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Biden bids an emotional farewell to Delaware as he heads to Washington

InternationalJan 20. 2021President-elect Joe Biden during a sending-off event in Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 19. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman.

By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, Annie Linskey

WILMINGTON, Del. – President-elect Joe Biden offered an emotional farewell to his home state Tuesday, weeping openly several times as he spoke in front of a bank of Delaware flags before boarding a flight to Washington for his swearing-in as president at noon Wednesday.

“I know these are dark times. But there’s always light,” Biden said from the Major Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center at the New Castle Airport, a venue named after his son, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

“You’ve been there for us in the good and the bad and never walked away,” Biden said, after calling out to several friends in the audience. “And I am proud, proud, proud, proud to be a son of Delaware.”

As Biden spoke, tears rolled down his face, and he fought for control several times.

Paraphrasing an adage from Irish writer James Joyce, Biden said: “Excuse the emotion. But when I die, Delaware will be written on my heart.”

Biden said his only regret was that his eldest son, who had been the state’s attorney general and was looking toward a run for governor before his death, was not the one leaving for Washington to be sworn in as president. Biden’s plane arrived at Joint Base Andrews two hours later.

Biden’s raw goodbye matched the tumultuous moment in the country’s history as he prepares to take over as president.

More than 20,000 troops are billeted in the nation’s capital to keep peace during Biden’s inauguration. And roughly 400,000 Americans have died from covid-19, which is spreading across the nation amid a struggling effort to vaccinate the most vulnerable.

As a result, the events leading up to the inauguration will be subdued rather than celebratory and festive.

Even before the Capitol riot two weeks ago, many events associated with a transfer of power had already been scaled back due to the virus. Biden’s first event in Washington, on Tuesday evening, will be a commemoration of those who have died in the pandemic; lights will shine from the Reflecting Pool before the Lincoln Memorial and on buildings throughout the country.

On Inauguration Day, the National Mall will be filled with flags instead of people. White-tie balls will be replaced with online events.

Additional security precautions were made in the days since President Donald Trump incited a deadly mob to storm the Capitol, including scrapping a train ride Biden planned from Wilmington to Washington.

Still, Biden’s team was busy planning for the next few days and circulated a top-line list of tentative executive orders that lawmakers should expect to be rolled out over each of the next seven days – an early look at policies and messages the new White House expects to drive in its opening days.

They include directives in key areas where Biden had promised action, including fighting the coronavirus, providing economic relief, requiring the federal government to procure American goods, forging racial equality, combating climate change, improving access to health care, overhauling the immigration system and restoring the country’s leadership abroad.

The list of Biden’s pending executive orders, confirmed by two people who have seen it, gives a broad overview of what the incoming administration plans to do on its own – without Congress if necessary – to address the immediate priorities.

The president-elect plans to issue administrative actions relating to the coronavirus on Thursday and economic relief on Friday. A “Buy American” action will come on Monday, and an order addressing racial equity issues will follow on Tuesday.

Biden will announce actions on climate change on Jan. 27, health care on Jan. 28, immigration on Jan. 29, and on Feb. 1, he will take action on international affairs and national security.

Biden’s final few days as a private citizen included a mix of family time and homages to his past and to the crises faced by the country.

The president-elect; his wife, Jill; and other family members packed canned goods and rice into boxes on Monday at Philabundance, Philadelphia’s largest hunger-relief program. It was part of a national day of service that kicked the inaugural festivities into high gear, and aides said more than 150 boxes of food were packaged.

On Sunday, his granddaughter Naomi posted a photo of Biden with one of his dogs – an empty box and framed photos propped on the floor in the background, nodding to the packing going on around them.

“This is kind of emotional for me,” Biden told the crowd in Delaware on Tuesday afternoon to an small audience that included longtime friends and allies. “You’ve been with me my whole career – and through the good times and the bad.”

