fortune--2020-09-27--The biggest risk in business right now is grief

By the time the pandemic fully swept over New York City this spring, Electric’s employees were already in mourning.
On March 18, days after the tech startup closed its downtown Manhattan offices and asked its 145 workers to start doing their jobs from home, one of their number died suddenly and tragically—not from the coronavirus that was swiftly becoming real to New Yorkers, but from an unexpected heart problem. James Stepney, a 32-year-old senior customer-support technician from the Bronx, with a kind smile and an easygoing warmth around the office, had wanted to get in one last workout before New York’s gyms closed. He collapsed at the gym and was rushed to the ICU, where he died a little over a day later.
“He was an incredible person. It was a huge hit,” Jamie Coakley, Electric’s vice president of people, says months after his death. Then her voice catches: “I’m going to get emotional here.”
For Stepney’s colleagues and work friends, the news of his death was an unexpected gut-punch—all the more devastating for coming as their city, their routines, and the rest of their lives were upended. Nor was it the last of the spring’s tragedies for Electric, where another employee soon lost her brother to COVID-19. Meanwhile, the death of George Floyd set off protests through New York streets and national waves of pain over police brutality and systemic racism, especially for the company’s Black employees.
“How do you wake up in the morning and pretend you can come to work after experiencing something like that?” says Coakley. “You can’t.”
And yet more than 147 million U.S. employees are doing so, coming to work under a crushing burden of grief this year. We’re mourning the 200,000 people who have now died in the United States from COVID-19, and the deathbeds and funerals we’ve missed during quarantine. We’re mourning Floyd and Breonna Taylor and all those hurt by systemic racism, in a grief that has been long carried by Black Americans. We’re mourning tens of millions of lost jobs and the financial stresses that the pandemic has created—along with the unthinkable choices for many “essential workers” about whether keeping their livelihood is worth risking their lives or the lives of their loved ones. We’re mourning the deaths of beloved public heroes, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Lewis and Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. We’re mourning less fatal but still meaningful losses, too—all the postponed weddings and canceled vacations and upended childcare plans and chaotic school schedules that have made the future nearly impossible to plan. As author and workplace consultant Jennifer Moss puts it, we’re mourning “the death of our previous lives.”
And we are doing all of this mourning at the office—whether in the Zoom calls and Slack chats conducted from the kitchen tables and bedroom desks of those who can work from home, or in the grocery stores and hospitals and schools where essential workers are expected to be physically present every day. Yet most employers aren’t prepared to manage any of this grief, many experts warn—or the corresponding stress, anxiety, burnout, and widespread lack of productivity that is already sweeping across corporate America, and that will overshadow the workforce for years to come.
“Grief is not anything we’ve ever tackled well in the workplace. Businesses don’t usually recognize it, but it actually has a huge financial impact,” says David Kessler of Grief.com, who coauthored two books with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and wrote Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. “Employee productivity is so impacted by loss, and loss is everywhere right now.”
Long before the pandemic, grief was estimated to cost employers up to $75 billion every year in lost productivity, while employee burnout caused up to $190 billion in health care costs every year. Those expenses are certain to skyrocket after this year, in which at least 1.8 million Americans are estimated to have already lost a relative to COVID-19. More than half of adults in the United States have seen their mental health worsen due to worry and stress during the pandemic, and 75% of employees are reporting burnout at work, with 40% reporting burnout specifically during the pandemic.
Now grief experts, mental-health professionals, physicians, and human resources executives are trying to get corporate America better prepared to handle the biggest risk in business right now—one that, unlike COVID-19, can’t eventually be contained by a vaccine. The effects of this year’s grief and mourning will linger far into the future, they warn—and for employers who are relying on a nationally traumatized workforce, this fallout needs to be addressed as directly as any other business risk.
“Trauma and grief and loss really impact productivity, and people’s ability to concentrate and to be resilient,” says DeLisa Alexander, an executive vice president and chief people officer for IBM’s Red Hat. “This is not life as usual—this is life in a crisis.”
“Grief upon grief upon grief”
This year’s grief, though widespread, has accumulated unevenly. COVID-19 has taken the biggest toll on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people, who have disproportionately died in the pandemic. These communities also make up many of the “essential” and often low-wage workers who have faced hazardous conditions on the job during the pandemic. By late June, one in three Black Americans knew someone who had died from COVID-19, compared to less than one in 10 white Americans, according to a Washington Post–Ipsos poll.
At the same time, across all types of jobs and levels of socioeconomic status, workers of color and especially Black employees have been affected by the ongoing symptoms of systemic racism—and the mental anguish of watching other Black people hurt and killed by it.
“It’s really complex, compound grief. It’s COVID, where you might be losing coworkers, and then racism as a public health crisis, where collectively your Black employees are losing people on almost a daily basis,” says Angela Neal-Barnett, a professor of psychology at Kent State University and the director of its Program for Research on Anxiety Disorders among African-Americans. “We know that grief upon grief upon grief, in this time of isolation, brings about trauma and very, very high anxiety. And from a Black and brown perspective, the question that everyone is asking is, ‘What next?’”
For Jessica Isom, MD, a psychiatrist who focuses on the impact of racial bias in mental health and who works with a mostly Black patient population at Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, Mass., “Grief as a conversation is more common than I think it should be among my patients.
“It’s been such a year of powerlessness and misinformation, which is so destabilizing,” she adds. “There are some people who are used to those things and are still struggling—and then there are those for whom it’s very novel.”
Another group of workers that has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic’s mental-health burden are the physicians, nurses, paramedics, respiratory therapists, and other health care workers who have been on the front lines of caring for those infected from COVID-19—and who have seen their patients die in droves, while also worrying about their personal safety. For many health care workers on the West Coast, that stress is now compounded, again, by the wildfires that have become a recurring disaster in recent years.
“We need to be prepared for a wave of PTSD,” says Edward M. Ellison, MD, a physician and executive medical director of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group as well as co-CEO of the Permanente Federation. “This is not in the rearview mirror. We’re going to be dealing with this for time to come.”
A longtime advocate for better mental wellness resources for health care workers, Ellison and his team years ago implemented several such programs. In some hospitals, doctors struggling with any sort of stress or anxiety can seek support in person from staff who are specially trained in mental wellness, who wear purple or orange shirts to signal that they are available for counseling. In the wake of COVID, Kaiser Permanente hospitals increased the multidisciplinary psychological support teams available to employees—while also providing other benefits, like flexible hours and childcare credit to employees suddenly faced with remote learning responsibilities.
Today Ellison is immediately concerned about the more than 23,000 physicians he helps oversee nationally—and the 59% of U.S. health care workers who report a decline in mental health since the pandemic’s onset—but he cautions that no one will be recovering from 2020 quickly or easily. He hopes that the pandemic will persuade other employers to spend more time prioritizing their workers’ mental wellness.
“In this country in general, we need to reduce the stigma about seeking help or talking about your feelings,” he says.
Some large employers are taking steps to do just that—and to acknowledge that all of their workers may need more help processing some sort of loss, even those who have remained healthy and safe and employed throughout 2020.
“My son’s not going to high school for senior year. He’s not playing football, he’s not playing lacrosse, and it’s a very different experience of seeing my last kid out of the house,” says Red Hat’s Alexander. “It’s not the same level of trauma as someone else. But some days, it just makes me really sad that he can’t experience these things and that, as a family, we can’t experience these things.”
She’s bringing that perspective to her role overseeing HR for Red Hat’s 16,000 global employees—and helping them manage their grief at the office. This year, Alexander provided grief training resources for her human resources staff as well as discussion guides related to grief and loss for managers. She also brought in a trauma expert to speak to managers and workers, “to help people understand that it’s okay not to be okay.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Red Hat also held a series of internal conversations to listen to the feedback of its Black employees, then to communicate that feedback, and some of the concrete steps Red Hat is taking to address it, to all employees. The company is also instituting quarterly mental-health days—when all employees are off at the same time.
“When everyone else is not off, it just creates more stress in some cases, because you’re behind,” Alexander says. “We’re all taking a collective breath, and doing whatever it is we need to do to make ourselves more resilient.”
These steps make Red Hat relatively rare among big companies, where leaders have long struggled to respond well to employee bereavement.
“It’s really difficult for a large organization,” says Moss. “The ones that are doing really good work are overcommunicating, creating training for managers to have these conversations, providing peer support and grief support groups, and enlisting a lot of external agencies to help.”
She and other experts and executives also recommend suspending performance targets and expanding bereavement leave beyond the scant few days offered by most employers (and not guaranteed by law, outside of Oregon). They also cautioned that employers who want to improve their response to employee grief—and contain the costs of lost productivity—will have to commit to patient and long-term support.
“Grief is not a start-and-stop situation. It comes in waves,” says Jocelyn DeGroot, who studies grief as a professor of applied communication studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “Death is forever, and your grief is forever.”
The new normal
As Electric mourned James Stepney and more of its employees lost loved ones this spring, its senior executives grieved both personally and widely. After announcing Stepney’s death in an all-hands virtual meeting and increasing the grief-counseling resources it offered employees, Electric committed to donating $10,000 annually to an IT training scholarship in his name. The company is also renaming its quarterly employee-recognition brunch in his honor and “building in those monuments that will allow us to create long-lasting space for James in the company, and preserve his memory,” Coakley says. “We need to really honor the fact that we lost a friend.”
Electric also instituted monthly all-company mental-health days for the rest of the year, expanded its bereavement leave from five to 20 days, and started allowing bereaved employees to have flexible work schedules after they return to the job. So far, other employees have been able to redistribute the work from those taking time off to grieve, but “if we didn’t have that coverage, we would have hired a temp,” says Coakley. “That would just be an investment that we would take on as a business.”
Many of these policies are expensive—but Electric seems to be thriving regardless. The startup, which provides remote IT support services to companies including Boxed and Resy, doesn’t disclose financial information. But while many companies have laid off or furloughed workers during the pandemic, Electric has actually hired more than 30 new U.S. employees since March. Coakley says that thanks to the booming digital economy under quarantine, the company has had “an excellent year,” financially.
Still, she and the rest of Electric’s executives realize that this year has fundamentally hurt its workers—and that they will need support to continue grieving for years to come.
“We have not been back to the office, and we haven’t had the chance to be together as a group since James died,” says Gabriel Sierra, a senior IT service desk manager at Electric and Stepney’s supervisor. “We’re in a weird situation, where you hope that things will go back to normal eventually.”
But as he knows, the pre-COVID normal no longer exists. “I’ve had dreams about being back in the office and seeing James,” he says. “It’s going to take some time for the team to have closure.”


