President Joe Biden has slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminium and medical equipment, taking potshots at Donald Trump along the way as he embraced a strategy that’s increasing friction between the world’s two largest economies.
The Democratic president said on Tuesday that Chinese government subsidies ensure the nation’s companies do not have to turn a profit, giving them an unfair advantage in global trade.
“American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone as long as the competition is fair,” Biden said in the White House Rose Garden. “But for too long, it hasn’t been fair. For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies … it’s not competition, it’s cheating.”
China immediately promised retaliation. Its Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was opposed to the tariff hikes by the United States and would take measures to defend its interests.
Biden will keep tariffs put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of EV duties to more than 100 percent and doubling the duties on semiconductor tariffs to 50 percent.
The new measures affect $18bn in imported Chinese goods including steel and aluminium, semiconductors, electric vehicles, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes, the White House said. The EV figure, while headline-grabbing, may have more political than practical impact in the US, which imports very few Chinese EVs.
The US imported $427bn in goods from China in 2023 and exported $148bn to the world’s number-two economy, according to the US Census Bureau, a trade gap that has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the revised tariffs were justified because China was stealing US intellectual property. But Tai recommended tariff exclusions for hundreds of industrial machinery import categories from China, including 19 for solar product manufacturing equipment.
The tariffs come in the middle of a heated campaign between Biden and Trump, his Republican predecessor, to show who’s tougher on China.
Asked to respond to Trump’s comments that China was eating the US’s lunch, Biden said of his rival, “He’s been feeding them a long time.” The Democrat said Trump had failed to crack down on Chinese trade abuses as he had pledged he would do during his presidency.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, called the new tariffs a “weak and futile attempt” to distract from Biden’s own support for EVs in the United States, which Trump says will lead to layoffs at car factories.
Administration officials said their measures are combined with domestic investment in key industries and unlikely to worsen a bout of inflation that has already angered US voters.
Trade tariff
Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of his economic policies despite a backdrop of low unemployment and above-trend economic growth. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Trump had a seven percentage-point edge over Biden on the economy.
China’s BYD overtook Tesla as the biggest seller of electric vehicles [File: VCG/VCG via Getty Images]
Analysts have warned that a trade tiff could raise costs for EVs overall, hurting Biden’s climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.
Biden has said he wants to win this era of competition with China but not to launch a trade war. He has worked in recent months to ease tensions in one-on-one talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both 2024 US presidential candidates have departed from the free-trade consensus that once reigned in Washington, a period capped by China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Trump’s broader imposition of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency kicked off a tariff war with China.
As part of the long-awaited tariff update, Biden will increase tariffs this year from 25 percent to 100 percent on EVs, bringing total duties to 102.5 percent, from 7.5 percent to 25 percent on lithium-ion EV batteries and other battery parts and from 25 percent to 50 percent on photovoltaic cells used to make solar panels. Some critical minerals will have their tariffs raised from nothing to 25 percent.
More tariffs will follow in 2025 and 2026 on semiconductors, as well as lithium-ion batteries that are not used in electric vehicles, graphite and permanent magnets, as well as rubber medical and surgical gloves.
A number of lawmakers have called for massive hikes on Chinese vehicle tariffs or an outright ban over data privacy concerns. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles being imported now.
The United Auto Workers, a politically important union that endorsed Biden, said the tariff moves would ensure that “the transition to electric vehicles is a just transition.”
On May 14, 1954, Boeing, now one of the world’s largest commercial aerospace companies, unveiled its first commercial jet-powered passenger plane, the Model 367-80 prototype, at its Renton Field plant on the south shore of Lake Washington in Washington state, where jetliners are still produced today.
The 367-80 would eventually be retired on January 22, 1970 but not before its technology had been used to create the famous 707 model – and, later the hugely successful 737.
Initially, airlines were cautious about embracing jet technology, citing worries about expense and noise levels among other things. However, the successful test flights of the 367-80 demonstrated the advances aviation had made in increased speeds and altitudes.
Ultimately, this success laid the groundwork for Boeing’s 707 plane, which was launched in 1957. US airline group Pan Am began regular 707 flights on October 26, 1958, signalling the industry’s broader acceptance of jet airliners. Before the 707, propeller-driven aircraft had dominated commercial air travel.
Boeing’s 737 model was launched in 1967 and would become the most commercially successful aeroplane in aviation history.
However, in recent years, Boeing has suffered a string of technical failures. Most recently, a Boeing 737 carrying 85 people caught fire and skidded off a runway at Senegal’s main airport, injuring 10 people including the pilot, while a Boeing 767 cargo plane was forced to make an emergency landing following a front landing gear failure.
Last week, Boeing was forced to postpone the launch of its new CST-100 Starliner capsule, designed for launch into space, after engineers detected a problem with a rocket valve.
Here is a timeline of some of Boeing’s highs and lows over the past century.
(Al Jazeera)
A century in the air – some of Boeing’s highs
The company, which was first founded as Pacific Aero Products Co by William Boeing in 1916, was officially named Boeing Airplane Co in 1917, shortly after the US entered the war. During the war, Boeing provided Model C trainer planes to the US Navy, designed a new patrol “flying boat” and signed a contract with the US Navy to build 50 Curtiss HS-2L seaplanes.
In 1917, it also produced the first US-designed and built bomber plane and its Martin MB-1 bomber made its first flight.
During World War II, Boeing produced bombers such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress. The B-29 Superfortress planes, named Enola Gay and Bockscar, were the two aircraft used to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The atomic bombing caused almost 200,000 casualties. Long-term effects on survivors would lead to radiation sickness and such cancers as leukaemia, thyroid cancer and lung cancer, due to radiation exposure.
Launch of the 737 airliner
One of Boeing’s most significant contributions to commercial aviation was the 737 series of jetliners, launched in 1967. The model would become one of the best-selling commercial jetliners in aviation history. Nearly 12,000 have been built.
During the Apollo programme, which ultimately saw American astronaut Neil Armstrong become the first person to walk on the moon, Boeing built the Saturn V’s maiden rocket in 1967. That same model rocket would be used for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, landing astronauts on the moon.
Boeing, the billion-dollar company
Boeing made $1bn in sales for the first time in 1956. It was publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange, trading under the ticker symbol BA, in January 1978 and is currently valued at $109.5bn.
Which fatal crashes have involved Boeing planes?
More than 100 years after Boeing was first founded, Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 domestic passenger flight, crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after taking off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Tangerang in Indonesia, en route to Depati Amir Airport, Pangkal Pinang, killing all 189 people on board on October 29, 2018. An investigation by the Indonesian authorities blamed a combination of an aircraft design flaw which had forced the plane to dive down, inadequate training and maintenance problems, one year later.
Residents collect debris at the scene where Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed in a wheat field just outside the town of Bishoftu, 62km southeast of Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019 [Jemal Countess/Getty Images]
Ethiopian Airlines crash, 2019
Less than a year after the Lion Air incident, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, also a Boeing 737 MAX 8 and a scheduled international passenger flight from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, crashed near the Ethiopian town of Bishoftu just six minutes after takeoff on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people on board. The same technical issue which had been found in the Lion Air case was also discovered.
