04/09 Business in brief
Published 3:27 pm Monday, April 8, 2024
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the Biden administration will push China to change an industrial policy that poses a threat to U.S. jobs.
Yellen said this on Monday after four days of talks with Chinese officials. She also said during her visit to Beijing that they had “difficult conversations” about national security, including American concerns that Chinese companies are supporting Russia in its war in Ukraine.
But the focus of her trip was industrial policy, and what the U.S. and Europe describe as manufacturing overcapacity in China. Wealthy nations fear a wave of low-priced Chinese exports that will overwhelm factories at home.
The first labor union for Amazon workers in the United States is divided, running out of money and still does not have a contract two years after clinching a historic victory in New York City.
Despite campaigns at several facilities in the past few years, a Staten Island warehouse still is the only site in the U.S. where the retail giant’s workers have voted in favor of union representation. Cracks emerged within the Amazon Labor Union ranks after it lost votes at two other warehouses, spurring strategy disagreements.
The Spanish government says it will scrap so-called “golden visas” that allow wealthy people from outside the European Union to obtain residency permits on investing more than half a million euros in real estate.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his minority coalition government would study the reform in the weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday. Sánchez said the reform was part of the government’s push to make housing a right not a speculative business.
The government says some 10,000 such visas have been issued since the measure was brought into law in 2013 by a previous right-wing Popular Party government as a means to attract foreign investors.
Two lawmakers from opposing parties are floating a new plan to protect the privacy of Americans’ personal data.
The draft legislation was announced Sunday by two lawmakers from Washington state — Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell. Their proposal would make privacy a consumer right and set new rules for companies that collect and transfer personal data.
Congress has long debated ways to safeguard personal data, but partisan disputes have doomed previous proposals. The new measure from Cantwell and McMorris Rodgers hasn’t been introduced yet, but their bipartisan support indicates the measure is likely to get serious consideration.