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How Higher Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum Will Affect Companies

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Home builders, car manufacturers and can makers are among those that will see higher prices for materials. Those companies could charge customers more.President Trump has raised tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50 percent less than three months after imposing a 25 percent tariff on them. He said the move, made Wednesday, would help support U.S. steel companies, but many domestic businesses say that the latest increase would hurt them and raise prices for all Americans.U.S. home builders, car manufacturers, oil producers and can makers will be among the most affected. Many companies in those and other industries will likely pass on cost increases to their customers.“It means higher costs for consumers,” said Mary E. Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research organization in Washington that tends to favor lower trade barriers.These are some of the industries that could feel the biggest effects from Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs.American Steel MakersIndustry groups representing domestic steel producers praised the steeper levies, which they said could spur investment and create jobs in the United States.Kevin Dempsey, the president and chief executive at the American Iron and Steel Institute, said the latest increase would help U.S. steel producers compete with China and other countries that have flooded the global market with metal. Mr. Dempsey said the industry had worried that the 25 percent tariff on steel imports alone was not sufficient.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 Tariffs Drive a Rise in Trade Crime

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    As President Trump’s tariffs have ratcheted up in recent months, so have the mysterious solicitations some U.S. companies have received, offering them ways to avoid the taxes.Shipping companies, many of them based in China, have reached out to U.S. firms that import apparel, auto parts and jewelry, offering solutions that they say can make the tariffs go away.“We can avoid high duties from China, which we have already done many in the past,” read one email to a U.S. importer.“Beat U.S. Tariffs,” a second read, promising to cap the tariffs “at a flat 10%.” It added: “You ship worry free.”“Good News! The tariffs has been dropped finally!” another proclaimed.The proposals — which are circulating in emails, as well as in videos on TikTok and other platforms — reflect a new flood of fraudulent activity, according to company executives and government officials. As U.S. tariffs on foreign products have increased sharply in recent months, so have the incentives for companies to find ways around them.The Chinese firms advertising these services describe their methods as valid solutions. For a fee, they find ways to bring products to the United States with much lower tariffs. But experts say these practices are methods of customs fraud. The companies may be dodging tariffs by altering the information about the shipments that is given to the U.S. government to qualify for a lower tariff rate. Or they may move the goods to another country that is subject to a lower tariff before shipping them to the United States, a technique known as transshipment. More

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    Trump’s China Deal Frees Up Shipping. Will Goods Pour Into the U.S.?

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    The temporary lowering of tariffs may compel some U.S. businesses to order goods that they had held off buying after President Trump raised them to 145 percent.For weeks, Jay Foreman, a toy company executive, froze all shipments from China, leaving Care Bears and Tonka trucks piled up at Chinese factories, to avoid paying President Trump’s crippling 145 percent tariff.But as soon as his phone lit up at 4 a.m. on Monday alerting him that Mr. Trump was lowering tariffs on Chinese imports for 90 days, Mr. Foreman, the chief executive of Basic Fun, which is based in Florida, jumped out of bed and called his suppliers, instructing them to start shipping merchandise immediately.“We’re starting to move everything,” Mr. Foreman said. “We have to call trucking companies in China to schedule pickups at the factories. And we have to book space on these container ships now.”If other executives follow Mr. Foreman’s lead, a torrent of goods could soon pour into the United States. While logistics experts say global shipping lines and American ports appear capable of handling high volumes over the next three months, they caution that whiplash tariff policies are piling stress onto the companies that transport goods around the world.“This keeps supply chain partners in limbo about what’s next, and leads to ongoing disruption,” said Rico Luman, senior economist for transport, logistics and automotive at ING Research.After talks this weekend in Geneva, the Trump administration lowered tariffs on many Chinese imports to 30 percent from 145 percent. China cut its tariffs on American goods to 10 percent from 125 percent. If a deal is not reach in 90 days, the tariffs could go back up, though Mr. Trump said on Monday that they would not rise to 145 percent. Some importers may hold off on ordering from China, hoping for even lower tariffs later.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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    Can President Trump Turn Back the Economic Clock?

