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Trump’s Plan to Revive US Shipbuilding Would Take Billions and Many Years

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President Trump and members of Congress want to revive U.S. shipbuilding with subsidies and penalties against Chinese-built ships. But there are obstacles.President Trump and some members of Congress want to revive a depleted American shipbuilding industry to compete with China, the world’s biggest maker of ships by far.It is such a daunting goal that some shipping experts say it is destined to fail. More hopeful analysts and industry executives say the Trump administration and Congress could succeed but only if they are willing to spend billions of dollars over many years.One of the places where Washington’s maritime dreams might take shape or fall apart is a shipyard on the southern edge of Philadelphia that was bought last year by one of the world’s largest shipbuilding companies, a South Korean conglomerate known as Hanwha.“The shipbuilding industry in America is ready to step up,” David Kim, the chief executive of Hanwha Philly Shipyard, said in an interview.But to do that, he said, the yard must have a steady stream of orders for new vessels. And the federal government will need policies that subsidize American-built ships and penalize the use of foreign vessels by shipping companies that call on U.S. ports.Last month, Mr. Trump issued an executive order aimed at revitalizing American shipbuilding. “We’re going to be spending a lot of money on shipbuilding,” he said when announcing the order. “We’re way, way, way behind.”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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    Here’s What 7 Americans Think of Trump’s First 100 Days

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    The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have been a whirlwind of action, with the imposition of steep tariffs worldwide, the detention of immigrants and deep cuts to the federal work force.The New York Times has been talking with a group of voters who all cast their ballots in last November’s election with some trepidation. While they had expressed a range of hopes and concerns about the new administration, they have now seen enough to make some early judgments at the close of the first 100 days. (A recent Times/Siena College poll also found that majorities of voters, even many who approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing, view his first few months as “chaotic” and “scary.”)‘I don’t regret voting for him.’Jaime Escobar Jr., 46, from Roma, TexasAs mayor of the small border town of Roma, Jaime Escobar Jr. was accustomed to assessing whether strategies were working. At this point, Mr. Escobar remained mostly optimistic, but he was still wary.“I’m not saying I’m 100 percent happy with everything, but for the most part, I feel that Trump is tackling the issues that the American voters thought were important,” he said, referring to immigration and the economy. “I don’t regret voting for him.”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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    What to Know About Who Pays the Higher Costs of Trump’s Tariffs

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    President Trump’s latest tariffs are about to become an unavoidable and expensive reality for American businesses and for people who rely on foreign goods.Shoppers buying clothes from retailers in China may soon pay more than twice as much, now that a special exemption for lower-value imports is disappearing. And companies involved in international trade must now make even more complicated calculations to decide how much they owe in tariffs.“Maybe 3 percent of the people are well prepared,” said Jeremy Page, a founding partner of Page Fura, an international trade law firm, whose clients include large companies. “And that might even be charitable.”Imports from China have been hit with tariffs of 145 percent. That means for every $100 worth of goods a business buys from that country, it has to pay $145 to the federal government. Goods from most other countries have a new 10 percent tax, though that could rise if the countries do not reach trade agreements with the United States by July. And there are separate tariffs on cars, steel and aluminum. Mr. Trump has also said he wants to impose new tariffs on pharmaceuticals and computer chips.Mr. Trump contends that the tariffs will encourage businesses to produce goods in the United States. The tariffs on Chinese goods will almost certainly reduce imports from the country. But American businesses will not be able to quickly get goods from elsewhere — U.S. imports from China totaled $439 billion last year — and they will end up owing huge amounts in tariffs.A garment factory in Guangzhou, China. Imports from China have been hit with tariffs of 145 percent. Qilai Shen for 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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    Small Businesses Face a ‘Tornado’ of Challenges: Cuts, Freezes and Now Tariffs

