Tag: Trade

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Business

EV manufacturing could shrink U.S. Midwest auto elements commerce

EV manufacturing may shrink U.S. Midwest auto parts trade

The race to build EVs in the US is heating up as new rounds of investment pour out of Washington. The workers in the former center of the auto industry fear being left behind.

“If we look closely at what’s going on at the factory, it won’t be fewer workers,” Keith Cooley, former Michigan Department of Labor chief, told CNBC. “Different people will build the cars.”

Researchers believe modern factory jobs may require more education and be less available than in the past. They estimate that electric vehicles could require 30% less manufacturing labor compared to conventional cars. “The lines that route oil or gas around an internal combustion engine won’t be there,” Cooley said.

That change could hit auto parts suppliers, many of whom are concentrated near Midwestern cities like Kokomo, Indiana; Lima, Ohio; and Detroit, Michigan.

“Auto companies in some of these places actually make up a decent chunk of tax revenue, and they employ a lot of people in the surrounding community,” Sanya Carley, a professor at Indiana University and a collaborator on the Industrial Heartland study, told CNBC. “So the fate of these companies is very closely linked to the fate of the communities.”

Washington leaders are hoping that two key pieces of legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, will provide a bridge to that future. These laws grant billions of dollars in incentives to clean energy companies.

With funding in the pipeline, automakers are now wondering how quickly demand for electric vehicles will materialize. Electric vehicles will account for 9% of global car sales in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency.

Watch them Video to learn more about how the electric vehicle revolution will impact the economies of Midwestern states.

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Politics

U.S.-China Commerce Talks Ought to Resume, U.S. Enterprise Teams Say

U.S.-China Trade Talks Should Resume, U.S. Business Groups Say

A group of America’s most influential corporate groups are urging the Biden government to resume trade talks with China and lower tariffs on Chinese-made goods that remained in effect after the trade war began between the two countries.

The groups, which represented interests as diverse as potato growers, microchip companies and the pharmaceutical industry, said in a letter Thursday that the Biden government should take “swift action” to address “onerous” tariffs. They also urged the White House to work with the Chinese government to ensure it honors the commitments they made in their trade peace signed with the Trump administration in early 2020.

The letter, addressed to the Treasury Department and the United States’ sales representative, comes as relations between the world’s two largest economies remain at odds. A high-profile visit to China by Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy foreign minister, last month started with sharp opening remarks from the Chinese side and ended with little progress. The two have argued over human rights, cyberattacks and China’s military operations in the South China Sea.

While the Biden government has developed a strategy of confronting China on a number of issues, it has said less about the countries’ economic relations.

It has been more than seven months since former President Donald J. Trump signed a January 2020 trade deal with China, along with other national security measures taken by the previous administration. Officials have not yet disclosed the results of this review.

The January 2020 trade stall essentially frozen US tariffs on Chinese imports of $ 360 billion. This deal also did nothing to stop the Chinese government’s subsidies for strategic industries such as computer chips and electric cars that worried American competitors. While some of the provisions of the trade agreement expire at the end of the year, much of the agreement will remain in force.

The industry group’s letter appeared to be an attempt to get the Biden government to act.

“Because of the tariffs, US industry is facing increased costs to manufacture products and provide services domestically, making its exports of those products and services less competitive overseas,” the letter read by the New York Times was reviewed.

Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the US Trade Representative’s office, said, “For the first half of this year, the US economy grew as fast as it has been in nearly 40 years, and more jobs were created in the first six months” than any other Administration in history. ”He added that the government is“ conducting a robust, strategic review of our economic relations with China to create effective policies ”.

The existence of the letter was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The letter said China had met some of its trade deal commitments, including new measures to open up its market to US financial institutions. It added that further talks are the only way to ensure that China meets remaining commitments in other sectors such as intellectual property protection.

Although China has purchased substantial US goods since the trade war, the amount and composition have lagged behind its pledges to purchase US $ 200 billion worth of American goods and services in 2020 and 2021. According to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economically, China lagged 40 percent behind those purchases last year and is 30 percent behind this year.

“We urge the government to work with the Chinese government to increase purchases of US goods through the remainder of 2021 and to implement all structural commitments of the agreement before its two-year anniversary on February 15, 2022,” the letter added added.

While the Biden government has questioned whether the trade deal with China was well designed, it has also signaled that it will continue to press China into unfair trade practices.

In June, President Biden expanded a Trump administration blacklist that prevented Americans from investing in Chinese companies that aid the country’s military or the repression of religious minorities. Mr. Biden put Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, on the list of banned companies. The White House also announced the formation of a trade and technology council with American and European officials to counter China’s influence by coordinating digital policy between Brussels and Washington.

“We will not hesitate to highlight China’s compulsive and unfair trade practices that harm American workers, undermine the multilateral system, or violate fundamental human rights,” said Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, in a prepared statement for a Senate hearing in May . “We are working on a strong strategic approach to our trade and economic relations with China.”

