U.S. President Joe Biden has a tough task before him this week as he prepares to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. The countries face the shared threats of an increasingly capable nuclear North Korea as well as a likely significant nuclear buildup by China. The need for close cooperation on these and other international challenges, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and developing clean energy for climate change, could not be more urgent. That’s why it is especially concerning that some in South Korea are publicly entertaining the idea of the country developing its own nuclear weapons.

Even Yoon joined in when he said in January that if North Korea’s nuclear threat grows, South Korea would consider building its own arsenal. He later walked back these comments, but they attracted international attention, as it is incredibly rare for a country—let alone a democracy allied with the United States—to publicly muse about developing nuclear weapons.

It isn’t only Yoon who has flirted with the nuclear option. Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul and a potential future presidential contender, also called for the development of these weapons to address South Korea’s security needs. Though politicians have the biggest platforms on this issue, some of the strongest voices advocating for nuclear weapons emanate from prominent South Korean think tanks. Public opinion polls show high popular support for an indigenous nuclear arsenal, though that could change as the downside risks penetrate the public debate. A few polls and remarks from private citizens should not be given excessive credibility, but loose talk from leaders has consequences, and it’s time for South Korea to tighten up if it wants to continue playing a major leadership role in the global system. Biden needs to take advantage of the upcoming summit to make this clear.

The threats to Yoon’s country are real, but a South Korean nuclear weapons program is not the answer. The pursuit of these weapons by Seoul—a stalwart of the global nonproliferation regime and a country protected by the U.S. defense treaty and nuclear umbrella—would needlessly rupture some of the country’s most important geopolitical relationships. It would isolate South Korea, challenge its role as a major technology exporter in the global economy, and jeopardize both the U.S.-South Korean alliance and South Korea’s role as a major geopolitical player—not to mention increase nuclear risks in the region.

South Korea’s nuclear debate—and its extended deterrence relationship with the United States—has only become more complicated in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some South Korean observers have made the questionable claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats have deterred direct U.S. military involvement in Ukraine and wondered whether North Korea might successfully employ the same tactics against the United States should it engage in conflict against the South. Moreover, it was only a few years ago that then-U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to coerce larger South Korean defense contributions by threatening to withdraw troops from the peninsula. The damage Trump did to confidence in U.S. security assurances in various geographies should not be underestimated. As a result, and despite considerable efforts by the Biden administration to repair the damage, South Korea is scrutinizing whether it can count on future U.S. presidents to uphold the alliance and the security guarantee it provides.

But South Korea will not solve its national security challenges by developing a nuclear deterrent. Doing so would instead invite new challenges and trigger consequences that would stymie Seoul’s rise as a global leader and imperil both economic prosperity and national security in the process. The South Korean government and its people must fully understand these dangers before they consider such a risky course.

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South Korea Could Get Away With the Bomb

The global norm against nuclear proliferation is strong, but Seoul’s political and economic ties are stronger.

Argument
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Ramon Pacheco Pardo

The global nonproliferation regime is designed with consequences in mind—many of which are steep. The United States has played an instrumental role in creating and sustaining this system. Since the mid-1960s, the United States has worked rigorously within this system to prevent nuclear proliferation to adversaries and allies alike. This policy should be no different for South Korea.

Washington has several tools at its disposal should South Korea breach its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, enrich or reprocess any material provided by the United States under its civil nuclear cooperation arrangement, or receive enrichment or reprocessing technology from other sources. Should South Korea cross any of these red lines, the United States could, for example, terminate its nuclear energy cooperation with South Korea and end certain types of military sales and economic assistance, including U.S. credits or loans to South Korea. If South Korea went all the way and tested a nuclear device, the United States would be required under the 1977 Glenn Amendment to cease defense sales and the export of certain key technologies to a nuclear South Korea. Unlike the previous example, there are no waivers for Glenn Amendment sanctions, meaning that even if a future U.S. administration were reluctant to penalize Seoul, it would still be required to enact them.

Some of the harshest consequences would fall on Seoul’s energy sector. South Korea’s nuclear energy program—which provides nearly 30 percent of the country’s electricity—relies on the import of uranium fuel and would thus be impacted severely by the international response. That’s because countries that provide nuclear fuel as part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group would be required under international guidelines to cut South Korea off from these supplies if it abandons its safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and many might choose to halt assistance even if South Korea did not cross that threshold. Beyond domestic energy supply, Seoul’s ambitious plan to be a leading nuclear reactor exporter, one of Yoon’s key policy goals, would be unlikely to succeed. Nuclear power has become more widely accepted as an important tool for combating climate change, and it is poised to expand in many parts of the world. South Korean nuclear reactor technology, with U.S. supply chain support, has already been deployed successfully in the United Arab Emirates, and failure to capitalize on this demonstrated success will likely open the way to more Russian and Chinese influence in the Middle East and beyond.