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    President Trump vowed to aid entrepreneurs by reducing taxes and slicing red tape. But some owners say other policies have put them at a disadvantage.It was a bad week for Ben Coryell, who runs a wilderness guiding company in Golden, Colo.He got several calls from customers who wanted to cancel their climbing courses and mountaineering expeditions over the summer, often citing second thoughts about big purchases as the Trump administration has thrown the economy into turmoil with eye-watering tariffs.At the same time, Mr. Coryell is wondering how long his business, Golden Mountain Guides, can continue to offer those trips, as personnel cuts at the National Park Service have held up the processing of the permits he needs to operate along high-demand routes. And with those cuts leaving fewer rangers on patrol, he fears that unlicensed operators could run amok.So far he hasn’t laid anyone off, but it seems increasingly likely that he may have to.“It’s really starting to feel like a lot of the operations we’ve depended on might have to be bumped for the next number of years until we can find a healthy status quo,” he said.Helmets on display at Golden Mountain Guides.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesThousands of entrepreneurs are finding themselves in similar positions as they confront the blizzard of changes from Washington over the last two and a half months. Funding freezes, staffing cuts to federal agencies and an immigration crackdown — along with, of course, tariffs — are throwing many into turmoil, with little certainty about how to proceed.“It’s feeling like a tornado to small-business owners,” said Natalie Madeira Cofield, chief executive of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, which supports initiatives to help companies with fewer than 10 employees. “This is an unprecedented 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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    Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Legal Rationale for Tariffs on China

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    The New Civil Liberties Alliance — a nonprofit group that describes itself as battling “violations by the administrative state” — sued the federal government on Thursday over the means by which it imposed steep new levies on Chinese imports earlier this year.The new filing, which the group said was the first such lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration over its tariffs, set the stage for what may become a closely watched legal battle. It comes on the heels of President Trump’s separate announcement on Wednesday of broader, more extensive tariffs targeting many U.S. trading partners around the world.At issue are the tariffs that Mr. Trump announced on China in February and expanded in March. To impose them, Mr. Trump cited a 1970s law that generally grants the president sweeping powers during an economic emergency, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.Mr. Trump charged that an influx of illegal drugs from China constituted a threat to the United States. But the alliance argued in the lawsuit, on behalf of Simplified, a Pensacola, Fla.-based company, that the administration had misapplied the law. Instead, the group said the law “does not allow a president to impose tariffs,” but rather is supposed to be reserved for putting in place trade embargoes and sanctions against “dangerous foreign actors.”Port Manatee in Palmetto, Fla., on TuesdayScott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Trump cited that same law as one of the legal justifications for the expansive global tariffs he announced with an executive order on Wednesday. That order raised the tariff rate on China to at least 54 percent, adding new levies on top of those that the president imposed earlier this year.Mr. Trump’s new order specifically described the U.S. trade deficit with other nations as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”For now, the alliance asked the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida to block implementation and enforcement of the president’s earlier tariffs on China. “You can look through the statute all day long; you’re not going to see the president may put tariffs on the American people once he declares an emergency,” said John J. Vecchione, senior litigation counsel for the alliance.A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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    Why Did Trump Impose Tariffs, and What’s Next? Everything to Know.

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    President Trump announced what could be one of the most drastic economic policy changes in decades on Wednesday, when he substituted America’s longstanding system of taxing imports with a new tariff system of his own devising.The president said the tariffs would reverse decades of what he called unfair treatment by the rest of the world and result in factories and jobs moving back to the United States.“The markets are going to boom” and “the country is going to boom,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday, as global financial markets suffered their biggest rout in years. He added that other countries “have taken advantage of us for many, many years.”Economists’ estimates have been far more grim, with most predicting that the president’s sweeping tariffs and likely retaliation will slow U.S. economic growth, push up costs for consumers and make life difficult for businesses that depend on international supply chains.The president’s measure is both consequential and complicated. Here’s what you need to know.What did the president just do?Mr. Trump announced two big tariff plans that apply to most of the world. One component is a “base line” tariff of 10 percent that will apply broadly to nearly all U.S. imports, except for products coming from Canada and Mexico.The second measure is what the president is calling a “reciprocal” tariff. That levy will apply to 57 countries that Mr. Trump says have high tariffs and other unfair economic practices that have hurt American exporters. He said this is a reciprocal tariff because it will match the way other countries treat the United States.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 Order Could Cripple Federal Worker Unions Fighting DOGE Cuts

