1. Fed Leaves Interest Rates Unchanged
2. Toyota Maintained Its Leadership With 5.47 Million Vehicle Sales
3. U.S. Senate Clears The Way For Talks Of $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Package

Fed Leaves Interest Rates Unchanged

In line with the expectations, the Fed did not change the federal funding rate, keeping it unchanged at 0-0.25 percent.

Along with that, the committee said in a unanimously approved statement that the economy continues to “strengthen.”

Despite the optimism about the economy, Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed is nowhere near considering a rate hike.

“Our approach here has been to be as transparent as we can. We have not reached substantial further progress yet,” Powell said. “We see ourselves having some ground to cover to get there.”

Powell noted the rising threat that the pandemic is posing but said he does not see it having a significant economic impact.

“What we’ve seen is with successive waves of Covid over the past year and some months now, there has tended to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave,” Powell said at his post-meeting news conference. “We will see if that is the case from the delta variety.”

In the statement, Fed noted that the Federal Open Market Committee would establish separate domestic and international standing repo facilities to backstop money markets during times of stress.

“These facilities will serve as backstops in money markets to support the effective implementation of monetary policy and smooth market functioning,” the Fed said in a statement.

Toyota Maintained Its Leadership With 5.47 Million Vehicle Sales

Toyota Motor maintained its leadership with the sales of 5.47 million vehicles in the first six months of this year. Thus, the company retained its title as “the world’s best selling vehicle manufacturer.”

Toyota shared the data for the January-June period of the year with its statement.

The statement emphasized that the negative effects of the coronavirus and semiconductor chip supply problem decreased the company’s global vehicle sales.

In the January-June period, Toyota sold 5,467,218 vehicles globally, up 31.3% from a year earlier. The figure includes those sold by its mini vehicle-manufacturing subsidiary Daihatsu Motor Co. and truck maker Hino Motors Ltd.

The company’s overseas sales increased by 36.5 percent to 4 million 300 thousand, while its domestic sales increased by 15 percent to 1 million 170 thousand.

Emphasis was placed on the impact of demand for Toyota’s new models in the North American and Chinese markets on vehicle sales.

Meanwhile, the Japanese manufacturer surpassed the German Volkswagen AG, which sold 4 million 978 thousand 200 vehicles simultaneously, maintaining the title of “the world’s best selling vehicle manufacturer.”

U.S. Senate Clears The Way For Talks Of $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Package

The U.S. Senate has completed the procedural vote required to move to the discussion and voting phase of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill proposed by President Joe Biden.

In this context, the necessary procedural voting was held to pass the infrastructure bill to the discussion and voting stage. Thirty-two votes accepted the start of the negotiations on the bill to 67. In the said vote, 17 Republican and 50 Democratic senators voted “yes.”

The agreement was reached after months of strenuous negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans. Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he reached a deal with a bipartisan group of senators on a roughly 1.2-trillion-U.S. dollar infrastructure plan.

Over the past few weeks, senators have been trying to nail down details of the infrastructure package. About a week ago, Senate Republicans blocked a procedural vote to advance the infrastructure bill, calling for more time to negotiate the bill and finalize the details.

Within the scope of the infrastructure package, it is planned to spend approximately 1.2 trillion dollars in 8 years.

Many details weren’t changed much from the initial plan, including about $110 billion for roads and bridges, $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, $65 billion for broadband internet, more than $50 billion for water infrastructure, $25 billion for airports, and $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations.