updates

Commercial space for rent in New York City. Stay-at-home orders and other restrictions have left millions without work as businesses close.

Here’s what you need to know:

The already sputtering economic rebound went into reverse in December, as employers laid off workers amid rising coronavirus cases and waning government aid.

U.S. employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first net decline in payrolls since last spring’s mass layoffs, and though the December loss was nowhere near that scale, it represented a discouraging reversal for the once-promising recovery. The U.S. economy still has about 10 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic began.

The December losses were heavily concentrated in leisure and hospitality businesses, which have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. The industry cut nearly half a million jobs in December, while sectors less exposed to the pandemic continued to add workers.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent, down sharply from its high of nearly 15 percent in April but still close to double the 3.5 percent rate in the same month a year earlier.

“We’re losing ground again,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton. “Most notably, this is still very much a low-wage recession, and the losses were where we first saw them when the pandemic hit.”

Unemployment rate

By Ella Koeze·Seasonally adjusted·Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Hiring has slowed every month since June, and the economy lost more than nine million jobs in 2020 as a whole, the first calendar-year decline since 2010 and the worst on a percentage basis since the aftermath of World War II.

Congress last month passed a $900 billion relief package that will provide temporary support to households and businesses and could give a boost to the broader economy. And in the longer run, the arrival of coronavirus vaccines should allow the return of activity that has been suppressed by the pandemic.

But the vaccine and the aid came too late to prevent a sharp slowdown in growth.

“We did have a pullback in the economy,” said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America. “If stimulus was passed earlier, maybe that could have been avoided.”

When the economy shut down last spring, many workers thought they would be out of a job for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.

Nine months later, many still aren’t back on the job.

The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report on Friday showed that nearly four million Americans had been out of work for more than six months, economists’ standard threshold for long-term unemployment. That was up by 27,000 from November, and roughly quadruple the number before the pandemic began.

Those figures almost certainly understate the scope of the problem. People who aren’t looking for work, whether because they don’t believe jobs are available or because they are caring for children or other family members, aren’t counted as unemployed.

The number of people who have been unemployed long-term is still rising

Share of unemployed who have been out of work 27 weeks or longer

By Ella Koeze·Seasonally adjusted·Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

When the data was collected in mid-December, many of the long-term jobless faced a frightening deadline: Federal programs that extended unemployment benefits beyond their standard six-month limit were set to expire at the end of the year. The aid package later passed by Congress and signed by President Trump extended the programs, but by less than three months.

Long-term joblessness was a defining feature of the last recession a decade ago, when millions eventually gave up looking for work, in some cases permanently. If that pattern repeats, it could have long-term consequences, particularly for people with disabilities, criminal records or other characteristics that make it hard to find jobs even in the best of times.

“These are the kinds of workers who are really only recruited and called upon in a very tight labor market, and it may take us a long time to get back there,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist with the hiring site ZipRecruiter. “That is the worry, that there are these groups of people who will drop out now and who will only really find good opportunities again after a sustained and lengthy expansion.”

State and local governments continued to cut payroll employment in December, a sign that a crucial sector was bleeding jobs nine months into the pandemic.

Those governments account for about 13 percent of employment in the United States, which makes their trajectory extremely important to the nation’s labor market outlook. Because most are required to balance their budgets, lower income or higher expenses can lead to big job cuts.

State and local employers shed 51,000 workers in December compared with the prior month. As of last month, they reported 1.4 million fewer jobs than in February, the month before the pandemic job losses started.

The big employment cuts come despite revenue losses that appear milder than many analysts had expected at the pandemic’s outset. Louise Sheiner at the Brookings Institution estimated in a recent post that states would miss $350 billion in revenue over three years. Meanwhile, by her estimation, they received about $280 billion in direct and indirect federal aid in a March relief package, and about $120 billion more — largely indirectly — with the most recent fiscal package.

But expenses have shot up as the states try to deal with the public health crisis, which could leave budgets under strain even as federal aid helps to overcome revenue shortfalls. And the economic hit from the virus has not been evenly spread — some places are struggling more acutely.

From an employment standpoint, it’s also important that states were finalizing budgets when worse outcomes were expected, and may have cut back as a result, Ms. Sheiner wrote.

“What we’re seeing is that it’s different state to state,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at a news conference in December. But he pointed out that many employees had been cut from state payrolls, at least temporarily. “We’re watching carefully to understand why that many people have been let go and what really are the sources,” he said.

Wall Street continued its rally on Friday, fueled by bets on robust fiscal stimulus coming from a Democratic-led government in Washington, despite fresh evidence that the United States economy is backsliding as the pandemic surges.

The S&P 500 rose less than half a percent in early trading, after reaching a record on Thursday. The Stoxx Europe 600 was 0.6 percent higher, and the FTSE 100 in Britain dipped slightly. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 in Japan closed with a gain of 2.4 percent, climbing to a level it last hit in 1990.

Though Washington continues to reverberate after a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol building on Wednesday, the investing world is instead focused on the wave of spending that could come as Democrats assume leadership of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Investors also seemed to look past the Labor Department’s report on December payrolls, which showed U.S. employers cut 140,000 jobs last month, the first drop since last spring. The weak report bolsters the argument that more economic stimulus is needed.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said they expected $750 billion in additional spending in the first three months of the year, while their counterparts at Morgan Stanley are forecasting as much as $1 trillion in spending.

At the same time, few on Wall Street seem to think Democrats will prioritize tax increases, which had previously been seen as a potential risk of a Democratic sweep. The result is almost an ideal scenario for a range of investments geared to the short-term outlook for economic growth.

That’s been most evident in the so-called cyclical areas of the stock market, which include industrial, material and financial shares. Small-capitalization stocks, closely tied to the outlook for shorter-term American economic growth, are also rallying, as are companies that will profit from President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledges to spend heavily on infrastructure and alternative energy.

“Now you have the potential for more stimulus, even possibly an infrastructure spend,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at the investment management firm Invesco on Thursday. “So, I think the stock market is enthused right now. And that enthusiasm is pretty strong.”

Gains continued in other financial markets too. Oil prices continued their rally, with Brent crude climbing 1.6 percent, to $55.25 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate rallying to above $51 a barrel.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note also continued to rise, reaching 1.09 percent on Thursday. The rise in yields most likely reflects expectations that the Treasury will be issuing large amounts of debt to finance renewed government spending.

Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times

Several states say they are moving quickly to restore federal unemployment benefits that lapsed last month when President Trump delayed signing a second round of federal pandemic relief.

A handful, including New York, Texas, Maryland and California, say they have started sending out the weekly $300 supplement that was part of the legislation, while others like Ohio say they are awaiting more guidance from the U.S. Labor Department.

Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, said that “at least half of the states should have something up by next week.”

Congress approved 11 weeks of additional benefits, and the entire amount will ultimately be delivered to eligible workers even if payments are initially delayed.

“Any claims for the first week will be backdated,” said James Bernsen, deputy director of communications at the Texas Workforce Commission.

