US economy grew much faster than expected in second quarter
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(NEW YORK) — The U.S. economy grew much faster than expected over three months ending in June, accelerating from the previous quarter and defying concerns about a possible slowdown.
U.S. GDP grew at a 2.8% annualized rate over three months ending in September. That figure doubled the annualized rate of growth undertaken over the previous quarter.
The economic expansion reflected a surge in consumer spending, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Thursday. The uptick in spending included purchases of housing, and cars, among other items, the BEA added.
The fresh data delivers a strong bill of health for the nation’s economy. The robust performance defies a years-long period of high interest rates, which typically weigh on demand and slow economic activity.
However, the continued growth could complicate the path toward a widely expected interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September.
Until the most recent quarter, the economy had been cooling. That trend gave the Federal Reserve confidence that its high interest rates had indeed slowed output and contributed to a slowdown of price increases.
Price increases have slowed significantly from a peak of more than 9%, though inflation remains more than a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%. An outright drop in prices in June compared to the month prior marked a major sign of progress in slowing inflation.
If the Fed cuts interest rates as the economy is heating up, however, the central bank risks rekindling rapid price increases.
The chances of an interest rate cut at the Fed’s meeting in September stand at more than 80%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien speaks on the first day of the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Vice President Kamala Harris has received endorsements from most of the nation’s top labor unions, with a key exception: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who leads the union of 1.3 million members, drew attention last month when he spoke at the Republican National Convention, praising former President Donald Trump as “one tough SOB.”
The speech followed a visit by Trump to Teamsters headquarters in January, but little has been known about what Trump told some union members, the executive board and O’Brien at the meeting months before the RNC.
Details about Trump’s visit, first reported by ABC News, reveal an effort to woo meeting attendees with labor-friendly views and a promise of political access if the Teamsters went on to endorse him, according to an account published last month by the Teamsters in the union’s quarterly magazine.
“Before departing the union’s headquarters, the former President directly told those in attendance that the Teamsters would have a seat at the table if a potential endorsement was made for a second administration,” the Teamsters magazine said.
Speaking with Teamsters members at its national office in Washington, D.C., Trump described union contracts as an effective means of winning wage gains amid high inflation, the union said. Trump also said he agreed with attendees who voiced support for antitrust policy and who described the strong potential for growth in the U.S. labor movement, according to the union’s account.
Trump appeared to voice views friendlier to unions than he has shared in some other appearances on the campaign trail. Some positions he offered up with the Teamsters stood in contrast with stances his administration took while he was in office.
“The former President often pointed to persistent inflation as a detriment to any marginal gains achieved by workers to increase their wages but acknowledged that union workers like Teamsters were much more likely to get ahead thanks to strong collective bargaining agreements,” the magazine said.
The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Trump campaign.
In response to a previous request for comment, Teamsters Assistant Director of Communications Kara Deniz told ABC News the Teamsters has traditionally endorsed a candidate for president after the party conventions.
“We are on our timeline and continuing to engage our members in this process,” Deniz added.
To be sure, the magazine sent by the Teamsters to its members included accounts of roundtables held with President Joe Biden, as well as third-party candidates Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. Last month, the Teamsters invited Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion at the union’s headquarters, the union said in a post on X. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the invitation.
The Teamsters is currently carrying out a vote among its members on who the union should endorse, the union said in a post on X last week.
During the roundtable discussion in January, which the union said lasted more than an hour, Trump declined to offer a firm view on potential legislation enshrining “right to work” nationwide, the union said. Rather, Trump said, such legislation should be left up to the states to decide for themselves, according to the union.
Currently, 26 states have enacted right-to-work laws, which allow workers to opt out of membership in a union at their workplace. The laws are widely opposed by unions in part because studies have shown that states with right-to-work laws have lower unionization rates.
In declining to support a nationwide right-to-work law, Trump bucked the position of more than half of the Republican members of Congress, who’ve signed onto such a measure introduced last year.
As president, however, Trump voiced support for right-to-work laws.
“The president believes in right to work,” then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a White House press conference in February 2017.
More generally, the favorable attitude toward union contracts that Trump expressed in the meeting contrasts with efforts taken by the Trump administration that made it more difficult for workers to form a union.
Trump appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that sets labor rules, for instance, expanded the length of time between when a union files for representation and when an election takes place. That additional time affords greater opportunity for anti-union employers to dissuade workers.