Categories
Health

Australia’s commerce minister on vaccination charges and journey bubbles

Australia's trade minister on vaccination rates and travel bubbles

Police officers patrol the Sydney Opera House on July 11, 2021.

James D. Morgan | Getty Images

More Australians need to be vaccinated before the country builds travel bubbles and lets international students in.

Australia has closed its doors to the outside world since March 2020 and even banned its own citizens from returning from India last May.

Australia’s Trade Minister Dan Tehan told CNBC that the easing of border restrictions and the return of foreign students to the country are still “a big part of the roadmap if we get out of this virus”.

“Of course we have to increase the vaccination rates. And as soon as we increase the vaccination rates further, we will check quarantine precautions, “he said on Tuesday in the” Squawk Box Asia “.

Tehan added that South Australia will begin implementing a domestic quarantine process. That trial is slated to take place for two weeks in September and Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it could pave the way for Australians to leave and return, local media reported.

Australia has been criticized for its slow adoption of vaccines. According to Our World in Data, only 15.3% of the population was fully vaccinated as of August 1. Last week, local media reported that Morrison said the country must vaccinate 80% of its population before borders are reopened.

As soon as vaccination rates rise, Australia will try to let in more groups of people in, according to Tehan.

“So we’re going to try to lift the caps so more Australians can return home and then look for ways we can bring in international student business people who want to do business here in Australia,” he said.

Travel bubble plans

Largest city Sydney is battling a virus resurgence as cases hit record highs last week and the military was called in to enforce restrictions. Sydney last week extended its lockdown – which began in late June – for another four weeks as the Delta variant continued to spread.

Still, Tehan said Australia was “very interested” in building travel bubbles with countries that have handled the virus well, such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

“That’s still the plan. Obviously we are in a pandemic. So the plan can be adjusted and changed further, but … that’s what we see. We want to be able to open up and open up” with these countries Contact the basis of the medical advice when we know it is safe, “he said.

Categories
World News

Asia-Pacific shares rise as buyers await China’s commerce knowledge for June

Asia-Pacific stocks edge higher; Australia central bank's rate decision ahead

SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Tuesday morning trade as investors awaited the release of China’s trade data for June.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan gained 0.55% in early trade while the Topix index advanced 0.57%. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.54%.

Shares in Australia also advanced as the S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.25% higher.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.1% higher.

On the economic data front, China is set to release its trade data for June at 11:00 a.m. HK/SIN on Tuesday.

Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

Overnight stateside, the major indexes on Wall Street rose to record closing highs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 126.02 points to 34,996.18 while the S&P 500 gained about 0.35% to 4,384.63. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.21% to 14,733.24.

Currencies

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 92.214 as it struggled to return to levels above 92.7 seen last week.

The Japanese yen traded at 110.30 per dollar, still weaker than levels below 110 seen against the greenback last week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7481, above levels around $0.745 seen yesterday.

Categories
World News

Commerce secretary on commerce, restoration from Covid

Commerce secretary on trade, recovery from Covid

Hong Kong’s economy has rebounded sharply after being hit by the Covid-19 pandemic — but it’s not out of the woods yet and some sectors are still reeling, said the city’s top trade official.

“The distribution of this rebound is rather uneven,” Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday.

Yau explained that imports and exports have been a “very strong catalyst” of growth in the last few months, with overall trade hitting record levels in some months. However, retail sales are moderating and tourism is still struggling to recover, he said.

Such uneven economic performance is also reflected in the jobs market, and will likely remain so as Hong Kong faces the “twin battle” of containing the spread of Covid and reviving the economy, added Yau.

The Hong Kong economy grew 7.9% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to a year ago. It was the city’s first economic expansion after six consecutive quarters of year-on-year contraction.

A man wearing a protective face mask stands on Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront that faces Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong.

Anthony Wallace | AFP | Getty Images

Before the pandemic, Hong Kong — a Chinese-ruled semi-autonomous region — was rocked by widespread pro-democracy protests that turned violent at times. The unrest sent the economy into a recession in 2019 for the first time in a decade, driven by a steep decline in retail sales and tourist arrivals.

The Covid outbreak dealt another blow to the economy.

While retail sales have recovered since February this year, the pace of growth has slowed down. Meanwhile, visitor arrivals into Hong Kong have remained weak.

Yau said it’s encouraging that the number of daily Covid cases has fallen and stayed low in Hong Kong over the past month. That would allow more segments of the economy to recover, but fresh waves of infections could still occur, he added.

“The lesson we learned is try to shorten the time to suppress the outbreak,” said Yau, adding that the ability to do so will help instill confidence among individuals and businesses.

Categories
Health

Shares commerce decrease as nation for ‘whole’ lockdown

Stocks trade lower as country for 'total' lockdown

A man wearing a facemask as a protection against Covid-19 walks past two Malaysian flags in capital city Kuala Lumpur.