China, South Korea’s neighbor and largest trading partner, would be strongly opposed to a nuclear South Korea and would likely ratchet up military and economic pressure to prevent such a development. These sanctions would almost certainly go beyond those levied by Beijing following Seoul’s deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in 2017—an action that cost South Korea billions of dollars.

Most visibly, South Korea’s prestige and influence also would suffer tremendously if it decided to build nuclear weapons. It’s hard to see how a South Korea mired in controversy over a nuclear weapons program would be permitted to host major international meetings or attend a NATO summit, as Yoon did last year.

Instead of embarking on this pathway, which serves neither South Korea’s nor the United States’ interests, the countries should use the upcoming White House summit to further invest in their now 70-year-old alliance to address emerging challenges in ways that advance, rather than undermine, nuclear stability and nonproliferation. That means strengthening extended deterrence, including by tighter coordination of U.S. and South Korean military capabilities, and improved planning and communications mechanisms for peacetime and crises. It also means continuing to work toward an eventual nuclear weapons-free peninsula through renewed diplomacy with North Korea. For the United States, it means finding ways to manage strategic competition and avoid nuclear risks with China, however daunting those tasks may seem.

For his part, Yoon should use the summit to publicly reaffirm South Korea’s commitment to the NPT. Biden should applaud that commitment given the country’s worrisome security environment and, in return, reiterate the importance the United States attaches to its mutual defense obligations.

The security challenges facing Seoul and Washington are real—but so are the opportunities for advancing their deeply rooted alliance based on shared values and interests. South Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons would be a dangerous miscalculation. It’s a scenario neither country should countenance.

BALTIMORE — Detroit Tigers (7-10, third in the AL Central) vs. Baltimore Orioles (11-7, third in the AL East)

Baltimore; Friday, 7:05 p.m. EDT

PITCHING PROBABLES: Tigers: Michael Lorenzen (0-0, 13.50 ERA, 2.50 WHIP, six strikeouts); Orioles: Tyler Wells (0-1, 3.86 ERA, .74 WHIP, 11 strikeouts)

FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK MLB LINE: Orioles -178, Tigers +152; over/under is 8 1/2 runs

BOTTOM LINE: The Baltimore Orioles host the Detroit Tigers to open a three-game series.

Baltimore is 4-3 in home games and 11-7 overall. The Orioles have a 7-1 record in games when they out-hit their opponents.

Detroit has gone 3-6 in road games and 7-10 overall. The Tigers have a 4-1 record in games when they scored at least five runs.

Friday’s game is the first meeting between these teams this season.

TOP PERFORMERS: Adley Rutschman has two doubles and four home runs for the Orioles. Austin Hays is 15-for-42 with three doubles, a triple, two home runs and four RBI over the past 10 games.

Kerry Carpenter leads the Tigers with seven extra base hits (four doubles and three home runs). Nick Maton is 7-for-38 with two doubles, three home runs and eight RBI over the past 10 games.

LAST 10 GAMES: Orioles: 7-3, .252 batting average, 4.20 ERA, outscored opponents by 14 runs

Tigers: 5-5, .231 batting average, 4.54 ERA, outscored by 13 runs

INJURIES: Orioles: Jorge Mateo: day-to-day (hip discomfort), Mychal Givens: 15-Day IL (knee), John Means: 60-Day IL (elbow), Dillon Tate: 15-Day IL (elbow)

Tigers: Matt Manning: 15-Day IL (foot), Austin Meadows: 10-Day IL (anxiety), Beau Brieske: 15-Day IL (arm), Freddy Pacheco: 60-Day IL (elbow), Tarik Skubal: 60-Day IL (elbow), Casey Mize: 60-Day IL (elbow)

(© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Amazon Pacheco is a powerful software suite designed to help Amazon retailers streamline their operations and maximize profits. This all-in-one toolset provides users with invaluable tools for managing inventory, advertising, sales analytics, and more. With so many features available, it can be challenging to master all its potential fully. In this article, we will guide you through the different aspects of Amazon Pacheco, giving you tips on how to use this platform to its fullest, improve productivity and boost your Amazon business’s success.

Table of Contents

1. Understanding Amazon Pacheco
2. Inventory Management
3. Advertising Strategies
4. Analytics & Insights
5. Customer Reviews
6. Automated Repricing
7. Preventing Suspensions
8. Final Thoughts

Understanding Amazon Pacheco

Before diving into the specific functionalities, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of Amazon Pacheco itself. Most e-commerce businesses use Amazon Pacheco to manage their entire online operation, such as:

• Inventory management
• Advertising campaigns
• Sales reports and analytics
• Repricing strategies
• Review monitoring

Amazon Pacheco has become an indispensable tool for many online retailers, assisting them in growing and thriving on the competitive Amazon marketplace.

Inventory Management

Managing inventory is one of the most critical aspects of a successful Amazon business. Amazon Pacheco offers a robust inventory management system to help ensure you can keep track of your stock levels accurately and avoid overselling or stockouts. The following are some tips for inventory management using Amazon Pacheco:

1. Monitor Stock Levels

Regularly check your inventory levels and track items with a low stock threshold. Set up automatic notifications to alert you when an item’s stock reaches a predefined level, allowing you to act accordingly and prevent stockouts.

2. Integrate with Other Platforms

If you sell on multiple marketplaces or platforms, consider using Amazon Pacheco’s multi-channel inventory management feature. This feature synchronizes your inventory across various channels, simplifying your management process and ensuring accurate stock levels.

Advertising Strategies

Advertising is another vital aspect of a successful Amazon business. Here are some tips for leveraging Amazon Pacheco’s advertising tools:

1. Get Started with Sponsored Products

Amazon Pacheco offers Sponsored Products advertising, which allows you to promote your products to a broader audience. Use this feature to increase your products’ visibility, leading to more sales and higher search rankings.

2. Experiment with Different Targeting Options

Amazon Pacheco offers a variety of targeting options for advertising campaigns. Test different targeting types, such as keyword targeting, product targeting, and category targeting, to find the best approach for your products and budget.

3. Analyze Advertising Data

Track your advertising campaigns’ performance using Amazon Pacheco’s in-depth analytics. Evaluate metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversion rates to determine your campaigns’ effectiveness and make data-driven decisions to optimize your ads.

Analytics & Insights

Amazon Pacheco provides comprehensive analytics to monitor your business’s performance. Use this data to identify trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and develop data-driven strategies to increase profitability. Here are some tips for using analytics effectively:

1. Analyze Sales Data

Examine sales data to identify patterns and trends in your performance. This information can help you to plan purchasing decisions, identify top-selling products, and maximize inventory turnover.

2. Monitor Performance Metrics

Track essential performance metrics such as conversion rates, sell-through rates, and return on investment (ROI). Use this data to identify areas where your business could improve and implement strategies to enhance your overall performance.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews play a critical role in your Amazon business’s success. Positive reviews can influence purchasing decisions and increase your credibility as a seller. Amazon Pacheco offers tools to help you monitor and manage customer reviews. Here are some strategies:

1. Respond to Negative Reviews

Address negative reviews promptly and professionally, attempting to resolve the issue and demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction. A well-handled negative review can build trust and credibility with potential buyers.

2. Encourage Positive Reviews

Ensure excellent customer service and fast shipping to increase the likelihood of receiving positive reviews. Offer incentives, such as discounts or promotional codes, for customers who share their product experiences in reviews.

Automated Repricing

Prices on the Amazon marketplace are extremely competitive. To stay ahead, it’s crucial to ensure your products are competitively priced at all times. Amazon Pacheco’s automated repricing feature enables you to automatically adjust your product prices based on market conditions, competitor pricing, and your desired profit margins. Here’s how to make the most of automated repricing:

1. Set Repricing Rules

Create custom repricing rules based on factors such as product cost, desired profit margin, and product category. This ensures that your repricing strategy aligns with your overall business goals.

2. Monitor Repricing Performance

Track the performance of your repricing strategies and make adjustments as necessary to optimize your prices and maintain competitiveness in the market.

Preventing Suspensions

Amazon has strict rules and guidelines that sellers must follow to maintain their accounts in good standing. Failing to adhere can lead to account suspension or termination. Here are some tips for staying compliant with Amazon’s policies when using Amazon Pacheco:

1. Stay Informed of Amazon’s Policies

Keep up to date with Amazon’s seller policies and guidelines. This ensures that you’re aware of any changes and can adjust your processes accordingly to maintain compliance.

2. Monitor Your Account Health

Monitor your Amazon Seller Central dashboard to track your account’s health, such as order defect rate, late shipping rate, and cancellation rate. Ensure that you maintain good standings in all performance metrics to avoid potential suspensions.

