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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the controversial environmental lawyer turned public health critic, is set to find out on Tuesday if he has cleared the first hurdle to become the nation’s top health official when the Senate Finance Committee votes on his nomination.Democrats are still raising concerns about Kennedy’s potential to profit from anti-vaccine advocacy and lawsuits, but Republicans appear to be rallying behind President Donald Trump’s health secretary nominee. On Monday, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican once viewed as a possible “no” vote, announced he would back Kennedy.Kennedy needs support from all but three Republicans if Democrats uniformly oppose him. What will doctor and Republican Bill Cassidy do? One key vote remains in question: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana physician who sits on the finance committee that will vote on Kennedy’s confirmation. Last week, during Kennedy’s hearings, Cassidy repeatedly implored Kennedy to reject a disproven theory that vaccines cause autism, to no avail. He ended the hearing by saying he was “struggling” with the vote.“Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy.On Monday evening, Cassidy told reporters that he had “very cordial” conversations with Kennedy over the weekend but was “still working through” how to handle his vote.Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are all seen as potential no votes, too, because they voted against Trump’s defense secretary nominee and have expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work.In a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, McConnell declined to say how he would vote on Kennedy’s nomination but reiterated “vaccines are critically important.” Democrats still have questions for Kennedy Democrats, meanwhile, continue to raise alarms about Kennedy’s potential to financially benefit from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers if confirmed as health secretary.“It seems possible that many different types of vaccine-related decisions and communicationswhich you would be empowered to make and influence as Secretarycould result in significant financial compensation for your family,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter sent over the weekend to Kennedy.Kennedy said he’ll give his son all of the referral fees in legal cases against vaccine makers, including the fees he gets from referring clients in a case against Merck. Kennedy told the committee he’s referred hundreds of clients to a law firm that’s suing Merck’s Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. He’s earned $2.5 million from the deal over the past three years.As secretary, Kennedy will oversee vaccine recommendations and public health campaigns for the $1.7 trillion agency, which is also responsible for food and hospital inspections, providing health insurance for millions of Americans, and researching deadly diseases. Who are the wild card votes? Kennedy’s allies are still holding out hope that they could entice a Democrat or two to their side. A pressure campaign has been focused on Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who has expressed support for Kennedy’s push to make American foods more healthy. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has also been a focus, although he told Fox News Channel this weekend that the nomination was “challenging.”A Democratic-led opposition campaign, built around Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy and influence in Samoa during a measles outbreak that left dozens of children and infants dead in 2019, has also narrowed in on Republican Sen. John Curtis, who represents Utah, home to one of the nation’s largest Samoan populations. Tuesday’s vote is just the start The Senate finance committee, made up of 25 senators, will vote on whether to recommend Kennedy for a vote on the Senate floor, where all 100 senators will have the chance to vote on the nomination.The committee vote will be a strong indicator of where things are headed for Kennedy, but it’s not necessarily the final word. Even if the committee votes against his confirmationseemingly unlikelySenate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., could still push for a floor vote.If Kennedy gets the committee’s recommendation, he could still have work to do to win over Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell. Cassidy also could potentially vote against Kennedy’s final confirmation even if he votes in favor of him Tuesday. What is ‘MAHA’? Kennedy, a longtime Democrat, ran for president but withdrew last year to throw his support to Trump in exchange for an influential job in his Republican administration. Together, they have forged a new and unusual coalition made up of conservatives who oppose vaccines and liberals who want to see the government promote healthier foods. Trump and Kennedy have branded the movement as “Make America Healthy Again.” Amanda Seitz and Stephen Groves, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
China countered President Donald Trump’s across-the-board tariffs on Chinese products with tariffs on select U.S. imports Tuesday, as well as announcing an antitrust investigation into Google and other trade measures.U.S. tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico were also set to go into effect Tuesday before Trump agreed to a 30-day pause as the two countries acted to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking. Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days.The Chinese response was “measured,” said John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. “I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” he said. “And they see this example from Canada and Mexico and probably they are hoping for the same thing.”This isn’t the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the U.S. had engaged in a trade war in 2018 when Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded in kind.This time, analysts said, China is much better prepared to counter, with the government announcing a slew of measures that cut across different sectors of the economy, from energy to individual U.S. companies. Counter tariffs China said it would implement a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, and large-engine cars imported from the U.S. The tariffs would take effect next Monday.