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      China Sets Economic Growth Target of About 5%

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      Premier Li Qiang targets growth of about 5 percent this year but signals continued reluctance to use deficit spending for economic stimulus.China’s top leaders on Tuesday set an ambitious target for economic growth but they signaled only modest stimulus measures, not the aggressive support for China’s domestic economy that many analysts believe is necessary to halt a steep slide in the housing market and ease consumer malaise and investor wariness.Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 official after Xi Jinping, said in his report to the annual session of the legislature that the government would seek economic growth of “around 5 percent.” That is the same target that China’s leadership set for last year, when official statistics ended up showing that the country’s gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent.The country’s program for state spending showed little change. Mr. Li said that the central government’s deficit would be set at 3 percent of economic output, but that the government was ready to issue another $140 billion worth of bonds to pay for unspecified projects of national importance. The more the government borrows, the more it can spend on initiatives that could boost the economy.China had also set the deficit at 3 percent early last year, before raising it in October to 3.8 percent when the government approved $140 billion in additional bonds to pay for disaster relief and prevention measures after severe summer flooding.Conspicuously missing from the premier’s agenda for this year was a move to shore up the country’s social safety net or introduce other policies, like vouchers or coupons, that would directly address Chinese consumers’ very weak confidence and unwillingness to spend money.“There’s a lot of positive noises for the economy, but not a lot of concrete proposals for how to resolve the country’s growth difficulties,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Center for China Analysis of the Asia Society.

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      China consumer confidence index
      Source: China National Bureau of StatisticsBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No, Wind Farms Aren’t ‘Driving Whales Crazy’

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      Donald Trump has attacked the President Biden’s climate and energy policies with gusto, but many of his criticisms are simply untrue.As the South Carolina Republican primary approaches, former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner, is increasingly hammering President Biden with inaccurate statements on energy issues.Mr. Trump — who has called climate change a “hoax,” “nonexistent” and “created by the Chinese” — rolled back more than 100 climate and environmental protections during his administration, while promoting the development of fossil fuels. He has claimed, falsely, that windmills cause cancer, that energy efficient buildings have no windows and that solar rooftops leave older people without air-conditioning in the summer.This month, Mr. Trump has repeated many of his false claims, sometimes with new twists. Here is a closer look at three of Mr. Trump’s recent climate and energy assertions.WHAT WAS SAID:“I will end Joe Biden’s war on American energy, cancel his ban on exporting American natural gas, beautiful, clean natural gas.”— Donald J. Trump at an event in North Charleston, S.C. on Feb. 14This is false. In January, President Biden announced that he would temporarily pause approvals for permits for new liquefied natural gas export terminals until the Department of Energy conducts a study on the economic, security and climate implications of increased exports. This is not a ban; the United States continues to export more natural gas than any other nation. Even with the pause in approving new terminals, the country is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction.Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk testified to Congress that the review would take “months,” not years, to complete.WHAT WAS SAID:“We are a nation whose leaders are demanding all electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far. They cost too much, and whose batteries are produced in China with materials only available in China when an unlimited amount of gasoline is available inexpensively in the United States, but not available in China.”— Donald J. Trump at an event in Conway, S.C., on Feb. 10This is misleading. There’s a lot here. But let’s start with this: No administration can mandate how many cars sold in the United States must be all-electric.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tesla Recalls About 2.2 Million Electric Vehicles Over Warning Light Font Size

