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The World
President Biden said that he may make a decision within days on seeking a pause to the federal gasoline tax, as Americans deal with soaring gas prices. Biden told reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Del., that he is considering a gas tax holiday. “I hope to have a decision based on the data I’m looking for by the end of the week,” he said. Any suspension in the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon would require action from Congress. So far, Democratic-led efforts to temporarily pause collecting the tax have failed to gain traction.
The European Commission president has warned EU member states not to backtrack on their long-term drive to cut fossil fuel use, as Germany, Austria and the Netherlands said they would fire up coal plants after Russia moved to limit gas supplies. Ursula von der Leyen said governments need to stay focused on “massive investment in renewables”. (Financial Times)
Democratic and Republican lawmakers will this week introduce legislation to spur the White House to funnel more money to the Indo-Pacific region to help counter China. Ami Bera, the Democratic chair of the House foreign affairs Asia subcommittee, and Steve Chabot, the top Republican on the panel, hope their “Indo-Pacific Engagement Act” will narrow the gap between the rhetoric about Asia being the priority region and funding levels. (Financial Times)
China’s southern strategy: How Beijing is using the global south to constrain America. For the past decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping has endeavored to help China attain what it considers to be its rightful position at the center of the world stage. To do this, Xi—along with the rest of China’s leadership—is attempting to consolidate the country’s economic, political, diplomatic, and military power. It is also working to counter U.S. pressure in the Indo-Pacific region. Xi’s desire to turn China into the world’s most powerful state is, after all, coupled with an inextricable corollary: the imperative of stopping what he sees as efforts by the West to contain it. But China’s grand strategy includes a third component: asserting its dominant position over a different international system of states. Chinese policymakers are attempting to create a sphere of influence comprising not just their country’s immediately contiguous region but also the entire emerging, non-Western, and largely nondemocratic world—the “global South.” Securing dominance over this vast swath of nations would provide a strong base for China’s power while restricting the United States’ actions and influence. Ultimately, that could help spell the end of U.S. global hegemony. (Foreign Affairs)
At a press conference confirming they intend to dissolve parliament and call new elections, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid extolled their short-lived government and said all their actions, including the decision to bring the current coalition to an end, were taken for the good of the country. The coalition had recently limped from crisis to crisis, and faced the real possibility of the opposition clinching a majority to bring it down. Instead, Bennett and Lapid decided to end things on their own terms, announcing they will initiate legislation next week to dissolve parliament and send Israel to its fifth general election in three-and-a-half years. Bennett cited the coalition’s failure to pass legislation to renew the application of some Israeli law to West Bank settlers as the immediate catalyst. The opposition supports the measure, set to expire at the end of June, but has voted against it in order to further destabilize the government. (Times of Israel)
UK Ministers are preparing to begin negotiations for a controversial free trade agreement with Gulf nations that would deepen the UK’s ties with Saudi Arabia. The Department for International Trade (DIT) is set to begin formal talks in Riyadh with the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), a political and economic alliance that counts Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as members. (The Times)
Buying from Mark Cuban’s pharmacy could save Medicare billions: The program for seniors could have saved as much as $3.6 billion over one year if it had bought generic drugs from the pharmacy, Harvard Medical School researchers estimate. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
Widespread e-CNY adoption in China is coming: Close to 1 in 5 Chinese adults report having downloaded the official e-CNY app, and most of them use it for e-commerce and public services like transportation. Chinese consumers don’t see the digital currency’s potential advantages through the lens of geopolitics. Global upsides like internationalizing the yuan, also known as the renminbi, and increasing China’s international clout fall near the bottom of their list of perceived “major advantages.” Existing payment providers stand to lose market share to the e-CNY, especially as the government highly incentivizes adoption via low fees for merchants and promotions for users. To adapt, they should seek to integrate with the e-CNY in ways that avoid making it an either-or choice for consumers. Financial institutions outside of China should track the progress of the e-CNY rollout with an eye toward the stability of the overall Chinese banking system, especially its propensity to accelerate bank run risk in the event of a shock. (Morning Consult)
