January 22, 2021 - Biz in 60

Volkswagen reports operating profit of $12.2B in 2020 Volkswagen has defied the pandemic to report an annual operating profit of 12-point-2 billion dollars. That's as a late Chinese-led sales recovery helped to mitigate the impact of a widespread shutdown of global car production. The German carmaker has also emerged with a small gain in market share, with some of its rivals hit harder by the crisis. China fails to meet US trade deal target in 2020 China has failed to meet its commitment to buy American goods under the "phase one" trade deal it signed with the US last January. In the first year of the deal, China imported 100 billion dollars' worth of goods, which is roughly 58 percent of the targeted 173 billion dollars for 2020. As part of the deal, Beijing has agreed to buy an additional 200 billion dollars of US goods by the end of 2021. Google threatens to shut down search in Australia Google has threatened to shut down its search function in Australia if a controversial bill designed to benefit the news media becomes law. Under the proposal, the Australian government is aiming to make tech giants pay local media outlets for sharing their content. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said lawmakers would not yield to threats made by Big Tech.