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      The vehicles were recalled because the font size on a warning lights panel was too small. Tesla will address the issue with a software update.Tesla is recalling about 2.2 million vehicles because the font on the warning lights panel was too small to comply with safety standards, U.S. regulators said on Friday.“Warning lights with a smaller font size can make critical safety information on the instrument panel difficult to read, increasing the risk of a crash,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a notice.The recall is one of several that Tesla has made in recent years, a setback for the company, the dominant maker of electric vehicles in the United States. In another hurdle for Tesla, the safety administration, said in a separate notice that a U.S. government investigation into steering issues that may have affected 334,000 Tesla vehicles was escalated to an engineering analysis.The probe, which was opened in July, reviewed more than 2,000 complaints about loss of steering control in the 2023 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles. Tesla drivers who made complaints said they had been unable to turn the steering wheel, or that turning it required increased effort. A majority of people who complained about this issue reported seeing a warning message, “Steering assist reduced,” either before, during or after they had experienced a loss of steering control.“A portion of drivers described their steering begin to feel ‘notchy’ or ‘clicky’ either prior to or just after the incident,” the agency said. The regulator added that its office of defects investigation was aware of more than 50 vehicles that were towed from places including driveways, parking lots, roadsides and intersections, apparently because of steering-related issues.Tesla is releasing a software update that will fix the issue free of charge, the safety administration said. The models affected include the 2012 to 2023 Model S, the 2016 to 2024 Model X, the 2017 to 2023 Model 3, 2019 to 2024 Model Y and 2024 Cybertruck vehicles.In December, the company recalled more than two million vehicles, including its most popular, the Model Y sport-utility vehicle, after federal officials said that it had not done enough to ensure that drivers remained attentive when using a system that can steer, accelerate and brake cars automatically. That recall covered nearly all cars the company had manufactured in the United States since 2012.In January, the Chinese government announced that Tesla would recall nearly all the 1.6 million cars it had sold in the country to adjust their assisted-driving systems. It was a stumbling block for the company, which has emerged as the only Western automaker that can compete with Chinese manufacturers in the global electric car sector. China is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing market for electric cars.Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Reuters reported in December that tens of thousands of Tesla customers had complained to the company about failures of suspension or steering parts. Tesla blamed drivers, even though it had been tracking the issues for years and knew more about them than it disclosed to regulators, Reuters found. More

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      Tesla Shares Tumble As Growth Stalls

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      Shares in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker fell sharply after the company delivered lackluster quarterly results and declined to give full-year guidance.Growth has slowed at Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTesla plunges Elon Musk and Tesla shareholders are at a crossroads.Hit by a bruising price war, intensifying competition in North America, Europe and China, and Musk’s demands for billions in new Tesla shares, the electric vehicle’s stock has plunged this year, lopping roughly $130 billion off its market capitalization.Shares are down roughly 8 percent on Thursday in premarket trading after Wednesday’s lackluster year-end results.But Musk sees reason for optimism. He asked investors to look beyond 2024, predicting a “major growth wave” fueled by a low-cost Tesla model that will be built partly in Austin, Texas, and Mexico.Wall Street doesn’t appear to be buying the message. The latest stock fall comes after Tesla reported that fourth-quarter profit nearly doubled to $7.9 billion — largely thanks to a one-time tax break. The company also declined to give detailed full-year guidance, but said it expected sales growth to be “notably slower.”“Tesla is signaling that the days of 50 percent or even 30 percent to 40 percent growth year-over-year is not going to happen in 2024,” Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar Research analyst, told Bloomberg. “At a certain point, you can’t cut prices anymore.”Musk doubled down on his call for more shares. He stunned investors this month when he said that if the board didn’t increase his stake, to 25 percent from 13 percent, he would consider developing new artificial intelligence products “outside of Tesla.” That spooked even Tesla bulls who feared that granting Musk so many shares would dilute their holdings. Failing to do so could risk Musk hiving off the A.I. work that had driven investor enthusiasm in the stock.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden Vetoes Republican Measure to Block Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

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      Republicans and some Democrats tried to repeal a waiver issued by the Biden administration that allows federally funded E.V. chargers to be made from imported iron and steel.President Biden on Wednesday vetoed a Republican-led effort that could have thwarted the administration’s plans to invest $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations across the country.In issuing the veto, Mr. Biden argued that the congressional resolution would have hurt domestic manufacturing as well as the clean energy transition.“If enacted, this resolution would undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars that the private sector has already invested in domestic E.V. charging manufacturing, and chill further domestic investment in this critical market,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.The move comes amid a growing political divide over electric vehicles. The Biden administration is aggressively promoting them as an important part of the fight to slow global warming. The landmark climate law signed in 2022 by Mr. Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, offers incentives to consumers to buy electric vehicles and to manufacturers to build them in the United States.Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s likely challenger in the 2024 election, have attacked electric vehicles as unreliable, inconvenient and ceding America’s auto manufacturing to China, which dominates the supply chain for electric vehicles.Republicans, with some Democrats, voted to repeal a waiver issued by the Biden administration that allows federally funded electric vehicle chargers to be made from imported iron and steel, as long as they are assembled in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Happy Thanksgiving, Hermit Billionaires!

