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      Trump’s Tariff Threat for Drug imports Poses Big Political Risks

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      Levies on Americans’ daily prescriptions and other medicines could raise costs, spur rationing and lead to shortages of critical drugs.President Trump’s decision to move a step closer to imposing tariffs on imported medicines poses considerable political risk, because Americans could face higher prices and more shortages of critical drugs.The Trump administration filed a federal notice on Monday saying that it had begun an investigation into whether imports of medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients threaten America’s national security, an effort to lay the groundwork for possible tariffs on foreign-made drugs.Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he planned to impose such levies, to shift overseas production of medicines back to the United States. Experts said that tariffs were unlikely to achieve that goal: Moving manufacturing would be hugely expensive and would take years.It was not clear how long the investigation would last or when the planned tariffs might go into effect. Mr. Trump started the inquiry under a legal authority known as Section 232 that he has used for other industries like cars and lumber.Mr. Trump said in remarks to reporters on Monday that pharmaceutical tariffs would come in the “not too distant future.”“We don’t make our own drugs anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “The drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.”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 Dilemma: A Trade War That Threatens Every Other Negotiation With China

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      President Trump is staking everything on winning by imposing tariffs on China. But the fight threatens to choke off negotiations about other issues like Taiwan, fentanyl, TikTok and more.President Trump came into office sounding as if he were eager to deal with President Xi Jinping of China on the range of issues dividing the world’s two biggest superpowers.He and his aides signaled that they wanted to resolve trade disputes and lower the temperature on Taiwan, curb fentanyl production and get to a deal on TikTok. Perhaps, over time, they could manage a revived nuclear arms race and competition over artificial intelligence.Today it is hard to imagine any of that happening, at least for a year.Mr. Trump’s decision to stake everything on winning a trade war with China threatens to choke off those negotiations before they even begin. And if they do start up, Mr. Trump may be entering them alone, because he has alienated the allies who in recent years had come to a common approach to countering Chinese power.In conversations over the past 10 days, several administration officials, insisting that they could not speak on the record, described a White House deeply divided on how to handle Beijing. The trade war erupted before the many factions inside the administration even had time to stake out their positions, much less decide which issues mattered most.The result was strategic incoherence. Some officials have gone on television to declare that Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Beijing were intended to coerce the world’s second-largest economy into a deal. Others insisted that Mr. Trump was trying to create a self-sufficient American economy, no longer dependent on its chief geopolitical competitor, even if that meant decoupling from the $640 billion in two-way trade in goods and services.Shipping containers in the port of Tianjin, China, last month. Beijing has matched every one of Mr. Trump’s tariff hikes, trying to send the message that it can endure the pain longer than the United States can. The New York TimesWe 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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      UK Cuts Tariffs on Dozens of Products as Global Trade Tensions Rise

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      British officials also announced more financing for exporters as the country sought to protect firms hurt by tariffs.The British government ramped up actions to help protect businesses and households from some of the economic tumult created by President Trump’s decision to raise tariffs and upend the norms of global trade.The government said on Sunday it would suspend tariffs on 89 products for about two years to help businesses and consumers save money. The products include those for construction, such as plywood and plastics, and everyday household items, such as pasta and fruit juices.Officials will also increase financing support for exporters by 20 billion pounds ($26 billion), through partial loan guarantees, and give small businesses access to loans of up to £2 million.As Mr. Trump raises tariffs on most imports, including those from Britain, to a 10 percent base line and even higher for certain goods like cars and steel, the British government has sought to calm anxieties at home. Officials have said they want to move quickly to support companies as they try to sustain fragile economic momentum.“This week, we witnessed the uncertainty of a changing world,” Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote in The Observer, a Sunday newspaper. In response, the government “must rise to meet the moment,” she wrote.The announcements on Sunday followed other interventions by the government in recent days to bolster protections for firms affected by tariffs. On April 6, the government eased rules on electric vehicle sales after Mr. Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on cars imported into the United States. British officials also relaxed regulations to speed up timelines for clinical trials to support the life sciences sector with Mr. Trump also expected to impose levies on the pharmaceutical industry.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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      Stocks Notch Gains After More Tariff Whiplash

