Evelyn Reynolds

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    Have You Seen Evidence of Trade Crime? We Want to Hear From You.

    The New York Times is looking to talk to business owners and employees who have seen evidence of tariff dodging or customs fraud.For as long as the United States has had tariffs, importers have been trying to find ways around them. But the significant increase in tariffs in recent months appears to have prompted an increase trade and customs fraud.I’m Ana Swanson, the international trade reporter for The New York Times. I’m looking for unreported instances of how companies may be avoiding or evading President Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods. To better understand the topic and inform my reporting, I’d like to hear from company owners and employees about what they have seen firsthand. I’d be particularly interested to learn whether companies are trying to avoid tariffs on goods that feed into the supply chains of major corporations. And I want to know what tactics are commonly used to sidestep the impact of tariffs.I’ll read every submission and contact you if we’re interested in learning more. I won’t publish any submission without reaching out to you and hearing back. We don’t use your contact information for any reason other than to follow up with you, and we don’t share it outside our newsroom. More

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    Global Economic Officials Gather Amid Headwinds From Trump’s Trade War

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet his international counterparts at a G7 finance ministers meeting in Canada.Top finance officials from the world’s wealthiest economies will begin gathering in Canada on Tuesday for meetings that are expected to be consumed by renewed fears of a global downturn set off by President Trump’s trade war.The summit of the Group of 7 finance ministers, a traditionally friendly gathering, is likely to be more fraught this year. The tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on American allies and adversaries have threatened to blunt global growth and inflame inflation. Europe, Japan and Canada have all been bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s “America first” economic agenda.The tenor of the discussions could also be complicated by recent tension between the United States and Canada, the country hosting this year’s meetings and one that Mr. Trump has said he wants to annex.“I think it’s going to be awkward,” said Charles Lichfield, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.The three days of meetings will include many of the recent topics of discussion, including support for Ukraine, concerns about China’s economic practices and headwinds facing the global economy. However, Mr. Trump’s trade tactics, which many economists view as the biggest threat to global economic stability, will dominate the discussions between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his counterparts.Mr. Bessent, who skipped a gathering of the Group of 20 finance ministers in February, will appear at the international forum for the first time and at a particularly tenuous moment.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 Berates Walmart and Mattel for Warning About Tariff Price Increases

    The president recently attacked Walmart, saying it should “eat” the costs rather than pass them on to customers.President Trump is telling some of the nation’s largest companies that they should eat the cost of his tariffs, as a growing number of businesses signal that they must raise prices to blunt the impact of a persistent global trade war.As a result, the man who ran for the presidency by boasting about his business acumen is now openly sparring with corporate America, seeking to dictate how Walmart, Mattel, and other retailers and manufacturers respond to some of the highest levies seen in decades.Since the spring, the United States has imposed a 10 percent tariff on nearly every nation, with steeper duties reserved for specific products and countries, including a minimum 30 percent tax on Chinese imports.While the White House insists the president’s strategy is working — generating new revenue and forcing nations to negotiate — some companies have started to report early signs of financial strain. Their warnings have affirmed economists’ long and widely held belief that tariffs fall hardest on U.S. companies and consumers, not the allies and adversaries that Mr. Trump seeks to punish.But the White House repeatedly has dismissed this evidence, while the president himself has increasingly needled companies for trying to ameliorate the financial fallout.“He maintains the position that foreign countries absorb these tariffs,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters at a briefing on Monday.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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    Consumer sentiment slides to second-lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs

    The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April and hitting its second-lowest reading on record.
    The majority of the survey was completed before the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs between the two countries.
    The trade situation appears to be a key factor weighing on consumer sentiment.

    A woman walks in an aisle of a Walmart supermarket in Houston, Texas, on May 15, 2025.
    Ronaldo Schemidt | Afp | Getty Images

    U.S. consumers are becoming increasingly worried that tariffs will lead to higher inflation, according to a University of Michigan survey released Friday.
    The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022.

