The Economist - 4 февраля 2023

Год выпуска: февраль 2023

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 76

BIG, GREEN AND MEAN: Joe Biden’s plan to remake America’s economy

• Joe Biden’s plan to remake the economy is ambitious, risky, confused and selfish — but it could help save the planet: leader, page 9.
• America’s government is spending lavishly to revive manufacturing: briefing, page 17.
• The need for permit reform, page 21.

Asia’s chip wars

• America’s hoped-for Asian semiconductor pact faces steep odds, page 30.

How Russia dodges sanctions

• The West’s attempts to curb Russia’s oil sales are proving to be underwhelming: leader, page 11, and analysis, page 60.
• On the frozen China-Russia border, locals talk about the past and future: Chaguan, page 38.

Adani under fire

• A short-seller’s attack on a business empire raises thorny questions about Indian capitalism: leader, page 10, and analysis, page 53.
• The Hindenburg critique, page 54.

Battle of the ai labs

• ChatGPT is not the only game in town, page 55.
• How do employees and customers feel about artificial intelligence? Bartleby, page 57.

The world this week Politics

• More than 100 people were killed by a suicide-bomb at a mosque in Peshawar, a city in north-west Pakistan. Nearly all the dead were members of the security forces. The mosque was located in a heavily fortified area. The Pakistan Taliban was blamed for the atrocity, though it denied involvement. Last November the militants called off a peace process with the government and said they would carry out attacks across the country. Critics of the process say it allowed the Taliban to regroup.
• Meanwhile, Pakistan’s government held another round of talks with the imf over a possible bail-out. Ahead of the negotiations the government raised fuel prices and loosened foreign-exchange controls, which sent the rupee to a new low. Foreign reserves are dwindling, causing a backlog of imports at ports as buyers scramble to find the necessary dollars to pay for goods.

Unhappy anniversary

• Democracy activists staged a “silent strike” in Myanmar to mark two years since the country’s junta seized power. Myanmar has been racked by violence since the coup, a resistance movement having sprung up to fight the army on multiple fronts. This week the junta extended the country’s state of emergency for at least another six months.
• Chinese health officials said the wave of covid-19 that has torn through China since December is “coming to an end”. Last month’s lunar new-year holiday appears not to have led to a new spike in cases. Independent experts said the reported decline in infections made sense, but China is believed to be undercounting covid deaths.
• Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, visited Israel and the West Bank in an attempt to reduce tensions following an increase in violence. A Palestinian gunman shot dead seven people at a synagogue in Jerusalem, the worst incident of its kind in Israel since 2008. The attack came after Israeli forces stormed a Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin, killing ten people. Israel said its troops went in to foil a terrorist attack and arrest militants. Two Palestinians were killed and two Israelis were wounded in separate shootings.
• A drone attack on a munitions factory in the Iranian city of Isfahan was reportedly carried out by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, from inside Iran.
• Just 11% of the electorate in Tunisia voted in parliamentary run-off elections that were boycotted by the main parties. Critics of Kais Saied, the president, said the low turnout was a rejection of his reforms, which give the presidency near absolute power.
• UN experts called for a probe into war crimes in Mali allegedly committed by security forces and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group. The experts said they had received “alarming accounts of horrific executions, mass graves, acts of torture, rape and sexual violence”.
• Peru continued to be seized by unrest. At least 58 people have died in protests that began in December against President Dina Boluarte, demanding new elections and the freeing of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, who was jailed after ordering the closure of Congress. Scores of roads, especially in the southern highlands, remain blocked. Food, petrol and oxygen for hospitals are running short in some towns.
• America’s Justice Department charged four men in connection with the murder in 2021 of Jovenel Mo'ise, then president of Haiti. The four—three Haitian-Americans and a Colombian—were transferred to Miami from Haiti, where the case had become bogged down amid death threats against local judges.
• America imposed fresh sanctions on Paraguay’s former president, Horacio Cartes and serving vice-president, Hugo Velazquez, accusing them of “rampant corruption”. It alleges that Mr Cartes, a rich businessman, had used illicitly acquired wealth to expand his political and economic power, and says both men have links with Hizbullah, a militant group backed by Iran. The two deny all the allegations.
• More emergency workers who were present at or shortly after the beating that led to the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis were either sacked or suspended from their jobs. Mr Nichols, who was black, was stopped by five policemen, all of them also black, for alleged reckless driving. In body-cam video they pull Mr Nichols from his car and repeatedly punch him. All five are charged with second-degree murder.
• The fbi conducted a search at Joe Biden’s holiday home in Delaware for sensitive material. No classified documents were found.
• Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russian forces have been stepping up their artillery bombardment in the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine. Many people fear that Russia, which has mobilised an additional 200,000 men or more, is preparing for a fresh new offensive in the coming days or weeks.
• Petr Pavel solidly won the Czech Republic’s presidential election. A former head of the Czech armed forces and senior nato official, Mr Pavel beat Andrej Babis, a billionaire former populist prime minister, by promising to stick with the West and support Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Mr Babis had been lukewarm about defending nato allies from a potential Russian attack.

