Economy

More than a week into its targeted strike at the three established U.S. car companies, the United Automobile Workers union has poked holes in a supply chain that has still not fully recovered from the pandemic.The companies and the union remain far apart in negotiations, and the U.A.W. could expand its strikes to more locations as soon as Friday. Depending on how long the strikes last, it could exact a heavy toll on autoworkers and the three companies — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler and Jeep. But the work stoppages could also be painful to drivers, car dealers and auto-parts suppliers.A long and expanding strike will reduce the number of new cars on dealer lots, make it harder for people to repair their vehicles and reduce demand for parts needed to make...

In November 2020, executives at Huawei, the Chinese telecom-equipment maker, exchanged messages about holding a meeting with a “friend” and an “adviser” in Greece.The contacts, identified as Greek government advisers, were set to provide Huawei with something valuable: a document outlining government contracts and “first priority projects” that the company might want to work on in the country. Huawei managers discussed giving the advisers a Huawei Mate XS smartphone, the company’s GT 2 smartwatch and wine, according to internal text messages and other documents reviewed by The New York Times.The plans are “strictly confidential among us,” a Huawei manager wrote in a group chat named after Greece’s digital ministry. The exchange was part of more than 120 messages and summaries of internal H...

Cryptocurrency lobbyists were riding so high in early 2022 that an FTX executive felt comfortable directly emailing Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, to ask him to meet with Sam Bankman-Fried, the soon-to-be-disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange.It worked.“The day that would work for me is February 1,” Mr. Powell replied to a Jan. 11 email from Mark Wetjen, an FTX policy official and former commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Mr. Powell’s public calendar shows that he and Mr. Bankman-Fried met as planned. And Mr. Wetjen went on to send the Fed chair two policy papers that FTX had recently published, according to emails obtained through a public records request. “Hope you’re finding these useful!” Mr. Wetjen wrote. “Great to have people like...

Hollywood is moving one step closer to getting back to work.SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents tens of thousands of movie and television actors who have been on strike since July, will resume negotiations with the major entertainment studios on Monday. Several studio executives will attend.The joint announcement on Wednesday was made one day after the Writers Guild of America’s leadership voted to end its 148-day strike against the studios. The tentative contract now goes to the union’s membership for ratification, and writers began returning to work on Wednesday.The flurry of movement is a welcome reprieve for an industry that has been hobbled for months by the dual strikes. (It was the first time the actors and the writers were both on strike since 1960.) TV and movie production has es...

The United Automobile Workers union said on Wednesday that it planned to expand its strike against the big three Michigan automakers on Friday if negotiators failed to make substantial progress on new contracts.The union ordered workers to walk off the job nearly two weeks ago at three vehicle assembly plants — each owned by one of the companies, General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler and Jeep. Last Friday the union broadened the strike to include spare parts-distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis, saying it had made progress in its talks with Ford.The U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, is scheduled to update members in a video streamed live on Facebook on Friday morning.The union is seeking a substantial wage increase to make up for much smaller raises ove...

Federal government shutdowns have become so common in recent years that forecasters have a good read on how another one would affect the American economy. The answer is fairly simple: The longer a shutdown lasts, the more damage it is likely to inflict.A brief shutdown would be unlikely to slow the economy significantly or push it into recession, economists on Wall Street and inside the Biden administration have concluded. That assessment is based in part on the evidence from prior episodes where Congress stopped funding many government operations.But a prolonged shutdown could hurt growth and potentially President Biden’s re-election prospects. It would join a series of other factors that are expected to weigh on the economy in the final months of this year, including high interest rates,...

Hospitality workers in Las Vegas have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against major resorts along the Strip, a critical step toward a walkout as the economically challenged city prepares for major sporting events in the months ahead.The authorization vote on Tuesday by members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165, which collectively represent 60,000 workers across Nevada, was approved by 95 percent of those taking part, according to union officials.Although a vote is a forceful step, it does not guarantee that workers will strike before hashing out a new contract deal with the major resorts. Contracts for roughly 40,000 housekeepers, bartenders, cooks and food servers at MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts expired on Se...

The Biden administration plans to bring back open internet rules that were enacted during the Obama administration and then repealed by the Trump administration.In a speech on Tuesday, Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, declared that the repeal in 2017 put the F.C.C. “on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the public.”The earlier open internet rules, known as net neutrality, prohibited broadband internet suppliers — telecommunications and cable companies — from blocking or slowing online services. It also banned the broadband companies from charging some content providers higher prices for priority treatment, or “fast lanes” on the internet.“This afternoon,” Ms. Rosenworcel said in her speech at the National Pre...

Jonathan Isaac is a forward for the National Basketball Association’s Orlando Magic, but he is perhaps better known as someone who chose not to protest police brutality against Black Americans during a summer of widespread activism involving racial injustice.Mr. Isaac, who is Black, turned that singular moment in July 2020 — when he decided not to join many other N.B.A. players in kneeling during the national anthem as the league restarted in a Covid “bubble” setting in Orlando, Fla. — into a platform as a conservative political activist. In 2022, he spoke at a rally of Christian nationalists and anti-vaccine Americans and wrote a book about why he did not join the protest. This year, he started Unitus, an apparel company centered on “faith, family and freedom.”“I wanted my values to be re...

President Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to join a group of striking autoworkers on the picket line, an extraordinary gesture of support to a labor union by a sitting American president.At first glance, the visit looks like a capstone for a politician who has for decades positioned himself as a champion of the middle class, but other political forces are at play as well. Mr. Biden will join the workers in Wayne County one day before his predecessor and likely 2024 rival, former President Donald J. Trump, is scheduled to visit a nearby county and deliver remarks to current and former union members.It is the first time this campaign season that the two men, whose political styles are as divergent as their visions for the country, will be competing in real time to present dueling me...