Trump, Donald J

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7 Americans Weigh In on Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs

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President Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs this week on dozens of countries, with some of the steepest tariffs levied on some of America’s biggest trading partners. The move, arguably the most far-reaching of his second term so far, sent stocks into a nosedive and substantially raised the prospect of a recession.Voters were bracing for the effects in their own lives, but some said they were, for now, waiting and watching to see how all of this plays out.— More

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    Republicans Like to Cut Taxes. With Tariffs, Trump Is Raising Them.

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    President Trump’s tariffs are scrambling the Republican plan for the economy, long centered on tax cuts and growth.The Republican Party embarked this week on a haphazard experiment in economic policymaking, wagering that the United States can weather a monumental tax increase in the form of broad tariffs on imported goods as long as Congress also cuts taxes on income.It’s a mash-up that many investors, economists and even some G.O.P. lawmakers expect to be a failure.“I always think that with gambling, at least you have a chance of winning. This is worse than that,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist who worked for former President George W. Bush, said. “This is betting with the mafia. You’re going to lose.”President Trump’s plan to charge at least a 10 percent tariff on nearly all imports into the United States — along with much higher rates on goods from many countries — is the culmination of his quest to force companies to manufacture domestically, even if it comes at the expense of a relatively strong economy. Because tariffs are a type of taxation, Mr. Trump’s plan is among the largest tax increases in decades, analysts say, a policy change that sent the stock market reeling, paralyzed corporate investment and shoved the economy closer to a recession.At the same time, Republicans on Capitol Hill are plowing forward with legislation that would lock in lower taxes for American individuals and companies. There’s diminishing hope among Republicans that those cuts can make up for drag created by the tariffs. Some of Mr. Trump’s allies and tax cut enthusiasts, like Stephen Moore, his former economic adviser, have been begging the president for “more tax cuts and less tariffs, please.”Of course, Mr. Trump and the White House argue that tariffs are not taxes on Americans, but rather on foreign companies that will have to lower their prices to maintain access to the U.S. market. Mainstream economists have consistently found that tariffs raise prices for American consumers and companies, including domestic manufacturers who import materials to turn into final products.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 Is Defiant as Tariff Moves Roil Markets a Second Day

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    Two days after President Trump announced his expansive global tariffs, the United States confronted wide-ranging and painful blowback, as China retaliated against American goods and markets plummeted again on worries of a persistent, damaging trade war.No portion of the global economy appeared unscathed as the world braced for Mr. Trump to begin imposing his nearly across-the-board taxes on imports Saturday, marking the first salvo in a potentially costly trade conflict that the president has vigorously defended.China, which Mr. Trump has already hit with 20 percent tariffs, announced plans to retaliate. Beijing promised to impose a 34 percent tariff on American goods next week, including on agricultural products. China calibrated its tariffs to match Mr. Trump’s decision to add a 34 percent tax to Chinese imports.The tit-for-tat delivered a huge blow to financial markets, as Wall Street reckoned with the rising odds of an escalating global trade standoff. By the closing bell, the S&P 500 had fallen by almost 6 percent, pulling it closer into a bear market, a widely used Wall Street term for a decline of at least 20 percent from its peak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 5.8 percent, pushing it into bear market territory.As China took aim at the United States, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization, warned on Friday against a “cycle of retaliatory measures that lead to further declines in trade.” In the United States, Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, struck his own downbeat note over the unpredictable trajectory of the economy.“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” Mr. Powell said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”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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    Ted Cruz and Other Senate Republicans Question Trump’s Tariffs

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    Some Republican senators on Capitol Hill, including one of President Trump’s most ardent supporters, have signaled their uneasiness to the sweeping global tariffs that the president announced this week and that sent global markets reeling.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, warned on Friday that a future where other countries slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, as China has already done, was a “very real possibility” and would be a “terrible outcome” for the country.“It’s terrible for America,” Mr. Cruz said on the latest episode of his podcast. “It would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the U.S. economy if we had tariffs everywhere.”Mr. Cruz also said that a trade war would likely push inflation up and burden consumers with higher costs.“I love President Trump. I’m his strongest supporter in the Senate,” Mr. Cruz said. “But here’s one thing to understand: A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers.”Mr. Cruz’s comments came just two days after the Senate, in a largely symbolic move, voted to halt planned 25 percent levies on Canada. However, the bill is almost certain to die in the House — and even if it does not, Mr. Trump would be unlikely to sign it.Mr. Cruz was not among the Republican senators who joined all Democrats in pushing the bill through. They were Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, and Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, both of Kentucky.On Thursday, another top Republican senator — Chuck Grassley of Iowa — teamed up with a Democrat to introduce a bill aiming to reclaim congressional authority over the implementation of tariffs.The bill, which Mr. Grassley co-sponsored with Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, would require the president to give Congress 48 hours notice of any new tariffs. Congress would then have to approve those tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire. Mr. Cruz was not a co-sponsor. More