How Xi Jinping is reshaping China’s capital markets: When Xi Jinping revealed his first big policy manifesto after taking the helm of China’s Communist party, he electrified the world of global finance with a call for state-owned enterprises to step back and let markets play a “decisive” role in the world’s second-largest economy. Analysts at Goldman Sachs hailed the slate of policy priorities, released in late 2013, as a “bold economic reform agenda” with a “pro-market stance” that would curb government intervention and rein in entrenched state-run businesses. But in the years that followed, waves of volatility in Chinese stocks and currency, the threat of financial disruption from upstart tech tycoons and fears offshore listings could breach data security only served to bolster the case among policymakers that if markets are to play a “decisive role”, then the role of the party must be more decisive still. (Financial Times)
Ernst & Young’s plan to split its audit and consulting businesses would give thousands of its partners multimillion-dollar payouts and relies on optimistic assumptions for growth to justify the deal, according to internal company documents and people familiar with the matter. The plan would split up the firm’s accountants who audit companies like Amazon.com Inc. from its faster-growing consulting business, which advises businesses on tax issues, deals and technology, among other things. The internal documents show that Ernst & Young believes both firms could grow faster and be more profitable on their own. The breakup of the 312,000-person firm could happen as soon as late next year. (Wall Street Journal)
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried blames the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates for 2022's crypto crash, resulting in an investor risk “recalibration”. (NPR)
Celsius Network, the cryptocurrency lender that rattled markets by suspending withdrawals last week, has warned that it will “take time” to normalise its operations, as companies across the sector face mounting financial pressure from a sell-off in digital assets. The crypto lending company’s warning came after a series of shocks to digital asset markets dragged down prices. The price of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell below $20,000 over the weekend for the first time since November 2020. Bitcoin was down 3.6 per cent against the dollar in Asia trading on Monday at $19,864, reversing an earlier rally that had pushed it back above the $20,000 mark. (Financial Times)
Brex says it will no longer work with SMBs that do not have venture funding and will shut down “tens of thousands” of accounts after August 15. (TechCrunch)
Technology
The US FAA says Verizon and AT&T have voluntarily agreed to delay some C-Band 5G usage until July 2023 as airlines retrofit some airplane radio altimeters. (Reuters)
India lifts ban on Mastercard from issuing new debit, credit, or prepaid cards after it demonstrated “satisfactory compliance” with the local data storage rules. (TechCrunch)
The New York Times grew website visitors 52% YoY to 524.6M in May 2022, helped by Wordle, making the NYT the world's fastest growing top news site. (Press Gazette)
The great sports unbundling is here: Apple’s new partnership with Major League Soccer is more than just a big get for the iPhone maker. It’s a massive shift in how sports are being distributed, and further calls into question the future of the cable bundle. It’s also a blueprint for sports itself, as more leagues are trying to reinvent themselves to find new and younger audiences. Apple announced a 10-year pact with MLS this week. Under the deal, Apple will carry over 1,000 soccer matches a year. A subset of those games will be made available for free to everyone via the Apple TV app, while others will only stream to Apple TV+ subscribers. Finally, a good chunk will be behind yet another paywall — a new MLS streaming service that’s exclusive to the Apple TV app. All of this is a “VERY big deal,” according to Lightshed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield, who has been a cable bundle skeptic for some time now. (Protocol)
This Styrofoam-eating ‘superworm’ could help solve the garbage crisis. The organism, commonly called a “superworm,” could transform the way waste managers dispose of one of the most common components in landfills, researchers said, potentially slowing a mounting garbage crisis that is exacerbating climate change. In a paper released last week in the journal of Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, showed that the larvae of a darkling beetle, called zophobas morio, can survive solely on polystyrene, commonly called Styrofoam. The findings come amid a flurry of research on ways bacteria and other organisms can consume plastic materials, like Styrofoam and drinking bottles. (Washington Post)
Smart Links
Airline staff shortages expected to last into 2023. (Axios)
Emirates boss says travel demand unlikely to dissipate despite airport chaos. (CNBC)
Stuck at an airport? Frequent fliers have 10 suggestions. (Washington Post)
Mondelez to buy energy bar maker Clif Bar for about $3 billion. (CNBC)
NYT, WaPo, WSJ get half of US subscriptions; 19% in US paid for online news in the last year. (Press Gazette)
Cancer deaths are down, but 1.9 million new cases expected in 2022. (Washington Post)
SpaceX fires workers who criticized Elon Musk in open letter. (Washington Post)