The federal government is moving forward with a plan to let teenagers drive big rigs from state to state in a test program. 

Currently, truckers who cross state lines must be at least 21 years old, but an apprenticeship program required by Congress to help ease supply chain backlogs would let 18-to-20-year-old truckers drive outside their home states. 

The pilot program, detailed Thursday in a proposed regulation from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), would screen the teens, barring any with driving-while-impaired violations or traffic tickets for causing a crash. 

But safety advocates say the program runs counter to data showing that younger drivers get in more crashes than older ones. They say it’s unwise to let teenage drivers be responsible for rigs that can weigh 80,000 pounds and cause catastrophic damage when they hit lighter vehicles. 

The apprenticeship pilot program was required by Congress as part of the infrastructure bill signed into law November 15. It requires the FMCSA, which is part of the Transportation Department, to start the program within 60 days. 

The American Trucking Associations, a large industry trade group, supports the measure as a way to help with a shortage of drivers. The group estimates that the nation is running over 80,000 drivers short of the number it needs, as demand to move freight reaches historic highs. 

Under the apprenticeship, younger drivers can cross state lines during 120-hour and 280-hour probationary periods, as long as an experienced driver is in the passenger seat. Trucks used in the program have to have an electronic braking crash mitigation system and a forward-facing video camera, and their speeds must be limited to 65 mph. 

Continued monitoring

After probation, the younger drivers can drive on their own, but companies have to monitor their performance until they are 21. No more than 3,000 apprentices can take part in the training at any given time. 

The FMCSA must reach out to carriers with excellent safety records to take part in the program, according to the Transportation Department. 

The program will run for up to three years, and the motor carrier agency has to turn in a report to Congress analyzing the safety record of the teen drivers and making a recommendation on whether the younger drivers are as safe as those 21 or older. Congress could expand the program with new laws. 

The test is part of a broader set of measures from the Biden administration to deal with the trucker shortage and improve working conditions for truck drivers. 

In a statement, Nick Geale, vice president of workforce safety for the trucking associations, noted 49 states and Washington, D.C., already allow drivers under 21 to drive semitrailers, but they can’t pick up a load just across a state line. 

“This program creates a rigorous safety training program, requiring an additional 400 hours of advanced safety training, in which participants are evaluated against specific performance benchmarks,” Geale said. The program will ensure that the industry has enough drivers to meet growing freight demands, he said. 

But Peter Kurdock, general counsel for Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, said federal data show that younger drivers have far higher crash rates than older ones. “This is no surprise to any American who drives a vehicle,” he said. 

Putting them behind the wheel of trucks that can weigh up to 40 tons when loaded increases the possibility of mass casualty crashes, he said. 

Kurdock said the trucking industry has wanted younger drivers for years and used supply chain issues to get it into the infrastructure bill. He fears the industry will use skewed data from the program to push for teenage truckers nationwide. 
…

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday the United Nations is “in a race against time” to prevent millions of Afghans from falling deeper into a severe economic and humanitarian crisis. 

“Livelihoods across the country have been lost. More than half the population of Afghanistan now depends on life-saving assistance,” Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters. “Without a more concerted effort from the international community, virtually every man, woman and child in Afghanistan could face acute poverty.” 

He said the situation has become so desperate that parents have sold their babies in order to feed their other children, and health facilities are overflowing with malnourished children. 

Guterres’ call comes two days after the United Nations launched its biggest humanitarian appeal ever for more than $5 billion to assist 28 million people inside Afghanistan and in five neighboring countries this year. 

Last year, the U.N. and its partner agencies reached more than 18 million people across the country. 

Economic collapse 

The secretary-general said the biggest driver of the current crisis is the free fall of Afghanistan’s economy, which he warned must not be allowed to collapse. 

“For our part, the United Nations is taking steps to inject cash into the economy through creative authorized arrangements, but it is a drop in the bucket,” he said. 

Guterres said the country’s Central Bank must be preserved and assisted, and a way found for the conditional release of Afghan foreign currency reserves.

“Without creative, flexible and constructive engagement by the international community, Afghanistan’s economic situation will only worsen,” he warned.