In addition to a $300-a-week supplement for those receiving unemployment benefits, the $900 billion emergency relief package renews two other jobless programs created last March as part of the CARES Act.

One, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, covers freelancers, part-time hires, seasonal workers and others who do not normally qualify for state unemployment benefits. A second, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, extends benefits for workers who have exhausted their state allotment.

This latest round also offers additional assistance for people who cobble together their income by combining a salaried job with freelance gigs. The new program, called Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation, provides a $100 weekly payment to such workers in addition to their Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits.

Credit…Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

  • Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion in a legal settlement with the Justice Department stemming from the 737 Max debacle, the government said on Thursday. The agreement resolves a criminal charge that Boeing conspired to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the company and evaluates its planes. With less than two weeks left in the Trump administration, the agreement takes the question of how a Biden Justice Department would view a settlement off the table. President Trump had repeatedly discussed the importance of Boeing to the economy, even going so far last year to say he favored a bailout for the company.

  • Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, is now the richest person in the world. An increase in Tesla’s share price on Thursday pushed Mr. Musk past Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people. Mr. Musk’s net worth was $195 billion by the end of trading on Thursday, $10 billion more than that of Mr. Bezos’s. Mr. Musk’s wealth has increased by more than $150 billion over the past 12 months, thanks to a rally in Tesla’s share price, which surged 743 percent in 2020. The carmaker’s shares rose nearly 8 percent on Thursday.

  • Wayfair, the furniture and home goods e-commerce business, said on Thursday that all of its U.S. employees would be paid at least $15 an hour. The increase, which took effect on Sunday, applies to full-time, part-time and seasonal employees. More than 40 percent of Wayfair’s hourly workers across its U.S. supply chain and customer service operations received a pay bump.

  • The Tiffany-LVMH saga has finally come to a well-polished, multifaceted end. LVMH, the French conglomerate, completed its acquisition of the American jewelry brand on Thursday, and it was out with the old and in with the new — executives, anyway. After a brief transition period, gone will be Reed Krakoff, Tiffany’s chief artistic officer. Also leaving will be Daniella Vitale, the chief brand officer. In their place comes Alexandre Arnault, who will become executive vice president, product and communications.

Categories
Politics

In Trump’s Last Chapter, a Failure to Rise to the Covid-19 Second

In Trump’s Final Chapter, a Failure to Rise to the Covid-19 Moment

WASHINGTON — It was a warm summer Wednesday, Election Day was looming and President Trump was even angrier than usual at the relentless focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

“You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting.”

Mexico’s record in fighting the virus was hardly one for the United States to emulate. But the president had long seen testing not as a vital way to track and contain the pandemic but as a mechanism for making him look bad by driving up the number of known cases.

And on that day he was especially furious after being informed by Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, that it would be days before the government could give emergency approval to the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment, something Mr. Trump was eager to promote as a personal victory going into the Republican National Convention the following week.

“They’re Democrats! They’re against me!” he said, convinced that the government’s top doctors and scientists were conspiring to undermine him. “They want to wait!”

Throughout late summer and fall, in the heat of a re-election campaign that he would go on to lose, and in the face of mounting evidence of a surge in infections and deaths far worse than in the spring, Mr. Trump’s management of the crisis — unsteady, unscientific and colored by politics all year — was in effect reduced to a single question: What would it mean for him?

The result, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials and others in contact with the White House, was a lose-lose situation. Mr. Trump not only ended up soundly defeated by Joseph R. Biden Jr., but missed his chance to show that he could rise to the moment in the final chapter of his presidency and meet the defining challenge of his tenure.

Efforts by his aides to persuade him to promote mask wearing, among the simplest and most effective ways to curb the spread of the disease, were derailed by his conviction that his political base would rebel against anything that would smack of limiting their personal freedom. Even his own campaign’s polling data to the contrary could not sway him.

His explicit demand for a vaccine by Election Day — a push that came to a head in a contentious Oval Office meeting with top health aides in late September — became a misguided substitute for warning the nation that failure to adhere to social distancing and other mitigation efforts would contribute to a slow-rolling disaster this winter.

His concern? That the man he called “Sleepy Joe” Biden, who was leading him in the polls, would get credit for a vaccine, not him.

The government’s public health experts were all but silenced by the arrival in August of Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the Stanford professor of neuroradiology recruited after appearances on Fox News.

With Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the coordinator of the White House virus task force, losing influence and often on the road, Dr. Atlas became the sole doctor Mr. Trump listened to. His theories, some of which scientists viewed as bordering on the crackpot, were exactly what the president wanted to hear: The virus is overblown, the number of deaths is exaggerated, testing is overrated, lockdowns do more harm than good.

As the gap between politics and science grew, the infighting that Mr. Trump had allowed to plague the administration’s response from the beginning only intensified. Threats of firings worsened the leadership vacuum as key figures undercut each other and distanced themselves from responsibility.

The administration had some positive stories to tell. Mr. Trump’s vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed, had helped drive the pharmaceutical industry’s remarkably fast progress in developing several promising approaches. By the end of the year, two highly effective vaccines would be approved for emergency use, providing hope for 2021.

The White House rejected any suggestions that the president’s response had fallen short, saying he had worked to provide adequate testing, protective equipment and hospital capacity and that the vaccine development program had succeeded in record time.

“President Trump has led the largest mobilization of the public and private sectors since WWII to defeat Covid-19 and save lives,” said Brian Morgenstern, a White House spokesman.

But Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to put aside his political self-centeredness as Americans died by the thousands each day or to embrace the steps necessary to deal with the crisis remains confounding even to some administration officials. “Making masks a culture war issue was the dumbest thing imaginable,” one former senior adviser said.

His own bout with Covid-19 in early October left him extremely ill and dependent on care and drugs not available to most Americans, including a still-experimental monoclonal antibody treatment, and he saw firsthand how the disease coursed through the White House and some of his close allies.

Yet his instinct was to treat that experience not as a learning moment or an opportunity for empathy, but as a chance to portray himself as a Superman who had vanquished the disease. His own experience to the contrary, he assured a crowd at the White House just a week after his hospitalization, “It’s going to disappear; it is disappearing.”

Weeks after his own recovery, he would still complain about the nation’s preoccupation with the pandemic.

“All you hear is Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid,” Mr. Trump said at one campaign stop, uttering the word 11 times.

In the end he could not escape it.

By late July, new cases were at record highs, defying Mr. Trump’s predictions through the spring that the virus was under control, and deaths were spiking to alarming levels. Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate, died from the coronavirus; the previous month he had attended a Trump rally without a mask.

With the pandemic defining the campaign despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to make it about law and order, Tony Fabrizio, the president’s main pollster, came to the Oval Office for a meeting in the middle of the summer prepared to make a surprising case: that mask wearing was acceptable even among Mr. Trump’s supporters.

