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Trump to appear at virtual G-20 as coronavirus ravages the globe (nationthailand.com)

Trump to appear at virtual G-20 as coronavirus ravages the globe

InternationalNov 21. 2020President Trump golfs at Trump National Golf Club on Nov. 15, 2020, in Sterling, Va. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Al Drago. 

By The Washington Post · David J. Lynch · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, WHITEHOUSE, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

Gathered in an elegant 19th-century museum building in Washington, the world’s most powerful leaders came together for the first time amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The unprecedented November 2008 gathering of the Group of 20 nations marked the first of what would be three such summits in fewer than 12 months. Each showcased an American president – one Republican, one Democrat – helping to remake a damaged global economy. With leaders from Europe, Japan, China and elsewhere, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama crafted a $5 trillion stimulus, overhauled financial regulations and quashed beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism.

This year, the American president is a reluctant attendee. After days of noncommittal silence, the White House finally confirmed only late Friday afternoon — less than 24 hours before the global summit’s scheduled start — that President Donald Trump would participate.

It’s just the latest reminder that during this once-in-a-century health and economic emergency, world leaders have struggled to develop a common response. Trump initially wanted to hold this year’s annual Group of Seven summit at Trump National Doral, his Miami hotel, then backtracked amid criticism and rescheduled it for the presidential retreat at Camp David before eventually canceling altogether. Trump also skipped a pair of summits with Asian leaders that were held last weekend via videoconference.

The G-20 now moves into the spotlight with expectations remarkably low, given the stakes. On Saturday and Sunday, the G-20′s annual conclave is expected to finalize a framework for granting poor nations debt relief and little else.

“I don’t imagine there will be a huge amount of progress made,” said Douglas Rediker, chairman of International Capital Strategies, a financial advisory firm.

With signs that the global economic recovery is stalling, some influential voices are calling for intensified cross-border collaboration.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, warned the G-20 that uncoordinated crisis spending would cost two-thirds more than a joint approach. And she urged its members to prepare an ambitious roster of synchronized infrastructure investments to help complete the recovery, once the pandemic is tamed.

Business leaders and prominent Democrats, meanwhile, want President-elect Joe Biden to call together world leaders early in his administration to craft a joint response to the pandemic’s intertwined health and economic dangers. Failure to coordinate global distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, some say, could hobble any global rebound as richer nations power ahead of poorer ones.

“A sustainable economic recovery cannot be achieved anywhere unless we defeat the pandemic everywhere,” Georgieva wrote Thursday on the IMF blog, adding: “We can build the impetus for growth, jobs, and address climate change, far more effectively if we work together.”

The G-20 was launched in 1999 to bring together finance and central bank officials from traditional and emerging powers. But in late 2008, as the global economy unraveled, Bush called an emergency leaders summit.

The first-time forum quickly emerged as the crisis management cockpit for presidents and prime ministers. After the second summit in April 2009, Obama gushed that the leaders had achieved “a level of tangible, global economic cooperation that we’ve never seen before.”

Today, that heads-of-state harmony is just a memory. And Trump’s well-known distaste for multilateral negotiations is only part of the reason. Even before Trump took office, the G-20 in recent years had earned a reputation as an ineffectual talking shop, rather than an organization that wielded genuine heft.

The souring between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, has further complicated global cooperation, while the pandemic has prevented the personal contact that symbolized the leaders’ activism in the last crisis.

“The G-20 lost its way years ago. But it’s definitely been worse in the Trump era,” said Matthew Goodman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped coordinate Obama’s summit appearances. “There’s no sense now of the common purpose that was there in 2008-2009.”

Indeed, Trump – whose official schedule has been almost empty since he lost the Nov. 3 election – skipped two virtual summits of Asian leaders last weekend. (Early Friday morning, he made a brief video appearance at another Asia-Pacific gathering.)

The group’s eclipse could end once Biden is inaugurated in January. Already, prominent Democrats such as former treasury secretary Larry Summers have called for the president-elect to convene an early G-20 leaders summit.

Biden, who promised during the presidential campaign to “rally the world” to combat shared challenges, is likely to do so, several analysts said.

“I would expect that to happen,” said Tim Adams, president of the Institute of International Finance, an industry group. “This is the first time in the modern era we did not have a strong visible coordinating heads-of-state response.”

A spokesman for the Biden transition did not respond to a request for comment.

Elements of the business community are eager for the United States to reengage with a host of international bodies, such as the World Trade Organization, and would welcome a more active crisis-fighting stance.

“There’s an important role for the U.S. in leading the world on a coordinated economic response, as the U.S. did in 2008-09. All indications are that President-elect Biden and his team understand that well,” said Josh Bolten, president of the Business Roundtable, which represents the CEOs of the nation’s biggest companies.

Talk of a stepped-up U.S. effort comes as the outlook for the global economy remains troubled. The IMF said last month that it expects global output to shrink by 4.4 percent this year and make only “a partial and uneven recovery next year.”

In a matter of months, the pandemic could drive as many as 150 million people into extreme poverty, reversing two decades of steady progress in alleviating the suffering of the world’s poorest people, according to the World Bank.

While global coordination has lagged, individual countries this year have spent freely to compensate for the damage the pandemic has caused. The United States moved within weeks of the shutdown in March of nonessential businesses to approve approximately $3 trillion in aid for individuals and businesses.

European nations, both separately and through their shared union, have spent a comparable sum. The Japanese government plans more spending on top of the more than $2 trillion it already has committed.

Officials from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve this year also have worked in tandem with their counterparts in Europe, Japan and elsewhere to ensure that financial markets work smoothly. In March, the Fed reprised a tool it had used to great effect in 2008, agreeing to provide central banks in countries such as Australia, Brazil and Mexico with as much as $60 billion in dollars apiece in return for foreign currency.

“Finance and central bank officials, including from the United States, have done a great job trying to mitigate the economic fallout from the pandemic and ensuring that the financial system moderated rather than amplified shocks,” said Dan Price, managing director of Rock Creek Global Advisors.