Biden recalled how his parents moved to the state from Pennsylvania under economic duress. He recounted standing on a train platform 12 years earlier, awaiting then-President-elect Barack Obama and speaking to his sons about the changes that had prompted the nation to elect the first Black president.

And now, he said, he was headed to Washington to meet up with Kamala Harris, who will be the first female, first Black and first Asian American vice president.

“I said, ‘Don’t tell me things can’t change. They can,’ ” Biden said. “And they do. That’s America. That’s Delaware. A place of hope, life and limitless possibilities.”

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At the 11th hour, Trump administration declares China’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang ‘genocide’

InternationalJan 20. 2021

Chinese soldiers train in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on Jan. 4. (AP)

By The Washington Post · John Hudson

On his last full day in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that China had committed “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” through a campaign of internment, forced labor and forced sterilization of predominantly Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.

In an embarrassing blow to Beijing, Pompeo said Tuesday that the United States has documented a dramatic escalation in China’s “decades-long” campaign of repression against Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities since at least March 2017.

The “morally repugnant, wholesale policies, practices, and abuses are designed systematically to discriminate against and surveil ethnic [Uighurs] as a unique demographic and ethnic group, restrict their freedom to travel, emigrate, and attend schools, and deny other basic human rights of assembly, speech, and worship,” Pompeo said in a statement.

The 11th-hour determination means that the incoming Biden administration will largely have to deal with the diplomatic blowback from the decision, not the Trump administration. China denies accusations of mistreatment.

The determination does not force immediate sanctions or other penalties on China, but it may have implications for whether companies decide to do business in Xinjiang, which is a major supplier of cotton around the world.

The move is likely to put further strain on the world’s two largest economies, whose relations plunged to their lowest depths during the Trump administration.

Pompeo has hailed the Trump administration as a truth-teller on U.S.-China relations and said that it came to this determination not because of “domestic political concern” but because “it is right.”

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, however, said Trump expressed approval for China’s use of Uighur concentration camps in Xinjiang during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Bolton wrote in his memoir “The Room Where It Happened.” The administration has denied this account.

The State Department decision follows the passage of legislation by Congress on Dec. 27 requiring the United States to make a finding within 90 days about whether China’s practices in Xinjiang constitute crimes against humanity or genocide.

“It’s an indication of serious concern, but that it’s coming literally less than 24 hours to go in this administration – so that in some ways undermines that message,” said Sophie Richardson, a specialist on China issues at Human Rights Watch.

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Merkel strikes deal to extend and tighten German virus curbs

InternationalJan 20. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Arne Delfs, Raymond Colitt

Chancellor Angela Merkel and regional leaders agreed to extend and tighten Germany’s coronavirus restrictions as they step up efforts to check the stubborn spread of the disease.

On a video call Tuesday, Merkel and the premiers of the 16 states decided to prolong lockdown rules — which include closing schools and nonessential stores — until mid-February, according to a person familiar with the agreement, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.

They also moved to limit private meetings to only one other person, make medical face masks obligatory on public transport and agreed to intensify pressure on companies to allow employees to work from home where possible, another person familiar with the talks said. The call was brought forward by almost a week due to concern faster-spreading variants of the disease could establish themselves in Europe’s biggest economy.

Authorities were under pressure to act with the contagion rate still nearly triple a government target, despite increasingly stringent curbs — including tighter limits on private gatherings and movement restrictions in hard-hit areas. The country has had 2.05 million covid-19 cases and nearly 48,000 deaths.

While infections have been receding in recent days, Merkel has warned that the new mutations could cause a surge like in Britain and Ireland.

Some of the regional leaders — who are responsible for health policy under Germany’s federal system — were pushing back against Merkel’s bid to prolong school closures, and a final decision on the issue had yet to be made, Der Spiegel magazine reported earlier, without identifying the source of its information.