Arrayed in front of the Resolute Desk, Mr. Trump’s advisers listened as Mr. Fabrizio presented the numbers. According to his research, some of which was reported by The Washington Post, voters believed the pandemic was bad and getting worse, they were more concerned about getting sick than about the virus’s effects on their personal financial situation, the president’s approval rating on handling the pandemic had hit new lows and a little more than half the country did not think he was taking the situation seriously.

But what set off debate that day was Mr. Fabrizio’s finding that more than 70 percent of voters in the states being targeted by the campaign supported mandatory mask wearing in public, at least indoors, including a majority of Republicans.

Mr. Kushner, who along with Hope Hicks, another top adviser, had been trying for months to convince Mr. Trump that masks could be portrayed as the key to regaining freedom to go safely to a restaurant or a sporting event, called embracing mask-wearing a “no-brainer.”

Mr. Kushner had some reason for optimism. Mr. Trump had agreed to wear one not long before for a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, after finding one he believed he looked good in: dark blue, with a presidential seal.

But Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff — backed up by other aides including Stephen Miller — said the politics for Mr. Trump would be devastating.

“The base will revolt,” Mr. Meadows said, adding that he was not sure Mr. Trump could legally make it happen in any case.

That was all Mr. Trump needed to hear. “I’m not doing a mask mandate,” he concluded.

Aside from when he was sick, he was rarely seen in a mask again.

The president had other opportunities to show leadership rather than put his political fortunes first.

Covid-19 Vaccines ›

Answers to Your Vaccine Questions

With distribution of a coronavirus vaccine beginning in the U.S., here are answers to some questions you may be wondering about:

    • If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine? While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.
    • When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated? Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.
    • If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask? Yes, but not forever. Here’s why. The coronavirus vaccines are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This appears to be enough protection to keep the vaccinated person from getting ill. But what’s not clear is whether it’s possible for the virus to bloom in the nose — and be sneezed or breathed out to infect others — even as antibodies elsewhere in the body have mobilized to prevent the vaccinated person from getting sick. The vaccine clinical trials were designed to determine whether vaccinated people are protected from illness — not to find out whether they could still spread the coronavirus. Based on studies of flu vaccine and even patients infected with Covid-19, researchers have reason to be hopeful that vaccinated people won’t spread the virus, but more research is needed. In the meantime, everyone — even vaccinated people — will need to think of themselves as possible silent spreaders and keep wearing a mask. Read more here.
    • Will it hurt? What are the side effects? The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection into your arm won’t feel different than any other vaccine, but the rate of short-lived side effects does appear higher than a flu shot. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. The side effects, which can resemble the symptoms of Covid-19, last about a day and appear more likely after the second dose. Early reports from vaccine trials suggest some people might need to take a day off from work because they feel lousy after receiving the second dose. In the Pfizer study, about half developed fatigue. Other side effects occurred in at least 25 to 33 percent of patients, sometimes more, including headaches, chills and muscle pain. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign that your own immune system is mounting a potent response to the vaccine that will provide long-lasting immunity.
    • Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.

After he recovered from his bout with the virus, some of his top aides, including Mr. Kushner and Jason Miller, a senior campaign strategist, thought the illness offered an opportunity to demonstrate the kind of compassion and resolve about the pandemic’s toll that Mr. Trump had so far failed to show.

When Mr. Trump returned from the hospital, his communications aides, with the help of Ivanka Trump, his daughter, urged him to deliver a national address in which he would say: “I had it. It was tough, it kicked my ass, but we’re going to get through it.”

He refused, choosing instead to address a boisterous campaign rally for himself from the balcony of the White House overlooking the South Lawn.

Mr. Trump never came around to the idea that he had a responsibility to be a role model, much less that his leadership role might require him to publicly acknowledge hard truths about the virus — or even to stop insisting that the issue was not a rampaging pandemic but too much testing.

Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, briefed the president this fall on a Japanese study documenting the effectiveness of face masks, telling him: “We have the proof. They work.” But the president resisted, criticizing Mr. Kushner for pushing them and again blaming too much testing — an area Mr. Kushner had been helping to oversee — for his problems.

“I’m going to lose,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kushner during debate preparations. “And it’s going to be your fault, because of the testing.”

Mr. Morgenstern, the White House spokesman, said that exchange between the president and Mr. Kushner “never happened.”

Mr. Azar, who was sometimes one of the few people wearing a mask at White House events, privately bemoaned what he called a political, anti-mask culture set by Mr. Trump. At White House Christmas parties, Mr. Azar asked maskless guests to back away from him.

The decision to run the government’s response out of the West Wing was made in the early days of the pandemic. The idea was to break down barriers between disparate agencies, assemble public health expertise and encourage quick and coordinated decision-making.

It did not work out like that, and by fall the consequences were clear.

Mr. Trump had always tolerated if not encouraged clashes among subordinates, a tendency that in this case led only to policy paralysis, confusion about who was in charge and a lack of a clear, consistent message about how to reduce the risks from the pandemic.

Keeping decision-making power close to him was another Trump trait, but in this case it also elevated the myriad choices facing the administration to the presidential level, bogging the process down in infighting, raising the political stakes and encouraging aides to jockey for favor with Mr. Trump.

The result at times was a systemwide failure that extended well beyond the president.

“What we needed was a coordinated response that involved contributions from multiple agencies,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first two years of the Trump administration.

“Someone needed to pull that all together early,” he said. “It wasn’t the job of the White House, either. This needed to happen closer to the agencies. That didn’t happen on testing, or on a whole lot of other things.”

The relationship between Mr. Azar and Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, grew increasingly tense; by early November, they were communicating only by text and in meetings.

Dr. Birx had lost the clout she enjoyed early on in the crisis and spent much of the summer and fall on the road counseling governors and state health officials.

Mr. Meadows was at odds with almost everyone as he sought to impose the president’s will on scientists and public health professionals. In conversations with top health officials, Mr. Meadows would rail against regulatory “bureaucrats” he thought were more interested in process than outcome.

Some of the doctors on the task force, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, were reluctant to show up in person at the White House, worried that the disdain there for mask wearing and social distancing would leave them at risk of infection.

Vice President Mike Pence was nominally in charge of the task force but was so cautious about getting crosswise with Mr. Trump as they battled for re-election that, in public at least, he became nearly invisible.

The debates inside the White House increasingly revolved around Dr. Atlas, who had no formal training in infectious diseases but whose views — which Mr. Trump saw him deliver on Fox News — appealed to the president’s belief that the crisis was overblown.

His arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was itself something of a mystery. Some aides said he was discovered by Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary. Others said John McEntee, the president’s personnel chief, had been Googling for a Trump-friendly doctor who would be loyal.

Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, opposed hiring Dr. Atlas. But once the president and his team brought him in, Mr. Short insisted that Dr. Atlas have a seat at the task force table, hoping to avoid having him become yet another internal — and destructive — critic.

Once inside, Dr. Atlas used the perch of a West Wing office to shape the response. During a meeting in early fall, Dr. Atlas asserted that college students were at no risk from the virus. We should let them go back to school, he said. It’s not a problem.