Over the past two decades, Afghanistan’s economy has been heavily dependent on foreign aid to survive. Some 75% of the former government’s budget was donor-funded, as was 40% of its GDP. 

International donors have urged the Taliban to form an inclusive government and respect the rights of women as a condition for the release of more aid, which the group has not done.

Since the Taliban took over the government in August 2021, the suspension of most international aid has contributed to the breakdown in many basic services, including electricity, health services and education. Inflation is rampant, and the price of ordinary goods is beyond the reach of most Afghans. 

The U.N. has been raising the alarm for several months, saying there needs to be a mechanism for U.S. dollars from outside Afghanistan to be exchanged for Afghanis, the local currency, inside the country. 

In response to a question, the U.N. chief said the United States has a very important role to play in shoring up Afghanistan’s economy because most of the global financial system operates in U.S. dollars, and because Washington has frozen billions of Afghan assets to keep them out of the Taliban’s hands. 

The Taliban have repeatedly called for lifting international sanctions and for access to Afghanistan’s Central Bank assets. 

Last month, World Bank donors agreed to release $280 million from its Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. The bank had paused disbursements after the Taliban takeover. The funds were disbursed to UNICEF and the World Food Program. Guterres urged donors to make the remaining $1.2 billion available to assist Afghans in getting through the winter. 

The secretary-general also reiterated his call on the Taliban to make good on pledges to respect the rights of women and girls. Their oppression of women during their previous hold on power in Afghanistan is one of the main reasons that donors are reluctant to allow them access to funds.
…

First-time claims for U.S. unemployment compensation increased unexpectedly last week to their highest level since mid-November, suggesting some employers may be laying off workers as the omicron variant of the coronavirus surges throughout the country and curtails some business operations.

The Labor Department said Thursday 230,000 filed for jobless benefits, up 23,000 from the week before, but the figure was still below the 256,000 figure recorded in mid-March, 2020, when the coronavirus first swept into the United States and businesses started laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands.

For the most part, employers have been retaining their workers and searching for more as the United States continues its rapid economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s unemployment rate dropped in December to 3.9%, not far above the five-decade low of 3.5% recorded before the pandemic disrupted the world’s biggest economy.  

Many employers are looking for more workers, despite about 6.9 million workers remaining unemployed in the United States.  

At the end of November, there were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S., but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.  

U.S. employers added only 199,000 new jobs in December, a lower-than-expected figure. But overall, 6.3 million jobs were created through 2021 in a much quicker recovery than many economists had originally forecast a year ago.  

The U.S. economic advance is occurring even as President Joe Biden and Washington policy makers, along with consumers, are expressing concerns about the biggest increase in consumer prices in four decades – 7% at an annualized rate in December.

The surging inflation rate has pushed policy makers at the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, to move more quickly to end their asset purchases they had used to boost the country’s economic recovery, by March rather than in mid-2022 as originally planned.  

Minutes of the Fed board’s most recent meeting showed that policy makers are eyeing a faster pace for raising the benchmark interest rate that they have kept at near zero percent since the pandemic started.

The Federal Reserve has said it could raise the rate, which influences the borrowing costs for loans made to businesses and consumers, by a quarter-percentage-point three times this year to tamp down inflationary pressures.

Meanwhile, government statistics show U.S. consumers are paying sharply higher prices for food, meals at restaurants, gasoline at service stations, and for new and used vehicles.
…

U.S. consumer prices jumped 7% in December compared to a year earlier, the highest inflation rate in 40 years, the government’s Labor Department reported Wednesday.  

Higher prices coursed throughout the U.S. economy in 2021, with the biggest increases since 1982. The annualized jump in December was up from the 6.8% figure in November and was a half-percentage point gain over the course of a month.

Analysts say robust consumer demand collided with coronavirus-related supply shortages, pushing up prices over the year for big ticket items like cars and furniture, but more importantly for must-buy, everyday purchases like food and gasoline for motorists.   

Despite the year-over-year inflation surge, President Joe Biden said the report “shows a meaningful reduction in headline inflation over last month, with gas prices and food prices falling.”

