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Business

China GDP and other key economic data delayed amid 2022 Communist Party Congress

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

China has abruptly delayed the publication of key economic data, one day before its scheduled release, as the ruling Communist Party gathers at a major political meeting against the backdrop of a faltering economy.

The country’s National Bureau of Statistics updated its schedule on Monday, with the dates for a series of economic indicators – including the closely-watched GDP growth – marked as “delayed.” The indicators, which had been scheduled for release on Tuesday, also include quarterly retail sales, industrial production and monthly unemployment rates.

The bureau did not give a reason for the delay or set a new publication date.

Separately, the country’s customs authority also postponed the release of monthly trade data, which were initially scheduled to come out on Friday.

The delay of the highly anticipated data coincides with the week-long 20th Communist Party National Congress in Beijing, where Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to secure a norm-breaking third term in power. Priorities presented at the gathering will also set China’s trajectory for at least the next five years.

“The delay suggests that the government believes that the 20th Party Congress is the most important thing happening in China right now and would like to avoid other information flows that could create mixed messages,” said Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING Group, in a research note on Tuesday.

Other analysts believe it could be because the data sets are not pretty.

“My forecast is for a further decline of 1.2% [on a quarterly basis for China’s GDP]. This would mean China had joined the US in a technical recession,” said Clifford Bennett, Chief Economist at ACY Securities.

The delay would make sense “from an image management perspective,” he said. Some economists call two consecutive quarters of contraction a technical recession.

China’s GDP declined 2.6% in the second quarter from the previous one, reversing a 1.4% growth in the January-to-March period. On a year-on-year basis, the economy expanded 0.4% in the second quarter.

Analysts have widely expected third-quarter growth to remain weak, as strict Covid curbs, an intensifying crisis in real estate, and slowing global demand continue to pressure the economy.

Economists polled by Reuters have expected China’s GDP to expand by 3.4% in the third quarter from a year earlier. That would fall far short of the government’s full-year growth target of around 5.5%.

Many international organizations, including the IMF and World Bank, have recently downgraded China’s GDP growth forecasts for this year.

Bennett expected the third-quarter GDP data to be released after the Party Congress.

“Whenever the release occurs, we should all be prepared for some global financial market reaction if the world’s two largest economies are both in recession this year, ” he said.

China’s economy is facing mounting challenges. Growth has stalled, youth unemployment is at a record high, and the housing market is in shambles. Constant Covid lockdowns have not only wreaked havoc on the economy, but also sparked rising social discontent.

In the 20th Party Congress report released on Sunday, Xi renewed his pledge to grow China into a “medium developed country” by 2035.

That would mean China needs to grow at an average growth rate of around 4.7% a year from 2021 to 2035, according to Larry Hu, chief China economist for Macquarie Group.

Hu added that the target might be hard to meet, as the economy faces several structural headwinds, such as the property downturn, an aging population, and rising US-China tensions.

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World

China’s economy is ‘in deep trouble’ as Xi heads to Communist Party congress

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

When Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, China had just overtaken Japan to become the world’s second largest economy.

It has grown at a phenomenal pace since then. With an average annual growth rate of 6.7% since 2012, China has seen one of the fastest sustained expansions for a major economy in history. In 2021, its GDP hit nearly $18 trillion, constituting 18.4% of the global economy, according to the World Bank.

China’s rapid technological advances have also made it a strategic threat to the United States and its allies. It’s steadily pushing American rivals out of long-held leadership positions in sectors ranging from 5G technology to artificial intelligence.

Until recently, some economists were predicting that China would become the world’s biggest economy by 2030, unseating the United States. Now, the situation looks much less promising.

As Xi prepares for his second decade in power, he faces mounting economic challenges, including an unhappy middle-class. If he is not able to bring the economy back on track, China faces slowing innovation and productivity, along with rising social discontent.

“For 30 years, China was on a path that gave people great hope,” said Doug Guthrie, the director of China Initiatives at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, adding that the country is “in deep trouble right now.”

While Xi is one of the most powerful leaders China and its ruling Communist Party have seen, some experts say that he can’t claim credit for the country’s astonishing progress.

