Evelyn Reynolds

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    The Grand Egyptian Museum Is Finally Open. (Well, Mostly.)

    I was drawn to the outskirts of Cairo by the colossal complex in the desert — a towering site that arose over decades, built at unimaginable expense, with precisely cut stones sourced from local quarries; a set of buildings whose construction, plagued by extraordinary challenges, spanned the reigns of several rulers; a collective cultural testament, the largest of its kind, teeming with royal history.No, I’m not referring to Giza’s famous pyramids. I came to see the Grand Egyptian Museum.Approaching the museum’s main entrance. (The plaza contains an obelisk that is elevated on a granite base, allowing for views of the cartouche — an oval containing a royal name in hieroglyphics — of Ramses II.)Hieroglyphic motifs and translucent stone adorn the building’s exterior.A pyramidal entryway leads to the grand atrium.There is perhaps no institution on earth whose opening has been as wildly anticipated, or as mind-bogglingly delayed, as the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo. Its construction has been such a fiasco — mired by funding lapses, logistical hurdles, a pandemic, nearby wars, revolutions (yes, plural) — that it begs comparison to that of the pyramids that lie just over a mile away on the Giza Plateau.(The 4,600-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, built from around 2.3 million stone blocks and without the use of wheels, pulleys or iron tools, took about 25 years to build, by some estimates. So far, the Grand Egyptian Museum has taken more than 20.)Planned openings have come and gone since 2012. (Even The Times got it wrong; our list of 52 Places to Go in 2020 prematurely referred to the “fancy new digs for King Tut and company.”) In time, frustrations bubbled over for would-be visitors, many of whom had planned vacations around the new museum. “I have canceled two trips to Cairo because of anticipated opening dates and then delays,” one traveler wrote on the museum’s Instagram page this year. “I have wanted to visit since I was a child and the promise of the museum and constant delays is ruining that experience for so many people.”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 Has Mixed Emotions Toward Japan

    The president at turns praises and criticizes Japan, a U.S. ally that decades ago stirred his anger over the unequal balance of trade and his penchant for tariffs.This month in the White House’s Rose Garden, as he held up a placard showing the global wave of tariffs he wanted to impose, President Trump paused to fondly recall a fallen friend.“The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo, was — Shinzo Abe — he was a fantastic man,” Mr. Trump said during the tariff announcement on April 2. “He was, unfortunately, taken from us, assassination.”The words of praise for Mr. Abe, who was gunned down three years ago during a campaign speech, did not stop Mr. Trump from slapping a 24 percent tariff on products imported from Japan. But they were unusual, nonetheless, coming from a president who has had few nice things to say these days about other allies, particularly Canada and Europe.Now, Japan will be one of the first countries allowed to bargain for a possible reprieve from Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, many of which he has put on hold for 90 days. On Thursday, a negotiator handpicked by Japan’s current prime minister is scheduled to begin talks in Washington with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others.Japan’s place at the front of the line reflects the different approach that Mr. Trump has taken toward the nation. While the president still accuses it of unfair trade policies and an unequal security relationship, he also praises it in the same breath as a close ally, an ancient culture and a savvy negotiator.“I love Japan,” Mr. Trump told reporters last month. “But we have an interesting deal with Japan where we have to protect them but they don’t have to protect us,” referring to the security treaty that bases 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan.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 10% Tariff May Be Less Onerous but Still Raises Prices and Threatens Trade

    The blanket tariffs, once considered extreme, still threaten to harm world trade and make everything more expensive for businesses and consumers.President Trump’s global 10 percent tariff is likely to make consumer goods more expensive.When Donald J. Trump championed the idea of a 10 percent blanket tariff during the campaign, many people, whether for or against, were taken aback by how radical the idea was.Alarms sounded about higher inflation, lost jobs, slower growth or recession. The prospect seemed so outlandish that most economists and Wall Street analysts who gamed out the possibilities tended to treat a 10 percent tariff simply as a bargaining tool.Now, after a rapid-fire series of announcements from the White House that promised, imposed, reversed, delayed, decreased and increased tariffs, the 10 percent solution is looking like the most temperate choice rather than the most revolutionary, especially now that a red-hot trade war between China and the United States is blazing.Yet 10 percent tariffs have not lost their sting.At that level, universal tariffs still hit more than 10 times as many imports as the ones targeted during Mr. Trump’s first term, and are significantly higher and broader than anything the United States has tried in more than 90 years.The tariff rate is “quite extreme,” said Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING, a Dutch bank. “It still brings us back to levels last seen during the 1930s.”In addition to measures targeting China, Mr. Trump powered up a long list of punishing taxes — including a flat 10 percent tariff on most imports — on April 9. 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

    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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    Trump Moves to Put New Tariffs on Computer Chips and Drugs

    The Trump administration took steps on Monday that appear likely to result in new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceutical products, adding to the levies President Trump has put on imports globally.Federal notices put online Monday afternoon said the administration had initiated national security investigations into imports of chips and pharmaceuticals. Mr. Trump has suggested that those investigations could result in tariffs.The investigations will also cover the machinery used to make semiconductors, products that contain chips and pharmaceutical ingredients.In a statement confirming the move, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the president “has long been clear about the importance of reshoring manufacturing that is critical to our country’s national and economic security.”The new semiconductor and pharmaceutical tariffs would be issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs to protect U.S. national security.Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump hinted that he would soon impose new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, as he looked to shore up more domestic production.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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    Fed Governor Waller sees tariff inflation as ‘transitory’ in ‘tush push’ comparison

    Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Monday he expects the effects of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on prices to be “transitory.”
    The central banker embraced a term that got the central bank in trouble during the last bout of inflation.
    “Since it didn’t work out the way you expected, does that mean that you shouldn’t call for the tush push the next time you face a similar situation?” he added.

    Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller speaks during the Clearing House Annual Conference in New York City, on Nov. 12, 2024.
    Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

    Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Monday he expects the effects of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on prices to be “transitory,” embracing a term that got the central bank in trouble during the last bout of inflation.
    “I can hear the howls already that this must be a mistake given what happened in 2021 and 2022. But just because it didn’t work out once does not mean you should never think that way again,” Waller said in remarks for a policy speech in St. Louis that compared his inflation view to the controversial “tush push” football play.

    Laying out two scenarios for what the duties eventually will look like, Waller said larger and longer-lasting tariffs would bring a larger inflation spike initially to a 4% to 5% range that eventually would ebb as growth slowed and unemployment increased. In the smaller-tariff scenario, inflation would hit around 3% and then fall off.
    Either case would still see the Fed cutting interest rates, with timing being the only question, he said. Larger tariffs might force a cut to support growth, while smaller duties might allow a “good news” cut later this year, Waller added.
    “Yes, I am saying that I expect that elevated inflation would be temporary, and ‘temporary’ is another word for transitory,'” he said. “Despite the fact that the last surge of inflation beginning in 2021 lasted longer than I and other policymakers initially expected, my best judgment is that higher inflation from tariffs will be temporary.”
    The “transitory” term harkens back to the inflation spike in 2021 that Fed officials and many economists expected to ease after supply chain and demand factors related to the Covid-19 pandemic normalized.
    However, prices continued to rise, hitting their highest since the early 1980s and necessitating a series of dramatic rate hikes. While inflation has pulled back substantially since the Fed started raising in 2022, it remains above the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed cut its benchmark borrowing rate by a full percentage point in late 2024 but has not cut further this year.

    A Trump appointee during the president’s first term, Waller used a football analogy to explain his views on “transitory” inflation. He cited the Philadelphia Eagles’ famed “tush push” play that the team has used to great effect on short-yardage and goal line situations.
    “You are the Philadelphia Eagles and it is fourth down and a few inches from the goal line. You call for the tush push but fail to convert by running the ball,” he said. “Since it didn’t work out the way you expected, does that mean that you shouldn’t call for the tush push the next time you face a similar situation? I don’t think so.”
    Waller estimated that Trump has either of two goals from the tariffs: to keep the levies high and remake the economy, or use them as negotiating tactics. In the first case, he sees growth slowing “to a crawl” while the unemployment rate rises “significantly.” If the tariffs are negotiated down, he sees the effect on inflation to be “significantly smaller.”
    In the other case, he said “one of the biggest shocks to affect the U.S. economy in many decades” is making forecasting and policymaking difficult. Fed officials will need to “remain flexible” in deciding the future path.
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    Unemployment fears hit worst levels since Covid as tariffs fuel inflation outlook, Fed survey shows

    Consumer worries grew over inflation, unemployment and the stock market as the global trade war heated up in March, according to a New York Fed survey.
    The probability that the unemployment rate would be higher a year from now surged to 44%, up 4.6 percentage points and the highest level going back to the early Covid pandemic days of April 2020.
    The expectation that the market will be higher a year from low slid to 33.8%, a decline of 3.2 percentage points to the lowest reading going back to June 2022.

    People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025. 
    Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

    Consumer worries grew over inflation, unemployment and the stock market as the global trade war heated up in March, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey released Monday.
    The central bank’s monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations showed that respondents saw inflation a year from now at 3.6%, an increase of half a percentage point from February and the highest reading since October 2023.

    Along with concerns over a higher cost of living came a surge in worries over the labor market: The probability that the unemployment rate would be higher a year from now surged to 44%, a move up of 4.6 percentage points and the highest level going back to the early Covid pandemic days of April 2020.
    The survey also showed angst about the uncertainty translating into problems for stock market prices.
    The expectation that the market will be higher a year from low slid to 33.8%, a decline of 3.2 percentage points to the lowest reading going back to June 2022. While the expectations for equities pulled back, respondents said they figure gold to rise by 5.2%, the highest since April 2022.
    The survey reflects other readings, such as the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, which showed one-year expectations in mid-April at their highest since November 1981.
    In the case of the New York Fed measure, the survey took place ahead of President Donald Trump’s April 2 “liberation day” tariff announcement, as well as the 90-day suspension of the order a week later. However, it is largely consistent with other measures reflecting consumer concern over the impact tariffs will have, even as market-based measures show inflation worries are low among traders.

    Expectations for inflation at the five-year horizon actually edged lower to 2.9%, down 0.1 percentage point, and were unchanged for the three-year outlook at 3%. The outlook for food prices a year from now nudged up to 5.2%, its highest since May 2024, and was at 7.2% for rent, an increase of half a point. The outlook for medical care costs also jumped to an expected 7.9% increase, the most since August 2024.
    Respondents expect gasoline to rise by 3.2%, a 0.5 percentage point drop from the February outlook.
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