Monday Morning Briefing: Biden administration fights for COVID relief plan

The Reuters Daily Briefing Monday, January 25, 2021 by Linda Noakes and Farouq Suleiman Good morning, . Here’s what you need to know. 'We can't wait' Officials in Joe Biden's administration are trying to head off Republican concerns that his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief proposal is too expensive, as optimism over the plan sends global shares to just shy of record highs. Jared Bernstein, a member of Biden's Council of Economic Advisers, said the $900 billion in relief passed in late 2020 would only help for "a month or two." But besides the price of the new package, there is concern about a proposal to send $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans, even some with fairly high incomes. "We can't wait," said White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. "Just because Washington has been gridlocked before doesn't mean it needs to continue to be gridlocked." Meanwhile, a rift among Republicans over Donald Trump's upcoming impeachment trial was on full display on Sunday. “It’s pretty clear that over the last year or so, there has been an effort to corrupt the election of the United States and it was not by President Biden, it was by President Trump,” Senator Mitt Romney told Fox News. “I think it’s counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire,” Senator Marco Rubio said. Pressing on with his rollback of Trump policies, Biden is poised to repeal a ban on transgender people joining the military, while the U.S. today marks its return to the global fight against climate change by joining high level talks with world leaders. Today’s biggest stories The coronavirus Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he had tested positive for COVID-19 during the country’s deadliest week yet in the pandemic. The 67-year-old leader said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving treatment. “As always, I am optimistic,” said Lopez Obrador, who has resisted wearing a face mask in public since the virus reached Mexico over 10 months ago. Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia, according to a London-based forecaster. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned riots across the country this weekend in which demonstrators attacked police and set fires to protest against a night-time curfew, calling them “criminal violence”. The U.S. CDC is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached, the agency’s chief said. New Zealand confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in the community in months in a 56-year-old woman, but said close contacts of the recently returned traveler had so far tested negative. U.S. The House of Representatives will formally charge ex-President Donald Trump with inciting insurrection in a fiery speech to his followers before this month’s deadly attack on the Capitol, signaling the start of his second impeachment trial. The nine Democratic lawmakers who will prosecute Trump in his impeachment trial reflect America’s racial, ethnic and sexual diversity, in stark contrast to the white nationalist imagery that marked the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. The United States often sends ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to “flex its muscles” and this is not good for peace, China’s Foreign Ministry said, after a U.S. aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed waterway. With Democrats controlling the Senate, progressives want to repeal the Trump administration’s Wall Street-friendly rules, but they may struggle to win enough votes in a thinly divided Congress and risk obstructing Biden’s agencies from writing stricter new rules, said lobbyists and legal experts. Business Between the closed theaters and restaurants, the prices slashed by airlines and half-empty hotels, and the government benefits paid or in the pipeline, Americans may have as much as $2 trillion in extra cash socked away by this spring. For the Federal Reserve, that is both blessing and curse. China’s Huawei Technologies is in early-stage talks to sell its premium smartphone brands P and Mate, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that could see the company eventually exit from the high-end smartphone-making business. Nothing escapes the winds of change now sweeping through BP, not even the exploration team that for more than a century powered its profits by discovering billions of barrels of oil. Its geologists, engineers and scientists have been cut to less than 100 from a peak of more than 700 a few years ago, company sources told Reuters, part of a climate change-driven overhaul triggered last year by CEO Bernard Looney. Global life insurers are taking steps to curb payouts stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, including long-term health consequences that are not fully understood, industry sources told Reuters. From Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Davos, Boohoo, Suez At a time when the global elite should be gathered at a Swiss ski resort, the World Economic Forum has instead kicked off a virtual shindig, online retailers are finding rich pickings on Britain’s ailing high street, and Paris-listed water-and-waste group Suez received a boost from strong-second half results. Read concise views on the pandemic's financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe. Quote of the day "Battered by COVID-19, threatened by nationalism, and uncertain what the promise of a post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ adds up to, the United Kingdom must urgently rediscover what holds it together" Gordon Brown UK could become 'a failed state' without reform, former UK PM Brown says Video of the day Biden to add South Africa to travel ban: source President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19, a senior U.S. public health official told Reuters. And finally… Makers of Sophia the robot plan mass rollout amid pandemic Since being unveiled in 2016, Sophia - a humanoid robot - has gone viral. Now the company behind her has a new vision: to mass-produce robots by the end of the year. 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