President Joe Biden is pushing for federal legislation that would expand U.S. consumers’ right to fix their own electronics — a move that the White House predicts will save the average American family $400 a year and reduce the nation’s massive output of electronic waste.  

The legislation Biden seeks has far-ranging implications that will touch supply lines, consumers and workers around the world, advocates say.

Earlier this week, Apple threw its support behind Biden’s push. At a White House event on the issue, a senior official from the California-based company called for “strong national right-to-repair legislation” and pledged to honor, nationwide, a new California law on the matter.

Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, this week laid out the White House’s view, which is that by not providing access to parts, diagrams and tools, companies are imposing “unfair anti-competitive restrictions.” 

“For everything from smartphones to wheelchairs to cars to farm equipment, too often manufacturers make it difficult to access spare parts, manuals and tools necessary to make fixes,” she said this week.

“Consumers are compelled to go back to the dealer and pay the dealer’s price or to discard and replace the device entirely. This not only costs consumers money, but it prevents independent repair shops from competing for the business and creates unnecessary waste by shortening the life span of devices.”

Years of effort

American advocacy groups have been pushing states to enact right-to-repair protections for at least a decade, said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition.  

And while her group welcomes Biden’s support for federal legislation and Apple’s support, “it doesn’t mean quite as much as it appears,” she said.

“Apple got behind this bill so that they didn’t have a stronger bill that would have been more uncomfortable for them and would have made more significant progress with right-to-repair. So they got behind this to avoid worse, in their view,” she said.

“So, it will help. I think the impact that it’s going to have obviously will be worldwide, because these manufacturers operate around the world.”

It might seem, advocates say, that this is a no-brainer for consumers.

“Who doesn’t want the right to repair?” asked the nonprofit Public Interest Research Groups. “Companies worth over $10 trillion.”

But opponents argue that such legislation could infringe on copyrights and lead to higher consumer prices, lower-quality products and depressed innovation.

“Unnecessary government intervention in a thriving market should be avoided,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote in a policy paper on the issue earlier this year.

But Gordon-Byrne argued that without such legislation, profit-seeking companies would have no interest in making sure their customers can access parts and information to fix their own stuff.

“Left to their own devices, the manufacturers will simply stop selling parts, tools. diagrams. They’ll just stop,” she said. “Basically, they can just do less and make it impossible for you to repair your product.

“So, we have to have more of an active approach towards requiring the provision of repair materials. Because if they stop, they stop, and then nobody can fix anything.”

It’s not clear when any legislation could be debated by Congress, which only this week installed a House speaker after several chaotic, leaderless weeks. 
…

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s declaration on Wednesday that his relationship with U.S. President Joe Biden was “second to none” must have been a welcome respite for the American president, who is grappling with overlapping crises and mounting anger in the Muslim world.

Biden, who campaigned on a promise to end his nation’s “forever wars,” now must deal with a war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising Sino-U.S. tensions over Taiwan. His handling of the Israel-Hamas war has incited condemnation in many parts of the globe and sparked furor from Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S.

“There’s a feeling of betrayal in the American Muslim community where American Muslims see the president as being too one-sided in this conflict,” said Robert McCaw, who leads the Government Affairs Department at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim advocacy network in the U.S.

The administration’s request for supplemental funding to help foreign allies fight their wars is also meeting resistance from some Republican lawmakers, including the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.

Johnson, a staunch fiscal conservative, forcefully supported Kyiv in the initial days of the war but more recently opposed additional aid to Ukraine. As speaker he has said funding will have to come with conditions.

However, Johnson, an evangelical Christian, is deeply sympathetic to Israel, calling up a resolution supporting the country in his first action as speaker on Wednesday.

Nine members of Congress, mostly from the progressive wing of Biden’s Democratic Party, voted against the resolution, largely because it did not mourn the loss of Palestinian lives or mention aspirations for a two-state solution.

“I voted against this resolution because it is a deeply incomplete and biased account of what is happening in Israel and Palestine, and what has been happening for decades,” said Rashida Tlaib, who represents a House district in Michigan, a state with one of the largest Muslim and Arab American populations in the country.

