BEIRUT—In recent decades Lebanon has been a place of relative calm in a turbulent region. Now it is living through a once-in-a-century economic meltdown.

The collapse, rippling through all levels of society, has been accelerated by the lasting effects of the explosion in the Port of Beirut one year ago today.

Power outages have become so frequent that restaurants time their hours to the schedule of electricity from private generators. Brawls have erupted in supermarkets as shoppers rush to buy bread, sugar, and cooking oil before they run out or hyperinflation topping 400% for food puts the prices out of reach. Medical professionals have fled just as the pandemic hammers the country with a new wave of infections. Thefts are up 62% and murder rates are rising fast.

In May, Gaith Masri, a 24-year-old law student and gas-station attendant from northern Lebanon, was shot dead after a scuffle with a customer when he refused to go beyond a rationing limit....

The shipping container that has been the building block of global trade growth is turning into the latest source of frustration for importers and exporters coping with world-wide supply-chain disruptions.

The steel boxes are harder than ever to find as surging demand to restock inventories and a series of shipping disruptions has left many thousands of containers stranded at sea on ships anchored near jammed-up ports. Still more are stacking up at inland freight hubs in the U.S., Europe and Asia as companies struggle to cope with the cargo flows that at times have overwhelmed their operations.

What's News brings you the headlines and business news that move markets and the world—twice every weekday. In 10-12 minutes, get caught up on the best Wall Street Journal scoops and exclusives, with insight and analysis from the award-winning reporters that broke the stories. Hosted by Annmarie Fertoli and Marc Stewart.

WASHINGTON—Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) raised alarms about inflation in a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday, calling on the central bank to start reversing the emergency support it has provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

“With the recession over and our strong economic recovery well underway, I am increasingly alarmed that the Fed continues to inject record amounts of stimulus into our economy,” he wrote.

Mr. Manchin wrote in the letter that he was concerned the Fed’s easy money policies and additional spending legislation in Congress could exacerbate recent spikes in inflation. The Senate is currently working on both a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion bill of Democratic priorities, for which Mr. Manchin’s support will be pivotal.

“I am deeply concerned that the continuing stimulus put forth by the Fed, and proposal for additional fiscal stimulus, will lead to our economy overheating and to...

WASHINGTON—Investors barely reacted last week when Federal Reserve officials signaled they could announce plans to start reducing their bond buying later this year. That was a relief for policy makers eager to avoid a repeat of the market turmoil that erupted in 2013 when the Fed made a similar announcement.

The Fed’s next test will come when it outlines a concrete plan for when and how it will scale back, or taper, the asset purchases.

The central bank has been buying $120 billion a month of Treasury and mortgage securities since June 2020, a pace officials say will continue until the economic recovery advances further. By bidding up the price of long-term bonds, the purchases tend to hold down borrowing costs for businesses and consumers, since bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Some investors worry that yields will jump significantly higher when the Fed stops buying bonds. The Fed’s indication in 2013 that it would eventually wind...

Companies across the U.S. economy are raising pay to recruit workers in a tight labor market, increases that are rippling through firms and prompting employers to rethink pay for existing staffers.

So-called wage compression—when pay for new hires or entry-level staff approaches what longtime staff or senior colleagues make—poses a financial and management challenge for employers, and has gained new urgency as companies fight to attract and retain employees amid record-high rates of job-quitting.

When companies announce pay increases for entry-level jobs, they also send signals to their internal workforces, said Diane Burton, academic director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s ILR School and a professor of human resource studies. Those signals can prompt companies and individuals to reassess the value of skills, experience and seniority.

“The symbolic aspects of wages matter. People want to know how they stack up,” Dr....

BEIJING—China’s factory-gate prices rose at an unexpectedly fast clip in July, matching the highest level in more than 12 years as crude oil and coal prices soared—though economists say the price pickup is unlikely to last.

China’s producer-price index rose 9.0% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday—faster than June’s 8.8% year-over-year increase and the 8.8% gain forecast by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

July’s increase matched May’s 9.0% year-over-year jump, which marked the biggest surge in producer prices since September 2008.

On a month-over-month basis, China’s producer prices rose 0.5% in July, faster than June’s 0.3% advance.

The price increases came despite measures taken by Beijing in recent months to cool soaring commodity prices, including restricting steel exports and cracking down on speculative behavior.

Black millennials thought college would help them get ahead. Instead, it is setting them back.

The median net worth of households with Black college graduates in their 30s has plunged over the past three decades to less than one-tenth the net worth of their white counterparts, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. The drop is driven by skyrocketing student debt and sluggish income growth, which combine to make it difficult to build savings or buy a home. Now, the generation that hoped to close the racial wealth gap is finding it is only growing wider.

More than 84% of college-educated Black households in their 30s have student debt, up from 35% three decades ago, when many baby boomers were at the same age. The younger generation owes a median of $44,000, up from less than $6,000. By comparison, 53% of white college-educated households in their 30s have debt, up from 27% three decades earlier. The median amount rose to $35,000...

Black millennials thought college would help them get ahead. Instead, it is setting them back.

The median net worth of households with Black college graduates in their 30s has plunged over the past three decades to less than one-tenth the net worth of their white counterparts, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. The drop is driven by skyrocketing student debt and sluggish income growth, which combine to make it difficult to build savings or buy a home. Now, the generation that hoped to close the racial wealth gap is finding it is only growing wider.

More than 84% of college-educated Black households in their 30s have student debt, up from 35% three decades ago, when many baby boomers were at the same age. The younger generation owes a median of $44,000, up from less than $6,000. By comparison, 53% of white college-educated households in their 30s have debt, up from 27% three decades earlier. The median amount rose to $35,000...

In recent months, China has blown up what would have been the world’s largest initial public offering, launched probes into some of its biggest technology companies, and wiped out more than $1 trillion in market value while investors scramble for cover.

There are many signs it isn’t over yet.

Investors, analysts and company executives believe the government is just getting started in its push to realign the relationship between private business and the state, with a goal of ensuring companies do more to serve the Communist Party’s economic, social and national-security concerns.

The government’s far-reaching ambitions under Xi Jinping promise serious and often unpredictable implications for business, these people say—and keeping foreign investors happy isn’t a priority.

That means more risk for people who have plowed billions of dollars into China’s fast-growing companies hoping to capitalize on the only tech industry that can rival Silicon...

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is extending a moratorium on federal student-loan payments through early 2022.

The Education Department made the announcement Friday, and it follows an earlier extension President Biden made when he took office. The moratorium was set to expire at the end of September and has been extended until Jan. 31.

The Education Department said that this would be the final extension.

“The department believes this additional time and a definitive end date will allow borrowers to plan for the resumption of payments and reduce the risk of delinquency and defaults after restart,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “The department will continue its work to transition borrowers smoothly back into repayment, including by improving student-loan servicing.“

Loan repayments and interest accrual has been paused for borrowers with federal student loans since March 13, 2020. Collection on defaulted loans has...

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, died Thursday at the age of 72.

Mr. Trumka had led the federation of 56 unions, with 12.5 million members, since 2009 and was a prominent supporter of Democrats and an influential voice on labor issues in Washington. The cause of death was believed to be a heart attack.

“Rich Trumka devoted his life to working people,” AFL-CIO Communications Director Tim Schlittner said in a statement. “He was a relentless champion of workers’ rights, workplace safety, worker-centered trade, democracy and so much more.”

Mr. Trumka grew up in Nemacolin, Pa., where his father and grandfather were coal miners, according to his biography on the labor federation’s website. Mr. Trumka also worked in the mines, while attending Pennsylvania State University. Mr. Trumka, who enjoyed discussing Nittany Lion football, also earned a law degree at Villanova University.

In 1982, at age 33, Mr....

Asia is emerging as a weak link in an otherwise strong global economic recovery, as new pandemic restrictions restrain manufacturing in some countries and the exports that have powered the recovery in China show signs of slowing.

With progress on vaccinations slower than in the West, Asia is hitting new pandemic highs driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus. The spread of the virus is threatening to hurt consumer confidence and erode the advantage of many Asian economies as manufacturing powerhouses.

Countries in Southeast Asia have been among the hardest hit, prompting new social-distancing restrictions and lockdowns in countries that had largely avoided those measures earlier in the pandemic. As factory production contracts across Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia, which have recently faced surging caseloads and Covid-19 deaths, have been among the worst affected, according to IHS Markit .

Foreign demand has propelled export economies...

Big companies raced ahead during the Covid-19 pandemic, leveraging the changes driven by the deepest business disruption in decades to grab a larger slice of the economic pie.

Now, as the rich world bounces back from the shock, the heavyweights are extending that lead, spending more on investments and acquisitions, snapping up talent, employing big data and leveraging new technologies.

Their success could set up a clash with antitrust regulators.

The Biden administration is pushing new policies aimed at promoting competition in the U.S. economy, warning that fewer large players are controlling more of the market. The European Union’s powerful antitrust regulator is re-evaluating how it polices the digital economy.

Economists believe the gap between large and small companies helped explain poor productivity growth before the pandemic. Traditionally, innovations spread from company to company, helping the broader economy. But in recent years,...

The world economy likely returned to its pre-pandemic size in the spring, according to economists, marking an extraordinary comeback from the deepest global downturn in decades. But new variants of Covid-19 are casting a cloud over the global expansion, disrupting manufacturing powerhouses in Asia, leaving some Western consumers on edge and driving a wedge between rich and poor countries.

In Europe and North America, businesses and households are starting to look tentatively beyond the pandemic, thanks to widespread vaccinations. But governments in parts of Asia are introducing new social restrictions and spending plans to combat the fast-spreading Delta variant. Meanwhile, Africa’s low vaccination rate means its economic recovery is expected to lag other regions.

Close to 40% of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, compared with 11% in emerging market economies, according to the International Monetary Fund.

...

This week’s revival of the national eviction ban is sending landlords scrambling again to pay their debts, just when they thought they would be able to begin evicting tenants who are not paying rent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enacted the eviction ban last September to prevent people with financial hardship from being evicted during the pandemic. Since then, many smaller landlords have struggled to collect their monthly rent checks and some have gone into forbearance on their mortgages.

“The government took a firm stance that there would be an end to the [ban],” said Bob Pinnegar, president and chief executive of the National Apartment Association, a landlord trade group. “Now, there’s no faith.”

The White House let the ban expire over the weekend. But it reversed course on Tuesday, issuing a 60-day extension that will apply to counties with elevated Covid-19 infection rates due to the spread of the Delta variant.

That new...

WASHINGTON—The bipartisan infrastructure bill is unlikely to have a big impact on growth in the next few years, economists say. Longer term, though, investments in highways, ports and broadband could make the economy more efficient and productive.

The short-term boost to growth will be relatively limited for two reasons, economists say. For one, the bill represents just $550 billion in new spending—compared with nearly $6 trillion that Congress has approved in the past year-and-a-half to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout.

Second, the infrastructure spending will take place over five to 10 years starting in 2022, a longer timeline than pandemic-era initiatives like stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits and small-business support programs. That will make its direct effects on employment and demand less noticeable.

Alec Phillips, chief political economist for Goldman Sachs Research, said the infrastructure bill could add around...

China’s producer-price index is expected to remain elevated in July after rising at its highest pace in nearly 13 years in May. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal are forecasting the PPI, a gauge of factory-gate prices, will increase 8.8% from a year earlier, the same as the prior month. The consumer-price index is expected to drop 0.8% on year due to plunging pork prices, compared with June’s 1.1% expansion.

This week’s revival of the national eviction ban is sending landlords scrambling again to pay their debts, just when they thought they would be able to begin evicting tenants who are not paying rent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enacted the eviction ban last September to prevent people with financial hardship from being evicted during the pandemic. Since then, many smaller landlords have struggled to collect their monthly rent checks and some have gone into forbearance on their mortgages.