Faris Hadziq | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images

Stocks in Malaysia fell in early Monday trade as the government announced a nationwide “total lockdown” to curb the rapidly rising daily Covid-19 infections in the country.

The benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index fell around 1.5% at the open before settling around 1.1% — underperforming most Asia-Pacific markets.

Malaysia has been struggling to control a surge in Covid infections. Last week, the country reported five-consecutive days of record increases in coronavirus cases, taking cumulative infections to more than 565,500 cases with 2,729 deaths as of Sunday, health ministry data showed.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced Friday after market close that the country will enter a two-week lockdown starting Tuesday.

During the period, individuals are generally only allowed to leave their homes to buy essential items or seek medical services. For companies, those offering essential services will remain open while certain segments of the manufacturing sectors can operate with a reduced capacity.

Brian Tan, an economist at Barclays Bank in Singapore, estimated that the measures will cost the Malaysian economy between 0.5 to 1 percentage point every two weeks.

Tan wrote in a Monday note that he has lowered Malaysia’s 2021 growth forecast from 6.5% to 5.5% — below the central bank’s projection range of 6% to 7.5%.

Categories
Business

U.S.-China Section 1 Commerce Deal May Set Guidelines for Commerce

U.S.-China Phase 1 Trade Deal Could Set Rules for Commerce

SHANGHAI — Just days before the coronavirus shut down the Chinese city of Wuhan and changed the world, the Trump administration and China signed what both sides said would be only a temporary truce in their 18-month trade war.

Since then, the pandemic has scrambled global priorities, international commerce has stalled and surged again and President Biden has taken office. But the truce endures — and now appears to be setting new, lasting ground rules for global trade.

The agreement didn’t stop many of the same practices that sparked the trade war, the biggest in history. It does nothing to prevent China from throwing huge subsidies at a range of industries — from electric cars to jetliners to computer chips — that could shape the future, but for which the country often relies heavily on American technology.

In return, the truce enshrined most of the tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on $360 billion a year in Chinese-made goods, many of them subsidized. Such unilateral moves run counter to the spirit of the rules of global trade, which were set up to stop nations from starting economic conflicts on their own and to keep them from spiraling out of control.

But the new model seems to be catching on. The European Union announced on May 5 that it was drafting legislation that would allow it to broadly penalize imports and investments from subsidized industries overseas. E.U. officials, who had initially looked askance at the U.S.-China truce, said their policy was not aimed specifically at China. But trade experts were quick to note that no other exporter has the scale of manufacturing and breadth of subsidies that China has.

“You see a real appetite in the U.S. but also in the E.U. for unilateral measures,” said Timothy Meyer, a former State Department lawyer who is now a professor at Vanderbilt Law School.

The truce, known as the Phase 1 agreement, could still be supplanted by a new deal. The agreement requires that the two sides conduct a high-level review of it this summer. On Wednesday in Washington, Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, held an introductory call with a senior Chinese official, Vice Premier Liu He — a signal that Mr. Liu, the same top negotiator who squared off against the Trump administration, will be kept in place by China.

But prospects for a far-reaching new deal this year are slim. The Biden administration is drafting a comprehensive strategy toward China, a complex interagency procedure that could last into early next year. It has also shown little appetite for easing up on China’s trade practices, and it has publicly discussed smoothing ties with European and other allies that were ruffled by other disputes during the Trump administration.

“We welcome the competition,” Ms. Tai told lawmakers earlier this month. “But the competition must be fair, and if China cannot or will not adapt to international rules and norms, we must be bold and creative in taking steps to level the playing field and enhance our own capabilities and partnerships.”

On the Chinese side, Beijing won’t budge on the issue of subsidies, said people familiar with both countries’ positions who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Apart from numerous demands that the United States simply abandon its tariffs, China has not even made a proposal to revamp the agreement, they said, because Chinese officials do not want to discuss subsidy limits.

If that intransigence lasts, Phase 1 could keep setting trade rules for years to come.

Though a few provisions expire at the end of the year, the agreement includes permanent requirements, such as that China stop forcing foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms as a condition of doing business there. An obscure clause also calls for China to buy rising amounts of American goods through 2025.

That could set the stage for more narrowly targeted talks, including about whether China has lived up to the agreement’s annual purchase targets. The two sides might also discuss the solar industry, which sparked previous trade spats between them but could get a new look as the Biden administration emphasizes climate change.

On its face, the Phase 1 trade agreement has fallen short of the Trump administration’s goals. The administration had hoped negotiations would even out the huge trade imbalance between the two countries and rein in Chinese subsidies, which American companies and officials see as creating huge, state-funded competitors to U.S. industries.

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May 26, 2021, 4:06 p.m. ET

Instead, the U.S. trade deficit with China grew by nearly half again, to $78.6 billion, in the first three months of this year compared with a year earlier, fueled by pandemic purchases like consumer electronics, exercise equipment and other goods made mainly in China.

