Business
A Hollywood Production (Made in Liverpool)

LIVERPOOL, England — For twenty years, the Littlewoods constructing in Liverpool, a protracted, low-slung and cavernous house constructed to accommodate a betting and mail-order firm within the Nineteen Thirties, sat deserted. Nobody needed to tackle this crumbling hulk looming on the outskirts of town.
Till Lynn Saunders. She is the driving power to make it the middle of Liverpool’s first movie and TV studio advanced.
“It’s a beast of a web site,” stated Ms. Saunders, the top of the Liverpool Movie Workplace. It had been too intimidating for many potential patrons. However amid a growth in TV and movie manufacturing in Britain, Littlewoods Studios is now one in every of at the least two dozen main plans to construct or increase studio house throughout Britain.
Streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video are racing to satisfy insatiable demand for content material and have chosen Britain as their location to make it, countering the malaise of total funding within the nation because it voted to go away the European Union. In 2021, a document 5.6 billion kilos ($7.4 billion) was spent on movie and high-end TV productions in Britain, practically 30 p.c greater than the earlier excessive in 2019, in keeping with the British Movie Institute. Greater than 80 p.c of that cash was coming ashore from American studios or different international productions.
Assured that there is no such thing as a imminent finish to the need for binge-worthy exhibits and films, studios, property builders and native authorities are speeding to construct extra manufacturing house.
Blackstone, the world’s largest personal fairness firm, and Hudson Pacific Properties, the proprietor of Sundown Studios, which embody the previous houses of Columbia Footage and Warner Bros. off Sundown Boulevard in Hollywood, have stated they’ll make investments £700 million to construct the primary Sundown Studios facility exterior Los Angeles, simply north of London. With 21 soundstages, it is going to be bigger than any of its Hollywood studios.
“There’s simply such a large want to supply content material in markets that have already got infrastructure,” stated Victor Coleman, the chairman and chief govt of Hudson Pacific Properties. “And the infrastructure isn’t essentially simply the amenities but it surely’s additionally the expertise each in entrance and behind the digicam.”
The early “Star Wars” movies and 10 years’ price of Harry Potter films helped Britain get right here. Movie productions had been attracted by skilled labor and visible results firms and, critically, beneficiant tax breaks. In 2013, the incentives had been prolonged to TV productions that price greater than £1 million per broadcast hour — so-called high-end TV sequence, like “The Crown” and “Recreation of Thrones.” In recent times, productions had been supplied a 25 p.c money rebate on qualifying expenditures, corresponding to visible results finished in Britain. Within the 2020-21 fiscal yr, tax breaks for movie, TV, video video games, kids’s tv and animation exceeded £1.2 billion.
In Britain, movie will get a degree of presidency consideration that different artistic industries, corresponding to stay theater, can solely dream of.
“I’d not prefer to ponder the lack of the tax incentive,” stated Ben Roberts, the chief govt of the British Movie Institute. With out it, Britain would grow to be instantly uncompetitive, he added.
A lot of the progress in manufacturing in Britain comes from big-budget TV exhibits, a staple of streaming channels. Final yr, 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain, corresponding to “Ted Lasso” and “Good Omens,” and fewer than half of them had been produced solely by British firms, in keeping with the British Movie Institute. In contrast with 2019, the quantity spent jumped by 85 p.c to £4.1 billion.
Liverpool already claims to be the second-most-filmed-in metropolis in Britain after London. For a number of weeks in late 2020, its streets turned Gotham Metropolis for “The Batman,” and for years exhibits, together with “Peaky Blinders,” have been shot there. The native authority is courting extra TV exhibits by constructing 4 smaller studios.
Property builders introduced the plan for Littlewoods Studios in early 2018, however the grand ambitions had been pushed astray a number of months later by a hearth within the constructing. Not desirous to miss out on the rising demand, Ms. Saunders satisfied the Metropolis Council to spend £3 million constructing two soundstages adjoining to the positioning. They opened in October.
