Raphael Stevens

Abortion was one of the top hot-button issues that drove voters to the polls this election.
President-elect Donald Trump’s comeback will likely make abortion rights in the U.S. more vulnerable and uncertain, health policy experts said, even as ballot measures to protect access were passed in seven of the 10 states that had them. 
Trump and his political appointees could further restrict abortion on the federal level through methods that won’t require Congress to pass new legislation.

Anti-abortion demonstrators listen to President Donald Trump as he speaks at the 47th annual “March for Life” in Washington, D.C., Jan. 24, 2020.
Olivier Douliery | Afp | Getty Images

Voters in seven out of 10 states approved ballot measures this week to safeguard abortion rights, a hot-button issue that helped drive Americans to the polls.
But President-elect Donald Trump’s victory early Wednesday could make access to the procedure more vulnerable and uncertain across the U.S., health policy experts warned, leaving the reproductive well-being of many women hanging in the balance.

Trump has waffled considerably on his position on abortion, most recently saying he would not support a federal ban and wants to leave the issue up to the states. But Trump and his appointees to federal agencies could further restrict abortion on the federal level through methods that won’t require Congress to pass new legislation.
“The more restrictions we see on abortion over the next four years, the worse health outcomes are going to be. People are suffering and dying unnecessarily,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center.
Abortion access in the U.S. has already been in a state of flux in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to the procedure — a decision Trump takes credit for since he reshaped the court. As of last year, more than 25 million women ages 15 to 44 lived in states where there are more restrictions on abortion than before the court’s ruling in 2022, PBS reported.
Experts say a further crackdown on abortion by the Trump administration could put the health of many patients, especially those who are lower-income or people of color, at risk.
“As long as we have a government that is not fully committed to abortion access for everyone who seeks it, there is going to be chaos and confusion on the ground around what is legal and what is available,” O’Connor said. “It’s going to contribute to the ongoing health-care access crisis we’re seeing with abortion.”‘

It’s unclear what Trump’s actions around the issue could look like. There is little public support for Congress to pass nationwide bans on abortion, according to a poll conducted in June by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. At least 70% of Americans oppose a federal ban on abortion or a ban on the procedure at six weeks.
If Trump does decide to curb access, experts say, that could include limiting the use of medication abortion, particularly when it is administered through telehealth or delivered by mail. 
Medication is the most common method used to end a pregnancy in the U.S., accounting for 63% of all abortions in the U.S. last year, according to a March study by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access. 
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decades-old Comstock Act

A Trump administration could sharply restrict or ban medication abortion by enforcing an interpretation of the long-dead Comstock Act, according to Julie Kay, co-founder and executive director of The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. 
The law, passed in 1873, makes it a federal crime to send or receive drugs or other materials designed for abortions in the mail. It has not been widely enforced for decades.

National Women’s Strike holds a protest marking the second anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Monday, June 24, 2024.
Bill Clark | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Trump’s administration could use the act to block the shipment and distribution of abortion pills and potentially any medical equipment used in abortion procedures, such as dilators and suction catheters, preventing doctors from performing abortions at hospitals, according to Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
To enforce it, Trump would have to appoint an anti-abortion U.S. attorney general, which would require Senate confirmation. 
The Biden administration maintains that the Comstock Act’s provisions are outdated. Trump in August said he had no plans to enforce the Comstock Act. 
But anti-abortion advocates and people in Trump’s close circle, including his running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, have urged the opposite. Some of Trump’s former advisors, writing in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, also endorse the use of the Comstock Act to restrict abortion pills. So does every major anti-abortion organization in the country.
There would likely be legal opposition to any effort to enforce it, O’Connor noted. 
That issue could end up at the Supreme Court, whose justices have expressed openness to the idea that the Comstock Act could ban abortion. Earlier this year, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas repeatedly invoked the Comstock Act during oral arguments in a case regarding medication abortion. 