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    The move added to the list of actions by President Trump that use the powers of his office to weaken perceived enemies.Federal worker unions have sought over the past two months to lead the resistance to President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, filing lawsuits, organizing protests and signing up new members by the thousands.This week, Mr. Trump struck back with a potentially crippling blow.In a sweeping executive order denouncing the unions as “hostile” to his agenda, the president cited national security concerns to remove some one million civil servants across more than a dozen agencies from the reach of organized labor, eliminating the unions’ power to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.A lawsuit accompanying the executive order, filed by the administration in federal court in Texas, asks a judge to give the president permission to rescind collective bargaining agreements, citing national security interests and saying the agreements had “hamstrung” executive authority.Labor leaders vowed on Friday to challenge the Trump actions in court. But, barring a legal intervention, the moves could kneecap federal unions and protections for many civil service employees just as workers brace for a new round of job cuts across the government.“They are hobbling the union, ripping up collective bargaining agreements, and then they will come for the workers,” said Brian Kelly, a Michigan-based employee of the Environmental Protection Agency who heads a local of the American Federation of Government Employees, the country’s largest federal employee union. “So, it’s a worst-case scenario.”The move added to the list of actions by Mr. Trump to use the levers of the presidency to weaken perceived enemies, in this case seeking to neutralize groups that represent civil servants who make up the “deep state” he is trying to dismantle. In issuing the order, Mr. Trump said he was using congressionally granted powers to designate certain sectors of the federal work force central to “national security missions,” and exempt from collective-bargaining requirements. Employees of some agencies, like the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., are already excluded from collective bargaining for these reasons.Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.

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    Trump’s New Crackdown on China Is Just Beginning

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    The administration is positioning itself to clamp down on Chinese investment and access to technology. But the wild card may be the president himself.President Trump’s tough talk on China typically centers on tariffs. But a closer look at the decisions he has made since taking office shows that the president is considering a far wider set of economic restrictions on Beijing, ones that could hasten America’s split from a critical trading partner.The Trump administration has so far proposed expanding restrictions on investments flowing between the United States and China. It has appointed officials who, because of national security concerns, are likely to push for more curbs on Chinese investments and technology sales to China. And Mr. Trump has ushered in a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports, a move that he called an “opening salvo.”After years in which officials from both parties gradually pared back America’s economic relationship with China, Mr. Trump’s moves suggest that he is prepared to sever ties more aggressively.Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said the investment memorandum that the administration issued on Friday read like “a call to finish the unfinished task of fully unwinding commercial ties with China.”“So far, pragmatists have prevailed in getting a more narrow version of decoupling,” Ms. Sacks said.The pronouncements could be “a bargaining tool” for Mr. Trump to kick off negotiations with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, Ms. Sacks said. “But should that fall apart or not work out — which is probably most likely — I see this as the blueprint to finish the job of decoupling.”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 Tests Fed’s Independence With Order Expanding Authority Over Agencies

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    The Federal Reserve’s independence from the White House has long been enshrined in the law. But an executive order that President Trump signed this week seeking to extend his administration’s reach over independent agencies is prompting concerns about how much further he will go to challenge that separation.Mr. Trump’s directive took aim at regulatory agencies that had typically operated with limited political interference as authorized by Congress.The order partly shielded the Fed by exempting the central bank’s decisions on interest rates. Those are voted on at every meeting by seven presidentially appointed members of the Board of Governors, who typically serve 14-year terms, as well as a rotating set of five presidents from the regional reserve banks.But the order sought to exert authority over how the Fed oversees Wall Street, decisions that are ratified with majority support by the board.The order was the president’s latest attempt to centralize the executive branch’s power over the government. It requires independent organizations to submit proposed rule changes to the White House for review and gives the Office of Management and Budget oversight of how these institutions spend funds and set priorities. It also asserts that the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretations of the law are binding and that alternative interpretations require authorization.The expansive nature of the order has raised questions about whether Mr. Trump’s decree is legally applicable to an institution like the Fed. It has also fueled speculation that the president — who has a history of trying to influence the central bank’s decision on interest rates — may eventually turn his scrutiny to monetary policy decisions.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