Final Thoughts

Mastering Amazon Pacheco can be an invaluable asset for your Amazon business. By leveraging its powerful suite of tools and features, you can streamline your operations, increase efficiency, and ultimately, boost your profits. Utilize the tips provided in this article to make the most of Amazon Pacheco and take your Amazon business to new heights.

Eury Perez, RHP, Marlins: Perez went five innings on Thursday, allowing two hits, with a walk and five strikeouts. It was Perez’s best outing of the season. There’s an argument to be made that Perez is the top pitching prospect in the game, with premium stuff and projection still remaining in the tank. It’s just a matter of whether he can go deep into games and show improved pitchability.

Gavin Williams, RHP, Guardians: The Guardians top prospect went five no-hit innings, only allowing a single walk while striking out eight. It wouldn’t be shocking to see some movement in the Guardians rotation in the next week, which could mean Williams gets the bump up to Triple-A. In a system full of exciting pitching prospects and an organization known for its ability to develop starters, Williams, Tanner Bibee and Logan Allen stand out as part of the next wave of Cleveland pitchers.

Brandon Pfaadt, RHP, D-Backs: Pfaadt posted his best start of the season as he went seven innings, with three hits, a walk and eight strikeouts. With Madison Bumgarner being designated for assignment this week, Pfaadt could soon move into the D-backs rotation. With little left to prove in Triple-A his start on Thursday served as another reminder that Pfaadt is ready to contribute for the big league club.

Steven Zobac, RHP, Royals: A 2022 fourth-rounder out of California, Zobac dominated in a three-inning appearance last night. He struck out eight while allowing one hit. Zobac struck out the first 10 batters he faced this season before a pop out broke the streak.

Zach Cole Jr., OF, Astros: Cole on Thursday went 2-for-3 with a home run and a stolen base. Cole was a 2022 10th-rounder out of Ball State who has projectable skills. He’s a tall athlete with long levers who needs to limit his strikeouts, but he has a nice combination of power and speed.

Brady House, 3B, Nationals: House connected for his third homer in eight games on Thursday and is now hitting .333/.471/.778 to begin the season. The House bounceback looks to be in full bloom early in the season. His combination of power, approach and contact could see House soar back up prospect rankings this spring.

Tim Elko, DH, White Sox: The Ole Miss legend went 4-for-4 with two home runs on Thursday. It was reminiscent of Elko’s heroics in college, where he routinely came up with big hits in big spots for Mississippi. Elko is old for Low-A at 24 years old, but he’s absolutely raking to begin the season, hitting .413/.491/.739 over his first 11 games.

Anthony Gutierrez, OF, Rangers: One of the most exciting young players in the Rangers system, Gutierrez shook off early season struggles on Thursday, going 2-for-4 with his first home run of the season. At 18 years old for all of 2023, Gutierrez is one of the youngest players at a full-season level and an exciting name to watch.

Chris McElvain, RHP, Reds: The former Vanderbilt starter is dominating Low-A over the first three appearances of his pro career. He went five scoreless innings, allowing two hits, two walks and striking out nine. Seven of his 13 whiffs on the night came against the fastball, which sat 92-94 mph, touching 95 mph at peak. He got whiffs against all three of his secondaries but led primarily with his slider.

Logan Cerny, OF, Astros: A player who was generating a lot of buzz among scouts this spring, Cerny has struggled to begin the season. He broke out in a big way on Thursday, going 2-for-4 with two home runs. Cerny is a good athlete with speed and sneaky power, it’s just a matter of honing his approach.

Dalton Rushing, C, Dodgers: An early season addition to the Top 100 Prospects list, Rushing went 2-for-4 with a home run and a walk on Thursday. His combination of feel to hit, power and approach has pushed him up rankings early in his career, and there are few catching prospects in the minors with more offensive upside. The biggest question around Rushing’s profile is whether or not he’s going to stick behind the plate long term.

Amid a historic attack on workers’ living standards in Argentina, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Biden’s second-highest-ranking diplomat, met with leaders of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) in Buenos Aires and praised “the transformative power of Argentine syndicalism.” As the largest trade union body in the country, the CGT is a “model” for the entire region, she stressed.

Conditions are worsening exponentially for workers in Argentina, who often describe the decades-long fall in living standards by pointing out that they haven’t had an asado (barbecue) in years, or half-jokingly saying that they have “had to become vegetarian.”

In 2021, meat consumption reached the lowest point since the 1920s, when Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In late 2022, UNICEF found that more than 1 million children and 3 million adults were skipping a daily meal because they couldn’t afford it. Meat consumption had fallen 67 percent, and the intake of fruits, vegetables and dairy had dropped 40 percent, according to the UN agency.

