by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
In 2023 the world’s forests stopped acting as a carbon sink
[REDD Monitor, via Naked Capitalism 08-10-2024]
At the recent International Carbon Dioxide Conference in Manaus, Brazil, scientists presented preliminary findings that in 2023 the world’s forests stopped acting as a carbon sink. An intense drought in the Amazon rainforest and record wildfires in Canada were part of the reason that forests and other land ecosystems emitted almost as much carbon dioxide as they removed from the atmosphere.
Usually, forests remove about one-quarter of the world’s annual CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere. But in 2023, that carbon sink collapsed, study co-author Philippe Ciais of the French research organisation the Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences told Reuters.
As a result, in 2023, the growth rate of CO₂ in the atmosphere shot up by 86% compared to 2022. Yet CO₂ emissions — which come mainly from burning fossil fuels — only increased by between 0.1% and 1.1%. The explanation is that natural carbon sinks absorbed much less….
‘Holy Sh*t This Ad Is Powerful’: UAW Says It Knows How to Defeat Trump and the Billionaire Class
Jon Queally, August 10, 2024 [CommonDreams]
“This is brilliant,” said author Naomi Klein in response to new United Auto Workers ad….
“There is only one answer to the threat we face as a nation. The answer is solidarity.”
That is the core message directed at the American working class from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a new ad that frames the nation’s current political battle as one between organized workers and the billionaire and corporate classes.
“We stand at a historic crossroads in this country right now,” says UAW president Shawn Fain to begin the 2-minute video. “And it’s clear Donald Trump represents the billionaire class—that’s his base.” ….
UAW: Fight For a Better Life
“The dream of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working class people will remain divide,” says Fain. “They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love, or where we were born. That’s the game of the wealthy, divide and conquer
The battle over who makes the rules for US companies
[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism 08-06-2024]
….Over the past autumn and winter, the Chancery trial court ruled on three highly esoteric matters of corporate law, making certain long-accepted dealmaking practices impermissible.
But, this summer, the state’s legislature and governor were quickly persuaded by the influential law firms that represent big companies to enact changes to the Delaware General Corporation Law that nullified the rulings. The convention of waiting for the Delaware Supreme Court, often a tempering mechanism, to hear any appeals was ignored.
Lawyers representing pension funds, asset managers and individual shareholders fret that the changes will unduly limit their ability to bring lawsuits against misbehaving corporate boards and overmighty founders.
And many law professors worry that the foundations of Delaware corporate law have been carelessly erased without an understanding of the broader consequences….
Global power shift
China Is Done With Global Carmakers: “Thanks For Coming”: Dwindling Sales and Vanishing Profits
Michael Dunne, August 06, 2024 [via Naked Capitalism 08-10-2024]
For most of this century, foreign brands totally dominated China’s car market. Every year, they sold millions of cars and earned billions in profits.
Chinese consumers swarmed into Buick, Volkswagen, BMW and Toyota showrooms nationwide, happy to pay cash for the prestige of owning a brand that wasn’t Chinese.
“China is our forever profit machine,” my colleagues at GM liked to humble-brag a decade ago, back when I ran GM’s Indonesia operations. “We can bank on an easy $2 billion dividend every year.”
Now, suddenly, that golden era is over.
Sales and profits in the People’s Republic are vanishing. And boards in Detroit, Wolfsburg and Tokyo are stunned by the speed and intensity of the changes.
Ford has lost more than $5 billion in China since 2020. Sales are down 70% from their peak. “We’ve never seen competition like this before,” says CEO Jim Farley.
GM is hurting, too. The former poster child for sunny US-China relations, GM has lost more than $200 million so far this year alone. That marks the first time in two decades that GM’s China operations have printed red ink….
Driving China’s ascendancy is a massive and abrupt shift to electric vehicles. The EV share of total car sales will jump to almost 50% this year, up from just 6% in 2020.
Think about that. China has sprinted from 1 million to more than 10 million annual EV deliveries in just four short years. (I already see you dealership folks scratching your heads in amazement.)
Global automakers were caught flat-footed on EVs, lulled into complacency by years of winning at selling gasoline-powered vehicles.
TSMC Arizona struggles to overcome vast differences between Taiwanese and US work culture
[Tom’s Hardware, via Naked Capitalism 08-10-2024]
[NC commenter Micael T: “So all this American Talwan vs. China nonsense iis really about importing new management practices to the US?” Moi: Some of you may remember that Toyota went into a joint venture with GM to take over GM’s worst plant, which feature regular absenteeism and drunkenness in its workforce, and of course high defect rates. Toyota got the plant performance to above average for Toyota plants, which was much higher than GM levels.”]
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