“Xi’s leadership is not causal for China’s economic rise,” said Sonja Opper, a professor at Bocconi University in Italy who studies China’s economy. “Xi was able to capitalize on an ongoing entrepreneurial movement and rapid development of a private [sector] economy prior leaders had unleashed,” she added.

Rather, in recent years, Xi’s policies have caused some massive headaches in China.

A sweeping crackdown by Beijing on the country’s private sector, that began in late 2020, and its unwavering commitment to a zero-Covid policy, have hit the economy and job market hard.

“If anything, Xi’s leadership may have dampened some of the country’s growth dynamic,” Opper said.

More than $1 trillion has been wiped off the market value of Alibaba and Tencent — the crown jewels of China’s tech industry — over the last two years. Sales growth in the sector has slowed, and

tens of thousands of employees have been laid off, leading to record youth unemployment.

The property sector has also been bludgeoned, hitting some of the country’s biggest home developers. The collapse in real estate — which accounts for as much as 30% of GDP — has triggered widespread and rare dissent among the middle class.

Thousands of angry homebuyers refused to pay their mortgages on stalled projects, fueling fears of systemic financial risks and forcing authorities to pressure banks and developers to defuse the unrest. That wasn’t the only demonstration of discontent this year.

In July, Chinese authorities violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who were demanding their life savings back from rural banks that had frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits. The banking scandal not only threatened the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers but also highlighted the deteriorating financial health of China’s smaller banks.

“Many middle-class people are disappointed in the recent economic performance and disillusioned with Xi’s rule,” said David Dollar, a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

According to analysts, the vulnerabilities in the financial system are a result of the country’s unfettered debt-fuelled expansion in the previous decade, and the model needs to change.

“China’s growth during Xi’s decade in power is attributable mainly to the general economic approach adopted by his predecessors, which focused on rapid expansion through investment, manufacturing, and trade,” said Neil Thomas, a senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group.

“But this model had reached a point of significantly diminishing returns and was increasing economic inequality, financial debt, and environmental damage,” he said.

While Xi is trying to change that model, he is not going about it the right way, experts said, and is risking the future of China’s businesses with tighter state controls.

The 69-year old leader launched his crackdown to rein in the “disorderly” private businesses that were growing too powerful. He also wants to redistribute wealth in the society, under his “common prosperity” goal.

Xi hopes for a “new normal,” where consumption and services become more important drivers of expansion than investments and exports.

But, so far, these measures have pushed the Chinese economy into one of its worst economic crises in four decades.

The International Monetary Fund recently cut its forecast for China’s growth to 3.2% this year, representing a sharp slowdown from 8.1% in 2021. That would be the country’s second lowest growth rate in 46 years, better only than 2020 when the initial coronavirus outbreak pummeled the economy.

Under Xi, China has not only become more insular, but has also seen the fraying of US-China relations. His refusal to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s recent aggression towards Taiwan, could alienate the country even further from Washington and its allies.

Analysts say the current problems don’t yet pose a major threat to Xi’s rule. He is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in power at the Communist Party Congress that begins on Sunday. Priorities presented at the congress will also set China’s trajectory for the next five years or even longer.

“It would likely take an economic catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression to create levels of social discontent and popular protest that might pose a threat to Communist Party rule,” said Thomas from Eurasia Group.

“Moreover, growth is not the only source of legitimacy and support for the Communist Party, and Xi has increasingly burnished the Communist Party’s nationalist credentials to appeal to patriotism as well as pocketbooks,” he added.

But to get China back to high growth and innovation, Xi may have to bring back market-oriented reforms.

“If he was smart, he would liberalize things quickly in his third term,” said Guthrie.

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Business

US Postal Service proposes new prices ‘to offset’ inflation

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CNN
 — 

The US Postal Service on Friday proposed increased prices “to offset the rise in inflation,” according to a statement from the agency.

The price hikes, which have been approved by the Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, include a three-cent increase to purchase a stamp and a four-cent increase to mail a postcard. The changes amount to a 4.2% price increase for first class mail, according to USPS.