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    U.S. Employers Added 228,000 Jobs in March, but Outlook Is Clouded

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    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

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    Slumping Oil Prices Reflect Intensifying Economic Worries

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    Oil prices continued to fall on Friday, extending Thursday’s sharp drop. Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded at its lowest level in more than three years, below $65 a barrel, a fall of almost 8 percent.Fears that President Trump’s tariffs could slash global economic growth — and demand for oil as a result — were weighing on the market, analysts said.China’s announcement on Friday of 34 percent retaliatory tariffs against the United States has further stoked worries that demand for oil and other commodities could be throttled by the trade turmoil.Thursday’s surprise decision by a Saudi Arabia-led group of countries in the OPEC Plus cartel to accelerate planned production increases has added to the downward pressure. Essentially, the market is worried about a bearish mixture of tariffs weakening demand, compounded by growing pressure from oil-producing countries like Iraq and Kazakhstan to add to supplies.In a note to clients, analysts at Morgan Stanley said that in a recession — which is a looming possibility — demand growth for oil “typically falls at least to zero.” More

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    Trump Officials Warn of Tariff Pain as Price Increases Loom and Stocks Tumble

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    In the weeks leading up to his expansive global tariffs, President Trump and his top aides tried to prime the public for economic pain. They warned that while there would be fallout from their aggressive trade strategy, it would prove short-lived and benefit the economy in the long run.Investors, businesses and others made clear on Thursday that the U.S. economy was not ready to accept that approach. Global markets tumbled, economists warned of a possible recession and consumers braced for price increases on cars, food, clothing and more.The early tumult underscored the high stakes of Mr. Trump’s agenda, which the president has framed as a painful medical procedure to rescue an economy he likened to a “sick patient.” In the eyes of Mr. Trump, the United States is going to “boom” once his tariffs have had time to reset the nation’s trade relationships, raise revenue and boost domestic production.But those tariffs are expected to send prices skyrocketing in the interim, an unwelcome development for Americans already struggling with years of elevated prices. Several economists have increased the odds of a recession in their forecasts as they projected a slowdown in consumer spending, business investment and economic growth.A new analysis from the Yale Budget Lab found that Mr. Trump’s overall tariffs could cause price levels to rise 2.3 percent in the short term. That would translate into an average loss of $3,800 in purchasing power per household based on 2024 dollars.“Prices are going to go up, period,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, adding that companies were going to feel the immediate pinch. “These are really big tariffs. These are not things we can expect companies to just absorb.”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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    Canada’s Carney Puts Tariffs on U.S.-Made Cars as Stellantis Plant Pauses Production

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    Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada had introduced a 25 percent tariff on cars and trucks made in the United States in retaliation for the tariffs that went into effect Thursday morning on Canadian vehicles.Five hours before the tariffs imposed by President Trump took effect, the automaker Stellantis told the union representing workers at its minivan and muscle car factory in Windsor, Ontario, that the plant would close Monday for two weeks so it could assess the effects of the tariffs, idling about 3,600 employees.Mr. Carney estimated that Canada would collect about $5.7 billion from the retaliatory tariffs he said it was imposing — on top of the $42 billion or so he said Canada would generate from the tariffs it imposed on March 4. That money, Mr. Carney said, would go toward helping workers and businesses affected by the U.S. tariffs.“We take these measures reluctantly,” Mr. Carney said at a news conference after a meeting with Canada’s premiers. “And we take them in ways that’s intended and will cause maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada.”He added, “We can do better than the United States. Exactly where that comes out depends on how much damage they do to their economy.”Canada’s tariffs, Mr. Carney said, would exclude auto parts, and the country would still allow companies that make cars in Canada — Stellantis, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Toyota — to import vehicles built in the United States without paying tariffs.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