The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide due to concerns about a faulty sensor that had caused its Manoeuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to continually tilt the plane downwards, causing it to dive.
As a result of the controversy over the design flaw, Boeing’s board removed CEO Dennis Muilenburg as chairman but allowed him to remain chief executive.
The Boeing 737 MAX was finally cleared to resume flights by the FAA in November 2020, after the problem was fixed but Boeing had already been heavily criticised by the US House Transportation Committee for failing to take better safety measures.
What incidents involving Boeing planes have happened this year?
Alaskan Airlines door panel blowout, January
In January this year, a door panel on Alaskan Airlines flight 1282, a Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet, blew out, causing rapid decompression and forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport. Some passengers suffered minor injuries but nobody was killed or seriously harmed. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) immediately grounded the 737 Max 9, of which there were 171 in use worldwide. Loose hardware was reported in an initial investigation.
This photo released by the National Transportation Safety Board shows a gaping hole where the panelled-over door had been at the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, on January 7, 2024, in Portland, Oregon [National Transportation Safety Board via AP]
The incident caused a flurry of conspiracy theories which have ramped up in the past three months because of the deaths of two Boeing whistleblowers.
John Barnett, a quality control engineer who worked for Boeing for more than three decades, was found dead in March 2019. His body was discovered with a gunshot wound and a suicide note in his truck, which was parked in a hotel car park in South Carolina.
Two weeks ago, Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier for Boeing, died in an Oklahoma hospital due to a staph infection that quickly developed into pneumonia.
Air Senegal plane skids off runway, May
A chartered Air Senegal Boeing B737-300 plane skidded off a runway before takeoff early on Thursday, May 9 at Blaise Diagne International Airport in the capital, Dakar. Eighty-five people – including two pilots and four cabin crew – were on board the flight operated by TransAir and bound for the Malian capital Bamako. At least 10 people were injured, the transport ministry said.
Photos showed the damaged plane at a standstill in a grassy field with a damaged wing, its emergency exit slides deployed.
Videos shared on social media appeared to show a left wing on fire.
A FedEx Express Boeing 767 cargo plane made an emergency landing at Istanbul Airport on May 8 without deploying its front landing gear but managed to stay on the runway and avoid casualties [Umit Bektas/Reuters]
FedEx flight makes emergency landing, May
On Wednesday, May 8, a Boeing 767 cargo aircraft belonging to FedEx made an emergency landing at Istanbul in Turkey after its front landing gear failed. No one was injured and the crew successfully evacuated the aircraft.
Corendon Airlines plane has burst tyre, May
Also in Turkey, 190 people – including six crew members – were safely evacuated from a Boeing 737-800 belonging to Corendon Airlines after one of the aircraft’s tyres burst on Thursday, May 9, during landing at Gazipasa, an airport near the Mediterranean coastal town of Alanya.
Boeing Starliner launch halted, May
Boeing called off the inaugural crewed flight CST-100 Starliner space capsule on Monday, May 7, after engineers detected an issue with the Atlas V rocket valve. The decision to call off the launch on Monday came two hours before the scheduled liftoff and about an hour after two NASA astronauts had strapped into the spacecraft.
NASA chief Bill Nelson posted on X. “Standing down on tonight’s attempt to launch. As I’ve said before, @NASA’s first priority is safety. We go when we’re ready.”
(Al Jazeera)
Is Boeing’s safety record being investigated?
Boeing has been the subject of 32 whistleblower complaints lodged with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the workplace safety regulator, in the United States during the past three years
Air safety officials in the US are also currently investigating whether employees at Boeing falsified inspection records for the 787 Dreamliner.
Sam Salehpour, another whistleblower and quality engineer who worked for Boeing for 10 years has stated he had safety concerns regarding the 787 Dreamliner. Last month, Salehpour testified at a congressional hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the safety of the 777 and 787 aircraft.
He stated: “I have analysed Boeing’s own data to conclude that the company is taking manufacturing shortcuts on the 787 programme that may significantly reduce the airplane’s safety and the life cycle.”
Boeing strongly refuted the claims and stated that it is “fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner”.
Ashley Uhl-Leavitt landed an opportunity most athletes can only dream of – a chance to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games. While this Florida-based marathon runner has run in some of the most iconic races in the world like the New York City Marathon, this is her first time to compete in the Olympic marathon.
In less than 100 days, athletes and spectators alike will converge in Paris, France, for an event synonymous with bringing the world together regardless of the calibre of global geopolitical tensions throughout the history of the modern Olympiad.
“Hundreds of thousands of people tried to get a handful [marathon] spots. It was such a long shot,” Uhl-Leavitt told Al Jazeera.
But with that blessing comes a hurdle on the track to the games. How to train and cover one’s costs.
“When I’m in marathon builds, it’s very time-consuming,” she said.
She has to fit training in where she can between her two jobs – one as a personal trainer and the other as a bartender in her hometown of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida – roughly 20 miles (32km) from Jacksonville.
To offset the costs of getting to the games, she turned to the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.
Training for this high level of athletics is a full-time job. Athletes also travel to compete in different games to hone their skills in the lead-up to the big day. But since most prospective Olympians have to pay their own way for all this effort, it is a nearly impossible situation having to decide between working or competing.
Only a select few land a lucrative corporate partnership. Allianz Life Insurance Company, for example, is only sponsoring five Olympians and Paralympians (the games for those with disabilities).
There is no salary for athletes training for the Olympics. There are limited stipend opportunities, but only once they have qualified for the games – a long-shot endeavour in itself. While stipends vary, some are as low as a few hundred dollars a month. The training up to that point is out of pocket.
More than 90 percent of all Olympians reported spending as much as $21,700 in competition fees and membership dues in the lead-up to the games. More than a quarter of all US Olympians report making less than $15,000 annually in total income.
As for healthcare, Olympian athletes reported spending as much as $9,200 for out-of-pocket expenses amid injuries and as little as 16 percent were reimbursed, according to a report from the Commission on the State of US Olympics & Paralympics – an independent commission appointed by Congress in 2020 (PDF).
Uhl-Leavitt is one of the many athletes over the years who turned to alternative means to finance their Olympic journey. Another is boxer Jennifer Lozano of Laredo, Texas, who, according to her crowdfunding campaign, is the first in the south Texas town she calls home to get a chance to compete.
Lozano’s training regimen is physically and time intensive – a must for this 21-year-old in her efforts to bring home the gold. She begins every day as early as 6am. She gets a stipend from USA Boxing to cover her day-to-day costs like car payments while training and for travel for the games.
She told Al Jazeera that she had been getting a stipend for the past eight months, before she officially qualified for the team at an international competition in Santiago, Chile, in October 2023. She declined to share the amount and frequency of the stipend.
Before that, though, all costs came out of her pocket and that of her family. She declined to share the dollar figure for those costs as well.
Lozano told Al Jazeera that she’s using the funds from her GoFundMe campaign to cover the costs associated with getting her family and coaches to the games.