At the behest of global finance capital and in close coordination with the IMF, the “left” nationalist government of Peronist President Alberto Fernandez and the union bureaucracy are enforcing  economic shock therapy to impose mass poverty and hunger against workers.

With the third highest inflation rate in the world after Venezuela and Zimbabwe, prices in Argentina have increased 105 percent in one year—that is, they have more than doubled. And inflation is expected to continue accelerating, as the ruling elite employs the devaluation of the Argentine peso as a battering ram against workers.

By the end of 2022, the official poverty rate had risen to 40 percent, but it is likely much higher now. In February 2023, UNICEF warned that two out of three children were poor or are deprived of basic rights, and that nearly 100 percent of these children live in households with an active worker. In the first trimester of 2023, the government found that the median per capita income in the cities—where 93 percent of the population lives—had fallen to 44,000 monthly pesos. This means that half of the population is living on $107 monthly, or about $3.60 daily according to the black-market but more precise “blue dollar.”

In an industrialized country and leading food producer, children are undernourished and incomes have fallen below Haiti’s per capita GDP.

And just as US imperialism “draws lessons” from its war against Russia in Ukraine by staging war games in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, it is sending top officials to draw lessons from the escalating class struggle in Argentina.

Gerardo Martínez, foreign relations secretary of the CGT and leader of the construction workers union UOCRA, led the delegation to the US Embassy and said in a news briefing that they “analyzed the socio-economic situation in Argentina, the trade-unionist vision of social dialogue and the efforts to find guided compromises.”

Barely 20 miles away from the embassy, in the suburb of General Pacheco, workers at a snack food plant of the US multinational Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods) were blocking the Pan-American highway, exposing the character of Sherman’s meeting with the CGT bureaucrats.

A worker who belongs to a rank-and-file committee organizing the protest explained to C5N:

[The] union and its internal commission ignored us and signed an agreement at our expense. We are suffering speed-ups, and fellow workers who are pregnant are being forced to work on packaging, where they hit their bellies against boxes given the fast rate of production. We can’t stand this any longer. The situation started during the pandemic. The company hires and fires personnel as it pleases. Now, 1,800 have been left jobless, including pregnant workers. This company does whatever it wants … and the Ministry did not answer our appeals.

Beyond exchanging compliments, Sherman, who was joined by US Ambassador Marc Stanley and other US diplomats, asked the CGT to “institutionalize” an Argentine chapter of “M-Power”—a Biden administration initiative launched with the support of the AFL-CIO that seeks to “elevate the role of trade unions” internationally.

This request takes place as the White House exerts pressure and leverages IMF funds to align Buenos Aires behind its military and economic war drive against Russia and China. The Biden administration’s M-Power is one of its tools to advance this geopolitical agenda.

The meeting with the CGT follows a recent trip by President Fernández to the White House. Sergio Massa, the minister of economy, who is leading the ongoing austerity drive, has met several times with IMF and US officials in Washington this year. Moreover, on Monday, the chief of the US Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson, met with Argentine Defense Minister Jorge Taiana to discuss the country’s ties to China.

The praise for the CGT as a “model” confirms the warnings of the World Socialist Web Site that Biden’s claims to be “the most pro-union president” mean that he is relying on the union bureaucracy to impose austerity and war.

In Argentina, with a Central Bank interest rate of 78 percent, local and foreign investors are seeing windfalls, and vultures led by the IMF are ransacking the public treasury by charging interest on $400 billion in public debt. Monthly interest payments to “Leliq” bondholders have increased seven-fold over the last year, surpassing pension payments and becoming the largest expenditure for the government.

Meanwhile, export corporations, including in gas and mining, can sell their products in dollars and euros and maintain low operational costs in pesos.

This outright plundering of Argentina, with the support of the handful of corrupt billionaire oligarchs in the country, has been possible only thanks to the union bureaucracy, which is allied with the Fernandez administration. The CGT and CTA confederations agreed to a 60 percent ceiling on wage negotiations with the government, which is resulting in a huge drop in the purchasing power of workers.

At the same time, in “revision talks,” or paritarias, every six months or even more frequently, union officials meet with employers in ostensible “negotiations” mediated by the government, where they feign outrage and sometimes are compelled to call for “Hollywood” strikes for 24, 48 or 72 hours until they finally “compromise” and agree to wage increases far below the inflation rate. This process has become institutionalized, and its results are enforced by union delegates and the “internal commissions” at workplaces.