Tuesday’s talks marked the first since Armin Laschet — the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia — was elected head of Merkel’s Christian Democrats. He’ll compete with Markus Soeder — his Bavarian counterpart from the CSU sister party — for the right to be the conservative bloc’s chancellor candidate in September elections.

Ahead of the tighter measures, Merkel’s administration expanded aid to affected companies with additional support totaling at least $12 billion (10 billion euros) in the coming weeks. That includes bridge financing of as much as 1.5 million euros a month and writing off unsold winter goods.

“We have the strength to continue taking massive action to offset the coronavirus crisis, and we will do exactly that,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said Tuesday in Berlin. “We will continue to do everything to support companies and workers, and protect health.”

Extended lockdowns are likely to cause German output to shrink in the first three months of 2021, with Bloomberg Economics forecasting a 3% contraction before a rebound starts in the second quarter.

Germany risks severe economic consequences if it fails to contain the pandemic, with companies carrying too much debt and cash reserves exhausted, according to one of the country’s leading economists.

“I’m afraid we’re too optimistic about getting out of this crisis quickly,” said Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, or DIW.

The country has still fared relatively well compared with its European peers, mainly due to the extensive fiscal support and a large manufacturing sector that is less exposed to restrictions than shops and restaurants. Investors grew more confident, with ZEW’s gauge of expectations for the next six months rising to 61.8 in January from 55.0 a month earlier.

Europe has emerged as a global hot spot for the virus, with more than 401,000 fatalities and nearly 17 million infections. The European Union is urging member states to do more to track dangerous virus mutations with genome sequencing. Only one is testing more than 1% of samples, while some others aren’t sequencing at all.

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Janet Yellen faces critical choice for global economy, poor nations rocked by coronavirus

InternationalJan 20. 2021Janet Yellen, President- elect Joe Biden’s pick to be Treasury Secretary, speaks in Wilmington, Del., on Dec. 1, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman

By The Washington Post · Jeff Stein, David J. Lynch

WASHINGTON – An International Monetary Fund proposal to approve emergency financial backing for nations reeling from the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus has the support of the overwhelming majority of its 189 member countries.

But for months, the initiative has been blocked almost single-handedly by the Trump administration, which has used effective U.S. veto power over IMF decisions to reject theinternational consensus.

The fate of the additional IMF aid will soon fall in large part to incoming treasury secretary Janet Yellen, the former chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.

Even as she confronts daunting domestic economic needs, Yellen will face an early foreign policy test in the battle over the IMF’s special drawing rights or “SDRs.” Established as an international reserve asset in 1969, the SDRs can be converted into one of five major currencies, including the dollar or Japanese yen. The IMF can dramatically increase the amount of SDRs in circulation at no cost to U.S. taxpayers, economists say, allowing countries to stabilize their financial reserves and prevent capital flight.

The proposed increase in the IMF’s crisis war chest is backed by American farmers and manufacturers hoping to revive their overseas markets, as well as global antipoverty advocates such as Oxfam and the International Rescue Committee. Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, calls the move a “no brainer.”

Yet Yellen has seemed skeptical, echoing in the past objections to the plan raised by her predecessor, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

“A large share of the money goes to developed countries like the United States. It’s unclear that this strategy would provide sufficient funds to stressed emerging markets,” Yellen said in an interview with the Brookings Institution in April.

Mnuchin had raised similar concerns, saying last year that 70 percent of an SDR increase would go to members of the Group of 20 nations, which don’t need the help. Only 3 percent would reach low-income countries, he said.

Mnuchin also told reporters last month that approving additional special drawing rights would effectively turn the IMF into “the equivalent of a central bank” by having it serve as a source of global emergency liquidity.

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill may seek to force Yellen’s hand. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Senate Democrat, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have pushed legislation to increase the amount of SDRs in circulation by 2 trillion or roughly $2.9 trillion. Durbin, Sanders and incoming Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are circulating a letter to Yellen urging her support for swift passage of their proposal, saying it would help “solve the urgent crises of poverty, hunger and disease being experienced by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.” That effort has been approved by the House but stalled amid Republican opposition in the Senate.