Less than the federal poverty line
Financial constraints hit Olympian athletes but not other high-level athletes like those in professional athletic leagues. In sports like American football, even players who don’t play in an official game get paid well. The minimum pay for a player on the practice squad this year in professional American football is $16,800 per week, according to the National Football Leagues’ most recent collective bargaining agreement. As for Major League Baseball – players within their minor leagues are paid a minimum of $60,300 for the 2024 season.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics were delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic [File: Marko Djurica/Reuters]
While many Olympians do not rake in compensation from their time at the games, the medal winners do. A gold medal finisher walks away with $37,500, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for third-place finishers.
In context, that means that third-place finishers make less than the current federal poverty line for one person. To afford rent in the United States, you’ll need to make more than double what a gold medallist earns at the bare minimum.
The United States has fairly low payouts for Olympic prize money compared with other nations. During the last Olympic Games, Italy offered $213,000 for gold medallists. Singapore offered the equivalent of $737,000 for first-place finishers. This time, Singapore is raising the stakes and will offer first-place winners $1m in prize money. But if history is any indicator, it may not have to pay that out as the island nation has only produced one gold medallist in its history.
“Your lifetime earnings as an Olympic athlete are in the extremely high negative figures. There’s no doubt about that,” said Victor Matheson, professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and the author of Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics.
There has been some momentum to maximise payouts for these athletes, but there has not been much in the last decade. Following the 2016 games, then-President Barack Obama signed a bill into law that barred the IRS from taxing rewards on medals, dubbed the victory tax.
So far, Track and Field is the only sport to offer additional prize money to winners. Earlier this month, World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, announced it would hand out $50,000 in prize money to each of the gold medallists. Track and Field is slated to have 48 different events in the upcoming games.
While prize money helps, it does not address the financial barriers to entry. In part, that is why so many athletes like Uhl-Leavitt have turned to crowdfunding platforms in 2024 before the games.
Training itself is expensive. That’s what drove now-retired sabre fencer Monica Aksamit, who earned a bronze medal in the 2016 games, to start a GoFundMe while training for the 2020 Tokyo games, although it was delayed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the months in the run-up to the Tokyo games, she garnered national headlines in which she explained that it was a choice between training and working. She told the student newspaper at her alma mater, Penn State, that the US Olympic Committee gave her a small stipend of $300 a month. Meanwhile, she spent more than $20,000 on training. Because of the time commitment that Olympic-level training requires, she struggled to find work even at a local grocery store.
Aksamit had agreed to sit down with Al Jazeera in New York. However, she did not show up to the preplanned interview nor could she be reached for rescheduling.
There is some minor help out there for some athletes in a handful of sports. Associations including USA Swimming, US Taekwondo and US Rowing offer small stipends for athletes training for the Olympics primarily after they have qualified for the national team.
Otherwise, options are pretty limited to the few athletes that are able to solidify sponsorships.
Because of these massive financial costs and low likelihood of long-term financial success, there is less incentive for parents to get their children interested in sports to begin with – not just the niche ones.
“Parents pay huge amounts of money in the hopes of getting their kids even just on the varsity team in high school, that elusive college scholarship or the even more elusive slot on a regional or national team and a potential invite to the Olympics. It’s wildly expensive,” Matheson, the economics professor, added.
Only about half of middle-income and only 31 percent of low-income children get involved in athletics, whereas the more high income do at 71 percent, according to the Centers For Disease Control.
This has been a challenge for Olympic athletes and their families for a long time. In 2012, Natalie Hawkins, the mother of iconic gymnast Gabby Douglas, filed for bankruptcy amid the high costs of training.
Well-paid executives
Meanwhile, the Olympic Games are a massive money-maker for several different parties. During every game, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) pools the earnings from ticket sales, advertising sales, and other money spinners. Some of it is redistributed back to host cities and partner organisations including each country’s individual committee after the IOC takes its cut.
Olympic committee execs tend to be well paid but athletes struggle for funds [File: Stephanie Lecocq/Reuters]
That is when, in theory, organisations like the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee divide up the revenue and distribute it on its level to training programmes and athletes.
“Almost certainly too much of it gets eaten up by overpaid administrators and some stuff like that,” Matheson said.
That is what happened stateside.
Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, made more than $1.1m in 2022 – the year of the most recent Winter Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the US Olympic committee had a net revenue of $61.6m – the second-highest on record, according to the organisation’s 2022 financial disclosures. It is only second to the Tokyo 2021 games (delayed by a year because of the pandemic), which brought in $104.6m in net income. By comparison, in 2016, the year of the Rio De Janeiro games, $78.5m (the equivalent of $88.9m, adjusted for inflation).
The events also make a lot of money for broadcasters. In the United States, NBC holds the exclusive broadcasting rights for the games. The media company disclosed that it has sold at least $1.2bn in advertisement sales before the games. The broadcaster, which holds exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics until 2032, expects record revenue.
That’s significantly higher than what other broadcasters nab for other high-profile events that they have exclusive broadcasting rights to. For instance, CBS brought in a record $635m for American football’s premiere event – the Super Bowl.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The biggest names in a handful of sports do end up with lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals, including athletes like swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 28 gold medals over the course of his career, and gymnast Simon Biles, who gained global fame after clinching gold in 2016.
But for most striving athletes, greatness is not about the marginal chance of financial success, but rather a showcase of a key part of who they are.
“Long runs on the weekends are two and a half to three hours, and you’re running an hour or two hours and a half or cross-training every day through the week,” Uhl-Leavitt said. “It definitely does consume your life.”
Robert Blake, a tribal citizen of Red Lake Nation in Minnesota, watched for years as fossil fuel companies built pipelines through his homelands.
“How can we continue to resist the fossil fuel infrastructure?” thought Blake, executive director of Native Sun Community Power Development. “That’s when we noticed this grant opportunity for electric vehicle charging stations.”
In 2021, Native Sun received nearly seven million dollars from the US Department of Energy to build a network of charging stations between 23 reservations in Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota — states with some of the lowest numbers of charging stations in the country. The project, Electric Nation, also provided 15 electric vehicles to Red Lake Nation and Standing Rock, with more scheduled for delivery.
Globally, the electric car revolution is booming, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. It predicts that surging demand over the next decade will remake the global auto industry and significantly reduce oil consumption.
In the US, electric vehicles are quickly moving from fringe to mainstream. Although the industry faces near-term challenges, the IEA report predicts almost one in five cars sold in the United States will be electric by 2030. A February report by Clean Investment Monitor found that, despite headlines suggesting a slowdown, 2023 sales in the US were at the top of the range of projections.
The shift to electric vehicles is fundamental to emission reduction goals in the US, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters — second only to China. Transportation is the economic sector with the largest GHG emissions in the US, making up 28 percent of total emissions.
For Blake, encouraging the switch to EVs is one way to resist fossil fuels. “The oil company may get their pipeline built, and they may win the battle, but they’re not going to win the war,” he said.
EV trajectory is upward
There is no doubt that the US has lagged behind China, the EU and Norway in putting its pro-EV policies in place, but it is now following the same path as successful countries, explained Joel Jagger, senior research associate at the World Resources Institute’s Systems Change Lab.
“Overall, it’s going really well,” he said. “Even just last year, the US sold one million EVs for the first time.” Sales increased by about 50 percent from 2022 to 2023, which he called “eye-popping growth.”