What has been missing is consistent coordination by heads of state. The $11.5 trillion that G-20 nations have allocated – even more than during the 2008-09 crisis – is not part of a single road map. As individual governments have charted their own course, the resulting imbalances threaten to inflame political sensitivities. A sharp increase in U.S. government spending fueled an economic rebound that sucked in imported goods, while some U.S. trading partners spent less. Every month since April, the United States has incurred a larger trade deficit than in the same month in 2019.

An enfeebled G-20 has left hopes for replenishing the IMF’s financial war chest, long-term debt relief and global vaccine distribution plans uncertain, said Josh Lipsky, director of programs and policy for the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

The United States this year blocked the creation of $1 trillion in new crisis financing capacity for the IMF, fearing that some of the money would flow to countries such as China or Iran. And a World Bank initiative to suspend debt service payments for the poorest countries initially failed to include China or private-sector lenders. So far, the Debt Service Suspension Initiative has saved 43 poor nations $5 billion, which Summers has derided as using a “squirt gun” to extinguish a raging fire.

“The G-20 unfortunately has been much more of a bystander in this crisis,” said Lipsky, a former IMF official. “This is it for the G-20. If it’s not going to act now, what’s the point?”

This weekend’s summit is expected to approve a new framework for debt relief, which would for the first time include both China and the world’s banks.

But, as was the case 12 years ago, the summit will occur as leaders anticipate the arrival of a new U.S. president.

The departure of Trump – the most protectionist U.S. president since the 1930s – could facilitate intensified cooperation, including a renewed G-20 pledge to avoid new trade barriers.

But there will remain points of friction. Biden’s plan to limit government contracts to goods “Made in the USA,” for example, already has sparked objections from U.S. trading partners.

“There is some tension between domestic industrial policies and working cooperatively with allies,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a former Trump White House official who is now a partner at Hogan Lovells. “But we are facing so many challenges, international coordination is going to be key.”

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Trump supporters plan to hold December rally (nationthailand.com)

Trump supporters plan to hold December rally

InternationalNov 21. 2020

By The Washington Post · Marissa J. Lang · NATIONAL, POLITICS

WASHINGTON – Two days after thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters descended on the nation’s capital, waving Make America Great Again flags and chanting “four more years” in a demonstration to support his refusal to concede an election that he lost, organizers were planning another District of Columbia rally – this time just before electoral college votes are cast.

Women for America First, a group of conservative women at the center of organizing last week’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, has filed for another protest permit from the National Park Service.

On Dec. 12, according to the permit application, organizers again expect thousands of Trump faithful to gather in the District. The Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group known for their black-and-yellow garb and endorsement of violence, seemed to confirm on social media they would also be attending.

The Park Service has not yet granted the group’s request, although permits are not typically issued until the week of an event.

The Saturday rally, scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., would bring a crowd of the president’s most ardent supporters to Washington two days before electors from each state and the District meet and vote for their designated candidates.

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to walk away with 306 electoral votes – surpassing the 270 needed to win the White House – with Trump getting 232.

Women for America First organizers, who were not available Friday to comment, have been promoting the December event on social media and encouraging Trump supporters to attend.

Last weekend, hundreds of counterprotesters showed up to meet the roaring crowd of mostly maskless Trump supporters – two opposing groups that were kept separated by barricades and police lines for much of the day.

But skirmishes and flashes of violence broke out as night fell, with roving groups roaming through downtown. Demonstrators on both sides were bloodied and attacked. District police said nearly two dozen people were arrested, including several on gun charges. One person was stabbed and four police officers were injured, officials said.

Anti-Trump activists snatched red MAGA hats off the heads of Trump supporters and set them ablaze, feeding Trump 2020 flags into the fire as the night wore on.

Trump supporters ripped down signs declaring “Black Lives Matter” and defaced artwork and memorials for Black people killed by police that line the long black fence that encircles Lafayette Square – a site that for months has been at the center of racial justice protests.

Members of the Proud Boys and a handful of self-styled militia groups chanted “whose streets? Our streets,” discussing plans to draw counterprotesters into confrontations.

Chris Ballard, a spokesman for Women for America First, last week had said the group would “welcome all peaceful protesters in support of President Trump” and that the group did not condone violence.

In the application filed with the Park Service this week, the group appeared to acknowledge the likelihood it would again draw counterprotests from D.C. activists and anti-fascist protesters.

“After this weekend we will make sure to have a plan to ensure the safety of attendees,” organizer Cindy Chafian wrote. It wasn’t clear what that plan would entail.

Counterprotests already have been announced by a number of anti-Trump organizations, although details remain sparse.

The Women for America First group requested the same venue as its last demonstration, Freedom Plaza, but a spokesman for the Park Service said that location had already been requested by another organization.

It’s likely the pro-Trump rally will instead be held at the Lincoln Memorial, according to the Park Service.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, who was attacked in a letter by congressional Republicans this week for not better protecting pro-Trump demonstrators during last weekend’s demonstrations, did not respond to a request for comment.

On the day Women for America First submitted its application for a second rally, D.C. protesters and supporters were gathered outside the White House to rebuild.

They repainted signs and posters. They affixed new slogans and photos to the fence with zip ties, and reassembled a memorial displaying the faces of Black men and women who have been killed by law enforcement.

The rebuild went on for two days.

After Saturday’s rally, District protest groups admonished those who did not come out to stand against Trump supporters – particularly after thousands had packed downtown streets to celebrate Biden’s victory one week earlier.

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Romney blasts ‘undemocratic’ Trump for pressuring Republicans to overturn election (nationthailand.com)

Romney blasts ‘undemocratic’ Trump for pressuring Republicans to overturn election

InternationalNov 21. 2020

By The Washington Post · Timothy Bella · NATIONAL, POLITICS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/ac7146ec-b078-4897-a828-32d1b735e294?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney late on Thursday denounced President Donald Trump’s attempt to pressure Republican officials to reverse the results of the election, describing it as among the most “undemocratic” actions ever taken by a sitting president.

“Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” the Utah senator and frequent Trump critic said in a statement posted to Twitter. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”

Romney joined Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., as the only two GOP senators on Thursday to publicly oppose the president’s actions as Trump and his campaign continue lobbing baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud in Michigan and other states in hope of remaining in power.

Their rebukes came at the end of an extraordinary day in which the president’s attorneys claimed without evidence that voter fraud took place in cities run by Democratic leaders – areas that largely favored President-elect Joe Biden – due to a centralized conspiracy linked to Venezuela meant to rig the election.

In addition to the baseless claims, the president has also invited the leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state Senate and House to meet him Friday at the White House. Ahead of Monday’s state canvassing board meeting to certify results in Michigan, Biden is the projected winner and leads Trump by about 157,000 votes.

At a time when nearly all Congressional Republicans have either supported the president or declined to call out his unfounded allegations of voter fraud, Romney’s 57-word statement was the strongest GOP reprimand to date of Trump’s post-election efforts to stay in power.

A longtime critic and target of the president who was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial, Romney also has a personal tie to Michigan, where his father, George, was governor from 1963 to 1969.

Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the Trump campaign, lashed out at Romney’s remarks in a Friday morning text message to The Washington Post.

“While Senator Romney continues to buy into, and echo, liberal media spin, President Trump and his campaign will continue to work to ensure that the will of the American people is honored by counting every legal vote,” Epshteyn said.

In a statement Thursday, Sasse warned how “wild” news conferences like Thursday’s “erode public trust” before criticizing Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for trying to “pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations” in Michigan.

“Based on what I’ve read in their filings, when Trump campaign lawyers have stood before courts under oath, they have repeatedly refused to actually allege grand fraud – because there are legal consequences for lying to judges,” Sasse said. “President Trump lost Michigan by more than 100,000 votes, and the campaign and its allies have lost in or withdrawn from all five lawsuits in Michigan for being unable to produce any evidence.”

Other Republicans offered more measured criticism, including Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who lashed out at claims by Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell that down-ballot candidates “paid to have the system rigged to work for them.” Ernst called Powell’s comments “offensive” and “outrageous.” In an interview with Fox News Radio, Ernst said she believed Trump had the right to use the courts for any legal challenges, but added “there does have to be proof.”

“I haven’t seen proof yet. There are a lot of allegations out there and that’s exactly why we have the court system,” she said. “I have not seen it personally. I’m sure they’ll be able to present it to a judge.”

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G-20 nearing deal to boost IMF arsenal, Saudi minister says (nationthailand.com)

G-20 nearing deal to boost IMF arsenal, Saudi minister says

InternationalNov 21. 2020Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alonso Soto, Yousef Gamal El-Din · BUSINESS, WORLD, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

The world’s richest economies could reach a consensus soon to increase International Monetary Fund resources in what could be a landmark agreement to help developing countries that has faced opposition from the U.S.

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said on Friday the kingdom is pushing for consensus within the Group of 20 leading economies to back fresh resources to the global lender. Saudi Arabia will host the G-20 leaders in a virtual summit this weekend.

“I am optimistic that we will reach an agreement in the near future,” Jadaan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

The Trump administration earlier this year blocked a proposed $500 billion issuance to increase the IMF’s reserve assets, known as special drawing rights, criticizing the plan for not targeting poor countries. The U.S. is the largest shareholder of the fund and has veto power over any increase.

The election of Democrat Joe Biden to succeed President Donald Trump has raised hopes that the world’s largest economy will back a new issuance like it did during the 2009 global financial crisis when he was vice president. Biden is expected to take office on Jan. 20 despite Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results.

“It has been a key objective for us to obtain fresh money either through a reallocation of existing SDRs, or — even better — the issuance of new SDRs,” said Tidjane Thiam, the former chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG who is a special envoy for the African Union. “That is the only way to provide low-income countries with the quantum of net inflows that is needed. I believe that the Biden administration will take a constructive approach to these issues.”

The Trump administration hasn’t eased its stance and continues to resist calls to bolster reserves.

“We don’t think it’s the best way to get aid out in a timely and targeted fashion,” Brent McIntosh, the U.S. Treasury’s Undersecretary for International Affairs, said at an online event Friday.

The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic has raised pressure on global institutions and wealthy economies to rescue developing nations facing a slew of debt defaults that could bring millions back into poverty.

Under the stewardship of Saudi Arabia, the G-20 has offered to delay debt payments from 73 countries struggling with dwindling revenues and foreign investment. So far, just more than 40 countries have asked for the suspension, with the rest worried a waiver could hurt their reputation in debt markets.

Last week, the G-20 backed a novel plan to restructure the debt of countries hardest hit by the economic shock. The so-called common framework aims to increase the participation of China and private creditors, which are now the two biggest creditors of developing countries.

Responding to criticism that Beijing has not done enough, Chinese Finance Minister Liu Kun said on Friday that the nation’s lenders have delayed more than $2.1 billion in debt payments from 23 countries. He urged the World Bank — whose president, David Malpass, has criticized Beijing’s debt-relief response — to offer more help to the poor and set up a multilateral debt-relief facility that China could contribute to.

Earlier this month, Zambia become the first African country to default on its external debt since the onset of the pandemic as holders of its bonds rejected a payment holiday, accusing authorities of not seeking a similar deal with Chinese banks. The outcome of the dispute between Beijing and bondholders could define how other developing nations address the debt crises from now on.

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Vietnam looks for Biden partnership after rocky Trump era (nationthailand.com)

Vietnam looks for Biden partnership after rocky Trump era

InternationalNov 21. 2020Motorcyclists pass customers shopping at a makeshift market set up near the Foxconn factory in Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province, Vietnam, on Oct. 10, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Linh Pham. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Michelle Jamrisko, Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen, Jenny Leonard · WORLD, ASIA-PACIFIC

Vietnam is looking to reset its volatile relationship with the U.S. after finding itself caught in the middle of President Donald Trump’s economic confrontation with China.

