Evelyn Reynolds

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    Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Nominee, Discloses Business Interests

    Howard Lutnick, the wealthy Wall Street executive whom President Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Commerce, detailed a complex network of financial holdings on Friday as he prepared to face scrutiny from lawmakers during a confirmation hearing next week.The financial disclosures showed that Mr. Lutnick, who has built a fortune in brokerages, real estate and financial services, holds at least $800 million in assets, though he is very likely wealthier than the disclosures reveal.They also laid out executive positions he has held or holds in more than 800 individual firms, and showed that he received in excess of $350 million in income, distributions and bonuses in the past two years from his network of financial services and real estate firms.In an ethics form filed with the government, Mr. Lutnick said he would divest stakes in the brokerage and real estate firms that have generated his wealth. But his network of business ties could still raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest, as he leads the way on government policies that could have significant effects on businesses and markets, potentially enriching former customers or business partners.As commerce secretary, Mr. Lutnick would take the lead on carrying out Mr. Trump’s trade plans, which include proposals to impose tariffs on a wide variety of countries. He would oversee an agency with an $11 billion budget and roughly 51,000 workers. Commerce has a vast mandate that includes promoting businesses abroad, restricting U.S. technology exports for national security concerns, along with investing in broadband infrastructure and semiconductor factories around the United States and many other responsibilities.Mr. Lutnick had worked on Wall Street for decades. He gained national attention when many of the employees at Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage firm where he was president and chief executive, died in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983, shortly after graduating college, and took over as president and chief executive in 1991.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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    Trumps Threatens Tariffs Feb. 1 on Canada, Mexico and China

    When President Trump did not follow through with his promise to immediately impose new tariffs on his first day in office, business executives and others who support international trade breathed a sigh of relief.That relief was short-lived. On Monday night, just hours after his inauguration speech, Mr. Trump said he planned to put a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico beginning on Feb. 1, claiming that the countries were allowing “mass numbers of people and fentanyl” to come to the United States.On Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump said he would also put an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese products by the same date, accusing China of sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada, which was then crossing into the United States.Mr. Trump’s threats leave just 10 days before significant levies could go into effect on the United States’ three largest trading partners, a move that could throw American diplomatic relationships and global supply chains into disarray.Mexico, China and Canada account for more than a third of the goods and services that are imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs. Together, the countries purchased more than $1 trillion of U.S. exports and provided nearly $1.5 trillion of goods and services to the United States in 2023, the last year government data is available.While tariffs have long been used by the United States as punishment for unfair trading practices, Mr. Trump’s first use of them is aimed at an entirely different outcome: tightening American borders against immigrants and illegal drugs.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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    Stellantis Will Restart Illinois Factory That U.A.W. Pushed to Revive

    The United Automobile Workers union has been pressing the automaker, which owns Chrysler and Jeep, to revive the plant in Belvidere, Ill.Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler and Jeep, said on Wednesday it planned to reopen a factory in Illinois and increase production elsewhere in the United States, a move that is likely to resolve several simmering disputes with the United Automobile Workers union.The reopening is also likely to help the company in its relations with the Trump administration, and is among the first big changes made by an interim management team that has been running the company since its chief executive, Carlos Tavares, resigned in December.“These actions are part of our commitment to invest in our U.S. operations to grow our auto production and manufacturing here,” Antonio Filosa, the company’s chief operating officer in North America, said in a statement.The announcement follows a recent meeting between Stellantis’s chairman, John Elkann, and President Trump, the company said. Mr. Elkann told the president that Stellantis, whose headquarters are in Amsterdam, aimed to strengthen its U.S. manufacturing base and was committed to safeguarding American jobs and to the broader U.S. economy.Stellantis, which also owns Fiat, Dodge, Ram and Peugeot, idled the Illinois plant, in Belvidere, in early 2023. Later that year, it agreed in a new contract with the U.A.W. to reopen it. In August 2024, the company said it was delaying the reopening after its sales and profit tumbled.The U.A.W. responded by filing grievances with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Stellantis was not abiding by the 2023 contract.Stellantis said on Wednesday that it planned to make a medium-size pickup truck in Belvedere, and that it would rehire some 1,500 union workers.The company also said it would move forward with plans to produce a new Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle at a plant in Detroit. The U.A.W. had feared Stellantis was preparing to move production of the vehicle to Mexico, and the union had filed grievances on that issue as well.“This victory is a testament to the power of workers standing together and holding a billion-dollar corporation accountable,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We’ve shown that we will do what it takes to protect the good union jobs that are the lifeblood of places like Belvidere, Detroit, Kokomo and beyond.”The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In its statement, Stellantis also said it would make investments in its plants in Toledo, Ohio, where it makes the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator models. Additional investments will also come to an engine plant in Kokomo, Ind., the company said. More

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    A record number of consumers are making minimum credit cards payments as delinquencies also rise

    The share of active credit card holders just making minimum payments rose to 10.75% in the third quarter of 2024, the highest ever in data going back to 2012.
    The share of card holders more than 30 days past due rose to 3.52%, an increase from 3.21%, for a gain of more than 10%.
    Even with the rising delinquency rate, it is still well below the 6.8% peak during the 2008-09 financial crisis and not yet indicative of serious strains.

    In this photo illustration the Visa, Mastercard and American Express logo on various credit cards and debit cards are seen beside US one dollar bills on January 4, 2025 in Somerset, England. 
    Anna Barclay | Getty Images

    Consumer stress has intensified, with an escalating share of credit card holders making only minimum payments on their bills, according to a Philadelphia Federal Reserve report.
    In fact, the share of active holders just making baseline payments on their cards jumped to a 12-year high, data through the third quarter of 2024 shows.

    The level rose to 10.75% for the period, part of a continuing trend that began in 2021 and has accelerated as average interest rates have soared and delinquencies also have accelerated. The increase also marked a series high for a data set that began in 2012.
    Along with the trend in minimum payments came a move higher in delinquency rates.
    The share of card holders more than 30 days past due rose to 3.52%, an increase from 3.21%, for a gain of more than 10%. It also is more than double the delinquency level of the pandemic-era low of 1.57% hit in the second quarter of 2021.
    The news counters a general narrative of a healthy consumer who has kept on spending despite inflation hitting a more than 40-year high in mid-2022 and holding above the Fed’s 2% target for nearly four years.

    Signs of strength

    To be sure, there remain plentiful positive signs. Even with the rising delinquency rate, the pace is still well below the 6.8% peak during the 2008-09 financial crisis and not yet indicative of serious strains.

    “A lot remains unknown. We’ve seen in the past few days how quickly things might be changing,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance company NerdWallet. “The baseline expectation is consumers in aggregate economywide will remain strong.”
    Adjusted for inflation, consumer spending rose 2.9% on an annual basis in November, according to Goldman Sachs, which noted Tuesday that it sees consumers as “a source of strength” in the economy. The firm estimates that consumer spending will slow some in 2025, but still grow at a healthy 2.3% real rate this year, and Goldman sees delinquency rates showing signs of leveling.

    However, if the trend of solid consumer spending holds, it will come against some daunting headwinds.
    Average credit card rates have climbed to 21.5%, or about 50% higher than three years ago, according to Fed data. Investopedia puts the average rate even higher, at 24.4%, noting that so-called low-cost cards that are given to borrowers with poor or no credit history have topped 30%. Consumers haven’t gotten any help from the Fed: Even as the central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point last year, credit card costs remained elevated.
    Those rates are hitting much higher balances, with money owed on revolving credit swelling to $645 billion, up 52.5% since hitting a decade low of $423 billion in the second quarter of 2021, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
    Renter noted that an increasing number of respondents — now at 48% — to the firm’s own consumer survey reported using credit cards for essentials. Moreover, the NerdWallet survey also found an even higher level, more like 22%, saying they are only making minimum payments.
    With average credit card balances at $10,563, it would take 22 years and cost $18,000 in interest when just paying the minimum, according to NerdWallet.
    “With higher prices, people are going to turn to credit cards more to use for necessities. You tack on higher interest rates and then you have more difficulty getting by,” Renter said. “If they’re only making the minimum payment, you can go very quickly from getting by to drowning.”
    The trend in that direction is not encouraging. A recently released New York Fed survey for December found that the average perceived probability for missing a minimum debt payment over the next three months stood at 14.2%, tied with September for the highest since April 2020.

    Home loans slow

    It’s also not just credit cards where households are feeling the pinch.
    Mortgage originations hit a more than 12-year low in the third quarter as well, according to the Philadelphia Fed report. After peaking at $219 billion in third quarter of 2021, originations are just $63 billion three years later.
    “With high mortgage rates, consumers who have locked in low fixed-rate mortgages have little motivation to refinance, reducing mortgage demand,” the central bank branch said in the report.
    Moreover, debt-to-income ratios on home loans also are on the rise, hitting 26% most recently, or 4 percentage points higher over the past five years.
    The typical 30-year mortgage rate recently has swelled above 7%, posing another obstacle for housing and homeownership.

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    Trump Is Said to Push for Early Reopening of North American Trade Deal

    The president wants to begin renegotiating a U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico earlier than a scheduled 2026 review, people familiar with his thinking said.The Trump administration intends to push to renegotiate the U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico ahead of a required 2026 review of it, seeking to shore up U.S. auto jobs and counter Chinese firms that are making inroads into the Mexican auto sector, people familiar with the deliberations said.The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Mr. Trump signed in 2020, required the three countries to hold a “joint review” of the deal after six years, on July 1, 2026. But Mr. Trump intends to begin those negotiations sooner, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.Trump officials particularly want to tighten the pact’s rules governing the auto sector, to try to discourage auto factories from leaving the United States, they said. They are also seeking to block Chinese companies making cars and auto parts from being able to export to the United States through factories in Mexico.Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico, saying those countries are allowing drugs and migrants to flow across American borders. Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday night after his inauguration, he said he planned to move forward with the tariffs on Feb. 1.Members of the Trump team believe that Mexico has been violating the terms of a separate agreement to limit metal exports to the United States, and they are eager to show the Mexican government that they mean to take action against such trade violations, one person familiar with the conversations said.The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Mr. Trump was pushing for an early renegotiation of his North American trade deal. The three countries are required to meet to discuss the terms of the trade deal six years after the agreement went into force, but trade experts have expected the Trump team to speed up work on the issue.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 Pitches External Revenue Service to Collect Tariffs: What to Know

    President Trump has promised to generate a “massive” amount of revenue with tariffs on foreign products, an amount so big that the president said he would create a new agency — the External Revenue Service — to handle collecting the money.“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Mr. Trump said on Monday in his inaugural address, where he reiterated a promise to create the agency. “It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury coming from foreign sources.”Much about the new agency remains unclear, including how it would differ from the government’s current operations. Trade experts said that, despite the name “external,” the bulk of tariff revenue would continue to be collected from U.S. businesses that import products.Here’s what you need to know about what Mr. Trump has proposed.The U.S. has an established system for collecting tariffs.Tariff revenue is currently collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which monitors the goods and the people that come into the United States through hundreds of airports and land crossings.This has been the case nearly since the country’s inception. Congress established the Customs Service in 1789 as part of the Treasury Department, and for roughly a century tariffs were the primary source of government revenue, counted in stately customs houses that still stand in most major cities throughout the United States, said John Foote, a customs lawyer at Kelley, Drye and Warren.With the creation of the income tax in 1913, tariffs became a minor source of government revenue, and after the Sept. 11 attacks, the customs bureau was moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.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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    Europe Braces for a New Trump Era, Uncertain About What It Means

    As Donald J. Trump took the oath of office in Washington on Monday, the crowd at a jam-packed party held by Ukrainian business groups in Davos, Switzerland, intently watched the ceremony on huge screens.The event, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference, seemed to be a display of enthusiasm for the returned American president. Speakers praised Mr. Trump and predicted that he would be a valuable partner for Ukraine in its war against Russia, despite his criticism of U.S. spending on the military effort. Waiters served mini cheeseburgers on red-and-blue buns (“American food,” attendees whispered). A few people applauded at the end.Yet the apparent optimism was a thin veneer over deep uncertainty.“We expect President Trump to surprise us, but we do not know what the surprise will be,” Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, said at the party.Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has plunged Europe’s business leaders and policymakers into a precarious era, and officials have been bracing for it behind the scenes. The European Commission — the European Union’s executive arm — formed a never-officially-announced group, sometimes colloquially referred to as a “Trump task force,” which spent much of 2024 working on possible responses to changes to American trade and foreign policy.There is almost no aspect of European policy that Mr. Trump does not seem poised to upend. He is threatening to impose sweeping tariffs and is pressing for much heftier European spending on defense. Two of his first acts as president were to withdraw from the Paris climate agreements and the World Health Organization.How he will adjust America’s stance toward Ukraine is one of the biggest questions: During his campaign, he pledged to end the war on his first day in office, though that timeline has crept back and he has not said how.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 Holds Off on Tariffs, but Paves the Way for Future Trade Action

    President Trump will stop short of immediately imposing tariffs on imported products on Monday, but will issue an executive order directing federal agencies to begin studying a broad list of trade issues that could ultimately result in taxes on goods from China, Canada, Mexico and other countries in the coming months.The decision suggests that Mr. Trump is taking a more measured approach to fulfilling a key campaign promise of using tariffs to reorder America’s trading relationships. It will also delay — at least for now — fights that have been brewing with foreign governments, which have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own.The topics Mr. Trump will direct his officials to investigate in an executive order Monday will be extensive, including trade deficits and trade deals signed with China, Canada and Mexico. That could tee up the ability of the president to deploy tariffs on numerous targets for many different reasons, potentially scrambling international supply chains and spawning global trade wars in the weeks and months to come.The executive order will direct federal agencies to examine unfair trade and currency practices and to assess whether foreign governments have complied with terms of the two trade deals Mr. Trump signed in his first presidency. It will also require the government to assess the feasibility of creating an “External Revenue Service” to collect tariffs and dutiesMr. Trump is also ordering a study of tariffs that the United States has imposed for national security reasons, as well as the use of a special trade exemption, called de minimis, that allows low-value goods to come into the United States tariff free. That loophole has allowed large volumes of Chinese goods to escape the tariffs Mr. Trump slapped on China during his first term. The details of the executive order were earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.While Mr. Trump has decided to hold off on tariffs for now, his advisers say he remains more convinced than ever that they can be used to great advantage.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