The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

BUSINESS

Goodbye, jeans. After months in

soft fabrics, some people are

swearing off denim for good. G3

WORK ADVICE

Tr apped by the pandemic in a

job that was only ever supposed

to be a short-term gig. G5

THE WEEK
As of Friday at 5 p.m. ○

DOW 26,428.32

41.57, 0.2% ○

NASDAQ 10,745.27

382.09, 3.7% ○

S&P 500 3,271.12

55.49, 1.7% ○

GOLD $1,985.90

$60.70, 3.2% ○

CRUDE OIL $40.27

$1.02, 2.5% ○

10-YEAR TREASURY

$5.50 per $1,000; 0.53% yield

CURRENCIES

$1= 105.92 YEN, 0.85 EUROS

BY CHRISTIAN DAVENPORT

In a bold move two years ago, the
White House issued a directive that
would make the Commerce Department
a traffic cop in space, giving it the author-
ity to establish rules of the road for the
rapidly growing number of satellites in
orbit in hopes that it will prevent colli-
sions that destroy millions of dollars’
worth of hardware and leave behind
dangerous clouds of debris.
In a speech, Vice President Pence
hailed the effort, saying “President
Trump knows that a stable and orderly
space environment is critical to the
strength of our economy and the resil-
ience of our national security systems.”
But since then, the directive, known as
Space Policy Directive-3, has gone no-
where, mired in a Washington bureau-
cratic battle over which agency would be
best suited for the mission. The Trump
administration argues that the Com-
merce Department is b est placed to foster
the growing commercial space industry
— including satellite servicing, manufac-
turing, space tourism and more — while
taking advantage of new technology to
track items in orbit.
Some members of Congress think,
SEE SATELLITES ON G3

More satellites

bring concerns

over congestion

KLMNO

BusineSS

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020. SECTION G AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM

BY PETER KENDALL IN WISCONSIN RAPIDS, WIS.

D

arrell Fox checked his email at the paper mill on a

summer morning in June and immediately texted

his wife at home: “Call me if you’re up.”

He didn’t want to tell her by text that the mill

was closing.

They had met at the plant long ago, married and worked

there together. Now they were losing their jobs together.

The massive paper mill has churned relentlessly since it

began feeding off the energy of the Wisconsin River more

than a century ago, forming the cornerstone of a city’s

economy and producing glossy paper coveted by publishers

during the heyday of U.S. magazines.

But the novel coronavirus pandemic has sped up a

long-term trend — the waning need for the paper used in

magazines and printed advertising — and Verso Corp.’s

Wisconsin Rapids Mill f inally f ell silent a t the end of July. The

shutdown, announced June 9, will knock some 900 people

out of work and has sent tremors across the region’s economy,

reaching from the plant’s gates through town and deep into

the Wisconsin forests that supply wood pulp to make paper.

SEE PAPER MILL ON G4

A warning from Wisconsin

State’s massive paper industry was

already in decline, but now the

coronavirus has delivered a death blow

PHOTOS BY LAUREN JUSTICE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: Verso Corp.’s paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.., shut down at the end of July.

The closure affects 900 employees and will reverberate across the region. A BOVE: Cindy

Hansen and Darrell Fox, seen at their home in Vesper, met at the mill 23 years ago.

I have four children, one
of them in elementary
school. Officials at my
school district just
announced that its
preferred plan is for school to operate in
a hybrid fashion, alternating between
in-person weeks and weeks of remote
learning. Aside from my concerns about
whether this plan is developmentally
appropriate for young children who
need regular routines, as a working
parent, I am utterly exhausted thinking
about how we will manage.
It is not as if parents’ jobs can be put
on hold every other week. As a college
professor, I am fortunate to have a
somewhat flexible schedule and can
work from home a lot of the time. B ut
roughly half of all essential workers
(about 27 million) are women — mostly
working in-person jobs in health care
and community-based services — who
do not have the option of working
remotely.
That is, if we can find child care.
Already, the capacity of day-care centers
has been reduced because of strict child-
SEE CHILD CARE ON G5

C hild-care crisis

could set women

back a generation

Commentary

ALICIA SASSER
MODESTINO

Members of a House
subcommittee
summoned the chief
executives of Amazon,
Apple, Facebook and
Google on Wednesday to
grill them on how their
companies maintain,
enhance and abuse their
monopoly power.
Over the course of the five-hour
hearing, it was hard to know who
seemed sillier — the politicians outraged
that profit-making companies had tried
to buy up rivals and use their platforms
to favor their own services, or the
executives who couldn’t understand why
anyone would think that their
companies had even the slightest bit of
market power over suppliers and
customers.
Of course, any honest search for who is
responsible for the rise of Big Te ch would
also include the members of Congress
themselves, who for three decades have
sat on their thumbs as judges infatuated
with free-market ideology were allowed
to so hollow out American antitrust law
that regulators are now almost powerless
SEE PEARLSTEIN ON G2

P utting brakes on

Big Tech requires

rewriting the law

Steven
Pearlstein