But China’s imports from the United States have been catching up since bad weather and a deadly pig disease sharpened China’s appetite for American-grown food. He Weiwen, a retired Commerce Ministry official who is now an executive director of the China Association of International Trade in Beijing, said that China had made a sincere effort to meet its pledges.

“China is not violating that Phase 1 agreement,” he said.

Over the long term, the Phase 1 deal could cement the American approach of using tariffs to offset China’s drive to retool and upgrade its economy through lavish subsidies.

The Trump administration tried during the trade war to persuade China to renounce subsidies for its exporters, which include cheap land for factories and huge loans to manufacturers at below-market interest rates. The Biden administration plans extensive subsidies as well, but those are aimed mostly at research and development, a category of subsidies that seldom violates international trade rules.

Some economists in China have also tried without success over the years to argue that the country’s industrial policy is too expensive and adds to its debt burden.

But Beijing has stood fast, reluctantly tolerating American tariffs instead of accepting limits on subsidies. In the year and a half since, China has doubled down on subsidies in many sectors. Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has strongly endorsed a drive by China to achieve industrial self-reliance.

Even coming up with a serious offer now to exchange reductions in Chinese subsidies for cuts in American tariffs would require confronting powerful domestic constituencies in China. Most government ministries now appear to be determined to spend whatever it takes to turn the country into a technological powerhouse, said the people familiar with China’s economic policies.

Premier Li Keqiang signaled in his annual report to the legislature in March that China remained committed to strengthening its manufacturing sector, already the world’s largest by a wide margin. “In pursuing economic growth, we will continue to prioritize the development of the real economy, upgrade the industrial base, modernize industrial chains and keep the share of manufacturing in the economy basically stable,” he said.

Chinese officials appear more open to talking narrowly about solar energy. Such a deal could involve lifting Chinese tariffs on American polysilicon, the main raw material for solar panels, in exchange for removing American tariffs on Chinese panels. That would make solar energy less expensive in the United States and help Americans rely less on coal and other fuels that contribute to climate change.

Exports of American polysilicon, mainly produced with electricity from hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest, would also lessen China’s dependence on producing polysilicon using coal-fired power in its western Xinjiang region. A recent report alleged that the Chinese government worked with big Chinese solar companies to create jobs in programs that activists describe as prone to human rights abuses.

The Chinese government has denied that any abuses took place.

But a deal would worry those in Congress and elsewhere who contend that the West needs to shore up its industrial base and who point to its dependence on Chinese solar panels.

“Countries outside China,” said Seamus Grimes, a professor emeritus at the National University of Ireland who studies Chinese supply chains, “are becoming much more aware of how dependent they are.”

Categories
Business

U.S. and Europe Transfer Nearer to Truce in Trump-Period Commerce Spat: Dwell Updates

Working on a steel pipe at the Iron S.p.A. factory in Assisi, Italy. Former President Donald J. Trump’s administration imposed steel tariffs on several countries in 2018.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

The United States and the European Union said Monday they had begun discussions to resolve a conflict over steel and aluminum imports that was a major front in the Trump administration’s trade wars and a serious burden on trans-Atlantic relations.

As part of a truce announced Monday, the European Union will not, as planned, increase tariffs on products like United States whiskey, orange juice and motorcycles, which the bloc imposed in 2018 in retaliation for duties that the Trump administration imposed on European steel and aluminum. The higher tariffs were scheduled to take effect June 1.

The talks about steel and aluminum are part of an effort by the Biden administration to rebuild relations between the United States and Europe after the Trump administration treated the bloc like an adversary, sometimes threatening to leave NATO and citing national security as a justification for charging 25 percent tariffs on imports of European steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

In March, the United States and European Union temporarily suspended tariffs on billions of dollars of each others’ aircraft, wine, food and other products as they worked to settle a long-running dispute involving Boeing and Airbus, the two leading airplane manufacturers. The United States also temporarily suspended retaliatory tariffs against British products like Scotch whisky that had been imposed as part of the dispute over aircraft subsidies.

Some European officials had hoped President Biden would simply lift the Trump-era tariffs, which are unpopular with businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. But the administration is moving cautiously and is likely to seek something in return, mindful that the tariffs are welcomed in steelmaking regions like Pennsylvania.

In a joint statement, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative; Gina M. Raimondo, the secretary of commerce; and Valdis Dombrovskis, the top European Union trade official, said they would discuss how to address a global glut in steel products that poses “a serious threat to the market-oriented E.U. and U.S. steel and aluminum industries and the workers in those industries.”

The United States and European Union are “allies and partners, sharing similar national security interests as democratic, market economies,” the officials said, adding that they would work together to “hold countries like China that support trade-distorting policies to account.”

