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The Kenyan government says it has entered or plans to enter labor agreements with Canada, Germany, the United States, and certain Persian Gulf nations. The agreements aim to ease the path for Kenyans to work overseas. But advocates for workers’ rights say such agreements, especially with Gulf nations, leave workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Mohammed Yusuf reports.
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Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are starting Tuesday to consider legislation to suspend the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling until early 2025 so it can borrow more money to keep paying the country’s bills.

Both Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who negotiated the debt ceiling deal, are urging its passage and say they think they have the votes to win. But some liberal Democratic lawmakers are complaining that it cuts too much in social welfare spending, while conservative Republicans are grumbling that it trims too little.

First up is a vote Tuesday afternoon in the 13-member House Rules Committee, which typically sets the terms of the debate by the full House, such as whether amendments can be offered on any legislation. Approval by the panel, with nine Republicans and four Democrats, is normally just a procedural step to advance legislation favored by McCarthy to the full 435-member House.

But two of the Republicans named to the committee by McCarthy as he won the top House position in January have already declared their opposition to the increase in the debt limit. That could presage a close tally by the panel on advancing the measure, depending on how the four Democratic lawmakers on the committee vote.

In politically divided Washington, the four Democrats have typically rejected advancing any measure favored by McCarthy and Republicans, but in this case, the debt ceiling agreement was reached by Biden’s negotiators with McCarthy and his associates.

McCarthy said on Monday he was not worried the Rules Committee would kill the bill.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told Congress the measure must pass by June 5, the point at which she says the government will run out of cash to pay its bills and would sustain the country’s first-ever default. Analysts say a default would lead to a cut in the country’s top-of-the-line AAA credit rating, roil world stock markets, and force the government to decide which bills to pay.

Assuming the House Rules Committee advances the legislation, McCarthy has set a full House vote for Wednesday, with the Senate planning to vote later in the week.

Representative Stephanie Bice, a Republican vote counter, said she is confident the measure will pass.

“It is a true negotiation and reflective of divided government,” she told reporters, referencing the fact that Democrats control the White House and Senate, while Republicans hold an edge in the House.

But some hard-right Republicans adamantly rejected any support for the deal and blamed McCarthy for agreeing with Biden on far fewer of the spending cuts than House Republicans had approved in debt ceiling legislation laying out their priorities. 

“Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” Representative Chip Roy, a member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters outside the Capitol. “We will continue to fight it today, tomorrow, and no matter what happens, there’s going to be a reckoning about what just occurred unless we stop this bill by tomorrow.” 

Another member of the group, Representative Dan Bishop, said he thinks McCarthy should be ousted from the speakership because of his role in the negotiations. 

“I’m fed up with the lies,” Bishop said. “I’m fed up with the lack of courage, the cowardice.” He contended, “Nobody could have done a worse job” in the negotiations with the White House than McCarthy.

The proposal includes waiving the existing borrowing limit until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in the fiscal year starting in October and increases it by 1% in the following 12 months into 2025.

Other pieces of the compromise package include a reduction in the hiring of more agents at the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government, and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.

“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” Biden said at the White House on Sunday. It “takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”

“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. But that’s the responsibility of governing,” Biden said in a statement. He called the pact “an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone.”

McCarthy, discussing the deal at the Capitol, said, “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”

He told the “Fox News Sunday” show that from Republicans’ perspective, “There’s so much in this that is positive. It will not do everything for everyone, but this is a step in the right direction.”
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U.S. lawmakers are examining the details of an agreement to increase the country’s borrowing limit ahead of votes expected in the coming days, as both President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy urge them to approve it. 

The proposal includes waiving the debt ceiling until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in 2024 and increases it by 1% in 2025. 

Among the other pieces of the compromise package are reducing some funding to hire new Internal Revenue Service agents, rescinding $30 billion in COVID-19 relief and ensuring people ages 49 to 54 meet work requirements in order to receive food aid. 

Biden and McCarthy reached the agreement Sunday after weeks of negotiations with an early June deadline looming for the government running out of money to pay its bills. 

“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” Biden said at the White House. It “takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”  

McCarthy, discussing the agreement at the Capitol, said, “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”  

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias

While the two leaders expressed support for the deal, progressive Democratic lawmakers from the party’s ideological left, and Republicans from the party’s right-wing immediately voiced opposition Sunday.      

