The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-12-03)

***** THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXVI NO. 131 WSJ.com HHHH$4.

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Covid-

Vaccine

Cleared

Fo r Us e

In U.K.

West’s first approval

for emergency use

opens door for limited

distribution in days

onavirus pandemic—a dy-

namic that has shifted power

significantly. UPS and rival

FedEx Corp. have raised prices

and promised to hold mer-

chants to volume agreements.

The temporary limits, which

some drivers said they haven’t

seen during previous holiday

seasons, are a sign that UPS is

metering the flow of packages

into its network to preserve its

performance during one of the

busiest shipping weeks of the

year. The National Retail Fed-

eration estimated that online

shopping jumped 44% over a

recent five-day stretch that in-

cluded Black Friday and Cyber

Monday.

UPS, without commenting

on any customer-specific di-

rective, said the company will

pick up packages from custom-

ers whose demand exceeded

allocated space once more ca-

pacity becomes available.

Shipping levels tend to jump

the week after Thanksgiving,

Please turn to page A

Test for Tech:

Wyatt Earp?

Ringo Starr?

iii

Facial recognition

meets its match in

Old West photos

BYPARMYOLSON

Denny Rodman, an antiques

collector in Houston, made an

exciting find on Facebook’s on-

line marketplace in August. An

old image of three men looked

a lot like the infamous Dalton

brothers, the Wild West bank

robbers.

He bought the photo for

$100, wrote a 35-page report

arguing for its authenticity,

then sent the report to Bob Ut-

ley, a 91-year-old authority on

the outlaws of the period. He

included a facial-recognition

analysis that showed strong

evidence of a match.

Mr. Utley wasn’t convinced.

“Identifying people of genera-

Please turn to page A

In February 2018, Beijing’s

chief trade negotiator was in

Washington to try to avert a

trade war. Before meeting

his U.S. counterparts, he

turned to a select group of

American business execu-

tives—mostly from Wall

Street.

“We need your help,” Vice

Premier Liu He told guests

gathered in a hotel near the

White House, according to

people with knowledge of

the matter. They included

BlackRock Chief Executive

Larry Fink, David Solomon,

then Goldman Sachs Group’s

second-in-command, and JP-

PERSONAL JOURNAL

A guide to films and

series rolling out

during the holiday

season.A12-A

BUSINESS

The home-appliance

industry makes a hard

pivot toward hygiene

amid the pandemic.B

BLOOMBERG NEWS

On Capitol Hill, Another Joust Over Fed Lending Measures

BUMPS: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared Wednesday before a

House panel, where Mr. Mnuchin defended his decision to let a suite of emergency lending programs expire at year’s end. A

GREG NASH/PRESS POOL

LONDON—The U.K. became

the first Western nation to

grant emergency-use authori-

zation for a Covid-19 vaccine,

clearing a shot developed by

Pfizer Inc. of the U.S. and BioN-

Tech SE of Germany to be dis-

tributed in limited numbers

within days.

The two-shot vaccine is also

being reviewed by the Food

and Drug Administration in the

U.S., where a similar authori-

zation could come this month

and a rollout before year-end.

The U.K. green light on

Wednesday punctuates a

monthslong sprint by the two

drugmakers, which teamed up

this year and then pulled

ahead of two other Western

pharmaceutical companies,

each with its own promising

shot. Vaccines typically take

years to bring to market.

It also marks a key milestone

in efforts to translate a promis-

Please turn to page A

ByBojan Pancevski,

Jenny Strasburg

andJared S. Hopkins

UPS Puts Restrictions

On Retailer Shipments

United Parcel Service Inc.

imposed temporary shipping

restrictions on some large re-

tailers such as Gap Inc. and

Nike Inc. this week, an early

sign that the pandemic-fueled

online shopping season is

stretching delivery networks

to their limits.

The delivery giant on Cyber

Monday notified drivers

across the U.S. to stop picking

up packages for now at six re-

tailers—L.L. Bean Inc., Hot

Topic Inc., Newegg Inc. and

Macy’s Inc., in addition to Gap

and Nike—according to an in-

ternal message viewed by The

Wall Street Journal and con-

firmed by UPS workers in dif-

ferent regions.

“No exceptions,” the mes-

sage said.

This year retailers are in-

creasingly dependent on deliv-

ery companies to move online

holiday orders, as store traffic

has plummeted during the cor-

BYPAULZIOBRO

Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie

Dimon, there as chairman of

the Business Roundtable lob-

bying group.

Looking for allies in trade

talks with the Trump admin-

istration, Mr. Liu dangled a

prize, the people say: Beijing

offered to give U.S. financial

firms a new opportunity to

expand in China.

Shortly after the gather-

ing, Mr. Liu presented

China’s position to the U.S.

side, including the financial

opening. Most other U.S. in-

dustries were disappointed.

The Trump administration

Please turn to page A

BYLINGLINGWEI,BOBDAVIS

ANDDAWNLIM

chamber’s Democratic leader,

said that a new, bipartisan

$908 billion coronavirus relief

proposal released Tuesday

should serve as the starting

point for talks to try to resolve

months of disagreement with

GOP leaders and the White

House.

“Of course, we and others

will offer improvements,” Mrs.

Pelosi and Mr. Schumer said in

a joint statement, “but the need

to act is immediate and we be-

lieve that with good-faith nego-

tiations we could come to an

agreement.”