Starbucks has announced that masks will be optional for vaccinated customers as of Monday, unless local regulations require them.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York Times

Target on Monday joined a growing list of retailers, restaurants and theme parks that will allow fully vaccinated customers to go mask free, following new coronavirus safety guidance from the federal government last week that said vaccinated people rarely transmit the virus.

[Answers to your questions about vaccines and masks at work.]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday took many businesses by surprise when it said that people who are vaccinated could go maskless in most places, including indoors. For businesses, the announcement was complicated by the fact that C.D.C. guidance does not override state and local rules. But several major companies have already moved to relax mask requirements. Businesses for the most part have not said they would require customers to show proof that they have been vaccinated.

Here’s the latest on companies that are changing their mask policies.

Costco, which has more than 500 U.S. stores, said it would allow fully vaccinated customers to go mask-free where state and local guidance allowed. The retailer said it would “not require proof of vaccination” but would ask for its customers’ “responsible and respectful cooperation with this revised policy.”

Publix, which has 1,270 grocery stores in the Southeast, said “face coverings are optional for fully vaccinated individuals inside Publix stores” subject to local regulations.

Starbucks, which has 32,000 cafes worldwide, said that facial coverings would be optional for vaccinated customers beginning on Monday, unless local regulations requireed them. Employees at Starbucks locations in the United States and Canada will still be required to wear masks.

Target, which has 1,909 stores in the United States, said it would no longer require fully vaccinated customers and employees to wear face coverings, except where required by local ordinances. The retailer said that it masks would still be “strongly recommended” for both shoppers and staff members who were not fully vaccinated.

Trader Joe’s, which operates 517 grocery stores across the country, said that customers who were fully vaccinated no longer needed to wear masks in its stores. It will not require proof of vaccination “as we trust our customers to follow C.D.C. guidelines,” a spokeswoman, Kenya Friend-Daniel, said in an email. Masks are still required for store employees.

Walmart said that vaccinated customers were allowed to go maskless starting May 18 in areas that did not have stricter mandates. A spokesman for the company, which operates more than 4,000 Walmart and nearly 600 Sam’s Club stores in the United States, said it expected its customers to abide by the honor system. Employees can also go mask-free by answering “yes” to a vaccination question that is part of a daily health assessment.

Walt Disney World Resort in Florida said that it was no longer requiring visitors to wear masks in most outdoor areas as of this weekend, though masks are still required in indoor locations. Disneyland in California continues to require masks indoors and out because of state mandates. Disney’s chief executive, Bob Chapek, said on an earnings call Thursday that the company had begun to increase capacity and that the C.D.C.’s new guidance “is very big news for us, particularly if anybody’s been in Florida in the middle of summer with a mask on.” About 150 million people visited Disney’s parks in 2019.

Hershey Park in Pennsylvania said it would no longer require masks nor social distancing for fully vaccinated guests. The theme park, which drew 3.4 million visitors in 2019, said it would rely on its guests to “accurately follow the guidelines based on their vaccination status.”

Universal Orlando Resort said masks were no longer required when outdoors but still must be used in “all indoor locations.” Its theme park in California will still require masks both outside and inside because of the state rules.

One of the 40,000 DVD rental kiosks operated by Redbox in the United States.Credit…Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Redbox, the company best known for its DVD-rental kiosks, is going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a deal that values the company at $693 million, the DealBook newsletter was the first to report.

Redbox’s parent, Outerwall, was acquired by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2016 at a $1.6 billion valuation; it later separated the group’s businesses, which included Redbox, Coinstar and ecoATM. Apollo is rolling over all of its equity in Redbox as part of the deal, which also includes a $50 million investment led by Ophir Asset Management.

Redbox has some 40,000 kiosks across the United States, more than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. Are they needed in the age of Netflix? Redbox gets its DVDs long before many movies arrive on subscription services, said its chief executive, Galen Smith, and its customers are more value-conscious than the typical Netflix streamer. Many are also late adopters to streaming, perhaps because they can’t afford broadband access, Mr. Smith said.

The physical rental business was in decline at the time of Apollo’s acquisition, and revenue from DVDs fell more than a third last year, to around $500 million, as the pandemic held up new releases. As the backlog clears, the company is expecting a rebound. There is a “very long tail for the physical business,” Mr. Smith said.

Redbox is also hoping to convert loyal customers to its own streaming business, which accounted for about 8 percent of its revenue last year. It partners with brands like Showtime and is also creating its own content. Once seen as a threat to the studios, Redbox is now considered an important buyer. “We can create value in helping these studios reach consumers that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach through our platform,” Mr. Smith said.

The Internal Revenue Service delayed the tax filing deadline by a month, to May 17.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated Press

It’s May 17 and it’s Tax Day, the deadline for filing your 2020 taxes. The Internal Revenue Service in March said that Americans who needed it could take extra time to file their taxes. That time has arrived.