Yellen could unilaterally approve U.S. support for the IMF issuing additional SDRs of about $650 billion, although she would have to give Congress 90 days notice before doing so, according to Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank.

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

Additional IMF aid could help some of those suffering the most from the pandemic and its economic consequences.

UNICEF estimates that 2 million children under five years of age could die this year due to a lack of health care and nutrition, with more than 140 million children being added to the ranks of the global poor due to economic deterioration caused by covid-19. World Food Programme director David Beasley recently said in the Guardian: “We are losing the battle against hunger as never before.” Concerns have also emerged about poor countries’ ability to pay for the coronavirus vaccine.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters earlier this month that she plans to immediately start working with the incoming Biden administration on SDRs, touting them as “one of the instruments” for shoring up developing economies.

“It would avoid an enormous amount of suffering around the world and redound to the benefit of the United States,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist at Columbia University who mentored Yellen and remains a friend. Stiglitz said there is no good economic rationale against a dramatic increase in SDRs. “There’s a very broad consensus among economists that this is a good thing to do.”

Summers, who also served as chief economist at the World Bank, added that dramatically expanding SDRs would “require no U.S. budget cost” and is more urgent now given the spread of mutations of the coronavirus.

“This is a place where the new Biden administration needs to step up on behalf of American humanitarian values and economic common sense,” added Gene Sperling, an economist who advised Biden during the presidential campaign and served as a top economic adviser to President Clinton. “This is the least we should do.”

The dispute over IMF credit facilities illustrates the complex global agenda that awaits Yellen, if she is confirmed, as expected. Yellen weathered her first Senate committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

The former Federal Reserve chief is best known for her views on issues of domestic economic policy, ranging from deficit spending to wealth inequality. But her portfolio at the Treasury Department will also include enormous powers that could shape the global economy, including the ability to impose sanctions on nations that choke them off from international markets and bludgeon their economies.

“Quite possibly the most important decisions Treasury Secretary Yellen can really make will be in the international arena, where there has been an incredible vacuum of U.S. leadership,” said Summers, who served as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration.

SDRs are only one part of Yellen’s international portfolio. She and her deputy, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, also will be kept busy managing the active global sanctions agenda they will inherit from the Trump administration.

From his first days in office, President Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for unilateral presidential power drew him to economic sanctions, which offer a middle ground between diplomacy and military force. In February 2017, the new president responded to an Iranian missile test by slapping sanctions on 25 companies and individuals involved in the military program.

Ever since, sanctions have been the administration’s preferred tool in disputes with both adversaries such as China, Russia, and Venezuela, and allies such as Turkey. Trump has resorted to sanctions nearly twice as often as his predecessors, according to statistics compiled by Adam Smith, a partner at Gibson Dunn.

Trump has added an average of more than 1,000 individuals or companies to the government’s sanction list each year, blocking any assets held by U.S. financial institutions and barring any American person or company from doing business with them. The comparable figures for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are 533 and 435, respectively.

Treasury’s list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” fills a 1,528-page online report.

“There’s been a steady increase since 2001. But Trump has taken it to new levels,” said Smith, a senior sanctions adviser at Treasury during the Obama administration.

Those figures probably understate recent U.S. activism. They don’t take into consideration that Trump targeted more large foreign companies than his predecessors and they exclude export controls, Smith said.

By contrast, Biden is likely to seek allied agreement whenever possible before imposing new financial restrictions. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told Yellen to be “aggressive” in the administration’s use of sanctions policy during the Senate finance committee hearing on Tuesday. Yellen responded by saying she would be tasking Adeyemo with a review of U.S. sanctions policy to ensure their efficacy.

“You can be sure I will be focused on making sure they’re used strategically and appropriately,” Yellen said of sanctions.