Jagger attributes the growth to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provides renewable energy funding and tax credits, the 2021 Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs Act, which allocates five billion dollars from 2022 to 2026 to build charging stations, and new regulations this year from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Electric Nation is distributing electric vehicles to Native American communities, including Red Lake Nation in Minnesota [Photo courtesy Native Sun Community Power Development]
The EPA projects the new pollution standards will result in two-thirds of new passenger vehicle sales being electric by 2032, while also improving air quality and preventing seven billion tonnes of carbon emissions. “Those are going to be really impactful,” Jagger said of the EPA regulations.
Although electricity demand will increase slightly as EVs become more widespread, the switch will reduce overall fossil fuel demand, Jagger said. “Demand would slightly increase for electricity with a percent of that coming from fossil fuels, but that would be heavily outweighed by the decrease in demand for gasoline, which is 100 percent fossil fuel,” he said. Over time, as the energy transition happens, the share of fossil fuels powering the grid will decrease.
For now, some carmakers face short-term hurdles. In April, Tesla reported that sales were down, leading to a 9 percent drop in revenue in the first quarter of 2024. Safety issues with its “Cybertruck” led to a recall, and it has struggled to compete with other EV companies entering the market.
While Tesla’s bad sales quarter is generating negative headlines, Jagger said it’s important to look at the big picture.
“Yes, there’s gonna be some bumps, but overall the trajectory is upward,” he said. “There’s a lot of ups and downs as these automakers try to beat each other in the new EV markets. There’s lots of ambitious plans, there’s lots of new EV models being released, and they’re not all going to be a smashing success right away.”
Short-term factors slowing the transition
Still, the EV transition faces hurdles. For instance, the IRA tax credits incentivise domestic production of batteries and minerals.
“Those domestic content requirements might be a bit of a slowdown in the short run, as manufacturers switch their supply chain and bring manufacturing onshore, but that’s ultimately going to help in the long run,” Jagger said. Domestic mining for lithium used in EV batteries has run into opposition from Native American communities who say it will desecrate sacred sites, harm endangered species and pollute the environment.
Possibly the biggest challenge is “range anxiety” and lack of charging stations.
Most people who own EVs are charging them at home, explained Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy. “EVs are really well-matched if you have a garage and you can just plug in a charger,” he said.
But people living in apartment buildings, or planning long trips, must rely on public charging stations, which are far from perfect — they may require adaptors for certain vehicles, may not charge fast enough, or they might not exist in certain places, Taylor said.
Public charging stations are an important prerequisite for EVs to be widely adopted [File: Michele Tantussi/Reuters]
Another challenge on that front has come from Tesla in April as the company backed away from planned Supercharger locations.
Although EVs are becoming longer-range, Jagger agreed with Taylor, “If nothing is done to put up more charging infrastructure, that will continue to be a barrier,” he said.
Cost is another barrier. The IEA report says that the pace of the transition hinges on affordability; EV prices are dropping, but most are still more expensive than internal combustion engine vehicles.
The Inflation Reduction Act helps out by providing up to $7,500 in tax credits for buying an EV, Jagger pointed out. “Those tax credits extend until 2032, which creates certainty for the auto industry,” he said.
The cost of fuel and maintenance for EVs is generally lower. Taylor explained there may be “growing pains” sourcing parts for repair, but they have fewer moving parts than internal combustion vehicles. “That’s where the cost savings come in,” Taylor said.
The November election could also lead to a shift in climate policy. Republicans and fossil fuel industry groups have promised to fight the new EPA regulations, although laws like the Inflation Reduction Act will be harder to kill. “Policy in the US is pretty durable — when something is passed in Congress, it takes a higher threshold for it to be repealed,” Jagger said.
“I really do think that the transition to EVs is inevitable,” he added. “It’s more about how fast it’s going to go.”
When will EVs become mainstream?
The Biden administration’s goal is for EVs to reach 50 percent of light-duty vehicle sales around 2030. “This seems to me like an achievable goal, considering the tax incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act, the newly finalised EPA regulations on car emissions, and the trajectory that EV sales have taken in other countries,” Jagger said.
Taylor predicted there will be internal combustion engines on the road for years to come, but EVs will be a common sight on the roads by 2032, if the EPA’s pollution standards stay in place. “People will not blink an eye when you’re driving an EV,” he said. “In fact, it will be perhaps strange to be buying an internal combustion engine in 2032.”
In some states, the transition will happen much faster. EVs are already common in California, which has its own emissions regulations and is the leading state for EV sales and number of chargers.
Electric cars are only one part of decarbonising transportation. “Not everyone should have a car,” Taylor said. “It’s really important, as part of addressing climate change, that people have access to good transit.”
In remote areas with fewer charging stations, Blake expects drivers will be more likely to buy hybrids in the near term. But he is optimistic that electric vehicles will become common in Red Lake Nation by 2040 thanks to government funding, tax incentives, regulations and the technology becoming cheaper over time.
“That investment into the necessary infrastructure is going to really drive the adoption of EVs in these communities,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has concluded a five-day tour of Europe, after visiting France, Serbia and Hungary, where he touted Beijing’s vision of a multipolar world and held talks on trade, investments and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron feted Xi with gifts of luxury bottles of cognac and a trip to a childhood haunt in the Pyrenees mountains, while in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic organised a grand welcome, gathering a crowd of tens of thousands of people, who chanted “China, China” and waved Chinese flags in front of the Serbian presidential palace.
In Hungary, President Tamas Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orban also rolled out the red carpet for Xi, receiving him with military honours at the Hungarian presidential palace.
The tour marked Xi’s first trip to Europe in five years and came at a symbolic time for the three nations.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France, and the 75th of those with Hungary. The trip also coincided with the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Serbia’s war on Kosovo.
Xi’s main aim with the visit, analysts say, was pushing for a world where the United States is less dominant, and controlling damage to China’s ties with the European Union as trade tensions grow amid a threat of European tariffs and a probe into Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles that European officials say are hurting local industries.
People waving Chinese and Serbian flags gathered outside the Palace of Serbia during a welcome ceremony for Chinese President Xi Jinping in Belgrade [Dimitrije Goll/ Serbia’s Presidential press service via AFP]
Here are the main takeaways.
No concessions on trade, Russia-Ukraine
Throughout Xi’s two-day trip to France, Macron pressed the Chinese leader to address Beijing’s trade imbalances with the EU – which stood at a deficit of 292 billion euros ($314.72bn) last year – and to use his influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Macron invited European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to join his talks with Xi, to underline European unity on calls for greater access to the Chinese market and to address the bloc’s complaints regarding its excess capacity in electric vehicles and green technology. The pair also pushed Xi to control the sales of products and technologies to Russia that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
But the Chinese leader appeared to have offered few concessions.
Xi denied there was a Chinese “overcapacity problem” and only reiterated his calls for negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Xi, who is expected to host Putin in China later this month, said he called on all parties to restart contact and dialogue.
“Both trade and Russia are non-negotiable for China. Macron could not achieve anything [on those fronts],” said Shirley Yu, political economist and senior fellow at the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom.
But she suggested the visit furthered Macron’s personal relationship with Xi, one that is part of the French leader’s strategy to make France a crucial partner to all emerging world powers.
