Yellen Goes To China, Threads Take On Tweets, America Needs Its Charge

The U.S. wants to lead the climate fight with electric vehicles,

but where will drivers plug them in when they're on the road?

Clearly we need more high-speed chargers.

We look at the state of the country's EV charging infrastructure.

Will Mark Zuckerberg's threads succeed in taking on Elon Musk's Twittersphere?

Stay with us, we'll give you the news you need to start your day.

a government under biblical rule.

If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

I'm Heath Drewsen, and on the new season of Extremely American,

I'll take you inside the movement.

Listen to Extremely American from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR network.

On the heels of a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken,

Yellen has an agenda that includes meetings with China's new premier

and other top officials who have a hand in the economy.

Since then, the trade relationship is even more strained.

So can the U.S. and China compete while they also cooperate?

Good morning, Emily.

because I started reporting on China for NPR in 2019,

and as you mentioned, the trade war was in its most intense period at that point.

But all the issues that Yellen is up against are from that time period,

and Chad P. Bowne has been tracking those tariffs that were imposed during that trade war.

He's a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.,

and almost four years later, as Yellen lands in China today, he says this.

None of the tariffs that were imposed or that were in place

as of when President Trump's phase one agreement went into effect, none of those have been removed.

coming to the U.S. and vice versa.

And so Yellen faces all these old challenges, and on top of that, you have new sources of friction,

for example, American export controls to prevent China from getting certain advanced semiconductor technology.

And so Bowne says Yellen needs to talk about not just trade imbalances now with China,

but also national security concerns.

it seemed to just be all about the U.S.-China economic relationship in trade.

Now it's not. Now it's about geopolitical conflict, military conflict, potentially Taiwan, Hong Kong.

What can the U.S. and China agree on?

But again, American officials are really downplaying expectations for her trip.

They say this is just to maintain contact so the two sides understand each other,

even if they disagree with each other.

Yellen's also in China this week to try to convince China that these export controls that China hates,

the fact that U.S. companies are moving some of their supply chains away from China.

This is being done to protect U.S. interests, just as China does things to protect its interests

that the U.S. also doesn't like.

And she's trying to convince China that this is not meant to completely decouple the two economies.

And in fact, the two countries have a lot to cooperate on.

For example, combating climate change and addressing global debt.

Because right now, if you're a foreign business in China, the trends are pretty worrying.

China's passed these new laws that can let them sanction foreign companies.

There are new data control laws that make it really hard for companies to operate even there.

Add to that, there's a new counter-espionage law passed this year that's so broad,

American businesses are genuinely concerned that their normal activities could get them accused of being spies.

Late yesterday, Facebook's parent company, Meta, launched a service called Threads.

But will it succeed?

What's it like?

But it has some advantages over a run-of-the-mill Twitter rival in the form of data.

Meta has a lot of this.

When you download the Threads app, you can instantly port over all of your Instagram photos,

your bio, all of your Instagram friends.

If all of your friends on Instagram join Threads, then you can sort of keep your network that you have on Instagram.

Now, in terms of technology itself, Rob, for 2023, this is not exactly a breakthrough innovation.

For a social media app, actually, this feels very 2010.

But people are still joining.

I think that really shows just how much frustration there is with the current state of Twitter.

In its first seven hours, more than 10 million people have joined Threads.

And people have already found some pretty funny names for it.

Some are calling it Twinstagram. Others are calling it Twitterkiller.

So we'll see how it goes.

Why is Mark Zuckerberg doing this now?

Since he took over Twitter, it's been less reliable. It's been less credible.

Musk's abrupt policy changes have often alienated Twitter's most loyal users.

Just this past weekend, Musk capped the number of tweets non-paying users can read each day.

Then he made it impossible to view tweets unless you're signed into the platform, which has now been reversed.

But the damage is done for some users, Rob.

Many are just fed up with Twitter. It's too chaotic and glitchy.

And Musk clearly has one goal in mind, right?

And that's getting more people to pay for Twitter.

But people are leaving in droves.

Zuckerberg sees opportunity there.

Backing up for some context here, Zuckerberg and Musk have long had a rivalry.

And a decade ago, Zuckerberg tried to buy Twitter, but Twitter wouldn't sell.

And Zuckerberg has long envied Twitter for being the public square of the internet.