The proposal must now be reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The announcement from the US Postal Service comes as consumers around the nation continue to grapple with rising prices for groceries, gas and other necessities. The US Postal Service has publicly struggled financially in recent years, and President Joe Biden signed a law earlier this year to overhaul the USPS’ finances and allow the agency to modernize its service.

“As operating expenses continue to rise, these price adjustments provide the Postal Service with much needed revenue to achieve the financial stability sought by its Delivering for America 10-year plan,” US Postal Service said on Friday. “The prices of the U.S. Postal Service remain among the most affordable in the world.”

Unlike other government agencies, the USPS generally does not receive taxpayer funding, and instead must rely on revenue from stamps and package deliveries to support itself.

The Postal Service is also looking to increase fees for P.O. Box rentals, money orders and the cost to purchase insurance when mailing an item.

If approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission the changes would take effect January 22, 2023, after midnight.

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Business

America’s national debt has now surpassed $31 trillion

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Minneapolis
CNN Business
 — 

America’s national debt has climbed north of $31 trillion for the first time, a milestone that comes at a time of historically high inflation, rising interest rates and growing economic uncertainty.

The nation’s total public debt outstanding closed at $31.1 trillion on Monday, according to Treasury Department data published Tuesday.

The US government went on a borrowing spree during the Covid-19 pandemic to help shore up the nation’s economy as the deadly virus upended lives, labor markets and supply chains. Outstanding debt has climbed nearly $8 trillion since the beginning of 2020. And it has jumped by $1 trillion in just eight months.

The borrowing that occurred under the Trump administration and early on in the Biden administration came at a time when interest rates were low. Now, during a period of historically high inflation and a series of steep interest rates hikes by the Federal Reserve in its battle to tame rising prices, borrowing costs are far higher.

The Committee for a Responsible Fiscal Budget last month estimated that President Joe Biden’s policies could add $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031.

“Excessive borrowing will lead to continued inflationary pressures, drive the national debt to a new record as soon as 2030 and triple federal interest payments over the next decade – or even sooner if interest rates go up faster or by more than expected,” the CRFB wrote.

America’s borrowing levels have soared during the past decade. The outstanding public debt was $10.6 trillion when former President Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009; $19.9 trillion when former President Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2017; and $27.8 trillion when Biden took office on January 20, 2021, Treasury Department data shows.

Surpassing another debt milestone certainly could indicate a “very large problem” in the future; however, in the near-term, high levels of inflation are of the highest concern, said Alex Pelle, US economist for Mizuho Securities.

“Any type of debt issue is really a potential issue – I wouldn’t even say a certain issue – but a potential issue for five to 10 years down the road,” he said. “One of the benefits of being the world’s reserve currency is everyone wants to buy your debt for cheap.”

CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf contributed to this report.

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Business

5 signs the world is headed for a recession

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

Around the world, markets are flashing warning signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge.

The question of a recession is no longer if, but when.

Over the past week, the pulse of those flashing red lights quickened as markets grappled with the reality — once speculative, now certain — that the Federal Reserve will press on with its most aggressive monetary tightening campaign in decades to wring inflation from the US economy. Even if that means triggering a recession. And even if it comes at the expense of consumers and businesses far beyond US borders.

There’s now a 98% chance of a global recession, according to research firm Ned Davis, which brings some sobering historical credibility to the table. The firm’s recession probability reading has only been this high twice before — in 2008 and 2020.

When economists warn of a downturn, they’re typically basing their assessment on a variety of indicators.

Let’s unpack five key trends:

The US dollar plays an outsized role in the global economy and international finance. And right now, it is stronger than it’s been in two decades.

The simplest explanation comes back to the Fed.

When the US central bank raises interest rates, as it has been doing since March, it makes the dollar more appealing to investors around the world.

In any economic climate, the dollar is seen as a safe place to park your money. In a tumultuous climate — a global pandemic, say, or a war in Eastern Europe — investors have even more incentive to purchase dollars, usually in the form of US government bonds.

While a strong dollar is a nice perk for Americans traveling abroad, it creates headaches for just about everyone else.