“Macron shares one vision in common with Xi, which is that the US hegemony – including the quest for Europe’s allegiance to the US’s foreign policy – must yield to a multipolar global order by accommodating the rising powers’ interests and concerns,” Yu told Al Jazeera. Macron’s recent visits to India and Brazil also “prove that France wants to stay at the forefront of that global shift,” she added.
And despite the lack of concessions, French officials told the Reuters news agency that the visit allowed Macron to pass on messages on Ukraine and would allow for more open discussions in the future.
As for Xi, Macron’s talk of European “strategic autonomy” helps further the Chinese leader’s vision for a multipolar world. And while there was no reconciliation on the economic front, Xi’s visit would help with “damage limitation” wrote Yu Jie, a senior research fellow on China at the Chatham House, a United Kingdom-based think tank. It could help prevent ties with Europe from worsening even more, as they have with the US, she said, amid the threat of European tariffs on Chinese goods and a probe into Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, right, address the press after their official talks in the Carmelite Monastery, the prime minister’s office, at Buda Castle district in Budapest, Hungary on May 9, 2024 [Pool via AFP]
In contrast to Xi’s stop in France, his visits to EU candidate country Serbia and EU member state Hungary were marked by pledges to deepen political ties and expand investments in eastern and central Europe.
In Belgrade, Vucic, the Serbian president, signed up to Xi’s vision of a “global community of shared future” and the two leaders hailed an “ironclad partnership” while also announcing that a free trade deal signed between their two countries last year would come into effect on July 1.
Other economic promises included the purchases of new Chinese trains, new air links and increased Serbian imports.
Yu, the political economist at LSE, said Xi’s visit to Belgrade on the 25th anniversary of NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in the city, was meant to make “clear that China and Russia share a common objection to NATO’s east expansion”. It also “reveals that there should be no illusion that China will bow down to Western pressure to curtail economic partnership with Russia,” she said.
In Budapest, Xi pledged more investments in transport and energy, including the construction of a high-speed railway connecting the capital city centre to its airport and cooperation in the nuclear sector, according to Hungarian officials. Xi also promised to move forward on a $2.1bn project to connect the Hungarian capital with the Serbian capital.
The project, most of which is financed by a loan from China, is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, the ambitious infrastructure plan launched by Xi a decade ago to connect Asia with Africa and Europe.
All this demonstrates Xi’s keenness “to reintroduce the Cold War ‘Second World’ as a significant geostrategic player,” said Yu. “With China’s economic support, the periphery of the EU can become more significant European economic players, boasting higher speed of growth and delivering high-tech supply chains,” she said.
To China, Hungary serves as a gateway to the EU trade bloc and Yu added that Beijing’s growing partnership with Hungary could also “potentially deem the EU’s sanctions on Chinese EVs ineffective”.
Araku Valley, India – Gemmala Sita is proud of the coffee beans she grows on what is among the world’s largest organic, fair-trade plantations. Her Arabica beans end up as steaming cups of coffee in the chic cafes of Paris and Dubai, Stockholm and Rome.
But the 29-year-old’s own life is a struggle for the basics. She must bathe in a makeshift washroom made of bamboo and covered with used household cloths.
Sita and her 45-year-old husband G Raja Rao are among 450 members of a tribal community that lives in Gondivalasa village in Araku Valley, on India’s eastern highlands facing the Bay of Bengal. The region in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is dotted with coffee fields renowned for its Arabica beans that are grown as an intercrop along with black pepper. When leaders from G20 nations visited New Delhi for the grouping’s annual summit last September, the Indian government gifted them this coffee.
Yet in Araku Valley, it is a protest that is brewing.
In India’s 2019 national election, the coffee hub grabbed headlines after more voters picked ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) from a long list of candidate options than the combined votes secured by the nation’s two biggest parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress party, in the constituency.
Only one other constituency in all of India registered more NOTA votes than Araku’s 47,977 votes – a direct message from voters that they did not find any candidate worth supporting. In 2014, too, Araku notched up the highest NOTA tally of 16,352 votes for any constituency in Andhra Pradesh.
And since then, the disillusionment among voters like Sita has only grown – as India’s ongoing national election rolls around to Araku Valley, which is scheduled to vote on May 13. In October 2019, Modi declared India open defecation-free. Sita knows that’s not true.
“It would have been better had there been toilets in the houses, but we have to go out in the open every morning to defecate,” she said. “We have no other option.”
Coffee farmer Gemmala Sita, whose beans reach cafes in global capitals – even as she must struggle without a toilet [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]
Sip of desperation
A British civil servant, NS Brodie, introduced coffee to Andhra Pradesh in 1898. Two decades later, in 1920, British revenue officers along with Maharaja of Jeypore – a now-abolished kingdom in present-day Odisha state – introduced coffee to Araku with seeds brought from the Nilgiris, a hill range in southern India.
Since then, the region’s coffee has emerged as a brand in its own right. Samala Ramesh, a deputy director at the local office of India’s coffee board, says the valley’s altitude – 3,000 feet above sea level – in a tropical region gives it a rare combination of hot days and cool nights. That, along with the medium levels of acidity in the region’s iron-rich soil, serve as ingredients that give Araku coffee a unique taste, he said.
The valley itself has 156 villages with a total population of 56,674 people, of which an estimated 20,000 people work in the coffee industry. The district it belongs to has a total of 230,000 coffee farmers. Most people involved in coffee farming come from tribal communities.
The annual unroasted coffee bean production of the entire district was around 15,000 metric tonnes in 2023-24. About 90 percent of Araku’s coffee is exported to Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Switzerland and other nations, according to the Trade Promotion Council of India. It is sold as gourmet coffee in Paris.
The government buys about 10 percent of the coffee from Araku farmers, while private firms buy the rest of it and process it, mostly for exports. The district’s coffee exports bring in 4 billion rupees ($48m) in annual revenue, said Ramesh. Overall, India is Asia’s third-largest coffee producer.
But while global audiences sip on Araku coffee, 33-year-old coffee farmer Buridi Samba said the region’s villagers don’t even have access to clean drinking water. They rely on natural springs.
The men in Gondivalasa bathe in a manhole they’ve built. There’s no drainage system. While the administration has built some public toilets, it has not provided water connections or septic tanks for human waste. The result: The toilets lie unused.
About 96 villages in the valley depend on one primary health centre (PHC) that is desperately short of medical staff. “We have just one general physician here and no specialist,” said Majji Bhadrayya, who heads the PHC.
While the health centre can do normal deliveries, it does not have the resources to carry out caesarean procedures. Patients often need to walk up to 10km (6 miles) to get to the clinic. Villagers carry those who can’t walk on makeshift stretchers made of clothes and tied to sticks. The health centre refers more serious cases to a larger hospital 7km (4.3 miles) away, said Bhadrayya. But that hospital too, a doctor there said on condition of anonymity, is missing specialists in key fields, as well as MRI and CT scan facilities.
Some villages have no proper roads connecting them to the clinic and hospital. In other cases, the roads are littered with potholes. Many parts of the region have no streetlights – so travelling after dusk is even more dangerous. And there’s only one college in the valley that offers degrees.