“The U.S.’s unilateral tariff increase seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organization,” the State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement. “It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also damages normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S.”The impact on U.S. exports may be limited. Though the U.S. is the biggest exporter of liquid natural gas globally, it does not export much to China. In 2023, the U.S. exported 173,247 million cubic feet of LNG to China, representing about 2.3% of total natural gas exports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.China imported only about 700,000 cars overall last year, and the leading importers are from Europe and Japan, said Bill Russo, the founder of the Automobility Limited consultancy in Shanghai. Further export controls on critical minerals China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products.They include tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium, many of which are designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning they are essential to U.S. economic or national security that have supply chains vulnerable to disruption.The export controls are in addition to ones China placed in December on key elements such as gallium.“They have a much more developed export control regime,” Philip Luck, an economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former State Department official, said at a panel discussion on Monday.“We depend on them for a lot of critical minerals: gallium, germanium, graphite, a host of others,” he said. “So . . . they could put some significant harm on our economy.”The response from China appears calculated and measured, said Stephen Dover, chief market strategist and head of the Franklin Templeton Institute, a financial research firm. However, he said, the world is bracing for further impact.“A risk is that this is the beginning of a tit-for-tat trade war, which could result in lower GDP growth everywhere, higher U.S. inflation, a stronger dollar and upside pressure on U.S. interest rates,” Dover said. U.S. companies also impacted In addition, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said Tuesday it is investigating Google on suspicion of violating antitrust laws. The announcement did not mention the tariffs but came just minutes after Trump’s 10% tariffs on China were to take effect.It is unclear how the probe will affect Google’s operations. The company has long faced complaints from Chinese smartphone makers over its business practices surrounding the Android operating system, Gong said.Otherwise, Google has a limited presence in China, and its search engine is blocked in the country like most other Western platforms. Google exited the Chinese market in 2010 after refusing to comply with censorship requests from the Chinese government and following a series of cyberattacks on the company.Google did not immediately comment.The Commerce Ministry also placed two American companies on an unreliable entities list: PVH Group, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and Illumina, which is a biotechnology company with offices in China. The listing could bar them from engaging in China-related import or export activities and from making new investments in the country.Beijing began investigating PVH Group in September last year over “improper Xinjiang-related behavior” after the company allegedly boycotted the use of Xinjiang cotton.Putting these U.S. companies on the unreliable entities list is “alarming” because it shows that the Chinese government is using the list to pressure U.S. companies to take a side, said George Chen, managing director for The Asia Group, a Washington D.C.-headquartered business policy consultancy.“It’s almost like telling American companies, what your government is doing is bad, you need to tell the government that if you add more tariffs or hurt U.S.-China relations at the end of the day it’ll backfire on American companies,” Chen said. Wu reported from Bangkok. AP writers Zen Soo in Hong Kong and Christopher Bodeen in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report. Ken Moritsugu and Huizhong Wu, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Shares in music streamer Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) are up nearly 9% in premarket trading as of the time of this writing after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings results for its fiscal 2024. It was a quarter that ended the music streamer’s first full year of profitability. And saw many important metrics increase by double-digit percentages. Heres what you need to know about Spotify’s Q4 2024 earnings. SPOT Q4 2024 earnings by the numbers Spotify posted several investor-pleasing metrics today. Here are the main highlights of Spotifys Q4 2024: Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 675 million (up 12% Y/Y) Premium subscribers: 263 million (up 11% Y/Y) Total Revenue: 4.2 billion (up 16% Y/Y) Spotify says its 35 million additional MAUs was the largest Q4 MAU addition in the companys history and ended up exceeding the companys internal forecasts by 10 million. Additionally, its Premium Subscriber additions of 11 million were 3 million more than the company forecasted. But perhaps the best news from Spotifys results was that it reported its first full year of operating income profitability. Operating income in Q4 reached 477 million, and for the 2024 fiscal year totaled 1.4 billion. Spotify stock jumps After announcing its Q4 2024 results, Spotify shares jumped in premarket trading on the New York Stock Exchange. As of the time of this writing, SPOT shares are currently up almost 9% to above $596 per share. Year-to-date, SPOT shares were already up over 21% as of yesterdays closing share price of $549. Spotify’s stock is trading significantly higher than where it was just a few years ago. In October 2023, the companys share price was trading below $75 per share. But since then, it has steadily risen and, since mid-2024, has experienced a resurgence. Much of that resurgence can be attributed to the efficiency efforts the company has adopted in recent years, notes Yahoo Finance. Those efforts have included reducing costs through layoffs and shifts away from its beleaguered podcasts strategy. Looking ahead to 2025 Spotify is the largest music streamer in the world in terms of monthly active users. Its next closest competitor is Apple Music. But if Apples recent efforts are any indication, the iPhone maker could be gunning hard to overtake Spotify in 2025. Yesterday, Apple announced that it is offering new Apple Music subscribers six months of the music streaming service for just $2.99. That equates to less than 50 cents a month and shows the financial hit Apple is willing to take if it means gaining some of Spotifys hundreds of millions of current subscribers, who currently pay $11.99 a month for individual plans. Spotify did not address Apples promotion in its Q4 results today, but the companys CEO, Daniel Ek, said he was very excited about 2025 and [feels] really good about where we are as both a product and as a business. We will continue to place bets that will drive long term impact, increasing our speed while maintaining the levels of efficiency we achieved last year, Ek noted. Its this combination that will enable us to build the best and most valuable user experience, grow sustainably and deliver creativity to the world. As for the first part of Spotifys 2025, the company has issued a Q1 forecast in which it sees itself adding 3 million MAUs for the current quarter as well as another 2 million net new premium subscribers.
Category:
E-Commerce
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