Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, March 10th, and this is your F.T. news briefing.

The U.S. Congress is set to vote on President Joe Biden's economic stimulus plan.

The pandemic seems to be lowering birth rates across Europe and a South Korean e-commerce giant is about to list in New York.

The back home is under fire for harsh working conditions. Plus, there's renewed excitement about hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels.

It's actually very difficult when you cover the energy industry at the moment to have a conversation that doesn't include a reference to hydrogen.

But how much can the gas help clean up the world's energy use? We'll take a look. I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on President Joe Biden's stimulus plan today.

Once signed, the $1.9 trillion economic package would be a milestone in the administration's first 100 days.

I'm joined now by the F.T.'s Lauren Fedor. She covers Congress. Lauren, what was the biggest change that was needed to get this through the Senate and on to the House where it is today?

You've got to remember that the Senate right now is very finely balanced between Democrats and Republicans.

It's split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast a tie-breaking vote.

That means that there's a handful of Democratic senators, the most moderate or centrist senators in the caucus, are able to exert a lot of influence.

They had concerns primarily about the stimulus checks, which are very popular with the American public, but some of these senators wanted them to be more targeted towards people on lower incomes.

And there were also concerns about top-ups in unemployment insurance and how long that was going to last.

In the end, they reached a compromise that meant that those checks were going to start being phased out at a slightly lower level.

And that unemployment insurance, the additional unemployment insurance, would last until the beginning of September.

Now, while the Senate wrangled over this, the OECD came out yesterday and said the plan would boost the global economic recovery from the pandemic, what are economists saying it'll do to the U.S. economy?

The consensus is generally that this fiscal stimulus will only boost the economy and kind of supercharge the recovery.

The Biden administration loves to quote a forecast from Moody's that says that it could add up to 7 million jobs.

That's really important given the huge levels of unemployment that we've seen in the wake of the pandemic.

You know, it's not universally popular with economists. There are those who've raised concerns that this sheer scale of this spending could lead to a spike in inflation.

And there, you know, the hawks who have also raised some concerns about additional borrowing and what that might mean for the deficit and debt further down the road.

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