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    American Firms Invested $1 Billion in Chinese Chips, Lawmakers Find

    A Congressional investigation determined that U.S. funding helped fuel the growth of a sector now viewed by Washington as a security threat.A congressional investigation has determined that five American venture capital firms invested more than $1 billion in China’s semiconductor industry since 2001, fueling the growth of a sector that the United States government now regards as a national security threat.Funds supplied by the five firms — GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Walden International — went to more than 150 Chinese companies, according to the report, which was released Thursday by both Republicans and Democrats on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.The investments included roughly $180 million that went to Chinese firms that the committee said directly or indirectly support Beijing’s military. That includes companies that the U.S. government has said provide chips for China’s military research, equipment and weapons, such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, or SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker.The report by the House committee focuses on investments made before the Biden administration imposed sweeping restrictions aimed at cutting off China’s access to American financing. It does not allege any illegality.Last August, the Biden administration banned U.S. venture capital and private equity firms from investing in Chinese quantum computing, artificial intelligence and advanced semiconductors. It has also imposed worldwide limits on sales of advanced chips and chip-making machines to China, arguing that these technologies could help advance the capabilities of the Chinese military and spy agencies.Since it was established a year ago, the committee has called for raising tariffs on China, targeted Ford Motor and others for doing business with Chinese companies, and spotlighted forced labor concerns involving Chinese shopping sites.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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    For First Time in Two Decades, U.S. Buys More From Mexico Than China

    The United States bought more goods from Mexico than China in 2023 for the first time in 20 years, evidence of how much global trade patterns have shifted.In the depths of the pandemic, as global supply chains buckled and the cost of shipping a container to China soared nearly twentyfold, Marco Villarreal spied an opportunity.In 2021, Mr. Villarreal resigned as Caterpillar’s director general in Mexico and began nurturing ties with companies looking to shift manufacturing from China to Mexico. He found a client in Hisun, a Chinese producer of all-terrain vehicles, which hired Mr. Villarreal to establish a $152 million manufacturing site in Saltillo, an industrial hub in northern Mexico.Mr. Villarreal said foreign companies, particularly those seeking to sell within North America, saw Mexico as a viable alternative to China for several reasons, including the simmering trade tensions between the United States and China.“The stars are aligning for Mexico,” he said.New data released on Wednesday showed that Mexico outpaced China to become America’s top source of official imports for the first time in 20 years — a significant shift that highlights how increased tensions between Washington and Beijing are altering trade flows.The United States’ trade deficit with China narrowed significantly last year, with goods imports from the country dropping 20 percent to $427.2 billion, the data shows. American consumers and businesses turned to Mexico, Europe, South Korea, India, Canada and Vietnam for auto parts, shoes, toys and raw materials.Imports from China fell last yearU.S. imports of goods by origin

    Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic AnalysisBy 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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    Trump Couldn’t Shut Down the Border. Can Biden?

    President Biden could take some steps without Congress, but the idea that he has unfettered power to seal off the country is far too simplistic.President Biden is pleading with Congress for new authority to shut down the nation’s overwhelmed southern border, declaring that he has done “all I can do” and urging lawmakers to “give me the power” to fix it.“We don’t have enough agents. We don’t have enough folks. We don’t have enough judges,” Mr. Biden said on Monday. “Why won’t they give me the help?”A Senate bill introduced over the weekend tries to do just that. But it is fiercely opposed by House Republicans, who insist the president has simply failed to wield the power over immigration that he already has.Who’s right?While it is true that there are some steps Mr. Biden could take without Congress, the idea that he has unfettered power to seal the country off is far too simplistic. The United States also has laws that require the government to consider asylum claims from people fleeing persecution. Any attempts to circumvent that would almost certainly face legal challenges.The proposed legislation would clear away legal, practical and financial roadblocks to stiffer enforcement at the border that both parties say they want.Veterans of decades of political and policy debates over immigration said the bill would give Mr. Biden explicit new authority to deny asylum claims, expel people from the country more quickly and keep track of migrants while they are 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The 8 Days That Roiled the U.N.’s Top Agency in Gaza

