AP – Is anyone going to CES this year? A long-simmering question in the tech world will finally get its answer as the gadget show returns to the Las Vegas Strip after a hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We know it will be a smaller show this year, for obvious reasons,” said Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Senior Vice President Jean Foster. CTA is the event organiser.

Several huge tech companies have abandoned plans to attend in person. The latest sign of its dwindling size was Friday’s announcement that CES will run one day shorter than originally planned.

The sprawling exhibition floors open tomorrow as the spread of COVID-19’s omicron variant has heightened concerns about the safety of indoor events and international travel.

The CTA by late December was anticipating between 50,000 and 75,000 attendees for this week’s conference, down from more than 170,000 who came for the last in-person gathering two years ago.

Some die-hard CES devotees were mulling over the choice to go or stay home right up until last week.

“An online CES is not a real CES,” said Prince Constantijn of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in a December interview. “You’ve got to see the products and meet the people.” But a week later, the royal who regularly serves as a special envoy for Dutch technology start-ups had opted to stay home after all.

His country is sending a barebones crew to CES 2022. So are many big tech companies – if they send anyone at all.

The last physical CES in January 2020 pumped an estimated USD300 million into the Las Vegas economy.

Few attendees would have known then about the coronavirus outbreak emerging in central China and still months away from being declared a pandemic.

The CTA took the conference online in 2021 as COVID-19 hospitalisations were spiking around the world and vaccines weren’t yet widely available.

The trade group announced eight months ago it was ready to come back to Nevada in 2022 but would offer options for remote participants to see some of it virtually.

Those who do travel to CES are required to show they are fully vaccinated and will be given a COVID-19 test kit. Masks are required inside.

“CES is maybe the most significant event economically of the year in terms of conventions,” said Alan Feldman, a former executive who is a fellow at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Even a significantly reduced event will be “something to look forward to” for local hotels, restaurants, retailers and entertainment crews, Feldman said.

With a smaller audience and the same sprawling footprint occupied by some 2,000 exhibitors, and a desire to keep people distanced, the CTA’s Foster said the “main change for people” will be more empty space and wider aisles.

Much about the Omicron coronavirus variant remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness.

Scientists said Omicron spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, including Delta.

Even without a pandemic to dampen the party, tech industry analyst Carolina Milanesi said “big industry events like this are becoming less important than they used to be” as digital technology has supplied other ways to network and keep up with trends.

CES used to stand for Consumer Electronics Show, but Milanesi said the decades-old gathering has become less a place to find the next line of consumer gadgetry and more focussed on longer-term technology cycles, like self-driving cars or the artificial intelligence applications being fused into smart homes and cities.

“You no longer go to CES to see what’s going to be in the Best Buy near you by summer,” Milanesi said. New expo categories centred around the digital assets called non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as well as space technology and food, reflect the latest tech buzzwords on the minds of investors and marketers.

Some companies also plan to hype their vision for the next generation of the Internet – a collection of virtual worlds known as the metaverse – though explored from the confines of a physical convention floor.

Milanesi has regularly attended CES for a decade to keep an eye on tech companies and trends but public health concerns led her to mull over whether she’d go this time.

She made a final decision in mid-December to attend, but plans to do things differently – visiting the exhibition halls but skipping big speaking events she can watch from her hotel room.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Verizon and AT&T have rejected a request by the United States (US) government to delay the rollout of next-generation wireless technology.

A joint letter on Sunday from the telecommunications giants to US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Steve Dickson, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, sought to dismiss concerns brought by US airlines that a new 5G wireless service could harm aviation.

But CEO of Verizon Communications Hans Vestberg and CEO of AT&T John Stankey also wrote that they were willing to accept some temporary measures over the next six months to limit the service around certain airport runways.

Airlines had asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to delay the scheduled 5G rollout, saying the service, set to launch tomorrow, could interfere with electronics that pilots rely on.

Airlines for America, a trade group for large US passenger and cargo carriers, said in an emergency filing that the FCC has failed to adequately consider the harm that 5G service could do to the industry.