After which on the finish of final yr, £8 million in public funding was authorized for remedial work on the Littlewoods constructing to create two extra sound levels. Ms. Saunders hopes that including studios will hold productions on the town for longer — occupying lodge rooms, ordering from eating places and using native individuals. The movie workplace has additionally began investing in productions — thus far to the tune of £2 million in six TV exhibits.
Britain is already the most important manufacturing location for Netflix exterior america and Canada. Whereas a lot is filmed on location — corresponding to “Bridgerton,” in Tub, and “Intercourse Schooling,” in Wales — Netflix dedicated to a everlasting dwelling in 2019 on the Pinewood Group’s Shepperton Studios in Surrey, simply southwest of London, the place “Dr. Strangelove” and “Oliver!” had been made many years in the past. Shepperton is now increasing, aiming to double the variety of its soundstages to 31 by 2023, and Netflix plans to occupy a lot of that new house.
However the descent of American streamers on British shores has introduced its challenges, too. The business is rife with tales of manufacturing crews leaving jobs for higher-paying gigs, lengthy waits for studios and manufacturing prices that outpace inflation.
Anna Mallett, Netflix’s vice chairman of bodily manufacturing for the U.Okay., Europe, Center East and Africa, resists the concept the streamer’s voracious enlargement is squeezing others out of studio house.
“I do assume there’s sufficient for everybody,” she stated. “There’s over six million sq. ft of manufacturing house coming onto the market within the subsequent couple of years.”
Amazon plans to maneuver in subsequent door. Final month, Prime Video agreed to lease 450,000 sq. ft within the new growth at Shepperton Studios, together with 9 soundstages. The streaming service despatched a ripple of pleasure by Britain final yr when it introduced that it could movie the second season of its “Lord of the Rings” sequence, “The Rings of Energy,” within the nation. It’ll transfer from New Zealand to the dismay of that nation’s officers, who over twenty years have supplied tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in monetary incentives to the franchise.
By 2023, Warner Bros. hopes to be underway with its plans so as to add 50 p.c extra soundstage house to its studios northwest of London.
Warner Bros. was the primary main Hollywood studio to arrange a everlasting location in Britain when it purchased in 2010 the Leavesden studios, the place it made Harry Potter.
“It was a reasonably big leap for Warners to make that funding,” stated Emily Stillman, the top of studio operations at Leavesden. After years of piecemeal enlargement, the brand new growth, if it will get planning approval, would be the studio’s largest funding on the web site.
Away from extra famend studios surrounding London, there’s hope that the manufacturing growth can convey job alternatives and funding to neglected areas in Britain. New studios are being constructed out of an previous industrial house in Dagenham, in east London, an space as soon as synonymous with the manufacture of Ford vehicles within the twentieth century. In Bristol, the native authority is investing £12 million so as to add three extra soundstages to Bottle Yard Studios in an space that’s economically struggling, stated Laura Aviles, the top of the Bristol Movie Workplace.
“It’s been a wrestle” to regenerate the realm, she stated, “and there are numerous younger individuals there who may very well be third-generation unemployed who’ve struggled to get into work.” The enlargement will hopefully entice different companies to the realm.
There’s a threat that every one this demand for studio house may grow to be a blessing and a curse. Regardless of the expert work power within the area, there are actual considerations about whether or not Britain can prepare sufficient manufacturing crew and fill the related roles to populate all this new studio house.
The business has dedicated hundreds of thousands of kilos to fast coaching packages. Business leaders hope to convey extra individuals into the sphere and break the stereotype that the work — most of it freelance — is solely for the effectively off and effectively related. This month, Prime Video stated it could spend £10 million to fund programs in Britain targeted on growing variety within the business and positions in Prime Video-commissioned productions.
And there’s the worry that smaller unbiased productions by British filmmakers, who can’t as readily use debt to finance an enlargement, might be left behind on this growth. Simply 16 p.c of the cash spent on high-end TV exhibits in Britain final yr went to solely home productions.
The extent of international funding “does run the chance of difficult the indigenous, unbiased sector by way of its means to retain expertise, crew up, get finance, rent house, use places,” Mr. Roberts of the British Movie Institute stated. “We’re actually alert to that not feeling like a squeeze too far.”

