White House looks to move quickly on $17 billion revamp of U.S. ports

By David Shepardson and Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House plans to move quickly on a $17 billion revamp of U.S. ports approved by Congress as part of President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Biden is due to visit the Port Of Baltimore on Wednesday to tout funding for revamping U.S. ports facing huge backlogs.

The $17 billion will “improve infrastructure at coastal ports, inland ports and waterways, and land ports of entry along the border,” the White House said.

Many U.S. ports have bridge or depth limitations that restrict their ability to receive larger vessels, while a surge of cargo is straining land operations at some ports.

The project aims:

* To identify projects for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction at coastal ports and inland waterways within the next 60 days.

* To provide a roadmap for more than $4 billion in funding to repair outdated infrastructure and to deepen harbors for larger cargo ships.

* To prioritize key ports of entry for modernization and expansion within the next 90 days.

* To identify $3.4 billion in investments to upgrade obsolete inspection facilities and allow more efficient international trade through the northern and southern borders.

The Biden administration aims to alleviate congestion at the Port of Savannah by funding a project by the Georgia Port Authority.

That will allow the state to reallocate more than $8 million to convert existing inland facilities into five pop-up container yards in Georgia and North Carolina.

The Port of Savannah will transfer containers further inland so that they can be closer to final destinations, a move that will free more dock space.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. vaccines for children plan fully operational next week, White House says

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is rolling out Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 this week, but most of the 15 million shots being shipped initially are unlikely to be available before next week, the White House said on Monday.

Millions of doses specifically formulated for children of that age group will start arriving at distribution centers over the next few days, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said, and the federal government has purchased enough supply for all eligible 28 million children.

“The whole plan is based on Pfizer vaccines,” Zients told reporters at a briefing. “So the bottom line is there’s plenty of supply of the Pfizer vaccine and we look forward to parents having the opportunity to vaccinate their kids.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years, making it the first COVID-19 shot for young children in the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still needs to advise on how the shot should be administered, which will be decided after a group of outside advisers discuss the plan on Tuesday.

Following the CDC’s decision, parents will be able to visit vaccines.gov and filter locations offering the vaccine for the children, Zients said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Michael Erman in New Jersey; Editing by Alison Williams)

White House lays out plan to vaccinate kids ages 5 to 11

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration on Wednesday outlined its plan to vaccinate millions of kids ages 5 to 11 as soon as the COVID-19 shot is approved for younger children, readying doses and preparing locations ahead of the busy holiday season.

It is working to set up vaccination clinics in more than 100 children’s hospital systems nationwide as well as doctor’s offices, pharmacies and potentially schools, it said.

If Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE’s vaccine wins wider approval, the plan would ensure “it is quickly distributed and made conveniently and equitably available to families across the country,” the White House said in a statement, noting regulators will independently weigh approval.

Food and Drug Administration officials are reviewing the Pfizer/BioNTech application seeking approval of its 2-dose vaccine for younger children, with its panel of outside advisers scheduled to weigh in on Oct. 26. The FDA typically follows the advice of its panel but is not required to do so.

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will next weigh in on recommendations for the vaccine at a Nov. 2 and 3 meeting, which its director will use in making her own recommendation.

“We will be ready to begin getting shots in arms in the days following a final CDC recommendation,” the White House said ahead of an 8:45 a.m. (1345 GMT) news briefing with U.S. President Joe Biden’s White House COVID-19 response team.

Once approved, roughly 28 million more children in the United States would be eligible to receive what would be the first U.S.-approved vaccine to ward off the novel coronavirus in younger kids. The Pfizer/BioNTech shot is already approved for those ages 12-17, and the companies are still studying it for those younger than 5.

“We have to be prepared to ensure that we can get vaccines to families as soon as the FDA and the CDC issue their decision,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told NBC News’ “Today” program.

Murthy said the administration was not looking to get ahead of health regulators but wanted to lay the groundwork to ease distribution to ensure there is ample supply and access to vaccination locations.