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we should start with things we’re thankful for this year. Don’t suppose the imminent end of the political career of the dreadful Representative George Santos rises to the level of holiday cheer.So you go first. No fair counting family and friends.Bret Stephens: It’s a depressing world, Gail, so we need to find cheer wherever we can, and the House Ethics Committee report on Santos does make for delightful reading. My favorite bit: “During the 2020 campaign, a $1,500 purchase on the campaign debit card was made at Mirza Aesthetics; this expense was not reported to the F.E.C. and was noted as ‘Botox’ in expense spreadsheets.” Santos would have been around 32 years old at the time.Gail: You’re right. Makes me cheery just hearing it.Bret: On a loftier plane, I was delighted to see Joe Biden describe Xi Jinping as, well, “a dictator” of a “Communist country” while Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, visibly winced. That was another wonderful moment.Gail: I can see how Biden felt a little cornered when a reporter asked him if he still believed Xi was a dictator. I mean, what was he supposed to say? “No, I think he’s changed a lot?”But it also does seem as if it’s the kind of question he should have been a tad better prepared to handle.Feel free to perk me up again.Bret: I loved Biden’s answer. It reminded me of Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” to the consternation of diplomats and pundits but to the relief of anyone who liked hearing an American president state the obvious and essential truth. I also think it’s worth celebrating the fact that inflation seems to have been tamed without cratering the rest of the economy in the process. That might not help Biden’s campaign, since a lot of price increases are now baked into the system, but at least things aren’t getting worse.OK, now your turn.Gail: Hey, this is a president who has really kept the economy under control, who has a great program for building new roads, bridges and mass transit and who always keeps climate change in mind when he’s working out an agenda.And who does not seek out cheap headlines by saying things that are both wrong and wrongheaded just to get attention.Bret: Like Elon Musk?Gail: OK, never been grateful for Elon Musk. He has, however, made me more appreciative of stupendously rich people who don’t get involved in public debates. Happy Thanksgiving, hermit billionaires!Bret: He’s also made me more appreciative of normal billionaires who, unlike him, don’t promote crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theories on their social media platforms. I’m also appreciative of companies — like IBM, Paramount, Apple and Disney — that have pulled their advertising dollars from X, formerly known as Twitter, out of disgust for his views. Now I’m rooting for Tesla owners to trade in their Model 3s for a Rivian or any other electric car that doesn’t run on a high-voltage blend of bottomless narcissism, knee-jerk bigotry and probably too much weed.Gail: Well said. Moving on to politics: I’m grateful that some Republican presidential candidates other than He Who Shall Not Be Named are getting some attention. Particularly your fave, Nikki Haley.On that topic, tell me what you think about the primaries. Trump is way ahead nationally, but do you think Haley could do something impressive in the early primaries? If, say, Chris Christie dropped out and endorsed her?Bret: My gut tells me that primary voters prefer a contest to a coronation, but then my brain remembers that the G.O.P. has turned into a cult. As the field narrows, Haley will pick up Christie voters and maybe some DeSantis voters, too. But Trump will pick up other DeSantis voters, plus Ramaswamy’s.I’m about as thankful for Trump’s dominance as I would be for a terminal cancer diagnosis. But hey, aren’t we trying to keep things optimistic?Gail: Maybe it’s my desperation that creates these imagined scenarios in which Haley impresses New Hampshire voters, who are always up for a script in which they get to pick the new star. And then the campaign gets a real jolt when Christie drops out and gives her his endorsement.Bret: I like this fantasy. Say more.Gail: Then Haley starts a serious campaign that draws terrific interest among rich Americans who don’t want a president who has to spend half his time in court trying to prove that he didn’t actually try to fix the last election, that his real estate empire isn’t just a fairyland of debt, that — I could go on. If Haley could get the serious-alternative attention and funding, it’d