The group wants more time for the FCC and the FAA, which regulates airlines, to resolve issues around aviation safety.

Those are related to a type of 5G service that relies on chunks of radio spectrum called C-Band, which wireless carriers spent billions of dollars to buy up last year.

Siding in part with airlines, Buttigieg and Dickson wrote late Friday to the CEOs of AT&T and Verizon to propose a delay in activating 5G C-band service near an undetermined number of “priority airports” while the FAA studies the potential for interference with aircraft operations.

AT&T and Verizon previously agreed to a one-month delay in 5G, which provides faster speeds when mobile devices connect to their networks and allows users to connect many devices to the internet without slowing it down.

But the telecommunications executives said on Sunday that further delays requested by the government would harm their customers.

AP – United States (US) President Joe Biden (AP; pic below) will meet virtually with independent farmers and ranchers to discuss initiatives to reduce food prices by increasing competition within the meat industry, part of a broader effort to show the administration is trying to combat inflation.

The White House event occurs as higher-than-expected inflation has thwarted Biden’s agenda.

Consumer prices in November rose 6.8 per cent over the prior 12 months – a 39-year high.
Inflation has hurt Biden’s public approval, become fodder for Republican attacks and prompted Senator Joe Manchin to cite higher prices as a reason to sideline the Democratic president’s tax, social and economic programmes. Biden is building off a July executive order that directed the Agriculture Department to more aggressively look at possible violations of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which was designed to ensure fair competition and protect consumers.

Meat prices have climbed 16 per cent from a year ago, with beef prices up 20.9 per cent.

The administration is targetting meat processing plants, which can shape the prices paid to farmers and charged to consumers.

The White House issued a fact sheet saying that the top four companies control 85 per cent of the beef market. In poultry, the biggest four processing firms control 54 per cent of the market.

Biden plans to stress the plans to distribute USD1 billion from the coronavirus relief package to help independent meat processors expand. He also plans to highlight funding to train workers in the industry and improve conditions, as well as issue new rules for meatpackers and labelling requirements for being designated a “Product of USA”.

The Justice Department and the Agriculture Department will launch a joint effort to make it easier to report anti-competitive actions to the government.

The administration will also seek to improve the transparency of the cattle market.

The effort is part of a broader attempt to regain control of America’s economic narrative.

Besides inflation, the repeated waves of coronavirus outbreak have dampened people’s opinions about the economy despite strong growth over the past year.

Biden will have an opportunity to highlight the economy’s strengths with the December jobs report being released on Friday. Economists surveyed by FactSet expect that the US added 362,000 jobs last month with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.1 per cent.

Gains of that magnitude would indicate that the US added roughly 6.5 million jobs last year, more than in any other previous year in a reflection of population growth and government spending.

DETROIT (AP) – A couple of months ago, a woman paid a visit to Jeff Schrier’s used car lot in Omaha, Nebraska. She was on a tight budget, she said, and was desperate for a vehicle to commute to work.

She was shown three cars priced at her limit, roughly USD7,500. Schrier said the woman was stunned.

“‘That’s what I get for USD7,500?'” he recalled her saying. The vehicles had far more age or mileage on them than she had expected for something to replace a car that had been totaled in a crash.

The woman eventually settled on a 2013 Toyota Scion with a whopping 160,000 miles on it.

Schrier isn’t sure he made any profit on the deal. “We just helped her out,” he said.

As prices for used vehicles blow past any seemingly rational level, it is the kind of scenario playing out at many auto dealerships across the country.

Prices have soared so high, so fast, that buyers are being increasingly priced out of the market.

Consider that the average price of a used vehicle in the United States (US) in November, according to Edmunds.com, was USD29,011 – a dizzying 39 per cent more than just 12 months earlier.

And for the first time that anyone can recall, more than half of America’s households have less income than is considered necessary to buy the average-priced used vehicle.

The days when just about anyone with a steady income could wander onto an auto lot and snag a reliable late-model car or buy their kid’s first vehicle for a few thousand dollars have essentially vanished.