Democrats had coalesced

earlier around a $2.4 trillion

bill passed in the House, which

contains measures including

funding for state and local gov-

ernments and food stamps,

among others, which GOP pro-

posals have excluded. Republi-

cans leaders have proposed a

fraction of that; their most re-

cent bill cost around $500 bil-

lion. But on Tuesday, a new bi-

partisan group unveiled a

$908 billion relief proposal, de-

signed to help buoy workers

and businesses through March.

Senate Majority Whip John

Thune (R., S.D.) said Demo-

cratic leaders’ call to center ne-

gotiations around the biparti-

san proposal was a move in the

Please turn to page A

Democratic leaders signaled

Wednesday they were prepared

to reduce their demands for the

next round of coronavirus re-

lief, fueling hopes that an

agreement could be reached

with Republicans by year’s end

to boost struggling businesses

and households.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

(D., Calif.) and Sen. Chuck

Schumer of New York, the

BYKRISTINAPETERSON

Virus-Aid Talks Pick Up Speed

China Has a Friend

In Wall Street

Trade deal disappointed many U.S. industries,

but financial giants see opportunity

debt parents took on through a

federal college loan program

called Parent Plus.

Previously, the department

released information on debt

levels of students at specific

colleges and universities, but

not the borrowing taken on by

parents on a student’s behalf.

The Parent Plus data “pro-

vides a more complete financial

picture of how recent graduates

have paid for their postsecond-

ary education,” the Education

Department said in a statement

Wednesday.

The amounts may be bur-

densome for many parents. At

nearly 150 colleges, parents

typically took out loans worth

$50,000 or more, the data

show. At more than 500

schools, the median amount

they borrowed was between

$25,000 and $50,000.

Parents of graduates from

Please turn to page A

Poor and middle-income

parents at hundreds of col-

leges have taken on substan-

tial debt—amounts sometimes

more than twice their annual

income—to help their children

through school, new federal

figures show.

The schools with the largest

parent-debt burdens aren’t

world-famous Ivy League

schools, a Wall Street Journal

analysis found. Rather, they in-

clude art schools, historically

Black colleges, and small pri-

vate colleges where parents are

borrowing nearly six-figure

amounts to fulfill their chil-

dren’s college dreams.

For the first time, the U.S.

Education Department, through

its annual release of college fi-

nancial data, provided informa-

tion Wednesday on the level of

BYANDREAFULLER

ANDJOSHMITCHELL

College-Loan Debt

Hits Parents Hard

INSIDE

 House passes delisting of

China firms over audits........ B

 Fed candidacy appears

unlikely to succeed................. A

 CDC shortens quarantine for

virus exposures........................ A

 U.S. hospitalizations for

coronavirus top 100,000.... A

CONTENTS

Business News...... B

Capital Account.... A

Crossword.............. A

Equities....................... B

Heard on Street.. B

Markets................... B

Opinion.............. A15-

Personal Journal A11-

Sports....................... A

Technology............... B

U.S. News............. A2-

Weather................... A

World News...... A9,

s2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

>

What’s

News

The U.K. becamethe

first Western nation to

grant emergency-use autho-

rization for a Covid-19 vac-

cine, clearing a shot devel-

oped by Pfizer and BioNTech

to be distributed in limited

numbers within days.A

Covid-19 hospitalizations

in the U.S. set another record

as the number of coronavi-

rus patients in the nation’s

hospitals topped 100,000.A

The CDC cutthe recom-

mended quarantine period to

seven to 10 days for people

in the U.S. who have been ex-

posed to the coronavirus.A

Democratic leaderssig-

naled they were prepared to

reduce their demands for

the next round of coronavi-

rus relief, fueling hopes that

a deal could be reached with

Republicans by year-end.A

The SBA’s releaseof new

data on PPP borrowers high-

lights how money flowed

to both mom-and-pop busi-

nesses and larger firms.A

Poor andmiddle-income

parents at hundreds of col-

leges have taken on sub-

stantial debt to help their

children through school,

new federal figures show.A

Trump delivereda speech

from the White House in

which he insisted that he won

the election and again de-

clined to concede to Biden.A

Netanyahu’s coalitionpart-

ners withdrew their support

for the government, raising the

prospect it could collapse and

send Israel to a fourth elec-

tion in less than two years.A

Died: Valéry Giscard

d’Estaing, 94, former

president of France.A

U

PS imposedtemporary

shipping restrictions on

some large retailers such as

Gap and Nike this week, an

early sign that the pandemic-

fueled online shopping sea-

son is stretching delivery

networks to their limits.A

The House unanimously

approved legislation that

threatens a trading ban on

shares of Chinese compa-

nies over concerns that

their audits aren’t suffi-

ciently regulated.B

Senate Republicans’bid

to confirm Shelton as a Fed-

eral Reserve governor ap-

pears unlikely to succeed

now that a new Democratic

senator has been seated.A

Amazon.com is inexclu-

sive talks to purchase pod-

cast startup Wondery, as

the technology giant

pushes further into the

growing audio sector.B

Dyal is in talksto merge

with Owl Rock, part of a

complicated deal with a

special-purpose acquisition

company that would take the

asset managers public.B

The S&P 500 rose0.2% to

a record in a choppy trading

session. The Dow also

added 0.2%, while the Nas-

daq slipped 5.74 points.B

Some investorsare betting

the Fed could start buying

more long-term Treasurys as

soon as its next policy meet-

ing, a trend that has helped

temper some recent selling.B

SoftBank andits tech-fo-

cused Vision Fund stand to

win big if DoorDash’s ex-

pected IPO is as successful

as the food-delivery com-

pany hopes it will be.B

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