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    Europe Braces for Trump: ‘Worst Economic Nightmare Has Come True’

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    The United States is the biggest trading partner for the European Union and Britain, whose economies could be at risk from the president-elect’s policies.The outlook for Europe’s economy has been disappointing.Last week — after Donald J. Trump’s presidential election — it got worse.Deep uncertainty about the Trump administration’s policies on trade, technology, Ukraine, climate change and more is expected to chill investment and hamstring growth. The launch of a possible tariff war by the United States, the biggest trading partner and closest ally of the European Union and Britain, would hammer major industries like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and machinery.And the need to raise military spending because of doubts about America’s guarantees in Europe would further strain national budgets and increase deficits.In addition, the president-elect’s more confrontational attitude toward China could pressure Europe to pick sides or face retribution.“Europe’s worst economic nightmare has come true,” said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at the Dutch bank ING. The developments, he warned, could push the eurozone into “a full-blown recession” next year.With political turmoil in Germany and France, Europe’s two largest economies, this latest blow could hardly come at a worse time.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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    With Trump Tariffs Looming, Businesses Try to ‘Run From a Moving Target’

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    Rick Muskat woke up the morning after the election with an urgent task. He got his agent in China on the phone at 4:30 a.m. Beijing time and pressed him to ask their factory how many more pairs of men’s dress shoes they could make before Chinese New Year, at the end of January.“I told them if they could make an additional 30,000 pairs, we would take that,” Mr. Muskat, the co-owner of a shoe company called Deer Stags, said on Thursday.The impetus was not a sudden jump in demand for shoes but the looming threat of steep tariffs on Chinese products. By stockpiling now, Mr. Muskat reckoned, his company could avoid at least some of the levies that President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to impose when he takes office in January.“We’re going to take whatever they can make,” Mr. Muskat said.The election of Mr. Trump is already cascading through global supply chains, where companies are grappling with his promises to remake international trade by raising the tariffs the United States puts on foreign products. Mr. Trump has floated a variety of plans — including a 10 to 20 percent tax on most foreign products, and a 60 percent tariff on goods from China — that would raise the surcharge American importers pay to a level not seen in generations.Much remains unclear about his proposals, including which countries other than China would face tariffs, what products might be excluded and when they would take effect. But given Mr. Trump’s history of imposing taxes and the challenges those pose to global businesses that depend on moving products across borders, many executives are not waiting to see what he does.Some, like Mr. Muskat, are preparing to stock up their U.S. warehouses before tariffs might go into effect. Others have been accelerating plans to move out of China, reaching out to lobbyists and lawyers in Washington and calling board meetings to discuss what the tariff threats could mean for their businesses.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

  • 138 Shares189 Views

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    Could Trump’s Tariffs Lead to Higher Prices? Here’s What to Know.

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    The president-elect says that tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” You may be hearing it a lot.President-elect Donald J. Trump has professed a belief in the power of tariffs for decades. Now, as he prepares to take office, they are a central part of his economic plan.Mr. Trump argues that steep tariffs on foreign goods will help benefit U.S. manufacturing and create jobs. His proposals would raise tariffs to a level not seen in generations. Many economists have warned of potentially harmful consequences from such a move, including higher costs for American households and businesses, and globally destabilizing trade wars.Here are five crucial things to know about Mr. Trump’s sweeping trade plans.Mr. Trump has floated several hefty tariff plans.While campaigning for the White House, Mr. Trump offered up a running list of tariffs. He talked about a “universal” tariff of 10 to 20 percent on most foreign products. He has proposed tariffs of 60 percent or more on Chinese goods. And he has suggested removing permanent normal trading relations with China, which would result in an immediate increase in tariffs on Chinese imports.Mr. Trump has also promoted the idea of a “reciprocal” tariff, in which the United States would match the tariff rates that other countries put on American goods. He has suggested using tariff revenue to replace income taxes. And he has threatened tariffs of 100, 200 or even 1,000 percent on Mexico, saying the country should do more to stop flows of migrants and shipments of Chinese cars.The Biden administration has also raised tariffs on goods from China, but Mr. Trump’s plans are much larger — affecting trillions of dollars of products, rather than tens of billions.Mr. Trump says foreign companies pay the tariffs. That’s usually wrong.A tariff is a tax that is put on a product when it crosses a border. For instance, a company that brings its product into the United States — the importer — actually pays the tariff to the U.S. government.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

  • 138 Shares179 Views

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    Another Jolt of Uncertainty for a Global Economy Mired in It

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    The U.S. presidential election result has ensured a sharp turn in economic policy expected to upend global commerce and diverge from decades of American norms.The U.S. presidential election is over. What remains is a disorienting miasma of fresh economic uncertainty.Despite reams of campaign proposals, just how President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration will handle policy decisions that are crucial to the global economy’s path — on trade, technology, climate, industrial policy and more — is still unclear.Meanwhile, pre-election sources of instability keep spinning. War rumbles on in Ukraine. Escalating conflict in the Middle East could reignite a rise in food and energy prices. China, a vital engine of global growth, is trying to resuscitate its flattened economy. Many poor and middle-income countries face an unscalable wall of debt.Increasing bouts of extreme weather continue to destroy crops, wreck cities and swell the flow of migrants from economically devastated regions. And advances in artificial intelligence are poised to eliminate, create and reconfigure tens of millions of jobs.Then there is the hangover from the pandemic. Philip N. Jefferson, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, has said policymakers are still trying to understand the economic aftereffects of this “once-in-a-century disturbance of worldwide consequence.”Inflation, in particular, has become harder to predict in the pandemic’s aftermath as political and military tensions have risen, he noted.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 Economic Plans Could Worsen Inflation, Economists Say