“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. But that’s the responsibility of governing,” Biden said in a statement. He called the pact “an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone.”      

Earlier Sunday, McCarthy, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, said that from Republicans’ perspective, “There’s so much in this that is positive. It will not do everything for everyone, but this is a step in the right direction.”       

The debt ceiling needs to be increased so the government can borrow more money, or the U.S. government will run out of cash to pay its existing bills June 5, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress.     

Yellen has said that without an increase in the debt ceiling or a suspension of the borrowing limit, interest on U.S. bonds held by foreign governments and individual American investors would be imperiled, as well as stipends for U.S. pensioners and salaries for government workers and contractors. Without enough tax receipts coming into U.S. coffers to pay its bills, the government would be forced to prioritize which payments to make.    

Another part of the agreement would also speed up the approval process for new energy projects.     

The pact also left in place Biden’s plan to write off up to $20,000 in student loan debts but says that loan recipients will have to start making loan payments that had been paused during the coronavirus pandemic. The provision would become moot if the Supreme Court overturns Biden’s authority to revoke the debt in a challenge to his action that it is expected to rule on by the end of June.    

Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the 102-member House progressive caucus, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that Biden and Jeffries should worry about progressives’ support for passage of the debt ceiling increase.     

Jayapal criticized expanding work requirements for food stamp recipients and said she did not know whether she would vote for the debt ceiling increase.    

“I’m not a big fan of in-principle (agreements) frameworks,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “That’s always, you know, a problem if you can’t see the exact legislative text. And we’re all trying to wade through spin right now. But I think it’s going to come down to what the legislative text is.”   

Among Republicans, Representative Bob Good wrote on Twitter, “No one claiming to be a conservative could justify a YES vote” on the package.    

Another Republican critic of the deal, Representative Ralph Norman, tweeted, “This ‘deal’ is insanity.” He said a possible $4 trillion increase in the debt over the next two years “with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to. Not gonna vote to bankrupt our country. The American people deserve better.” 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Republican and Democratic House leaders expressed optimism Sunday that they will get enough votes in favor of raising the debt ceiling. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has details on a deal that has in principle, been struck. Video editor: Marcus Harton.
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 China’s first domestically made passenger jet flew its maiden commercial flight Sunday, as China looks to compete with industry giants such as Boeing and Airbus in the global aircraft market.

The C919 plane, built by the Commercial Aviation Corporation of China, carried about 130 passengers on the flight, according to state-owned newspaper China Daily. The jet took off Sunday morning from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and landed less than two hours later in Beijing.

The flight was operated by state-owned China Eastern Airlines and the side of the plane was emblazoned with the words: “The World’s First C919.”

The inaugural flight comes as COMAC looks to break into the single-aisle jet market in a direct challenge to Airbus and Boeing. Airbus’s A320 and Boeing’s B737 jets are the most popular aircraft, typically used for domestic and regional flights.

While COMAC designed many of the C919’s parts, some of its key components are still sourced from the West, including its engine.

The company plans to build 150 C919 planes each year for the next five years, according to earlier state media reports.

The C919, in development for 16 years, has a maximum range of about 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers) and is designed to carry between 158 and 168 passengers.

Over 1,200 C919 jetliners have been ordered, COMAC says, with China Eastern Airlines under contract to buy five of them.
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Good relations with China are possible even without being part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deal, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in an interview published Sunday, as her government weighs abandoning the project.

Italy is the only major Western country to have joined China’s BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.

In an interview with Il Messaggero daily, Meloni said it was too early to anticipate the outcome of Italy’s decision on whether to remain part of the project, which it signed up for in 2019, drawing criticism from Washington and Brussels.

“Our assessment is very delicate and touches upon many interests,” said Meloni. The pact expires in March 2024 and will be automatically renewed unless either side informs the other that they are pulling out, giving at least three months’ notice.

In an interview with Reuters last year, before she won power in a September election, Meloni made clear she disapproved of the 2019 move, saying she had “no political will … to favor Chinese expansion into Italy or Europe.”

Meloni noted that while Italy was the only one of the Group of Seven (G7) rich democracies to have signed the Belt and Road memorandum, it was not the European and Western country with the strongest economic and trade ties with China.