    The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%.
    However, the majority of the survey was completed before the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs between the two countries. The trade situation appears to be a key factor weighing on consumer sentiment.
    “Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy,” Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said in the release.
    Inflation expectations are closely watched by investors and policymakers. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank wants to make sure long-term inflation expectations do not rise because of tariffs before resuming rate cuts.
    Even with the pauses on import levies against China and other countries, the effective tariff rate for goods entering the United States is still significantly higher today than it was before President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. Economists on both sides of the aisle mostly agree that tariffs could lead to a short-term rise in prices, though the extent of that increase and whether it would fuel long-term inflation remains unclear.

    Recent inflation data has not shown a tariff bump, as both the consumer price index and producer price index for April came in below consensus estimates.
    A final consumer sentiment index for the month is slated to be released on May 30, and will likely be closely watched to see if the tariff pause led to an improvement in sentiment.

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    The low-end consumer is about to feel the pinch as Trump restarts student loan collections

    Andersen Ross Photography Inc | Digitalvision | Getty Images

    Wall Street is warning that the U.S. Department of Education’s crack down on student loan repayments may take billions of dollars out of consumers’ pockets and hit low income Americans particularly hard.
    The department has restarted collections on defaulted student loans under President Donald Trump this month. For first time in around five years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.

    Using a range of interest rates and lengths of repayment plans, JPMorgan estimated that disposable personal income could be collectively cut by between $3.1 billion and $8.5 billion every month due to collections, according to Murat Tasci, senior U.S. economist at the bank and a Cleveland Federal Reserve alum.
    If that all surfaced in one quarter, collections on defaulted and seriously delinquent loans alone would slash between 0.7% and 1.8% from disposable personal income year-over-year, he said.
    This policy change may strain consumers who are already stressed out by Trump’s tariff plan and high prices from years of runaway inflation. These factors can help explain why closely followed consumer sentiment data compiled by the University of Michigan has been hitting some of its lowest levels in its seven-decade history in the past two months.
    “You have a number of these pressure points rising,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. “Perhaps in aggregate, it’s enough to quash some of these spending numbers.”
    Bank of America said this push to collect could particularly weigh on groups that are on more precarious financial footing. “We believe resumption of student loan payments will have knock-on effects on broader consumer finances, most especially for the subprime consumer segment,” Bank of America analyst Mihir Bhatia wrote to clients.

    Economic impact

    Student loans account for just 9% of all outstanding consumer debt, according to Bank of America. But when excluding mortgages, that share shoots up to 30%.
    Total outstanding student loan debt sat at $1.6 trillion at the end of March, an increase of half a trillion dollars in the last decade.
    The New York Fed estimates that nearly one of every four borrowers required to make payments are currently behind. When the federal government began reporting loans as delinquent in the first quarter of this year, the share of debt holders in this boat jumped up to 8% from around 0.5% in the prior three-month period.
    To be sure, delinquency is not the same thing as default. Delinquency refers to any loan with a past-due payment, while defaulting is more specific and tied to not making a delayed payment with a period of time set by the provider. The latter is considered more serious and carries consequences such as wage garnishment. If seriously delinquent borrowers also defaulted, JPMorgan projected that almost 25% of all student loans would be in the latter category.
    JPMorgan’s Tasci pointed out that not all borrowers have wages or Social Security earnings to take, which can mitigate the firm’s total estimates. Some borrowers may resume payments with collections beginning, though Tasci noted that would likely also eat into discretionary spending.
    Trump’s promise to reduce taxes on overtime and tips, if successful, could also help erase some effects of wage garnishment on poorer Americans.
    Still, the expected hit to discretionary income is worrisome as Wall Street wonders if the economy can skirt a recession. Much hope has been placed on the ability of consumers to keep spending even if higher tariffs push product prices higher or if the labor market weakens.
    LPL’s Roach sees this as less of an issue. He said the postpandemic economy has largely been propped up by high-income earners, who have done the bulk of the spending. This means the tide-change for student loan holders may not hurt the macroeconomic picture too much, he said.
    “It’s hard to say if there’s a consensus view on this yet,” Roach said. “But I would say the student loan story is not as important as perhaps some of the other stories, just because those who hold student loans are not necessarily the drivers of the overall economy.”