fortune--2020-09-27--5 better ways to help your employees mourn at the office

Magic Leap tried to create an alternate reality .
Its founder was already in one

As the United States crosses 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, grief has become the biggest risk facing U.S. employers. Most have absolutely no idea how to handle it—or how to avoid the billions of dollars it costs in lost productivity.
“We always think grief is all about time off—and of course it’s about time off, and we don’t give enough time off,” says grief expert David Kessler of Grief.com. “But it’s also about how you handle it.”
With no federally mandated bereavement leave in the United States, only 54% of U.S. private-sector employees get any paid time off for funerals, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But a few days is hardly enough time to recover from the death of a loved one—and more time off, while a good start, is only the first step in helping employees mourn. Below, Kessler and other grief experts, human resources executives, mental-health professionals, and physicians explain how employers can help their workers—and their companies—alleviate this year’s crushing burden of grief.
Provide bereavement leave—a lot of it. Every single grief expert Fortune spoke to criticized the country’s lack of federally guaranteed bereavement time—and the few days generally provided by the employers who do offer it. Only Oregon has passed a law guaranteeing bereavement leave to workers employed in the state, although a similar bill has been under consideration in California.
Now that at least 1.8 million Americans are estimated to be mourning the death of a relative from COVID-19—while worrying about keeping their jobs during an economic crisis—employers are widely being urged to step up.
“People are afraid to take time off, particularly during COVID, because jobs are gone,” says Angela Neal-Barnett, a professor of psychology at Kent State University and the director of its Program for Research on Anxiety Disorders among African-Americans. “If you can, tell employees, ‘Take the time that you need, and your job will be here when you get back.’ If that is a true statement, say that.”
Loosen the restrictions on which deaths qualify as “worthy” of bereavement leave. If you’re lucky enough to have guaranteed bereavement time, it’s likely still restricted to immediate relatives. But what if you’re mourning the death of a close friend? A neighbor who sometimes watched your children? A beloved pet?
“Employers have notoriously been terrible at bereavement leaves being restricted to immediate family,” says Jocelyn DeGroot, who studies grief as a professor of applied communication studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
She has some experience with the cost/benefits analysis of being generous with bereavement leave. Occasionally she has students “whose grandmas die over and over again” during a semester of classes. “Clearly you’re dealing with something, and it’s not my business at that point,” she says.
In the corporate sector, DeGroot understands that employers are afraid that workers could take advantage of more generous paid bereavement time. “But would you rather have someone staying at home who is faking it, or someone coming to work who is completely bereaved and can’t focus and might cost you money by making an error?” she asks. “It just makes you a terrible human being to make someone come to work when they’re in that condition.”
Ease up on, or suspend, performance targets and reviews. This spring, Facebook effectively eliminated performance reviews for the first half of 2020, in a prominent acknowledgment of the pandemic’s new burdens for workers. “A lot of people are personally grieving. They’re going through their own stress and fears, and then they’re trying to hit their goals,” says Jennifer Moss, an author and workplace consultant who’s writing a book on burnout.
Moss also points out that maintaining your company’s performance targets is especially unfair to women, who have shouldered more of the pandemic’s childcare burden—and its job losses. “Not only are we seeing more grief, we’re also seeing this increase of expected workplace productivity at this time of extreme stress,” she says.
Don’t punish employees for taking mental health breaks. Instead, some companies have responded to the pandemic by giving their employees additional time off—all at the same time. “Taking a day off when no one else is off creates more stress,” says DeLisa Alexander, chief people officer for IBM’s Red Hat, which has instituted quarterly all-hands “recharge days” for its 16,000 employees.
Senior executives have helped to reinforce that no one is expected to work during those mental-health days, in part by setting up their own out-of-office messages to say “Red Hat is on a recharge day today,” Alexander adds. “It’s a brilliant thing.”
If your company can’t afford to have everyone out of the office on a workday, consider at least instituting no-meeting days. And think about what additional work you might be creating for your employees with any virtual all-hands meetings or other obligations—even the supposedly fun ones.
“Some companies were trying to connect everyone at the beginning of the pandemic with yoga, or mindfulness sessions, or just afternoon happy hours,” says Moss. “But well-being led to workload.”
Too many of those events force employees to sign on at night or over the weekend to catch up on missed work, she warns: “It has to be part of making you well…and there haven’t been a lot of really good ways it’s working right now.”
Talk about your employees’ grief—and bring in expert help to do so. “The worst thing that employers can do is keep silent around everything that’s happening,” says Jessica Isom, a psychiatrist at Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, Mass.
When her medical director recently asked Isom for advice on what to say about the impact of racism on his Black employees, she told him to “just validate that it’s tough for us even to come into work, and commit to making reforms that allow people to show up with their full reality.” For example, “if someone asks in a business meeting how everyone is doing, it should be okay to say, ‘I’m just okay,’ or ‘I’m not well,’” she says. “Give people a sense that [your concern] goes beyond the performative.”
Many experts also recommended bringing in qualified outside experts to help employees process their grief. Several years ago, after the child of one of Neal-Barnett’s lab members was killed, “one of the things that was extremely helpful was to bring in a grief counselor for the lab,” she recalls. “It just made a difference.”
Now, “given the dual pandemic of COVID and racism as a health crisis, bringing someone in to talk to your division or your corporation about what you’re experiencing, to normalize it and ways to process it, is absolutely key,” she says.
She adds that as corporate America reckons with the consequences of systemic racism, employers should also be mindful that these conversations don’t create extra work for Black employees and other workers of color. “For Black and brown people, it’s just so important that you have somebody who’s culturally competent,” Neal-Barnett says. “Black and brown employees do not have the energy to explain what racism is.”


