<!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>The change has been particularly visible over the past year, during which health care has been responsible for about a third of all employment growth, while other categories, like retail and manufacturing, have stayed essentially flat.–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>The nation’s corps of nurses, oncologists, lab technicians, anesthesiologists and other health-related […] More
At the worst point of the labor shortage that emerged in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdowns, Thunderdome Restaurant Group had 100 people sign up for a job interview and only 15 show up. Of the two workers it hired, one never came in.The job market has cooled significantly since then, and Joe Lanni, who runs the Cincinnati-based company with his brother, now faces a different dilemma: how to grow the business, which has over 50 locations, while controlling costs as concerns about the economy spread.So they’re rethinking menu items like freshly made tortillas that require a dedicated full-time worker. They are also planning to shutter a handful of locations where sales have been softest, while adding more outposts of their fast casual restaurants that are doing well.Uncertainty about the economy has skyrocketed as President Trump has begun to radically reshape the global trading system with tariffs, cut off a crucial supply of workers with an immigration crackdown and floated big changes to the rules and regulations that govern how businesses operate. Consumers, who fuel the American economy, have become more hesitant to spend, and according to recent surveys, both the services and manufacturing sectors are slowing.But the economy does not appear to be at the cliff’s edge just yet, and employers like Mr. Lanni don’t want to be too cautious and miss out on opportunities.As his restaurants gear up for outdoor service this summer, Mr. Lanni said, he still expects head count across the company to swell by about 200 people, to around 1,500 employees, before receding in the fall. The stakes are high, however.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
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
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
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
The Treasury secretary urged executives and entrepreneurs to look beyond the Trump administration’s trade agenda.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged skittish global business leaders on Monday to ignore President Trump’s economic naysayers and ramp up investment in the United States, defending an economic agenda that economists warn will slow economic growth and exacerbate inflation.Speaking to executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers, Mr. Bessent argued that the Trump administration’s economic plans go beyond trade policy and will pay off in the long run. He urged them to also focus on Mr. Trump’s plans to cut taxes and regulation, which he said would spur job creation and output.“Tariffs are engineered to encourage companies like yours to invest directly in the United States,” Mr. Bessent said in remarks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. “You’ll be glad you did — not only because we have the most productive work force in the world. But because we will soon have the most favorable tax and regulatory environment as well.”His comments came just hours after Mr. Trump ordered up new tariffs on foreign film producers, a decision that left many in Hollywood puzzled about how such a tax would work.The Treasury secretary has been working to ease concerns among investors that Mr. Trump’s trade plans will destabilize the global economy. Last month the president levied tariffs on countries around the world and escalated a trade fight with China, which sent financial markets plunging.Since then, Mr. Bessent has been racing to negotiate trade deals with dozens of countries. He has also signaled that the China tariffs are not sustainable, offering hope that Mr. Trump would soon begin negotiations to lower them.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
But the effects of the levies, which have created uncertainty for businesses, have not yet been fully felt.The labor market remained sound in March, with job openings declining but layoffs remaining near record lows, while rates of new hiring were slow but steady, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday.The numbers from last month are a snapshot of the state of the U.S. economy and labor market before the start of the global trade volatility brought on by President Trump’s tariff campaign.“It reflects a labor market that ‘could have been,’ given the damage tariffs will do,” argued Guy Berger, the director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies the labor market. “We have the foundations of a labor market stabilization,” he added, “but trade policy has other ideas.”The prevailing environment before April of subdued hiring and few firings was not an easy one for active job seekers, especially in certain sectors like tech and manufacturing. But the stability of the overall job market was undeniable — so much so that some labor economists started to worry that the conditions bordered on stagnant.Now, the economy is facing a radically different set of challenges.Consumer sentiment has plunged since January, when the import taxes were announced by the White House, as fears of both job loss and higher inflation have surged among households and top business leaders.The effects of the tariffs on shipping have not yet been fully felt. But experts in global freight logistics, such as Craig Fuller, the founder of FreightWaves, expect that to change in the coming days and weeks as companies face tariffs ranging from 10 percent to well over 120 percent on many Chinese goods.Federal job openings declined by 36,000 in March, a result of the Trump administration’s steep cutbacks to the federal civil service. And in the overall labor market, job openings fell by 288,000. Some financial analysts are focused on a broader, monthslong pre-tariff slowdown.“The main story is that job openings are down,” said Neil Dutta, the head of economics at the research firm Renaissance Macro. “We are at the point where opening declines push up unemployment.”The jobs report for April will help fill out some of the economic picture. Economists expect unemployment to have been largely unchanged and for moderate job growth to have continued. But forecasters are bracing for surprises because of the uncertainty surrounding the tariffs.The employment picture and consumer spending remain bright for now — a point that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has emphasized in his public remarks.But many analysts, including Daniel Altman, the chief economist at Instawork, a job search and recruitment site, are in wait-and-see mode.“I think the jobs report will be more revealing,” Mr. Altman said. More
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
U.S. employers accelerated hiring in March, a surprising show of strength that analysts warned might be the high-water mark for the labor market as the Trump administration’s economic policies began to play out.Employers added 228,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, a figure that was far more than expected and was up from a revised total of 117,000 in February. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent, from 4.1 percent.The data, based on surveys of households and businesses conducted in the second week of March, do not reflect the sweeping tariff announcement that rattled markets this week, or the full extent of the job cuts resulting from President Trump’s efforts to reduce the federal work force.The market reaction to the report was scant, as traders were preoccupied with the threat of a trade war. The S&P 500 fell 6 percent on Friday. The glum investor mood followed Thursday’s huge sell-off, the biggest since the height of the pandemic, over the rollout of Mr. Trump’s worldwide tariff campaign.Still, Mr. Trump was quick to seize on the report as proof that his economic agenda was working. In a post on social media Friday morning, he wrote: “GREAT JOB NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT’S ALREADY WORKING.”Unemployment rate More