Appointing anti-abortion actors to key agency roles

Trump could also appoint anti-abortion leaders to control key federal agencies that could use executive power to severely limit or ban the procedure in the U.S. That includes the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice. 
“Those agencies have been instrumental in clarifying or protecting as much as possible in a post-Dobbs world when it comes to abortion rights,” said Kelly Baden, vice president for policy at the Guttmacher Institute, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Trump and his political appointees to the FDA could direct that agency to severely restrict or potentially eliminate access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in a common medication abortion regimen. 
Anti-abortion physicians squared off with the FDA in 2023 in a legal battle over the agency’s more than two-decade-old approval of the medication. In June, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the challenge to mifepristone and sided with the Biden administration, meaning the commonly used medication could remain widely available.

Mifepristone and Misoprostol pills are pictured Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, in Skokie, Illinois.
Erin Hooley | Chicago Tribune | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

But Trump’s FDA appointees could push to roll back certain changes made from 2016 to 2021 that expanded access to mifepristone. That could include reinstating requirements that would require mifepristone to be dispensed in person, which would effectively eliminate access to the pill via telehealth. 
Telehealth has become an increasingly common way to access abortion bills, accounting for nearly 1 in 5 of them during the last months of 2023, according to a research project published in May by the Society of Family Planning. 
Restricting telehealth as an option would have an “incredibly chilling effect” on abortion access,” said Alina Salganicoff, a senior vice president and the director of Women’s Health Policy at KFF, a health policy research organization. 
“We will likely see more people in states where abortion is banned having to travel, more delays in getting care and the potential for more of them actually being denied that care due to difficulties related to getting the procedure in person,” she said. 
New FDA leaders could also attempt to use a more extreme approach: rescinding mifepristone’s approval altogether. Either strategy would disregard significant scientific research demonstrating mifepristone’s safe and effective use in the U.S., experts said.
Trump vaguely suggested in August that he would not rule out directing the FDA to revoke access to mifepristone. Just days later, Vance attempted to walk back those remarks. 
Trump’s comments appear to be a shift from his stance in June, when the former president said during a CNN debate that he “will not block” access to mifepristone.

Reviving old rules, gutting Biden’s

At the very least, Trump could reinstate some of the policies implemented during his first term that made abortions harder to obtain and gut some of the efforts that the Biden administration used to expand access. 

Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Fla., left, points out states with restricted reproductive rights as Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, and Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., hold the map during a news conference on reproductive rights in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. 
Bill Clark | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Trump could reinstate a so-called domestic gag rule, which he implemented in 2019 and that the Biden administration reversed in 2021.
The rule prohibited providers that are part of the federally funded Title X family program from referring patients for abortion care or providing counseling that includes abortion information. Title X is a decades-old program that provides family planning and preventive health services to patients, especially lower-income individuals. 
Guttmacher’s Baden said the rule “decimated” Title X’s network of family planning clinics and constrained its ability to serve low-income patients. She said those clinics are “still recovering from that.” 
“I see no reason to assume that he wouldn’t go back to reinstating that rule in the first 100 days,” Baden said.
A Trump administration could also quickly nullify some of Biden’s executive orders, memorandums and other efforts that aimed to protect and expand access to reproductive health services, according to Baden.  More

Steve Madden’s CEO said the company will reduce the goods it imports from China by as much as 45% over the next year.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump said he would impose a 10% to 20% tariff on all imports, with tariffs as high as 60% to 100% on goods from China.
Other retailers and brands have already made a push to diversify sourcing from China because of tariff risks, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions.

The logo of the label Steve Madden at the fashion fair Premium. 
ens Kalaene | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Steve Madden said Thursday that it will slash the goods it imports from China by as much as 45% over the next year as it braces for President-elect Donald Trump to carry out his pledge for steep tariffs on imports from other countries.
On an earnings call, CEO Edward Rosenfeld said the shoe brand has been “planning for a potential scenario in which we would have to move goods out of China more quickly.” Over the past few years, he said, it’s looked for factories in other countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil.