The value of the UK pound, the euro, China’s yuan and Japan’s yen, among many others, has tumbled. That makes it more expensive for those nations to import essential items like food and fuel.

In response, central banks that are already fighting pandemic-induced inflation wind up raising rates higher and faster to shore up the value of their own currencies.

The dollar’s strength also creates destabilizing effects for Wall Street, as many of the S&P 500 companies do business around the world. By one estimate from Morgan Stanley, each 1% rise in the dollar index has a negative 0.5% impact on S&P 500 earnings.

The No. 1 driver of the world’s largest economy is shopping. And America’s shoppers are tired.

After more than a year of rising prices on just about everything, with wages not keeping up, consumers have pulled back.

“The hardship caused by inflation means that consumers are dipping into their savings,” EY Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco said in a note Friday. The personal saving rate in August remained unchanged at only 3.5%, Daco said — near its lowest rate since 2008, and well below its pre-Covid level of around 9%.

Once again, the reason behind the pullback has a lot to do with the Fed.

Interest rates have risen at a historic pace, pushing mortgage rates to their highest level in more than a decade and making it harder for businesses to grow. Eventually, the Fed’s rate hikes should broadly bring costs down. But in the meantime, consumers are getting a one-two punch of high borrowing rates and high prices, especially when it comes to necessities like food and housing.

Americans opened their wallets during the 2020 lockdowns, which powered the economy out of its brief-but-severe pandemic recession. Since then, government aid has evaporated and inflation has taken root, pushing prices up at their fastest rate in 40 years and sapping consumers’ spending power.

Business has been booming across industries for the bulk of the pandemic era, even with historically high inflation eating into profits. That is thanks (once again) to the tenacity of American shoppers, as businesses were largely able to pass on their higher costs to consumers to cushion profit margins.

But the earnings bonanza may not last.

In mid-September, one company whose fortunes serve as a kind of economic bellwether gave investors a shock.

FedEx, which operates in more than 200 countries, unexpectedly revised its outlook, warning that demand was softening, and earnings were likely to plunge more than 40%.

In an interview, its CEO was asked whether he believes the slowdown was a sign of a looming global recession.

“I think so,” he responded. “These numbers, they don’t portend very well.”

FedEx isn’t alone. On Tuesday, Apple’s stock fell after Bloomberg reported the company was scrapping plans to increase iPhone 14 production after demand came in below expectations.

And just ahead of the holiday season, when employers would normally ramp up hiring, the mood is now more cautious.

“We’ve not seen the normal September uptick in companies posting for temporary help,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “Companies are hanging back and waiting to see what conditions hold.”

Wall Street has been hit with whiplash, and stocks are now on track for their worst year since 2008 — in case anyone needs yet another scary historical comparison.

But last year was a very different story. Equity markets thrived in 2021, with the S&P 500 soaring 27%, thanks to a torrent of cash pumped in by the Federal Reserve, which unleashed a double-barreled monetary-easing policy in the spring of 2020 to keep financial markets from crumbling.

The party lasted until early 2022. But as inflation set in, the Fed began to take away the proverbial punch bowl, raising interest rates and unwinding its bond-buying mechanism that had propped up the market.

The hangover has been brutal. The S&P 500, the broadest measure of Wall Street — and the index responsible for the bulk of Americans’ 401(k)s — is down nearly 24% for the year. And it’s not alone. All three major US indexes are in bear markets — down at least 20% from their most recent highs.

In an unfortunate twist, bond markets, typically a safe haven for investors when stocks and other assets decline, are also in a tailspin.

Once again, blame the Fed.

Inflation, along with the steep rise in interest rates by the central bank, has pushed bond prices down, which causes bond yields (aka the return an investor gets for their loan to the government) to go up.

On Wednesday, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury briefly surpassed 4%, hitting its highest level in 14 years. That surge was followed by a steep drop in response to the Bank of England’s intervention in its own spiraling bond market — amounting to tectonic moves in a corner of the financial world that is designed to be steady, if not downright boring.

European bond yields are also spiking as central banks follow the Fed’s lead in raising rates to shore up their own currencies.