As a fundamental element in the Argentine syndicalist “model,” wherever rank-and-file opposition seems to overflow, as in Mondelez, careerists among the plethora of pseudo-left organizations swarm in like firefighters with their fists raised and and spouting radical rhetoric, calling for workers to “recover” the unions from the bureaucracy. But whatever new leadership or faction they build gets channeled back and integrated into the same bureaucracy in the name of “unity.”

As workers face global corporations and offensives directed from Wall Street and London, the most crucial service provided by the Argentine union federations is that they keep workers isolated from their class brothers and sisters internationally as they, too, enter into struggle against similar attacks.

After decades of militant struggles, beginning with waves of strikes in 1918 and 1919, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Argentina’s trade union apparatus took shape in the 1940s, amid a boom of trade and industrialization that began during World War Two. A cabal of military officials eventually led by Juan Domingo Perón implemented major concessions to workers, including wage increases, new benefits and labor protections. However, these measures were used to subordinate union activity to the diktats of management and the capitalist state.

Perón had been influenced by what he saw for almost two years, as a military envoy during the war in Mussolini’s Italy, particularly the fascist corporatist alliance between the state, employers and trade unions. This is the historic basis of the “model” now promoted by Biden.

Union membership, encouraged by Perón, shot upwards, and the union bureaucracy became entrenched around the Peronist CGT, which grew into a conservative appendage of the capitalist state.

The US designation of the CGT as a “model” form of trade unionism has particularly sinister implications, given the history of this right-wing apparatus during the run-up to the 1976 military coup. It played the leading role in organizing the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, or Triple A, a network of death squads that killed and disappeared hundreds of militant and left-wing workers and even union delegates in an attempt to quell the mounting uprising by workers and youth.

Today, both the US and the Argentine ruling classes are banking on this union bureaucracy suppressing working class opposition as the next administration tries to eliminate welfare, energy subsidies and other social protections, while syphoning the profits from the world’s largest lithium deposits and the major Vaca Muerta gas field at the behest of the financial vultures and US and European imperialism.

Major class battles are on the horizon and, while the Peronist bureaucracy maintains significant influence that Biden wants to emulate, its enforcement of decades of unending attacks on living standards has significantly eroded its control over the working class. Union membership among formal workers has been cut almost in half since 1990, to 27 percent.

As the WSWS has explained: “Biden’s promotion of the unions arises out of fear that the rank-and-file organizations set up by many sections of workers to prevent their struggles from being suppressed and isolated will develop into a national and international network. This is precisely what is necessary.” Accordingly, the WSWS is fighting to build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees in opposition to all trade union bureaucracies.

One of the biggest questions facing California‘s largest cities in the last few years has been how their downtowns will rebound from the pandemic.

Early indications show that some regions are recovering much more quickly than others. And the stakes couldn’t be higher, as leaders and officials race to lure workers and tourists back to cities’ economic centers.

San Diego has bounced back to 99% of previous foot traffic levels while Los Angeles is at 65%, according to a study by the School of Cities at the University of Toronto that recorded foot traffic based on cellphone data in 62 North American cities from 2019 to November 2022. San Francisco remained at only 31% of pre-pandemic levels.

Each of California’s largest downtowns has rebounded differently. San Diego was more reliant on tourism and residential development, which helped its recovery. San Francisco, on the other hand, was far more dependent on office workers and has suffered from companies shifting to remote work. The lack of commuter traffic has also devastated that downtown’s retail life. San Francisco leaders have been working to turn things around and prevent what some experts have described as a potential “doom loop.”

“There is tremendous diversity in who’s coming back,” said Karen Chapple, a professor emerita of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley and director at the School of Cities.

San Diego

On a Thursday night in Little Italy in downtown San Diego, the restaurants along India Street were buzzing. Tables at Buon Appetito and Barbusa were filled with diners, giddy from the reprieve of California’s wild wintry weather. Tourists strolled the sidewalks, illuminated by string lights overhead. Across town in the historic streets of the Gaslamp quarter, dozens of customers queued up to order ice cream cones and cups from Cali Cream. A few blocks away, fans formed a line outside the American Comedy Club to see Kevin Fredericks’ show, the latest leg of his national tour.

Downtown San Diego is whirling again, a place that was in a developmental sprint until 2020 momentarily slowed it down. “San Diego has an unusually large and diverse set of activities, which I think is part of what’s leading the way,” said Bill Fulton, an urban planner and San Diego’s former planning director.

Though San Diego’s downtown is less office-centric, it was still decimated by the dramatic retraction of its bedrock leisure and hospitality industries — about 9,840 jobs were lost in 2020, wiping out four years of job growth, according to the Downtown San Diego Partnership.