fortune--2020-09-27--China is inching toward another trade war

Australia’s relationship with its largest trading partner is in rapid decline.
Over the course of this summer—or winter, to Canberra—Beijing has imposed 80% tariffs on Australian barley, launched anti-dumping investigations into Australian wine, blocked Australian beef, arrested an Australian journalist, and reportedly banned two Australian academics from visiting China.
But the seemingly sudden decline has, in fact, been years in the making. Australia, despite its heavy dependence on China as an export market, remains a vocal critic of China’s growing global influence. Canberra, citing national security concerns, also has denied entry to Chinese academics, and has blocked Chinese bids for major infrastructure projects in Australia.
Two years ago, a similar mismatch of business needs and security fears pushed China and the U.S. into a devastating trade war. With that conflict still unresolved, China’s spiraling relationship with Australia threatens to drag Beijing into another trade feud. On the line is $235 billion in annual trade between the two powers.
Watermark
The high point in Sino-Aussie relations passed not too long ago.
In 2015, the two sides inked the landmark China Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), bringing to a close ten years of negotiations. Under the deal, import duties on 95% of Australia’s exports to China were waived while Chinese investment in Australia’s private sector was subject to less scrutiny than before.
“ChAFTA was the high watermark of Australia-China relations, going back to 1972 when diplomatic relations began,” says Michael Shoebridge, director of the defense, strategy and national security program at the Australian Strategic Policy institute. Trade between Australia and China, which in 2019 was valued at $235 billion, is now more than double the $108 billion it was in 2016.
Australian-made wine is on sale at a store in Beijing on Aug. 18, 2020. China in August ramped up tensions with Australia by launching a probe into wine imports from the country. NOEL CELIS—AFP via Getty Images
But the bonhomie was short-lived. In 2017, local media reported that Beijing was buying influence in Australia’s government by tapping Chinese-Australian business leaders to fund local politicians. After the revelation, one senator resigned and the government passed a law targeting foreign interference.
The foreign interference law was vital and long overdue, says Linda Jakobson, director of Australian think tank China Matters, but the way the legislation was introduced—to target China specifically—damaged relations.
“It wasn’t foreign interference, it was China interference. It was very targeted at one country,” Jakobson says. When the legislation passed, then-Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull chose to paraphrase Chairman Mao Zedong’s declaration at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and said, in Chinese, that the Australian people had “stood up.”
“That merely brought to a head Beijing’s displeasure with how Australia was handling the situation,” Jakobson says. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been “basically frozen” since then, she says.
Watershed
Canberra’s push against perceived interference from China soon targeted technology. In 2018, Canberra blocked Huawei and China’s state-owned ZTE from participating in its national telecoms network, alleging that the two telecoms manufacturers, both based in Shenzhen, posed a national security threat.
“Australia made its decisions well in advance of the U.S. and led that debate,” Shoebridge says. Washington—Huawei’s most vocal opponent—first aired its suspicions about the Chinese tech giant in 2013, but Australia banned Huawei from its 5G rollout a month before the U.S. did. This year Canberra has continued to match Washington’s rhetoric against China.
A cargo ship heading for Tianjin, China is loaded with iron ore at Fortescue Metals Group Ltd.’s berth in Port Hedland in Western Australia in 2011. China, the world’s largest consumer of iron ore, gets 60% of its supply from Australia. Carla Gottgens—Bloomberg/Getty Images
In April, Australia advocated for an independent international investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Prime Minister Scott Morrison talked about imbuing the World Health Organization with powers similar to those of UN “weapon inspectors,” a suggestion that implied that Beijing had played an active role in the viral spread.
Canberra’s policy approach was too abrasive to gather allies, however, so the government pivoted instead to support a softer resolution brought by the EU to the World Health Authority, which governs the WHO. The resolution called for an independent, international “review” of the virus’ origin and didn’t target China specifically. When the resolution passed, Australia claimed victory; the Chinese embassy said the measure was laughable
“The draft resolution on COVID-19 to be adopted by the World Health Assembly is totally different from Australia’s proposal of an independent international review,” a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Australia told Reuters. “To claim the WHA’s resolution a vindication of Australia’s call is nothing but a joke.”
Beefing
China’s ambassador to Australia had earlier warned that if Canberra pursued an investigation into COVID-19, Chinese consumers might begin boycotting Australian imports. But, in the end, it was the Chinese government itself that targeted Australian goods.
On the day the WHA resolution passed, China imposed an 80% anti-dumping tariff on imports of Australian barley. Australia ships 70% of its barley to China. China banned beef imports from four Australian processing plants days earlier. Then in August, Beijing launched an anti-dumping probe into imports of Australian wine. China is the largest overseas market for Australian wine makers, importing $850 million worth of wine a year.
In the wake of Beijing’s tariffs and bans, Australian exporters have rushed to find alternative markets while Canberra stokes tensions. Australia blocked the sale of a Japanese-owned drinks subsidiary to a Chinese company, claiming the $430 million deal was “contrary to the national interest” in August.
“The Treasurer hasn’t made clear how [the deal] was contrary to the national interest,” says James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. Canberra maintains that it hasn’t taken punitive trade action against China. But now, Laurenceson says, “You do have to worry that we’re drifting towards a tit-for-tat trade war.”
Tit for tat
China’s trade war with the U.S. is projected to cost the American economy an estimated $316 billion through to the end of this year, with Beijing primarily targeting agricultural imports. The fallout of a trade war could be “catastrophic” for individual Australian companies. But, Laurenceson argues, it could be worse for Beijing.
China is the world’s largest consumer of iron ore, which it processes into steel to support its massive infrastructure projects. Roughly 60% of China’s iron ore supply is from Australia. In the first half of the year, Australia also became China’s No. 1 source for coking coal—used to heat smelting furnaces. Demand for the high-burning fuel surged 67%, despite the continued downturn in relations.
“That’s why Australia has more leverage in the relationship than a lot of narrative suggests,” says Shoebridge. China’s economic action against Australia has so far only targeted “discretionary” goods imports. The $57 billion business of iron ore, gas and coal exports—the bulk value of Australia’s exports to China—have remained untouched.
According to Shoebridge, Australia’s future approach to trade with China will seek to conflate economic and political goals into a single policy, rather than treating them as separate tracks. Such an approach, Shoebridge says, would be in line with “the way China operates.”
One example of that is Beijing’s requirement that foreign companies transfer technology to Chinese partners in order to operate in the domestic market. It was this “forced tech transfer” policy that really initiated the U.S.-China trade war, as Washington feared U.S. companies had given away their edge in tech.
The White House is now imitating the Chinese policy it initially fought against. That’s clear from President Donald Trump’s insistence that TikTok—a popular app owned by Beijing-based Bytedance—be sold to or possibly partner with an American firm to maintain its U.S. operations. It’s not unreasonable to think Australia will pivot in the same way.


fortune--2020-09-27--U.S. antitrust investigation of Google is coming to a head. Here’s what you need to know

Donald Trump is a master of hypnotism .
How he used the power on America—and then himself

Google’s search engine, one of the most-profitable businesses in history, is about to face its biggest challenge as the U.S. government readies an antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of crushing competition to protect and extend its monopoly.
After a 14-month investigation, the Justice Department is homing in on whether Google skews search results to favor its own products and whether it uses an iron fist over access to users to shut out rivals, according to people familiar with the matter.
Google, which controls about 90% of the online search market in the U.S., has long been a target of rivals that complain it’s used that power to snuff out competition across the internet. What started out as a college research project in the late 1990s now generates about $100 billion in highly-profitable revenue each year. The search engine decides the fates of thousands of businesses online and has funded Google’s expansion into email, online video, smartphone software, maps, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles and other forms of digital ads.
European competition regulators have fined Google billions of euros for breaking antitrust laws. But U.S. enforcers have left the company mostly untouched since the Federal Trade Commission closed a probe in early 2013 with no action. Now, Attorney General William Barr is on the cusp of what could be the biggest U.S. monopoly case since Microsoft Corp. was sued by the government more than two decades ago. Google’s shares were down about 1% Friday morning in New York. They have gained about 5% this year.
Barr has been a key ally in Donald Trump’s crackdown on technology giants. The U.S. president has railed against internet companies for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints online.
While some involved in the Google case expected it to be filed as soon as next week, that timing will likely be pushed back, possibly to the following week, according to two people familiar with the matter. State attorneys general and Justice Department lawyers have been discussing final preparations for the case this week in Washington. The people asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
Senior Justice Department officials met with Google representatives this week to discuss two prongs of the investigation: search bias and search distribution, according to one of the people. Search bias is the allegation that Google skews results to favor its own properties, such as a shopping service, travel bookings and local business listings.
Search distribution centers on agreements with device makers and other partners to provide Google search as a default to users. In 2018, Goldman Sachs estimated Google paid Apple Inc. $9 billion to get its search engine on Apple’s Safari web browser and other prime spots on Apple devices.
It’s impossible for small search engine competitors to compete with Google’s deep pockets and outbid it for valuable placements like Apple’s browser, according to Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive officer of DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search provider that has complained to the DOJ about Google.
During a recent congressional hearing, Google executive Don Harrison argued that the company doesn’t dominate the markets it operates in. Google may lead when it comes to general searches, but for product queries and other commercial searches consumers are more likely to start on Amazon.com Inc., he noted.
The Justice Department and states also are investigating Google’s conduct in the advertising-technology market, where Google owns many of the systems that deliver display ads across the web. Some Democratic attorneys general briefed on the case want the Justice Department to include ad-tech in the lawsuit and may file their own complaint after the November election, one of the people said. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Competitors have complained that Google funnels excess search marketing dollars to its display ad network. That extra money can account for large portions of digital publisher revenue, making them less likely to drop Google for a rival ad-tech provider.
U.S. investigators have asked detailed questions about how to limit Google’s power in the search market, according to DuckDuckGo. In Europe, regulators have forced Google to give consumers a choice over which search engine they use on Android phones.
“We’re pleased it seems like the DOJ — unlike any other government in the world — is going to finally address the elephant in the room: Google’s obvious, overwhelming, and anti-competitive dominance in search,” a spokesman for DuckDuckGo said. “Consumers would benefit from a world without search defaults, where they could easily choose their preferred search engine.”
Google has engaged in an array of practices aimed at maintaining its control over the search market and preventing competitors from gaining scale, said Gene Kimmelman, a senior advisor at Public Knowledge, which urged the Justice Department this summer to investigate Google’s conduct around search. Consumers have lost out as a result because rivals are effectively shut out from competing to build better search offerings, he said.
“Search is the fundamental motivator for the pattern of behavior by Google, and all of it appears designed to maintain a monopoly,” Kimmelman said.
A research paper published in June by the Omidyar Network, an organization that advocates for more aggressive antitrust enforcement against tech giants, outlined several scenarios where Google may have violated antitrust laws. The exclusive deal with Apple has helped solidify its monopoly by preventing competitors from reaching consumers, the paper argued.
Google created a similar effect with its Android mobile operating system and agreements that effectively forced handset makers to pre-install Google’s search engine and browser on their phones. Those restrictions made Google the default search service and further prevented rivals from gaining market share, according to the Omidyar paper. The EU also fined Google over this.
“This is a classic tale of a likely monopolization strategy premised on denying scale to rivals,” the paper said.
The allegations echo those made against Microsoft in 1998 when the Justice Department and a group of states sued the software maker for antitrust violations. Back then, Microsoft forced computer manufacturers to bundle its Windows operating system with its Internet Explorer browser, making it harder for rivals such as Netscape to compete. Even though other browsers didn’t pose a direct threat to Microsoft’s monopoly in computer operating systems, the risk was that they could one day grow to challenge its dominance.
The Justice Department could make a similar argument about Google today, said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former FTC chairman.
“The arguments about demanding exclusivity as a way of excluding rivals are arguments that were very successful in the Microsoft case,” he said.