“This means it is possible to have good relations, also in important areas, with Beijing, without necessarily these being part of an overall strategic design,” she said.

Earlier this month a senior Italian government official told Reuters Italy was highly unlikely to renew the Belt and Road deal.

A first test of the right-wing government’s attitude toward China looms as Rome vets a shareholder pact at tire maker Pirelli’s, whose top investor is China’s Sinochem.

China is among the biggest markets for most countries in the G7 group, particularly for export-reliant economies such as Japan and Germany.

At a summit last weekend, G7 leaders pledged to “de-risk” without “decoupling” from China, an approach that reflected European and Japanese concerns about pushing Beijing too hard, officials and experts said.
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The United States “won’t tolerate” China’s effective ban on purchases of Micron Technology MU.O memory chips and is working closely with allies to address such “economic coercion,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Saturday.

Raimondo told a news conference after a meeting of trade ministers in the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework talks that the U.S. “firmly opposes” China’s actions against Micron.

These “target a single U.S. company without any basis in fact, and we see it as plain and simple economic coercion and we won’t tolerate it, nor do we think it will be successful.”

China’s cyberspace regulator said May 21 that Micron, the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, had failed its network security review and that it would block operators of key infrastructure from buying from the company, prompting it to predict a revenue reduction.

The move came a day after leaders of the G7 industrial democracies agreed to new initiatives to push back against economic coercion by China — a decision noted by Raimondo.

“As we said at the G7 and as we have said consistently, we are closely engaging with partners addressing this specific challenge and all challenges related to China’s non-market practices.”

Raimondo also raised the Micron issue in a meeting Thursday with China’s Commerce Minister, Wang Wentao.

She also said the IPEF agreement on supply chains and other pillars of the talks would be consistent with U.S. investments in the $52 billion CHIPS Act to foster semiconductor production in the United States.

“The investments in the CHIPS Act are to strengthen and bolster our domestic production of semiconductors. Having said that, we welcome participation from companies that are in IPEF countries, you know, so we expect that companies from Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc, will participate in the CHIPS Act funding,” Raimondo said.
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Trade ministers of 14 countries in the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework talks “substantially completed” negotiations on an agreement to make supply chains more resilient and secure, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Saturday.

The “first of its kind” agreement calls for countries to form a council to coordinate supply chain activities and a “Crisis Response Network” to give early warnings to IPEF countries of potential supply disruptions, Raimondo told a news conference following a ministerial meeting in Detroit.

The deal provides an emergency communications channel for IPEF countries to seek support during supply chain disruptions, coordinate more closely during a crisis and recover more quickly.

Raimondo cited shortages of semiconductors during the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down American auto production, idling thousands of workers.

“I can tell you I would have loved to have had that Crisis Response Network during COVID. It absolutely would have helped us secure American jobs and keep supply chains moving,” she said.

The supply chains agreement, led by Commerce, marks the first tangible outcome of a year’s worth of IPEF discussions. But it is just one the four “pillars” of the IPEF talks.

The other pillars — trade, climate transition, and labor and inclusiveness — are more complex and expected to take longer to negotiate.

The supply chains agreement also includes a new labor rights advisory board aimed at raising labor standards in supply chains, consisting of government, worker, and employer representatives, the Commerce Department said.
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Living in New York City, working full time and without a car, Jessica Ray and her husband have come to rely on deliveries of food and just about everything else for their home. It has meant more free time on weekends with their young son, rather than standing in line for toilet paper or dragging heavy bags of dog food back to their apartment.

“I don’t even know where to buy dog food,” said Jessica Ray of the specialty food she buys for the family’s aging dog.

There are millions of families like the Rays who have swapped store visits for doorstep deliveries in recent years, meaning that contentious labor negotiations now underway at UPS could become vastly more disruptive than the last time it happened in 1997, when a scrappy upstart called Amazon.com became a public company.

UPS delivers millions more packages every day than it did just five years ago and its 350,000 unionized workers, represented by the Teamsters, still seethe about a contract they feel was forced on them in 2018.

In an environment of energized labor movements and lingering resentment among UPS workers, the Teamsters are expected to dig in, with the potential to cow a major logistical force in the U.S.

