🖥️ Who's Trying To Broaden Internet Access?

Good morning. US stock futures dipped in Tuesday morning trading as investors worry that the Federal Reserve may not cut rates as much as Wall Street had hoped.

🤖 Biden admin lobbies for internet subsidy program

📝 Our report: The White House is nudging Congress to keep the subsidy program afloat, which helps one in six U.S. families get online. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) offers qualifying families discounts on their internet bills — $30 a month for most families and up to $75 a month for families on tribal lands. The one-time infusion of $14.2 billion for the program through the bipartisan infrastructure law is projected to run out of money at the end of April.  

 🔑 Key points:

• The program has a wide swath of support from public interest groups, local- and state-level broadband officials, and big and small telecommunications providers.

• Biden has likened his promise of affordable internet for all American households to the New Deal-era effort to provide electricity to much of rural America. Congress approved $65 billion for several broadband-related investments, including the ACP, in 2021 as part of a bipartisan infrastructure law.

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently proposed a bill to sustain the ACP through the end of 2024 with an additional $7 billion in funding — a billion more than Biden asked Congress to appropriate for the program at the end of last year. However, no votes have been scheduled to move the bill forward, and it’s unclear if the program will be prioritized in a divided Congress.

💡 So what: President Joe Biden's Affordable Connectivity Program is crucial for bridging the digital divide by making internet access more affordable for low-income families, promoting equity in accessing information and digital resources and supporting economic opportunities. By subsidizing internet access, the program ensures that individuals and families have the means to access job opportunities, participate in online education and training programs, and engage in e-commerce, thereby addressing disparities in digital access and promoting digital inclusion on a broader scale.

Tuesday - Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari Speaks

Wednesday - U.S. Trade Deficit, Consumer Credit

Thursday - Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin Speaks

Friday - Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan Speaks

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🏈 Superbowl spending expected to soar in 2024

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🤖 Global chip sales to grow double digits in 2024

WHAT: Buckle up! Global chip sales are revving up this year, thanks to the booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and the ever-growing hunger for automotive chips. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) forecast a 13.1% jump in global chip sales to $595.3 billion, compared with a drop of about 8% in sales in 2023.

WHY: This year, the frenzy among tech giants to deliver products and services that deploy AI has triggered a surge in demand for the advanced chips produced by companies like Nvidia and AMD, as cloud computing companies seek to build more capacity to run such software.

🤝🏽 Skincare acquisition on the cards

WHAT: Private equity giant Blackstone might be eyeing a bid for skincare sensation L'Occitane International SA, as per reports from Bloomberg News, citing sources familiar with the matter. Blackstone has been considering preliminary due diligence as it evaluates a potential offer while also considering the possibility of teaming up with L'Occitane’s billionaire chairman Reinold Geiger on a buyout, the report added.

WHY: The Hong Kong-listed skincare specialist company's controlling shareholder had decided against a deal to take the company private in September last year. The buyout offer was from Geiger's investment holding company, L'Occitane Groupe SA, at a time when Hong Kong emerged as an epicentre of buyout deals and a number of firms from the West were looking to boost exposure in the rapidly growing Chinese market.

💻 Another day, another Google trial…

WHAT: A federal judge in the U.S. has marked September 2024 on the calendar for the grand showdown in the legal saga between Google and the Justice Department plus a bunch of states. The lawsuit, filed in January 2023, accuses Google of monopolizing the market for digital advertising and undermining competition. The government has said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite.

WHY: Google separately faces a March 2025 trial in U.S. federal court in Texas, where a similar lawsuit from Texas and other states is challenging its ad tech practices. In a third case, a U.S. judge in Washington, D.C., is expected to hear closing arguments in May in lawsuits from the U.S. Justice Department, Colorado and other states over Google's web search dominance.

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