Dr. Birx exploded. What aspect of the fact that you can be asymptomatic and still spread it do you not understand? she demanded. You might not die, but you can give it to somebody who can die from it. She was livid.

“Your strategy is literally going to cost us lives,” she yelled at Dr. Atlas. She attacked Dr. Atlas’s ideas in daily emails she sent to senior officials. And she was mindful of a pact she had made with Dr. Hahn, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield even before Dr. Atlas came on board: They would stick together if one of them was fired for doing what they considered the right thing.

Health officials often had a hard time finding an audience in the upper reaches of the West Wing. In a mid-November task force meeting, they issued a dire warning to Mr. Meadows about the looming surge in cases set to devastate the country. Mr. Meadows demanded data to back up their claim.

One outcome of the meeting was a Nov. 19 news conference on the virus’s dire threat, the first in many weeks. But while Mr. Pence, who led the briefing, often urged Americans to “do their part” to slow the spread of the virus, he never directly challenged Mr. Trump’s hesitancy on masks and social distancing. At the briefing, he said that “decision making at the local level” was key, continuing a long pattern of the administration seeking to push responsibility to the states.

Mr. Azar had been cut out of key decision-making as early as February, when Mr. Pence took over the task force. Mr. Azar would complain to his associates that Mr. Pence’s staff and task force members went around him to issue orders to his subordinates.

On tenterhooks about his job status, Mr. Azar found an opening that offered a kind of redemption, steering his attention through the summer and fall to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s effort to support rapid development of a vaccine, lavishing praise on Mr. Trump and crediting him for nearly every advance.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Azar portrayed Dr. Hahn to the White House as a flailing manager — a complaint he also voiced about Dr. Redfield. In late September, he told the White House he was willing to fire Dr. Hahn, according to officials familiar with the offer.

For their part, Dr. Hahn, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Birx and other senior health officials saw Mr. Azar as crushing the morale of the agencies he oversaw as he sought to escape blame for a worsening crisis and to strengthen his own image publicly and with the White House.

Health officials on the task force several times took their complaints about Mr. Azar to Mr. Pence’s office, hoping for an intervention.

Caitlin B. Oakley, a spokeswoman for Mr. Azar, said he had “always stood up for balanced, scientific, public health information and insisted that science and data drive the decisions.”

Once eager to visit the White House, Dr. Hahn became disillusioned with what he saw as its efforts to politicize the work of the Food and Drug Administration, and he eventually shied away from task force meetings, fearing his statements there would leak.

If there was a bureaucratic winner in this West Wing cage match, it was Dr. Atlas.

He told Mr. Trump that the right way to think about the virus was how much “excess mortality” there was above what would have been expected without a pandemic.

Mr. Trump seized on the idea, often telling aides that the real number of dead was no more than 10,000 people.

As of Thursday, 342,577 Americans had died from the pandemic.

In an Oval Office meeting with senior health officials on Sept. 24, the president made explicit what he had long implied: He wanted a vaccine before the election, according to three people who witnessed his demand.

Pfizer’s chief executive had been encouraging the belief that the company could deliver initial results by late October. But Mr. Trump’s aides tried in vain to make clear that they could not completely control the timing.

Dr. Fauci and Dr. Hahn reminded West Wing officials that a company’s vaccine trial results were a “black box,” impossible to see until an independent monitoring board revealed them. A vaccine that did not go through the usual, rigorous government approval process would be a “Pyrrhic victory,” Mr. Azar told them. It would be a shot no one would take.

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the scientific leader of Operation Warp Speed, said the president never asked him to deliver a vaccine on a specific timetable. But he said Mr. Trump sometimes complained in meetings that “it was not going to happen before the election and it will be ‘Sleepy Joe’” who would ultimately get credit.

In late October, science and regulations worked against Mr. Trump’s waning hopes for pre-Election Day good news. At the F.D.A., scientists had refined the standards for authorizing a vaccine for emergency use. And at Pfizer, executives realized that the agency was unlikely to authorize its vaccine on the basis of so few Covid-19 cases among its clinical trial volunteers.

They decided to wait for more data, a delay of up to a week.

When Pfizer announced on Nov. 9 — two days after Mr. Biden clinched his victory — that its vaccine was a stunning success, Mr. Trump was furious. He lashed out at the company, Dr. Hahn and the F.D.A., accusing “deep state regulators” of conspiring with Pfizer to slow approval until after the election.

The president’s frustration with the pace of regulatory action would continue into December, as the F.D.A. went through a time-consuming process of evaluating Pfizer’s data and then that of a second vaccine maker, Moderna.

On Dec. 11, Mr. Meadows exploded during a morning call with Dr. Hahn and Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator. He accused Dr. Hahn of mismanagement and suggested he resign, then slammed down the phone. That night, the F.D.A. authorized the Pfizer vaccine.

In the weeks that followed, Mr. Pence, Mr. Azar, Dr. Fauci and other health officials rolled up their sleeves to be vaccinated for the cameras.

Mr. Trump, who after contracting Covid-19 had declared himself immune, has not announced plans to be vaccinated.

Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Sharon LaFraniere and Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Katie Thomas contributed reporting from Chicago.

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World News

Inventory futures rise as market tries to reclaim report highs in last days of 2020

Stock futures rise as market tries to reclaim record highs in final days of 2020

U.S. stock index futures were slightly higher early Wednesday morning as the market tried to regain record highs in the final days of 2020.

Contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average scored 114 points. S&P 500 futures rose 15 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 48 points.

Key averages closed lower Tuesday, abandoning early gains that drove stocks to record highs on the opening bell. Both the Dow and S&P 500 snapped three-day winning streaks, each down 0.22%. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.38%.

The Russell 2000 closed 1.85% lower for the third straight year.

In Washington, lawmakers continued to disagree on direct payments to Americans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Chuck Schumer’s efforts to expedite the bill passed by Parliament late Monday that would increase checks from $ 600 to $ 2,000. The stimulus payments could run out on Tuesday evening, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

President Donald Trump backed higher payments and said in a tweet on Tuesday that the move should be approved “ASAP. $ 600 is not enough!”

With only two trading days a year left, the key averages are on the way to rising higher by 2020. The Dow was up 6.3% over the year, while the S&P 500 was up 15.36%. Despite recent selling pressures, the Russell 2000 is still up 17.4% over the year.

The clear winner since the beginning of the year remains the Nasdaq Composite, which is up 43%.

“We expect strong economic growth to recover in 2021 after headwinds from the pandemic in 2020 and the US-China trade war in 2019,” said Brian Demain, portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors. “While the leadership so far has been tight – mostly limited to the digital economy – we expect a deepening recovery as vaccines become widespread and consumers can re-enter the physical economy,” he added.

The number of Covid cases is still higher. The US is currently seeing at least 180,905 new cases and at least 2,210 virus-related deaths per day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using data from Johns Hopkins University. On Tuesday, the US confirmed its first case of the faster-spreading strain of coronavirus, originally discovered in the UK

Some investors say another potential headwind for stocks ahead is the surge in some of the hottest stocks of the year.