He said it “demonstrates that we are making progress in slowing the rate of price increases. At the same time, this report underscores that we still have more work to do, with price increases still too high and squeezing family budgets.”

The rapidly rising costs for consumers have caught the attention of the White House and policy makers at the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, even as they say they expect inflation to remain high throughout 2022.  

In November, Biden called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.” The Fed is signaling new efforts to rein in inflation by ending its direct financial support of the economy in March, sooner than originally planned, and to increase its benchmark interest rate that influences borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.  

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a congressional committee Tuesday that getting prices down to more stable levels was key to ensure a lasting recovery from the pandemic.  

“If inflation does become too persistent, if these high levels of inflation become too entrenched in the economy or people’s thinking, that will lead to much tighter monetary policy from us, and that could lead to a recession and that would be bad for workers,” Powell told lawmakers.  

For consumers, inflation is often more of a daily fact of life than other aspects of the American economy that have recovered smartly since the coronavirus pandemic first swept into the U.S. in March 2020.  

The U.S. economy added a record-setting 6.4 million jobs last year, the unemployment rate dropped from 6.3% in January to 3.9% in December and rank-and-file workers’ hourly paychecks rose by 5.8%. Government assistance checks sent to all but the wealthiest American households helped many families.  

But prices consumers paid rose markedly.  

Government statistics showed that gasoline prices paid by motorists at service stations were up 58% last year, while the price of used cars and trucks were up 31% and new vehicles by 11%.   

Meat, poultry and fish prices were up 13%, furniture and bedding by nearly 12%. Fast-food and casual dining places raised their prices by nearly 8%.
…

China’s expanding sphere of influence and economic reach in Europe is met with a mixture of praise and complaints in the Greek port of Piraeus. Athens reporter Laurent Laughlin has the details.
…

Russia is contributing to an undersupply of natural gas to Europe, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol said on Wednesday, noting it comes amid a standoff between Moscow and the West over Ukraine. 

The Paris-based IEA, energy watchdog for developed countries, warned that the high energy prices and consumer pain wrought by the gas crunch makes the case for future mandatory storage quotas for European companies. 

“We believe there are strong elements of tightness in Europe’s gas markets due to Russia’s behavior,” Birol told reporters, noting “today’s low Russian gas flows to Europe coincide with heightened geopolitical tensions over Ukraine.” 

Russian gas company Gazprom reduced exports to Europe by 25% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2021 despite high market prices and reduced spot sales while other exporters boosted them, Birol said. 

“The current storage deficit in the European Union is largely due to Gazprom,” he added. “The low levels of storage in company’s EU-based facilities account for half of the EU storage deficit although Gazprom facilities only constitute 10% of the EU’s total storage capacity.” 

Russian energy exports have been in focus amid a standoff between Russia and the West as Russia has built up its troop presence near neighboring Ukraine, which is trying to forge closer ties with NATO. 

Some European Union lawmakers have accused Russia, which supplies more than 30% of the bloc’s natural gas, of using the crisis as leverage while Russia and NATO hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday. 

Moscow has denied this and Gazprom has said it has fulfilled European contracts in full. 

Yet Birol said Russia could increase deliveries to Europe by at least one-third through abundant spare capacity, the equivalent of 10% of the EU’s average monthly gas consumption or a full LNG vessel every day via commercially available pipelines. 

In contrast to its dealings with the European Union, Russia is delivering natural gas exceeding its contractual commitments to China, Birol added. 

“I think regulations in Europe should be reviewed to ensure that storage levels are in effect to cover end-user needs with mandatory minimum storage obligations for all commercial operators.” 
…

Cyberthreats and the growing space race are emerging risks to the global economy, adding to existing challenges posed by climate change and the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum said in a report Tuesday.  

The Global Risks Report is usually released ahead of the annual elite winter gathering of CEOs and world leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, but the event has been postponed for a second year in a row because of COVID-19. The World Economic Forum still plans some virtual sessions next week. 