be quite a ride.And oh, did I mention that I’d be thankful if she rethinks her position on a six-week abortion ban bill?Bret: Gail, I bet this is the first time you wish the 1 percent were more like the majority, at least in terms of attitudes about Republican candidates. If Park Avenue got to decide the G.O.P. primary contest, Haley would be the nominee in a heartbeat.And speaking of heartbeats: Biden turns 81 this week. Happy birthday, Mr. President. May you live to 100, but please, please, please retire. We’ll all pitch in to buy you a new Corvette, at least before we have to take away the keys.Gail: Sigh. Once again, I’m gonna have to follow up my praise of Biden in office with a plea for him to leave it. If you’re in good health like he is, your 80s can be a great time of achievement. Or your 90s — look at Jimmy Carter and all his charitable work and Rosalynn Carter, who just died at 96. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good time to be president of the United States.If our president really wants to make me thankful this season, he knows what he can do.Bret: Let’s face it: There’s just not a lot to be thankful for, politically speaking. So, um, read any good books lately?Gail: Well, right now I’m on “Romney,” the Mitt biography by McKay Coppins, although Romney himself was so wildly cooperative it feels as if he should get some kind of co-author status. So far, it’s a very good read.And I just finished our colleague Adam Nagourney’s book “The Times,” which is about … well, us. Adam’s a friend and a terrific reporter. Bet anyone who’s a devoted Times reader will gobble it up.Finally, I sort of have a thing for presidential biographies, and if anybody’s looking for a really fine one, I’d recommend “Washington,” by Ron Chernow. Always good to start at the beginning.How about you?Bret: Generally, I hate books about the media by the media: Solipsism is one of the curses of our profession. But everyone who has read Adam’s book tells me it’s terrific, and I’ve promised myself to get to it before the year’s out.I’m making my way through two books right now, one to feed the mind and the other the soul. The first is the Johns Hopkins scholar Yascha Mounk’s “The Identity Trap,” an intellectual tour de force about the origins of identity politics and the threat it presents to genuine, honest, old-fashioned liberalism. The second is “My Effin’ Life,” by the greatest living Canadian: the singer and bassist Geddy Lee of the band Rush. It’s a story about how an improbable trio of geeks from Ontario rose to the pinnacle of rock ’n’ roll stardom while somehow holding on to their wits, souls and marriages.I’m sure you can’t wait to read it. I’m guessing you’d rather talk about budget negotiations.Gail: Well, one ongoing story line that’s driving me crazy is the House Republicans’ insistence that pretty much everything be tied to a cut in the I.R.S. budget.Now I know it’s natural for people to hate tax collectors. But the idea that you make the country more stable by making it easier for folks to conceal income and illicitly expand deductions is beyond me.Bret: Hope it won’t surprise you to learn that while I’m all for lowering taxes majorly, I’m also for collecting them fully. The Republican war on the I.R.S. isn’t pro-growth; it’s just anti-government.As for the big picture: We can’t go on like this, from one short-term spending bill to another, one budget crisis to another, one House speaker to another. This is banana republic governance — and by “banana,” I mean “bananas.” Pramila Jayapal, the progressive congresswoman from Seattle with whom I agree roughly once every 500 years, was right when she said, “It’s the same menu, different waiter.”Gail: In a normal — thinking non-Trump — era, the Republicans would have taken over the House by a more substantial margin. Usually happens when one party gets the presidency, as you know. Voters get nervous and want to put up some barricades against extremely partisan behavior.But this time the Republicans won by only a hair, in part because there were a number of awful Trump-promoted Republican candidates.So you’ve got a House run by a deeply inexperienced leader with a tiny majority. And everything bad that happens is going to be the Republicans’ fault.Except, I guess, if Biden’s dog Commander comes back to the White House and bites more people.Hey, before we go, happy Thanksgiving, Bret. Very grateful for the chance to converse with you every week.Bret: And to you!The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Union Victories May Lift Biden, as U.A.W. Targets Tesla and Others