The Southeast Asian nation was among the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S.-China trade war as global companies added investments to diversify their supply chains. But its own swelling surpluses with the U.S. saw it slapped with tariffs and accused of currency manipulation.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Sunday “no matter who wins, the U.S. is still a friend.” But behind the scenes, officials are calculating whether and how Vietnam can restore stability in economic relations with President-elect Joe Biden.

Hanoi anticipates the Biden administration will accelerate the U.S.’s broader engagement with Vietnam and won’t be as focused on currency and trade issues as Trump officials, said Le Dang Doanh, a Hanoi-based economist and former government adviser.

“The United States is the biggest export market for Vietnam,” Doanh said. In order to keep employment steady, “Vietnam needs to keep exports growing.”

There’s heightened concern among some U.S. businesses that Trump officials could slap additional tariffs on Vietnam after the U.S. Department of Commerce this month imposed a preliminary anti-subsidy duty on Vietnamese car and truck tires, citing the nation’s “undervalued currency” among the reasons.

The department will make a final determination on the tariff around March 16, near when the U.S. International Trade Commission is scheduled to rule on the case. U.S. imports of passenger tires from Vietnam were valued near $470 million in 2019, it said. Vietnam’s trade surplus with the U.S. is on pace to break last year’s record $56 billion.

“For a country like Vietnam, where inflation rates have been higher than most of its trading partners, a weakening dong is understandable,” said Truong Van Phuoc, a senior member of the prime minister’s economic advisory board. The government kept inflation at about 4% while the dong’s decline was only around 1%-2% annually in the last few years, he said.

The U.S. has criticized Vietnam for its current-account surplus and for allegedly buying the greenback to weaken its own currency. Yet the current-account surplus is mainly due to remittances, not exports, according to Phuoc, who’s also a former chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Commission and former head of the central bank’s foreign-exchange department. Remittances are money sent to Vietnam from abroad and often used for businesses, not just family support.

“When investors bring dollars in, they need to convert them into dong to invest,” he said, noting that it’s not the central bank snapping up dollars.

Additional tariffs put in place by outgoing officials could handcuff the Biden administration, which would have to expend political capital to undo them. Congressional Democrats are also expected to push for a stronger focus on human rights issues in Vietnam, said Ernie Bower, Washington-based president and chief executive officer of BowerGroupAsia.

Prime Minister Phuc, in a meeting last month with Adam Boehler, head of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, reiterated that Vietnam doesn’t use its currency for a competitive trade advantage. Doing so would “seriously hurt macroeconomic stability, people’s and investors’ confidence,” while damaging the nation’s economy, he said.

Vietnam will have a chance to make another high-profile pitch to the outgoing U.S. administration when National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien visits Vietnam and the Philippines this week.

Meanwhile, the views of one official on Biden’s transition team offer some clues to the new administration’s thinking on Vietnam.

Brad Setser, a former Treasury deputy assistant secretary in the Obama administration who’s taking leave from the Council on Foreign Relations, is listed on the Biden review team for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Setser noted in a March blog post for CFR that Vietnam was not a “clean” case for a U.S. designation as a currency manipulator, and that “this is clearly a time for comity and cooperation not currency wars.”

Foreign investors and multinationals are increasingly drawn to Vietnam, which is set to be a rare economy to eke out growth in 2020. Its Communist leaders have doubled down on free trade, inking a deal last year with the European Union and hosting the signing Sunday of the world’s biggest trade deal, known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

New U.S. tariffs could hurt the export-dependent economy, particularly manufacturers, which are struggling amid the global pandemic, said Doanh in Hanoi. Economic growth is forecast to slow to 2%-3% in 2020 from last year’s 7.02%.

“The Vietnamese have a reasonable hope that the Biden approach will be less ideological and sharp” while maintaining pressure on China, Washington-based Bower said.

Meanwhile, thanks to aligned interests on regional politics, trade and investment, “there’s a view among the Biden foreign policy team that Vietnam has become a very strategic-thinking country in Asia.”

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After Trump embrace, Saudi Arabia may find Biden not so bad (nationthailand.com)

After Trump embrace, Saudi Arabia may find Biden not so bad

InternationalNov 21. 2020Joe Biden, 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, gestures while arriving during an election night party in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 4, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Stefani Reynolds. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nick Wadhams, Vivian Nereim · NATIONAL, WORLD, NATIONAL-SECURITY, WHITEHOUSE, MIDDLE-EAST

Under President Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia got all the attention it could have wanted from the U.S. — and more. While a Biden presidency looks certain to end the love-fest, the kingdom’s leaders may not mind as much as one might think.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed, are set to lose much of what they gained during Trump’s four years in office, including hastily approved weapons sales, the easing of pressure over human rights abuses, and not least a back-channel via the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

But even with an unabashed fan of fossil fuels in the White House, the good times came with something less beneficial: an erratic, sometimes unpredictable U.S. foreign policy in which Washington inflamed tensions with Iran and talked tough but never responded forcefully to cruise-missile strikes on Saudi oil facilities.

A Biden administration might seem at first glance like it’s all bad for the world’s largest crude exporter, and for the crown prince who largely runs the country and assumed his role less than a year after Trump took office. Yet while there will certainly be greater scrutiny, especially over human rights, the country may have an opportunity in a U.S. president who isn’t all that different from Trump in regarding Saudi Arabia as a crucial ally in a volatile region.

“What Saudi Arabia has wanted is to be seen as a state like any other, to be a leader in the G-20, to have legitimacy,” said Karen Young, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “What the Biden administration can offer is to say, ‘OK fine, you want to be treated like any other partner in the Middle East, no more special relationship, let’s lay it all out.'”

Saudi Arabia will get a fresh chance to burnish its bona fides this weekend when it hosts a virtual summit of the Group of 20 nations. It’s still unclear whether Trump will make a video appearance: The White House has refused to say whether he’ll attend, as the president pushes claims of voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election that he lost to Biden. Trump did join a video conference on Friday for the leaders of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum member states.

In yet one more sign of the Trump administration’s long support for the regime, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo will visit the country’s leaders briefly on Sunday in the futuristic planned city of Neom.