Interactive Brokers Chairman Thomas Peterffy said on Squawk Alley on Tuesday that a “fantastically unusual” thing had happened in the past few days: his customers are net below the market for the first time.

“Our customers are usually on the sell side of options, and there is such a demand for these out of the money options that our customers tend to become sellers,” he said. “So the Robinhood people have long options and Interactive Brokers clients have few options,” he added. In other words, while this is not necessarily a direct bet on the downtrend, customers on the other hand take advantage of such high demand.

Charles Bobrinskoy, vice chairman of Ariel Investments, echoed the dangers of a dynamic market.

“It cannot be that the way to win investing is just to buy what has increased in recent years,” he said Tuesday on CNBC’s Closing Bell. “That works in momentum markets. Momentum markets are wonderful until they turn. But when they turn, it’s ugly,” he said.

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Business

American Airways sees capability cuts by means of February as Covid instances rise

American Airlines sees capacity cuts through February as Covid cases rise

American Airlines Flight 718, the first US Boeing 737 MAX commercial flight since regulators lifted a 20-month primer in November, will take off from Miami, Florida on December 29, 2020.

Marco Bello | Reuters

American Airlines believes the impact of the coronavirus pandemic will continue to weigh on demand and flight schedules through 2021, the airline’s president said Tuesday.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline is flying about 45% of its 2019 schedule this month, Robert Isom told reporters at Miami International Airport, before the Boeing 737 Max’s first U.S. flight carrying commercial passengers ceased almost two years ago .

“We expect it will stay that way through January and February. We hope the vaccine will show promise,” he said.

American and its competitors have warned investors over the past few weeks that a spike in Covid-19 cases and new travel restrictions hurt sales in the fourth quarter, although the number of travelers on vacation rose towards the end of the year.

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World News

U.S. inventory futures rise as Wall Avenue set to enter final week of 2020

U.S. stock futures rise as Wall Street set to enter last week of 2020

Traders work on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

The stock futures rose slightly in night trading on the Sunday before the last trading week of 2020.

The futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 149 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were also trading in slightly positive territory.

President Donald Trump signed a $ 900 billion law on Covid-19 that prevented the government from closing and expanded unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. The signing came days after Trump proposed vetoing the legislation and calling for $ 2,000 in direct payments to Americans instead of $ 600.

“I’m signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental support, add money for PPP, get our airline employees back to work, add significantly more money to distribute vaccines, and much more,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday evening.

Wall Street has had a quiet week of holidays with major averages posting flat returns. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% last week as some investors took off year-end chips. The 30-share Dow gained 0.1% over the same period.

Profit taking could rise in the last week of the year, which has seen surprisingly high returns so far. The S&P 500 is up 14.6% year-to-date, while the Dow is up 5.8%. The Nasdaq is up 42.7% this year as investors preferred high-growth technology names amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that the country could see a surge in new Covid-19 infections after Christmas and New Years. Two vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna started the distribution process this month. To date, over a million people have been vaccinated in the United States.

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Health

The plant-based meat trade is on the rise, however challenges stay

The plant-based meat industry is on the rise, but challenges remain

A visitor tries a plant-based meat substitute at the Restaurant & Bar and Gourmet Asia Expo at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in Hong Kong on November 11, 2020.

Peter Parks | AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE – The demand for meat alternatives has increased and will continue to increase, but the industry still has hurdles to overcome in various parts of the world, analysts said.

According to Google Trends, global search interest for the term “plant-based meat” skyrocketed in early 2019 months before Beyond Meat went public.

The global meat substitute sector is valued at $ 20.7 billion and is expected to grow to $ 23.2 billion by 2024, market research firm Euromonitor told CNBC.

This growth is being fueled by concerns ranging from animal welfare to food security to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In times of shock and instability, building a low-risk value chain means focusing on opportunities, and the shift towards plant-based meat is showing no signs of slowing,” said Elaine Siu, executive director of The Good Food Institute Asia -Pacific.

However, obstacles remain for the burgeoning market.

Cultural barriers

The plant-based meat market in Asia could be constrained by established perceptual issues, Siu said.

For example, pig meat, or vegetarian meat, used to be mainly eaten by Buddhist practitioners in China, she said.

“The replication of the taste and texture of meat has never been pushed beyond relatively basic levels,” she said, adding that these traditional products serve a specific purpose and “are considered to be of limited appeal to certain groups.”

“In order for plant-based meat to develop its full market potential in Asia, the sector must continue to break away from its association with traditional fake meat, which is expected to be sold at a low price and which carries historical image baggage.” said Siu.

Objections from the traditional meat industry

Ranchers could also stand in the way of the alternative protein sector, particularly in the US, said Simon Powell, global head of thematic research at the American bank Jefferies.

The US Cattlemen’s Association filed a petition in 2018 calling for an official definition of the terms “beef” and “meat” to keep vegetable proteins out of the description.

A herd of cattle gathers in the shade of an old barn in Owings, Maryland on May 4, 2020.

Mark Wilson | Getty Images News | Getty Images

“Incumbent producers will be working hard with their governments to change labeling and play around with consumer advertisements to say it can’t be called meat,” Powell told CNBC of Zoom. “I think that’s possibly one of the biggest obstacles.”

The European Union rejected proposals in October to ban restaurants and shops from using words such as sausage or burger to describe meat alternatives.

Consumer confidence, consumer fatigue

Powell added that if any of the vegetable meat companies had “an accident” or an issue with their recipe that resulted in a “massive recall”, customers could fear consuming these alternatives.

“This is a big ‘if’ … but if they have a big recall of products, it could hurt consumer confidence,” he said. “Eventually you will get these events. It will set the industry back a little.”

Separately, Powell said the “instagrammability” of plant-based foods is one reason the market is growing “all over the world”. The market’s growth could be hampered as the novelty of meat alternatives wears off or wears off, he said.

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World News

Dow futures rise 100 factors forward of holiday-shortened session

Dow futures rise 100 points ahead of holiday-shortened session

US stock index futures rose early in the trading day on the Thursday before the last trading day of the week with shortened holidays.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average indicated an opening gain of around 100 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures also traded in positive territory.

The S&P 500 ended Wednesday’s session barely changed – up less than 0.1% – after slipping in the last few minutes of trading. Even so, the benchmark index suffered a three-day streak of bad luck. The Dow gained 114.32 points, or 0.38%, after rising more than 270 points at one point during the session. The Nasdaq Composite hit a record high before wiping out those gains and closing 0.29% lower.

“It was sold in the index-dominating tech names that weighed on the SPX, not in the general market weakness,” Vital Knowledge’s Adam Crisafulli said in a note. Netflix and Microsoft were among the declining tech names, falling 2.4% and 1.3% respectively.

The late-day decline came as investors took profits late in the year and President Donald Trump vetoed a comprehensive defense bill. The move came after calling the US $ 900 billion congressional aid package to Covid an inappropriate “shame”. The president looked particularly at direct payments, which were to be increased from $ 600 to $ 2,000.