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      President Biden’s support for autoworkers helped them make big wage gains, and labor organizers are looking to bring about similar gains elsewhere as carmakers transition to electric vehicles.The United Automobile Workers’ big wins with Detroit’s Big Three automakers could also prove to be a significant political victory for President Biden, who openly sided with striking workers to pressure the companies, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, to produce generous concessions.But the U.A.W.’s turn now toward nonunionized automakers like Tesla, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes will test whether Mr. Biden’s support, as well as measures that he signed into law, will produce the expansion of organized labor that he has long promised.For unionized autoworkers, many of them in the swing state of Michigan, the tentative contracts, which are awaiting rank-and-file ratification, would bring substantial wage gains, “another piece of good economic news,” Mr. Biden said on Monday. The tentative contracts would lift the top U.A.W. wage to more than $40 per hour over four and a half years, from $32 an hour. Stellantis, maker of Chryslers, Jeeps and Ram trucks, agreed to reopen its assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill., near the border of Wisconsin, another crucial swing state.“The impact of Biden’s public support can’t be overstated,” said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the umbrella A.F.L.-C.I.O., which includes the autoworkers’ union. “There’s a lot of upside here for Biden. The contracts set a new standard for the industry that clearly show the benefit of collective bargaining.”Beyond that, G.M. agreed to bring its electric vehicle battery joint venture, Ultium, under the national contract, a boon for Ultium workers but also a pressure point for unions as they seek to organize battery plants sprouting up around the country. Such plants are using generous subsidies from Mr. Biden’s signature legislative achievements — especially the climate change provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act — as the administration pushes to speed the country’s transition to electric vehicles.“This historic contract is a testament to the power of unions and collective bargaining to build strong middle-class jobs while helping our most iconic American companies thrive,” Mr. Biden said Monday evening.Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which has brought together labor and environmental groups to marshal support for the clean energy transition, said the contracts, if ratified by U.A.W. workers, would be a watershed moment for the economy — and possibly the planet.“The legislative intent behind the industrial policy in the Inflation Reduction Act was an implicit deal: We as a nation are going to invest in the sectors of the economy that are important to the country and the planet in the long run, but in return we want the companies that receive those benefits to maximize returns to workers, communities and the environment,” Mr. Walsh said. To that end, the contract settlement is “huge,” he added. “It highlights the lie peddled by Donald Trump and at times the Big Three that the E.V. transition means lower-quality jobs in a nonunion work force.”The U.A.W. actions took on strikingly political meaning. In May, the autoworkers’ union opted to withhold an endorsement of Mr. Biden’s re-election, openly expressing “our concerns with the electric vehicle transition” that the president was pushing through legislation and regulation.Last month, Mr. Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, castigated striking workers, saying “they want more money working fewer hours. They want more benefits working fewer days.”Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, visited a nonunion parts plant in Michigan to rail against electric vehicles and to demand that Shawn Fain, the new and aggressive U.A.W. president, endorse him for another term in the White House.Mr. Fain said he would never do that, and supporters of the president pointed to provisions in federal laws championed by Mr. Biden that may have helped secure the deals. Subsidies for electric vehicle production will go only to domestic manufacturing plants, meaning Detroit management could not credibly threaten to move new auto plants overseas in search of cheaper labor.But union officials did not say on Monday what their intentions were for a presidential endorsement. Mr. Fain did make clear over the weekend that he was not resting on his laurels with the gains achieved with its escalating wave of strikes against the Big Three. The union plans to target Tesla, the nonunion automaker that dominates the domestic electric vehicle market, as well as foreign automakers with factories in the Southeast, where unions have struggled to gain a foothold. Some of the biggest new plants are under construction in Georgia, a critical swing state for 2024, including a Hyundai electric vehicle plant that will be the state’s biggest economic development project ever.Organizers will be able to lean on provisions of the three big laws that Mr. Biden signed — a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for clean energy to combat climate change — to push their case.Tucked into all of those laws were measures to give unions the power to effectively tell employers that accept rich federal tax incentives this: You must pay union-scale wages and use union apprenticeship and training programs, so you might as well hire union workers.How electric vehicle and battery makers respond to the U.A.W.’s next push will go a long way toward determining whether Mr. Biden can make good on his promise that his effort to curtail climate change and wean the nation off fossil fuels will indeed produce “good union jobs.” More