Progressive groups have been pushing Biden to do more to see that humanitarian aid reaches civilians in Gaza, including through a cease-fire.

Support for Israel

Various polls show more Americans sympathize with Israelis than with the Palestinians, though younger Americans are more divided.

Politically, Biden’s support for Israel will help him secure their votes, including a key constituency of his Democratic Party, American Jews, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“With American Jews – a very important group in terms of votes and also contributions to the Democratic Party – there’s been almost universal praise for President Biden and the way he’s handled this,” Sabato told VOA. “Sometimes Jewish Americans will move even 40% to a Republican. I don’t think that’s going to happen next year.”

An October 25 Morning Consult poll showed that voters increasingly favor Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, with an increase of 9 percentage points since the days immediately following Hamas’ attack on Israel.

However, the impact of the war in Gaza on Biden’s re-election bid in 2024 will depend on whether the conflict can be contained.

“If we get involved directly in these forever wars, yes, Biden will suffer,” Sabato said, underlining other key factors in the president’s approval rating – whether Palestinian deaths can be minimized and humanitarian aid delivered.

The president has repeatedly warned Iran not to widen the war, as cross-border attacks between Israel and Tehran-backed Hezbollah intensify in neighboring Lebanon. U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have also been attacked with drones or rockets at least 17 times in recent days, including on Thursday, according to U.S. officials, who blamed other Iranian-backed militia groups in the region.

Sabato added that as long as Biden keeps American troops out of the line of fire, his support for foreign wars won’t be a major factor in voters’ support. In general, unless soldiers are deployed, foreign policy is not a key driver in how Americans vote.

Economic sentiment, however, plays a pivotal role in how Americans make their electoral choices, and the news is not great for Biden on that front. Despite 4.9% GDP growth in the third quarter and inflation that’s slowly falling from its recent high rates, Americans continue to lament the cost of goods, a key driver of the president’s low approval ratings.

The U.S. is also facing a massive $1.7 trillion federal deficit.

VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson and Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.
…

Amid a recent flurry of U.S.-China diplomacy, a leading congressional voice on China policy is warning against concessions to Beijing, saying they simply serve to encourage even more aggressive behavior.

In an interview with VOA’s Mandarin Service, Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher said that in meetings this week with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the Biden administration should focus on the defense of Taiwan, trafficking in drug precursors and human rights.

Gallagher is the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. His remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is visiting Washington this week. What are the most important topics you would like to see the administration raise in the meetings?

Representative Mike Gallagher: Well, I think the most important topic is cross-strait deterrence. And it seems that Xi Jinping is preparing his country for a war over Taiwan. He’s repeatedly said that he wants to take Taiwan by force if necessary, and that’s something we need to deter. We need to prevent him from doing that. A conflict between the United States and China would be incredibly costly. It’s not something we want, but all the more reason why we need to send a strong message that the increasing aggression against Taiwan will not be tolerated. We will help Taiwan defend itself. And we will do whatever is necessary to defend our own interests in the Indo-Pacific. 

Beyond that, I would hope that the administration urges the Chinese Communist Party to take more aggressive action when it comes to cracking down on the production of fentanyl precursors. Fentanyl is flooding across the southern [U.S.] border, and it’s killing tens of thousands of Americans. And ultimately, it can be traced back to China. That’s unacceptable.

And finally, I hope we don’t deprioritize the issue of human rights, whether it is the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, whether it’s the, let’s say, economic coercion that’s happening globally, whether it’s the ongoing suppression of Hong Kongers, there are important human rights issues that the administration needs to raise during these meetings.

VOA: We are seeing more high-level official communications between U.S. and China. Do you think it signals a smoother and maybe a more pragmatic path for U.S.-China relations?

Gallagher: I don’t. I think the administration is trying to revive diplomatic and economic engagement in the hope of taking down the temperature, but I think the opposite is happening. It seems that the more we rush or bend over backwards to sit down at a table with Xi Jinping or some other high-level CCP member, the more aggressive the CCP becomes, and we shelve or delay critical defensive action, whether it’s ending the licensing exemptions that we provide for Chinese companies like Huawei, or providing transparency on the spy balloon incident or actually investigating the origins of COVID. 

