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- in Economy
Chobani Plans to Invest Over $1 Billion in New N.Y. Factory
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
- in Economy
After Trump Spares Apple, Other Businesses Want a Tariffs Break
Retail executives huddled with the president amid fears that tariffs could result in higher prices.When President Trump’s steep tariffs threatened to send the price of iPhones soaring, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, called the White House — and soon secured a reprieve for his company and the broader electronics industry.Almost immediately, top aides to Mr. Trump insisted they had not strayed from their promise to apply import taxes across the economy with minimal, if any, exceptions. But the carve-out still caught the attention of many businesses nationwide, igniting a fresh scramble for similar help in the throes of a global trade war.Top lobbying groups for the agriculture, construction, manufacturing, retail and technology industries have pleaded with the White House in recent days to relax more of its tariffs, with many arguing that there are some products they must import simply because they are too expensive or impractical to produce in the United States.On Monday, executives from retailers including Home Depot, Target and Walmart became the latest to raise their concerns directly with Mr. Trump, as the industry continues to brace for the possibility that steep taxes on imports could result in price increases for millions of American consumers.“We had a productive meeting with President Trump and our retail peers to discuss the path forward on trade, and we remain committed to delivering value for American consumers,” a Target spokesman, Jim Joice, said in a statement.Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive, has previously acknowledged the many “variables” surrounding Mr. Trump’s tariffs and retail prices. A spokeswoman for Walmart confirmed the meeting on Monday, describing the conversation in a statement as “productive.” Other companies did not respond to requests for comment.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
- in Economy
Peter Navarro: The Architect of Trump’s Tariffs
On a clear day last July in Miami, Peter Navarro emerged from four months in federal prison, where he’d been imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Mr. Navarro had refused to testify in an investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an action he described as a defense of the Constitution.Just hours after his release from prison, Mr. Navarro flew to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention in support of Donald J. Trump’s re-election.“They convicted me, they jailed me. Guess what? They did not break me,” he said that night, punctuating each word as the crowd roared. It was an exercise in loyalty to Mr. Trump that seems to have paid off.For much of Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Navarro, a trade adviser, had been sidelined, mocked and minimized by other officials who saw his protectionist views on trade as factually wrong and dangerous for the country.But in the second Trump administration, Mr. Navarro, 75, an economist and trade skeptic, has been newly empowered. He returned to government more confident in his revanchist vision for the American economy, more dismissive of his critics, and with more than a dozen trade-related executive orders already drafted, many of which the president has since signed. Mr. Trump also came back to Washington more determined to finally realize the trade views he has held for decades, that an unfair trading system was ripping America off and needed to be radically changed.Why Peter Navarro switched sidesAna Swanson explains how China’s entry into the World Trade Organization turned Navarro, a Southern California professor, into President Trump’s biggest trade warrior.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
- in Economy
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
- in Economy
The ‘China Shock’ Offers a Lesson. It Isn’t the One Trump Has Learned.
When Congress voted to normalize trade relations with China at the beginning of this century, U.S. manufacturers braced for a stream of cheap goods to begin flowing into U.S. ports.Instead, they got a flood. Imports from China nearly tripled from 1999 to 2005, and American factories, with their higher wages and stricter safety standards, couldn’t compete. The “China shock,” as it has come to be known, wiped out millions of jobs in the years that followed, leaving lasting scars on communities from Michigan to Mississippi.To President Trump and his supporters, those job losses are an object lesson in the damage caused by decades of U.S. trade policy — damage he promises that his tariffs will now help to reverse. On Wednesday, he further raised duties on imports from China, well beyond 100 percent, even as he suspended steep tariffs he had imposed on other trading partners.Few economists endorse the idea that the United States should try to bring back manufacturing jobs en masse. Even fewer believe that tariffs would be an effective tool for doing so.But economists who have studied the issue also argue that Mr. Trump misunderstands the nature of the China shock. The real lesson of the episode wasn’t about trade at all, they say — it was about the toll that rapid economic changes can take on workers and communities — and by failing to understand that, Mr. Trump risks repeating the mistakes he claims he has vowed to correct.“For the last 20 years we’ve been hearing about the China shock and how brutal it was and how people can’t adjust,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization. “And finally, after most places have moved on, now we’re shocking them again.”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
- in Economy
Trump’s Tariffs Could Impact Apparel Companies That Make Clothing in the U.S.
On the open 15th floor of a loft building in Midtown Manhattan, about a dozen skilled workers make their way through piles of pants, stitching each piece together with focus and precision. Some of the items are designed by Outlier, a fashion brand that produces its smaller runs and experimental products with the garment district’s ecosystem of contract manufacturers.It’s the kind of work that should get a boost from the stiff tariffs newly imposed on products entering the United States from nearly every other country. But the storeroom where Outlier keeps its fabric tells a more complicated story.The rolls of cloth and boxes of recycled goose down come from Italy and Switzerland, Thailand and New Zealand, countries with specialized industries developed over generations that are unlikely to be recreated in America. Take the linen, made from flax grown in a coastal region stretching from northern France to the Netherlands.“It would take a decade to get a crop growing,” said Tyler Clemens, Outlier’s co-founder. A linen shipment was headed for the cutting room; Mr. Clemens had just gotten the bill from the Department of Homeland Security with a charge labeled “IEEPA-RECIPROCAL,” after the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, one of the laws used to justify President Trump’s tariff measures.A fabric order for Outlier arriving at a factory in Manhattan. The fabric was made in Japan and dyed in Portugal before being shipped to the United States, where it incurred a tariff.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesOutlier’s material comes from abroad, as do some of its finished products. Karsten Moran 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
- in Economy
Inside Factories in China, a Struggle to Survive Trump’s Tariffs
As President Trump ratcheted up new tariffs on goods from China to 125 percent this week, the mood in the dusty streets and small factories of southeastern China was a mixture of anger, worry and resolve.Thousands of export-oriented small factories in or near Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southeastern China, have played a central role in the country’s rapid economic development over the past half century. Quick to supply almost any manufactured product at a low cost, they employ millions of migrant workers from all over China.Now many of these small factories, cornerstones of the Chinese economy, are confronting difficult times. Clothing factory managers fret about a spate of orders from American customers being canceled at the last minute, saddling them with losses. Managers of factories making machinery wonder whether their low costs will help them survive. And workers hope they will still have jobs in the coming weeks and months.A small factory in Guangzhou, China, makes ovens, fryers and other equipment for restaurants and backyard barbecuers.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesA few garment factories that mainly supplied the United States market have already closed temporarily as their owners wait for more clarity on tariffs. Managers of many more factories are now hurrying to find buyers in other countries or chase down customers in China.But China already faced a huge glut of factory capacity even before Mr. Trump began closing the American market this year to many imports from China. Customers elsewhere have demanded ever deeper discounts.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
