Moreover, the specific policies cited by Republican lawmakers as evidence of Mr. Biden’s supposed “war on American energy” have had little impact on rising gas prices.

The Keystone XL pipeline, which would have expanded an existing system transporting oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, has been a political and environmental battleground since its conception in 2008. The Obama administration denied the company behind it, TransCanada, a construction permit in 2015. The Trump administration approved the permit in 2017, but the project stalled in the face of litigation. By the time Mr. Biden rescinded its permit on his first day in office, just 8 percent of it had been built.

Even if Mr. Biden had greenlighted the project and TransCanada, now known as TC Energy, had won its court battles, it is unlikely that the pipeline would have been operational today given that the company estimated in March 2020 that it would have entered into service in 2023. And “even if it were completed overnight, there’s no capacity for oil to be put into this pipeline,” Mr. De Haan said, pointing to supply chain issues and labor shortages that continue to affect American and Canadian oil and gas producers.

Absent the Keystone XL pipeline, crude oil imports from Canada have nonetheless increased by 70 percent since 2008, transported by other pipelines and rail. The Trump administration itself told PolitiFact in 2017 that the pipeline’s impact on prices at the pump “would be minimal.”

The claims about oil and gas leases are even more incorrect.

Though Mr. Biden temporarily halted new drilling leases on federal lands in January 2021, a federal judge blocked that move last June. In its first year, the Biden administration actually approved 34 percent more of these permits than the Trump administration did in its first year, according to federal data compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

“None of these permits are relevant to production right now,” Mr. Rajendran said. “These permits are for production three, four years down the line. If they had approved 10 times as many permits, we would have the same production issues.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/us/politics/fact-check-republicans-biden-gas.html

But consumers are sitting on big cash piles amassed over the course of the pandemic, and because the United States produces gas domestically, higher prices could also incentivize companies to invest and supply more in the United States.

“It is risky to assume that the old rule about higher prices depress overall U.S. economic growth still applies,” Ian Shepherdson, an economist at Pantheon Economics, wrote in a recent note.

High gas prices could be a liability for Democrats during a midterm election year, given they hit voters right in the wallet. Republicans have already seized on gas prices as a talking point.

“Under Joe Biden, families are paying more for gas than ever before,” Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement Tuesday.

But the White House is emphasizing that the price increases are the result of the actions of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and Mr. Biden pointed out that the United States and its partners are releasing global petroleum reserves.

The president also seemed prepared to shift some blame to companies.

“To the oil and gas companies, and to the finance firms — we understand that Putin’s war against the people of Ukraine is causing prices to rise, we get that, that’s self-evident,” he said. He added, “It’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases, or padding profits, or any kind of effort to exploit this situation or American consumers.”

Jason Horowitz and Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/business/economy/russian-oil-ban-economy.html

U.S. consumers are already feeling the squeeze. In California, prices for some types of gas has hovered around $6 in recent days; on Tuesday the state average was well over $5.

Republicans on Tuesday largely backed Mr. Biden’s decision to cut off Russian oil, giving the president a rare moment of bipartisan support. But even as they did so, many Republicans once again seized on high prices at the pump to criticize him and his party.

“Democrats want to blame surging prices on Russia,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, said on Tuesday. “But the truth is, their out-of-touch policies are why we are here in the first place.”

In his remarks, Mr. Biden cast the decision as a moral one, aimed at further crippling Mr. Putin’s economy as Russian forces continued their brutal bombardment of civilians in several of Ukraine’s cities and suburbs after two grueling weeks of war in Europe.

“Ukrainian people have inspired the world and I mean that in the literal sense,” Mr. Biden said. “They’ve inspired the world with their bravery, their patriotism, their defiant determination to live free. Putin’s war has caused enormous suffering and needless loss of life of women, children, and everyone in Ukraine.”

He added: “Putin seems determined to continue on his murderous path, no matter the cost.”

Battles continued to rage across Ukraine on Tuesday as humanitarian officials reported that two million refugees have fled the country seeking safety. But casualties increased as evacuations though supposed “green corridors” continued to come under fire.

About 2,000 civilians were able to escape Irpin, a suburb just northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, which has spent days without water, power and heat because of the heavy fighting in the area. In the war-battered city of Sumy, east of Kyiv, one humanitarian corridor lasted long enough to allow hundreds of civilians to escape in a convoy of buses led by the Red Cross.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/us/politics/biden-oil-ban-russia-ukraine-putin.html

Russian operations make up only 3 percent of McDonald’s operating income but 9 percent of its revenue. Likewise, Russia accounts for $3.4 billion, or 4 percent, of PepsiCo’s annual revenue of $79.4 billion. The company says on its website that it is the largest food and beverage manufacturer in Russia. It owns more than 20 factories in the country.

“PepsiCo has been there forever. PepsiCo was there under Nixon,” said Bruce W. Bean, a professor emeritus at Michigan State University’s law school who, as an American lawyer in Russia, worked with companies making investments there.

“Obviously, PepsiCo can walk away from the business,” Mr. Bean added. “It will hurt them, but it will hurt the Russians who have picked up the business, the Russians that distribute its product — it hurts them more.”