Business
Trump and Musk Attack Journalists by Name in Social Media Posts

President Trump has made clear his animus toward mainstream media organizations. Now he’s getting more personal.
Mr. Trump and his key lieutenant, Elon Musk, who has been empowered to run what they call the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” have attacked journalists by name in recent days on the social media platforms they own: Truth Social and X.
On his Truth Social account on Friday, Mr. Trump called for The Washington Post to fire Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, and labeled him “incompetent.” Mr. Trump frequently posts on the account to his millions of followers and regularly condemns perceived enemies.
Mr. Robinson had written in an opinion column on Thursday that top Republican senators “should be ashamed of themselves” for not standing up to Mr. Trump during the confirmation process for some of his cabinet picks and for not protesting Mr. Musk’s taking an ax to government departments like the United States Agency for International Development, which administers foreign aid programs. Mr. Robinson also appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC on Friday to discuss his column.
“So sad to see him trying to justify the waste, fraud, and corruption at USAID with his pathetic Radical Left SPIN,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He should be fired immediately!!!”
In an email, a spokeswoman for The Post said: “Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with a 45-year record of integrity, professionalism and scrupulous reporting and commentary. The Washington Post stands behind Gene — just as it stands behind all journalists and news organizations dedicated to independent coverage and a free press.”
Mr. Musk took aim at a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Katherine Long. Ms. Long was the first to reveal, in a report in The Journal on Thursday, that Marko Elez, one of Mr. Musk’s lieutenants in the Department of Government Efficiency, was linked to a since-deleted racist social media account that had posted statements like, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Mr. Elez resigned after The Journal approached the White House for comment, according to the article. It was Ms. Long’s first article in her new job at The Journal.
Mr. Musk said in separate replies on X on Friday that Ms. Long was “a disgusting and cruel person” and should be “fired immediately.”
Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on X on Friday, saying that he disagreed with some of Mr. Elez’s posts but that they shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.” (Mr. Elez is 25 years old.)
“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” Mr. Vance wrote.
The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Journalists have a job to do and should never be attacked by high-ranking government officials for doing it,” Timothy Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, a free-expression nonprofit, said in a statement.
He added, “Musk’s call for this journalist’s firing contradicts his self-proclaimed free speech advocacy and reveals his hypocrisy.”
The behavior is not new for Mr. Trump. In his first term, he frequently criticized high-profile journalists, including Jim Acosta of CNN, Katy Tur of NBC News and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.
Since his inauguration in January, Mr. Trump has been quick to demonize what he calls “the fake news media.” He promoted a false claim on his Truth Social account this week that government agencies had given “billions of dollars” to news organizations “as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.”
In fact, the cited figures showed millions of dollars being paid in subscriptions to media outlets and professional subscription services.
Mr. Trump’s administration has said it will cancel some government subscriptions to news organizations as it tries to slash government spending. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the Trump administration would cancel all government Politico subscriptions. The Times reported on Thursday that the Agriculture Department had canceled its subscriptions to Politico Pro, Politico’s professional subscription service, which reports on policy and legislation.
Politico’s leaders said in a note to readers on Thursday that Politico was a privately owned company that had never received any government funding.
“Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient,” the statement said.
Business
Column: Trump and Musk crippled our most important global aid agency. The consequences are grim

It’s probably too soon to claim Elon Musk has babies’ blood on his hands for effectively shuttering America’s most consequential foreign aid agency. But trust me: He will.
On Musk’s orders, the work of the United States Agency for International Development has come to a screeching halt. Thousands of its administrators, workers and contractors have been thrown out of work, its programs suspended for who-knows-how-long and its website no longer functioning.
“We’re shutting it down,” Musk said Monday. “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
My guess is that Musk, the unelected, unappointed billionaire bureaucrat in charge of slashing federal spending, and his boss, President Trump, are betting that most Americans won’t care about stuff that goes on overseas. Voters were in an isolationist mood when they gave Trump a second term. And most of us have only a glancing knowledge of USAID, which delivers humanitarian aid to developing nations beleaguered by conflict, disease and natural disaster across the globe. With a budget of around $40 billion, USAID is also the world’s largest provider of food assistance — which, to put in terms even Musk might grok, means it saves the lives of malnourished babies.