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      U.A.W. Will Not Expand Strikes at G.M., Ford and Stellantis as Talks Progress

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      The United Automobile Workers reported improved wage offers from the automakers and a concession from General Motors on workers at battery factories.The United Automobile Workers union said on Friday that it had made progress in its negotiations with Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, and would not expand the strikes against the companies that began three weeks ago.In an online video, the president of the union, Shawn Fain, said all three companies had significantly improved their offers to the union, including providing bigger raises and offering cost-of-living increases. In what he described as a major breakthrough, Mr. Fain said G.M. was now willing to include workers at its battery factories in the company’s national contract with the U.A.W.G.M. had previously said that it could not include those workers because they are employed by joint ventures between G.M. and battery suppliers.“Here’s the bottom line: We are winning,” said Mr. Fain, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Eat the Rich.” “We are making progress, and we are headed in the right direction.”Mr. Fain said G.M. made the concession on battery plant workers after the union had threatened to strike the company’s factory in Arlington, Texas, where it makes some of its most profitable full-size sport-utility vehicles, including the Cadillac Escalade and the Chevrolet Tahoe. The plant employs 5,300 workers.G.M. has started production at one battery plant in Ohio, and has others under construction in Tennessee and Michigan. Workers at the Ohio plant voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the U.A.W. and have been negotiating a separate contract with the joint venture, Ultium Cells, that G.M. owns with L.G. Energy Solution.Ford is building two joint-venture battery plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and a fourth in Michigan that is wholly owned by Ford. Stellantis has just started building a battery plant in Indiana and is looking for a site for a second.G.M. declined to comment about battery plant workers. “Negotiations remain ongoing, and we will continue to work towards finding solutions to address outstanding issues,” the company said in a statement. “Our goal remains to reach an agreement that rewards our employees and allows G.M. to be successful into the future”Shares of the three companies jumped after Mr. Fain spoke. G.M.’s stock closed up about 2 percent, Stellantis about 3 percent and Ford about 1 percent.The strike began Sept. 15 when workers walked out of three plants in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, each owned by one of the three companies.The stoppage was later expanded to 38 spare-parts distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis, and then to a Ford plant in Chicago and another G.M. factory in Lansing, Mich. About 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three Michigan automakers were on strike as of Friday morning.“I think this strategy of targeted strikes is working,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University. “It has the effect of slowly ratcheting up the cost to the companies, and they don’t know necessarily where he’s going to strike next.”Here Are the Locations Where U.A.W. Strikes Are HappeningSee where U.A.W. members are on strike at plants and distribution centers owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.The contract battle has become a national political issue. President Biden visited a picket line near Detroit last month. A day later, former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a nonunion factory north of Detroit and criticized Mr. Biden and leaders of the U.A.W. Other lawmakers and candidates have voiced support for the U.A.W. or criticized the strikes.When negotiations began in July, Mr. Fain initially demanded a 40 percent increase in wages, noting that workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years and that the chief executives of the three companies have seen pay increases of roughly that magnitude.The automakers, which have made near-record profits over the last 10 years, have all offered increases of slightly more than 20 percent over four years. Company executives have said anything more would threaten their ability to compete with nonunion companies like Tesla and invest in new electric vehicle models and battery factories.The union also wants to end a wage system in which newly hired workers earn just over half the top U.A.W. wage, $32 an hour now, and need to work for eight years to reach the maximum. It is also seeking cost-of-living adjustments if inflation flares, pensions for a greater number of workers, company-paid retirement health care, shorter working hours and the right to strike in response to plant closings.In separate statements, Ford and Stellantis have said they agreed to provide cost-of-living increases, shorten the time it takes for employees to reach the top wage, and several other measures the union has sought.Ford also said it was “open to the possibility of working with the U.A.W. on future battery plants in the U.S.” Its battery plants are still under construction and have not hired any production workers yet.The union is concerned that some of its members will lose their jobs, especially people who work at engine and transmission plants, as the automakers produce more electric cars and trucks. Those vehicles do not need those parts, relying instead on electric motors and batteries.Stellantis’ chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said the company and the union were “making progress, but there are gaps that still need to be closed.”The union is also pushing the companies to convert temporary workers who now make a top wage of $20 an hour into full-time staff.Striking at only select locations at all three companies is a change from the past, when the U.A.W. typically called for a strike at all locations of one company that the union had chosen as its target. Striking at only a few locations hurts the companies — the idled plants make some of their most profitable models — but limits the economic damage to the broader economies in the affected states.It also could help preserve the union’s $825 million strike fund, from which striking workers are paid while they’re off the job. The union is paying striking workers $500 a week.G.M. said this week that the first two weeks of the strike had cost it $200 million. The three automakers and some of their suppliers have said that they have had to lay off hundreds of workers because the strikes have disrupted the supply and demand for certain parts.Santul Nerkar More