August 13 2024

1 40% of Major U.S. Manufacturing Investments Under IRA Face Delays or Cancellation
2 Trump returns to X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk and Donald Trump Converse
3 Family Policy is Possible Area for Bipartisan Agreement
4 U.S. Commandos Battle Resurgence of Islamic State in Syria
5 China Prioritizes Scientific Training to Challenge U.S. Tech Dominance
8/13/1961 Berlin is divided

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1 40% of Major U.S. Manufacturing Investments Under IRA Face Delays or Cancellation

Some 40 per cent of the biggest US manufacturing investments announced in the first year of Joe Biden’s flagship industrial and climate policies have been delayed or paused, according to a Financial Times investigation. The US president’s Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act offered more than $400bn in tax credits, loans and grants to spark development of a US cleantech and semiconductor supply chain. However, of the projects worth more than $100mn, a total of $84bn have been delayed for between two months and several years, or paused indefinitely, the FT found.

Article Source: FT

2 Trump returns to X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk and Donald Trump Converse

For over two hours, Elon Musk and Donald Trump bantered on X about national security, energy policy, immigration and more, in a freewheeling conversation that gave the former president a forum to launch personal attacks on his political rivals as both men reveled in their largely shared vision for the country. The discussion on the social-media platform’s livestreaming service Spaces—which was delayed because of technical problems—began with Musk asking about the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last month.

The Republican former president has been frustrated by the attention Harris’s ascent has received, and he saw his return to X—known as Twitter when he frequently used it during his presidency—as a way to regain some of the spotlight. X is a vastly bigger platform for Trump, where he had 88.9 million followers Monday night, compared with his own Truth Social network, with 7.53 million followers.

Earlier Monday, ahead of the discussion on X’s Spaces, Trump returned to the platform with several posts—his first since last August, when he posted a photo of his mug shot after he surrendered at an Atlanta jail on charges he conspired to overturn his election loss in Georgia.
WSJ

X users rushed to join Trump's "Space" where he was supposed to speak with the billionaire tech tycoon on the 2024 race. However, the "Space" immediately crashed due to the influx of users, offering the message "This Space is unavailable." Moments later, Musk took to X, telling users, "There appears to be a massive DDOS [distributed denial-of-service] attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later."

The interview was supposed to mark Trump's grand return to the platform after the company under previous ownership banned him in 2021 after the January 6 riot. Shortly after Musk bought Twitter and changed the company's name to X, he reinstated Trump's account. 
Fox News

Article Source: WSJ, Fox News

3 Family Policy is Possible Area for Bipartisan Agreement

In three interviews broadcast on Sunday morning, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, repeated his description of Democrats as “anti-family,” defended former President Donald J. Trump’s abortion policies and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was racist. Mr. Vance — who has been criticized for past comments in which he disparaged “childless cat ladies” and suggested that parents “should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids” — said that his disdain was for Democrats’ policies, not the makeup of their families. He added that the idea of giving children the right to vote but letting their parents have control of the votes, which he floated in 2021, had been a “thought experiment” that he hadn’t really meant.

In all three interviews, with CNN, ABC News and CBS News, Mr. Vance said that he supported expanding the child tax credit and enacting protections against surprise medical bills for people who see out-of-network providers for childbirth. President Biden and congressional Democrats expanded the child tax credit in 2021 as a pandemic relief measure and tried to make the expansion permanent, but congressional Republicans (and one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia) blocked it, and the extension expired. 
NYT

A concern about declining birth rates doesn’t have to come with hostility toward those without children. And the concern is justified. Both the global and the national birth rates have been falling for decades. Americans, like the people of most developed countries, are having fewer children than needed to keep the population steady. That’s a problem for Social Security and Medicare, for economic dynamism, and even for our military strength. Immigration can keep our population growing — but falling birth rates tend to reduce support for it and, anyway, more and more countries are seeing the same decline, so eventually the supply of potential immigrants will fall, too.
WaPo OPINION

Ed note: Beneath the back-and-forth about “childless cat ladies”, there is an interesting debate over family policy. Until 2021, America offered a Child Tax Credit to families with children, but that credit was temporarily expanded in 2021 under the COVID relief package, the American Rescue Plan. The American Rescue Plan of 2021 significantly expanded the Child Tax Credit, increasing the maximum benefit to $3,600 per child under 6, compared to the pre-2021 limit of $2,000 per child. Additionally, the 2021 credit was fully refundable, providing more comprehensive financial support to low-income families than the partially refundable credit available in previous years. Vance is proposing an expanded tax credit, marking a shift from the traditional Republican stance, which favored a less generous credit. Vance’s position, representing the “New Right," a rising faction within the Republican Party, diverges from the party’s previous stance. Democrats support an expanded tax credit for children, creating a potential area for bipartisan collaboration in future years with significant implications for American families.

Article Source: NYT, WaPo Op-Ed

4 U.S. Commandos Battle Resurgence of Islamic State in Syria

American commandos are scrambling to contain a resurgence of Islamic State where the militant group once imposed its violent religious fervor on vast territories and millions of people. Islamic State is mustering forces in Syria’s Badiya desert, training young recruits to become suicide bombers, directing attacks on allied troops and preparing to resurrect its dream of ruling an Islamist caliphate, according to officers from the U.S. and the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led troops whom the U.S. helped to defeat the militant group five years ago. Militant fighters have doubled their pace of attacks in Syria and Iraq this year. They have targeted security checkpoints, detonated car bombs and plotted to free thousands of comrades jailed since the SDF and a U.S.-headed Western coalition recaptured the last Islamic State-held town. In a little-publicized campaign, American aircraft conduct airstrikes and provide live aerial surveillance to SDF ground forces who conduct raids on suspected Islamic State cells. While they usually stay a safe distance from the fighting, elite U.S. troops sometimes conduct missions on their own to kill or capture senior Islamic State leaders.

Article Source: WSJ

5 China Prioritizes Scientific Training to Challenge U.S. Tech Dominance

Beijing’s challenge to the technological leadership that the United States has held since World War II is evidenced in China’s classrooms and corporate budgets, as well as in directives from the highest levels of the Communist Party. A considerably larger share of Chinese students major in science, math and engineering than students in other big countries do. That share is rising further, even as overall higher education enrollment has increased more than tenfold since 2000. Spending on research and development has surged, tripling in the past decade and moving China into second place after the United States. Researchers in China lead the world in publishing widely cited papers in 52 of 64 critical technologies, recent calculations by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveal. Last month, China’s leaders vowed to turn the nation’s research efforts up another notch. A once-a-decade meeting of China’s Communist Party leadership chose scientific training and education as one of the country’s top economic priorities. That goal received more attention in the meeting’s final resolution than any other policy did, except strengthening the party itself. China will “make extraordinary arrangements for urgently needed disciplines and majors,” said Huai Jinpeng, the minister of education. “We will implement a national strategy for cultivating top talents.”

Article Source: NYT

8/13/1961 Berlin is divided

Sources

1. https://on.ft.com/4clmB2k

2. https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-musk-gear-up-for-x-interview-tonight-98c5e9f9?st=7at70e96bxf0s89&reflink=article_copyURL_share; https://www.foxnews.com/media/x-melts-down-trump-musks-interview-space-immediately-crashes

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/us/politics/jd-vance-trump-harris-democrats.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/12/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies-natalism-arguments/

4. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-syrias-hinterlands-the-u-s-wages-a-hidden-campaign-against-a-resurgent-islamic-state-f22c44df?st=mniowg413mrmi1n&reflink=article_copyURL_share

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/business/china-ev-battery-tech.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare