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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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      Lego Black Market Fetches Big Prices for Little Plastic Bricks

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      Some Lego sets have skyrocketed in value but behind the eye-popping price tags is a dark side: an underground market that fuels brazen thefts.It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars.Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man, valued as high as $16,846.The children’s toys have even become something of an investing opportunity for those savvy enough to know what to look for.But with the eye-popping price tags comes a dark side: Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves.Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories.Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif.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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      How Tariffs Could Cause Car Insurance Costs to Rise

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      New tariffs are expected to push up prices of vehicles and car parts, and that could raise premiums as much as 16 percent. Here are some tips on how to try to keep costs down.Add this to worries about the likely impact of tariffs: costlier car insurance.The new tariffs on imported cars, metals and parts announced by the Trump administration are expected to raise vehicle prices by thousands of dollars if they remain in place. And because parts used in auto repairs will also become more expensive, the average cost of automobile insurance is expected to increase.The average annual premium for a full-coverage auto policy was just over $2,300 at the end of last year, according to an analysis by Insurify, an insurance comparison shopping website. The site initially estimated that premiums would increase just 5 percent this year, based on factors like inflation and insurer losses.How much of an impact could tariffs have on car insurance costs?With the addition of the tariffs, Insurify now projects premiums to rise at least 16 percent, or $378, to almost $2,700 on average nationally — about $256 more than without tariffs. The analysis includes the tariffs on steel and aluminum, those on imported cars and those on imported auto parts scheduled to take effect May 3. (Tariffs announced in February on products from Mexico and Canada were adjusted to exempt some goods, including cars and auto parts, that comply with the free trade agreement President Trump negotiated in his first term, according to Insurify. If that exemption is lifted, the increase in automobile premiums could be as high as 19 percent, the analysis found.)An Insurify spokeswoman said the Trump administration’s announcement on Wednesday, pausing double-digit global tariffs for 90 days, didn’t change the company’s projections. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in response to a reporter’s question after the announcement, indicated that the pause didn’t apply to certain tariffs like those on automobiles.“Things that increase the cost of repairs impact prices,” said Robert Passmore, vice president of personal lines with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, whose members are big insurance companies. About 60 percent of parts used in auto shop repairs are imported from Mexico, Canada and China, the association has said.The price of car insurance has soared in recent years for a variety of reasons, including more claims resulting from driving habits that deteriorated during the pandemic, the use of more expensive technology in cars, and damage from strong storms and hail. While increases had recently begun to moderate, the cost of motor vehicle insurance still rose 7.5 percent in March compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.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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      How Do the iPhone 16E and Google Pixel 9A Compare to More Expensive Models?

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      With all the talk about tariffs driving up costs, the word “cheaper” should bring comfort to just about anyone. That’s why I’m delighted to share that the cheaper smartphone from Google has arrived, a few months after Apple released a somewhat cheaper entry-level iPhone — and that both products are very good.Google this week released the Pixel 9a, the $500 sibling of its $800 flagship smartphone, the Pixel 9. It competes directly with the $600 iPhone 16e released in February, the cheaper version of Apple’s $800 iPhone 16.Both of the new phones have the staples that people care most about — great cameras, nice screens, zippy speeds, modern software and long battery life. To cut costs, they omit some fancier extras, like advanced camera features.Is it a wise idea to save some bucks, or better to spend more on the fancier phones? To find out, I strapped on a fanny pack and carried all four phones with me for the last week to run tests.The upshot: As is often the case, you get what you pay for. The $800 phones are slightly better in terms of features and performance than the cheaper versions, and the $600 iPhone is faster and has a better camera than the $500 Pixel.But more important, the cheaper Pixel and iPhone were nearly indistinguishable from their $800 counterparts in several of my tests. In some cases, like battery life, the cheaper phones were even better.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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      Egg Prices Continued to Rise in March

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      Egg prices have reached record highs as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens.For weeks, President Trump has repeatedly boasted that his administration had managed to bring egg prices down. But new data on Thursday showed that egg prices at the grocery store continued to climb in March.Egg prices rose 5.9 percent over the month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They climbed at a slower rate, though, after rising 10.4 percent in February and 15.2 percent in January.Compared with a year earlier, egg prices are up 60.4 percent.Egg prices have reached record highs in recent months as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens. But Mr. Trump, who had vowed to bring down grocery prices while on the campaign trail, has continued to claim victory on egg prices. This month, Mr. Trump said that egg prices had dropped 59 percent, and on Monday, he said that egg prices were down 79 percent.Consumers might not be feeling relief because the president is not referring to retail egg prices. He is instead pointing to the wholesale price of eggs, which has fallen by roughly half since the beginning of his second term.Wholesale egg prices dropped from a national average of $6.55 a dozen on Jan. 24 to $3.26 on April 4, according to data from the Agriculture Department. Wholesale egg prices are also down from a peak of more than $8 a dozen at the end of February.But the average retail price for a dozen large eggs reached $6.23 in March, up from $5.90 the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.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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      Bitcoin Is Down 10% Since Trump’s Global Tariff Announcement

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      The rapid drop shows that cryptocurrencies, which the president has promoted, are subject to the same market gyrations as any other risky asset.Virtually everyone in the cryptocurrency world celebrated the second election of President Trump, an enthusiastic booster of the industry who promised to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.”But now the man nicknamed “the first Bitcoin president” is presiding over a Bitcoin crash.Since Mr. Trump announced his global tariffs last week, the price of Bitcoin has plunged 10 percent, dropping below $78,000 on Sunday night. In January, Bitcoin reached a record price of nearly $110,000 on the day that Mr. Trump was inaugurated.The rapid drop shows that Bitcoin, often pitched as a stable long-term source of value, is still subject to the gyrations of the broader market that has cratered since Mr. Trump announced broad import taxes last week. Many investors treat Bitcoin just like any other tech stock, a risky investment that it makes sense to sell in difficult times.Ever since he won a second term, Mr. Trump has largely made good on his promises to help the crypto industry. He has appointed regulators who support crypto and signed an executive order directing the creation of a government stockpile of Bitcoin.At the same time, Mr. Trump has also broadened his personal investments in the crypto world, marketing a so-called memecoin to his supporters.But the impact of his tariffs on the crypto market has led to some disgruntlement.“Crypto is weird, but it’s mostly correlated to optimism & risk appetite,” Haseeb Quresehi, a venture investor who specializes in crypto, wrote on social media on Sunday. “That optimism is crumbling under Trump’s silence.” More

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      Grocery Shoppers Will Feel the Tariffs First in Produce

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

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      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