Good morning. Pressure is mounting on Volkswagen to pull out of a joint venture in the Xinjiang region of China in the latest example of geopolitical tensions colliding with business priorities for Germany’s largest manufacturers.

VW said the U.S. had impounded thousands of its Bentley, Porsche and Audi vehicles at U.S. ports because the cars contained a part made by a Chinese supplier on a sanctions list for using forced labor in Xinjiang.

• Voluntary disclosure: VW said it had notified the U.S. after learning from a supplier that its products included parts made by the banned company.
   
• End of a partnership? After new evidence emerged linking the German carmaker with China’s alleged persecution of Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang, VW said Wednesday it had entered talks with its joint-venture partner there regarding the business’s future.
   
• Tiny part: “One tiny part,” a VW spokesman said. “We really try, but this shows how challenging it is to really know everything that is happening in complex supply chains.”

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Wells Fargo resolves regulatory complaint at heart of 2016 fake-account scandal.

Wells Fargo’s key regulator said it had closed the 2016 consent order placed on the bank for opening fake accounts, the subject of a yearslong scandal.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Thursday the bank had made sufficient progress revamping its systems that guard against customer harm. The bank remains under regulatory scrutiny, including, most pressingly, an order from the Federal Reserve that restricts its growth until the regulator is convinced it is being run safely.

Deutsche Bank faces new threat of fines over money-laundering controls.

Germany’s top financial watchdog threatened to fine Deutsche Bank if it doesn’t improve controls against money laundering by a set deadline, the second time it has done so in less than two years.

BaFin, as the regulator is known, said Thursday that it ordered the bank to take specific measures to improve data-processing systems for monitoring transactions meant to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing.

• The Federal Trade Commission has proposed rules banning the use of artificial intelligence tools for impersonation of individuals.
   
• Senators from both sides of the political aisle are calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take action against the marketing of prescription drugs on social media, citing a proliferation of dangerous and misleading content by telehealth companies.
   
• A former Goldman Sachs analyst in London was convicted of using confidential information to personally trade shares, U.K. authorities said Thursday.
   
• The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Morgan Stanley’s broker-dealer arm $1.6 million for failing to close out certain municipal securities transactions in a timely manner, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

U.S. shoppers cut back in January.

Consumers entered the year with less vigor than in prior months. U.S. retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 0.8% in January from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

The larger-than-expected loss came after a strong round of holiday shopping in December. While technical factors may have exaggerated the weakness, a pullback by consumers, who account for roughly two thirds of economic activity, would spell a weaker outlook for growth this year than in 2023.

• Economies in the U.K. and Japan shrank at the end of last year, underlining the widening gulf between robust growth in the U.S. and more anemic conditions in the rest of the world.
   
• Russia is pursuing an “antisatellite capability” that represents a serious concern but doesn’t present an active threat to Americans’ safety, the Biden administration said Thursday.
   
• Global oil demand is expected to grow at a significantly weaker pace this year, while soaring output from the Americas will help boost supply despite output curbs from OPEC and its allies, the International Energy Agency said.

• Companies have slowed hiring for ESG positions as they focus on cost cutting and higher investment returns.
• More than a decade ago, the consumer experience was completely transformed by mobile apps and social media. Now AI is set to shake up enterprises.
• Several cybersecurity vendors say they are cautiously optimistic that the worst economic stressors seem to be over, and the commercial climate is starting to improve.
• Property insurers are already raising rates because of climate change. Health insurers are now also calculating how to navigate climate change as more people fall ill from heat and pollution.
• 🎧 Listen to Boston Consulting Group’s François Candelon discuss how workers can be most effective while using generative AI.

CFTC names new whistleblower office chief.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday named a former Justice Department prosecutor as the new director of its whistleblower award program, ending a search that began last July.

Brian Young succeeds Christina McGlosson, who has served as acting director since former whistleblower program director Christopher Ehrman left the regulator last year to join law firm Phillips & Cohen.

The U.S. derivatives market regulator said Young, who most recently served as the acting director of litigation for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, brings extensive experience in trying derivatives and commodities fraud cases. Young also spent more than a decade in the Justice Department’s criminal division, where he helped oversee prosecutors charging white-collar cases and prosecuted public corruption and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.

—Mengqi Sun

• The influx of millions of unauthorized migrants in recent years has sparked a political firestorm that has paralyzed Congress and consumed election campaigns. But it also has a benefit: a bigger, faster-growing economy.
   
• Egyptian authorities, fearful that an Israeli military push further into southern Gaza will set off a flood of refugees, are building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert near the border, according to Egyptian officials and security analysts.
   
• Preliminary findings suggest the shooting that killed one person and wounded 22 others at a Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally had no link to terrorism or homegrown violent extremism, and instead was a dispute among several people that ended in gunfire, officials said Thursday.
   
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he preferred President Biden to Donald Trump in the U.S. election, describing the president as “more experienced” and “predictable” in his first public comments on the race.
   
• Russian anticorruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has died in prison, news agencies reported Friday.
   
• Is it OK to be mean to a chatbot? Maybe not.

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