US ECONOMY & POLITICS

Durable Goods Orders Dropped Slightly in July as Supply Constraints Continue – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• Orders for cars, appliances and other durable goods decreased slightly in July, as manufacturers continued to grapple with shortages in parts and labor and confront higher material costs.
• New orders for products meant to last at least three years decreased 0.1% to a seasonally adjusted $257.2 billion in July as compared with June, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
• Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a 0.5% decline.
• Orders increased 0.8% in June from the prior month, unchanged from the initial estimate for the month. Demand for durable goods has increased in 13 of the last 15 months.
• The overall number was hurt by a 48.9% decline between June and July on new orders for nondefense aircraft and parts, a category that is often volatile.
• New orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft—so-called core capital-goods, a closely watched proxy for business investment—were unchanged in July compared with the previous month.

House Passes $3.5 Trillion Budget Blueprint, Sets Deadline for Infrastructure Bill – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• The House narrowly passed a measure approving a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint and locking in a late September vote on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, ending a standoff between centrist Democrats and party leaders over their legislative agenda.
• Tuesday’s passage of the $3.5 trillion budget framework in a 220-212 vote unlocks a process, known as reconciliation, allowing Democrats to pass a broad package of healthcare, education and climate provisions in the Senate without GOP support, so long as all 50 senators in the Democratic caucus back it.
• Among the priorities Democrats hope to include the $3.5 trillion legislation are expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision care; offering universal prekindergarten and two free years of community college; and pushing utilities to generate 80% of the nation’s electricity from clean sources by the end of the decade.
• They are also considering raising taxes on companies and high-income households to cover the cost.

Nursing Homes Keep Losing Workers – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• Nursing homes have a long-term care problem: 18 months after the Covid-19 crisis began, their staffs are still shrinking.
• Nursing homes and residential-care facilities employed three million people in July, down 380,000 workers from February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry employment has fallen every month except one since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic in March 2020.
• Nursing-home staff have quit—and stayed away—because of the pay, burnout and fear of Covid-19, administrators and workers say. Enhanced unemployment benefits and competing job opportunities also have played a role, they say.
• Covid-19 vaccines have brought relief inside nursing homes as resident and staff infections have declined. But they have also created another staffing challenge for administrators concerned that workers will walk away if they are required to get the shot.
• About 61% of staff at long-term-care facilities are vaccinated, and 83% of residents, according to government data.

Only a Fraction of Covid-19 Rental Assistance Has Been Distributed – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• The U.S. program to help tenants and landlords struggling with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is still moving at a slow pace and has delivered a fraction of the promised aid, data released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday show.
• Since December, Congress has appropriated a total of $46.6 billion to help tenants who were behind on their rent. As of July 31, just $4.7 billion had been distributed to landlords and tenants, the Treasury said.
• Wednesday’s data show that rental aid has begun to move faster in some states, though July’s $1.7 billion reflected only a modest overall increase from the $1.5 billion distributed in June.

SEC Chief Warns ‘Clock Is Ticking’ on Delisting Chinese Stocks – Bloomberg, 8/25/2021

• Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has a warning for hundreds of Chinese companies that have raised billions of dollars in U.S. markets: Submit to more scrutiny soon or get kicked out.
• In a Tuesday interview, he pledged to strictly enforce a three-year deadline that requires Chinese firms to permit inspections of their financial audits. If businesses refuse, their shares could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq as soon as 2024.
• The tough stance would seem to squash the hopes of some on Wall Street that Gensler might drag his feet in implementing the mandate from Congress and give Beijing more time to strike a deal with Washington regulators that allows the gravy train of Chinese stock sales to continue.

EUROPE & WORLD

Xiaomi revenue surges 64%, prepares autonomous driving expansion – Reuters, 8/25/2021

• Smartphone maker Xiaomi’s second-quarter revenue rose a record 64% from a year earlier, it said on Wednesday, announcing the purchase of an autonomous driving startup as it prepares to expand into the competitive market.
• Sales reached 87.8 billion yuan ($13.56 billion), up from 53.54 billion a year earlier and beating analyst expectations of 84.53 billion yuan.
• Growth in Xiaomi’s internet services unit, which makes money primarily by placing ads across various apps, grew 19.1% year-on-year.
• Net income reached 6.32 billion yuan, up 87.4% year on year and above analyst expectations.
• On Wednesday Xiaomi also announced that it is acquiring autonomous driving startup Deepmotion for approximately $77.37 million, in a bid to boost its own R&D efforts in the area, the company’s President Wang Xiang said.

Chinese Factories Are Having Labor Pains—‘We Can Hardly Find Any Workers’ – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• Labor shortages are materializing across China as young people shun factory jobs and more migrant workers stay home, offering a possible preview of larger challenges ahead as the workforce ages and shrinks.
• China’s shortfall in factory labor comes as it grapples with the opposite problem in another part of its economy: too many workers for white-collar professional jobs.
• More than 9 million students, a record, are graduating from college this year, aggravating the structural mismatch in China’s labor market, economists say.
• As China’s overall surveyed urban unemployment rate edged down to 5.1% in July from 5.7% a year earlier, the jobless rate among those aged 16 to 24 was 16.2% last month, though that was lower than an all-time high of 16.8% in July 2020.
• China’s working age population, defined as people between 15 and 59, fell to 894 million last year, or 63% of the total population.
• That was down from 939 million in 2010, or 70% of total population at the time, according to the country’s once-in-a-decade census data.

Didi Delays U.K., Europe Expansion Plans After Officials Raise Data Concerns – Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2021

• Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global has delayed plans to expand to Britain and Europe, partly due to political and regulatory challenges, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest illustration of the uphill battle that Chinese technology companies face in Western markets.
• Didi recently obtained licenses to operate in three British regions, including Manchester, and was planning to launch ride-hailing services in the country as early as this summer, some of the people said.
• It also planned to expand to London and other British cities later this year, one of the people said, and then France and Germany afterward, some of the people said.
• But executives decided to postpone plans to launch in the U.K. and Europe as political and regulatory scrutiny grew in both China and Britain, the people said.

EU to Discuss Reimposing Covid-Related Travel Curbs on U.S. – Bloomberg, 8/25/2021

• The European Union will discuss on Thursday whether to reintroduce travel restrictions on visitors from the U.S. as new coronavirus cases soar.
• Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU and is currently responsible for triggering an assessment of countries that are allowed non-essential travel into the bloc, recommended that the U.S. be removed from the list, according to two officials familiar with the plans.
• The U.S. had 507 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the previous 14 days as of Aug. 15, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. That’s well above the limit of 75 set out in the EU guidelines.
• The latest proposal recommends removing several other countries, including Israel, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Factmonster – TODAY in HISTORY

• The Department of the Interior created the National Park Service to manage and preserve national parks and monuments for future generations. (1916)
• Paris was liberated from Nazi occupation by Allied forces. (1944)
• Edward “Ted” Kennedy, who served as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts since 1962, dies. He was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2008. (2009)
• The first human to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, died after suffering complications from a heart bypass. (2012)