Democrats will attempt to make $ 2,000 direct payments Thursday, but Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Will object, CNBC reported. Meanwhile, McCarthy plans to offer a new temporary spending bill that will separate State Department funding and foreign aid funding from the wider spending package – a plan Democrats would likely oppose.

The main averages were mixed until the last day of the shortened vacation week. The Nasdaq is well on its way to end the week higher while the Dow and S&P 500 are slightly lower for the week. The Russell 2,000, which hit a new intraday and all-time high on Wednesday, is also higher for the week. Amid the strength of small-cap names, the index is on its way to its eighth straight week of earnings – the longest weekly earnings streak since February 2019.

With only 4.5 trading days a year, the Nasdaq is well on its way to becoming the clear winner, currently up around 42%. The Russell 2,000 is up 20% over the year while the Dow and S&P 500 are up 5.6% and 14.2%, respectively.

In terms of data, US jobless claims for the week ended December 19 were 803,000, better than an estimate of 888,000, according to economists polled by Dow Jones. However, both core durable goods and personal income fell below expectations in November.

The market closes early on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET and closes on Friday for Christmas.

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Business

Treasury yields rise amid combined financial information, Brexit deal optimism

Treasury yields rise amid mixed economic data, Brexit deal optimism

Government bond yields remained stable on Wednesday as investors digested a mix of economic data as well as signs of an impending Brexit trade deal between the UK and the European Union.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 3 basis points to 0.956%, while the yield on the 30-year government bond rose 4 basis points to 1.696%. Bond yields move inversely with prices.

Unemployment claims in the United States stood at 803,000 for the week ending December 19, the Department of Labor said on Wednesday. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected the initial claims to rise to 888,000. However, personal income declined 1.1% in November, compared to an estimate of 0.3% according to data from Dow Jones.

The yield on 10-year government bonds peaked when Brexit negotiators were on the verge of a new trade deal between the UK and the European Union. A deal would avoid tariffs due to come into effect at the beginning of the year.

President Donald Trump proposed on Tuesday not to sign a lengthy coronavirus aid package. He poured cold water on the $ 900 billion Covid relief bill that Congress passed earlier this week. Calling the measure an inappropriate “disgrace”, he called on lawmakers to make a number of changes, including larger direct payments to individuals and families.

The current package includes an increase in unemployment benefits, more small business loans, an additional $ 600 in direct payment, and funding to streamline the critical distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. However, Trump was dissatisfied with the $ 600 direct payments and requested an increase to $ 2,000.

Investors were also upset this week by a new strain of coronavirus first identified in the UK. The variant is believed to be up to 70% more transmissible than previous strains.

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Business

Stay Market Updates: Shares Rise as Brexit Talks Are Prolonged

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, which said it would reduce emissions by 15 to 20 percent by 2025 compared with 2016 levels.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Exxon Mobil announced on Monday that it would reduce methane and other greenhouse gas emissions from its exploration and production operations over the next four years.

The company said it would reduce emissions by 15 to 20 percent by 2025 compared with 2016 levels.

More significantly, the company said it would eliminate “routine” flaring by 2030 in an effort to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions generated when companies burn unwanted natural gas that is released during oil production.

The company stopped well short of the kind of targets set by BP and other European oil companies that have pledged to reduce emissions by much more and have said they would gradually move away from oil and gas as they invest more in renewable energy.

“We respect and support society’s ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and continue to advocate for policies that promote cost-effective, market-based solutions to address the risks of climate change,” Exxon’s chief executive, Darren Woods, said in a statement.

Exxon said that “meaningful decreases” in emissions of greenhouse gasses “will require changes in society’s energy choices coupled with the development and deployment of affordable lower-emission technologies.”

Rory Gamble, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, which agreed on changes meant to root out corruption at the union.Credit…Rebecca Cook/Reuters

The Justice Department and the United Automobile Workers union have reached a tentative agreement on changes meant to root out corruption at the union without putting it under government control.

The United States attorney for the eastern district of Michigan, Matthew J. Schneider, and the president of the union, Rory Gamble, are scheduled to announce details of the agreement Monday afternoon.

Mr. Schneider has been investigating corruption at the U.A.W. for several years and has secured guilty pleas by more than a dozen people, including two former union presidents.

Gary Jones, who became U.A.W. president in 2018 and resigned while under investigation a year later, in June plead guilty to tax fraud and improperly using union funds. He was accused of using more than $1 million in union funds for luxury travel and personal purchases.

Dennis Williams, who served as president from 2014 to 2018, pleaded guilty in September to conspiring with other union officials to embezzle union funds. He and Mr. Jones are awaiting sentencing.

Others who have pleaded guilty include three former executives of Fiat Chrysler and a senior union official, Joe Ashton, who once held a seat on the board of General Motors. In November, Mr. Ashton was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Rihanna at a show for the Savage x Fenty collection in 2018.Credit…Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

Savage x Fenty, the lingerie company that the pop singer Rihanna helped found, has hired Goldman Sachs to raise $100 million in financing, sources with direct knowledge of the deal told the DealBook newsletter.

The company wants the money for new initiatives that may include new lines like athletic wear and expanding in Europe.

The high-flying lingerie brand generates about $150 million in revenue, but is not yet profitable, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was confidential.

The valuation it is seeking in the funding round could not be determined, A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to comment, while Savage x Fenty did not respond to requests for comment.

Rihanna’s business ventures have challenged the traditional playbook of fashion and beauty brands, taking an inclusive approach in an industry for which exclusivity is the norm. Her Fenty Beauty line, which she produces with a subsidiary of LVMH, introduced with 40 shades of foundation for a wide range of skin tones. The makeup brand packed the shelves of LVMH-backed Sephora, and paved the way for a Rihanna fashion line with the French luxury empire.

Rihanna started Savage x Fenty in 2018, aiming it at a broad range of body types. It is partly owned by Techstyle Fashion Group, the venture-backed company behind the actress Kate Hudson’s athleisure line Fabletics. Rihanna frequently promotes the brand on Instagram, where she has 87.5 million followers. Earlier this year, Savage x Fenty was accused of deceptive marketing, which it denies.

Savage x Fenty’s launch came as Victoria’s Secret stumbled. The brand that once dominated the lingerie industry had begun to turn off its customers with garments that emphasized sex appeal over comfort. Last year, Victoria’s Secret canceled its fashion show amid dwindling viewership. In what seemed a direct shot at its rival, Savage x Fenty held a body-positive extravaganza at the Barclays Center last year, returning again this year with “a forceful display of inclusivity” that streamed on Amazon.

Britain’s most modern operating power plant, known as Sizewell B, near Sizewell, a fishing village about 100 miles northeast of London. Credit…Dylan Martinez/Reuters

The British government said on Monday that it would enter formal negotiations with EDF, the French utility, to build a new nuclear power station on the east coast of England.