We delay these actions for fear of offending the Chinese Communist Party in the hopes that they will reciprocate in kind. And they never do. They continue to hack high-level official emails. They continue to undermine our grid and our infrastructure and cyberspace. They continue to threaten Taiwan, all of these things are unacceptable. 

And so, I worry that this policy of engagement, what I’ve called “zombie engagement,” will actually have the opposite effect. It will actually make the CCP more aggressive, and we will lose time that we need to start defending ourselves from CCP aggression.

VOA: Given the current conflict in Israel and ongoing war in Ukraine, how would that affect the U.S. capability to focus on China or the Indo-Pacific and the threats posed by the CCP? 

Gallagher: Well, it should be a wake-up call to the West. Increasingly, it looks like we have an axis of authoritarian powers that are arrayed against our interests and those of our allies. China is the dominant player in this partnership. Vladimir Putin is a junior partner. But increasingly, there’s collaboration with Iran. These are murderous dictatorial regimes that are threatening our allies. Putin has obviously invaded Ukraine. Hamas has now attacked Israel, killed over 30 Americans, and it could not have done so without the longstanding financial and training support it’s received from Iran.  

So this should be a wake-up call. I don’t believe those who say that it’s an either/or choice between resources, you know, resources in Europe, resources in the Middle East or resources in the Indo-Pacific. This should be an opportunity for us to revitalize and rebuild our defense industrial base, which we’ve neglected for too long, to once again become the arsenal of democracy and deterrence. And if nothing else, to learn the lessons of the failure of deterrence in Ukraine and ensure that those failures are not repeated in the Indo-Pacific region. 

And in my mind, the primary lesson is that hard power, American hard power gives us our best chance of deterring totalitarian aggression, and if we don’t surge hard power to the Pacific now, before it’s too late, we could see a PLA invasion of Taiwan, and it would have the potential to make the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel look timid in comparison. 
…

Political leaders in the Mississippi River area are looking to form a multistate compact to manage threats from climate change, water pollution and drought-affected regions elsewhere.

“Twenty million people drink from the Mississippi River and its tributaries every day, including me and my family,” said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

With the world’s fourth-largest basin, the Mississippi River supports more than 400 species of wildlife, has led to more than 350,000 jobs and generates more than $21 billion in annual tourism, fishing and recreation spending, according to the nonprofit group American Rivers.

“Whether you’re looking at it from a clean water standpoint, an ecological standpoint, a shipping of goods standpoint, or even from national security, there’s not a more important waterway in our country,” Wellenkamp told VOA. “We need to come together to protect and manage this critical resource.”

That’s what community and political leaders hope to do with a Mississippi River Compact to help unify lawmakers and residents along more than 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) of America’s most important river.

The compact’s framework would join 10 states in the collective management of river resources in consultation with stakeholders, including environmental groups, businesses and riverfront communities, to promote transparency and a shared sense of responsibility for the river’s well-being.

“When a farmer in a state upriver uses harmful fertilizer, for example, it affects the ability for fishermen to catch healthy fish at the bottom of the river in the Gulf of Mexico,” Wellenkamp said.

Nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff from lawns, sewage treatment plants, farmland and other sources along the river trigger algae blooms that choke off oxygen in water, killing marine life. Where the river meets the Gulf, that has caused a “dead zone” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates is costing U.S seafood and tourism industries more than $82 million per year.

“The problems facing the Mississippi River are many,” said Matt Rota, senior policy director at Healthy Gulf in New Orleans, Louisiana. “Only looking at the environmental side of things, we need to address water diversion protections, the Gulf dead zone, pollution, catastrophic flooding and — as we’re seeing right now in Louisiana — persistent droughts that are allowing saltwater from the Gulf to make our water undrinkable.

“These issues can’t be addressed state by state,” Rota continued. “They require a ‘whole river’ perspective. It’s vague right now exactly what a compact would cover, but there’s certain potential. From shipping to flooding to agriculture to wastewater disposal to drinking water and more, if a compact could prioritize the sustainability of the river, maybe it could help attract funds to help solve these problems.”

A “thousand-mile journey”

Tackling these challenges as a group could prove difficult.

“Solving the collective problems that span the river will require political cooperation among a very diverse group of states that don’t always agree on river management priorities, particularly around water quality issues such as nutrient pollution,” said David Strifling, director of the Water Law and Policy Initiative at Marquette University.

“Still,” he said, the “resolution to pursue the development of a Mississippi River Compact is the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.”

Wellenkamp acknowledged that states along the river do not always agree on what is best, “but when the river experiences record-breaking floods, we are all under threat. And when we have record-breaking droughts, we all suffer. When harmful chemicals find their way into the river up north, it hurts those of us in the South. And when manufacturing operations along the river in the south are hurting, it harms their headquarters in cities along the river in the North.”

In pursuing a compact, Strifling believes it is promising that political leaders in the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative are rallying around issues that unify them, such as protections against diverting water to places outside the river basin.

Threat of “thirsty eyes”

The western region of the United States is experiencing a historic drought that U.S. Geological Survey data shows has resulted in a 20% drop in water flow along the important Colorado River over the last two decades.

“And conditions are only getting worse with climate change,” said Healthy Rivers senior policy advisor Kim Mitchell. “Forecasts show the Colorado River could lose another 25 to 30% of its flow by 2050. The region is desperate for solutions.”

Some western U.S. leaders are looking at water from the Mississippi and from its large tributary, the Missouri River, as part of the solution. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey last year agreed to spend $1 billion to investigate solutions that include pumping flood waters from the Mississippi River into the depleted Colorado.

“The idea of piping ‘excess’ Mississippi River water across the continental divide to supply water to the desert Southwest has persisted for decades no matter how unworkable it has been proven to be,” Trevor Russell, director of Friends of the Mississippi River’s Water Program, told VOA. “But not only would it just be a band aid for the problems being experienced out West, it would put the Mississippi River — America’s greatest river — at risk, too.”

That is where a Mississippi River compact could be especially beneficial.

“States with thirsty eyes have been wanting to put a straw in the Mississippi for years,” Wellenkamp said. “A Mississippi River Compact would finally put an end to that threat because no state along the river could give another state access to the river without the other states’ permission.”
…

The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly two years in the third quarter as higher wages from a tight labor market helped to power consumer spending, again defying dire warnings of a recession that have lingered since 2022.

Gross domestic product increased at a 4.9% annualized rate last quarter, the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2021, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said in its advance estimate of third-quarter GDP growth. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP rising at a 4.3% rate.

Estimates ranged from as low as a 2.5% rate to as high as a 6.0% pace, a wide margin reflecting that some of the input data, including September durable goods orders, goods trade deficit, wholesale and retail inventory numbers were published at the same time as the GDP report.

The economy grew at a 2.1% pace in the April-June quarter and is expanding at a pace well above what Fed officials regard as the non-inflationary growth rate of around 1.8%.

While the robust growth pace notched last quarter is unlikely sustainable, it was testament to the economy’s resilience despite aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. Growth could slow in the fourth quarter because of the United Auto Workers strikes and the resumption student loan repayments by millions of Americans.

Most economists have revised their forecasts and now believe that the Fed can to engineer a “soft-landing” for the economy, pointing to strength in worker productivity and moderation in unit labor costs growth in the second quarter, which they expected carried through into the July-September period.  

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, was the main driver.

A strong labor market is providing underlying support to spending. Though wage growth has slowed, it is rising a bit faster than inflation, lifting households’ purchasing power.  

Labor market resilience was highlighted by a separate report from the Labor Department on Thursday, showing the number of people filing new claims for state unemployment benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 210,000 during the week ending Oct. 21 from 200,000 in the prior week.

The GDP data likely has no impact on near-term monetary policy amid a surge in U.S. Treasury yields and stock market selloff, which have tightened financial conditions.  

Financial markets expect the Fed to keep interest rates unchanged at its Oct. 31-Nov. 1 policy meeting, according to CME Group’s FedWatch. Since March, the U.S. central bank has raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by 525 basis points to the current 5.25% to 5.50% range. 
…