What's happening with that?

I think it's theatrics.

I think there's a good chance that it won't happen at all.

But photos have leaked of Elon training for this cage match.

So yeah, we'll see what happens.

Will Threads be any different than the other attempts to replace Twitter?

Mastodon, Blue Sky Post, the list goes on.

The obvious difference here is scale.

Across its apps, Meta has more than 3 billion users.

Now the question is, can it recreate the culture of Twitter?

That might be hard.

Meta tried to copy TikTok with a service called Reels.

That hasn't worked out so great.

I talked to this tech analyst named Fane Greenwood

about whether Meta's Threads has a shot.

She is pretty skeptical.

It's because of something she calls the terrible uncle problem.

when all of your relatives, your colleagues, your high school classmates

are able to find you on social media.

That is a bad thing, especially for younger users

who see Facebook sort of as a party they would never want to go to.

where they feel like they have to censor what they're saying,

have to modulate what they're saying.

They don't want to deal with literally everybody they know

commenting on their posts.

I emailed him to get a sense of how he's thinking about Meta

taking a direct shot at Twitter, but I have not yet heard back.

about an electric vehicle for their next car purchase.

A big sticking point is the lack of public EV chargers.

even on a road trip she took last week with the Secretary of Energy.

Camilla is back from that and with us now.

Hello.

is the availability of fast chargers that people can find on the road?

actually happens at people's homes or maybe their work.

But psychologically, chargers on the road are really important.

Americans love a road trip.

Studies actually show this is the number one barrier

keeping people from buying electric vehicles,

even ahead of sticker price.

So last week, like you mentioned, I was,

the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm,

went on this road trip through the South, and I was tagging along.

We were traveling in electric vehicles,

and I want to play you some tape from one charging stop

that the Secretary took in Tennessee.

This is Secretary Granholm.

and went on to talk about this federal push

to incentivize chargers and green manufacturing.

fanning herself, asking for some air conditioning here

because it is hot.

Her staff had actually turned off the A.C.

to try to make the car charge faster.

This was one of several charging stops

where charging went much slower than it should have.

So we actually interrupted the interview at this point

to step outside the vehicle.

Okay, so that doesn't sound great.

And this was during a big heat wave, though, right?

I mean, we covered that.

A reminder of what's at stake here.

Ultimately, this is about climate change.

Getting people to adopt E.V.s is a big part of the push

to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

You do need people to be on board, right?

And people are buying E.V.s increasingly,

people like Holmesetta Green.

She's from Louisville, Kentucky,

and she was waiting in the shade by that electric vehicle charger

while her Volkswagen ID.4 was charging,

and she loves that car, but...

but she also says there just aren't enough chargers.

And this is really the situation right now, right?

The chargers aren't fast enough, they aren't reliable enough,

and there simply are not enough of them.

Tesla's and everyone else's.

Tesla's chargers, this is not just my opinion here, Rob,

this is data, they are better, they're more reliable.

Other companies are now embracing Tesla's charging standard,

which is a brand new, very interesting development.

But the biggest thing that's happening is that

there's just a push to build more of them.

The federal government is spending billions of dollars on them.

Car companies are going electric.

The federal government could potentially speed that up.

There are proposed standards that could mean

two-thirds of new vehicles are electric by 2032.

The big traditional automakers, their lobbying group

is currently saying that's simply not feasible,

that the need for more chargers is one reason why

they say they need more time.

Environmental groups, all electric automakers,

they say the speed is doable,

and they point to things like all the money that's going into chargers.

Now, these federal rules are being hammered out,

so to a certain extent, this is all negotiating positions.

But one thing everyone agrees on is that

we're going to need more of the things.

I'm Rob Schmitz.

Nina Kravinsky, Shelby Hawkins, Taylor Haney, and Julie Deppenbrock.

Our editors are Michael Sullivan, Rafael Nam, Pallavi Gogoi,

Alice Wolfley, and Jan Johnson.

Our technical director is Zach Coleman,

with engineering support from Stacey Abbott.

Join us again here tomorrow.

there's a radio show for that.

Find NPR's morning edition on your NPR station

at stations.npr.org.

And for podcasts, local news, and the latest headlines,

take NPR everywhere with the NPR One app.

Find it in your app store.

Technologies that say,

I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you,

take care of me.