fortune--2020-09-27--The best things I bought in September to make working and living at home easier

My quest for making pandemic life a little less taxing through “Order Confirmed” emails continues.
Courtesy of Apple
Bandwagon, I am here for you. In the pre-pandemic world, I liked having wired headphones as a signal that I was unavailable for conversations with random men who thought I might like to chat while at the gym, but since I’m no longer around strangers all that much, it was finally time to try wireless. And the AirPods Pro do not disappoint. I love that I can turn the noise canceling on and off: on for drowning out the window AC unit during Zoom calls and off for hearing traffic during a bike ride. I can’t wait to seamlessly move between devices with the iOS 14 upgrade.
After six months of sitting at a chair definitely not meant for 12-hour days, I treated myself to this adjustable office chair. I work at a counter-height table, so taller drafting chairs fit well. It’s nice that I can customize the fit to help my posture as much as possible—without breaking the bank. I’m noticing less pain, especially in my hips.
Courtesy of Nordstrom
The bloggers don’t lie: These pajamas are potentially the softest thing I’ve ever worn. I’ve already purchased one pair for a holiday gift. And if you want a different look, they also come in long sleeves and shorts. They do run big, so you should consider sizing down.
This was a basic need for my table-turned-desk, but there’s something about the clean white design that I find so delightful to look at. The circular shape with three USB plugs helps me plug in my many Apple devices—notorious for taking up too much space in power strips—without it overtaking my small work space.
I’m still on my pandemic skin care kick, but I think this will be the last new product I add for a while. This gel puts AHAs (alpha hydroxy acids) to work to make skin smoother and reduce wrinkles—which I definitely need after months of stress and screen time. It glides on so smoothly and gives a little bit of a tingle. I layer it in between retinol and moisturizer.
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
I originally purchased this as a birthday gift, but then I snagged a copy for myself, and I read it in just a few days. It’s the first time I’ve read a book where every sentence is cowritten, and it didn’t feel awkward at all. I felt so much of this book deeply, and I may have even cribbed a few phrases here and there for a recent maid of honor’s speech.


fortune--2020-09-27--We need a million more volunteers for COVID vaccine and drug trials. Can Harrison Ford convince you

We need a million more volunteers for COVID vaccine and drug trials. Can Harrison Ford convince you to sign up?

It was Ashton Kutcher’s idea, originally. The actor and technology company investor was talking recently with David Agus, M.D., CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine at USC, about a formidable challenge in the battle against COVID-19: recruiting enough volunteers for the many clinical studies needed to test experimental vaccines and therapies. Kutcher suggested an awareness campaign in which Americans who had already volunteered for a study record a video explaining why they’d done it. “Their unfiltered voices will offer a powerful testimony,” Agus recalls Kutcher saying, and that’s what we need to get the message out. “The vaccine effort isn’t about politics,” says Agus. “It’s simply about good science and civic duty and saving the lives of your loved ones and neighbors. Those who have volunteered for trials understand that—and can communicate that better than anyone.”
This straightforward notion has now been transformed into a striking public service announcement that’s being rolled out nationally. The 90-second PSA, narrated by Harrison Ford and produced by David Ellison’s Skydance Media in partnership with the National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Prevention Network, launched Friday on CBS, and is slated to air on other major television and cable networks as well. There are also shareable versions of the ad—which features a number of personal statements from clinical trials volunteers, designed for Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Hearkening back to President John F. Kennedy’s stirring call to action—“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—the new campaign urges Americans to volunteer for a clinical trial through COVID-19 Prevention Network’s registration platform, which is helping to find participants for all the major ongoing studies.
About 500,000 Americans have already registered to be potentially included in COVID clinical trials to date, but we’ll likely need a million more to sign up, says Agus, who is working closely with many of the international vaccine efforts. For context, the ongoing Phase 3 trials for just the five leading vaccine candidates—those being developed by Pfizer (with the German firm BioNTech), AstraZeneca (with Oxford University), Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax—require 174,000 study participants, according to their protocols. But in truth, they require many more volunteers than that merely to get the needed compositions of race, age, health status, and location—distributions that are necessary to ensure that the trial populations fairly represent the makeup of society at large.
Bio.org, a trade group for the biopharma industry, is currently tracking 188 vaccine candidates, 198 antiviral therapies, and 351 would-be treatments in various stages of development. Before any one of them can be proven safe and effective—and, in the United States at least, approved for use by the FDA—they would generally need to be vetted in human volunteers in two well-controlled studies. To defeat COVID, it’s likely that we’ll need several viable vaccines and therapies—the first, to prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from causing illness; the second, to treat the more serious infections that do occur. And that means we’ll need lots of volunteers to test them.
Why so many? For one reason, COVID vaccines will eventually be given not just to a confined group of patients with serious disease, but rather to billions of people around the world. In the U.S., most of the country’s 330 million people will need to be vaccinated in order to curtail the spread. That puts the bar for both safety and effectiveness incredibly high, says Agus.
While extremely safe overall, vaccines—as with any medicine—can affect different people in different ways. For any candidate COVID vaccine or therapy to truly demonstrate that it’s appropriate for global use, it will have to be tested in the very young and the very old, as well as in people with any number of pre-existing medical conditions. That’s no small number: According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), between 50 million and 129 million non-elderly Americans have a pre-existing health condition of some form.
It’s equally important that vaccines and other drugs be tested on people of different races and national origin. One study that examined 167 new drugs approved by the FDA between 2008 and 2013 found that roughly one in five acted differently in some racial or ethnic groups versus others. In some of the cases, the difference lay in the way the drug was absorbed, metabolized, or eliminated, which ultimately left more or less drug exposed in the body, depending on who took it; in others, it produced a different response; in still others, it did both.
And in the case of COVID, such differences in vaccine or drug interactions could conceivably have far more impact, given the huge disparity in disease outcomes witnessed so far. According to data posted by the CDC in August, Black Americans with COVID have a rate of hospitalization that’s 4.7 times higher than that for non-Hispanic whites, and a rate of death 2.1 times higher. Hispanic Americans and American Indians are also far more likely to get extremely ill from COVID, or die from it, than their white counterparts. Though much of this increased risk may be due to other underlying conditions more prevalent in those groups, there may as yet be other biological factors at work. That is all the more reason to make sure clinical trials include substantial numbers of Black and Latino volunteers—so that potential complications can be unearthed before any vaccine or drug is given to many millions of people.
But reports suggest that the opposite is happening in the COVID-related clinical trials already underway. As of late August, just one-fifth of those enrolled in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine studies, for instance, were Black or Hispanic, according to reporting by the Washington Post. And among those signing up for the COVID-19 Prevention Network’s Volunteer Screening Registry, the share of both groups combined was closer to 10%. (In the U.S. as a whole, for comparison, Blacks make up 13.4% of the population; Latinos, 18.%.) While the under-representation of minority groups in clinical trials is a longstanding problem, the scale of the challenge in the COVID era is at a whole new level.
Which is why the creators of the new PSA hope to bring their message to television networks with large numbers of Black viewers (including BET and the Oprah Winfrey Network) and to Spanish-speaking audiences (Telemundo, and Univision).
In addition to racial and ethnic diversity, says Agus, it’s important that the volunteer registry have people from all over the country (particularly in areas where the disease is spreading) and include those with a wide range of health conditions. Clinical trials are currently in progress at some 100 medical centers around the U.S., with studies typically asking volunteers to visit the research site 10 or times over one to two years. (The COVID-19 Prevention Network has a comprehensive and transparent FAQ here.)
In the case of the “blinded” vaccine trials, of course, participants will not know ahead of time whether they’ll get the experimental vaccine or a placebo. What they will know, however, is that they’re helping to bring this pandemic to an end.


fortune--2020-09-27--Donald Trump is a master of hypnotism. How he used the power on America—and then himself