Bottom line: There are few safe places for investors to put their money right now, and that’s unlikely to change until global inflation gets under control and central banks loosen their grips.

Nowhere is the collision of economic, financial, and political calamities more painfully visible than in the United Kingdom.

Like the rest of the world, the UK has struggled with surging prices that are largely attributable to the colossal shock of Covid-19, followed by the trade disruptions created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the West cut off imports of Russian natural gas, energy prices have soared and supplies have dwindled.

Those events were bad enough on their own.

But then, just over a week ago, the freshly installed government of Prime Minister Liz Truss announced a sweeping tax-cut plan that economists from both ends of the political spectrum have decried as unorthodox at best, diabolical at worst.

In short, the Truss administration said it would slash taxes for all Britons to encourage spending and investment and, in theory, soften the blow of a recession. But the tax cuts aren’t funded, which means the government must take on debt to finance them.

That decision set off a panic in financial markets and put Downing Street in a standoff with its independent central bank, the Bank of England. Investors around the world sold off UK bonds in droves, plunging the pound to its lowest level against the dollar in nearly 230 years. As in, since 1792, when Congress made the US dollar legal tender.

The BOE staged an emergency intervention to buy up UK bonds on Wednesday and restore order in financial markets. It stemmed the bleeding, for now. But the ripple effects of the Trussonomics turmoil is spreading far beyond the offices of bond traders.

Britons, who are already in a cost-of-living crisis, with inflation at 10% — the highest of any G7 economy — are now panicking over higher borrowing costs that could force millions of homeowners’ monthly mortgage payments to go up by hundreds or even thousands of pounds.

While the consensus is that a global recession is likely sometime in 2023, it’s impossible to predict how severe it will be or how long it will last. Not every recession is as painful as the 2007-09 Great Recession, but every recession is, of course, painful.

Some economies, particularly the United States, with its strong labor market and resilient consumers, will be able to withstand the blow better than others.

“We are in uncharted waters in the months ahead,” wrote economists at the World Economic Forum in a report this week.

“The immediate outlook for the global economy and for much of the world’s population is dark,” they continued, adding that the challenges “will test the resilience of economies and societies and exact a punishing human toll.”

But there are some silver linings, they said. Crises force transformations that can ultimately improve standards of living and make economies stronger.

“Businesses have to change. This has been the story since the pandemic started,” said Rima Bhatia, an economic adviser for Gulf International Bank. “Businesses no longer can continue on the path that they were at. That’s the opportunity and that’s the silver lining.”

— CNN Business’ Julia Horowitz, Anna Cooban, Mark Thompson, Matt Egan and Chris Isidore contributed reporting.

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Business

Latest GDP reading confirms the US economy shrank for two straight quarters, supporting one definition of a recession

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Minneapolis
CNN Business
 — 

The US economy shrank by 0.6% during the second quarter of the year, according to the latest gross domestic product estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Thursday.

That matches the most recent GDP estimate and shows the economy was in contraction for the entire first half of the year as businesses readjusted to pandemic-era supply chain disruptions.

The latest scorecard on the economy may reignite the debate as to whether the United States has been in a recession, commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Some economists and policymakers have rebuffed claims of an early 2022 recession, citing robust job growth, consumer spending and manufacturing.

However, the official arbiter is a panel of National Bureau of Economic Research economists, who take an array of economic indicators into consideration and can revise the data many years later.

Thursday’s third estimate of second-quarter GDP is based on more complete data than what was available last month and reflects upwardly revised levels of consumer spending, federal government spending and business fixed investment. Those were offset by a downward revision to exports and investment in housing, the BEA said.

Gross domestic income, an alternative economic measure of the earnings and costs incurred in production, were revised downward by $47.4 billion to $305.7 billion.

“The annual revisions to GDP and gross domestic income indicate a weaker US economy in the first half of 2022 than initially reported,” Gus Faucher, chief economist for The PNC Financial Services Group, wrote in a note issued Thursday.

The US economy is in transition during 2022, and the data is contradictory, he said, noting strength in areas such as the labor market, production and spending.