Tummidi Abhishek, an assistant executive engineer in the state government’s Tribal Welfare Department acknowledged that these shortages are “severe” in parts of the valley. But he insisted that the state government, under the regional YSR Congress Party, was “taking steps to improve the conditions in the valley and also in interior areas that had no accessibility before”.
These steps include the construction of so-called “multiple purpose centres” that would serve both as venues for community events and basic medical facilities – with labs for medical tests, midwives to help with deliveries and a room for doctors to examine patients. Abhishek said the government was also committed to building roads connecting remote villages to these facilities.
But the farmers of Araku have heard similar promises before. And it is not just the government that they feel bitter towards.
The coffee plantation fields of Araku Valley [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]
Earning a pittance
Since 1999, the Small and Marginal Tribal Farmers Mutually Aided Cooperative Society (SAMTFMACS), a cooperative of 100,000 coffee farmers families across 2,000 villages in the region, has tried to help the community produce better – and more sustainable – coffee. It is backed by the nonprofit Naandi Foundation. The cooperative supplies farmers with bio-inoculants to regenerate the soil, new varieties of seedlings and trains farmers in what is known as “terroir classification” – in essence, GPS mapping of each plot to help understand how the soil type, shade, elevation and other factors add to the unique taste of the coffee produced.
The cooperative also runs a modern processing unit in Araku, said Tamarba Chittibabu, the president of the cooperative society. Chittibabu said the cooperative usually sells the coffee to Araku Originals Private Limited (AOPL), a private firm that exports roasted beans to Belgium, France and China, among other countries.
But there’s a wide chasm between what the exporters make and what farmers earn.
Chittibabu said the cooperative buys coffee berries at 50 rupees ($0.60) per kilogramme – which he said was fair and based on the global price of coffee at the moment.
Ram Kumar Varma, the founder of Native Araku Coffee, a firm based in Visakhapatnam city in Andhra Pradesh, said his company tries to pay farmers a little more – 70 rupees ($0.80) per kilogramme. Many other coffee exporters buy berries from middlemen, who pay farmers even less than $0.60 per kilogramme for their produce. Varma and Chittibabu blamed middlemen for suppressing the earnings of farmers. “The middlemen have to be eliminated,” Varma said.
But Nava Roja, a 24-year-old coffee farmer, told Al Jazeera that even what SAMTFMACS or Native Araku pay producers is a pittance. She has around one acre of land that produces around 300kg (660 pounds) of berries. That gets her 15,000 rupees ($180) in a year, she said, at $0.60 per kilogramme.
“It is very difficult to survive with such a meagre amount in the face of growing inflation. We want at least 150 rupees [a little less than $2] per kilogramme as the roasted beans are sold at a very high price in the international market.”
Indeed, Varma confirmed that Araku’s coffee fetches between 2,500 and 6,000 rupees ($30-$72) per kilogramme in the international market.
Election officials prepare to seal the Electronic Voting Machines as the voting ends at a polling station in Chennai, southern Tamil Nadu state, Friday, April 19, 2024. The machine lists all candidates in that constituency and has the option of ‘None of the Above’ for voters not convinced about any candidate [Altaf Qadri/AP Photo]
Ballot or bullet
That sense of neglect from the government and the feeling of exploitation by the coffee industry have all made Araku fertile terrain for India’s Maoist rebels – who lead a far-left, armed movement spanning several states aimed at overthrowing the Indian state.
In 2018, Maoists shot dead two politicians hailing from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a regional political party in the state. In the past, Maoist fighters have also called on the valley’s people to boycott elections, said Vundrakonda Haribabu, a political scientist at Andhra University.
Yet, Araku’s coffee farmers have defied the Maoists to vote – tens of thousands of them instead choosing NOTA in 2019 as a way of registering their protest.
And five years later, many are convinced that remains their best bet at being heard.
“We are completely justified in pressing NOTA because it gives a clear message to the political parties that they have failed,” said 30-year-old Gemmela Vasu, a villager in Gondivalasa. “It is better to go for NOTA rather than boycotting the elections.”
The farmers insist that they are not asking for much – better prices for their coffee berries, roads and medical facilities – and toilets. On May 13, said Sita, the farmer who must defecate in the open, she will again queue up at a polling booth to vote. She still hopes democratic India will wake up and smell the coffee.
Singapore – For three decades, Singaporean corporate lawyer Gerald Yeo* chased the so-called Singapore Dream.
He climbed the ranks to become general counsel, managing a team of lawyers on a six-figure monthly salary.
Sometimes he would rack up 20 hours at work handling calls with clients and colleagues in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
When COVID-19 forced employees to start working from home, Yeo put in even more face-time online – until he suffered burnout and swapped the rat race for retirement in early 2021.
These days, Yeo volunteers with the elderly, dabbles in photography and indulges his love of travel, with jaunts that have taken him to the North Pole and Africa to spot gorillas.
“In Singapore, it’s drilled into our minds to pursue excellence, and you can’t slack off …We are always ‘on’. You have the mindset that you’re serving the corporation but without knowing, you slip into doing too much,” Yeo, who is in his 50s, told Al Jazeera.
Yeo is among a growing cohort of Singaporeans who are seeking to reimagine the Singapore Dream as being less about achieving material success and more about finding meaning and fulfilment.
Singapore’s prime minister-in-waiting, Lawrence Wong, is among those who argue the time has come for the city-state’s residents to look beyond money and work.
After the launch of a report on residents’ views on the future of the social compact in October, Wong said Singaporeans today “no longer talk so much about the five Cs” – referring to a condominium, car, cash, credit card and country club membership.
“From our engagements, it is also clear the Singapore Dream is more than just material success,” Wong, who is deputy prime minister and finance minister, said at the launch of a festival based on the findings of a 16-month consultation involving more than 200,000 Singaporeans.
“It is also about fulfilment, meaning and purpose in what we do. This is not a top-down government agenda. This is very much a shared consensus, a co-created road map for our next round of nation building.”
Singapore, whose government tightly controls displays of dissent and political activism by the population, is on the cusp of a major political transition.
Current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 72 — the eldest son of Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew — is this month stepping down from the helm of the tiny city-state after two decades in office.
On May 15, Wong will be sworn in as Singapore’s fourth prime minister.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is stepping down to be replaced by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong [Rodger Bosch and Julien De Rosa/AFP]
Under Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership, Singapore transitioned from poverty to prosperity within a generation of gaining its independence from Malaysia in 1965.
Today, Singapore has a higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than the United States and its residents enjoy some of the highest living standards on earth.
While Singapore’s success has been credited to a culture of competition and hard work, the city-state has also gained a notorious reputation as one of the most overworked, stressed-out and strait-laced societies in the world.
But there are signs that priorities are beginning to shift.
In a survey carried out in October by the Institute of Policy Studies, more than half of Singaporeans said they would accept lower pay or a less senior role to benefit their family or personal life.
Wong, who gained plaudits for his handling of the country’s pandemic response, has been seen as Lee’s successor since April 2022, when the long-dominant People’s Action Party (PAP) chose him as head of its team of “4G”, or fourth generation, leaders.
A former technocrat, Wong emerged as a dark horse for the premiership after the PAP’s first choice, Heng Swee Keat, a former central bank chief and education minister, stepped aside in 2021 citing age and health issues.