Here’s a rundown of the report, which is based on a survey of about 1,000 experts and leaders:  

World outlook 

As 2022 begins, the pandemic and its economic and societal impacts still pose a “critical threat” to the world, the report said. Big differences between rich and poor nations’ access to vaccines mean their economies are recovering at uneven rates, which could widen social divisions and heighten geopolitical tensions. 

By 2024, the global economy is forecast to be 2.3% smaller than it would have been without the pandemic. But that masks the different rates of growth between developing nations, whose economies are forecast to be 5.5% smaller than before the pandemic, and rich countries, which are expected to expand 0.9%.  

Digital dangers 

The pandemic forced a huge shift — requiring many people to work or attend class from home and giving rise to an exploding number of online platforms and devices to aid a transformation that has dramatically increased security risks, the report said.  

“We’re at the point now where cyberthreats are growing faster than our ability to effectively prevent and manage them,” said Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at Marsh, whose parent company Marsh McLennan co-authored the report with Zurich Insurance Group and SK Group.  

Cyberattacks are becoming more aggressive and widespread, as criminals use tougher tactics to go after more vulnerable targets, the report said. Malware and ransomware attacks have boomed, while the rise of cryptocurrencies makes it easy for online criminals to hide payments they have collected.  

While those responding to the survey cited cybersecurity threats as a short- and medium-term risk, Klint said the report’s authors were concerned that the issue wasn’t ranked higher, suggesting it’s a “blind spot” for companies and governments. 

Space race 

Space is the final frontier — for risk.  

Falling costs for launch technology has led to a new space race between companies and governments. Last year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space tourism venture Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson took off, while Elon Musk’s Space X business made big gains in launching astronauts and satellites.  

Meanwhile, a host of countries are beefing up their space programs as they chase geopolitical and military power or scientific and commercial gains, the report said.  

But all these programs raise the risk of friction in orbit.  

“Increased exploitation of these orbits carries the risk of congestion, an increase in debris and the possibility of collisions in a realm with few governance structures to mitigate new threats,” the report said.  

Space exploitation is one of the areas that respondents thought had among the least amount of international collaboration to deal with the challenges.  

Experts and leaders responding to the survey “don’t believe that much is being done in the best possible way moving forward,” World Economic Forum’s managing director, Saadia Zahidi, said at a virtual press briefing from Geneva.  

Other areas include artificial intelligence, cyberattacks and migration and refugees, she said.  

Climate crisis  

The environment remains the biggest long-term worry.  

The planet’s health over the next decade is the dominant concern, according to survey respondents, who cited failure to act on climate change, extreme weather, and loss of biodiversity as the top three risks.  

The report noted that different countries are taking different approaches, with some moving faster to adopt a zero-carbon model than others. Both approaches come with downsides. While moving slowly could radicalize more people who think the government isn’t acting urgently, a faster shift away from carbon intense industries could spark economic turmoil and throw millions out of work.  

“Adopting hasty environmental policies could also have unintended consequences for nature,” the report added. “There are still many unknown risks from deploying untested biotechnical and geoengineering technologies.” 
…

Warning that high inflation could make it harder to restore the job market to full health, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the Fed will raise interest rates faster than it now plans if needed to stem surging prices.

With America’s households squeezed by higher costs for food, gas, rent, autos and many other items, the Fed is under pressure to rein in inflation by raising rates to slow borrowing and spending. At the same time, the economy has recovered enough that the Fed’s ultra-low-interest rate policies are no longer needed.

“If we have to raise interest rates more over time, we will,” Powell said during a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, which is considering his nomination for a second four-year term.

The stark challenge for Powell if he is confirmed for a new term, as expected, was underscored by the questions he faced Tuesday from both Democratic and Republican senators. They pressed him to raise rates to reduce inflation, though without ramping up borrowing costs so much that the economy tumbles into a recession.  

Fed officials have forecast three increases in their benchmark short-term rate this year, though some economists say they envision as many as four hikes in 2022.  

Powell’s nomination is expected to be approved by the committee sometime in the coming weeks and then confirmed by the full Senate with bipartisan support. At Tuesday’s hearing, he drew mostly supportive comments from senators from both parties. A Republican first elevated to the chair by then-President Donald Trump, Powell has also been credited by many Democrats for sticking with ultra-low-rate policies to support rapid hiring for the past 18 months.  

