MV TELEGRAPH

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday advocated going public for Didi, the Uber-like Chinese company whose shares are set to go public in the US this week.

“I think the rating appears immediately appropriate,” said the Mad Money presenter. “If you want to speculate on a Chinese IPO, you have my blessings on Didi. I would try to get as many stocks as possible.”

Didi will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the ticker symbol DIDI. The company predicts its stock will range between $ 13-14 per share, which could earn the ridesharing giant a valuation of more than $ 60 billion. The IPO could gross the company more than $ 4 billion, which would make it one of the largest of 2021.

“There are some antitrust concerns here, but as long as you stay on the good side of the Communist Party,” said Cramer. “I doubt they’ll have much trouble with regulators.”

The antitrust concerns stem from a report that China’s market regulator is investigating whether Didi wrongly wiped out smaller competitors and whether its pricing practices are sufficiently transparent. The investigation comes after the country scrutinized other companies like Alibaba and Tencent.

Didi reported sales of $ 21.6 billion last year. The company also said it posted a profit of $ 6.4 billion in revenue for the last quarter.

Didi was ranked 5th on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

Johan Lundgren, CEO of British airline EasyJet, is urging the U.K. government to further ease restrictions on European travel due to progress on vaccination rates.

“We never anticipated it was going to be, you know, a straightforward recovery. We always knew there was going to be bumps along the way,” Lundgren said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “But clearly with the successful rollout for the vaccination, we believe that much of European travel could be opening up in a safe way.”

While the U.K.’s high rate of vaccination has significantly weakened the link between recorded infections and people becoming severely sick from the disease, the country is seeing a spike in Covid cases largely attributed to the delta variant, which originated in India. That prompted Prime Minister Boris Johnson to push back England’s next reopening phase to July 19 from the planned June 21.

In response to that delay, the U.K.’s travel industry held a “day of action” Wednesday calling on the U.K. government to relax certain restrictions, especially for fully vaccinated people, in time for the summer months. Leading U.K. travel association ABTA estimates that 195,000 travel jobs have been lost or are at risk due to the pandemic.

“This is not about approaching this from zero-Covid perspective. This is about managing a risk, not zero risk,” Lundgren told CNBC. The day of action, he added, was an effort to urge the government to be transparent with decision-making on what constitutes “safe travel,” and what, for example, are the number of infections per 100,000 people deemed “to be okay to live with.”

There are no restrictions on traveling abroad from England, but the U.K. government says residents “should not travel” to places classified as red or amber in its three-color classification system. France, Germany and the U.S., for example, are considered amber for now.

Various restrictions are in place for travelers entering England, with the strictness of testing and quarantine requirements depending on which countries or territories the person has been in 10 days prior to arrival. Citizenship and residency also play a role, as travelers from places on the red list are currently barred except for British and Irish nationals and permanent residents.

Britain has already indicated it plans to ease quarantine rules later this summer for fully vaccinated people who are arriving from “amber” countries, a move Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said was rendered possible by the progress of Covid vaccinations.

EasyJet, a low-cost European airline operating in more than 150 airports across 35 countries, is one of many airlines facing a bleak financial outlook amid the pandemic. While EasyJet’s shares are up since November, sparked by an upbeat vaccine outlook, they still remain below where they traded before the pandemic began to unsettle financial markets.

“We’re frustrated about this because it’s not justified when you look at it from a medical data, scientific approach. They are opening up the U.K. economy domestically with a different lens than they’re looking at it from an international travel point of view,” the CEO said.

Given that its experience with the alpha and delta Covid variants occurred at an earlier stage than in many other countries, the U.K. is being watched for any indications on what could happen in the U.S. The U.S., like the U.K., is seeking to ramp up vaccinations for younger people.

The U.K.’s Department of Health and Social Care did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment regarding Lundgren’s remarks.

High earners in high-tax countries rejoiced last week to hear that Senator Bernie Sanders added relief from the state and local tax ceiling to his budget.

However, the numbers suggest that Sanders is only considering reducing the cap partially. And the latest proposal being debated in Congress would do little to help the top earners, who make up the bulk of the SALT deductions.

Sanders’ $ 6 trillion budget included $ 120 billion in aid to SALT over five years. The provision raised hopes in states like New York, New Jersey and California that the progressive wing of Democrats is open to abolishing the $ 10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions. The cap was part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017 and resulted in an effective tax increase for many high earners in high-tax countries.

However, Sanders’ $ 120 billion provision would only cover a partial waiver. The Tax Policy Center estimates that completely lifting the SALT cap would cost about $ 450 billion in the first five years, while the Tax Foundation estimates it would cost about $ 460 billion over five years. So Sanders’ plan would be less than a third of the expected cost of lifting the cap.