“As of yesterday morning, we are putting that plan into motion,” he said Thursday. “And you should expect to see the percentage of goods that we sourced from China to begin to come down more rapidly going forward.”
Rosenfeld said imports to the U.S. account for about two-thirds of Steve Madden’s business. Of that, he said, “we currently source a little bit more than 70% of those goods from China.” That means slightly less than half of its business would be at risk of tariffs on Chinese imports, he said.
“Our goal over the next year is to reduce that percentage of goods that we sourced from China by approximately 40% to 45%, which means that if we’re able to achieve that and we think we have the plan to do it, that a year from today, we would be looking at just over a quarter of our business that would be subject to potential tariffs on Chinese goods,” he said.
Trump is expected to put pressure on companies to move more of their production to the U.S. During his presidential campaign, Trump said he would impose a 10% to 20% tariff on all imports, including tariffs as high as 60% to 100% for goods from China.
Other retailers and brands have already made a push to diversify sourcing because of a variety of factors, including reduced labor in China because of its growing middle class and as part of an effort to bulletproof their supply chains after disruption from the Covid pandemic and Red Sea shipping crisis.

Retail analysts and trade groups have warned the proposed tariffs could drive up prices for U.S. consumers and soften spending.
Tarang Amin, CEO of makeup and skin care maker E.l.f. Beauty, said it may have to raise prices on some of its items if tariffs take effect. He said the company has moved more of its production outside of China since tariffs began under Trump’s first administration.
For Tapestry, the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade, less than 10% of overall sourcing comes from China, the company’s CFO, Scott Roe, said on a Thursday earnings call. He said the handbag-, apparel- and accessory-maker is watching tariff policy closely, but has gotten plenty of practice with staying nimble.
“My goodness, we’ve had so many disruptions and challenges that have forced us to make adaptions based on port strikes and freight lanes, whatever it might be, tariff regimes changing over time,” he said. “So we’re pretty well versed in managing through this.”
— CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

The Food and Drug Administration proposed ending the use of a common ingredient in many popular over-the-counter cold and allergy medications because it doesn’t actually relieve nasal congestion.
The FDA said the proposed order is not final yet, which means companies can still market over-the-counter drugs containing oral phenylephrine for now.
A final order will force pharmacies to clear shelves of hundreds of products containing oral forms of the ingredient, which is found in versions of drugs such as NyQuil, Benadryl, Sudafed and Mucinex.

A bottle of Vicks DayQuil cold and flu medicine containing phenylephrine is displayed for sale in a CVS Pharmacy store in Hawthorne, California, on Sept. 12, 2023.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed ending the use of a common ingredient found in many popular over-the-counter cold and allergy medications.
The agency said an extensive review of available data determined that the ingredient, oral phenylephrine, doesn’t actually relieve nasal congestion. It comes more than a year after advisors to the FDA unanimously reached the same conclusion.

Based on the data, “we are taking this next step in the process to propose removing oral phenylephrine because it is not effective as a nasal decongestant,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a release.
The FDA said the proposed order is not based on safety concerns and is not final yet, which means companies can still market over-the-counter drugs containing oral phenylephrine for now. But a final decision would force pharmacies to clear shelves of hundreds of products containing oral forms of the ingredient, which is found in versions of drugs such as NyQuil, Benadryl, Sudafed and Mucinex.
Last year, CVS said it has already moved to pull certain medicines containing oral phenylephrine.
A final order would also require drugmakers such as Procter & Gamble, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson spinoff Kenvue to reformulate many of their oral cold and allergy products. 
Phenylephrine is thought to relieve congestion by reducing the swelling of blood vessels in the nasal passages. Without oral phenylephrine on the market, patients will likely scramble to seek out spray versions of the drug, or other medications with different ingredients, both of which the FDA’s decision does not affect.