However, recession risks remain elevated, Abbey Omodunbi, PNC’s assistant vice president and senior economist, told CNN Business, citing the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes to combat historically high inflation.

“And with that, we’re going to see significant slowing of the US economy, particularly in interest-rate-sensitive sectors” such as housing and business investments, he said.

The worldwide outlook is even more dour: There’s a 98.1% chance of a global recession, according to a probability model run by Ned Davis Research, which highlights Russia’s war in Ukraine and central banks’ drastic rate hikes to tamp down inflation.

The only other times that recession model was this high has been during severe economic downturns, most recently in 2020 and during the 2008 global financial crisis.

The first estimate for third-quarter GDP is set to be released on October 27.

CNN Business’s Matt Egan contributed to this report.

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Business

America’s gas prices rise for the first time in 99 days

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

The historic streak of falling gasoline prices is over.

After sinking every day for more than three months, US gas prices edged higher – by a penny – to $3.68 a gallon, on average Wednesday, according to AAA.

That ends 98 consecutive days of falling pump prices, the second-longest such streak on record going back to 2005.

The last time the national average price for gasoline rose was June 14, when it hit a record of $5.02. Prices fell every day since then and Thursday would have marked the 100th straight day of declines.

The plunge in gas prices was driven by a series of factors, including stronger supply and weaker demand as drivers balked at high prices and unprecedented releases of emergency oil by the White House.

Another major factor that had been driving gas prices lower: Growing concerns of a global recession that could hurt demand for gas. People who lose jobs don’t have to drive to work, and even those with jobs pull back on their spending during recessions.

The strong dollar also helped to bring down the price of gas, because crude oil is priced in dollars. That means each dollar can buy more oil than it would if the value of the currency was stable or falling. The dollar index, which compares the value of the greenback to major foreign currencies, is up 15% this year. That also means oil prices are rising faster for countries that don’t use the dollar, which dampens global demand.

At the same time, Russia’s oil flows have held up better than feared despite sanctions and the war in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the sanctions that followed, that helped to spark the steep rise in oil and gas prices. The average price the day of the invasion stood at $3.54 a gallon, just a bit lower than it is today. Russia’s announcement Wednesday that it would increase its mobilization of troops helped lift crude oil futures 2% in global markets.

Gas prices will probably remain relatively close to the current levels in the near term, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for OPIS, which tracks gas prices nationally for AAA.

“I don’t think you’ll see a major move higher or lower,” he said recently, ahead of Wednesday’s modest price rise. He said competing forces will affect prices in the near term.

US refining capacity remains limited. And OPEC along with other oil-producing nations recently agreed to cut production. Both put upward pressure on prices.

Meanwhile, seasonal factors, such as the end of the summer driving season and the annual end of the US environmental regulations requiring a cleaner, more expensive blend of gasoline during summer months, could help ease prices. Also pushing prices lower: Oil traders remain nervous about the state of the global economy.

“Crude has no speculative investment money behind it right now,” he said.

Wholesale gasoline futures point to sharply lower gas prices by the end of the year, with the possibility that gas under $3 a gallon could be common in much of the country by then, Kloza said. But he cautioned “futures prices are a notorious poor predictor of what the future will bring.”

Although sub-$3 gas remains rare – only 5% of America’s 130,000 gas stations are selling gas for under that price, according to OPIS – relatively cheap gas has become far more common with the months of decline. Nearly one station out of four nationwide is selling gas for less than $3.25 a gallon, and 56% are selling gas for less than $3.50 a gallon.

Cheaper gas has been a major boost to the US economy, easing inflationary pressure and giving Americans extra cash to spend. Since the typical US household uses about 90 gallons of gas a month, the drop in gas prices saves those households about $120 a month from what they had been paying since the peak in June.

A one-cent rise in gas prices is not a meaningful change for most drivers, and prices could slump again as global economic concerns grow along with fears that demand for fuel will keep sinking.

Yet if gas prices begin to rise that could undermine the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve’s efforts to keep inflation in check. Falling gas prices are the sole reason America’s consumer prices have remained steady overall during the past few months after rising sharply in 2021 and the beginning part of this year.

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