Micron will invest $15 billion though the end of the decade on a new semiconductor plant in its hometown that the chipmaker said will create 17,000 American jobs. Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Boise, Idaho-based Micron, said his company’s investment was made possible by last month’s passage of the CHIPS and Science ACT of 2022, a $280 billion bill aimed at bolstering U.S. competitiveness against China and avoiding another chip shortage like the one that derailed the auto and tech industries during the pandemic. The CHIPS law sets aside $52 billion to bolster the semiconductor industry, which due to COVID-related supply…

Last week’s agreement between Argentina and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restructure a record high 2018 loan brought the country and the world back from the brink of defaulting, which could have threatened the international financial system’s stability. As with any negotiated agreement, it was not ideal. But both sides clearly understood the dangers of falling into the abyss of the unknown: What would happen if an agreement was not reached? Most important, the IMF did not insist, as it usually does, on austerity. The agreement instead provides Argentina with room to continue its economic recovery. What  makes this…

At its core, the strategy articulates a vision for a twenty-first century U.S.-African partnership motivated by discernible global shifts. One motivation is the realization of Africa’s importance to U.S. global priorities, such as the continent’s rapidly growing population, one of the world’s largest trading blocs, significant natural resources endowments, and a sizable voting bloc in the United Nations. Another rationale is U.S. positioning for the  great power competition with China and Russia for influence in Africa. The document often cites Chinese “harmful activities” side-by-side with Russia’s use of “disinformation . . . to undercut Africans’ principled opposition to Russia’s further…

Two years ago, with millions of people out of work and central bankers and politicians striving to lift the U.S. economy out of a pandemic-induced recession, inflation seemed like an afterthought. A year later, with unemployment falling and the inflation rate rising, many of those same policymakers insisted that the price hikes were “transitory” – a consequence of snarled supply chains, labor shortages and other issues that would right themselves sooner rather than later. Now, with the inflation rate higher than it’s been since the early 1980s, Biden administration officials acknowledge that they missed their call. According to the latest report from the Bureau…

Developing an internal market for hydrogen. A forward-looking regulatory framework is the trampoline taking hydrogen to the centre of the energy system. The objectives of the Hydrogen Strategy should translate into clear policies removing barriers to hydrogen investment, enabling the development of clean hydrogen technologies, and scaling their deployment to deliver net zero by 2050. Set clean hydrogen targets to boost liquidity and unlock the rollout of clean hydrogen technologies. Massive volumes of clean energy will be needed to deliver emission reductions. Translating new policy and regulatory development into concrete market realities takes time. As such, Hydrogen Europe considers it is…