While children have a lower rate of death from COVID-19, many still face illness and long-term symptoms that are still being studied. Many adults who have been hesitant or opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine, and even some who did not oppose the vaccine for themselves, are expected to resist giving the shot to their children.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Philippa Fletcher)

White House asks U.S. oil-and-gas companies to help lower fuel costs -sources

By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) -The White House has been speaking with U.S. oil and gas producers in recent days about helping to bring down rising fuel costs, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Energy costs are rising worldwide, in some cases leading to shortages in major economies like China and India. In the United States, the average retail cost of a gallon of gas is at a seven-year high, and winter fuel costs are expected to surge, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Oil-and-gas production remains below the nation’s peak reached in 2019.

“We are closely monitoring the cost of oil and the cost of gas Americans are paying at the pump. And we are using every tool at our disposal to address anti-competitive practices in U.S. and global energy markets to ensure reliable and stable energy markets,” a White House official said.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that she is not aware of any contact with oil and gas companies “around this particular issue.”

U.S. crude oil recently hit $80 a barrel for the first time in seven years, as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies known as OPEC+ restrict output. The White House has discussed rising prices with top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

The average retail price of a gallon of gasoline has risen to $3.29, according to AAA figures. The U.S. Energy Department said on Wednesday that household heating costs are expected to rise dramatically this winter for all fuels, but particularly for heating oil and propane.

U.S. oil production has been slow to rebound from 2020, when output dropped during the coronavirus outbreak. Production hit a record of nearly 13 million barrels per day (bpd) in late 2019, but the U.S. Energy Department said Wednesday that output will only average 11 million bpd in 2021, rising to 11.7 million bpd in 2022.

Natural gas prices are up sharply this year, the result of supply shortages and stronger-than-expected demand in Europe and Asia.

U.S. shale producers, who are responsible for the boom in crude oil output in the last 10 years, have been less willing to drill for more oil after years of weak financial performance, and have instead focused on cutting spending to boost returns for investors.

It can take six months to drill and complete a new well and bring the oil and gas to market. Any call by the White House for an increase in U.S. production is likely to fall on deaf ears, according to one oil executive, who did not want to be identified criticizing the approach. The industry has also been unhappy with some of Biden’s earlier actions, including a temporary drilling halt on federal lands, that they see as an attack on the industry.

“By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” said Anne Bradbury, chief executive officer at the American Exploration and Production Council, which lobbies for independent oil-and-gas producers.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been conducting internal discussions about rising fuel costs, one of the two sources added.

The White House has been trying to tackle supply bottlenecks that have boosted the price of various goods, from meat to semiconductors. Officials said Wednesday that the administration has been working with major ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, along with shipping giants UPS and FedEx, to alleviate congestion slowing deliveries.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Ron Bousso and David French; Editing by Howard Goller and Andrea Ricci)

“There will be things that people can’t get,” at Christmas, White House warns

By Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House officials, scrambling to relieve global supply bottlenecks choking U.S. ports, highways and railways, warn Americans may face higher prices and some empty shelves this Christmas season.

The supply crisis, driven in part by the global COVID-19 pandemic, not only threatens to dampen U.S. spending at a critical time, it also poses a political risk for U.S. President Joe Biden.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows the economy continues to be the most important issue to Democrats and Republicans alike.

The White House has been trying to tackle inflation-inducing supply bottlenecks of everything from meat to semiconductors, and formed a task force in June that meets weekly and named a “bottleneck” czar to push private sector companies to ease snarls.

Biden himself plans to meet with senior officials on Wednesday to discuss efforts to relieve transportation bottlenecks before delivering a speech on the topic.

Supply chain woes are weighing on retail and transportation companies, which recently issued a series of downbeat earnings outlooks. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve last month predicted a 2021 inflation rate of 4.2%, well above its 2% target.

American consumers, unused to empty store shelves, may need to be flexible and patient, White House officials said.

“There will be things that people can’t get,” a senior White House official told Reuters, when asked about holiday shopping.

“At the same time, a lot of these goods are hopefully substitutable by other things … I don’t think there’s any real reason to be panicked, but we all feel the frustration and there’s a certain need for patience to help get through a relatively short period of time.”

Inflation is biting wages. Labor Department data shows that Americans made 0.9% less per hour on average in August than they did one year prior.