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      After exempting Chinese imports of smartphones, chips and other electronics, President Trump said on Sunday the carve outs were only temporary.Markets in Asia moved higher on Monday after a weekend that brought more shifts in strategy from President Trump about tariffs.Stocks in Japan rose a little over 1 percent while benchmarks went up 2 percent in Hong Kong and less than 1 percent in mainland China. S&P 500 stock futures, which let investors bet on how the index might perform when it opens in New York, were about 0.50 percent higher.The modest rally followed another chaotic week on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 starting with losses but ending with its best weekly performance since November 2022. The gains were driven by Mr. Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he would pause for 90 days the “reciprocal” tariffs he had imposed on dozens of countries just a week earlier.On Friday night, after Mr. Trump had repeatedly said he would spare no industry, U.S. customs officials exempted a host of technology products imported from China. That means smartphones, semiconductors, computers and other equipment would not face most of the 145 percent tariffs Mr. Trump has imposed on China.The carve outs were viewed as a win for Apple and other American tech giants because tech products and components are a key part of American imports from China. A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce on Sunday called it a “small step” in “correcting” the tariffs Mr. Trump has put on China.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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      ‘SNL’ Pokes Fun at Trump’s Tariffs and Economy Chaos in Easter Cold Open

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      Among the sources of all the fun is ‘The White POTUS,” a parody that casts members of the administration in their own twisted playground for the privileged.With Easter approaching, it seemed appropriate for “Saturday Night Live” to resurrect a favorite bit: a scene from the Bible that is interrupted by a comic monologue from James Austin Johnson playing President Trump.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Jon Hamm and featuring the musical guest Lizzo, began with what looked like a straightforward re-enactment of the Cleansing of the Temple, with the role of Jesus played by Mikey Day. “This will not stand,” Day said, overturning a money changer’s table. “I will rid this place of all its money.”The action paused so that Johnson could enter as Trump. “Remind you of anyone?” he asked. “Wow. I also got rid of money last week. But instead of one temple, I did whole country. Maybe even the globe. The money’s gone.”Johnson continued: “Hi, it’s me, your favorite president, Donald Jesus Trump, comparing myself to the son of God once again. You know, many people are even calling me the messiah, because of the mess-I-ah made out of the economy.”The financial turmoil, he said, was “all because of my beautiful tariffs — they’re so beautiful. They were working so well that I had to stop them.”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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      Stock Ownership Is What Really Divides Americans

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      In a pamphlet published in 1711, Jonathan Swift lamented the “folly” of those who “mistake the echo of a London coffeehouse for the voice of the kingdom.” Those informal salons were, he wrote, frequented by people whose wealth depended on their shares in the Bank of England or the East India Company or “some other stock.” If the responses to the Trump administration’s tariff policies have shown us anything, it is that, like most of the ills against which Swift railed, this unfortunate tendency to conflate stockholders with the nation remains very much with us.The greatest division in American life is not between so-called red and blue states, or between urban and rural citizens, but instead between those who own stock and those who do not. For those who do, economic security can be measured in portfolio statements; the rest — roughly 40 percent of Americans — must make do with such antiquated metrics as the cost of housing or even the price of eggs.This division is not merely economic; it is also ideological. Though many Americans own at least some stock, 10 percent of Americans own 93 percent of it. Yet the elite stock-owning class has convinced itself that what is good for the S&P 500 is good for America. Worse, many Americans who own stock through retirement plans or pension plans have been convinced to believe this, too, even though their interests tend not to align neatly with those of multimillionaires.The result is a kind of ideological capture in which any policy that does not serve the immediate interests of shareholders is dismissed as reckless, radical or economically illiterate. The common good, insofar as it is considered at all, must first be translated into the language of market returns. Can anything be good if it does not make the line go up? The question (we are told) answers itself.Like awed visitors to the oracle at Delphi, we consult the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 with solemn credulity, and their half-random fluctuations are taken as portents of divine favor, or else as intimations of the coming wrath of heaven’s gracious ones. All presidents — including Donald Trump — genuflect before this altar, and most of us implicitly regard any policy that displeases the great god Wall Street as a kind of sacrilege. We treat the stock market as the final arbiter of our collective well-being.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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      A Lot About Trump Doesn’t Add Up