A faction of 30 Democrats and Republicans have come together to form a SALT faction aimed at lifting the cap. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (DN.J.), one of the chairmen of the caucus, and others say they won’t sign a major new spending or tax bill unless the SALT cap is lifted.

More progressive Democratic Party members have criticized such a proposal as a tax gift to the rich, as 57% of the benefits of repeal would go to the 1% of top earners.

The latest compromise under discussion – and probably the one favored by Vermont’s Sanders – provides for an income limit of $ 400,000 a year, according to tax experts. The cap would be lifted entirely for those earning less than $ 400,000 a year, while taxpayers earning more would remain subject to the cap of $ 10,000. The income limit would help ensure that the benefits of abolishing SALT do not flow primarily to the rich.

Gottheimer told CNBC on Monday that he continued to support a full waiver rather than an income threshold. He said even an income limit of $ 400,000 would hurt the middle class, as high-earners in New Jersey and other high-tax countries support welfare programs with their excessive tax payments. He said that many rich are emigrating from the state to pay less taxes.

“It’s not just about the impact on income levels,” said Gottheimer. “It has a huge impact on people leaving states like mine. When people leave these countries, it has a huge impact on schools, law enforcement and firefighters hiring because the tax base drains when people move to Florida and Texas and the Carolinas, “as we see.”

An income limit would also create an “income cliff” for those earning just over $ 400,000.

Jared Walczak, the tax foundation’s vice president of government projects, said a New York tax officer who makes $ 399,000 and pays $ 45,000 in state and local taxes could deduct his SALT if a threshold of $ 400,000 was set would. But someone who makes $ 400,001 a year would pay $ 12,000 more in taxes annually as they are still subject to the SALT cap of $ 10,000.

“Even under this plan, most of the benefits would go to those relatively close to the threshold,” said Walczak.

The U.S. is “never going to have zero” new daily Covid cases, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday.

“We’re always going to have some level of spread,” the former FDA chief said, predicting infections will become endemic, meaning they will remain present in the American population. Seasonal flu, for example, is an endemic respiratory illness.

Gottlieb’s comments come as concerns increase about the Covid delta variant, first discovered in India and now wreaking havoc in the U.K. It’s starting in the U.S., threatening to cut into the nation’s hard-earned progress in reducing virus prevalence through mass vaccinations and other public health strategies.

On “Squawk Box,” Gottlieb said that while spread of the delta variant will continue to increase in the U.S., the response to new cases there may not follow the blueprint being used in other parts of the world. He pointed to Israel as one example. That country, which garnered acclaim for the success of its vaccine rollout, recently reinstated its indoor mask mandate, less than two weeks after first lifting it.

“Israel is a poor proxy in terms of what they’re doing relative to our situation here, because Israel is really going for a situation where they want zero Covid,” said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer. “We’re not going to try to get this down to zero cases a day” in the U.S.

“Israel is trying to get it down to zero cases a day, so that’s why you see them taking different kind of measures than us,” he added. “Hong Kong is trying to keep it out completely; that’s why they’re banning travel.”

Despite predicting the U.S. will have “persistent infection,” Gottlieb said the nature of the cases, in both scale and geography, will vary significantly from earlier stages of the pandemic, which is defined as an epidemic gone global.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a situation like we did last winter, where there’s 200,000 cases a day. I think we’re talking about tens of thousands of cases, perhaps, a day, here in the United States as it starts to take hold across the country,” said Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.

The highest single day of infections in the U.S. was 300,462 on Jan. 2, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The most U.S. Covid deaths in one day was 4,475 on Jan. 12.

Unlike earlier this year, the most-significant outbreaks are now likely be “highly regionalized,” he added, hinging considerably on the percentage of a local population that has been vaccinated “There’s part of the country that are going to be largely impervious to a lot of spread, and other parts of the country that are more vulnerable.”

The U.S. is averaging just under 12,000 new coronavirus cases per day, over the past seven days, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That figure is steady compared with one week ago. The seven-day average of new daily Covid deaths being reported in the U.S. is 306 — that’s up 9% compared with a week ago.

Roughly 46% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against Covid, while 54% has received at least one dose, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Crucially, about 78% of American age 65 and up have been fully vaccinated and nearly 88% have had at least one dose.

Gottlieb said that even as the U.S. experiences new coronavirus spread, “that represents far less impact than it did a year ago because more of the vulnerable people who are going to be more susceptible to this infection now are protected through vaccination.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion Inc. and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”