Among other things, Donald Trump’s a potent hypnotist. So reveals Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, the most brilliantly mordant cartoon since Charles Addams left the building. Adams is also an author and a social media influencer. And, as he frequently points out, a hypnotist.
Adams presciently predicted Trump’s 2016 victory. He told Reason over a year before that election, “A lot of the things that the media were reporting as sort of random insults and bluster and just Trump being Trump looked to me like a lot of deep technique that I recognized from the fields of hypnosis and persuasion.” Now, Bob Woodward’s new book reports that Jared Kushner recommends Adams’s Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter as key to understanding Trump. The subtitle says it all.
I am recognized by the world’s leading hypnosis professional association, the 14,000-plus-member National Guild of Hypnotists, as an elite, top-ranked, nonclinical hypnotist. Like Adams, in recognizing Trump’s serious hypnotic power early on I, too, tipped my hat to this businessman-turned-politician.
But here’s my big reveal: Trump may be too gifted at hypnosis for his own good.
“Hypnosis” conjures visions of Svengali and The Manchurian Candidate. Dr. Eric Willmarth, past president of the Society of Psychological Hypnosis, once observed, “If you watch hypnosis on TV, the subject always ends up clucking like a chicken, being naked, or assassinating a President.” That’s just stage or Hollywood hypnosis. There was no Svengali. There was no Manchurian candidate.
Serious hypnosis isn’t kooky or spooky. What is it? Scientist, entrepreneur, and statesman Benjamin Franklin chaired a 1784 French Royal Commission investigating mesmerism, a precursor of hypnosis. The commission concluded that its power derives from the imagination, not “animal magnetism.” The best short definition of hypnosis was coined by the late Stanford psychology professor and hypnosis researcher Ernest Hilgard: “believed-in imagination.”
Trump is indeed a powerful hypnotist, with the ability to conjoin belief and imagination. He is so powerful that he may even have hypnotized the great Scott Adams into overlooking a key counterpoint. Trump, while hypnotizing the world, also has repeatedly hypnotized himself—sometimes to his great detriment.
Trump, after mesmerizing bankers and voters, entrances himself. In succumbing to self-hypnosis he is not quite unique.
Napoleon Bonaparte, another politically incandescent hypnotist, dominated the world’s imagination in his day. As reported by R.M. Johnston in The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon’s Life in His Own Words, on June 17, 1800, upon observing some of his enemy POWs cheering him, Bonaparte observed: “What a thing is imagination! Here are men who don’t know me, who have never seen me, but who only knew of me, and they are moved by my presence; they would do anything for me! And this same incident arises in all centuries and in all countries! Such is fanaticism! Yes, imagination rules the world.”
Trump, unique among his political rivals, also grasps that “imagination rules the world.” That said, believed-in imagination is powerful yet not all-powerful. Napoleon lasted only a decade on his conjured throne. Trump himself has a long history of succumbing to his own hypnosis, becoming overcome by his own believed-in imagination into overreaching and taking a painful fall after a dazzling rise. (In Trump’s case only to rise and fall and rise again.)
As Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote in their inimitable 1993 classic The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, “At first, The Donald was successful. Then he branched out and put his name on anything the banks would lend him money for. … What made him successful in the short term is exactly what caused him to fail in the long term.” One chapter is subtitled “Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.” That’s a deft paraphrase of an old Greek mythic principle: Oblos (great wealth) leads to hubris (pride), inevitably followed by the goddess Nemesis (retribution).
Could Trump’s superpower, hypnosis, beat Biden’s superpower, empathy? Quite possibly. Consider the enduring popularity of the many beloved imaginary rascals like Odysseus, Rhett Butler, Tom Sawyer, and Harold Hill. Gifted mavericks can also radiate charm. They can live charmed lives.
Until, that is, a maverick hypnotizes himself into believing his own too-good-to-be-true promises.
Trump’s hypnotic superpower, turned on the world, generated spectacular successes for himself. When then he has succumbed to his own hypnotic power it has led to a spectacular fall. Trump uses his hypnotic superpower to dominate the imagination of us lesser mortals, propelling himself to monumental successes. Then he hypnotizes himself into ignoring Ovid’s cautionary: “Fear the vengeful gods … and Nemesis, her inexorable wrath!”
Will Donald Trump succumb to self-hypnosis yet again? Well—imagination rules the world.
Ralph Benko is a former Reagan White House deputy general counsel, author of The Capitalist Manifesto, and chairman of the Capitalist League.


fortune--2020-09-28--The funding gap between Black- and white-led organizations is clear—and alarming

Following the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, donations have poured into Black-led organizations and groups dedicated to racial equity. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, for example, received more than 1.1 million individual donations in the month after Floyd’s death. Higher Heights for America, which works to build the political power of Black women, said that it experienced 10 times its regular number of donations over a two-week period following the Floyd tragedy.
This wave of funding is much needed. For too long, organizations supporting Black lives have been unable to generate as much funding as white-led organizations. Now, there finally seems to be the recognition that this gap is real—and deeply problematic.
I’m hopeful that this marks a turning point in philanthropy. In January, I became the first Black leader of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which opened its doors in 2003. Every day, we fight to dismantle systemic racism and bolster policies that treat all people fairly, regardless of the color of their skin. We, like many Black-led organizations around the country, are up against deeply ingrained racist systems—and need funding to keep up the fight.
The funding gap between Black-led organizations and white-led organizations is clear—and alarming. One study of more than 140 nonprofits found that white-led groups had budgets that were 24% larger than those led by people of color. Groups led by Black women received less money than those run by white women and Black men. And the unrestricted net assets (donations that can be used for any purpose) of Black-led groups were a whopping 76% smaller than those of white-led groups.
There are many reasons for this. For one, many donations are based on connections. Leaders of color traditionally have fewer relationships with influential organizations and people. And breaking into the philanthropy community is difficult because new leaders often lack the bandwidth and experience to cultivate relationships with potential funders.
New leaders are also generally stretched thin adjusting to internal challenges—such as staffing and funding deficits—and lack the resources to engage in necessary outreach. In a study of nonprofit executives conducted by the Building Movement Project, half of executive directors and CEOs of color reported a “lack of relationships with funding sources,” compared to 33% of their white counterparts.
This funding gap is also fueled by racial biases—whether intentional or not. And the vast majority of family foundations don’t use diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and goals to guide their giving.
As a result, Black-led organizations need to devote more time and energy to generating funding. Every minute spent on that means less time and resources toward fighting for the causes we’re trying to help. And if we’re making less of an impact, that means groups and individuals are less likely to donate.
The challenges don’t stop there. My organization, like so many others, faces a difficult reality: We are a local group asking for funding in a fundamentally conservative state. People in progressive cities donate to their local organizations and well-known national groups. But it’s difficult to get such funders to donate to a group in another state. It’s a sad irony, given that Mississippi is one of the states most in need of progressive allyship and policies. We rank as one of the worst in health, life spans, education, and more.
At long last, sufficient funding is finally starting to come to Black-led organizations. We must keep this up—and ensure that all groups fighting for racial equity have the resources they need to make a difference. America, as the protests die down, don’t forget we must continue equitable and inclusive philanthropy. And yes, that means directing support to Black-led social justice organizations.
Vangela M. Wade is president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice.


fortune--2020-09-28--Uber shares soar as London court gives license go-ahead

Uber’s shares rose more than 10% at one point on Monday in premarket trading after the ride-hailing firm won the right to continue operating in London.
Uber has for years been in a tussle with Transport for London (TfL), the British capital’s transport regulator. It had its license withdrawn in 2017, over issues such as insufficient background checks for drivers, a failure to report serious criminal offenses, and its use of underhanded tactics when dealing with regulators. Uber won an appeal against that decision, but in late 2019 TfL again declined to renew its license over “a pattern of failures.”
The company appealed again and was able to continue operating while the appeal was ongoing. And on Monday it won, with the Westminster Magistrates Court granting it its license to operate in London.
In his ruling, Judge Tan Ikram said Uber, which claims to have over 45,000 drivers in the city, was now “fit and proper” to hold a London private-hire vehicle operator’s license “despite their historical failings.” He said Uber had addressed outstanding areas of concern, such as its driver vetting and its communications with TfL.
“There is nothing more important than the safety of the riders, drivers and the cities we serve,” Uber said in a blog post celebrating the decision. “Over the past four years we have rolled out a number of new in-app features, strengthening our systems and processes and partnering with safety organisations on important campaigns.”
However, the London Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA)—a long-standing opponent of Uber—was less welcoming.
“Today’s decision is a disaster for London,” it said in a statement. “Uber has demonstrated time and time again that it simply can’t be trusted to put the safety of Londoners, its drivers, and other road users above profit.”
A key problem that TfL had identified was that of drivers doctoring the documents and identifying photos that they gave Uber in order to use the platform. As the LTDA complained after Monday’s judgment came down, Uber’s own witnesses had admitted the problem was not escalated internally soon enough, and Uber had given TfL the impression that the issue had been addressed when it had not.
However, Ikram concluded, Uber had not attempted a cover-up.
In a statement shared with Fortune, TfL backed that up, saying, “We note the Court has found that Uber is now fit and proper to hold a private hire operator’s licence in London,” it said. “As a result of our decision in November last year Uber has implemented a number of changes to improve passenger safety and address the issues we identified. This 18 month licence with a number of conditions allows us to closely monitor Uber’s adherence to the regulations and to swiftly take action if they fail to meet the required standards.”


fortune--2020-09-28--3 key rulings are a window into the views of Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett

After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the White House is moving ahead with a nominee to fill the open seat. On Friday night, President Trump nominated to the Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago.
Coney Barrett is already a Trump judicial nominee; the President appointed her to her current seat in 2017 with a 55-43 Senate confirmation vote. A former clerk for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Coney Barrett is known as an originalist and for her career in academia.
Subscribe to The Broadsheet , a daily brief for and about the world’s most powerful women, delivered free to your inbox.
A few specific cases—and her rulings and dissents related to them, as highlighted by SCOTUS Blog—also shed light on how Coney Barrett would approach her purview on the nation’s highest bench.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. v. Commissioner, Indiana State Department of Health, et al.
This case, colloquially referred to as Indiana, is one of two times the issue of abortion has come before Coney Barrett during her tenure on the 7th circuit.
The suit concerned an Indiana law that barred abortions performed for reasons related to sex, race, or disability—like if a woman chose to end a pregnancy after learning her fetus had Down syndrome.
When the case made its way in front of Coney Barrett, she was being asked to consider a separate portion of the law concerning the disposal of fetal remains (other Republican judicial appointees had decided other questions about the law, coming down in opposition to the legislation). However, Coney Barrett chose to add an additional unsolicited opinion, writing that “none of the Court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race, and other attributes of children.”
The unprompted opinion suggests the strength of Coney Barrett’s opposition to abortion rights.
Doe v. Purdue University
On a three-woman panel of judges, Coney Barrett in 2019 wrote a ruling in Doe v. Purdue University that “made it easier for students accused of sexual assault to challenge universities’ handling of their cases,” reports the Washington Post.
The case considered a lawsuit over a sexual assault allegation in which a woman identified as Jane Doe accused a man identified as John Doe of assault; John Doe had been found guilty of sexual violence by an internal university ruling and was expelled from the school. John Doe sued Purdue over his expulsion and the loss of his scholarship; Coney Barrett’s ruling determined that his case could move forward and that he may have been discriminated against because of his gender. “It is plausible that [university officials] chose to believe Jane because she is a woman and to disbelieve John because he is a man,” the judge wrote.
Coney Barrett came to the conclusion that John Doe could have been discriminated against because of his gender because of the Obama Administration’s guidance instructing universities to take sexual assault on campus seriously, according to Emily Martin, VP for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center; by the time of Coney Barrett’s opinion in this case, many conservative activists had objected to that Obama-era guidance. The connection Coney Barrett makes in her argument provides some insight into how she views issues of both gender discrimination and sexual assault.
“The idea that taking sexual misconduct seriously suggests sex discrimination against men,” Martin says, “is a disturbing way of using the language of sex discrimination as a sword against efforts to address sexual assault.”
Kanter v. Barr
The 2019 case Kanter v. Barr concerned gun rights. Rickey Kanter, who owned an orthopedic footwear company, was convicted of mail fraud over false representation of his product. After that conviction, as a felon, he was deemed ineligible to own a gun; he sued over that limitation, arguing that as a non-violent felon the restriction violated his Second Amendment rights.
The majority decided against Kanter, but Coney Barrett dissented. The judge wrote the restriction on a felon owning a gun was too broad—that a felony makes someone eligible to have their Second Amendment right taken away, not that they automatically lose that right. Conviction for nonviolent crimes should not lose a citizen their right to bear arms, the judge said.
The dissent does not seem to reflect a willingness on Coney Barrett’s part to restore other kinds of rights—like voting rights—to those who are convicted of felonies. She has argued that voting and jury service are rights for a smaller group of “virtuous citizens,” while gun rights should only be restricted based on whether or not a person is dangerous.


fortune--2020-09-28--Fans of K-Pop’s BTS are mobilizing on a new platform: the stock market

After disrupting a Trump rally, raising millions of dollars for Black Lives Matter, and drawing the ire of the Chilean government, Korean pop music (K-pop) fans appear to be deploying their organizing and fundraising powers in the stock market.
On Monday, Big Hit Entertainment, the management label behind the K-pop supergroup BTS, said in a regulatory filing that its October IPO will be priced at the top end of its set range. The offering will be priced at 135,000 South Korean won ($115), which is the upper limit of the 105,000 won ($89) to 135,000 won ($115) price range the company proposed earlier this month.
Big Hit will be offering roughly 7.1 million new shares in the highly anticipated debut, which Big Hit says may raise the company as much as $820 million. Big Hit’s IPO is set to be South Korea’s largest stock offering in the past three years, and it may help continue a hot streak for entertainment firms debuting on South Korea’s exchange.
In early September, shares for computer game publisher Kakao Games surged to 30% higher than its initial offering price after it started trading, though its shares have since dropped.
The news about Big Hit Entertainment’s offering price appeared to encourage investors on Monday, as stocks for listed South Korean record labels and entertainment companies made strong gains. Record label YG Entertainment’s stock rose 11.98%, while the JYP Entertainment label jumped 9.94%, and entertainment company SM Entertainment clicked up 6.69%.
Big Hit Entertainment’s expected success reflects the growing global reach of BTS and South Korean pop music, but for many retail investors getting a piece of the action isn’t just about betting on its corporate performance.
Members of the ARMY, the self-ascribed title for BTS fans, told Reuters last week that buying stock in Big Hit Entertainment was a sign of their devotion to the group.
“I don’t know about stock valuations,” Kim Seo-hyeon told Reuters. The 12-year-old BTS fan in Seoul had asked her parents to buy Big Hit Entertainment stock. “I know my oppas [BTS band members] are rich but I hope me buying shares make them even richer, so that they can buy something nice to wear, that would make me happy.”
One fan even said that he would be taking out a personal loan in order to bid for stock in the company.
Upon Big Hit Entertainment’s October debut, the ARMY seems poised to move markets.


fortune--2020-09-28--The U.S. just undercut China’s best shot at semiconductor independence

The U.S. has reportedly placed China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, SMIC, on a list of foreign companies that U.S. suppliers need special permission to work with. The move is the latest in Washington’s attempts to wield U.S. dominance in semiconductors as a weapon over China.
Beijing is rushing to create its own semiconductor supply line and, as China’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturer, SMIC represents its best shot at chip independence. But news of the ban shows how vulnerable the company remains. SMIC’s Hong Kong–listed shares plummeted as much as 7.9% on Monday, after news of the ban broke on Saturday.
SMIC, for its part, says the restrictions haven’t happened yet.
“As of the date of this announcement, the company has not received such official information,” SMIC said in a statement on Sunday, noting that it has seen media reports on the U.S. restrictions but had yet to be notified by the Commerce Department directly. A spokesperson for SMIC confirmed Monday they had yet to receive any “confirmation” of new export restrictions.
Subscribe to Eastworld for weekly insight on what’s dominating business in Asia, delivered free to your inbox.
According to media reports, the Commerce Department wrote to representatives of the U.S. semiconductor industry on Friday, stating that exporting products to SMIC could “pose an unacceptable risk of diversion to a military end use.” Because of that risk, exporters of certain equipment will have to obtain a special license before selling supplies to SMIC. The Commerce Department didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for comment before publication.
In its statement, SMIC refuted the claims and said it “provides services solely for civilian and commercial end-users.” But independent market analyst Richard Windsor notes that one of SMIC’s major shareholders is Datang Telecom—a company that supplies technology to the People’s Liberation Army.
“In my opinion, the fact that Datang Telecom is a shareholder with a seat on the board provides a fairly strong link to the military, which seems to contradict SMIC’s own statements,” Windsor said.
Speculation that SMIC would be the next target of the Trump administration’s export restrictions began in early September. The White House has already used such means to target numerous Chinese companies, including telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies, which Washington perceives as a threat to national security.
Huawei was initially placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019. U.S. companies need to acquire permission from the department before dealing with any company on the Entity List.
According to Reuters, SMIC has not been placed on the Entity List. Instead, the Commerce Department has introduced a specific regulation limiting the export of some technology to SMIC.
In May, the Commerce Department made a similar special ruling for Huawei, after it was added to the Entity List. The regulation prohibited any company from selling chips to Huawei if U.S. technology is used at any stage of production. That ban was a blow for SMIC, which uses American-made equipment to manufacture chips for Huawei. Under the ban, SMIC could no longer serve Huawei, which is its largest customer by sales.
“We believe a ban on SMIC is only part of a greater Sino-American technological war,” said Morningstar equity analyst Phelix Lee. “More Chinese companies in the supply chain are at risk of being banned.”


fortune--2020-09-28--Fortune’s latest list celebrates the startups tackling society’s big problems

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
This morning, Fortune is launching an exciting new list—the Impact 20—that shows how profit and purpose can be harnessed into a powerful combination. Like our Change the World list, the Impact 20 focuses on companies making measurable progress addressing social issues as part of their core strategy. While Change the World focuses primarily on large companies, the Impact 20 celebrates venture- and private-equity-backed startups tackling some of society’s most vexing problems.
This inspiring list is worth spending some time with, and I don’t want to be the spoiler. But a couple of themes clearly emerge.
First, education and upskilling figure large on the list. The pandemic has both underscored the weakness of many existing online education programs, and also intensified the need for upskilling by accelerating technological and digital change. So it’s good to see some creative startups focused on what’s a rapidly growing problem. A shout out to Tom Davidson, CEO of EverFi and a member of the Fortune CEO Initiative, for making the Impact 20.
AI and robotics are also, not surprisingly, big themes for the socially-focused startup crowd this year. So is the environment. Amp Robotics is training robots to sort through trash and separate recyclables. Another winner, TreeDots, is helping reduce food waste in Southeast Asia by enabling suppliers to unload excess inventory to grocers and consumers at a discount—addressing hunger and reducing methane emissions at the same time.
Kudos to Fortune editor Matt Heimer who oversaw the rigorous vetting that led to this new list. And thanks to TPG for sponsoring. TPG played no role in the selection process, but a few companies backed by its Rise Fund earned places on the list.
At Fortune, we strongly believe that focusing the power of capitalism on social problems has a big payoff—for both investors and society. We are glad to see so many entrepreneurs proving us right!
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Trump taxes
The New York Times dropped a bombshell last night with an investigative report about President Trump's taxes. It seems Trump, a billionaire, paid $750 in income tax during the year of his election, and the same amount in his first year in office. In 10 of the previous 15 years, he paid no income tax, apparently because of massive losses racked up by his businesses. He has $300 million in loans coming due within the next several years, and is being audited over a $72.9 million tax refund he claimed and might have to pay back, with interest. Fake news, says the President. New York Times
TikTok ban
The TikTok ban has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, meaning U.S. downloads and updates of ByteDance's popular video app can continue for now. TiKTok's legal team argued at an unusual Sunday hearing that the ban was irrational, as ByteDance is still trying to strike the divestiture deal that Trump demanded in order not to ban the app. Fortune
Nikola designs
Nikola's wild ride continues; now it's reported that founder Trevor Milton got the company's truck designs from a third party, rather than developing them himself in his basement as previously claimed. The Nikola One truck is at the center of a legal battle between Nikola and Tesla, in which Tesla alleges Nikola can't protect its designs because they did not originate from the company itself. Financial Times
China coal
China will have to phase out coal-fired power by around 2050 if it is to meet its newly-self-imposed goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. Reminder: China is the world's biggest carbon emitter, and is still building new coal-fired power stations. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
One million
The novel coronavirus has claimed its millionth human life, according to official figures (the actual tally is probably higher). AFP has an interesting piece looking at Wuhan, the likely origin of the pandemic, but a place where there have been no new recorded cases since May. "Everyone in Wuhan feels at ease," one media worker told the agency. AFP
School risk
European schools have been going back to in-person learning, and the results have been better than many expected—yes, there are some coronavirus outbreaks, but nothing to suggest schools are a particularly risky environment. That could change in winter, though, as schools are forced to close their windows. Washington Post
Trade war
China is inching towards another trade war, this time with Australia. There has recently been a concerning decline in trade relations between the countries, and now $235 billion in annual trade is at threat. Fortune
Trump hypnotism
President Trump is a master of hypnotism, former Reagan White House deputy general counsel (and elite hypnotist) Ralph Benko writes in an unusual piece for Fortune: "Trump, unique among his political rivals, also grasps that 'imagination rules the world.' That said, believed-in imagination is powerful yet not all-powerful…Could Trump’s superpower, hypnosis, beat Biden’s superpower, empathy?" Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-09-28--Investors look to buck a four-week losing streak, sending global stocks higher

