Redwood Materials Inc., the battery recycling company, has reached a deal to supply Panasonic with billions of dollars in critical battery components that will be produced in the U.S. for the first time.
These two giants of the world economy may well be on very different economic paths. In short, the U.S. has secure access to cheap energy and Europe does not.
Retailers are dangling big sales well ahead of Black Friday, in a sharp reversal from a period in which scarcity allowed stores to charge full price for many products.
A solidarity pact could allow Europe’s largest consumers of natural gas to bail each other out if an extreme cold snap were to create shortages this winter.
However, the head of the Washington-based fund warned that a fragmentation in global manufacturing supply chains could make it harder to push measured inflation rates back down.