Oil has been a key element of the U.S.-Saudi relationship since Franklin Roosevelt met King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud on a warship in the Suez canal in 1945 and the American economy has relied on steady stream of Saudi barrels for decades.

The reliance has waned as the shale boom brought America close to energy independence, but Trump still made two major interventions on Saudi oil policy during his presidency. In 2018, when oil was trading near $80 a barrel, Trump asked Riyadh and other OPEC producers to increase production to bring down prices. Then this year, when a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia crashed prices, Trump intervened to broker a peace deal between President Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman because he feared tens of thousands of job losses in Texas and other oil-producing states.

Where Trump made no attempt to hide his support for fossil fuels, Biden has said he will rejoin the Paris climate accords as soon as he takes office. His embrace of a climate change agenda is indicative of growing global momentum for an energy transition away from oil and other fossil fuels that is perhaps the greatest challenge for Saudi Arabia’s long-term future.

Yet for now, Biden has made clear that Saudi Arabia is a “critical” partner in preserving stability in energy markets and the Middle East. Oil is poised for a third weekly gain, with prices pushing toward the top of a range they’ve held for months.

Saudi Arabia already seems to be adjusting to the new political reality. After initially holding off, its leaders sent cables congratulating Biden and seeking warmer ties with the U.S., according to the Saudi Press Agency. King Salman “praised the historical deep-rooted relations between the two friendly countries, adding that both countries are keen to develop and enhance these relations in all fields,” it said.

Meanwhile Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday that Saudi Arabia was a key U.S. ally regardless of “different parties coming into government.””I am very confident that will continue,” he said.

The Biden transition team declined to comment when asked to discuss the president-elect’s approach to Saudi Arabia. But while on the campaign trail, Biden referred to the country as a “pariah” and said he would end support for the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis for more than five years in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government, contributing to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

At the same time, Biden has made clear Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance.

“We should recognize the value of cooperation on counter-terrorism and deterring Iran,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations in July 2019. “But America needs to insist on responsible Saudi actions and impose consequences for reckless ones.”

Such pledges to cooperate have helped keep calm in Saudi Arabia. Officials recognize that it is a less harsh tone than President Barack Obama took, as when he once vented about the “so-called ally” and said Saudi Arabia must “share” the region with Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s leadership is also assuaged by Biden’s past comments that while he wants to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal that Trump abandoned, he also wants follow-on negotiations to strengthen the deal. Saudi Arabia regards Iran as its chief regional foe, and opposed the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers.

The kingdom’s economic and political importance to the Muslim world rules out any major change in relations, according to Mohammed Alsulami, head of Rasanah, an Iran-focused think tank based in Riyadh.

“You cannot ignore that,” he said. “Maybe you will talk more about human rights issues – maybe Yemen more – but not more than that.”

For the Saudis, there is also the matter of the Trump administration’s dependability. Saudi Arabia’s trust in the Trump team was shaken last year after the president responded with harsh words but no action when missiles and drones launched from Iran hit a Saudi oil field and the world’s biggest crude-processing facility in Abqaiq.

The kingdom is also aware that a Biden administration might be tougher on Turkey, a Saudi rival, whereas Trump largely held off criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Given the fact that we’re weaning ourselves off Arab hydrocarbon, Biden can pursue a different approach,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Mideast official at the State Department. At the same time, he said, the Biden administration will want to make sure Saudi Arabia sees a smooth transition of its own should King Salman, who is now 84, formally transfer power to the crown prince.

“The real equity with Saudi is making sure the place remains stable and survives,” he said.

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Most Republicans greet Trump’s push to overturn the election with a customary response: Silence (nationthailand.com)

Most Republicans greet Trump’s push to overturn the election with a customary response: Silence

InternationalNov 21. 2020Sen. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters in the Capitol in September. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 

By The Washington Post · Paul Kane, Mike DeBonis, Paulina Firozi, Rachael Bade · NATIONAL, POLITICS, CONGRESS, WHITEHOUSE

WASHINGTON – Three Senate Republicans have publicly criticized President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn election results in states that he lost. A couple more have acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden is likely to be sworn in as the 46th president on Jan. 20, without addressing Trump’s actions.

The rest did what many Republicans have done for four years when faced with Trump’s brazen, sometimes outlandish actions: They said nothing, or tried to avoid the issue.

Their response, or lack of it, served to harden one of the party’s legacies of the Trump years: its complicit silence, which has not only made GOP lawmakers appear subservient to the president, but has contributed to a notable shift in the party toward conspiracy and away from facts. Only this time, their collective refusal to speak up comes at an unusually perilous moment for American democracy – as a president takes the unprecedented step of wielding the powers of his office to try to subvert the will of the voters.

The Washington Post contacted all 53 Republican U.S. senators for comments on the president’s efforts to overturn the election results, including his invitation to Michigan’s GOP legislative leaders to a meeting Friday as he tries to block the state from certifying Biden’s victory of about 150,000 votes there.

Fewer than 10 senators’ offices responded at all. Of those, most declined to comment or referred to previous remarks – in some cases remarks that predated Trump’s actions this week, including his call to a county canvassing board member in Michigan.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, each of whom has been critical of Trump in the past, were the only Republicans to tackle the president’s actions head-on.

“There is a right way and a wrong way for the incumbent President to pursue his rights to contest what he perceives as election irregularities,” Collins said in a statement. “The right way is to compile the evidence and mount legal challenges in our courts. The wrong way is to attempt to pressure state election officials.”

She added, “The states should proceed to certify their election results as scheduled.”

Romney, in comments late Thursday, was harsher.

“Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” he said. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”

Trump, perhaps illustrating why Republicans fear his wrath, fired back in a tweet that Romney is a “RINO” – a Republican in name only – who got “slaughter[ed]” by Barack Obama.

Sasse said in a detailed statement that whenever Trump’s lawyers have had a chance to allege voter fraud in court, they have backed down “because there are legal consequences for lying to judges.” The senator singled out a Thursday news conference by Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, calling it a farce that provided no evidence of electoral malfeasance.

“Wild news conferences erode public trust,” Sasse said. “So no, obviously Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute. We are a nation of laws, not tweets.”

