Some economists have echoed those arguments, saying it’s a function of supply and demand.

“I think the spike in rates that have taken place during the pandemic is mostly due to an increase in demand for imported goods combined with port slowdowns that functionally act as a reduction in the number of ships operating,” said Colin Grabow, a trade analyst at the Cato Institute.

Daniel B. Maffei, the chair of the Federal Maritime Commission, said in an interview that there was “no question” that changes in consumer demand as a result of Covid had driven a rapid increase in shipping prices. But, he added, “does that mean the carriers have to charge this much?”

The commission has never filed an antitrust case against a carrier. But Mr. Maffei noted that “conditions are absolutely, totally different now than they were two years ago. The pandemic has changed everything.”

The shipping industry denies that its alliances have led to any collusion on prices. The alliances that ocean carriers form allow them to share space, by placing some of their own cargo on a ship operated by a partner. But these agreements specify that companies can’t discuss their prices, Mr. Butler said.

“That’s just not something that happens,” he said.

But some logistics experts say that cooperation between shipping companies has ended up reducing competition and concentrating market power, indirectly giving them more free rein to dictate prices and schedules.

Caitlin Murphy, the chief executive of Global Gateway Logistics, a freight forwarder, said small businesses in particular had been harmed by shipping practices during the pandemic, including when alliances have skipped less profitable ports. Her company had been trying to ship cargo from India to New York, but some carriers were avoiding the port at New York to bypass congestion.

“It’s reducing the supply of available vessels in India, which is driving the price up,” she said. “So it’s become very difficult to move product around the world.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/business/economy/inflation-biden-shipping.html

“This will help Ukraine to keep their electricity system stable, homes warm and lights on during these dark times,” said Europe’s energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, in a statement. “In this area, Ukraine is now part of Europe,” she added.

In case of a major hit to its power system, Ukraine could now apply for emergency electricity supplies from the European system, Mr. Timchenko said. Ukraine also severed its electricity links to Russia and Belarus just before the invasion to establish independence from power sources in hostile countries.

When its transmission lines are damaged or severed, DTEK arranges for Ukrainian soldiers to escort its emergency repair crews, dressed in flak jackets, to reach affected sites. Mr. Timchenko said that six of DTEK’s roughly 60,000 employees had been killed during the war, although not while performing duties for the company.

Overall, Mr. Timchenko said, Ukraine’s electricity operations were “relatively stable.” Keeping things that way, though, seems tenuous. The bulk of electricity for Ukraine’s households comes from four nuclear plants, and the one at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, is now occupied by Russian troops after coming under attack.

So far, he said, electric power consumption is down by around one-third from before the invasion on Feb. 24. That’s because of a falloff in economic activity and damage that can’t be repaired in the short term in places like Mariupol, the city on the Black Sea coast that has been under heavy Russian bombardment, and Kharkiv, the second largest city, which has also sustained major damage. Mr. Timchenko estimated that 1.3 million customers in Ukraine are, in effect, disconnected.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/economy/ukraine-energy-company-russia-war.html

The prospect of prolonged geopolitical tensions is likely to accelerate attempts by the United States and Europe to develop domestic supplies of commodities that often come from Russia. There are nickel deposits, for example, in Canada, Greenland and even Minnesota.

“Nickel, cobalt, platinum, palladium, even copper — we already realized we need those metals for the green transition, for mitigating climate change,” said Bo Stensgaard, chief executive of Bluejay Mining, which is working on extracting nickel from a site in western Greenland in a venture with KoBold Metals, whose backers include Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. “When you see the geopolitical developments with Ukraine and Russia, it’s even more obvious that there are supply risks with these metals.”

But establishing new mining operations is likely to take years, even decades, because of the time needed to acquire permits and financing. In the meantime, companies using nickel — a group that also includes steel makers — will need to contend with higher prices, which will eventually be felt by consumers.

An average electric-car battery contains about 80 pounds of nickel. The surge in prices in March would more than double the cost of that nickel to $1,750 a car, according to estimates by the trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

Russia accounts for a relatively small proportion of world nickel production, and most of it is used to make stainless steel, not car batteries. But Russia plays an outsize role in nickel markets. Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, is the world’s largest nickel producer, with vast operations in Siberia. Its owner, Vladimir Potanin, is one of Russia’s wealthiest people. Norilsk is among a limited number of companies authorized to sell a specialized form of nickel on the London Metal Exchange, which handles all nickel trading.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/energy-environment/nickel-russia-battery-electric-cars.html

The legislation passed by the House would also suspend normal trade relations with Belarus, in recognition of its role in aiding Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Stripping Russia of its trading status would be the latest in a growing list of economic penalties imposed on the country, whose economy is facing collapse.

The debate in Congress over how to best respond to Russia’s assault on Ukraine has taken on an increasingly bitter partisan tinge, as Republicans have moved to cast the invasion as an outgrowth of what they characterize as Mr. Biden’s shortcomings. Some of that spirit crept into the debate on the trade measure on Thursday, such as when Representative Tom Rice, Republican of South Carolina, criticized the Biden administration for “projecting weakness to Putin and his allies.”

Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, lavished praise on how both parties had worked together in a timely fashion to ban Russian energy products and advance the trade measure. Then he turned to criticizing Mr. Biden for failing to approve new gas drilling licenses at home.

For the most part, though, lawmakers trained their ire on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Speaking on the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused him of committing war crimes against civilians and children, echoing comments made this week by Mr. Biden.

Ms. Pelosi said that “what Putin is doing in Ukraine — bombing civilians, targeting children — is outside” what she called “the circle of civilized human behavior.”

“He is committing war crimes,” she said, “and he must be held accountable.”

Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/politics/house-russia-trade-status.html

For now, global central bankers are focused on taming inflation. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised U.S. interest rates for the first time since 2018 and projected six more increases this year as inflation soars. Last week, the European Central Bank moved closer to raising its interest rates when it proposed an end date for its bond-buying program. On Thursday, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said Europe was unlikely to return to prepandemic inflation patterns, which consistently undershot the bank’s target.

For Britain, and Europe as a whole, the economic ramifications of war come on the heels of an energy price shock that started last fall and just months after the economy regained its prepandemic size.

“The economy has recently been subject to a succession of very large shocks,” the Bank of England said on Thursday. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is another such shock.” If energy and commodity prices stay high, they will weigh on Britain’s economy.

“This is something monetary policy is unable to prevent,” the bank added.

The bank’s run of rate increases began in December, the first move higher in three and a half years. The rate had been 0.1 percent since March 2020, when the onset of the pandemic sent financial markets careening and the government first introduced lockdown measures.

On Thursday, the bank said it had raised interest rates in order to stop higher trends in pay and consumer prices from becoming stronger and entrenched.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/business/economy/bank-of-england-rates.html

A global game of sanctions cat-and-mouse is now underway. This week, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department bureau, issued a new alert to financial institutions urging them to identify and report suspicious transactions involving real estate, luxury goods and other high-value assets of sanctioned Russian elites and their families. It warned jewelry and art dealers that such assets could be particularly ripe for Russian sanctions evasion.

“Because real estate, luxury goods, and other high-value assets can be used as a store of value, a medium of exchange, or an investment, sanctioned Russian elites and their proxies may use such assets to evade expansive U.S. and other sanctions and restrictions imposed in response to the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine,” the network, known as FinCEN, said.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday also opened its new Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Program, which offers rewards of up to $5 million for information that leads to the seizure of stolen assets linked to Russia or other foreign governments. And to improve international coordination in targeting Russian assets, the United States unveiled the Multilateral Russian Oligarch Task Force with counterparts from Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Britain and the European Commission.

Much of the sanctions enforcement in the United States will be done through the I.R.S. Officials from the agency said they would use financial tracing technology and work with banks and international counterparts to track how oligarchs and others were shifting money and assets around the world in violation of the sanctions. They are looking for signs of newly created fictitious businesses that could be used to shelter assets and transactions involving cryptocurrencies, which criminals use to move money anonymously.

According to the report, the I.R.S. seized $3.6 billion of stolen cryptocurrency last year and has already surpassed that this year.

Mr. Rettig made the case personally on Thursday morning when he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee.

“A strong, robust criminal tax enforcement presence provides significant deterrence to those willing to evade their lawful obligations to our country,” he said. “Without adequate resources, we risk sending a much less powerful message to would-be and active tax evaders.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/politics/irs-russia-oligarchs-sanctions.html

“As these funds run out, Treasury is encouraging state and local governments to invest in long-term strategies to prevent evictions and build affordable housing, using other resources,” he added.

The program, initiated under the Trump administration and ramped up by Mr. Biden’s team, got off to a sluggish start, as state governments struggled to create new systems to process applications, determine eligibility and distribute the cash.

But by late 2021, most local systems were up and running, thanks in part to White House guidelines relaxing verification requirements.

The enormous infusion of cash, coupled with federal and local eviction bans, helped prevent or delay about 1.35 million evictions in 2021, according to an analysis published last week by Princeton’s Eviction Lab. Evictions have risen in recent months in some cities but remain below the levels predicted when the pandemic first struck.

Most of the aid that the Treasury Department is clawing back comes from states in the West, Midwest and New England with relatively high per capita incomes and low percentages of renters per capita. But part of the money is being pulled out of some of the country’s poorest states, where local officials were unable, for various political and logistical reasons, to disburse the funds.

Alabama, for instance, is losing $42 million from a total allocation of about $263 million. A spokesman for the state’s housing agency provided a memo from state housing officials claiming that the Treasury Department “did not consider that Alabama has a lower proportion of renters to homeowners” in making its aid decisions, and that an overall lack of need put “downward pressure” on applications.

But applicants and housing groups have complained that the state has made accessing the money difficult, and that a company hired to run the program rejected a large percentage of low-income tenants.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/pandemic-housing-aid.html

But the rise of warehouses has also sparked significant opposition. While they provide jobs and can lower residential property taxes by contributing to the local tax base, people across the region say the large hubs will lead to constant flows of semi-trucks and delivery vans that will worsen pollution and traffic congestion.

