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    A Tariffs Cheat Sheet

    An escalating global trade war has tanked markets and plunged corporate America into chaos. DealBook asked economists, investors and other experts to help make sense of what’s next.It was much worse than expected. President Trump’s attempt to reverse the rules of global trade through sweeping tariffs against dozens of nations, including major partners like the European Union, Japan and China, has caused a meltdown in global markets and sent corporate boardrooms scrambling.Today, 10 percent tariffs go into effect on all of America’s trading partners except Canada and Mexico. Additional, “reciprocal” tariffs will go into effect on dozens of other nations on Wednesday. China faces the toughest levies — at least 54 percent — and it hit back with its own toll on U.S. goods yesterday. Expect a response from the E.U. next week.Trump has argued that the economic pain caused by the tariffs will be short term and ultimately justified by a boom in the U.S. economy, but news of the measures hit investors hard. The benchmark S&P 500 closed yesterday near bear market territory, with analysts warning of an increased risk of recession.Jerome Powell, the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, offered a somewhat glum outlook yesterday on the prospects for growth and warned of higher prices that he acknowledged could be more than temporary.There’s a lot going on. DealBook asked economists, investment researchers and other experts to help make sense of what’s next.How have the new tariffs changed the risk of a recession?We asked: Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Theories Behind the Trump Shock

    There are two related theories of what Donald Trump’s dramatic revision of the global trade system is intended to accomplish.First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late 20th century served the American empire and American G.D.P. but at the expense of America’s earlier role as a manufacturing powerhouse — and because manufacturing jobs were such an important source of blue-collar male employment, at the expense of the working-class social fabric.Meanwhile, over time, our manufacturing base didn’t just move overseas, it moved into the territory of our greatest rival, the People’s Republic of China. So rebuilding industry in America has two potential benefits even if it sacrifices some of the efficiencies offered by global trade. Factory jobs fill a particular socioeconomic niche that’s been filled instead by drugs, decline, despair. And having a real manufacturing base is essential if we’re going to be locked into great power competition for decades to come.Under this theory, though, it would seem like tariffs would be most effectively deployed against China, countries in China’s immediate economic orbit, and developing countries that are natural zones for outsourcing. But the Trump administration has deployed them generally, against peer economies and allies. The policy seems much more sweeping than the goal, the potential damage to both growth and basic international comity too large to justify the upside.Which is where the second argument comes in — that this policy is about fiscal deficits, not just trade deficits and manufacturing. The same global system that made America a net importer also enabled us to borrow immense sums, but we are reaching the point where that borrowing cannot be sustained, where interest rates on the debt will crush our policymaking capacities even if there isn’t an overall flight from the dollar.Here tariffs serve several purposes. Most straightforwardly they generate revenue without striking the kind of grand bargain on Medicare and taxes that the two parties are just too polarized to make. (The only way a Republican president can preside over tax increases is to implement them unilaterally while insisting that they will fall mostly on foreigners.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Tariffs: How the Math Affects Over 100 Countries

    <!–> [–><!–>President Trump's new tariffs on more than 100 countries used the same simple formula to calculate the rate for each of them.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024.–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> […] More

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    Grocery Shoppers Will Feel the Tariffs First in Produce

    Grocery shoppers are likely to feel the impact of the Trump administration’s sweeping new tariffs before April is over. And the first place they’ll feel it is in parts of the store where the inventory has to move fast.In the produce aisle, food analysts said Thursday, expect small price increases on everyday purchases like bananas from Guatemala and grapes from Peru, countries whose exports to the United States will incur 10 percent tariffs when the new fees go into effect on Saturday. A separate round of reciprocal tariffs on 57 countries will follow on Wednesday.The seafood counter may hold even worse surprises. Grocery stores sell a lot of shrimp from Vietnam, which President Trump hit with a 46 percent reciprocal tariff, and India, with a 26 percent reciprocal tariff.Soon, analysts say, price hikes will arrive for staples like sugar and coffee, which is already priced at a historic high. Specialty coffee beans might eventually cost consumers 10 percent to 35 percent more than before the tariffs, bean buyers predicted.Since the pandemic, grocery stores have been expanding their lines of lower-priced private-label products. Customers loved them as a way to navigate inflation, but tariffs will drive up costs.Coffee prices, which are already at historic highs, are likely to increase.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Legal Rationale for Tariffs on China