‘Something’s got to give’

The 24 million packages UPS ships on an average day amounts to about a quarter of all U.S. parcel volume, according to the global shipping and logistics firm Pitney Bowes, or as UPS puts it, the equivalent of about 6% of nation’s gross domestic product.

Higher prices and long wait times are all but certain if there is an impasse.

“Something’s got to give,” said Thomas Goldsby, logistics chairman in the Supply Chain Management Department at the University of Tennessee. “The python can’t swallow the alligator, and that’s going to be felt by all of us.”

In other words, brace yourself for Supply Chain Breakdown: The Sequel.

In the second half of 2021, the phrase “global supply chain” began to enter casual conversations as the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses struggled to get what they needed, raising prices and wait times. Automakers held vehicles just off the assembly line because they didn’t have all the parts.

Some of those problems still linger and a strike at UPS threatens to extend the suffering.

Household routines at risk

Those who have come to rely on doorstep deliveries for the basics might have to rethink weekly schedules.

“We finally reached a point where we finally feel pretty good about it,” Ray said. “We can take a Saturday afternoon and do a fun family activity and not feel the burden of making everything work for the day-to-day functioning of our household.”

UPS workers feel they have played a part in the transformation of how Americans shop since the last contract was ratified in 2018, while helping to make UPS a much more valuable company.

Annual profits at UPS in the past two years are close to three times what they were before the pandemic. The Atlanta company returned about $8.6 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks in 2022, and forecasts another $8.4 billion for shareholders this year.

The Teamsters say frontline UPS workers deserve some of that windfall.

“Our members worked really hard over the pandemic,” said Teamsters spokesperson Kara Denize. “They need to see their fair share.”

Union members rejected the contract they were offered in 2018, but it was pushed through by union leadership based on a technicality. The acrimony over the current contract was so fierce that last year workers rejected a candidate to lead the Teamsters favored by longtime union head James Hoffa, instead choosing the more combative Sean O’Brien.

O’Brien went on a nationwide tour of local Teamsters shops preparing frontline workers ahead of negotiations.

In addition to addressing part-time pay, and what workers say is excessive overtime, the union wants to eliminate a contract provision that created two separate hierarchies of workers with different pay scales, hours and benefits. Driver safety, particularly the lack of air conditioning in delivery trucks, is also in the mix.

Possible ripple effect

A win at UPS could have implications for the organized labor outside the company.

Teamsters are attempting to organize Amazon workers and dozens of company delivery drivers and dispatchers in California joined the union last month. There are also prominent labor organization campaigns at Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Apple, even strippers at a dance club in Los Angeles.

“This has just huge implications for the entire labor movement in the United States,” said John Logan, the director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, referring to labor talks at UPS. “There’s greater assertiveness and militancy on the part of a lot of young labor activists and some sectors of the labor establishment. Sean O’Brien is representative of that.”

When dozens of UPS locals met with Teamsters leadership early this year, O’Brien delivered a message of urgency.

“We’re going into these negotiations with a clear message to UPS that we’re not going past August 1,” O’Brien told the gathering.

It would be the first work stoppage since a walkout by 185,000 workers crippled the company a quarter century ago.

UPS CEO Carol Tome has remained optimistic publicly, telling investors recently that the company and the Teamsters were not far apart on major issues.

“While we expect to hear a great deal of noise during the negotiation, I remain confident that a win-win-win contract is very achievable and that UPS and the Teamsters will reach agreement by the end of July,” Tome said.

If Tome is wrong, Americans might need to put aside more time to shop like they used to do.

“It has the potential to be significantly impactful,” said Ray, the New York City resident. “My husband and I have invested a lot in figuring out how to remove the burden of just making sure we always have toilet paper.”
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U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting on Friday with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who objected to U.S. tariffs and trade policies, their offices said.

But statements from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and China’s Commerce Ministry both emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade.

“Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, nonmarket approach to the economy and trade policy,” USTR said in a statement released after the meeting on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Detroit.

“She also raised concerns about PRC [People’s Republic of China] actions taken against U.S. companies operating there,” the statement said.

China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement that Wang raised complaints about U.S. economic and trade policies toward China, including U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, and on the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) that excludes China.