The plant, known as Sizewell C, would have an estimated price tag is 20 billion pounds, or about $27 billion. Negotiations with EDF, which owns most of the British nuclear power system, would cover financing and other arrangements.

In moving ahead with talks, the government is acknowledging that although Britain is investing heavily in clean energy sources like offshore wind, there may also be a need to construct new nuclear power plants to provide stable sources of power to achieve its ambitious climate goals of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which is likely to require electrifying large parts of the economy.

Nuclear attracts criticism as expensive compared to renewables and for the risk of accidents and long-term toxic waste problems, but it has the advantage of providing very large and steady amounts of low carbon power that would be available when the wind stops. The Sizewell C plant could supply power for six million homes.

Finding a workable financing solution will be crucial. The government said it would “explore a range of financing options” for the plant, including a proposal that might have consumers pay costs of the plant in advance of its operation through charges on their bills, as well as the use of public money to finance construction. A plan by Hitachi, the Japanese company, to build a nuclear installation in Wales collapsed in 2019, in part over financing issues.

The plant would be near Britain’s most modern operating power plant, known as Sizewell B, in the vicinity of Sizewell, a fishing village about 100 miles northeast of London. It is likely to draw protests from local environmentalists who worry that the plant will threaten important wildlife habitat.

The plant would be similar to another installation that EDF and a Chinese partner are building at Hinkley Point in southwest England. The hope is that experience gained at Hinkley Point will translate into lower costs for Sizewell.

Senator Angus King wrote to the heads of several streaming services on Monday, asking them to consider lifting subscription fees.Credit…Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

What if Netflix and the other major streaming services were available free during the holiday season? Wouldn’t that keep people home in the coming weeks, reducing the further spread of the coronavirus?

Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, made that proposal in a letter on Monday to the heads of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, WarnerMedia and Apple.

“Americans are faced with even further social isolation — and increased free time — during the holidays,” Mr. King wrote in the letter. “This is a risk; it could also be an opportunity for creative, socially responsible thinking.”

The streaming services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the past week, there has been an average of more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases a day in the United States, up nearly 30 percent from the average two weeks ago. And while the first health workers may start receiving shots of a new vaccine on Monday, the country faces a devastating winter if people become less vigilant, health officials say.

In an interview, Mr. King said that many people had “pandemic fatigue,” and his proposal was intended to encourage a safe activity, especially for those who don’t have the means to subscribe to streaming services.

“It’s a way to basically lift people’s spirits a bit and mitigate the heartbreak of not being able to be with family and friends at an important holiday,” he said.

Peter Vlitas, a travel industry executive, used the CommonPass app on a United Airlines flight to Newark from London in October.Credit…The Commons Project Foundation

In the coming weeks, major airlines including United, JetBlue and Lufthansa plan to introduce a health passport app, called CommonPass, that aims to verify passengers’ coronavirus test results — and perhaps soon, vaccinations.

CommonPass notifies users of local travel rules — like having to provide proof of a negative virus test — and then aims to check that they have met them. The app will then issue confirmation codes, enabling passengers to board certain international flights, Natasha Singer reports in The New York Times.

“This is likely to be a new normal need that we’re going to have to deal with to control and contain this pandemic,” said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Geneva that developed CommonPass.

Electronic vaccination credentials could have a profound effect on efforts to control the virus and restore the economy. They could prompt more employers and college campuses to reopen. And developers say they may also give some consumers peace of mind by creating an easy way for movie theaters, cruise ships and sports arenas to admit only those with documented virus vaccinations.

But the digital passes also raise the specter of a society split into health pass haves and have-nots, particularly if venues begin requiring the apps as entry tickets. The apps could make it difficult for people with limited access to vaccines or online verification tools to enter workplaces or visit popular destinations. Civil liberties experts also warn that the technology could create an invasive system of social control, akin to the heightened surveillance that China adopted during the pandemic — only instead of federal or state governments, private actors like employers and restaurants would determine who can and cannot access services.

In October, United tested CommonPass on a flight to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey from Heathrow Airport in London. United and four other airlines plan to start using it soon on some international flights.

Internet users worldwide received a jarring reminder on Monday about just how reliant they were on Google, when the Silicon Valley giant suffered a major outage for about an hour, sending many of its most popular services offline.

At a time when more people than ever are working from home because of the pandemic, Google services including Calendar, Gmail, Hangouts, Maps, Meet and YouTube all crashed, halting productivity and sending angry users to Twitter to vent about the loss of services. Students struggled to sign into virtual classrooms.

As users scrambled to figure out what was going on, Google disclosed the outages on a status dashboard that shares information about its various services. Downdetector, a website for tracking internet outages, also showed that Google was offline. Google’s search engine continued to work for some people.

But about an hour after the outages began, the services started working again.

Google initially provided limited information about what occurred, and it was not immediately clear how many users were affected by the outage. Several of Google’s products have more than a billion global users, including Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play, Search and YouTube.

Later, the company attributed the problem to an “authentication system outage” that lasted for approximately 45 minutes starting at 7:32 a.m. Eastern time.

“All services are now restored,” Google said in a statement. “We apologize to everyone affected, and we will conduct a thorough follow up review to ensure this problem cannot recur in the future.”

Today, at 3.47AM PT Google experienced an authentication system outage for approximately 45 minutes due to an internal storage quota issue. This was resolved at 4:32AM PT, and all services are now restored.

— Google Cloud (@googlecloud) December 14, 2020

Product outages were once fairly common for growing internet companies. But as Google, Facebook and others have become larger, building complex networks of interconnected data centers around the world, the incidents have become less common. Google has privately financed undersea cables to move data between continents and improve performance in the event problems occur in a certain location.

The reliability of the systems have become increasingly important as people and businesses depend on the services, whether to search for information online, find directions, send email or get access to private documents stored on Google’s servers. Some users reported their appliances not working because they were linked to Google’s line of home products.

During lockdowns, schools have leaned on Google services to teach students forced to stay home. “At least we have an excuse for not doing our homework,” one person wrote on Twitter.

The incident is likely to provide fodder for those who say the biggest technology companies have grown too powerful and deserve more oversight. In the United States, Google and Facebook are facing antitrust lawsuits. In the European Union, new regulations will be introduced on Tuesday to limit the industry’s power.

William Dixon, a cybersecurity expert at the World Economic Forum, said the outage highlighted the fragility of the world’s digital networks.

“What you have is an increasingly smaller number of technology providers that are systemically important,” said Mr. Dixon, who used to work on cybersecurity issues for the British government. “If there is one issue, then the cascades of that are quite significant.”

Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator on Brexit, speaking to reporters Monday morning in Brussels. Talks with Britain on a trade deal are continuing. Credit…Francois Walschaerts/Reuters

  • Stocks rose on Monday, rebounding from last week’s slump as negotiators trying to secure a Brexit trade deal and U.S. fiscal stimulus package were given a little more time to reach an agreement.