But tourism, especially domestic travel, returned with gusto in 2021. Conventions, particularly Comic-Con, came back to town. Sheyla Ulloa, an assistant manager of the Gaslamp Garage, a souvenir shop, stood in the store one day as lanyard-wearing conventioneers scooped up gifts. The return of conventions was a special turning point. “That was when I felt we are getting back on track,” Ulloa, 35, said.

Leaders credit recovery to other areas, too. “We have also seen the diversification of these new industries into downtown San Diego,” Betsy Brennan, the director of Downtown San Diego Partnership, said, noting the emerging biotechnology industry.

According to CoStar, a real-estate tracking company, about 2.8 million square feet of newly developed mixed-used space is slated to open over the next two years, the biggest stock of inventory in two decades. It includes the $550-million transformation of Westfield Horton Plaza into a mixed-used life science and technology center, and real-estate developer IQHQ’s research and development center, or RaDD, which comprises offices, laboratories and retail space on the waterfront. Neither of the spaces has announced any tenants yet, CoStar analysts said.

Downtown San Diego residents have also kept things in motion. “I love downtown,” Logan DeBuano, who lives and owns a salon in the area. “It’s the simplicity of being able to walk everywhere, and having things so close.”

But the pandemic still casts a shadow. Storefronts remain boarded up, and the number of homeless people in downtown has hit a record high, as home prices across the county soar and pandemic protections expire. Some residents in the area say the quality of life has declined.

Ariana Sadre walked from her downtown apartment to a 10:30 a.m. yoga class in the East Village, navigating streets lined with encampments and littered with rubbish during her 10-block route. Sadre, 31, said she has started to see open drug use, needles on the ground and people with gaping wounds.

“I feel for people, and it upsets me that we don’t have solutions in place,” she said. “But it’s crazy, because we keep building these high-rises and charging astronomical rent, and there are these massive problems that aren’t being addressed.” (The city has added more shelter beds, and the City Council is looking at a proposed ban on encampments on public property, but the crisis has not been fully solved.)

In the Columbia District, Allyson Samfilippo, co-owner of Kuma Cafe, which caters largely to downtown’s office workers, has had to raise prices and switch to leaner operations. Customers have told her their businesses are relocating. The climate feels different now, she said. “I was 25 when we started this and was ready to go,” said Samfilippo, who opened Kuma in 2016 with her husband. “Now I’m just looking around to see where the chips are going to fall.” She does see promise: Vacancy signs are coming down as new businesses move in.

“I hope that we will find a way to keep making it,” she said.

Los Angeles

One recent Tuesday morning, office workers dodged puddles and hid under umbrellas, stopping to pick up almond lattes and scones at Nice Coffee, an open air cafe in City National Plaza. Rain lashed the plaza’s skyscrapers, their neat rows of office windows stacked one atop the other, revealing mostly empty rooms under glaring white lights.

Downtown Los Angeles relies in part on the spending of employees who fill the skyscrapers in the city’s core. But office occupancy rates are at 47% of pre-pandemic levels, and rental rates are below 2019 levels.

The spike in remote work is short-term pain, said Nick Griffin, executive director of the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. He remains “bullish” on downtown Los Angeles’ ability to absorb those changes. “Hospitality, residential and to some extent retail [are] all recovering quickly and picking up the slack, and are likely taking a more prominent role in the shape of downtown going forward,” Griffin said.

Before the pandemic struck, downtown L.A. was ascending. Since the late 1990s, a watershed of residential units helped the population balloon from 20,000 to more than 85,000. It became a tourism magnet. Celebrity chefs opened restaurants and bars. The Arts District oozed with popularity and coolness.

“Downtown Los Angeles was booming,” resident James Lee said as he played with his dog, Buster, a 13-year-old terrier mix, in a mud-covered park in the Historic Core. The restaurants, the culture and walkability gave downtown its own vibe. “Then COVID kneecapped it.”

Trips to downtown L.A. fell from an average of 10 million monthly visits in 2019 to 2 million in April 2020, according to the Downtown Center Business Improvement District’s 2022 year-end report. Workplace visits dropped from 5.4 million average visits in 2019 to as low as 2.4 million visits. But 2022 saw meaningful and stable advancements; average monthly visits are now around 10% below the pre-pandemic average, the report found.

Many storefronts remain shuttered, and residents, employees and business owners point to the growing homelessness emergency that they say has gotten worse. At Wax Candy, a salon, manager Yaso Pacheco keeps the front door locked and buzzes clients in — a security measure introduced only recently after several unsettling interactions left employees rattled. Other workers and residents say certain streets are impassable, particularly after dark when leaving work.