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    Trump’s Computer Chip Deals With Saudi Arabia and UAE Divide US Government

    Big deals to sell chips to the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia have divided the U.S. government over whether they could be remembered for shipping cutting-edge A.I. overseas.Over the course of a three-day trip to the Middle East, President Trump and his emissaries from Silicon Valley have transformed the Persian Gulf from an artificial-intelligence neophyte into an A.I. power broker.They have reached an enormous deal with the United Arab Emirates to deliver hundreds of thousands of today’s most advanced chips from Nvidia annually to build one of the world’s largest data center hubs, three people familiar with the talks said. The shipments would begin this year, with the vast majority of the chips going to U.S. cloud service providers and about 100,000 of them to G42, an Emirati A.I. firm.The administration revealed the agreement on Thursday in an announcement unveiling a new A.I. campus in Abu Dhabi supported by 5 gigawatts of electrical power. It would the largest such project outside the United States and help U.S. companies serve customers in Africa, Europe and Asia, the administration said. The details about the chips weren’t disclosed, and it’s not clear if they could still be subject to change.As Mr. Trump traversed the region in recent days, the United States also struck multibillion-dollar agreements to sell advanced chips from Nvidia and AMD to Saudi Arabia. The United States and Saudi Arabia are also still in discussions on a larger contract for A.I. technology, five people familiar with the negotiations said.The A.I. deals have caused people inside and outside the White House to wrestle with an unexpected question. Is the Trump administration, in its zeal to make deals in a region where Mr. Trump and his family have financial ties, outsourcing the industry of the future to the Middle East?The question speaks to divisions over A.I. policy that are rippling through the Trump administration. The deals were negotiated in the Middle East by David Sacks, the administration’s A.I. czar, and Sriram Krishnan, its senior policy adviser for A.I., who are both longtime venture capitalists. Leading figures in the A.I. industry, like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, have also been involved in talks that have continued on the sidelines of the president’s trip in recent days.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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    Consumers Show Signs of Strain Amid Trump’s Tariff Rollout

    <!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>For now, consumers are still spending, although more slowly than in the past. Their attitudes about the economic outlook have soured in recent months in anticipation of elevated prices, slower growth and higher unemployment. Americans have also become choosier about how they spend their money. Leisure […] More

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    JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says recession is still on the table for U.S.

    JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said there is still “uncertainty” on the tariff front but the pauses are a positive for the economy and market.
    Michael Feroli, the firm’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that the recession outlook is “still elevated, but now below 50%.”
    “Even at this level, you see people holding back on investment and thinking through what they want to do,” Dimon told Bloomberg Television.

    Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the 2025 National Retirement Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
    Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon said Thursday that a recession is still a serious possibility for the United States, even after the recent rollback of tariffs on China.
    “If there’s a recession, I don’t know how big it will be or how long it will last. Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

    Specifically, Dimon said he would defer to his bank’s economists, who put recession odds at close to a toss-up. Michael Feroli, the firm’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that the recession outlook is “still elevated, but now below 50%.”
    Dimon’s comments come less than a week after the U.S. and China announced that they were sharply reducing tariffs on one another for 90 days. The U.S. has also implemented a 90-day pause for many tariffs on other nations.
    Thursday’s comments mark a change for Dimon, who said last month before the China truce that a recession was likely.
    He also said there is still “uncertainty” on the tariff front but the pauses are a positive for the economy and market.
    “I think the right thing to do is to back off some of that stuff and engage in conversation,” Dimon said.

    However, even with the tariff pauses, the import taxes on goods entering the United States are now sharply higher than they were last year and could cause economic damage, according to Dimon.
    “Even at this level, you see people holding back on investment and thinking through what they want to do,” Dimon said.
    — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.

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