Tai on Saturday will hold a ministerial meeting of countries in the IPEF talks, which exclude China and aim to provide a U.S.-centered alternative to its influence. Last week, she announced initial trade agreements with Taiwan. China claims the self-governed island as its own territory.

USTR is conducting a four-year review of U.S. tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports, imposed in 2018 and 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.

Tai has long raised objections to China’s attempts to dominate certain industries using massive state subsidies and said such issues continue to come up in the relationship.

Asked during a press conference whether the U.S. would resort to using further trade tools to address China’s practices, such as a new “Section 301” investigation that could lead to more U.S. tariffs, Tai said that “aspects” of the Biden administration’s response were already evident in U.S economic policies.

“The benefit of sitting down and having a conversation with interlocutors from Beijing is so that we can understand each other better and understand how we are experiencing the impacts that we have on each other’s economies,” Tai said.

Cabinet-level discussion

Wang’s meetings with Tai in Detroit and with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington on Thursday marked the first Cabinet-level exchanges in months between U.S. and Chinese officials, following a series of setbacks that raised tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Tai stressed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between Washington and Beijing as they spoke on the sidelines of APEC, the U.S. statement said.

The Chinese statement was similar in tone to concerns raised with Raimondo about U.S. trade, investment and export policies.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged more frequent communications at a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia last November to avoid U.S.-China tensions from turning into a new cold war. 

But those plans suffered several setbacks, starting with the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon in U.S. coastal waters.

These irritants continued through last Sunday, when Group of Seven leaders pledged to resist China’s “economic coercion” and Beijing responded by declaring U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology a national security risk, banning its sales to major domestic industries.
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For a second year, the war in Ukraine is adding to worries for American farmers already pinched by higher interest rates. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh speaks with farmers in the Midwest state of Illinois about the impact of world events as they launch another planting season. Camera: Kane Farabaugh.
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Japan and the United States will issue a joint statement on technology cooperation on Friday that will commit them to closer cooperation in research and development of advanced chips and other technologies, a Japanese government source said.

Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will meet in Detroit in the U.S. on the sidelines of the 2023 APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting, Yomiuri reported earlier. In addition to semiconductors, they will discuss artificial intelligence and quantum technology, the newspaper added.

They want to deepen ties between research and development hubs in Japan and the U.S., the Japanese official told Reuters, asking not to be identified because he is not authorised to talk to the media. It will be another incremental step as they map out their future technology cooperation, he added.

As Washington and Tokyo reduce their exposure to Chinese supply chains amid growing tension, they are working together to expand chip manufacturing to ensure access to advanced components that they see as essential for economic growth.

Japan has established a new chip maker, Rapidus, that is working with International Business Machines Corp (IBM)(IBM.N) to develop advanced logic semiconductors, and is offering subsidies to U.S. memory maker Micron Technology Inc (MU.O) so it can expand production there.

Japan, along with the Netherlands, has also agreed to match U.S. export controls that will limit the sale of some chipmaking tools in China.

The meeting between Nishimura and Raimondo comes after the leaders of the Group of Seven advanced democracies agreed at a meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, to reduce their exposure to China because of its “economic coercion.”

Raimondo on Thursday met China’s Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao in Washington where the pair exchanged views on trade, investment and export policies.
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The U.S. economy grew at a lackluster 1.3% annual rate from January through March as businesses wary of an economic slowdown trimmed their inventories, the government said Thursday in a slight upgrade from its initial estimate.

The government had previously estimated that the economy grew at a 1.1% annual rate last quarter.

The Commerce Department’s revised measure of growth in the nation’s gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — marked a deceleration from 3.2% annual growth from July through September and 2.6% from October through December.

Despite the first-quarter slowdown, consumer spending, which accounts for around 70% of America’s economic output, rose at a 3.8% annual pace, the most in nearly two years and an encouraging sign of household confidence. Specifically, spending on physical goods, like appliances and cars, rose 6.3%, also the fastest growth rate since April-June of last year.

A cutback in business inventories shaved 2.1 percentage points off January-March growth.

The steady slowdown in economic growth is a consequence of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to tame inflation, with 10 interest rate hikes over the past 14 months. Across the economy, the Fed’s rate increase have elevated the costs of auto loans, credit card borrowing and business loans.

