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      Amazon Sellers Struggle with Trump’s Tariff Plans

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      When President Trump announced tariffs this month on goods from all over the world, Jing and Eddie Levine, who sell party supplies on Amazon, were on a flight home to Chicago after visiting suppliers in Asia.Amazon was the center of their life. They met at a conference for Amazon sellers in 2016 and had their first kiss at another Amazon conference two years later. They moved in together and grew their business, Treasures Gifted. When they married in 2022, they threw an Amazon-themed wedding, with guests assigned Amazon product numbers instead of table numbers.The Levines tried to make sense of the news. The giant poster that Mr. Trump pointed to during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 2 showed that China would be hit with large tariffs, but so would every country they had just visited — and almost every country on the planet, for that matter.“Thank God the Wi-Fi on the plane was not bad this time,” Mr. Levine said, “because I would have had a heart attack.”The balloons, plates and decorations that the Levines import are just a speck in the trillions of dollars in goods that swirl around the globe. A week after Mr. Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs, he pulled them back for most countries for at least 90 days, while sending tariffs on China even higher.Countries or major companies may be able to lobby the president for a break, as he seemed to give Apple and other electronics makers over the weekend. But the best the Levines of the world can do is wait for news updates and hope their plans haven’t been shredded by Mr. Trump’s vision for unraveling decades of global trade. And like thousands of other small-business owners who sell online, the Levines are struggling to adapt to an e-commerce system that let them tap into international markets but that is now on the verge of falling apart.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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      China Girds for Economic Stress of Trump’s Tariffs

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      The economy grew steadily from January through March, but U.S. tariffs pose a risk for China in the coming weeks and months.President Trump’s tariffs have been good for China’s economic growth. At least they were over the first three months of the year, as the country’s factories raced to ship exports ahead of the trade restrictions.China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday that the country’s gross domestic product grew 1.2 percent from the last three months of 2024. If that pace continues, the Chinese economy will expand at an annual rate of 4.9 percent.But whether China can maintain that growth is shrouded in uncertainty.Pinned down by tariffs that threaten to freeze trade with its biggest customer, China’s economy is facing one of its greatest challenges in years.Growth in the early months of this year was propelled by rapidly rising exports and the manufacturing investment and production necessary to support those exports. Sales of electric cars, household appliances, consumer electronics and furniture were also strong because of ever-widening government subsidies for buyers.Then on April 2, Mr. Trump started escalating tariffs, which reached an extraordinary 145 percent for more than half of China’s exports to the United States.Mr. Trump’s first two rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods, 10 percent in February and again in March, had little immediate effect on exports. China’s overall exports in March rose 12.4 percent in dollar terms from a year earlier, as some exporters appeared to rush shipments to docks before tariffs could go even higher.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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      Hong Kong Suspends Packages to the U.S., Wading Into the Trump Trade War

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      The move comes before President Trump’s planned imposition of new tariffs on small packages sent to the United States from Hong Kong and China.Wading into the trade war, Hong Kong said on Wednesday that its postal service will no longer send packages to the United States.It is the city’s first move in a spiraling tit-for-tat trade war between China and the United States that is reordering global shipping routes.President Trump this month ordered the closure of a loophole that allowed retailers to send clothes and goods from China and Hong Kong, a special administrative region, to the United States without having to pay tariffs. After that change takes effect on May 2, United States Customs and Border agents will begin to collect previously exempted tariffs on shipments worth less $800.Hongkong Post said it would immediately stop accepting surface postal items containing goods to the United States. It said it was taking the action in response to President Trump’s tariffs.“The U.S. is unreasonable, bullying and imposing tariffs abusively,” the postal service said in a statement posted to the Hong Kong government’s website.The postal service said it would contact senders who posted packages with goods that have not yet been shipped, to return the packages and refund their postage.“The public in Hong Kong should be prepared to pay exorbitant and unreasonable fees due to the U.S.’s unreasonable and bullying acts,” it said. More

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      Stocks Edge Higher Amid Trump Tariff Uncertainty

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      The Trump administration’s chaotic tariff rollout continues to spur volatility in the markets.Stocks inched higher in early trading on Tuesday, as the Trump administration’s chaotic tariff rollout continues to spur volatility in the markets.The S&P 500 opened up 0.5 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq also gained slightly. President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policies are still driving sentiment on Wall Street, especially in sectors facing the threat of more levies or potential reprieves.Here’s what else to know:Bank stocks rose on Tuesday, as major U.S. lenders reported their latest earnings. Bank of America surpassed Wall Street’s profit and revenue expectations, and its shares rose about 5 percent Tuesday morning. Citigroup’s profits also beat estimates, sending its stock more than 2 percent higher.Tariff threats are taking center stage in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors, after the Trump administration on Monday took steps that appeared likely to result in new tariffs on pharma products and semiconductors. Shares in drugmaker Eli Lilly were up slightly on Tuesday morning, while Novartis stock was trading roughly flat. Shares in chip giant Nvidia were nearly 2 percent higher, after the company on Monday said it would invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.Shares in Boeing, the aviation giant, fell about 1.5 percent on Tuesday following a report from Bloomberg News that China had instructed its airlines to halt deliveries of Boeing planes after the Trump administration imposed steep tariffs on Chinese goods.In the auto industry, shares in General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — which jumped on Monday after Mr. Trump signaled that he might offer car companies some relief from tariffs — were mixed on Tuesday morning. Shares in General Motors and Ford both fell more than 1 percent, while Stellantis rose about a half percent. The sector, which is grappling with a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles, is bracing for new levies on imported car parts.The U.S. dollar, long a haven in global financial markets, has been falling against other major currencies. But an index that tracks the currency against a basket of major trading partners stabilized early Tuesday, ending a five-day slide. More

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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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      The Vibe Shifts Against the Right

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      Alex Kaschuta’s podcast, “Subversive,” used to be a node in the network between weird right-wing internet subcultures and mainstream conservatism. She hosted men’s rights activists and purveyors of “scientific” racism, neo-reactionary online personalities with handles like “Raw Egg Nationalist” and the Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters. Curtis Yarvin, a court philosopher of the MAGA movement who wants to replace democracy with techno-monarchy, appeared on the show twice. In 2022, Kaschuta spoke at the same National Conservatism conference as Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio.Finding progressive conventional wisdom hollow and unfulfilling, Kaschuta was attracted to the contrarian narratives and esoteric ideas of the thinkers and influencers sometimes known as the “dissident right.” They presented liberal modernity — with its emphasis on racial and gender equality, global cooperation, secularism and orderly democratic processes — as a Matrix-like illusion sustained by ideological coercion, and themselves as the holders of freedom-giving red pills.For Kaschuta, who lives in Romania, the promise of a more authentic, organic society, freed from the hypocrisies of the existing order, was apparently inviting. “There’s always been something tantalizing about the idea that the world is not how it is presented to you,” she wrote on her blog. “A frontier opens up.”But over the last couple of years, that frontier started seeming to her more like a dead end. Recently, she abandoned the movement. “The vibe is shifting yet again,” Kaschuta wrote on X last week. “The cumulative IQ of the right is looking worse than the market.”Kaschuta is not alone; several people who once appeared to find transgressive right-wing ideas scintillating are having second thoughts as they watch Donald Trump’s administration put those ideas into practice. The writer Richard Hanania once said that he hated bespoke pronouns “more than genocide,” and his 2023 book, “The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics,” provided a blueprint for the White House’s war on D.E.I. But less than three months into Trump’s new term, he regrets his vote, telling me, “The resistance libs were mostly right about him.”Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.” (Yoon Suk Yeol is South Korea’s recently impeached president.)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