The Republicans’ silence underlines the extent to which Trump’s loyal supporters form a large and active part of the GOP base, making any criticism politically risky, especially given Trump’s willingness to lash out at detractors.

That has created a pattern throughout Trump’s presidency in which top Republicans stay quiet when he makes offensive statements or takes actions widely seen as objectionable. That ranges from telling lawmakers of color to “go back” to their ostensible countries to a policy of separating children at the border to a conversation with the president of Ukraine in which Trump asked for a political “favor,” leading to his impeachment.

Republicans became so used to refusing to comment on Trump’s startling tweets that then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) joked, at an Alfred E. Smith dinner in 2017, that “every morning, I wake up in my office and scroll Twitter to see which tweets I will have to pretend that I didn’t see later.”

That pattern of willful unresponsiveness is continuing as Trump attempts to influence Republican officials in Michigan. House Republicans, like their Senate counterparts, have said little, though Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.) offered Biden congratulations and was the first House Republican to call him president-elect.

“I’ve not seen any evidence of fraud that would overturn 150,000 and some votes,” Upton said in an interview. He added, “I don’t see judges overturning the results of the certified elections. . . . No one has shown any evidence” of fraud.

In the Senate, some Republicans engaged on the matter only when asked about it during previously scheduled media appearances on other topics or happenstance run-ins with reporters in the Capitol.

Sen. Patrick Toomey (Pa.), whose aides initially pointed The Post to comments from Nov. 11, appeared on Bloomberg News on Friday to discuss the Treasury Department’s actions on an emergency loan program, but faced 30 seconds of discussion about Trump’s effort to contest the election.

Toomey reiterated his belief that Biden won his state and said administration officials should stop delaying the transition, though he stopped short of criticizing Trump.

“It’s not what I think should be happening – I think there should be a full, conventional transition underway,” Toomey said. Since it is “very likely” Biden will be the next president, he added, “why wouldn’t we go ahead and prepare for what certainly looks like the high-probability event?”

Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) received the inglorious task of overseeing a open-and-shut Senate session Friday, which placed him near reporters after the pro forma session concluded. He suggested he was unaware of the president’s actions, which have dominated the news.

“I haven’t followed it super closely. For instance, I know that Mayor Giuliani had a news conference yesterday. I’ve not seen it – I’ve heard about it,” Hawley told reporters, laughing a little.

Reporters described how Trump had summoned Michigan legislative leaders to a meeting and was trying to block the state from the normally perfunctory role of certifying its election results.

“I don’t have any concerns. I’m obviously not privy to the conversation, but I don’t really have concerns with him talking about the situation with elected officials,” Hawley said.

Hawley, who may run for president in 2024 as a Trump disciple, left open the idea there might be voter fraud as Trump claims, despite the lack of evidence. He even suggested Trump might end up getting a second term.

“Anything’s possible,” Hawley said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska) also bumped into reporters Friday and suggested that if Trump’s legal team was asserting fraud it needed to present actual examples.

“The president has every right to see that every ballot’s counted, but they have a high bar to make,” Sullivan said. “And they’ve got to prove it in court.”

Asked whether the lawyers had cleared that high bar, Sullivan did not answer, joining the other four dozen Senate Republicans in silence.

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Nuclear power pushed to back burner in U.K. (nationthailand.com)

Nuclear power pushed to back burner in U.K.

InternationalNov 21. 2020Electricite de France’s (EDF) Hinkley Point B nuclear power station near Bridgwater, England, in 2013. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Rachel Morison · BUSINESS, WORLD, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, EUROPE

Britain’s ambition to renew its aging fleet of nuclear power plants is losing momentum after the government offered few new details on how it will support additional projects.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration set aside 500 million pounds ($661 million) for small modular reactor projects but was silent on support for traditional large-scale plants. The issue gained urgency on Thursday as Electricite de France’s announced the closure of its Hinkley Point B reactors two years early.

The government’s latest thinking on how to replace its aging fleet of nuclear plants marks a dramatic shift from 2013, when David Cameron agreed to funding for new reactors at the Hinkley Point site with support from China. Since then, relations with China have deteriorated, electricity demand slumped and renewables such as wind and solar farms became much cheaper than new atomic plants.

“Large scale reactors are running into problems with delays, and developers pulling out,” said Rob Gross, director of the U.K. Energy Research Center. “By contrast, small modular reactors are new and exciting, with a leading role for British firms.”

That left an uncertain outlook for 20 billion pound Sizewell C nuclear project in eastern England that EDF is hoping to develop. That would replace units set to retire in 2035, when the last of the existing fleet of atomic plants in the U.K. will close. Including the Hinkley Point B that EDF said will close in 2022, four major plants will close in the next four years. The only project set to come online is Hinkley Point C in 2025.

For more than a year, the government has been promising an energy white paper that may set out a future funding model for nuclear power plants. That document is now due next month, delayed as ministers debate how to balance the energy industry’s needs with strains on the budget from covid-19 and the worst economic recession in decades.

The problem for nuclear power is its cost and time scale. Each project can cost 20 billion pounds or more and take a decade to deliver. Wind farms need a fraction of that money and can come together in less than five years. And while the cost of renewables is falling, nuclear power is becoming more expensive, with EDF reporting cost overruns and delays both at its Hinkley Point C project and one in France.

EDF is the only remaining nuclear developer with a major project underway. The French utility wants to build additional units in eastern England in a project dubbed Sizewell C. But it has made it clear it can’t shoulder alone the risks and investment needed. The government has suggested it may take an equity stake in Sizewell. The white paper may deliver a verdict on whether it might adopt the Regulated Asset Base model that has been used to with other major infrastructure projects.

For Hinkley Point C now under construction in western England, China General Nuclear Power Corp. took a one-third stake in the project. The government agreeing to pay a subsidy of 92.50 pounds for every megawatt-hour of electricity the plant produces for 35 years. The price would drop to 89.50 pounds if a station using the same technology goes ahead at Sizewell C.