With mortgage rates having doubled over the past year, the real estate market has already taken a beating: Investment in housing fell at a 0.2% annual rate from January through March. In April, sales of existing homes were 23% below their level a year earlier.

As the Fed’s rate hikes have gradually slowed growth, inflation has eased from the four-decade high it reached last year. Still, consumer prices were still up 4.9% in April from a year earlier — well above the Fed’s 2% target.

The economy’s slowdown is widely expected to lead to a recession later this year. For now, though, most sectors of the economy other than housing are showing surprising resilience. Retail sales have continued to rise. So have orders for manufactured goods.

Most significantly, the nation’s job market remains fundamentally solid. In April, employers added 253,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate matched a 54-year low. The pace of layoffs remains comparatively low. And job openings, though declining, are still well above pre-pandemic levels.
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The European Union fined Meta a record $1.3 billion on Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. digital snooping fears.

The privacy fine of 1.2 billion euros from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is the biggest since the EU’s strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon’s 746 million euro penalty in 2021 for data protection violations.

The Irish watchdog is Meta’s lead privacy regulator in the 27-nation bloc because the Silicon Valley tech giant’s European headquarters is based in Dublin.

Meta, which had previously warned that services for its users in Europe could be cut off, vowed to appeal and ask courts to immediately put the decision on hold.

“There is no immediate disruption to Facebook in Europe,” the company said.

“This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and U.S.,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global and affairs, and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.

It’s another twist in a legal battle that began in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems filed a complaint about Facebook’s handling of his data following former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. digital snooping.

The saga has highlighted the clash between Washington and Brussels over the differences between Europe’s strict view on data privacy and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law.

An agreement covering EU-U.S. data transfers known as the Privacy Shield was struck down in 2020 by the EU’s top court, which said it didn’t do enough to protect residents from the U.S. government’s electronic prying.

That left another tool to govern data transfers — stock legal contracts. Irish regulators initially ruled that Meta didn’t need to be fined because it was acting in good faith in using them to move data across the Atlantic. But it was overruled by the EU’s top panel of data privacy authorities last month, a decision that the Irish watchdog confirmed Monday.

Meanwhile, Brussels and Washington signed an agreement last year on a reworked Privacy Shield that Meta could use, but the pact is awaiting a decision from European officials on whether it adequately protects data privacy.

EU institutions have been reviewing the agreement, and the bloc’s lawmakers this month called for improvements, saying the safeguards aren’t strong enough.

Meta warned in its latest earnings report that without a legal basis for data transfers, it will be forced to stop offering its products and services in Europe, “which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”

The social media company might have to carry out a costly and complex revamp of its operations if it’s forced to stop shipping user data across the Atlantic. Meta has a fleet of 21 data centers, according to its website, but 17 of them are in the United States. Three others are in the European nations of Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. Another is in Singapore.

Other social media giants are facing pressure over their data practices. TikTok has tried to soothe Western fears about the Chinese-owned short video sharing app’s potential cybersecurity risks with a $1.5 billion project to store U.S. user data on Oracle servers.
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U.S. President Joe Biden said Sunday that opposition Republicans in the House of Representatives must move away from their “extreme position” on government spending in order to reach a deal with Democrats to raise the country’s borrowing limit before it runs out of cash to pay its bills.

The government could come up short to meet its financial obligations as soon as June 1, but the Democratic president said at a news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, that there will be no agreement to avert a catastrophic default affecting the U.S. and global economies only on Republican terms.

“It’s time for Republicans to accept that there is no bipartisan deal to be made solely, solely, on their partisan terms,” Biden said at the end of a Group of Seven summit of the leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies.

Biden said he had done his part by offering ways to raise the country’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit so the U.S. government can keep paying its bills, such as interest on government bonds, stipends to U.S. pensioners and payments to health care providers and salaries for government employees and contractors. He said, “It’s time for the other side to move from their extreme position.”

Biden was expected to talk later Sunday with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy about the debt ceiling negotiations, possibly as he flies back to Washington on Air Force One. While Biden was in Japan, his negotiators met with key Republicans, but the talks produced no agreement, with both sides digging in for their viewpoints on government spending for the year starting in October.

“My guess is he’s going to want to deal directly with me in making sure we’re all on the same page,” Biden said of McCarthy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show that the date when the government runs out of cash to pay its current bills remains uncertain, but that an expected June 15 infusion of tax payments may not come soon enough to avert a default.

