🐣 🇫🇷 The French government has launched a national plan to combat infertility, including sending an official letter to all 29-year-olds with information on fertility, reproduction, and preservation options.

The policy comes as France’s fertility rate has dropped to around 1.56 children per woman, far below the 2.1 replacement level and the lowest in decades.

Births are at post-war lows, with deaths now beginning to outnumber births.

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/french-government-letter-birth-rates-29-year-olds-zjkqmr6bc

📎 Europa

💥 🇮🇹 ⛷️Masked individuals launched fireworks at police during a protest tied to the Olympics in Italy.

📎 AF Post

🇪🇺 World leader’s disapproval rating:

🇫🇷 Emmanuel Macron: 77%
🇬🇧 Keir Starmer: 68%
🇩🇪 Friedrich Merz: 64%
🇪🇸 Pedro Sánchez: 61%

📝 Pavel Durov: Officials with the lowest approval ratings in the world (Macron, Starmer, Merz, Sanchez) are the loudest champions of social media bans for teens and ‘misinformation’ crackdowns.

🔗 World of Statistics

🇺🇸🐄 🇦🇷 President Trump signed an executive order quadrupling beef imports from Argentina in a massive blow to the cattle ranchers that supported him during the 2024 elections

The proclamation increases the in-quota tariff-rate quota for lean beef trimmings by 80,000 metric tons for calendar year 2026. The additional imports will be allocated entirely to Argentina and released in four quarterly tranches beginning Feb. 13.

The White House said the action is intended to boost supply and make ground beef more affordable for American consumers in a fact sheet on the order.

According to the proclamation, the Trump administration is acting in response to historically high beef prices and a prolonged decrease in the U.S. cattle herd.

📝Basel Musharbash: The Big Four meatpackers who control 85% of the U.S. beef market have apparently succeeded in using the persistent high beef prices which their own plant shutdowns facilitated to get Trump to loosen restrictions on beef imports.

The Big Four have long sought to get restrictions on beef imports lifted because they own foreign plants with excess capacity and/or lower cattle costs. By importing more beef trimmings — which are used to make ground beef and processed beef products — from their foreign plants, the Big Four can reduce the amount of U.S.-produced cattle they need, lowering their cost of production and improving their margins.

In a competitive market, the expanded availability of lower-cost foreign beef trimmings might be expected to spur meatpackers to cut beef prices to consumers. But, of course, we don’t have a competitive beef market. Since most (if not all) significant foreign plants with the capacity to export beef to the U.S. are controlled by the Big Four, opening the door to beef imports won’t expose the Big Four to any real competitive threat. And since the Big Four already control the U.S. beef market and beef prices are already extremely high, none of the Big Four needs to take sales from the others — certainly not by cutting prices — in order to reap higher profits. They can just use imports to cut their costs while keeping beef prices high, and watch their margins grow wider.

Meanwhile, as a result of Trump’s executive order, America’s ranchers will now face lower demand for their cattle. This will force U.S. ranchers to accept lower prices, and the lower prices will prevent them from growing the national cattle herd from its current record-low size — potentially starting a vicious cycle. Persistent low U.S. cattle output could invite more cheap imports over time. The cheap imports could keep U.S. cattle prices depressed, which could push domestic cattle output even lower — gradually shrinking the U.S. cattle industry until it can’t feed the country anymore.

🔗 https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/ranchers-dispute-price-claims-trump-expands-argentine-beef-imports-executive-order

🇺🇸 US job openings are now at recession levels:

US job openings dropped -386,000 in December, to 6.5 million, the lowest since September 2020.

Over the last 2 months, job openings have declined -907,000, the biggest 2-month drop since March 2023.

The number of available vacancies has plummeted -5.6 million since the March 2022 peak.

This is now below levels seen before the pandemic in 2018 and 2019, at ~7.0 million.

As a result, the ratio of available vacancies to unemployed workers is down to 0.87, the lowest since February 2021, and significantly below the pre-pandemic high of 1.24.

This is also below the levels recorded during the 2001 recession.

US job market weakness is accelerating.

🔗 Kobeissi Letter

🇺🇸🇮🇱🛬 — Israeli Prime-Minister Netanyahu will be moving up his trip to Washington and arriving this Tuesday to meet with President Trump on Wednesday, instead of his planned the week after.

📝The reason for this unusual change of schedule is an urgent discussion with the US President on Iran.

🇯🇵🗳📊 — Japan's NHK projects that the ruling conservative LDP will win between 274 to even 328 seats by its own

Such exit polls project the LDP may win the largest majority in Japanese history since 1945

🇯🇵🌹🗳❗️— The two Pro-China/China-friendly parties of Japanese House of Representatives, Reiwa Shinsengumi and the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SPD), are risking getting to zero seats at today's elections

🇯🇵🗳🗺 — NHK's map of election district results shows Japan's ruling conservative LDP red making major gains across the country.

🐍 The Osaka Prefecture, the home of the LDP's coalition partner, the libertarian-minded Ishin Party, remains Ishin territory.

📉 As noted by observers, even 30 minutes after the polls have closed, they haven't called a single district for the liberal opposition CRA.

🇯🇵🗳❗️ — Japan's Nationalist Prime-Minister Sanae Takaichi won her seat in Nara with 88.7% of votes