Reuters World News - State of the Union, Fed predictions and Ghana’s costly LGBTQ bill

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

President Joe Biden prepares for his State of the Union address with a splintered base and voter concerns about his age and policies. Fed Chair Jerome Powell gives testimony on Capitol Hill insisting the US is on a good path for a soft landing. Ghana faces a billion-dollar loss in international aid if it passes an anti-LGBTQ bill into law. And a health emergency is declared in Brazil over Dengue Fever. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Biden looks towards November for the state of the union address as the Fed Chair faces lawmakers. Garner's anti-LGBQ bill could end up costing its economy. And Dengi is making a comeback. It's Thursday, March 7th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Jonah Green in New York. And I'm Kim Vennel in London. Bailey's voters are up for grabs and the uncommitted are waiting to be convinced.

The stakes are high for President Joe Biden in tonight's State of the Union address. White House reporter Trevor Honeycutt will be watching along. Trevor, what should we expect? So the president has eight months until his reelection bid goes before voters, and he's got a lot of work to do between now and then. He's got a base that's splintered. He's got rampant concerns among voters. about not just his age, but also some of his policies. And he's going up against an opponent

who's been out of the public eye and seems to have benefited from that. And so this is a really good opportunity for him to make his case for another four years. And given where his poll numbers are at, it seems like a lot of voters will need some convincing. And so how will he do that? I mean, what are the policies he's going to try to highlight? Sure. Well, voters are saying that they're really concerned about immigration and they're really concerned about the economy. So you can expect that those two things are going to be at the top of the list for Biden. He's going to talk probably about how Republicans rejected a border deal that Biden was willing to agree to. His hope is that tacking right on that issue is going to be helpful for him with voters. He's going to talk about what he's doing to

lower costs for Americans, given their concerns about inflation and prices. So you'll see a lot of things. items around health care and probably junk fees and different initiatives that the administration is taking to lower costs for the American people. So those will be some of the big issues. In case our listeners forgot, this was the rowdy crowd Biden faced last year. Do we know anything about preparation? Yeah. Is he getting coached with a Marjorie Taylor Green lookalike yelling at him in the Oval Office? So Biden is doing a lot of preparation, you know, for this. He's been spending days and weeks of time with some of his senior aides. He was at Camp David over the weekend with a group of people who've been with him for years and years and years and understand

his tone of voice, his perspective, how he thinks through political issues and political challenges. And they've all been kind of passing drafts back and forth and editing. And Biden's spokesperson, Corrine Jean-Pierre, says that he's going to be fine-tuning until the day of the event. If the economy evolves broadly as expected, it will likely be appropriate to begin dialing back policy restraint at some point this year. Inflation also a hot topic for Fed Chair Jerome Powell during testimony on Capitol Hill. Powell says it remains unclear when the central bank may cut interest rates, but insists the U.S. economy is on a good path to a soft landing. Fed watcher Howard Schneider has been watching his words. So, Howard, what was Powell's big message?

to lawmakers. So the big message was that, you know, this economy is growing, the unemployment rates low. The Fed expects inflation to continue to fall, and they still expect if things evolve as they anticipate to be cutting rates later this year. Now, when that starts and how far, still to be determined. And as Powell cautioned, as he always does, the economic outlook is uncertain. And ongoing progress toward our 2% objective for inflation is not assured. So they'll be watching this data and still have sort of an intact projection expectation that rates will fall this year, but didn't give any hint on how soon that might be. And as North Carolina, Representative Patrick McHenry, a Republican, noted, we're in a political year. It's an election year. Did Powell give

any indication as to how he'll navigate these political pressures? Well, the operative response there was that he and his colleagues plan to, quote, unquote, keep our heads down and stick to the data, stick to their knitting, look at what the incoming information indicates about the decline of inflation, if it's evolving as they expect. As he said, there's risks on both sides. But yeah, they don't want to get in the crossfire between Trump and Biden, even though inevitably, it seems the outcomes of their decisions are going to shape the landscape between those two. Three people have been killed in a Houthi missile attack on a Red Sea merchant ship. It's the first fatalities reported since the Iran-aligned Yemeni group began their campaign of strikes.

All right, 29 hours one day, Senate bill 159, the Senate concurs. Alabama lawmakers pass a bill to protect IVF providers from lawsuits and criminal prosecution. Governor Kaye Ivy signed the bill into law after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos should be considered children, pushing at least three IVF providers. to stop procedures. The program that resettles Afghans who worked with the U.S. government into the U.S. could soon hit the limit set by Congress. And it's unlikely the divided Congress will approve the Biden administration's request

for 20,000 more special immigration visas, which offer a path to U.S. citizenship, thus stranding tens of thousands who are at risk of Taliban retribution. A new report shared's last. on what may have happened to Reuters reporter Isam Abdullah who was killed in Lebanon. An Israeli tank fired shells at a group of journalists and then, quote, likely opened fire on them with a heavy machine gun in an attack lasting one minute and 45 seconds. The report by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research

was contracted by Reuters to analyse the evidence from the October 13th attack. Ghana's president says an anti-LGBQ bill passed by Parliament last week has yet to cross his desk and is subject to a Supreme Court challenge. But the stakes for the tiny West African country are high. An internal government memo seen by Reuters says the bill could cost the country $3.8 billion in World Bank financing. Rachel Savage covers markets and economics in sub-Saharan Africa. Rachel, what could this anti-LGBQ push cost Ghana? So Ghana is currently recovering from a very deep economic crisis. It is restructuring its debt. It has a $3 billion three-year IMF loan program. And that IMF loan is predicated on

Ghana having additional international financial support, including from the World Bank. Now, the World Bank suspended new funding for Uganda last year after Uganda passed a very harsh anti-LGB bill. So the worry here for Garnayans is that the World Bank will similarly suspend new funding in Ghana. However, the World Bank hasn't yet responded to Reuters requests for comment at the time of recording this podcast. You mentioned Uganda. What's been the effect of the suspension there? So, so far, the World Bank suspending new funding in Uganda hasn't had any impact in Uganda. Their anti-LGB bill is still law, and the President Maseveni and other Ugandan politicians have been very firm in saying that, you know, it's Uganda's choice and they will continue with this law in place.

However, in Ghana's case, the president hasn't fully expressed support either way for the bill. Brazil's most populated state, Sao Paulo, has declared a health emergency over the surge in cases of dengue fever. This year, a record 1.2 million cases have been reported so far, with cases also spreading to Argentina and Paraguay. Global health reporter Jennifer Rigby has been looking at what's causing this spread. So dengue is a disease spread by mosquitoes and the kind that carry dengue thrive in hot and wet conditions, which is what El Nino in South America at the moment and climate change have brought to those countries. But it's not just South America, it's on the rise around the world

and it has been for a few years. Climate change is already having a really big impact on human health in all sorts of different ways, including things that are simple like really, really hot weather, puts people under heat stress, particularly vulnerable people. But then also in more complicated ways, infectious diseases are spreading to new areas. And Deng is a worry because it kills people.

That's it for Thursday's edition, Reuters World News. We'll be back on Friday. But if you want to stay ahead of the news from around the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.