The one-month delay from the usual April deadline did not offer as much extra time as the I.R.S. gave people last year, when the filing deadline was pushed to July 15. But the aim was the same: to make it easier for taxpayers to get a handle on their finances — as well as tax changes that took effect this year with the signing of the American Rescue Plan.

Still have questions? Here are some articles that might help.

How the Pandemic Has Changed Your Taxes

New rules for a new reality, from stimulus payments to retirement withdrawals to unemployment insurance, could cut your bill or even generate extra refunds.

The Tax Filing Deadline Was Delayed, but Read the Fine Print

The federal government and most states pushed back the date to May 17, but others have gone their own way. It’s a good idea to double-check deadlines.

The Tax Headaches of Working Remotely

“Each state has its own rules,” one tax expert says. So if you worked in a state other than your usual one in 2020, here are some tips on dealing with the tax season.

For Gig Workers and Business Owners, Taxes Are Even Trickier Now

Filing taxes has never been simple for freelancers and business owners, but the pandemic has made it far more complex.

A Break for Working Families

The government is allowing people who qualify for the earned-income tax credit to use income from either 2020 or 2019, whichever will result in a bigger credit.

Ryanair, the Irish low-cost airline, said it has seen signs that a recovery in air travel and tourism “has already begun.”Credit…Albert Gea/Reuters

U.S. stocks slipped in early trading on Monday and most European equity indexes were lower, reversing some of Friday’s rally.

The S&P 500 fell about 0.2 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 0.1 percent.

The Wall Street benchmark rose on Friday, but the increase was not enough to reverse a decline of 1.4 percent for the week, when faster-than-expected inflation data rattled markets.

Traders are watching inflation data closely because if it shows signs of a substantial and sustained rise central bank policymakers might pull back on monetary stimulus. On Wednesday, the central bank will publish minutes of its April policy meeting.

  • Discovery shares rose 8 percent in early trading after confirming it would merge with AT&T’s media business, including the WarnerMedia assets, to create a new giant company. AT&T shares rose more than 3 percent.

  • The FTSE 100 in Britain fell 0.4 percent even as England entered the next stage of its exit from lockdown. Indoor dining and hotels reopened as well as entertainment venues such as museums and cinemas. But an increase in the number of cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India has raised concerns about the easing of restrictions.

  • Ryanair shares rose slightly after the airline reported a loss of 815 million euros (or $991 million) in the year through March but said that it expected a “strong recovery” in air travel and tourism in the second half of this fiscal year. “The recent strong increases in weekly bookings since early April suggests that this recovery has already begun,” the earnings release said.

  • Taiwan’s stock index dropped 3 percent as the island battles its worst coronavirus outbreak. Its government imposed tougher restrictions, including closing cinemas and limiting the size of gatherings, and encouraged people not to panic buy essentials.

  • Oil prices rose slightly. The West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, rose 0.3 percent to $65.58 a barrel.

  • Bitcoin fell to about $45,000 on Monday morning, though it recovered some of its losses from the weekend after Elon Musk said Tesla hadn’t sold any Bitcoin. The electric carmaker bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency earlier this year but Mr. Musk recently suspended plans to accept Bitcoin for car payments.

The paper’s conclusions suggest that economic programs embraced by President Biden may be useful in raising wages.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Two economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute conclude in a new paper that the government is to blame for the fact that pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s.

“Intentional policy decisions (either of commission or omission) have generated wage suppression,” write Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens.

Included among these decisions are policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment and to let employers fight unions aggressively, trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad and the tacit or explicit blessing of new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs.

Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens argue that a decades-long loss of leverage largely explains the gap between the pay increases that workers would have received had they benefited fully from rising productivity, and the smaller wage and benefit increases that workers actually received, Noam Scheiber reports for The New York Times.

Drawing on existing measures of the relationship between unemployment and wages, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens estimate that excess unemployment lowered wages by about 10 percent since the 1970s, explaining nearly one-quarter of the gap between wages and productivity growth.

They perform similar calculations for other factors that undermined workers’ bargaining power: the decline of unions; a succession of trade deals with low-wage countries; and increasingly common arrangements like “fissuring,” in which companies outsource work to lower-paying firms, and noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which make it hard for workers to leave for a competitor.

Together, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens conclude, these factors explain more than three-quarters of the gap between the typical worker’s actual increases in compensation and their expected increases, given the productivity gains.

The C.D.C.’s new guidance on masks comes with caveats.Credit…Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times

Are companies responsible for making sure that every employee without a mask is vaccinated against the coronavirus?

What if unvaccinated employees infect their co-workers — is the company potentially liable? Will companies ask their employees to take Covid-19 tests?

Millions of office workers who have been able to do their job from home during the pandemic are now thinking seriously about returning to work. The prospect raises myriad health safety and workplace protocol questions for employees and companies.