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    Historians make their names by persuading people to see patterns in the chaos. In the late 1970s, the French historian Fernand Braudel thought that one of those patterns was about to repeat. Braudel was a student of the slow-moving currents that shape events. He wanted people to pay less attention to great men like Napoleon and more to seemingly humble things like the potato, a New World import that made it easier for European farmers to grow more food than they needed; this surplus, in turn, gave a wider array of Europeans time to engage in new hobbies like complaining about their rulers. One might say that he regarded the potato as the cause of Napoleon.Listen to this article, read by Malcolm HillgartnerIn the third volume of his epic “Civilization and Capitalism,” published in 1979, Braudel explored the forces that made one city at a time the economic center of the Western world, from Venice to Amsterdam to London, and then inexorably lifted up another in its place. He wrote that cities rose as centers of commerce, and then, as they prospered, they began to invest their surpluses in building new centers, engineering their own declines. Commerce moved on, leaving a financial hub behind.Braudel’s account ended with the decline of Amsterdam, the entrepôt of Europe through the 17th and into the 18th century, a city of astonishing wealth and diversity. Wide-eyed visitors wrote of its wonders with the same astonishment as later generations would write of New York. The young czar of Russia went home so impressed that he built St. Petersburg in its image. But as Amsterdam grew fat and happy, its merchants became bankers and began to seek better returns in fast-growing London. Amsterdam, Braudel wrote, became “a society of rentier investors on the lookout for anything that would guarantee a quiet and privileged life,” a society that had moved on “from the healthy tasks of economic life to the more sophisticated games of the money market.”Braudel noted that London, too, eventually ceded its role, underwriting the rise of New York in the early 20th century. And in the late 1970s, he judged that New York was entering the “autumn” of its era as the center of the global economy. Commerce and industry were fleeing the city, leaving behind a thriving financial center — a sure sign in Braudel’s view that New York, and the nation it anchored, were on the edge of decline.Donald Trump became Donald Trump in that city, building towers and bankrupting casinos as Wall Street boomed and the working class faded away, and he emerged with a similarly bleak view of America’s prospects. His career as a political figure has been built on his conviction that America is losing its wealth and its power. If Ronald Reagan filled voters with hope, Trump offers to keep them company in their misery. He has an intuition for the things that people fear and is comfortable saying what other politicians won’t. Where other presidents intone that it’s still Morning in America, Trump has touched a nerve by insisting that it’s not long before midnight.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 Signs Executive Order Walking Back Some Auto Tariffs

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    Most levies on imported cars and car parts will remain in place, but automakers have secured some relaxation of the trade policy.President Trump signed a pair of executive orders on Tuesday that walked back some tariffs for carmakers, removing levies that Ford, General Motors and others have complained would backfire on U.S. manufacturing by raising the cost of production and squeezing their profits.The changes will modify Mr. Trump’s tariffs so carmakers that pay a 25 percent tariff on auto imports are not subject to other levies, for example on steel and aluminum, or on certain imports from Canada and Mexico, according to the orders. However, the rules do not appear to protect automakers from tariffs on steel and aluminum that their suppliers pay and pass on.Carmakers will also be able to qualify for tariff relief for a proportion of the cost of their imported components, though those benefits will be phased out over the next two years.At a in Michigan on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump said that he was showing “a little flexibility” to the automakers but that he wanted them to make their components in the United States.“We gave them a little time before we slaughter them if they don’t do this,” he said.The decision to reduce the scope of the tariffs is the latest sign that the Trump administration’s decision to impose stiff levies on nearly all trading partners has created challenges and economic uncertainty for American companies. But even with the concessions announced Tuesday, administration policies will add thousands of dollars to car prices and endanger the financial health of automakers and their suppliers, analysts said.Mr. Trump signed the executive orders aboard Air Force One as he flew to Michigan, home to America’s largest automakers, for a speech marking his 100 days in office.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 Administration Looks to Take Steps to Ease Pain From Car Tariffs