    The crisis that threatens the future of the main United Nations agency in Gaza, amid a humanitarian disaster, began at a routine meeting between diplomats in Tel Aviv.When a senior U.S. diplomat called the Israeli military last week to request further details about Israeli allegations against a United Nations agency in Gaza, military leaders were so surprised that they ordered an internal inquiry about how the information had reached the ears of foreign officials.The allegations were grave: 12 employees of the organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, were accused of joining Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel or its aftermath.The claims reinforced Israel’s decades-old narrative about UNRWA: that it is biased against Israel and influenced by Hamas and other armed groups, charges that the agency strongly rejects.But while most Israeli officials oppose UNRWA, some military leaders did not want to see it shuttered amid a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. In fact, it was not the military that disclosed the information to the United States but UNRWA itself.The sequence of events began on Jan. 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, met with a top Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets roughly once a month in Israel with the diplomat, Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry who oversees relationships with U.N. agencies. This was meant to be a routine discussion about the delivery of food, fuel and other aid supplies to Gaza, according to a U.N. official briefed on the meeting.Instead, Mr. Weissbrod came supplied with the shocking intelligence about UNRWA, which had been given to him by officers in the military, according to four officials familiar with the situation.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

    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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    Millennials Flock to Instagram to Share Pictures of Themselves at 21

    The generation that rose with smartphones and social media had a chance to look back this week.Most of the photos are slightly faded. The hairlines fuller. Some feature braces. Old friends. Sorority squats and college sweethearts. Caps and gowns. Laments about skinny jeans and other long lost trends.This week, Instagram stories the world over have been awash with nostalgic snapshots of youthful idealism — there have been at least 3.6 million shares, according a representative for Meta — as people post photos of themselves based on the prompt: “Everyone tap in. Let’s see you at 21.”The first post came from Damian Ruff, a 43-year-old Whole Foods employee based out of Mesa, Ariz. On Jan. 23, Mr. Ruff shared an image from a family trip to Mexico, wearing a tiny sombrero and drinking a Dos Equis. His mother sent him the photo, Mr. Ruff said in an interview. It was the first time they shared a beer together after he turned 21.“Not much has changed other than my gray hair. I see that person and go, ‘Ugh, you are such a child and have no idea,’” he said.Mr. Ruff created the shareable story template with the picture — a feature that Instagram introduced in 2021 but expanded in December — and watched it take off.“The amount of people that have been messaging me and adding me on Instagram out of nowhere, like people from around the world, has been crazy,” Mr. Ruff said.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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    Walmart to Add 150 U.S. Stores in Five-Year Expansion Drive

    The retail giant, which last opened a domestic location in 2021, said most of the stores would be newly built.Walmart will add 150 stores in the United States over the next five years, a major expansion drive for the retail giant.The company, which announced the move in a statement on Wednesday, said would involve millions of dollars in investment. Walmart employs roughly 1.6 million people in the United States, and said it hires hundreds of people each time it opens a new store.Walmart had just over 4,600 stores nationwide at the end of October 2023, down from more than 4,700 a year earlier. The company has not opened a new U.S. store since late 2021.Most of the stores Walmart plans to open will be newly built, while others will be conversions of existing locations to new formats. The first two new stores will open in the spring, in Florida and Georgia, and the company is finalizing construction plans for 12 other stores this year. It also said it would remodel 650 locations.Walmart announced this week that it was raising salaries and benefits for store managers and offering them stock grants.The company reported sharply higher profit in the first three quarters of 2023, and its share price is hovering near a record high.Consumer spending, which powers the U.S. economy, has been resilient even though shoppers have been squeezed by high inflation and rising interest rates. Credit card data from the holiday season showed retail sales increased from a year earlier.Jordyn Holman More

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    Jean Carnahan, First Woman to Represent Missouri in U.S. Senate, Dies at 90

    Ms. Carnahan was appointed to the seat after her husband was posthumously elected to it just weeks after he was killed in a plane crash in 2000.Jean Carnahan, who in 2001 became the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to fill her husband’s seat following his posthumous election, died on Tuesday. She was 90.Her family released a statement saying that Ms. Carnahan died following a brief illness.“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life,” the statement said, without specifying the cause of death. “She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in the statement.Ms. Carnahan, the wife of Mel Carnahan, was appointed to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in December 2000, following the posthumous election of her husband, who was killed just weeks beforehand with their son and a longtime aide in a plane crash. She was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001.Ms. Carnahan, a moderate Democrat who had never held public office before being appointed to fill in for her husband, served for nearly two years. She lost to Jim Talent, a Republican, by 22,000 votes in November 2002.Following her defeat, Ms. Carnahan told The New York Times that despite the tumult and heartache she had endured, she had always pushed bitterness aside. “It’s an acid in your life that corrodes your soul,” she told The Times.Sheelagh McNeill More