Yellen won’t be the only Cabinet officer to grapple with key sanctions decisions in the administration’s early months. More than a dozen federal agencies play an active role in sanctions implementation or enforcement, according to a 2020 General Accounting Office analysis. Last week, the Commerce Department added several companies, including China’s state-owned oil exploration company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), to an export blacklist barring it from U.S. suppliers. More than a dozen federal agencies play a role in sanctions implementation or enforcement, according to a 2020 Government Accountability Office analysis. So for many of the most consequential measures, she will be one of several players in an interagency debate.

Commerce has made frequent use of its power over U.S. exports in service of Trump’s foreign policy goals.

But the details of implementing that ban, which only applies to CNOOC activities in the disputed South China Sea, will be left to the Biden team. Commerce also is leaving unfinished proposed regulations designed to largely prevent information technology gear from six countries – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro – from being used in U.S. communications networks.

The department must provide 60 days for public comments on the proposed restriction, meaning its ultimate fate rests with Biden’s commerce secretary-designate Gina Raimondo.

Yellen also will be drawn into some of the administration’s core foreign policy debates, including how to lure Iran back to the negotiating table. U.S. officials credited tough sanctions for getting Tehran to agree to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Trump quit the deal three years later, preferring to tighten the screws on Tehran in hopes of securing a more comprehensive settlement.

On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced new sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, its CEO and several companies that shipped steel to Iran via the Iranian shipping company.

“It’s just become so messy. There are so many cooks in this kitchen,” said Smith.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has struggled to keep pace with the rising workload. Though Congress has agreed to fund a larger staff, the department has had trouble competing with the private sector and other government agencies for talent. In fiscal 2020, 21 percent of OFAC’s 259 authorized staff positions were vacant, GAO said.

The proliferation of U.S. sanctions have imposed costs on global businesses, sparking grumbling from some foreign executives and government officials. In a 2016 speech, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in a 2016 speech warned that Washington risked driving companies away from the U.S. financial system if it overdid the use of sanctions.

“Sanctions should not be used lightly. They can strain diplomatic relationships, introduce instability into the global economy, and impose real costs on companies here and abroad,” Lew said.

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Brexit finance shift to France to accelerate, central bank says

InternationalJan 20. 2021

Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alexandre Rajbhandari, William Horobin

The shift of jobs and assets to Paris after Brexit will accelerate this year, providing Europe with an opportunity to strengthen its own financial infrastructure, according to Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau.

Financial institutions had transferred about 2,500 jobs and $206 billion (170 billion euros) worth of assets to France as of the end of 2020, with further relocations expected, Villeroy de Galhau said in an online speech on Tuesday.

The protracted departure of the U.K. from the European Union has triggered a tide of businesses moving from London to the continent’s main financial hubs, he said. In 2019, The European Central Bank estimated that 24 banks will settle in the bloc and a total of 1.3 trillion euros in assets will eventually move from London to the euro area.

European countries have been promoting their own financial centers to attract businesses leaving London. Germany’s Bundesbank said 400 billion euros in assets have been transferred to the country as of the end of 2020, a figure that is set to increase after Morgan Stanley shifts 100 billion euros over the coming months.

Villeroy de Galhau said the U.K.’s departure and post-pandemic recovery plans provide an opportunity for the EU to strengthen its own market structures to ensure its financial autonomy. In particular, the bloc should reinforce capabilities for clearing, an area long dominated by London. The economic recovery from the pandemic also a chance to improve the existing financial system, he said.

“It is now or never that we should seize the double opportunity of Brexit and the reconstruction to make a capital markets union,” Villeroy said.

Villeroy welcomed the ECB’s decision to allow banks to partially resume dividend payments, but said it’s only a very cautious first step that will allow them to attract investors and raise capital. The low returns on equity among French banks, roughly half the level of their U.S. counterparts, remains a challenge for the sector, he said.