Wong, a self-professed fan of playing the guitar and listening to rock, blues and soul, has admitted to not harbouring any grand political ambitions and has been portrayed in international media as being more relatable than as is typical of Singapore’s governing elites.
A spokesperson for Wong declined a request for comment, citing his busy schedule.
Donald Low, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who studies Singaporean governance, said that Singapore cannot simply prioritise GDP growth or emulate other more advanced societies or economies going forward.
“This is not because Singapore has nothing to learn from other countries. Rather, it’s because Singapore is now at the leading edge of development and it’d have to chart its own future…The country must harness the creativity and ingenuity of its people – to a far greater degree than the PAP government has been used to,” Low told Al Jazeera.
Low said that while he hopes Wong can oversee “small but much-needed changes” in Singapore’s political culture, it is unlikely he will do much to satisfy Singaporeans’ desire for the government to embrace greater diversity and representation – or better tolerate dissent and criticism.
“Because the party leadership is not emotionally convinced that there is much merit in what the critics or dissenters have to say – a consequence of its elitism and high-handedness – I don’t see any significant shifts in the way the PAP conducts politics,” he said.
Singapore is known for its workaholic culture [Edgar Su/Reuters]
Chong Ja Ian, a political analyst at the National University of Singapore, said that more Singaporeans are expressing interest in issues beyond monetary and material success – including the environment, meaningful political participation and diversity – which may shape their career plans and how they devote their money, time and energy.
Chong said that while the PAP has been trying to soften its image and engage more with younger people, it is “less clear when and whether such contact and image management have translated into concrete changes in policy”.
Chong pointed out that Wong has largely stressed continuity.
“Whether and how he intends to move in a clearer and bolder direction on these issues – especially how he transforms general principles and ideas into specific and concrete policies – remains to be seen,” he said.
Eugene Tan, a law professor at Singapore Management University, said the Forward SG initiative to rejuvenate the social compact should be seen as an “attempt to strike the balance between material and post-material concerns”.
“Going beyond material concerns to balancing that with post-material aspirations – fairness, social justice, egalitarianism, national identity – is not just about putting in place and financing measures that support the policy shifts identified in the Forward SG report,” Tan told Al Jazeera.
“It is a fundamental mindset shift requiring tangible behavioural changes and committed action that will take years before the outcomes would be evident. The question is will Singaporeans be prepared to wait patiently.”
Tan said that announcements in the 2024 Budget, such as financial incentives for graduates of the Institute of Technical Education, which provides vocational training to post-secondary students, are an important first and necessary step.
Still, Tan acknowledged that shifting the perception that growth is necessary at all costs has been difficult.
“The vulnerability of Singapore means that material concerns are always writ large but Singaporeans do not want that to be all that is to life in Singapore,” he said.
“Forward SG seeks to nudge and mould societal understanding of success and if the PAP under Wong is unable to do that successfully, then its political grip on power will weaken further and faster.”
While Singapore’s economic transformation was a vote-winner for Singaporeans born before and shortly after independence, millennials and members of Gen Z who have only ever known prosperity are in many cases itching for change, as demonstrated by the rising vote share for the opposition Workers’ Party.
Jayee, a student at Nanyang Technological University, said he acknowledged that the PAP has gradually allowed greater space for discourse on issues like LGBTQ rights and income inequality, but wished for more sufficient checks.
“While the PAP has done wonders for the country, it is often done with a heavy-handed approach…There is a real need for more watchmen in parliament to scrutinise the PAP and question their policies and conduct,” he told Al Jazeera.
Toby Ang*, a former civil servant in his 30s, said he is more worried about structural issues in the economy, such as stagnating wage growth, that cast a cloud over the city-state’s future trajectory.
“Real leadership and fresh ideas are lacking,” Ang told Al Jazeera.
Ang said he is unconvinced that Singaporeans who aspire to a more egalitarian society are prepared for the necessary trade-offs.
“The future state of the economy is quite worrisome. I am a bit concerned that we have put ourselves on a slippery slope, that we are moving towards a high-income Scandinavian model. But we are wired very differently in psyche from the Nordics,” he said.
SMU’s Tan said that Singaporeans increasingly expect a government that “talks with – rather than talks to or, worse, talks down to – the average citizen”.
“They want Singapore to remain exceptional but also a place that they can call home even as others make the country their hotel and playground,” he said.
“Ultimately, they want their views to matter and they want to be courted for their votes.”
As for Yeo, the former corporate lawyer, he is determined to make up for the time he lost working himself to the bone.
“I wonder what life would have been like if I’d lived differently in the past, if I’d set more boundaries and prioritised my well-being instead,” he said.
Air India was once so renowned for its service that Singapore’s founding statesman Lee Kuan Yew used the airline as a blueprint for launching the city-state’s own flag carrier in the early 1970s.
In recent decades, India’s national airline came to be seen as a cautionary tale of decline as it racked up billions of dollars in losses and battled a reputation for tardiness and poor service.
When the Tata Group bought the company in October 2021, returning control to the wealthy Tata family after decades of state ownership, CEO Natarajan Chandrasekaran laid out a clear objective: “To build a world-class airline”.
Tasked with leading this mission is Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, who was recruited from Singapore’s low-cost airline Scoot in 2022 to turn around the carrier, founded in 1932 by French-Indian aviator entrepreneur JRD Tata.
“Standards have slipped considerably over the years,” Wilson told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview.
But Wilson is adamant that “the journey to restoring Air India to its former glory is well under way” under a five-year turnaround plan unveiled last year.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson was recruited from Singapore’s low-cost airline Scoot in 2022 [Arun Sankar/AFP]
The Tata Group has spent tens of billions in transforming the company in recent years, investing in 470 new aircraft, cabin modernisation, a brand refresh and customer service changes.
After the “capital-intensive” five-year plan is completed, Air India hopes to capitalise on the huge growth potential of the Indian aviation market, the world’s third-largest with some 145 million domestic passengers annually.
The Tata Group’s initial priority has been its ageing fleet, the upkeep of which has been neglected for decades.
Shortly after the ownership change, Air India added 36 leased aircraft – 11 Boeing 777s and 25 Airbus A320s – which allowed the airline to launch six new international routes and increase frequency across a further 24.
Air India’s largest investment came with its announcement of plans to buy 470 new Airbus and Boeing aircraft at a cost of $70bn, including 140 A320neos, 70 A321neos, and 190 of the 737 MAX.
Wilson said the acquisitions will enable Air India to “operate the most advanced and fuel-efficient fleet within five years”.
The airline also plans to spend $400m to retrofit its existing fleet by refurbishing cabin interiors.
Wilson said the retrofit will initially focus on the airline’s narrow-body A320neo and A321neo aircraft, after which 40 legacy wide-body Boeing 777s and 787s will receive a “complete makeover with all new interiors”.
Other changes to improve onboard service include introducing premium economy seats on selected long-haul flights and new food menus.
Henry H Harteveldt, the president of Atmosphere Research Group, said the Tata Group’s investments may help to build a foundation for Air India to succeed, but the changes will not matter much if the airline does not manage to be reliable and punctual.
Above all else, Air India should strive to be seen as “the on-time machine”, Harteveldt told Al Jazeera.