But — surprise — Americans do care. On Wednesday, pro-USAID demonstrations took place at state capitols around the country. In Washington, D.C., where USAID is headquartered and many of its workers and contractors live, thousands turned out to protest Musk’s abrupt, potentially illegal move.
Detractors may wonder what the agency does, but a better question is what doesn’t it do?
Founded during the Kennedy administration to counter Soviet influence, USAID has helped Ukraine in its fight against Russia, worked to ensure that elections are free and fair and, collaborating with partners in 100 countries around the world, alleviated poverty, hunger, illness and desperation. It funds independent foreign media and civil society activists, advancing global freedom and security. And nearly all of that has abruptly stopped.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration’s stop-work order to all USAID-funded organizations leaves thousands of people “with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies with no access to monitoring or care.”
Like any massive agency, USAID suffers from a degree of waste, fraud and abuse. The agency’s inspector general also recently laid out his concerns about a frustrating lack of United Nations cooperation with USAID and recommended changes.
But despite problems that should be addressed, USAID is the very embodiment of American soft power. It’s quite simply the most persuasive peaceful tool we have to improve people’s lives, spread democratic ideals and counter China’s growing influence in Africa and South America.
Which is why, as you can imagine, autocrats around the world are thrilled to see it dismantled.
“Wrapped into the billions the U.S. spends annually on foreign aid — more than any other nation — are hundreds of grants for grassroots groups dedicated to fighting for democracy in authoritarian countries around the world,” the Associated Press reported. Favorable reactions to the agency’s shuttering came from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Russia, the AP noted: “Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on X that he hopes the ‘notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow’ Musk for pulling the plug on the agency.”
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for the second Trump administration, devotes a whole chapter to USAID, accusing the Biden administration of allowing the agency to promote “a radical ideology” and a “divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systematic racism.” And yet despite such absurd hyperbole, Project 2025 admits that the agency is crucial “to counter Communist China’s strategy of world domination.”
Musk called USAID an “evil” “criminal organization.” Trump chimed in that it’s run by “a bunch of radical lunatics.”
That is crazy. But it’s not surprising, because — with apologies to “Stranger Things” — we’re all living in the Upside Down right now.
“The idea that this is a criminal enterprise? Please,” said Peter Kerndt, a public health physician who recently spent five years in Mozambique working for a USAID contractor on a project to curb the spread of tuberculosis. His work involved tracing, identifying and treating those infected with the deadly disease. On Jan. 28, he was abruptly fired.
“It’s like a punch to the gut,” said Kerndt, who worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for 29 years before leaving for USAID. “My God, Musk doesn’t know the work that is being done. I think the richest man in the world has an agenda.”
Ya think?
Sen. Chris Murphy advanced a plausible theory Tuesday night in a video posted to Instagram. Musk, whose business relies on government contracts, is simply out to “pad his pockets,” the Connecticut Democrat said. He noted that Musk makes half his Teslas in China, which is also his biggest foreign market.
“He’s in a row right now with China because China is not allowing him to market his self-driving vehicle, and they are trying to give advantage to their domestic self-driving product,” Murphy said. “How do you get in quick favor with the Chinese government? You dismantle the agency that is the biggest thorn in the side of China.”
The USAID inspector general was also investigating how Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals, purchased with agency funds, were used in Ukraine’s war with Russia, though details are sparse. Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that Musk once cut off the Ukrainian military’s access to Starlink to thwart a submarine drone attack against Russia. That is simply too much power for one individual to wield.
MAGA Republicans can yelp all they want about “woke” agendas being exported by USAID, but the bottom line is the agency does incredibly important, lifesaving work.
I asked Dr. Kerndt why Americans should care about the work he does to prevent and cure tuberculosis, which is often fatal if untreated and for which there is no vaccine.
“Tuberculosis affects young, healthy people,” he told me. “It’s a catastrophic cost to those individuals, to the breadwinners, to the families. It sinks them further into poverty. It’s something we can prevent for pennies on the dollar. And it’s a source of immeasurable respect for the U.S.”