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    Many Americans fretted about inflation as they headed out to vote. But Donald J. Trump’s approach comes with risks of a renewed boost.Americans have been chafing against higher prices for years now, propelling unhappy voters to the polls and helping to deliver the White House to the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump.But how Mr. Trump’s policies would help on costs is unclear. And in fact, many economists have warned that his proposals could instead make inflation worse.Inflation measures how much prices are rising over a given period, usually a year. It picked up sharply starting in 2022 and remained rapid in 2023. While prices are no longer climbing as quickly, those two years of rapid increase have left costs for many common purchases — from eggs to apartments and restaurant meals — notably more expensive than consumers remember them being as recently as 2019 or 2020.For months, that has weighed on consumer confidence and caused many voters to give the nation’s economic performance poor marks, even though the unemployment rate is very low and companies have been hiring.Voters regularly cited the economy as a top concern in polls headed into the election, and they often suggested that they thought Mr. Trump would do a better job in managing it. While the economic perception gap between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the democratic candidate, closed somewhat over time, it never fully faded.While rapid inflation had been a global trend, Mr. Trump regularly pinned the blame for it on the Biden administration. And exit polls suggested that voters were indeed worried about the economy as they headed out to vote. Roughly three in four voters said that inflation had caused their families hardship over the past year.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

  • 175 Shares189 Views

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    U.S. Factory Towns Laid Low by the ‘China Shock’ Are Benefiting From New Investments

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    Communities that suffered the worst of plant closings in recent decades are now gaining an outsize share of fresh investment and new jobs.For much of the last half century, economic life in the heart of North Carolina has been dominated by factory closings, joblessness and downgraded expectations. Textile mills and furniture plants have been undercut by low-priced imports from Mexico and China. Tobacco processing jobs have disappeared.Yet over the last several years, an infusion of investment in cutting-edge industries like biotechnology, computer chips and electric vehicles has lifted the fortunes of long-struggling communities.North Carolina presents a conspicuous example of this trend, yet a similar story is playing out elsewhere. From industrial swaths of the Midwest to factory towns in the South, areas that suffered the most wrenching downsides of trade are now capturing the greatest shares of investment into forward-tilting industries, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a public policy research organization in Washington.As furniture manufacturing and textile jobs vanished, Chatham County, N.C., suffered the consequences for decades.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesThe Plant in Pittsboro, N.C., is home to a variety of small businesses and includes outdoor event spaces and restaurants.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesBrookings researchers examined pledges of private investment across the United States, using data compiled by the Biden administration as part of its campaign to subsidize domestic production of computer chips and electric vehicles. They also tapped a Massachusetts Institute of Technology database that tracks investments in clean energy. Over the last three years, $736 billion in investment has been promised for these key industries, the researchers found.When they mapped the investments, the Brookings team concluded that nearly a third of the total is flowing into communities that experienced the worst effects of the so-called China Shock — the factory closures that followed China’s entry to the global trading system in 2001.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

  • 138 Shares199 Views

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    Working-Class Voters Are Pivotal. Both Candidates Are Vying for Their Support.

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    Kamala Harris’s plans offer a bigger boost for the working class, but Donald Trump seems to be convincing voters.Bernadette Daywalt had yet to decide whom to vote for in the presidential election. But the 69-year-old retiree said her decision would probably come down to economics.She and her 82-year-old sister have struggled to keep up with rising grocery prices over the past few years, and they now frequent a food pantry in the Philadelphia suburb where they live.“I think we’re headed downhill right now, with the cost of food, the cost of everything,” Ms. Daywalt said as she checked on her voter registration at an outreach van parked outside the Elmwood Park Zoo on a crisp October afternoon. She voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, and she felt better economically when he was president.Ms. Daywalt’s perceptions underscore a tough reality facing Democrats, who have been trying to recapture a working-class vote that has been slipping away from them.Many economists say Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic proposals would do more to help everyday Americans than the agenda put forward by former President Donald J. Trump. One model suggests that her package would boost post-tax income for the poorest Americans by 18 percent by 2026, much more than the 1.4 percent bump Mr. Trump’s ideas would offer.Income Effects of Trump vs. Harris Economic ProposalsAfter tax and transfers, estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model suggest that Kamala Harris’s proposals would boost low-income groups while costing rich ones.

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    Percent Change as of 2026
    Notes: Percent changes are from the baseline expectation for income in 2026. Baseline income is about $20,000 for the bottom quintile, $81,400 for the middle quintile and $327,000 for the group in the 90-95 percent range.Source: Penn Wharton Budget ModelBy 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

  • 125 Shares99 Views

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    Can Democrats Win Back Voters From Trump on Trade Policy?

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    The Biden administration has pursued a big shift in trade policy, but it’s not clear whether that will be enough to win votes.Since Donald J. Trump won over many working-class voters in 2016 with his vows to impose tariffs and rework “disastrous” trade deals, Democrats have been scrambling to win back supporters by taking a more protectionist trade approach.Over the last four years, the Biden administration spent more time emphasizing the harm trade policy has caused to American communities than the benefits. It hit the brakes on negotiating trade deals with other countries and chose to maintain and even increase Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products. And it pumped billions of dollars into new American factories to make semiconductors and solar panels.It’s a significant shift from the decades that both mainstream Democrats and Republicans spent working to promote trade and lower international barriers.For Vice President Kamala Harris, next week’s election will be a moment of truth for whether the strategy worked.Mr. Trump has helped bring trade to the forefront in presidential elections with his vitriolic criticisms of past policy and his proposals for high tariffs. It is an issue that resonates strongly with voters in Northern swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where manufacturing employment fell steeply in recent decades as factories moved abroad.Biden officials have been trying to persuade more trade-skeptical voters that their policies to encourage manufacturing in the United States are working, pointing to a recent surge in U.S. factory construction.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