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning. There’s plenty of green on the screens as investors shake off COVID fears, election jitters and the headwinds that come from a strong dollar.
Let’s see where investors are putting their money.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are gaining in afternoon trading, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng up 1% .
are gaining in afternoon trading, with up . Ban averted . A U.S. District Court granted an 11th-hour reprieve to TikTok owner ByteDance, blocking a Trump Administration ban on the video-sharing platform that was to go into effect mere hours ago.
. A U.S. District Court granted an 11th-hour reprieve to owner ByteDance, blocking a on the video-sharing platform that was to go into effect mere hours ago. Meanwhile, the U.S. imposed export restrictions on China’s biggest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. It’s not quite as restrictive as the sanctions slapped on Huawei, but adds loads of red tape to any U.S. firm that wants to do business with SMIC. Shares were down 5% on the news.
Europe
The European bourses were mostly higher out of the gates with Germany’s Dax up 1.7% at the open.
were mostly higher out of the gates with Dax up at the open. It’s crunch time this week in the Brexit talks as both sides meet tomorrow to try to salvage a trade deal. Judging by the dismal performance of the pound sterling and FTSE , investors have already said goodbye to Britain.
as both sides meet tomorrow to try to salvage a trade deal. Judging by the dismal performance of the and , investors have already said goodbye to Britain. The stakes are high for both sides to get a deal done. According to a German economic research center, EU companies that export to the U.K. could see 700,000 jobs vanish in a no-deal scenario.
U.S.
U.S. futures are pointing to another solid open. That’s after the Dow and S&P 500 secured a fourth consecutive losing week last week, the longest such slide in over a year. (In that respect, September has been worse than March.)
are pointing to another solid open. That’s after the and secured a last week, the longest such slide in over a year. (In that respect, September has been worse than March.) Chris Harvey, Wells Fargo’s head of equities strategy, is advising clients against putting any new money into stocks. He thinks America’s COVID situation and the threat of a contested election are two very real risks. “In a contested election, we can see 10% downside to the equity market,” he told CNBC.
and the threat of a are two very real risks. “In a contested election, we can see to the equity market,” he told CNBC. Google shares are flat in pre-market trading this morning. That’s as Attorney General William Barr is believed to be close to opening the biggest antitrust investigation in the past two decades into a U.S. company over, among other things, Google’s search dominance.
Elsewhere
Gold is down, trading below $1,860/ounce .
is down, trading below . The dollar is down; no surprise there with equities climbing.
is down; no surprise there with equities climbing. Crude is off, with Brent trading around $42/barrel.
***
The I-word, revisited
One of the wackiest things about pandemic economics is the task of making sense of inflation. The consumer (particularly those who’ve gone shopping for a bicycle recently) thinks everyday prices are out of control, while economists fret we’re closer to deflation than inflation. Much of the eurozone, in fact, went into the deflation zone last month.
Despite U.S. CPI sitting at a meager 1.3%, investors too are pretty concerned about inflation. There are plenty of reasons for anxiety. Record deficit spending, a monster COVID case load and super-easy monetary policy are text-book indicators for rising inflation. In normal times, when prices rise, the Fed jumps in and tries to cool the economy down by raising interest rates. And higher rates tend to depress stock prices.
In a Sept. 25 research note, Goldman Sachs tried to put investors’ minds at ease by offering a bit of advice on how to think about your portfolio, should prices begin to rise.
Firstly, they think rising prices would be a good thing for equities. The Fed, as we now know, will let inflation of more than 2% run hotter than normal. Translation: there’s virtually no risk of a rate hike for a few more years. With that risk out of the way, Goldman thinks “rising inflation will support equity returns in the near term.”
They continue: “From a fundamental standpoint, rising inflation lifts S&P 500 earnings. Inflation is positively correlated with earnings because rising prices translate into faster nominal revenue growth. Although input costs also rise, the boost to nominal sales more than offsets inflation-driven margin compression. All else equal, a 100 bp increase in average annual core CPI relative to our baseline assumption would boost our 2021 S&P 500 EPS forecast of $170 by around $1/share.”
Over the past 50 years, Goldman calculates, sales growth outstrips higher input costs to deliver higher profits in times of higher prices.
Of course, some sectors fare better as prices rise.
As you can see from the chart above, some of the most battered sectors of 2020—financials and energy—have the highest upside to inflationary pressures.
The main drawback to this analysis is that inflation has been highly inconsistent. Food prices are sky-high while energy prices are in the dumps. That’s unlikely to change any time soon, depressing, very likely, the profits for Big Oil for the foreseeable future.
But one thing is clear: investors (and borrowers) don’t have to worry about interest rates any time soon. And they probably shouldn’t fret about inflation any time soon, either.
***
Postscript
Rome, famously, is perched upon a series of hills that roll up along either side of the Tiber. Our place is on one such hill situated between two parks, which is convenient for dog owners, and their dogs.
On our morning or afternoon walk, Scilla has a choice of running around a large park attached to the Basilica of Saint Paul (downhill), or a smaller park (uphill) that was built atop a series of early-Christian catacombs. Most archaeologists would frown at this, but it’s Rome. The ancient city under our feet is vast, and rather than dig the whole place up and turn it into a major open-air museum, the modern-day Romans instead decided to pave over most of it and put up apartment complexes and businesses.
Every once in a while, the old city exposes itself and we get an up-close look at how our previous neighbors lived. This is true of the small park up the hill, locally known as the parco di Commodilla, named after the third-century Christian martyr. The ancient Christians dug into the volcanic tufo rock here an extensive warren of catacombs. And the park sits on one of the most significant pieces of those catacombs.
You used to be able to book a visit to the Commodilla catacombs to see the famous 4th Century mural depiction of a bearded Christ. But it’s been mostly off-limits for years thanks to budget cuts and larger local issues with managing the city’s historical legacy.
In recent years, the outlines of the catacomb structure have been emerging from the soil. The rocky remains of an old wall create a kind of bench. Today, Roman teenagers plop down on the smooth rocky surface and take selfies. Scilla too hops on and off the low wall, following the scent of other dogs.
When the girls were young, we used to take them to the other side of the park, where they could play on the slide and shimmy up a tall, rocket-ship-like platform. Now, I’m on the other side, with the dog owners.
Whenever I enter the park, I’m always conscious I’m stepping into a special place—sacred ground, really. That moment of reflection soon fades. The dog wants to be free of its leash and bound around in the grass with the other dogs just as the girls wanted to break free of my hand to commandeer the playground toys.
These days, the girls sometimes accompany me on the walks with Scilla. I often point out how the ancient ruins are becoming more visible, but the girls couldn’t care less. They just want to run around with the dog.
Which makes sense. It’s a park, after all.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Multiplier effect. When the book—or, heck, film—about this wacky 2020 bull market gets written (agents, let's talk!), the day trading retail army will land a starring role. And when it does, there will probably be reference to this research from two academics from Harvard University and the University of Chicago. The duo found that individual investors have an outsized impact on the markets. Every day-trader dollar invested is worth five, their theory goes.
Mean reversion. In investing parlance, that's the tendency of stock and bond prices to, as Fortune's Shawn Tully explains, "return to their long-term norms." Tully is talking here about, yep, tech stocks. The biggest of big-cap tech stocks have fallen 16% so far this month. And, thanks to the forces of mean reversion, they almost certainly have further to fall. Here's why.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
Quote of the day
We see the U.K. as a value trap... Valuations might be attractive, but fundamentals are not.
That's Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors, who sums up why global investors have soured on U.K. equities. I ran the numbers, and found London's FTSE is trading this year like none of its peers, but rather like an emerging market index. Emerging markets are highly volatile. But time your EM investment right, and the returns can be impressive. Nobody sees that kind of upside in the once mighty FTSE. Here's why.