Lauren Hirsch of The New York Times’s DealBook team spoke to lawyers, employers and human resources professionals about some of the questions.

Generally, employers are allowed to require employees to be vaccinated. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance in December stating that vaccine mandates are legal. But this is complicated by proposed legislation in a number of states that would restrict companies’ abilities to set such requirements.

Whether executives are prepared to follow through on the implications of a vaccine mandate is also up for debate.

“If they want to permit employees to remove masks indoors, yes, I believe it does put the burden on the employer to verify,” said Kristin White, a lawyer at Fisher Phillips who specializes in workplace safety regulations.

The White House is also reviewing a new emergency standard on Covid workplace protections from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Labor groups have been pushing for new rules for about a year. OSHA suggests social distancing and masks in the workplace — but a temporary standard would establish requirements. Any new standard now needs to consider the new C.D.C. guidance.

As vaccination numbers rise and the number of Covid-19 cases drop, it’s natural for companies to rethink their workplace plans, said Joseph Allen, who is the director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program and advises companies on Covid-19 strategy.

“What was state-of-the-art last year is not state-of-the-art right now,” he said. “The science has changed, the plans should change.”

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Business

Eire’s tourism commerce prepares to re-open for good

Ireland's tourism trade prepares to re-open for good

Bruce Yuanyue Bi | The image database | Getty Images

DUBLIN – When Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin announced the gradual reopening of the hospitality industry in June, hotel managers like Niall Coffey breathed a sigh of relief.

Ireland’s tourism and hospitality industries were hardest hit during the pandemic, and previous attempts to reopen have been weighed down by new waves of Covid-19.

“I think we have no choice but to stay open at this stage because financially we really need to do this,” said Coffey, general manager of Harvey’s Point, a four-star hotel in Donegal, North West Ireland.

Apart from brief reopenings last summer and Christmas, bars, restaurants and hotels have largely been closed since March 2020.

Now that the vaccination campaign is gathering pace, Coffey and others are preparing for June 2nd when they can start letting some guests through the doors again. Bars and restaurants can then be opened in the following weeks, albeit with restrictions on the number and guidelines for indoor and outdoor meals.

Des O’Dowd, owner of Inchydoney Island Lodge & Spa in Cork, said companies have incurred a great deal of expense over the past year trying to reopen safely.

“They are trying to return groceries to vendors. We closed twice, going through fruits and vegetables and throwing them away or trying to find a home for them. We were closed and the beer ran out,” he told CNBC.

“It’s an expensive process to start and stop and do it all over again now would be heartbreaking. I hope that is the case, that we open up and there is no going back.”

The government has now recognized that the hospitality and tourism industries, a major employer in Ireland, will need further support even after the restrictions are lifted. Tourism was valued at around 9.3 billion euros ($ 11.3 billion) for the Irish economy in 2019, with 2 billion euros in tourism-related taxes paid to the treasury.

Food and supplies aside, many hotels and bars have had to invest in renovations and equipment to ensure compliance with Covid guidelines.

“This time last year we really faced a stranger. We were trying to measure six feet with tape measure and we had to buy a lot of partitions between the tables,” said O’Dowd.

Now, he said the hotel has a better understanding of what a safe reopening looks like, including providing antigen testing to the hotel’s 225 employees, adding to the cost of reopening and staying open.

Domestic visitors

Hotel managers and tourism industry workers hope the general public will share their enthusiasm for the reopening.

With international travel still effectively ceased, the country’s tourism industry relies on domestic visitors and “stays” during the summer months, but this will only last so long.

Coffey said he could not rely solely on domestic visitors for an extended period of time and that U.S. visitors are usually a major market group for his business.

“The golf business would have been pretty good for us in the summer season when we can get high rates (prepandemic). That’s gone,” he said.

He added that the hotel has had some bookings for September and October from American guests who are optimistic that international travel will reopen soon.

That could still come to fruition. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the end of April that the EU would allow fully vaccinated US visitors to enter the block.

“It’s great to see Europe talking about opening up and Britain is a little ahead of us. I think that’s a big advantage for us that we can see in the real world what happens a few weeks ahead of us,” said O. ‘Dowd added.

“Hopefully, in the UK and wherever these things are tested, very positive things will happen and we will get good results.”

International tourism

Niall Gibbons, executive director of the government agency Tourism Ireland, said the planned EU digital green certificate – or vaccination cards in a few quarters – is a step in the right direction to make international travel possible again.

Tourism Ireland is a joint government agency between Ireland and Northern Ireland whose job it is to promote the island of Ireland to overseas visitors.

According to the group, overseas tourist spending in Ireland in 2019 was 5.8 billion euros ($ 7 billion), with 325,000 people employed in the sector. It is therefore important to reopen the country in the second half of the year.

The EU certificate would allow visitors from other countries to check their vaccination or negative test status upon arrival in an EU country.