Throwing that good work away to appease a childish billionaire will leave a lasting moral stain on this country.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
Business
Job Market Gives Fed Cover to Extend Interest Rate Pause

Less than six months ago, Federal Reserve officials were wringing their hands about the state of the labor market. No major cracks had emerged, but monthly jobs growth had slowed and the unemployment rate was steadily ticking higher. In a bid to preserve the economy’s strength, the Fed took the unusual step of lowering interest rates by double the magnitude of its typical moves.
Those concerns have since evaporated. Officials now exude a rare confidence that the labor market is strong and set to stay that way, providing them latitude to hold rates steady for awhile.
The approach constitutes a strategic gamble, which economists by and large expect to work out. That suggests the central bank will take its time before lowering borrowing costs again and await clearer signs that price pressures are easing.
“The jobs data just aren’t calling for lower rates right now,” said Jon Faust of the Center for Financial Economics at Johns Hopkins University, who was a senior adviser to the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell. “If the labor market seriously broke, that may warrant a policy reaction, but other than that, it takes some progress on inflation.”
Across a number of metrics, the labor market looks remarkably stable even as it has cooled. The latest employment report, released on Friday, reaffirmed that view. The pace of hiring in January slowed more than expected, to 140,000 new positions, but previous months’ totals were revised higher. In November and December, there were 100,000 more jobs created than initially estimated. The unemployment rate also ticked back down to 4 percent, a historically low level.
The number of Americans out of work and filing for weekly benefits remains low, too.
“People can get jobs and employers can find workers,” said Mary C. Daly, president of the San Francisco Fed, in an interview this week. “I don’t see any signs right now of weakening.”
Thomas Barkin, who heads the Richmond Fed, told reporters on Wednesday that the economy overall was “solid, but not overheating.”
These conditions — plus a rapidly changing mix of policies spearheaded by the Trump administration — have helped to support the Fed’s case for pausing rate cuts and turning more cautious on when to resume.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told CNBC on Friday that the central bank was in a good place to wait for additional information before making any policy decisions, though he predicted interest rates would be “modestly” lower by the end of the year.
The consensus is that the Fed will cut at least once more this year, although confidence in those estimates generally has whipsawed in recent weeks.
Some economists have scaled back their expectations on the basis that inflationary pressures will resurface as policies like tariffs come into effect. Others have moved in the opposite direction on fears that the labor market is not as sound as it appears.
“There’s a lot of complacency out there about what the economy really looks like,” said Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research. “Whenever the Fed says they have time, they never have so much.”
One measure that has generated attention is the hiring rate, which remains subdued. Since the beginning of the summer, the share of unemployed Americans who have been out of work for about six months or longer has also steadily risen.
Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he was bracing for a pickup in layoffs as well, estimating that there has been a 5 percent increase compared with December’s level based on datathat tracks written notices for large-scale layoffs at companies with 100 or more full-time employees.
Right now, those developments warrant no more than a note of caution, most economists said. Steven Kamin, who previously ran the division of international finance at the Fed and is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the central bank would worry if monthly payrolls growth consistently hovered below 100,000 and the unemployment rate moved significantly higher. So long as inflation is in check, the Fed could restart rate cuts before the middle of the year, he added.
The biggest unknown for the labor market is immigration. Mr. Trump has begun to deport migrants, but not yet at the scale he pledged on the campaign trail. If net immigration falls to zero or turns negative, it could result in some combination of slower employment growth, higher wages in the most affected sectors and a lower unemployment rate, reflecting a shrinking labor force.
Julia Coronado, a former Fed economist who now runs MacroPolicy Perspectives, is among those primarily concerned about the hit to growth from these policies. Immigrants are “complements not substitutes” for domestic workers, she said, such that “if you lose construction workers, construction activity just goes slower.”
Coupled with the looming threat of tariffs, businesses are unsurprisingly on edge. If those nerves translate to a broader retrenchment, that could dent hiring more significantly.
“If I were a C.E.O. of any company right now, what would I be doing? For almost any investment I can think of, the best answer is to wait three months,” said Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan.
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