“I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this – it’s craziness,” said Schrier, who has been selling autos for 35 years. “It’s quite frustrating for so many people right now.”

When the government reported that consumer inflation rocketed 6.8 per cent in the 12 months that ended in November – the sharpest jump in nearly 40 years – the biggest factor, apart from energy, was used vehicles.

And while the rate of increase is slowing, most experts say the inflated vehicle prices aren’t likely to ease for the foreseeable future.

The blame can be traced directly to the pandemic’s eruption in March of last year. Auto plants suspended production to try to slow the virus’ spread. As sales of new vehicles sank, fewer people traded in used cars and trucks.

At the same time, demand for laptops and monitors from people stuck at home led semiconductor makers to shift production from autos, which depend on such chips, to consumer electronics.

When a swifter-than-expected economic rebound boosted demand for vehicles, auto plants tried to restore full production. But chip makers couldn’t respond fast enough. And rental car companies and other fleet buyers, unable to acquire new vehicles, stopped off-loading older ones, thereby compounding the shortage of used vehicles.

Bleak as the market is for used-car buyers, the computer chip shortage has also driven new-vehicle prices higher. The average new vehicle, Edmunds.com says, is edging toward USD46,000.

Even so, prices of used cars are likely to edge closer to new ones.

Since the pandemic started, used vehicle prices have jumped 42 per cent – more than double the increase for new ones.

Last month, the average used vehicle price was 63 per cent of the average new vehicle cost. Before the pandemic, it was 54 per cent.

At this point, Schrier has to tell lower-income buyers that he has very few used vehicles to sell them.

“What used to be a USD5,000 car,” he said, “is now USD8,000. What used to be USD8,000 is now USD11,000 or USD12,000.”

Including taxes, fees, a 10 per cent down payment, and an interest rate of around 7.5 per cent, the average used vehicle now costs USD520 a month, even when financed for the average of nearly six years, Edmunds calculated.

To make that payment and afford such other necessities as housing, food and utilities, a household would have to take home about USD60,000 a year, or USD75,000 before taxes, said a personal finance specialist at NerdWallet Kimberly Palmer.

In 2020, the US median pretax household income was USD67,521, the Census Bureau said.

“The average person,” Palmer said, “can’t afford the average used car right now.”

Senior Manager at Edmunds Ivan Drury said that while he doesn’t track used vehicle prices relative to household income, he thinks November marked a record “in the worst way possible for affordability”.

Monthly payments for the average used vehicle, he noted, were USD413 two years ago, USD382 five years ago and USD365 a decade ago.

The November average payment of USD500-plus for a used vehicle, Drury said, is about the average that was needed five years ago for a brand-new vehicle.

“People are going to have to make hard decisions, maybe cut back in other areas,” Palmer said. “It means that it’s stressful for a lot of families.”

Used vehicle prices are so high that Karl Hogan of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, was able last month to quickly sell his 2007 Toyota Tacoma small pickup truck, with more than 170,000 miles on it. Even with the vehicle’s age and mileage, a man from Ohio forked over USD6,500 for it.

Hogan didn’t have to budge from the asking price. When some would-be buyers offered him less money, he told them, “I’ve got 12 other guys behind you.”

A week before the sale, when he bought his new Tacoma, Hogan had been on the other side of the equation. The dealer wouldn’t budge from his USD38,000 sticker price.

“If I didn’t take it,” Hogan said, “there were three people waiting. I couldn’t get any off, but I wanted a new truck.”

Senior Manager at JD Power David Paris noted that used vehicle prices are directly tied to the cost of new ones. Though some automakers report that the computer chip supply is gradually improving, prices paid by dealers at used vehicle auctions kept rising through November, Paris said.

“We’re not seeing any softening in prices, which is extremely rare for this time of the year,” he said.

New vehicle dealers have about one million vehicles available nationally – scarcely one-third of the normal supply, Paris said.

And the vast majority have already been sold.

Given pent-up demand from consumers, prices for new vehicles are expected to remain historically high until the supply returns to around two million or 2.5 million and automakers resume discounting, which could take well into 2023.