In his testimony, Powell rebuffed suggestions from some Democratic senators that rate increases would weaken hiring and potentially leave many people, particularly lower-income and Black Americans, without jobs. Fed rate increases usually boost borrowing costs on many consumer and business loans and have the effect of slowing the economy.

But Powell argued that rising inflation, if it persists, also poses a threat to the Fed’s goal of getting nearly everyone who wants a job back to work. Low-income families have been particularly hurt by the surge in inflation, which has wiped out the pay increases that many have received.

“High inflation is a severe threat to the achievement of maximum employment,” he said.

The economy, the Fed chair added, must grow for an extended period to put as many Americans back to work as possible. Controlling inflation before it becomes entrenched is necessary to keep the economy expanding, he said. If prices keep rising, the Fed could be forced to slam on the brakes much harder by sharply raising interest rates, threatening hiring and growth.  

Powell won praise from Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the committee, and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, the senior Republican on the panel.  

“The president is putting results over partisanship, re-nominating a Federal Reserve chair of the other political party,” Brown said. “As chair, together with President Biden, he has helped us deliver historic economic progress.”

“There is broad bipartisan backing for Chairman Powell’s re-nomination,” Toomey added.

Still, Toomey also criticized some of the Fed’s 12 regional banks for holding events that addressed climate change and “so-called racial justice,” which, Toomey argued, went far beyond the Fed’s mandate. He cited one event, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in which he said participants called for defunding police.  

“The troubling politicization of the Fed puts its independence and effectiveness at risk,” Toomey said.

And Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, criticized Powell for the central bank’s initial characterization of the price spikes that began this spring as “transitory.”

“I’m concerned if the Fed missed the boat on addressing inflation sooner, a lot of us are,” Shelby said. “As a result of that, the Fed under your leadership has lost a lot of credibility.”

Inflation has soared to the highest levels in four decades, and on Wednesday the government is expected to report that consumer prices jumped 7.1% over the past 12 months, which would be the largest such jump since 1982.

Powell said the Fed mistakenly expected that supply chain bottlenecks driving up prices for goods such as cars, appliances and furniture would not last nearly as long as they have. Once unsnarled, prices for things like used cars, which have spiked in the past year, would come back down, he said.  

But for now, those supply chain problems have persisted, and while there are signs they are loosening, Powell said that progress is limited. He noted that many cargo ships remain docked outside the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s largest, waiting to unload.  

The number of people working or looking for work also remains far below pre-pandemic levels, Powell noted. Millions of Americans have retired early or are avoiding jobs because of fear of the coronavirus. The Fed had anticipated that more of those people would return to the workforce than have done so.  

The smaller workforce has forced businesses to offer much higher pay to attract and keep employees. Powell said that isn’t mainly why prices are high right now, but it “can be an issue going forward for inflation.”

Economists and former Fed officials are raising concerns that the Fed is behind the curve on inflation. Last Friday’s jobs report for December, which showed a sharp drop in the unemployment rate to a healthy 3.9%, and an unexpected wage increase, has helped fan those concerns. While lower unemployment and higher pay benefit workers, those trends can potentially fuel rising prices by encouraging more spending.  

At the Fed’s most recent meeting in December, Powell said the central bank was rapidly accelerating its efforts to tighten credit with the goal of reining in inflation. The Fed will stop buying billions of dollars of bonds in March, ahead of its previously announced goal of doing so in June. Those bond purchases have been intended to encourage more borrowing and spending by lowering longer-term rates.  

And Fed officials’ expectation that they will raise short-term rates three times this year marks a sharp shift from September, when they were divided over doing it even once.  

The flood of new omicron infections won’t slow the Fed’s shift toward policies more appropriate for an economy getting back to normal, Powell said at the hearing, because so far it doesn’t appear to be weighing on the economy.  

“It is really time for us to move away from those emergency pandemic settings to a more normal level,” he added. “It’s a long road to normal from where we are.”
…