Some companies — like Yum Brands and Papa John’s, which have hundreds of restaurants bearing their names across Russia — most likely have less control over whether those restaurants close because many are owned by individuals or groups of investors through franchise agreements, franchise experts said.

“It’s messy,” said Ben Lawrence, a professor of franchise entrepreneurship at Georgia State University. As long as the franchisees are meeting the requirements under their agreement and paying the royalty fees, it’s hard to tell them to shut down, he said.

Yum, which owns KFC and Pizza Hut, said on Tuesday that it was suspending operations at 70 company-owned KFCs and all 50 franchise-owned Pizza Huts in Russia. (The vast majority of the 1,000 KFCs in Russia are franchise-owned and, at this time, not part of these suspensions.) Yum also said it would suspend all “investment and restaurant development” in Russia and divert any profits from the region to humanitarian efforts.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/business/mcdonalds-russia-starbucks-pepsi-coca-cola.html

But that cross-border cooperation could stop with oil. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said his country could not simply turn off the spigot.

“Europe has deliberately exempted energy supplies from Russia from sanctions,” he said in a statement on Monday. “At the moment, Europe’s supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way.”

Biden administration officials say the immediate discussions over Russian energy are focused on banning domestic oil imports rather than carrying out wider sanctions that would cut off purchases by other countries. That could lessen the economic shock to oil markets given the United States does not import much Russian crude.

Last fall, it imported about 700,000 barrels per day from Russia, less than 10 percent of its total oil imports, U.S. officials said. By contrast, Europe imported 4.5 million barrels per day from Russia, about one-third of its total imports. The United States can easily find a way to make up for any loss of Russian oil, while Europe would have a harder time doing so, analysts said.

But any disruption in the flow of oil could further rattle global markets, including oil prices, which have surged because of the uncertainty over Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Brent crude, the global benchmark, ended Monday up about 4.3 percent to $123.21 a barrel, but earlier it had climbed as high as $139 a barrel. The price of oil has soared about 26 percent over the past week as the conflict has intensified.

In a sign of how concerned the administration is about the uncertainties around global energy flow, American officials have been discussing the possibility of increasing supply or distribution with oil-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, which is a partner of Russia and has been subject to broad U.S. sanctions for years.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said on Monday at a meeting with his council of vice presidents and military command that Venezuela had the capacity to produce more than three million barrels of crude oil per day “if necessary for the stability of the world.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/us/politics/biden-russia-oil-ban.html

Lack of competition, the Biden administration argues, goes a long way to explain why pay for a large share of the American work force is barely higher, after accounting for inflation, than it was a half-century ago. “The fact that workers are getting less than they used to is a longstanding problem,” Ms. Stevenson, who was not involved in the Treasury report, noted.

Anticompetitive practices thrive when there are fewer competitors. If workers have many potential employers, they might still agree to sign a noncompete clause, but they could demand a pay increase to compensate.

Even if there is no conclusive evidence that the labor market is less competitive than it used to be, the report says, researchers have concluded that there is, in fact, very little competition.

Suresh Naidu, a professor of economics at Columbia University, argues, moreover, that institutions like the minimum wage and unions, which limited employers from fully exercising their market power, have weakened substantially over time. “The previously existing checks have fallen away,” Mr. Naidu said.

Unions are virtually irrelevant across much of the labor market. Only 6 percent of workers in the private sector belong to one. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is so low that it matters little even for many low-wage workers.

The Treasury report argues that an uncompetitive labor market is reducing the share of the nation’s income that goes to workers while increasing the slice that accrues to the owners of capital. Moreover, employers facing little competition for workers, it argues, are more likely to offer few benefits and impose dismal working conditions: unpredictable just-in-time schedules, intrusive on-the-job monitoring, poor safety, no breaks.

The damage runs deeper, the report says, arguing that uncompetitive labor markets reduce overall employment. Productivity also suffers when workers have a hard time moving to new jobs that could offer a better fit for their skills. Noncompete clauses discourage business formation when they limit entrepreneurs’ ability to find workers for their ventures.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/economy/treasury-competition-report.html

Frances Meredith of Raleigh, N.C. used a branded American Airlines credit card for everything from groceries to medical expenses during the pandemic, piling up points with nowhere to spend them. That meant she had plenty to redeem when her family of four decided it was time for a winter getaway to Miami. Although the seats were pricey at 50,000 points each, Dr. Meredith, an internist, was excited to save money by using her rewards balance. “It was easy. There were lots of seats,” she said.

As travelers return to the skies, many, like Dr. Meredith, have amassed larger than usual totals in airline and credit card rewards programs. And they are starting to spend them. United Airlines’ Mileage Plus program has had multiple record-breaking days over the past few weeks as customers have flocked to redeem miles, said Michael Covey, the managing director of the United program. “The demand is hitting the books in ways we’ve never seen before,” he said.

Several factors make now the time to cash in points.

More flexibility

Flights booked with points on the major U.S. carriers are fully refundable. That means if you need to cancel the trip, all your points and any associated fees will be returned without any penalties. Tickets bought for cash, in contrast, typically offer a credit for a future flight rather than a refund and may charge fees, so your money is tied up with the airline. Refundable tickets can be purchased, but they are more expensive.