Anything you can do...

• The eu unveiled a Green Deal Industrial Plan, which proposes relaxing the rules on state aid in the single market in order to boost investments in renewable energies and technology to achieve net-zero emissions. The plan is a direct response to the huge subsidies doled out to green industry in America’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Europeans fear will drive green investment to the us.
• Unions in France held a second day of nationwide industrial action to protest against Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to raise the state retirement age to 64. Schools, public transport and fuel deliveries were all hit by strikes. In Britain teachers, train drivers, university staff and civil servants walked out in the biggest day of union action so far in a months-long wave of public-sector unrest over pay.
• Nadhim Zahawi was sacked as chairman of Britain’s Conservative Party following revelations of unpaid tax and a significant penalty from the tax authorities. In his letter dismissing Mr Zahawi, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said that he had promised to uphold “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”. The decision came after a swift inquiry concluded that Mr Zahawi had broken the ministerial code.

The world this week Business

• Meta’s quarterly earnings delighted investors, for a change, as it set out a plan to reduce costs in a “year of efficiency” and announced a $40bn share buy-back. Revenue fell in the last three months of 2022, year on year, but is expected to rise in this quarter. Still, Reality Labs, the division tasked with creating the metaverse, ran up another loss, of $4.3bn, taking its total loss for the year to $13.7bn.

Sharing the driving seat

• After months of sometimes troublesome negotiations, Nissan and Renault announced a restructuring of their two-decade-old alliance, which has been under strain since the fall from grace in 2018 of Carlos Ghosn, who had run both carmakers. The main feature of the agreement is a reduction in Renault’s stake in Nissan to 15% from 43%, with the remainder of Renault’s shares in Nissan to be put into a French trust and the voting rights “neutralised”. Each company will now own a working 15% stake in the other, which tackles a key concern of Nissan that the partnership had been unequal.
• ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell reported record annual profits of $56bn, $37bn and $40bn respectively. All three benefited from the higher price of energy amid the war in Ukraine, though prices have been falling in recent months.
• Unilever appointed a new chief executive to replace Alan Jope, who is standing down in July. Hein Schumacher is currently the boss of the world’s largest dairy co-operative, which is based in the Netherlands. He’ll take the reins of the consumer-goods conglomerate amid investor unease about its lagging share price, and criticism from some quarters about its purpose-driven approach to selling mayonnaise.
• Salesforce, which is also under pressure from investors to improve its stock performance, appointed three independent directors. This came shortly after Elliott Management, an activist hedge fund, took a small stake in the software company.
• The amount of money wiped off the value of Gautam Adani’s companies since Hindenburg Research, an American short-seller, said that their stock was artificially inflated passed $108bn. Adani Group forcefully denies the charges. More than $50bn has been wiped from the Indian billionaire’s fortune.
• The Federal Reserve lifted its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, to a range of between 4.5% and 4.75%, the highest it has been since September 2007. It was the smallest increase since the Fed embarked on a course of tightening monetary policy last March.
• America’s stockmarkets had a strong start to 2023. The NASDAQ composite rose by 10.7% in January, its best start to the year since 2001. The s&p 500 was up by 6.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 2.8%. Britain’s ftse 100, a star performer amid last year’s dismal market rout, also rose, by 4.3%.
• The IMF raised its forecast slightly of world gdp this year, which it now thinks will grow by 2.9%. The fund believes that “adverse risks have moderated” since its previous estimate in October, noting that global inflation is expected to fall to 6.6% (from 8.8% last year) and that China’s reopening after covid lockdowns will boost demand. Europe has also proved resilient despite the war in Ukraine and high energy prices. The imf even reckons that Russia’s economy will grow by 0.3%, a contrast to a recent report from the World Bank, which forecast that it would shrink by 3.3%.
• The euro area’s economy grew by 1.9% in the final quarter of 2022, year on year, helped by government support on energy bills and mild weather, which dampened fuel demand. The currency bloc’s gdp expanded by 3.5% over the whole year.
• Annual consumer-price inflation slowed to 8.5% in January, from 9.2% in December.
• South Korea reported a trade deficit of $47.5bn in 2022, the largest since records began in 1956. In January of this year the deficit came in at $12.7bn, the highest ever for a month. Exports of Korean chips and other tech have shrivelled while prices for imports of fuel and commodities have surged. This week Samsung Electronics reported its worst quarterly performance in eight years. Profit from semiconductors plunged by 97%, year on year.
• Intel’s chief executive and other senior managers are to take big pay cuts, after the chipmaker reported a surprise quarterly loss and plunging sales. It expects to make another loss this quarter.

The original jumbo jet

• Boeing delivered its final 747 to a customer, ending production of a plane that revolutionised air travel through non-stop trans-ocean flights. The aircraft’s inaugural commercial flight, Pan Am from New York to London in January 1970, took just six hours and 14 minutes, though its departure was delayed by seven hours.