  • The S&P 500 rose about 0.6 percent in early trading, while the Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.8 percent and the FTSE 100 in Britain was flat. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 closed 0.3 percent higher and the Shanghai composite index rose 0.7 percent.

  • The British pound strengthened against other major currencies, rising 1.1 percent against the euro and 1.4 percent against the U.S. dollar after Britain and the European Union decided on Sunday to extend talks on a trade deal. Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum over four years ago and formally did so on Jan. 31, entering a transition period that will end in 17 days’ time.

  • Last week, the pound suffered its steepest drop in three months after signs that Britain would not reach an agreement with its largest trading partner before the end of the year, which would lead to higher tariffs as well as trade and economic disruption.

  • In the United States, Congress has given itself another week to come to an agreement on package of measures to provide some relief to unemployed Americans and hard-hit businesses. A bipartisan group of lawmakers who have been working for a month on a $908 billion proposal met through the weekend. They plan to introduce a final product on Monday.

As the European Union has become the global leader in tech regulation, Google and other American tech giants have increasingly focused on Brussels in hopes of choking off even stiffer rules before they spread.

In Europe, the tech companies are spending more than ever, hiring former government officials, well-connected law firms and consulting firms, Adam Satariano and Matina Stevis-Gridneff reported in The New York Times. They funded dozens of think tanks and trade associations, endowed academic positions at top universities across the continent and helped publish industry-friendly research by other firms.

American lawmakers and regulators, too, have become much more aggressive in curbing the power of the technology industry’s biggest companies. Last week, federal and state officials accused Facebook of illegally crushing competition. In October, the Justice Department accused Google of illegally protecting its monopoly over search.

In the first half of 2020, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft declared spending a combined 19 million euros, or about $23 million, equal to what they had declared for all of 2019 and up from €6.8 million in 2014, according to Transparency International, a group that monitors E.U. lobbying.

“The budgets are really unrivaled — we’ve never seen this kind of money being spent by companies directly,” said Margarida Silva, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, a group that tracks lobbying in Brussels. The totals are probably much higher, she noted, because disclosure rules do not capture all the spending on law firms, academic partnerships and activities in individual countries.

The spending is less than in the United States, but the growing influence industry is alarming European Union officials who believe that Big Tech is contributing to a Washingtonization of Brussels, giving money and connections an upper hand over the public interest.

Janet Yellen, Mr. Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary, has long argued for emissions reduction as an economic imperative.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Even as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. confronts the immediate task of accelerating the pandemic recovery, he has placed the longer-running climate challenge at the center of his administration’s economic priorities.

The pandemic recovery, too, will have climate-minded undertones, The New York Times’s Jim Tankersley and Lisa Friedman report.

Three of Mr. Biden’s picks for top roles — Janet L. Yellen as Treasury secretary, Brian Deese for National Economic Council director, and Neera Tanden, the nominee to head the White House Office of Management and Budget — are preparing to weave efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate clean energy production into the economic stimulus legislation that his team is planning. Climate change is also expected to play a heavy role in a broader infrastructure initiative that could be one of Mr. Biden’s best hopes for a major bipartisan bill in his first year in office.

The climate battle is also likely to influence his economic approach more broadly, with his team preparing to use the government’s vast regulatory powers to reduce emissions via wind and solar energy, electric cars and other initiatives — an approach that Mr. Biden’s team insists will create jobs.

Those close to Mr. Biden said he was purposefully putting what scientists believe is the world’s largest looming crisis at the heart of the agencies most responsible for promoting the country’s economic security.

“Historically we have looked at climate change as an environmental issue,” said Christy Goldfuss, a former head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Barack Obama. What Mr. Biden has done, she said, “is center climate policy in his economic team.”

People lined to find assistance with their unemployment claims in Frankfort, Ky.Credit…Bryan Woolston/Reuters

The federal program that covers gig workers, part-time hires, seasonal workers and others who do not qualify for traditional unemployment benefits has kept millions of Americans afloat.

Established by Congress in March as part of the CARES Act, the program, known as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, has provided over $70 billion in relief.

But in carrying out the hastily conceived program, states have overpaid hundreds of thousands of workers — often because of administrative errors. Now states are asking for that money back, Gillian Friedman reports in The New York Times.

The notices come out of the blue, with instructions to repay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. Those being billed, already living on the edge, are told that their benefits will be reduced to compensate for the errors — or that the state may even put a lien on their home, come after future wages or withhold tax refunds.

Many who collected payments are still out of a job, and may have little prospect of getting one. Most had no idea that they were being overpaid.

“When somebody gets a bill like this, it completely terrifies them,” said Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit workers’ rights group. Sometimes the letters themselves are in error — citing overpayments when benefits were correctly paid — but either way, she said, the stress “is going to cost people’s lives.”

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World News

Dow futures rise as shares try to bounce again from shedding week

Dow futures rise as stocks attempt to bounce back from losing week

Traders work on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

US stock futures rose early Monday as markets indicated a rebound from a lost week.

Investors are weighing updates on the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine and the coronavirus stimulus stalemate in Washington

Dow futures indicated an opening gain of more than 180 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures also traded in positive territory.

Last week, stocks saw their first week of downturn in several months as lawmakers continued a stalemate over a Covid-19 bailout package.

The S&P 500 fell nearly 1% in its first negative week in three years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.57% for its first negative week in three and the Nasdaq Composite lost nearly 0.7% for its first negative week in four.

Next week is expected to be market-moving with the launch of the Pfizer vaccine and a Federal Reserve policy meeting. Tesla is also joining the S&P 500 on Friday.

Following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency approval for Pfizer’s vaccine, Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield signed the drug so that vaccinations could officially continue for those aged 16 and over.

The US has started shipping the cans from a Pfizer facility in Michigan to hundreds of distribution centers around the country. The FDA is expected to publish its assessment of Moderna’s vaccine this week.

The Covid-19 vaccine launches on some of the darkest days of the pandemic in the United States. More than 2,300 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded on Saturday, after over 3,300 deaths on Friday. New infections keep exploding. More than 219,000 cases were reported on Saturday.

The surge in cases coincides with months of debates in Washington over another round of Covid relief. A non-partisan group has proposed a $ 908 billion limit. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has opposed the proposal, instead calling for an agreement that eliminates corporate liability and funding provisions from state and local governments. These two issues are major sources of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats.

“Politically, the debate continues on more tax legislation that is badly needed for much of the population, but will also create an even bigger ‘wall of money’ for consumers when the economies are fully reopened,” said Raymond James’ Tavis McCourt towards customers on Sunday.

“It is very clear that the economy is slowing as the local stalemate persists, but the impact on the stock market has so far been limited. Whether this will continue through Q1 is unclear, but we expect withdrawals to be limited unless the vaccine changes significantly. ” History, “he added.

The Fed begins its two-day meeting on Tuesday, the last central bank meeting in 2020. Economists have speculated that the Fed might make changes to its bond program. The Fed is currently buying at least $ 80 billion a month from Treasuries, and Fed officials at their last meeting discussed what they could do to change that program.

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