The White House argues inflation is a sign that their decision to provide historic support to small businesses and households, through $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief funding, worked.

U.S. consumer demand stayed strong, outpacing global rivals, and the Biden administration expects the overall economy to grow at 7.1%, as inflation reaches its highest levels since the 1980s.

“We recognize that it has pinched families who are trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy as we move into the later stages of the pandemic,” said a second senior White House official.

BOTTLENECK CZAR

In August, the White House tapped John Porcari, a veteran transportation official who served in the Obama administration as a new “envoy” to the nation’s ports, but he’s known as the bottleneck czar.

Porcari told Reuters the administration has worked to make sure various parts of the supply chain, such as ports and intermodal facilities, where freight is transferred from one form of transport to another, are in steady communication.

Now it is focused on getting ports and other transportation hubs to operate on a 24-hour schedule, taking advantage of off-peak hours to move more goods in the pipeline. California ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles have agreed to extended hours, and there are more to follow, he said in an interview Monday.

“We need to make better use of that off-peak capacity and that really is the current focus,” Porcari said.

The administration is also seeking to restore inactive rail yards for extra container capacity and create “pop-up” rail yards to increase capacity.

“It’s important to remember that the goods movement system is a private sector driven system,” he said. “There’s problems in every single part of that system. And, and they tend to compound each other.

“While the pandemic was an enormously disruptive force. I think it also laid bare what was an underlying reality, which was the system was strained before the pandemic.”

A NEW WAR ON CHRISTMAS

Republican strategists are seizing on possible Christmas shortages to bash Biden’s policies as inflationary, and thwart his attempt to push a multi-trillion dollar spending package through Congress in coming weeks.

A recent op-ed by Steve Cortes, a one-time advisor to former President Donald Trump, dubbed the upcoming holiday season “Biden’s Blue Christmas,” continuing in a long tradition of conservatives criticizing Democrats over celebrations around the Christian holiday.

Trump, considered the front-runner Republican candidate for president in 2024, blasted it out in a mass email through his political action committee, Save America.

Seth Weathers, a Republican strategist who ran Trump’s Georgia campaign in 2016 said they see local impact. “People here in Georgia are paying twice as much for items than they paid a year ago and they are blaming Biden. He’s in charge.”

A Quinnipiac poll released last week showed Biden is losing the public’s trust on the economy, with only 29% of public thinking the U.S. economy is in “good” or “excellent” condition, compared with 35% in April.

“President Biden could use a holiday season win,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said. “A slowdown of holiday season deliveries and the financial strain that comes with it would be coal in the stocking for the Administration at the close of the first year in office.”

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons, Richard Pullin and Aurora Ellis)

White House warns of economic catastrophe without action on debt limit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House warned on Friday that a failure by the U.S. Congress to extend the debt limit could plunge the economy into a recession and could lead to cuts in critical state services.

The government faces an October deadline on the debt limit, after which it may not be able to pay all of its bills without congressional approval.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and his aides have been trying to broker a deal with Republicans to resolve a showdown over raising the $28.5 trillion federal borrowing limit.

The administration is warning lawmakers that the country risks a new financial crisis and a default on its payment obligations.

“Economic growth would falter, unemployment would rise, and the labor market could lose millions of jobs,” the White House said in a new fact sheet.

For months, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged Congress to act, saying cash and “extraordinary measures” being used to temporarily finance the U.S. government will run out in October.

But Republicans, who lost control of the White House in the 2020 election and do not hold the majority in the Senate or the House of Representatives, have balked and placed the potential crisis on Democrats’ shoulders.

“It’s absolutely unspeakable, unthinkable that we would allow the federal government to default on the obligations it has already made,” White House economic adviser Brian Deese told MSNBC on Friday.

“We’re confident that this is going to get done.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Rare bid to repeal war resolution advanced by U.S. Senate committee

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed legislation on Wednesday that would repeal congressional authorizations for past wars with Iraq, a significant step in lawmakers’ effort to wrest back the power to declare war from the White House.

The 20-member panel backed the measure by voice vote with support from members of both parties, although at least seven Republicans asked to be recorded as “no” votes.