“There’s always uncertainty about tax receipts and spending,” Yellen said. “And so, it’s hard to be absolutely certain about this, but my assessment is that the odds of reaching June 15th, while being able to pay all of our bills, is quite low.”

She said decisions have not been made on which bills would go unpaid if the government defaults.

“I would say we’re focused on raising the debt ceiling and there will be hard choices if that doesn’t occur,” Yellen said. “There can be no acceptable outcomes if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, regardless of what decisions we make.”

Biden said he still believes a compromise remains within reach to avert what would be the first-ever U.S. government default, roiling world stock markets, diminishing the U.S. credit rating and forcing many U.S. businesses to lay off thousands of workers.

“I’m hoping that Speaker McCarthy is just waiting to negotiate with me when I get home. … I’m waiting to find out,” Biden said.

Republicans in the House have called for sharp government spending cuts, rejecting the alternatives proposed by the White House, which has called for closing tax loopholes and more limited spending reductions. In the past, previous presidents and congressional leaders have reached deals to raise the country’s debt limit 78 times in give-and-take negotiations in which neither side got everything on its wish list.

This time, Republicans want increased work requirements for able-bodied poor people receiving government assistance, but Democrats say that under such a proposal several hundred thousand people could lose the benefits they now receive.

Republicans also are seeking cuts in funding for the country’s tax-collection agency and asking the White House to accept provisions from their proposed immigration overhaul to stem the tide of migrants trying to enter the U.S. at the Mexican border.

The White House has countered by keeping defense and nondefense spending flat during the next budget year starting October 1, which would save $90 billion in 2024 and $1 trillion over 10 years.

“I think that we can reach an agreement,” Biden said.

But he acknowledged, “I can’t guarantee that [Republicans] wouldn’t force a default by doing something outrageous.”
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The United Nations and Turkey have negotiated a two-month extension to an agreement allowing Ukraine farmers to continue to export of millions of tons of grain. That’s good news for Dutch farmer Kees Huizinga, who has been farming in Ukraine for 20 years. Anna Kosstutschenko reports.
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Fewer Americans applied for jobless benefits last week after a previous spike that some took as a sign that higher interest rates were finally cooling the labor market.

Applications for jobless claims for the week ending May 6 fell by 22,000 to 242,000, from 264,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The weekly claims numbers are broadly as representative of the number of U.S. layoffs.

The four-week moving average of claims, which flattens some of the week-to-week fluctuations, ticked down by 1,000 to 244,250. Analysts have pointed to a sustained increase in the four-week averages as a sign that layoffs are accelerating, but are reluctant to predict that a spike in layoffs is imminent.

Overall, 1.8 million people were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended April 29, about 8,000 fewer than the previous week.

Since the pandemic purge of millions of jobs three years ago, the U.S. economy has added jobs at a breakneck pace and Americans have enjoyed unusual job security. That’s despite interest rates that have been rising for more than a year and fears of a looming recession.

Early this month, the Fed raised its benchmark lending rate for the 10th time in a row in its bid to cool the economy and bring down four-decade high inflation. Though the labor market still favors workers, there have been some recent indications that the Fed’s policy actions are working.

In April, U.S. employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low. But the figures for February and March were revised lower by 149,000 jobs, potentially signaling that the Fed’s rate policy strategy is starting to cool the job market.

The government also recently reported that U.S. job openings fell in March to the lowest level in nearly two years.

The Fed is hoping to achieve a so-called soft landing — lowering growth just enough to bring inflation under control without causing a recession. Economists are skeptical, with many expecting the U.S. to enter a recession later this year.

Last month, the Commerce Department reported that U.S. economy slowed sharply from January through March, decelerating to just a 1.1% annual pace as higher interest rates hammered the housing market and businesses reduced inventories.

There have been an increasing number of high-profile layoffs recently, mostly in the technology sector, where companies added jobs at a furious pace during the pandemic. IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter, Lyft, LinkedIn and DoorDash have all announced layoffs in recent months. Amazon and Facebook have each announced two sets of job cuts since November.

But it’s not just the tech sector that’s trimming staff. McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley and 3M also announced layoffs recently. 
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