This difference, between ending up with a credit or a refund, can loom large for expensive trips like a family vacation overseas. Some travelers are “still uncomfortable with international travel,” while conditions remain in flux because of the pandemic, so using points to book a flight to a foreign country can offer more peace of mind, said Jamie Larounis, who writes about loyalty programs on his travel website, the Forward Cabin. He is now also seeing some worry about flights near Eastern Europe because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/travel/airline-miles-credit-card.html

In December, the United States Congress approved a budget of $768 billion for the American military. But salaries and equipment manufacturing costs are far higher in the United States, which has prompted some analysts to suggest that China’s military budget is rapidly catching up in actual purchasing power.

The plan Mr. Li outlined suggests that China values economic growth more than trying to make potentially painful adjustments to shift the economy toward greater reliance on domestic consumer spending. Beijing has been trying, with limited success, to move the economy away from dependence on debt-fueled infrastructure and housing construction.

China had managed to reduce slightly last year its debt relative to economic output. It needed to do so because this ratio had climbed, during the first year of the pandemic, to a level that economists regarded as unsustainable.

But meeting this year’s growth target would require more borrowing, undoing most or all of the progress made last year in reducing the debt burden, said Michael Pettis, an economist with Peking University. He said that it was hard to see how China could break its dependence on achieving high growth targets at least partly through heavy borrowing.

Mr. Li acknowledged that the Chinese economy would face challenges this year, pointing to the sluggish recovery of consumption and investment, flagging growth in exports and a shortage of resources and raw materials. By the last three months of last year, the economy was growing only 4 percent.

Part of that economic slowdown reflected a series of government policy shifts aimed at reining in unsustainable expansion in some sectors. Housing speculation was discouraged. Stringent limits were imposed on the after-school tutoring industry. And national security agencies imposed tighter scrutiny on the tech sector.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/asia/china-economy-congress.html

To offset weak consumption, Premier Li announced another round of heavy, debt-fueled spending on infrastructure and on assistance to very poor households, particularly in rural areas. Transfers from the central government to provincial governments, which mainly pay for social programs and infrastructure, will jump 18 percent this year.

Zhu Guangyao, a former vice minister of finance who is now a cabinet adviser, had said at a news conference in late January that he expected the target to be about 5.5 percent. But Jude Blanchette, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, had suggested that global supply chain difficulties and the economic and financial fallout from the war in Ukraine might prompt China to set a lower target.

At the congress, Mr. Blanchette predicted, “the biggest concern and the central focus is going to be the economy.”

How long will China seek to keep Covid out?

China has kept the coronavirus almost completely under control within its borders after the initial outbreak in Wuhan two years ago, but at considerable cost: intermittent lockdowns, particularly in border cities, as well as lengthy quarantines for international travelers and sometimes domestic ones as well. Hints could emerge of how China intends to follow the rest of the world in opening up, although possibly not until next year.

Experts say China is unlikely to throw open its borders before the Communist Party congress late this year. When China does start opening up, it will want to avoid the kind of uncontrolled outbreak that has overwhelmed nursing homes and hospitals in Hong Kong, largely taking a toll on the city’s oldest residents, many of whom are unvaccinated.

But in interviews with state media, posts on social media and in public remarks in the past week, China’s top medical experts have begun dropping clues that the country is looking for a less stringent approach that protects lives without being overly disruptive to the economy.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/business/economy/china-economy-congress-explained.html

As with other contractors, drivers must cover all payroll taxes and cannot unionize under federal law.

The bill is largely silent on unemployment benefits, something that employees are entitled to, but Washington State has frequently found that gig drivers should receive those benefits already. The bill will create a task force to study what the gig companies’ contributions to an unemployment insurance trust fund should be, an issue that has been contentious in other states.

One especially controversial feature of the bill is that it would block local jurisdictions from regulating drivers’ rights. A similar feature helped ignite opposition that killed the prospects for such a bill in New York State last year.

Seattle enacted a robust minimum wage law for gig drivers in 2020, which was intended to provide drivers with hourly pay of roughly $30 before expenses and was sharply criticized by gig companies. The statewide bill approved Friday preserved the current rates in Seattle, which will continue to be higher than the rest of the state, but would pre-empt similar legislation in the future.

Looming in the background of the legislative action in Washington State was the possibility of a ballot measure that could have locked in contractor status with weaker benefits for drivers. After California passed a law in 2019 that effectively classified gig workers as employees, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies spent roughly $200 million on a ballot measure, Proposition 22, that rolled back those protections. The legislation is still being litigated after a state judge deemed it unconstitutional.

Representative Liz Berry, who introduced the Washington State bill, said the differences between it and Proposition 22 “couldn’t be more stark.”

“My focus has been: What do the workers want? What are the drivers asking for? And we deliver on every single thing they asked for,” Ms. Berry said in an interview, adding that in contrast to California’s law, “our bill has real benefits that employees in the state of Washington enjoy.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/business/economy/washington-gig-worker.html