They have also bemoaned the loss of open land to mega facilities. In recent months, residents in the southern New Jersey township of Pilesgrove, just across the Delaware River from Wilmington, Del., protested plans for a 1.6 million square-foot warehouse — larger than Ellis Island — on former farmland.

While Amazon, major retailers and logistics operators such as UPS, FedEx and DHL dominated the initial wave of warehouse deals at the start of the pandemic, interest is now coming from smaller businesses seeking greater control of their supply chain amid a global bottleneck in the movement of goods.

“I’ve been doing this for 30-some-odd years, and I’ve never seen it like this,” said Rob Kossar, a vice chairman at JLL who oversees the company’s industrial division in the Northeast. “In order for tenants to secure space, they are having to negotiate leases with multiple landlords on spaces that aren’t even available. It’s insane what they are having to do.”

The rising cost to lease facilities has frustrated some small business owners who cannot compete with retail and logistics giants, as well as newcomers like Tesla and Rivian, which have opened showrooms and service centers for their electric vehicles in Brooklyn warehouses. Leasing prices for warehouses in the Bronx, for instance, have jumped 22 percent since the pandemic started.

Warehouse jobs are still just a fraction of New York City’s labor force, but companies are on a hiring spree. Since 2019, the number of warehouse jobs doubled to 16,500 positions in late 2021. New hires at Amazon make around $18 an hour and get starting bonuses up to $3,000. But the company has also been fighting workers at some of its warehouses, including on Staten Island, who are trying to unionize to improve working conditions.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/nyregion/ecommerce-warehouses-nyc.html

Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor whom critics painted as a communist after Mr. Biden picked her to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, withdrew her candidacy late last year.

Opponents to Ms. Raskin’s confirmation targeted more than just her climate views. They also took issue with work she did in the private sector — and the way she answered questions about that work.

Republicans had specifically cited concerns about Ms. Raskin’s time on the board of directors of a financial technology firm. The company, Reserve Trust, secured a coveted account with the Fed — giving it access to services that it now prominently advertises — after Ms. Raskin reportedly called a central bank official to intervene on its behalf.

It is unclear how much Ms. Raskin’s involvement actually helped. But the episode raised questions because she previously worked at the Fed and because she made about $1.5 million from the stock she earned for her Reserve Trust work. Democrats regularly denounce the revolving door between regulators and financial firms.

Republicans had demanded that Ms. Raskin provide more details about what happened while she was on the company’s board, but she had largely said she could not remember. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, led his colleagues in refusing to show up to vote on Ms. Raskin and the other Fed nominees until she provided more answers.

Mr. Toomey signaled on Monday that he would favor allowing the other Fed nominees to proceed.

Sherrod Brown, Democrat from Ohio and the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday that he would hold a markup for the other nominees, and later told reporters that he might move them as soon as this week.

“Sadly, the American people will be denied a thoughtful, experienced public servant who was ready to fight inflation, stand up to Wall Street and corporate special interests, and protect our economy from foreign cyberattacks and climate change,” Mr. Brown said in his statement.

Several more progressive Democrats expressed disappointment that Ms. Raskin would not be confirmed.

“The lobbyists have power on Capitol Hill, and when they see their power threatened, they fight back hard — Sarah Bloom Raskin is just the latest casualty,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in response to the news.

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/business/economy/raskin-fed-nominee-withdraws.html

The federal prohibition also makes it difficult to obtain bank financing or small-business loans, forcing some Black social equity applicants to enter deals with investors who sometimes end up controlling the business.

Another challenge is policing. Some say the police in Oakland, at times, have not switched their mind-set from arresting cannabis dealers to protecting their legal businesses. During a wave of robberies late last year, the police never showed up to some of the crimes, business owners say. The police say a surge in crime during the pandemic has stretched their resources.

Insurance companies are also adding to the challenges. Some owners said their claims were denied even though their policies indicated they would be covered. Others said they believe they were treated unfairly during the claims process because they were Black.

“You are giving licenses to people who would struggle in any industry, but in cannabis, the deck is further stacked against them,” said John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. “States need to do a better job adjusting for the structural racism built into the system.”

Since the initiative began in 2017, Oakland has granted cannabis licenses to 282 equity applicants and 328 non-equity applicants. But the city does not keep an ongoing tally of how many of those businesses are currently operating.

“While not a panacea, this program is a meaningful step toward embedding fairness and justice in all we do to improve conditions for communities of color,” Greg Minor, an assistant to the city administrator, said in an email. Amid the industry’s struggles, Mr. Minor said, the state recently authorized a $5.4 million grant to support Oakland’s equity program and was considering reducing the cannabis taxes.

But for Mr. Blunt, legalization has not produced the boon some might expect. Since he opened his licensed store four years ago, Mr. Blunt has yet to generate a profit.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/business/cannabis-dispensaries-oakland.html