“The government took a firm stance that there would be an end to the [ban],” said Bob Pinnegar, president and chief executive of the National Apartment Association, a landlord trade group. “Now, there’s no faith.”

The White House let the ban expire over the weekend. But it reversed course on Tuesday, issuing a 60-day extension that will apply to counties with elevated Covid-19 infection rates due to the spread of the Delta variant.

That new...

The biggest wildcard for U.S. inflation over the next year doesn’t come from used cars or airline fares. Instead, it is housing.

Officials at the Federal Reserve and the White House have highlighted what many forecasters expect will be the temporary nature of elevated price readings stemming from the reopening of the economy following pandemic-related restrictions.

But the degree to which 12-month inflation readings fall back to the central bank’s 2% goal could rest on the behavior of rents and home prices. In recent months, housing-cost trends point to more persistent, rather than transitory, upward price pressures in the coming years.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 3.5% in June from a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge, the personal-consumption expenditures price index. That was the highest rate of growth in 30 years. Rising prices over the April-to-June quarter largely reflected disrupted supply...

OTTAWA—Canada’s border agents ended a nearly daylong partial strike Friday after their union and the Canadian government struck a new labor deal, removing a potential roadblock for Americans, who can begin visiting their northern neighbor Monday for the first time in 16 months.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which negotiates on behalf of about 9,000 employees at the Canada Border Services Agency, said it clinched a four-year agreement after more than 36 hours of mediator-supervised talks. A mediator was brought in midweek to help resolve differences, which the union said focused on working conditions and compensation.

Government and union negotiators failed to reach a deal before a 6 a.m. ET Friday deadline, and that prompted unionized customs and immigrations officers to slow down the processing of trucks and travelers, and refrain from activity that isn’t required under the job description. The move caused long delays for shippers and travelers...

Law school was once considered a surefire ticket to a comfortable life. Years of tuition increases have made it a fast way to get buried in debt.

Recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law who used federal loans borrowed a median of $163,000. Two years later, half were earning $59,000 or less. That’s the biggest gap between debt and earnings among the top 100 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found.

Graduates from a host of other well-regarded law schools routinely leave with six-figure student loans, then fail to find high-paying jobs as lawyers, according to the Journal’s analysis of the latest federal data on earnings, for students who graduated in 2015 and 2016.

When Miami students asked for financial assistance, some graduates told the Journal, school officials often offered this solution: Take more loans.

“I had no work experience, life experience, anything...

China’s producer-price index is expected to remain elevated in July after rising at its highest pace in nearly 13 years in May. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal are forecasting the PPI, a gauge of factory-gate prices, will increase 8.8% from a year earlier, the same as the prior month. The consumer-price index is expected to drop 0.8% on year due to plunging pork prices, compared with June’s 1.1% expansion.

WASHINGTON—The clock is ticking for Congress to reach a deal to raise the federal borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, before the government runs out of money to pay its bills some time over the coming months. The ceiling was suspended in 2019 and was reinstated automatically at the beginning of this month. Top Senate Republicans, who object to President Biden’s spending agenda, have said the GOP may line up against any effort to raise the limit this year.

Here’s a guide to what that means, and how the issue may be resolved:

To Western investors, China’s regulatory crackdown on superstar companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Didi Global Inc. must seem suicidal. How better to undercut growth than to kneecap some of the world’s most successful technology companies?

President Xi Jinping would beg to differ. In his estimation, technology comes in two varieties: nice to have, and need to have. Social media, e-commerce and other consumer internet companies are nice to have, but in his view national greatness doesn’t depend on having the world’s finest group chats or ride-sharing.

By contrast, Mr. Xi thinks the country needs to have state-of-the-art semiconductors, electric-car batteries, commercial aircraft and telecommunications equipment to retain China’s manufacturing prowess, avoid deindustrialization and achieve autonomy from foreign suppliers. So even as the Chinese Communist Party unleashes a multifront regulatory assault against...