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    The planned concessions to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States would still leave substantial tariffs on imported cars and car parts.The Trump administration said it plans to announce measures as early as Tuesday to ease the impact of tariffs on imported cars and car parts to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States.Tariffs of 25 percent on imported vehicles and on auto parts will remain in place. But the tariffs will be modified so that they are not “stacked” with other tariffs, for example on steel and aluminum, a White House spokesman said. Automakers will not have to pay tariffs on those metals, widely used in automobiles, on top of the tariffs on cars and parts.In addition, automakers will be reimbursed for some of the cost of tariffs on imported components. The reimbursement will amount to up to 3.75 percent of the value of a new car in the first year, but will be phased out over two years, the spokesman confirmed.A 25 percent tariff on imported cars took effect April 3. On Saturday, the tariffs are set to be extended to include imported parts.“President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a statement. “This deal is a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically, while providing runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment to invest in America and expand their domestic manufacturing.”But even with these changes, there will still be substantial tariffs on imported cars and auto parts, which will raise prices for new and used cars by thousands of dollars and increase the cost of repairs and insurance premiums.The modification to the tariffs was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Lutnick helped automakers secure a major exemption from tariffs in March and has taken on a role advocating relief for some industries hit by the levies.Automakers welcomed the change. “We believe the president’s leadership is helping level the playing field for companies like G.M. and allowing us to invest even more in the U.S. economy,” Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of General Motors, said in a statement on Monday. “We appreciate the productive conversations with the president and his administration and look forward to continuing to work together.” More

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    Howard Lutnick, Trump’s ‘Buoyant’ Trade Warrior, Flexes His Power Over Global Business

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    Since Howard Lutnick was tapped to serve as President Trump’s commerce secretary, executives from some of the world’s largest companies have been trying to win him over.Leaders of Nvidia, Facebook, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Alphabet have visited his newly purchased $25 million property in Washington — a 16,250-square-foot mansion that Mr. Lutnick, a billionaire, recently quipped would be “big enough for my ego” — to persuade him to adopt a business-friendly agenda.As Mr. Trump ratcheted up tariffs to levels not seen in a century, Ford Motor, General Motors and other companies that have built their businesses around international trade reached out to Mr. Lutnick in the hope that he could persuade the president to take a less aggressive approach. Some chief executives have put in calls to the commerce secretary at midnight.Mr. Lutnick, 63, heads a department that both promotes and regulates industry, and he has been put in charge of overseeing trade. As a result, he has found himself in a position of incredible influence, as the go-between for a president imposing sweeping tariffs and the industries being crushed by them.A former bond trader who amassed billions on Wall Street, Mr. Lutnick has become one of the loudest salesmen for tariffs in an administration generally unified on their benefits. He has publicly echoed the president’s message that big tariffs are needed to revive American industry, and that if companies don’t like them, they should build factories in the United States.But in internal conversations in the administration, he has often been a voice for moderation. He argued in favor of Mr. Trump’s pausing his global tariffs for 90 days after they sent convulsions through the stock and bond markets. And he has made the case to the president to grant relief to certain favored industries, helping them to win exemptions from billions of dollars of levies.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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    Chobani Plans to Invest Over $1 Billion in New N.Y. Factory

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    The company, which has branched out from Greek-style yogurt, will invest more than $1 billion in the plant in the town of Rome.Chobani got its start in 2005 in the middle of New York State, in a decades-old Kraft factory that had become defunct, initially hiring just a few of its workers to produce Greek-style yogurt.Two decades later, the company — now one of the nation’s biggest producers of dairy products — is opening another plant nearby, to significantly more fanfare and economic impact.Chobani and New York State plan to announce on Tuesday that the company will open a million-square-foot factory in Rome, N.Y., costing at least $1.2 billion, that will be able to make one billion pounds of dairy products a year. Company executives describe the plant, which they reckon will be the biggest dairy factory in the United States, as a much-needed expansion to fulfill growing demand.“We’ve been growing, but that has accelerated dramatically over the last few years, eating up a lot of our capacity,” Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview. “These are the preparations for growth that’s coming and that we’re experiencing.”The new manufacturing center, which is expected to nearly double Chobani’s work force in New York State, is the latest sign of the company’s ambitions. Chobani already claims to be one of the fastest-growing food companies in the United States, with net sales last year rising 17 percent, to $2.96 billion, and adjusted pretax earnings rising 26 percent, to $509 million.Chobani has said that it now controls about a fifth of the American yogurt market, citing Nielsen data. It has also branched out well beyond Greek-style yogurt, the product category it helped pioneer. The company now makes creamers, oat milk, and — since its $900 million acquisition of La Colombe in 2023 — coffee beverages. (Mr. Ulukaya last year also personally bought Anchor Brewing, a centenarian San Francisco brewer, after it went out of business.)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