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      You have to give it to Donald Trump. The man is a marvel at multitasking.In one sensational swoop, President Trump was able to set the global economy reeling, shatter our alliances, shred our standing in the world, tank consumer confidence, scupper the Kennedy Center and tart up the Oval Office, turning it into Caesars Palace on the Potomac.And yet he still managed to find time to brag about winning his Jupiter golf club’s championship and sign an executive order relaxing restrictions on water pressure from shower heads — “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” the president cooed. He also ordered an investigation of an election security official he had fired four years ago for having the temerity to acknowledge that the 2020 election was not stolen.“We’re living in a bizarro world where heroes are being targeted and scoundrels are in a position to target them,” David Axelrod told me.Trump is also consumed with terms of surrender for top law firms and Ivy League universities in his quest to get even with those he feels went after him unfairly or embraced wokeness too avidly.My Netflix algorithm searches for “revenge,” “lives ruined” and “mayhem.” But I don’t want that in my government.Trump is engaging the full power of the presidency to settle scores. The White House was not meant for petty tyrants on revenge tours. In the biggest job in the world, Trump seems like a very small man.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 Tariff Pause Is Less Than Meets the Eye

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      Presidents who make big changes in government policy usually lay their plans with care. They game out what might happen next. They sweat the little things. Richard Nixon did not just decide one morning to fly to China. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were the better part of a decade in the making. The details of Barack Obama’s expansion of health insurance emerged from countless public debates.President Trump prefers to shoot before aiming. Declaring that he intends to reboot America’s relations with the rest of the world, he has imposed tariffs on imports with abandon, demonstrating a disregard for the details or the collateral damage. His careless conduct of the public’s business has roiled stock and bond markets, threatened to cause a recession and damaged America’s global standing. The president’s decision-making has been so erratic that at one point this week, the administration’s top trade official was interrupted in the middle of testimony before Congress because the president had just changed the policy the official was defending.The original version of Mr. Trump’s plan, which he paused on Wednesday, imposed tariffs on foreign nations at rates that bore no apparent connection to America’s national interests. The highest tariff rate, 50 percent, applied to Lesotho, a tiny and impoverished nation in southern Africa.The latest version isn’t much better. Mr. Trump is imposing a 10 percent tariff on imports from most nations, along with higher rates on imports from America’s three largest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China. The average tax on imports will rise to the highest level in more than a century, raising the prices on many consumer goods. The 145 percent maximum rate on Chinese imports is intended to isolate that nation economically, but the simultaneous tariffs on everyone else will undermine that goal. And while the stated purpose of all the tariffs is to expand American manufacturing, putting them in place immediately doesn’t give companies time to build factories. It will cause pain without any benefit.We want to emphasize that Mr. Trump has a point about the pain caused by free trade. The decades in which the United States threw open its doors to imports from other countries left many Americans without jobs and decimated the nation’s industrial heartland. Washington’s naïveté about China’s rise, accomplished partly through its own trade barriers and theft of intellectual property, is particularly regrettable.A revival of American manufacturing is a worthy goal. It would not heal past wounds, but it could provide a basis for future generations of Americans to build lives and to rebuild communities that are more prosperous and more secure.The price of cheap goods from ChinaDecrease in manufacturing employment caused by increased trade with China, 2000-19. More