That deal left EDF and its partners with all the risks involved with building the plant and taxpayers owing nothing until the facility begins generating electricity. However, the deal is looking like a bad value for consumers, since the wholesale price of electricity at the moment is about half of what EDF will earn.

The two key uncertainties that remain are “whether refinancing on a RAB model can bring down costs and unblock development of conventional reactors, and how long it will take before SMRs are market ready,” Gross said.

Up to now, the thinking had been that the U.K. would build one more large scale nuclear plant. That was the advice to government of a National Infrastructure Commission paper in 2018. All other projects on the drawing board have fallen by the wayside since then.

Hitachi exited a long-planned U.K. nuclear power project in September after turning down the most generous support package the government had ever offered.

Nuclear power supporters note reactors feed a constant stream of electricity without climate-damaging fossil fuel pollution. It’s part of the government’s roadmap on how it will meet targets for reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

“Only with robust financial commitments — potentially including public equity stakes — can the government overcome the challenges which have undermined U.K. nuclear capacity development over the past decade,” said Andrew Leming, researcher at the research group Bright Blue.

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Trump pushes last-minute drug pricing rules likely to face big legal challenges (nationthailand.com)

Trump pushes last-minute drug pricing rules likely to face big legal challenges

InternationalNov 21. 2020

By The Washington Post · Yasmeen Abutaleb · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, HEALTH, POLITICS, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced two sweeping drug pricing rules Friday that his administration is rushing to finalize before Inauguration Day to make good on his long-standing 2016 campaign promise to reduce what Americans pay for their medicines.

But experts said the rules are unlikely to survive legal challenges after the administration shortcut critical parts of the rulemaking process to get them done before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office. Some industry lobbyists also noted that it was unusual to implement controversial policy changes solely through executive authority just before leaving office.

“I was very proud to have gotten this done,” Trump said at an afternoon news briefing, at which he took no questions. “We’re pushing it very hard, as we did with the vaccines and other things.”

One of the rules – known as the “most favored nations” rule and adamantly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, which has vowed to sue to stop it – would tie the prices of drugs in Medicare Part B to the lower prices paid in other developed countries, many of which negotiate those prices directly with drugmakers.

The other, the “rebate” rule, would end a widespread practice in which drugmakers give rebates to insurance middlemen in government programs such as Medicare to include those drugs in their plans. The idea is to channel that money to consumers instead. However, the administration scuttled earlier plans for such a rule more than a year ago because its own analyses showed it would raise, rather than lower, seniors’ premiums and increase government spending.

Although the administration had discussed both ideas for several years, Trump health officials still found themselves rushing to get the rules finalized because of significant internal feuding over the proposals. Trump introduced both rules again in July as executive orders, but legal experts questioned whether they went through proper rulemaking processes and said those questions left them particularly vulnerable to legal challenges.

Friday was the last day the administration could release a rule to be finalized in the 60 days before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

It is unclear whether the Biden administration would implement and uphold the rules or overturn them after being sworn in. The Biden transition team did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

As vice president, Biden, along with President Barack Obama, tried to get Congress to change a law prohibiting Medicare officials from negotiating drug prices directly with manufacturers – but the proposal was repeatedly blocked by congressional Republicans.

In meandering remarks Friday, Trump touted the rules while also falsely claiming that he won the presidential race and lambasting Pfizer for the timing of its announcement – several days after the election – that its coronavirus vaccine candidate is more than 90% effective. Trump has baselessly accused both Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration of intentionally withholding the news until after the vote, even though Pfizer did not have access to the data until the Sunday after the election.

“Pfizer and others decided to not assess the results of their vaccine . . . until just after the election. That’s because of what I did on ‘favored nations,'” Trump said, without offering any evidence. “We are doing something that nobody thought anybody would do. The savings are going to be incredible.”

Democrats and Republicans alike praised some of the proposals announced Friday. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called an anti-kickback rule enabling increased coordination between physicians and other health-care entities “a significant step in the right direction for improving patient care.”

But some lawmakers raised concerns about Trump’s effort to push through such sweeping rules at the end of his term.

“By delaying until the end of his presidency taking action he could have undertaken at the beginning, Trump offers an invitation to legal challenges – not a guarantee of relief from price gouging,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas

The pharmaceutical industry, which has already killed at least one significant Trump administration drug pricing rule in the courts, signaled that it would challenge the administration over the “most favored nations” rule. The industry argues that the rule – affecting drugs in Medicare Part B that are often administered by a health-care provider or through medical equipment at home – would result in fewer new medicines being developed. The proposal is also anathema to most congressional Republicans, who say it is akin to price controls.

And the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, a trade group representing pharmacy benefits managers – the middlemen targeted by the rebate rule – said it would “explore all possible litigation options to stop the rule from taking effect and destabilizing the Medicare Part D program.”

The Department of Health and Human Services “had time to put these through the normal processes and issue them in accordance with relevant law,” said Rachel Sachs, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “The fact that they’ve chosen not to do so puts any gains in jeopardy. . . . On these drug pricing rules, there will be strong legal challenges to both of them, not only on the basis of their substance but the procedural way in which they are being pushed.”

Trump’s decision to finalize the rebate rule marks a significant win for Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former Eli Lilly official, who began pushing the proposal almost immediately after being sworn in to his post in early 2018. The rule caused significant infighting last year with key White House staffers, who persuaded Trump in the summer of 2019 to withdraw the rule after government analyses showed it could raise premiums in Medicare.

Experts said that since the administration withdrew the rule, the process should have restarted with another notice and comment period. But administration officials maintain that both rules went through all the necessary steps.

“With the final rebate rule, we are taking on a broken system and delivering big discounts directly to American patients,” Azar said in a statement. “Our action on rebates has the potential to be the most sweeping change to how Americans’ drugs are priced at the pharmacy counter, ever.”

The pharmaceutical industry supports the rebate rule because drug rebates are essentially discounts off the list prices of medications that drugmakers have to pay to pharmacy benefit managers, or directly to insurers, in exchange for a drug being covered by a given health plan.