fortune--2020-09-28--Airline executives say there’s less than 1% risk of catching COVID-19 on a flight—and some pandemic-

Airline executives say there’s less than 1% risk of catching COVID-19 on a flight—and some pandemic-era changes are here to say

Chief executive officers and executives from every major American airline spoke this week at the Skift Global Forum, a virtual conference focused on the travel industry and—this year—its stunted rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic.
With only days remaining before the Oct. 1 deadline to extend Washington’s payroll support program, which has granted the sector $25 billion in bailouts since March, the tone was generally more urgent than optimistic.
“I’ve been through 9/11, through the financial crisis, through restructuring, through our merger with US Airways and the Max grounding,” said Maya Leibman, executive vice president and chief information officer of American Airlines, “and I can say with certainty that this one takes the cake, in terms of crises.”
United Air Holdings CEO Scott Kirby warned that furloughs stemming from the expiration of payroll support could result in lapsed licenses for pilots and other certification-reliant staff, hampering the ability to “go from 50 to 100 overnight” when the lights turn back on. He added that 100,000 jobs were currently at risk and said things aren’t likely to improve significantly “until there’s a widespread vaccine.”
Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, made long-term predictions: A considerable portion of business travel will be lost forever—but so will change fees.
Still, JetBlue Airways sees light at the end of the tunnel and says it may not require a vaccine or even extensive testing schemes. According to company President Joanna Geraghty, research by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health could do a great deal for consumer confidence. The institution, she said, has found that the combined benefits of indoor mask wearing and HEPA air filtration systems yield a “less than 1% risk of transmitting Covid in an aircraft.”
The Harvard study, sponsored by the aviation industry, appears to be ongoing; the CDC, meanwhile, released preliminary data this week showing that 11,000 people in the U.S. have been potentially exposed to the virus on flights.
Convincing travelers that it’s safe to fly could be a five-year battle, says the International Air Transport Association. However long it takes, one thing is clear: Aviation has the potential to return in better shape than before. Here’s how these carriers plan to do it, as summarized from their four panels.
Middle Seats and Travel Corridors
Delta’s Bastian said that with 50% of domestic flights operational and running at around 30% of normal domestic passenger volume, the airline is seeing record-high customer service satisfaction scores. Before the pandemic, the average Net Promoter Score (NPS) for airlines was 44, on a scale of -100 to 100, measuring customer satisfaction via willingness to recommend a company’s product or services. In August, Delta’s score was 75, which Bastian credits to the airline’s commitment to mask compliance, electrostatic fogging, and blocking middle seats.
“All those steps are making a big difference in consumer confidence,” said Bastian. “Honestly, if you had asked me what the odds of Delta ever hitting a 75 in NPS, I’d say that’d be hard to imagine.”
The feedback indicates that some pandemic-borne policies may be worth holding on to. Nixed change fees may be a permanent change, along with the new antimicrobial TSA bins Delta airline introduced in five hubs earlier this month. “We’re trying to take what we can learn from this to make sure [that the positive feedback] continues on in the future,” Bastian said.
JetBlue’s Geraghty, meanwhile, suggested pivoting away from “perception based” policies such as blocking the middle seat—which the airline has promised to do on every flight through Oct. 15. She called instead for an awareness campaign, driven by Harvard’s research, that would establish flying to be as safe as a trip to the grocery store.
United’s Kirby agreed: “The facts are stunning how safe an airplane is.” But he doesn’t see demand rebounding until a vaccine is widely adopted, unless airlines can “get past the bureaucratic finish line” when it comes to testing.
“We’re close to establishing a travel corridor between New York and London,” said the United CEO. “If we can do that in one place and inspire confidence, we can open up other parts of the world.”
Shrinking Costs More Than Services
Kirby said United is burning through $25 million a day—“better than most our competitors”—while operating in “an apocalyptic environment.” He’s making up some deficit by growing the cargo flying business and shifting routes away from popular business hubs to domestic leisure destinations that have good connectivity, such as Denver, all while fading the airline’s maligned $200 change fees.
“Right now, we’re flying about 45% of our schedule—we’re a smaller airline—and this is probably the size we’ll be for the next 15 months,” he explained. The benefit to consumers, if not to United’s bottom line, is that for as long as passenger loads remain low, so will airfares. (In July, the airline brought back beverage and snack service to all its cabins, though such premium perks as Saks Fifth Avenue bedding in business are still off the table.)
JetBlue is also focusing on affordability and convenience. “The benefit of being a smaller airline is being very nimble, adding and taking down route coverage as demand fluctuates,” said Geraghty, who has been overseeing an expansion into Newark Liberty International Airport that includes Mint premium service to the West Coast. “We’re doing what JetBlue does best: increasing service at fares customers can afford,” she said.
American Airlines, meanwhile, is compensating for reduced cabin staff and meal service by doubling down on technology. New features for the airline include touchless kiosks that use QR codes to bring check-in to an “applet” on your phone, the ability to print bag tags by scanning your mobile boarding pass, and adopting facial recognition technology to sidestep the need for some forms of ID verification.
Less glitzy but maybe even more useful, said Liebman: a mobile wallet feature that enables easy cancellations, voucher redemptions, and refund processing.
“The focus on clean, safe, touchless experiences will only continue to grow, post-pandemic,” she explained.
Sustainability and Diversity
Each of the four executives voiced full-throated support for the idea that sustainability and social justice will define business far longer than the pandemic, and outlined commitments that may surprise the average flier—particularly at a time when cash is not exactly flowing.
All of JetBlue’s domestic aircraft were carbon neutral as of August, said Geraghty, who said the move is a first step. “Sustainable fuels have a ways to go. Air traffic control reform. Efficient air space. They’re all ways to improve the aviation industry’s footprint.”
While the company is proud that 55% of its crew represent diverse backgrounds, Geraghty expressed a desire to see more inclusive recruitment at the company’s top ranks, as well as within the company’s network of suppliers, airport restaurants, and other terminal-based businesses.
“As we rebuild our companies from the pandemic, we have to make sure we take everyone forward with us,” said Delta’s Bastian, who said 40% of his 75,000 employees are people of color, with 30% of them in positions of leadership. “Governments have a hard time with a lot of this, but businesses have an opportunity to pull people together,” he added.
Of the four airlines, Delta is ranked among the top 10% of companies in its size for diversity by Comparably, a workplace transparency tool, while American Airlines ranks in the top 50%. United ranks in the bottom 35%, JetBlue in the bottom 10%.
American’s Leibman talked up its “hackathons,” which seek to identify and employ talent from historically black colleges and universities, along with efforts to get young females interested in STEM education to create pipelines of diversity from early on.
Kirby similarly praised United’s Aviate program, which trains pilots from under-represented backgrounds, and he decried carbon offsets as a viable solution. “We were pitched one where they took your money, burned down a rainforest, and replaced it with palm oil plantations,” said Kirby. He also pointed at air traffic reform—which would create more direct and efficient routes—as a critical avenue of exploration.
“We are part of a global society, whether we like it or not,” he said, “and we have to solve global problems—not just one a time.”


fortune--2020-09-28--China’s ambitious new climate goals mean it must completely phase out coal by 2050

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement last week that China aims to hit peak carbon emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060 led environmental analysts to question how China would pull off the feats given its heavy reliance on coal power.
On Sunday, the Energy Environment Economy Research Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing offered a partial answer. China, which currently consumes half the world’s coal, must phase out coal-fired power by around 2050 in order to achieve Xi’s climate targets, according to a report from the university.
The coal reduction figure was one of several steps outlined in the report that China could take to reach its new climate goals, which analysts noted were ambitious but vague.
Subscribe to Eastworld for weekly insight on what’s dominating business in Asia, delivered free to your inbox.
The report, which was presented in a webinar by Zhang Xiliang, director of the Energy Environment Economy Research Institute, also projected that China’s annual carbon emissions will rise slightly between 2025 and 2030 before dropping sharply from 9 billion tons in 2035 to 3 billion tons by 2050 and 200 million by 2060. China is currently the world’s No. 1 carbon emitter.
Nonfossil fuels as a share of total energy demand in China will jump from 20% in 2025 to 84% in 2060. In 2018, nonfossil fuels made up around 15% of energy consumption in China, and coal made up 58%, according to a review of China’s energy market by the energy multinational BP. Zhang said China needs to increase the use of wind, solar, and nuclear power to offset the decreasing use of fossil fuels, since electricity demand in China will continue to increase, but he didn’t say exactly how to achieve that tradeoff.
Coal’s share of total energy consumption in China has been gradually decreasing over the past 10 years, but provincial governments continue to approve new coal plant construction projects. And an analysis by researchers at the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that China’s COVID-19 stimulus plans allotted three times as much money to fossil fuel projects as they did to low-carbon energy projects.
The Energy Environment Economy Research Institute works with the Chinese government’s ecology and environment ministry to project long-term climate goals, according to Bloomberg, but it’s not an official government organization. China’s government has not yet released an official plan for achieving Xi’s climate targets.
Environmental analysts are awaiting the publication of China’s upcoming five-year plan, the government’s regular set of reforms and economic targets, to see whether it will include more details on how China plans to curb emissions and fossil fuel use and boost renewable energy projects.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month—before Xi’s announcement—that the five-year plan may include a goal to cut the share of coal as an energy source from around 58% this year to 52% by 2025 and increase nonfossil fuels’ share to 20% by 2025.