Retail stores such as CVS and Walgreens could also take a hit: Those stores sold 242 million bottles of drugs containing phenylephrine in 2022, which generated nearly $1.8 billion in sales, according to a presentation by FDA staff last year.
The FDA could specifically revoke the drug’s over-the-counter designation as “generally recognized as safe and effective.” The designation, typically used for older medicines, allows drugmakers to include an ingredient in over-the-counter products without the need to file an FDA application.
The meeting of FDA advisors last year was prompted by researchers at the University of Florida, who petitioned the agency to remove phenylephrine products from the market based on studies showing they failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion. 
The same researchers also challenged the drug’s effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research.
However, FDA staff, in briefing documents posted ahead of the panel meeting last year, concluded that oral formulations of phenylephrine don’t work at standard or even higher doses. The staff said only a very small amount of phenylephrine actually reaches the nose to relieve congestion. 
Representatives for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a group that represents over-the-counter drug manufacturers, did not offer any new evidence to counter the FDA staff’s conclusion about phenylephrine during the meeting last year.
But the group argued that pulling oral phenylephrine from the market would be a significant burden to consumers.
The group shared a survey that found 1 in 2 households in the U.S. used an oral decongestant over the last year. It also found people prefer oral decongestants over nasal spray by a 3-to-1 margin.
Phenylephrine became the main decongestant in over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines in 2006, when sales of another decongestant, pseudoephedrine, were restricted in the U.S. 
Pseudoephedrine was moved behind the pharmacy counter because it can be misused to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant drug that affects the central nervous system.  More

Bentley Motors is once again pushing back a target to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles, with plans to continue leaning into plug-in hybrid electric vehicles through at least 2035.
The Volkswagen-owned carmaker initially said in 2020 that it planned to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles by the end of this decade.
Bentley said it plans to offer a new EV or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle each year until 2035, starting with its first all-electric vehicles in 2026.

A staff member checks a Bentayga SUV on the Bentley production line at its factory in Crewe, England, on Dec. 7, 2022.
Phil Noble | Reuters

Bentley Motors is once again pushing back a target to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles, with plans to continue leaning into plug-in hybrid electric vehicles until at least 2035.
The British maker of ultra-luxury performance cars on Thursday said it continues to have “an ambition to be building only fully electric cars from 2035,” but the adjustment is needed due to changing market conditions.

Bentley Chairman and CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser said “there’s not a lot of demand” for EVs from current customers. But he said the automaker needs to meet legislation and be ready for a new generation of customers.
“Legislation, for sure, is driving electrification … but also competition,” Walliser said during an online media event Thursday. “We have to be honest, there’s not a lot of demand.”
The Volkswagen-owned carmaker initially said in 2020 that it planned to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles by the end of this decade. Former CEO Adrian Hallmark days before leaving the company said those plans would be delayed by a few years but did not give a set timeframe.

Bentley Continental GTC Speed in Kingfisher
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Bentley said it plans to offer a new EV or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle each year until 2035, starting with its first EV, a “Luxury Urban SUV,” in 2026. The EV was initially expected to be produced starting next year.
“We want to produce PHEVs as long as markets and customers demand it,” Matthias Rabe, head of Bentley’s research and development, said during the Thursday briefing.

Rabe said Bentley may continue to release vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines in the years to come.
Walliser, who succeeded Hallmark in July, said the automaker’s first EV will be smaller than its traditional vehicles, including its current Bentayga SUV.
Hallmark previously said the delay in Bentley’s first all-electric vehicle was the result of software issues as well as difficulty with developing the vehicle’s architecture to Bentley’s standards. He had said those challenges were the primary driver behind delaying its EV plans, rather than the changing market conditions.
“Four years almost to the day that Bentley initially outlined its Beyond100 strategy, we adapt to today’s economic, market and legislative environment to initiate a major transformative phase for tomorrow,” Walliser said in a release.
Along with the changes, Bentley also is changing the name of its business strategy from Beyond100, a nod to the more than century-old carmaker, to “Beyond100+.”
Bentley is well known for lavish, large and powerful vehicles with 12- and 8-cylinder engines that can cost millions of dollars for special- or exclusive-edition models. However, the automaker ended production of its famed “W12” engine earlier this year, as it focuses on PHEVs with 8- and 6-cylinder engines.
PHEVs feature an internal combustion engine combined with a hybrid system and have a larger battery than traditional hybrid vehicles as well as a plug to recharge the vehicle’s battery. They typically allow drivers to travel a certain number of miles using the battery before the engine is needed to power the car or truck.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More