The committee’s action sent the joint resolution to the full Senate, where it is strongly supported by Democrats and backers say it is expected to garner enough Republican support to win the 60 votes needed for passage.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he planned a vote this year. “The Iraq War has been over for nearly a decade. An authorization passed in 2002 is no longer necessary in 2021,” Schumer said as he opened the Senate on Wednesday.

The legislation would repeal Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) passed in 1991 and 2002 for wars against Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Proponents of repeal argued that Iraq’s current government should be treated as a U.S. partner, not an enemy.

The House of Representatives backed repeal in June.

President Joe Biden’s administration supports the repeal, which is moving through Congress as opinion polls show Americans are weary of years of “forever wars” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere against militant groups.

Opponents said repeal would send a message of weakness in a volatile region. “I really believe that it would be a bad message to send… that we’re backing away from this,” said Senator Jim Risch, the top Foreign Relations Republican.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a leader of the repeal effort, listed 10 reasons to vote yes. Among others, he called repeal a step toward Congress taking seriously “its most solemn responsibility” to send troops into combat, and prevent serious abuses in the future.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Howard Goller)

White House calls on America’s most critical companies to improve cyber defenses

By Christopher Bing and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House is signaling to U.S. critical infrastructure companies, such as energy providers that they must improve their cyber defenses because additional potential regulation is on the horizon.

U.S. President Joseph Biden signed a national security memorandum on Wednesday, launching a new public-private initiative that creates “performance controls” for cybersecurity at America’s most critical companies, including water treatment and electrical power plants.

The recommendations are voluntary in nature, but the administration hopes it will cause companies to improve their cybersecurity ahead of other policy efforts, said a senior administration official.

The announcement comes after multiple high profile cyberattacks this year crippled American companies and government agencies, including a ransomware incident which disrupted gasoline supplies.

“These are the thresholds that we expect responsible owners and operators to go,” said the official. “The absence of mandated cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure is what in many ways has brought us to the level of vulnerability that we have today.”

“We are pursuing all options we have in order to make the rapid progress we need,” they added.

Biden on Tuesday warned that if the United States ended up in a “real shooting war” with a “major power” it could be the result of a significant cyber attack on the United States, highlighting what Washington sees as a growing threat posed by hackers from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

“The federal government cannot do this alone,” said the official. “Almost 90% of critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector. Securing it requires a whole of nation effort.”

The official described the current state of cybersecurity rules for critical infrastructure companies as “patchwork” and “piecemeal.”

“We’ve kicked the can down the road for a long time,” said the official.

(Reporting by Christopher Bing; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

White House sees YouTube, Facebook as ‘Judge, Jury & Executioner’ on vaccine misinformation

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has YouTube, not just Facebook, on its list of social media platforms officials say are responsible for an alarming spread of misinformation about COVID vaccines and are not doing enough to stop it, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking said.

The criticism comes just a week after President Joe Biden called Facebook and other social media companies “killers” for failing to slow the spread of misinformation about vaccines. He has since softened his tone.

A senior administration official said one of the key problems is “inconsistent enforcement.” YouTube – a unit of Alphabet Inc’s Google – and Facebook get to decide what qualifies as misinformation on their platforms. But the results have left the White House unhappy.

“Facebook and YouTube… are the judge, the jury and the executioner when it comes to what is going on in their platforms,” an administration official said, describing their approach to COVID misinformation. “They get to grade their own homework.”

Some of the main pieces of vaccine misinformation the Biden administration is fighting include that the COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, false claims that they carry microchips and that they hurt women’s fertility, the official said.

Social media companies have come under fire recently from Biden, his press secretary, Jen Psaki, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who have all said the spread of lies about vaccines is making it harder to fight the pandemic and save lives.

A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which has also been highlighted by the White House, showed 12 anti-vaccine accounts are spreading nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine misinformation online. Six of those accounts are still posting on YouTube.

“We would like to see more done by everybody” to limit the spread of inaccurate information from those accounts, the official said.