“If a service isn’t considered reliable, customers won’t have the confidence to book with that airline,” he said.
Damaged relations
The Tata Group’s biggest challenge of all may be addressing Air India’s damaged relationship with its customers.
Apart from recurring issues with reliability and punctuality, the airline’s image has been tarnished by high-profile controversies involving its customer service, such as an incident in February in which an 80-year-old passenger collapsed after being forced to walk 1.5km (2.4 miles) from the plane to the immigration counter due to a shortage of wheelchairs.
John Gradek, an expert in aviation management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, said that Air India’s fleet renewal efforts will fail to revive the airline’s fortunes unless it can establish a “new customer service mindset among its customer-facing staff”, a task that has proven difficult “for many airlines looking to grow their international brand”.
More than two years after the Tata Group’s takeover of Air India, the airline’s turnaround plan has completed its first phase.
Its achievements so far include a $200m investment in new IT to boost reliability and the recruitment of more than 3,800 new employees across several areas to support growth.
Harteveldt said the investment in IT was especially welcome as Air India has been “tech-starved for a long time because of the Indian government’s inability or unwillingness to invest in the airline adequately”.
For the Tata Group, the progression has continued into 2024 with the scheduling of new international routes with the newly delivered Airbus A350-900 between Delhi and Dubai.
Additional changes, such as consolidating carrier Vistara into Air India, are expected to occupy Tata’s focus for the remainder of 2024, in keeping with Chandrasekaran’s view of consolidation as “an important milestone in the journey to make Air India a truly world-class airline”.
There are also internal issues with its subsidiary Air India Express, which has both domestic and international flights. Since Tuesday, it has cancelled at least 90 flights as more than 100 crew members have called in sick at the last minute, essentially a strike action reportedly over pay and related matters.
Cancellations across the Indian budget carrier represent owner Tata Group’s second setback in as many months, as Vistara was forced to adjust its schedule with flight cancellations amid a pilot shortage only in April.
Tata Group CEO Natarajan Chandrasekaran has stressed the need for consolidation [Christopher Furlong/AFP]
Harteveldt said the “devil is in the details when it comes to airline mergers”.
If the airline teams can “be transparent, even humble”, operational faults can be smoothed out during the integration’s initial months, he said.
After being in the government’s hands for more than half a century, Air India’s recovery is expected to take time, Harteveldt said, but there is “no reason in the world why, with the right investments and focus, Air India can’t successfully distinguish itself from other Indian-based airlines”.
Wilson said Air India’s long-term goal is to grow its market share to 30 percent both domestically and internationally by 2027.
The goal, he said, is to create an airline that is “bold, confident, and vibrant, but also warm and deeply rooted to its rich history, traditions, and warm Indian hospitality”.
Still, Wilson said he is under no illusions that the turnaround will happen overnight.
Japanese car giant says net profit reached 4.94 trillion yen ($31.9bn) in the year to March.
Toyota has reported record profit and sales figures on the back of the weak yen and strong demand for hybrid vehicles.
The Japanese car giant said on Wednesday that it netted a record profit of 4.94 trillion yen ($31.9bn) in the year to March on revenues of 45.1 trillion yen, double the previous year’s income.
Global sales topped 10.3 million units, an all-time high, buoyed by strong demand in the home market and in North America and Europe.
Sales of hybrid vehicles jumped 31 percent to 3.7 million units.
The financial results far exceeded a company forecast in February of a 4.5 trillion yen net profit on revenues of 43.5 trillion yen.
Toyota offered a more sober outlook for the current year, estimating profit would fall nearly 28 percent due to increased investment.
The carmaker aims to sell 10.95 million vehicles worldwide this year, down 1.3 percent from 2023.
“We’ll make investments in order to firmly protect the supply chain from a perspective of sustainable growth,” Toyota CEO Koji Sato said at a news conference after the release of the results.
“The latest results show that our efforts have borne fruit, but we need [to] keep growing with the vision to become a mobility company,” Sato added.
While Toyota blazed a trail in the hybrid space with the release of the Prius in 1997, it has faced criticism for being slow to embrace fully electric cars.
Toyota sold just 116,500 fully electric vehicles in 2023, while China’s BYD and Tesla shifted about 1.6 million and 1.8 million, respectively.
Nevertheless, Toyota’s hybrid-first strategy has paid dividends over the last year amid falling demand for electric vehicles in the United States and Europe.
Despite falling behind Tesla and BYD in the electric vehicles space, Toyota, which offers more than two dozen hybrid models, has held the title of the world’s largest automaker by sales for four straight years.
In January, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda expressed scepticism that battery electric vehicles would ever dominate the market, predicting they would peak at about 30 percent of sales.
Move comes after launch of AI-enabled laptop drew fire from Republican lawmakers.
The United States has revoked some licenses that allow companies to ship goods, such as chips, to sanctioned Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies.
Some companies were notified on Tuesday that their licenses were revoked effective immediately, according to one person familiar with the matter.
The move comes after the release last month of Huawei’s first AI-enabled laptop, the MateBook X Pro powered by Intel’s new Core Ultra 9 processor.
The laptop launch drew fire from Republican lawmakers, who said it suggested that the US Department of Commerce had given the green light to Intel to sell the chip to Huawei.
“We have revoked certain licenses for exports to Huawei,” the Commerce Department said in a statement, declining to specify which ones it had withdrawn.
The move, first reported by Reuters, comes after concerted pressure by Republican China hawks in Congress who have been urging the Biden administration to take tougher action to thwart Huawei.
“This action will bolster US national security, protect American ingenuity, and diminish Communist China’s ability to advance its technology,” Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik said in a statement.
Depending on which licenses were revoked, the move could also hurt Huawei which still relies on Intel chips to power its laptops, and could hurt US suppliers that do business with the company.
A spokesperson for Intel declined to comment.
Huawei did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Huawei was placed on a US trade restriction list in 2019 amid fears it could spy on Americans, part of a broader effort to handicap China’s ability to bolster its military. Being added to the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping.
Even so, suppliers to Huawei have received licenses worth billions of dollars to sell Huawei goods and technology, including one particularly controversial authorization, issued by the administration of former President Donald Trump, which has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in its laptops since 2020.
Qualcomm has sold older 4G chips to handsets since receiving a license from US officials in 2020. In a regulatory filing earlier this month, Qualcomm said it did not expect to receive more chip revenue from Huawei beyond this year.
However, Qualcomm still licenses its portfolio of 5G technologies to Huawei, which last year began using a 5G chip designed by its HiSilicon unit that most analysts believe is manufactured in violation of US sanctions. Qualcomm said in the filing this month that its patent deal with Huawei expires early in Qualcomm’s fiscal 2025 and that it has started negotiations to renew the deal.
Qualcomm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Critics argue such licenses have contributed to the company’s resurgence. Huawei shocked the industry last August with a new phone powered by a sophisticated chip manufactured by Chinese chipmaker SMIC, despite US export restrictions on both companies.
The phone helped Huawei smartphone sales spike 64 percent year on year in the first six weeks of 2024, according to research firm Counterpoint. Its smart car component business has also contributed to Huawei’s resurgence, with the company notching its fastest revenue growth in four years in 2023.
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