At the meeting, Trump also told Teamsters members that he felt public sector workers should have the same rights as union members at private companies, according to the account published by the Teamsters last month.
However, the Trump administration filed a brief in support of plaintiffs in a 2018 Supreme Court case that struck a major blow to public sector unions.
In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Trump-appointee Neil Gorsuch cast a decisive fifth vote that made it illegal for public sector unions to charge so-called “fair share fees” to workers who opt out of belonging to a union at their workplace.
Labor unions widely condemned the decision, saying it would deny unions crucial funds that allow them to advocate for all workers at a given employer.
The remarks made by Trump at the meeting with the Teamsters sounded a more positive tone toward unions than he has expressed in some other settings during the campaign.
In an interview on Monday with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, Trump praised Musk for what he described as a willingness to fire employees who go out on strike. Federal labor law prohibits the termination of workers for engaging in a collective labor action, such as a strike.
“They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone.’ You are the greatest,” Trump told Musk in an interview broadcast on X.
O’Brien sharply criticized the comments on Tuesday.
“Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said.
The United Auto Workers filed federal charges against Trump and Musk on Tuesday over the remarks, alleging that the comments amounted to threats that workers would be fired for going on strike. Musk did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
At multiple fundraisers this year, Trump urged CEOs to make large donations because unions are giving significant funds to Democrats, the The Washington Post reported last month.
Art Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo, New York, said the comments made at the Teamsters meeting appear to be in keeping with efforts Trump has made to woo other constituencies.
“He likes to speak to whoever the audience is and say good things about them,” Wheaton told ABC News. “With this audience, he did not want to appear anti-union.”
“He seems to pander to his audience, which is not unusual for a politician,” Wheaton added.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff descend from Air Force Two at Delaware National Air Guard base in New Castle, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. (ERIN SCHAFF/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she released 15 years of her personal tax returns, the most of any 2020 presidential candidate. The disclosure offers a glimpse into how Harris, who has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race, became a millionaire as a public servant.
After Harris, in 2014, married Doug Emhoff, who was then an entertainment lawyer, her net worth increased significantly due to the couple’s combined assets, a review of her tax records and financial disclosures shows.
Before then, Harris’ income came mostly from her public salaries as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California.
Before she was married, the highest annual income reported by Harris was in 2010, when she reported earning $263,000. The next year, when she became attorney general, her reported income dropped to less than $160,000 a year in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
After marrying Emhoff — whose clients have included retail giant Walmart and health care company Abbott Labs, as well as a Malibu real estate agent who found fame on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — Harris’ income went up significantly.
As a high-profile attorney for one of the world’s largest companies, Emhoff earned more than $1 million per year and held dozens of investments and stocks, according to financial documents reviewed by ABC News.
In 2014, Emhoff owned shares of at least 30 stocks from companies including Home Depot, St. Jude Medical, Comcast, and American Express, according to his statement of economic interest, a form required for California employees.
After Harris announced she would run for U.S. Senate in 2015, Emhoff sold off many of his stocks, including CVS Health and Oracle. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
From 2015 until 2019, Emhoff reported dozens of publicly traded investments known as “excepted investment funds,” according to annual reports filed by Harris when she was a senator.
As Harris’ profile grew, so did her earnings. According to a 2018 annual report filed by Harris, she received an advance of more than $300,000 for her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she and Emhoff reported a gross joint income of $1,889,156 that year, according to tax returns.
Before Harris assumed the vice presidency in 2021, Emhoff announced in December 2020 that he would leave his law firm. He joined Georgetown University’s law school as a member of faculty, where he has earned nearly $200,000 per year.
As a result of the move, the couple’s income dropped significantly, from more than $3 million in 2019 to about $450,000 in 2023.
Nevertheless, with their real estate assets and pension, Forbes estimates Harris and Emhoff’s net worth to be about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021. Property records reviewed by ABC News show Harris sold her Washington, D.C., condo in 2021 for $1.85 million, and the couple currently owns a house in Brentwood, California, that Emhoff purchased in 2012 for $2.7 million.
If Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, she will face former President Donald Trump, who has long fought to keep his tax records private.
Forbes, in its most recent accounting, estimates Trump’s net worth to be $5.9 billion, which an earlier breakdown said consists of $2.5 billion mainly from his real estate properties, clubs and resorts, plus the value of his share of Truth Social’s parent company, minus the $540 million in legal liabilities from his civil trials over the last year.