“There are other factors that will be required before the international (travel) restart gets underway. First and foremost, we need to work with the government on a roadmap,” Gibbons told CNBC.

Photo taken in Ireland, Cork

Francis Gormezano / EyeEm | EyeEm | Getty Images

“There are factors such as the mandatory hotel quarantine, the applicable test regime, air connectivity and restarting.”

Ireland introduced mandatory hotel quarantine earlier this year, which requires people entering the country from certain locations to be quarantined in a hotel for two weeks. The system presents a number of challenges.

“Quarantine and tourism don’t go hand in hand,” Gibbons said. He added that he supports a plan similar to the EU traffic light system in place last year, indicating which countries have lower infection rates and travel safer.

“Ultimately, this is the place we all want to be across the European Union,” he said.

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World News

Brexit Commerce Deal Will get a Last OK From E.U. Parliament

Brexit Trade Deal Gets a Final OK From E.U. Parliament

BRUSSELS – In the results published on Wednesday morning, the European Parliament voted by a large margin for the European Union to finally approve a Brexit agreement, which is already fraught with difficulties, complaints and judicial contestation.

The vote was 660 votes in favor, five against and 32 abstentions.

While the outcome was never really in doubt, Parliament raised serious concerns about the trustworthiness of the current UK government in carrying out in good faith the two key Brexit documents: the withdrawal agreement and the trade and cooperation agreement that has just been approved.

The latter agreement, which regulates trade and customs issues and does not provide for tariffs or quotas, has been applied since the beginning of the year under certain conditions. It was completed on Christmas Eve and ratified by the UK Parliament on December 30th. However, a negative vote by the European Parliament would have killed it and produced the “No Deal Brexit”, which neither side supported.

The European Parliament had postponed its vote to protest the UK’s dealings with Northern Ireland and the protocol that governs trade on the divided island. The UK’s actions are the source of a legal complaint filed by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, after the UK unilaterally extended the grace period for failing to carry out controls on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The two sides have not yet found a common basis for implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol, which aims to protect the internal market while avoiding a hard border with Ireland, a member of the European Union.

Suspicion ran through the debate. Christophe Hansen, a key Brexit legislator from Luxembourg, said a positive vote “should not be seen as a blank check to the UK government or a blind vote of confidence that it will implement the agreements between us in good faith, but it is over from our point of view more of an insurance policy. “

The trade and cooperation agreement, said Hansen, “will help us remind the UK of the commitments it has signed.”

Terry Reintke, a German Green lawmaker, said: “This deal is not a good one because Brexit is not a good one. The situation is also complicated because we cannot be sure how trustworthy the UK government really is. Still, this agreement can be a starting point to reconstruct what we lost with Brexit. “

Manfred Weber, a German who heads the largest party group, the center-right European People’s Party, has published it bluntly on Twitter. “We will vote for the TCA after Brexit,” he wrote, referring to the trade deal. “But we’re concerned about implementation because we don’t trust Boris Johnson’s administration.”

Many concerns have been expressed that the UK is abusing or undermining the complex rules governing fishing rights and the Northern Ireland Protocol.

David McAllister, a German lawmaker who is half Scottish, said some of the problems encountered so far were due to teething problems, but others were due to the type of Brexit Britain chose for itself, an increasing divergence from the European Union will mean internal market. This alone requires continuous discussion and the processing of areas that are excluded from the Brexit agreement, including financial services and foreign and security policy.

Brussels is determined to work on practical solutions between Northern Ireland, Ireland and mainland Britain. “But the protocol isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. The problem is called Brexit. “

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, urged Parliament to ratify the agreement and promised that Brussels would use the dispute and enforcement mechanisms of the agreement to ensure UK compliance. If not, she said, she would not hesitate to impose punitive tariffs.

“The deal is tied to real teeth – with a binding dispute settlement mechanism and the possibility of unilateral corrective action if necessary,” she said. “We don’t want to have to use these tools. But we won’t hesitate to use them if necessary. “

Dissatisfied with Great Britain, Parliament had postponed ratification twice. However, conditional transposition would have expired at the end of April and Parliament eventually cast its vote.

After nearly five hours of debate on Tuesday, lawmakers, many of whom were in virtual attendance, voted remotely, with final totals not being released until Wednesday morning.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator with Great Britain, thanked the legislators for their diligence. He praised the deal but warned: “Everyone must take responsibility and respect what they have signed.”

But he summed up the feelings of many when he said: “This is a divorce, a warning and a failure, a failure of the European Union and we must learn from it.”

Ratification would mark a new chapter in relations with Britain, good or bad, said Ms. von der Leyen. She hoped that this would constitute “the basis of a strong and close partnership based on our common interests and values”.

The UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum in June 2016 almost five years ago. The complications of Brexit and the ongoing struggles over its implementation have not least contributed to the discussion in the rest of the European Union about a similar outcome.

Monika Pronczuk contributed to the reporting.