The fight against vaccine misinformation has become a top priority for the Biden administration at a time when the pace of vaccinations has slowed considerably despite the risk posed by the Delta variant, with people in many parts of the country hostile to being vaccinated.

The requests to Facebook and YouTube come after the White House reached out to Facebook, Twitter and Google in February about clamping down on COVID misinformation, seeking their help to stop it from going viral, another senior administration official said then.

“Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to vaccine misinformation… but Google has a lot to answer for and somehow manages to get away with it always because people forget they own YouTube,” said Imran Ahmed, CCDH founder and chief executive.

YouTube spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said that since March 2020, the company has removed over 900,000 videos containing COVID-19 misinformation and terminated YouTube channels of people identified in the CCDH report. She said the company’s policies are based on the content of the video, rather than the speaker.

“If any remaining channels mentioned in the report violate our policies, we will take action, including permanent terminations,” she said.

On Monday, YouTube also said it will add more credible health information and as well as tabs for viewers to click on.

The senior administration official cited four issues on which the administration has asked Facebook to provide specific data, but the company has been reticent to comply.

These include how much vaccine misinformation exists on its platform, who is seeing the inaccurate claims, what the company is doing to reach out to them and how does Facebook know the steps it is taking are working.

The official said the answers Facebook has given are not “good enough.” Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said the company has removed over 18 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation since the start of the pandemic and that its own data shows that for people in the United States using the platform, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50% since January and vaccine acceptance is high.

In a separate blog post last Saturday, Facebook called on the administration to stop “finger-pointing,” laying out the steps it had taken to encourage users to get vaccinated.

But the administration official said the blog post did not have any metrics of success. The Biden administration’s broad concern is that the platforms are “either lying to us and hiding the ball, or they’re not taking it seriously and there isn’t a deep analysis of what’s going on in their platforms,” the official said. “That calls any solutions they have into question.”

(Reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Chris Sanders and Dan Grebler)

White Houses still sees inflation abating, can’t say exactly when

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House expects supply chain pressures that are fueling higher inflation to abate in the “not-too-distant future,” but cannot say exactly when, a senior official said on Tuesday after June consumer prices showed the biggest gain in 13 years.

The official declined to repeat earlier forecasts that inflation would peak in the summer months, citing continued uncertainty about when the supply chain pressures would ease, and concerns over the emergence of new COVID-19 variants.

Asked if the bump in prices for certain services reflected any price gouging, the official said, “that probably remains to be seen,” and added that it was an issue worth investigating.

The U.S. consumer price index increased 0.9% in June amid supply constraints and a continued rebound in the costs of travel-related services from pandemic-depressed levels as the economic recovery gathered momentum.

The CPI had jumped 0.6% in May.

White House officials remain convinced that the bump in prices is transitory, citing moderating pressures in the semiconductor market and a drop in lumber prices – two factors that have led to bottlenecks and pushed prices higher.

They cited recent upward revisions in overall growth forecasts and said President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 rescue plan had been effective in driving a stronger-than-expected recovery, but also signaled growing concern about new COVID-19 variants and lingering disparities in vaccination rates.

“We expect that these things will work themselves out in the not-too-distant future, but I can’t say exactly when,” said one official. “We also can’t say whether or not we really truly do have this pandemic under control.”

Pressed to put a timeframe on when the inflationary pressures would ease, the official said, “We are just watching the data closely, week by week, month by month.”

About 60% of the June increase was due to used and new cars and auto parts, the official said.

Officials were looking at the sectors driving the higher prices carefully, the official said, adding that some of the increase was due to the so-called base effect, reflecting the low level of prices seen during the pandemic.

A second official said there was continued concern about the automotive market, but administration officials were in close touch with dealers, producers, semiconductor suppliers and others, and remained convinced current pressures would diminish.

The White House did not expect the sharp increases in used car prices to last beyond this year, said one of the officials.

The official said some underlying problems in the U.S. economy – including a severe shortage of housing and the high price of pharmaceuticals – would remain a problem.

Biden’s proposed budget included $213 billion in funding for affordable housing to address part of the issue, while the executive order he signed on Friday should result in lower pharmaceutical and hearing aid prices, the official said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Aurora Ellis)