(NEW YORK) — Less than a week after Elon Musk publicly endorsed the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, he shared an edited video of Vice President Kamala Harris that used artificial intelligence to mimic her voice.
Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, spread the video on his social media platform X, where he boasts 192 million followers. The post appeared to violate X policies that disallow sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media.” Later, Musk defended the video as parody, which is permitted on the platform when adequately labeled.
A similar firestorm broke out this week after X suspended an account affiliated with a fundraising drive in support of Harris called “White Dudes for Kamala.”
A message from X indicated that the account had been suspended for “violating our rules against evading suspension,” according to a screenshot posted by an event organizer. X, which plays host to nearly 250 million users, later reinstated the account.
The incidents stoked concern among some experts about the potential for Musk to wield X as a means of influencing public conversation about an election in which he holds a clear preference.
“It’s an unsettling situation,” Paul Barrett, a professor at New York University Law School and deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, told ABC News. “It illustrates the power that can reside in the hands of a single individual because of the almost bizarre way our current communications architecture is structured.”
Some experts disagreed, however, saying critics lack evidence of Musk’s undue intervention at X. They also downplayed the role X plays in the wider political conversation, noting that a focus on the platform risks overstating Musk’s influence.
“I actually don’t think his ownership of Twitter or activities on Twitter make the slightest bit of difference,” Siva Vaidyanathan, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, told ABC News, referring to the platform by its former name.
X did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment. The request also sought comment from Musk.
When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he vowed to relax content moderation and turn the platform into a “digital town square.” The company cut more than half of its staff, eased restrictions on some forms of speech and reinstated an account belonging to Trump, among other changes.
Meanwhile, Musk’s follower count soared. When he acquired Twitter, Musk had about 110 million followers. After adding more than 80 million followers, Musk has far surpassed the followings of top users like former President Barack Obama and pop star Justin Bieber.
In some cases, Musk has posted and amplified misinformation on X, including a post in January that falsely claimed a dependence on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election.”
“As the owner of Twitter, he’s the person who’s supposed to police the content but he himself is engaging in the spread of fake information,” Hamed Qahri-Saremi, a professor of computer information systems at Colorado State University who studies social media, told ABC News.
After easing content moderation, the platform has come to rely on Community Notes, a system in which context is appended to false or misleading posts once it receives approval from a sufficient number of users. That system has proven inconsistent, however, allowing some false posts to spread widely without corrections, The New York Times reported last week.
Sam Woolley, a professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism who focuses on political communication and technology, said Musk’s commitment to free speech has fallen short in recent cases, for instance the temporary suspension of the account affiliated with “White Dudes for Harris.”
“Musk’s actions suggest serious contradictions with his stated free speech intentions on the platform,” Woolley told ABC News.
Some experts sharply disagreed with criticism of Musk regarding his oversight of X, saying he hasn’t interfered with the platform in a manner that suggests an intent to reward his political allies or punish his foes.
“Has Elon come out and specifically set a policy or rule for X that in turn would then say he’s abusing that power?” asked Jason Buckweitz, a professor of business at Columbia University who studies the digital economy. “I haven’t seen any evidence.”
“I don’t necessarily think it’s a concern unless there’s some level of negative influence,” Buckweitz added.
Plus, observers should not assume that Musk’s large follower count translates into immense impact, said Vaidyanathan, noting that some of the followers are likely bots and inactive users.
“The very exposure to or posting of something doesn’t mean that anybody saw it or believed it,” Vaidyanathan said. Many of the followers are likely supporters of Musk who would already back his preferred candidate anyway, he added.
For his part, Vaidyanathan said Musk still wields significant political influence as the owner of aerospace company Space X, which has current contracts with the U.S. government.
Joshua Tucker, director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, said Musk’s dual role as an owner and user of X raises a policy question surrounding the regulation of social media platforms.
Tucker, who declined to say whether X warrants government regulation, pointed to a law calling for the ban or sale of TikTok as an example of the federal government weighing in on social media. On Wednesday, the Senate passed bipartisan legislation that aims to protect children’s safety on social media, signaling further willingness to police the platforms.
“We continue to live in an era where we have to think very carefully as a country about what types of public policies to regulate the behavior of social media companies in terms of public health but also the information ecosystem,” Tucker said.
Speaking about Musk’s dual role on X, Tucker added: “If this is something the public finds objectionable, that’s ultimately a public policy question.”