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Biden team slams Treasury decision to curtail Fed lending powers, calls move ‘deeply irresponsible’ (nationthailand.com)

Biden team slams Treasury decision to curtail Fed lending powers, calls move ‘deeply irresponsible’

InternationalNov 21. 2020

By The Washington Post · Jeff Stein, Rachel Siegel · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, POLITICS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team condemned the Trump administration’s decision to end several emergency lending programs, blasting the move on Friday as “deeply irresponsible” given the ongoing economic threats posed by the pandemic.

Biden’s team has not been in communication with the Treasury Department and had no advance notice or consultation that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would pull the plug on several emergency lending programs run jointly by the Treasury and Federal Reserve, according to Biden policy advisers.

Aides to the president-elect have looked at the unspent aid as one of many potential tools to boost the flagging economy Biden is set to inherit on Jan. 20, 2021, the advisers said. Some of the lending facilities, such as the troubled Main Street lending program, have issued few loans and could be revamped to offer more generous assistance to small businesses. In a letter released Thursday, Mnuchin requested that unspent money be reallocated, a decision that would require cooperation from the Fed.

“The Treasury Department’s attempt to prematurely end support that could be used for small businesses across the country when they are facing the prospect of new shutdowns is deeply irresponsible,” said Kate Bedingfield, a Biden spokeswoman, in a statement. “At this fragile moment, as the COVID and economic crises are re-accelerating, we should be reinforcing the government’s ability to respond and support the economy.”

Bedingfield’s comments come amid growing complaints that the Trump administration is impeding the incoming Biden administration’s transition to power early next year. During the financial crisis in 2008, the outgoing Bush administration worked closely with the incoming Obama administration on economic plans so as to give them maximum flexibility on policy making decisions.

On Thursday, the Fed responded to Mnuchin’s decision with an extraordinary rebuke, saying that the central bank “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop.” The rare public statement revealed a rift between Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who have worked closely together to stabilize the economy since the pandemic began.

While the Treasury Department has the ability to end the programs, it does not have the sole authority to reallocate the funding for those programs and needed to secure Fed agreement.

Late Friday afternoon, Powell struck a more collaborative tone in a letter to Mnuchin pointing to the programs’ success in calming the financial system and saying the unused funds would be returned.

“We will work out arrangements with you for returning the unused portions of the funds allocated to the Cares Act facilities in connection with their year-end termination,” Powell wrote.

Still, Powell noted that there are still ample resources in a non-Cares Act Treasury fund that could be tapped for the Fed’s lending facilities if the economy falls under further strain.

Mnuchin has defended his decision to end the programs, including the Main Street lending program and the municipal liquidity facility, arguing the funding should be redirected toward more distressed parts of the U.S. economy. A spokeswoman to the treasury secretary did not have any immediate response to Bedingfield’s comment.

Mnuchin said Friday that Congress intended the programs to expire at the end of the year and that the central bank’s interpretation was mistaken. Asked about the Federal Reserve’s criticism by CNBC, Mnuchin fired back: “They weren’t in the room. That’s not their job.”

Mnuchin also said that the programs were no longer necessary given the recovery in U.S. credit markets and relative stabilization of the American economy. Biden’s policy advisers strongly disputed that view of the economic outlook, citing extreme risks posed by the rising number of coronavirus cases and the expiration of federal protections, such as a moratorium on evictions, at the end of the year.

The split between the outgoing and incoming administration on a key economic policy matter comes at a perilous moment for the country, with coronavirus cases surging and fears mounting of economic head winds to businesses.

Mnuchin has emphasized that most of the aid in the expiring programs has not been used and could be better spent to help unemployed Americans and small businesses hard hit by the pandemic. Biden officials have looked at revamping the existing lending facilities so they are more attractive to struggling small businesses and municipalities seeking avenues for economic relief, the advisers said. Congress could approve more aid for small businesses to supplement the existing Fed facilities, the Biden advisers said.

“The people who really need this support right now are not the rich corporations – it’s the small businesses; the people that are unemployed. Those are the people we need to help the next few months,” Mnuchin said, calling on Congress to reappropriate the funding. “Let’s go use this money in parts of the economy that need it.”

While the Treasury Department has the ability to end the programs, it does not have the sole authority to reallocate the funding for those programs and would need to secure Fed agreement. As of Friday afternoon, it was unclear if the Fed would follow Mnuchin’s directive.

“The emperor has no clothes, so to speak,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.

Critics of the move say that Mnuchin could have asked the Fed for some of its untapped money from the Cares Act while leaving the emergency lending programs intact. For example, of the $454 billion pot allotted from the Treasury Department under the Cares Act, only $195 billion has been specifically committed to cover the Fed’s programs, leaving $259 billion that had not.

Mnuchin said he and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows would meet with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Friday to design a plan to negotiate a stimulus deal with congressional Democrats.

On Friday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement saying Congress should repurpose the money and that there “is an obvious right use for these hundreds of billions of dollars of already-allocated but unused funds.”

“American workers should not lose their jobs needlessly when a second round of the job-saving Paycheck Protection Program for the hardest-hit small businesses would make a huge difference,” McConnell said.

Yet the decision continued to receive broad pushback on Friday. Charles Evans, Chicago Fed president, called the decision “disappointing” on CNBC. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, R, also condemned the move.

“They need flexibility to do lending on an emergency basis,” Hogan said Friday on CNBC. “I don’t really understand the motivation behind it; I think it’s a mistake.”

The central bank and Trump administration appear to be offering different views of the ongoing risks to the U.S. economy. The statement from the Federal Reserve on Thursday, which called for maintaining the “full suite” of emergency facilities, emphasized the need to backstop “our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”

On Friday, Mnuchin struck a different tone, saying: “The medical emergency may not be over, but I think we’d agree the financial conditions . . . are in great shape. Corporate bonds have come in; mortgages have come in; the stock market has rebounded.”

Mnuchin also said he and Powell had discussed the issue “extensively” and strongly rejected criticisms that the decision was designed to handicap Biden. He added of Powell: “I’ll let him speak for himself and clarify his remarks. . . . We’re trying to follow the law as we’re supposed to.”