    The New Civil Liberties Alliance — a nonprofit group that describes itself as battling “violations by the administrative state” — sued the federal government on Thursday over the means by which it imposed steep new levies on Chinese imports earlier this year.The new filing, which the group said was the first such lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration over its tariffs, set the stage for what may become a closely watched legal battle. It comes on the heels of President Trump’s separate announcement on Wednesday of broader, more extensive tariffs targeting many U.S. trading partners around the world.At issue are the tariffs that Mr. Trump announced on China in February and expanded in March. To impose them, Mr. Trump cited a 1970s law that generally grants the president sweeping powers during an economic emergency, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.Mr. Trump charged that an influx of illegal drugs from China constituted a threat to the United States. But the alliance argued in the lawsuit, on behalf of Simplified, a Pensacola, Fla.-based company, that the administration had misapplied the law. Instead, the group said the law “does not allow a president to impose tariffs,” but rather is supposed to be reserved for putting in place trade embargoes and sanctions against “dangerous foreign actors.”Port Manatee in Palmetto, Fla., on TuesdayScott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Trump cited that same law as one of the legal justifications for the expansive global tariffs he announced with an executive order on Wednesday. That order raised the tariff rate on China to at least 54 percent, adding new levies on top of those that the president imposed earlier this year.Mr. Trump’s new order specifically described the U.S. trade deficit with other nations as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”For now, the alliance asked the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida to block implementation and enforcement of the president’s earlier tariffs on China. “You can look through the statute all day long; you’re not going to see the president may put tariffs on the American people once he declares an emergency,” said John J. Vecchione, senior litigation counsel for the alliance.A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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    Ford offers discounts on cars and trucks as auto tariffs kick in.

    Ford Motor said on Thursday that it was lowering prices on most of its vehicles to the same levels it charges employees in a bid to boost sales as President Trump’s tariffs on imported cars took effect.The tariffs began on Thursday on vehicles imported from Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany and other countries. The duties — 25 percent of the value of the vehicle in most cases — are expected to increase prices of new cars and trucks and dampen demand.About half the vehicles sold in the United States each year are produced in other countries. Mexico is the top source of those cars and Canada is among the largest. For three decades, the United States, Canada and Mexico have had a free-trade zone, and automakers have moved parts and vehicles freely among the three countries.Ford’s new program, which the company is calling “From America, for America,” could help reduce a large inventory of unsold cars. In February, Ford had more cars in inventory as measured by how many days it would take to sell them all than all but three other brands — Jaguar, Mimi and Dodge — according to Cox Automotive, a research firm.Ford’s new discounts apply to all new 2024 and 2025 vehicles, except for specialty versions of the Bronco sport-utility vehicle; the Mustang sports car; Super Duty versions of F-Series pickups; and a few other models.“Consumers will pay what we pay,” Rob Kaffl, Ford’s director of U.S. sales and dealer relations, said in a statement.The automaker also said it was extending another incentive program in which buyers of new electric models get a home charger for free, along with the cost of installation. That offer is now valid until June 30.Ford had more than 568,000 vehicles in inventory at the end of March, up about 8 percent from a year ago. More

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    Apple Plunges 9 Percent, Leading a Tech Sell-Off

    Apple led a sell-off of tech stocks on Thursday, falling about 9 percent. Its drop was one of its steepest intraday declines since early 2019, when the company plunged 10 percent after it warned that iPhone sales in China would fall short of its expectations at the time.Wall Street analysts who follow the company have been looking for signs that Apple will be granted a tariff exemption by the White House, as it did when the Trump administration began its previous round of tariffs in 2018. But after President Trump’s news conference yesterday, there was no indication that Apple would receive any relief.As a result, many analysts were scrambling to update their forecasts on Apple’s profits. The company counts on the sale of devices for three-quarters of its nearly $400 billion in annual revenue, and it makes almost all of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas.The investment bank TD Cowen estimates that every 10 percent of tariffs on a product imported from China, India or Vietnam — where Apple does most of its manufacturing — would reduce the company’s profit by more than 3.5 percent. The Wall Street advisory said Apple could offset that profit decline with a 6 percent price increase for every 10 percent of tariff. Given that China is being hit with 54 percent tariffs and that it makes 90 percent of the world’s iPhones, the price of most $1,000 iPhones would jump to about $1,300. More

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    Where Trump’s Tariffs Will Hit Hardest

    <!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Many of the worst-hit countries are close American allies and partners. In Southeast Asia, countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia have for years worked to turn themselves into alternatives to China for factories making the bags, electronics, shoes and auto parts that eventually end up in the United States. Now, […] More