But some familiar rhythms are reemerging. At the Golden Gopher, a neighborhood bar, managers said the energy during St. Patrick’s Day weekend was reminiscent of previous times: loud, crowded, hectic. Lee said he sees architecture and food tours on the move and more people exploring the steep streets of Bunker Hill, while other residents point to reopened galleries and tourists taking selfies in front of Disney Concert Hall. A slate of high-rise hotels, including the Conrad, inside Frank Gehry’s megacomplex the Grand, and the Moxy and AC complex are adding clout to downtown L.A. “It feels like it’s recovering,” said Carrin Tanaka, 36, a freelance music composer who lives in the area.

For some entrepreneurs, the pandemic crystallized new opportunities. Elliott Lau, the owner of Nice Cafe, applied for a liquor license last year, largely encouraged by busier sidewalks, offices and summer’s contagious energy. Lydia Clarke moved downtown in 2012 to open DTLA Cheese in Grand Central Market. She loved operating in the market but began exploring other locations. Then, the store beside Kippered, a bar Clarke also owns, went on the market, about 500 feet from Grand Central.

“When will you find a corner vacancy, right next to your other business?” Clarke, 45, said. “It feels like a nice time to [move]. Wheels are starting to not just be moving, but they’re getting greased up again.”

San Francisco

About 10 people lined up inside Le Regency Deli & Cafe in downtown San Francisco — a mix of law firm employees, construction workers, project managers, conventioneers and municipal staffers. A man in a uniform for BART, the city’s transit service, remarked to the deli’s owner, Paul Ayanian, how good it felt to see other customers. Trolley bells chimed on an otherwise empty street outside. It was three years to the day that Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, issued pandemic shutdown orders.

“Before we’d have a line out the door at lunch time,” Ayanian, 68, said. He and two employees — down from a staff of seven pre-pandemic — assembled wraps, salads and panini sandwiches.

San Francisco has earned a reputation as America’s emptiest downtown, exacerbated by the shift to remote work and massive layoffs, led by the behemoth tech industry. The city’s office vacancy rate hit a record high of 29.4% in the first quarter of 2023, up from 19.7% from the first quarter of 2022, according to data from the real-estate brokerage firm CBRE. Its office occupancy rate has stalled and hangs around 40% weekly, among the lowest in the nation.

That means fewer people grabbing coffee, jostling through the Embarcadero or Montgomery Street BART stations at peak hours, getting haircuts, going to happy hours or picking up dry cleaning — sending alarms about the loss in tax revenue if downtown remains empty.

“It is very ironic that our success created our exposure to failure,” said Wade Rose, president of Advance SF, a business advocacy group. “[San Francisco] hasn’t come back due in large part to the strength of the economy prior, and that the companies we promoted to form the background of San Francisco were the ones that created the technology that allowed everyone to leave and work from home.”

It’s not just remote work that’s hamstringing recovery. Public safety is a top concern, though data indicate violent crime has fallen over the last decade and is below that of cities of similar size. The fentanyl crisis has hit the city especially hard, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom to call in the California National Guard and the California Highway Patrol to help San Francisco police and prosecutors target traffickers.

Tourism, particularly international tourism, has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, although visitor spending more than doubled in 2022 from the prior year. Business owners find hope in the city’s conventions schedule, with events like the DreamForce tech gathering and the Game Developers Conference back on the calendar for the first time since 2019.

Freddie Thomas has been working in the Russ Building’s lobby security for more than 15 years through many of the city’s previous economic somersaults. “The businesses that are here, they are tenacious,” he said. “That’s what I admire about San Francisco. We will find a way to build these businesses back.”

The community benefit district Downtown SF Partnership is organizing events, including light shows, to transform downtown from a commuter’s town to a destination. Future Bars Group, a hospitality group with 14 businesses in San Francisco, is expanding its footprint. “All of the things that make San Francisco are still there,” Brian Sheehy, Future’s chief executive, said. “It’s just some housekeeping we have to deal with.”

Back at Le Regency deli, Demescha King, a legal assistant in a nearby office, called over the counter to the owner, Ayanian. “I said I hope they’re still open, because I’m coming here to get a sandwich,” she said. Her office, which now requires in-person work three days per week, often catered lunches from Le Regency.

Ayanian said he had good business day, but he has learned to temper his expectations. “I used to get excited,” he said, adding that one day a week isn’t enough. By 2 p.m., Le Regency was closed.