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    Trump Softens Tone on Inflation After Pledging to Lower Prices

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    President Trump pledged to lower costs on “Day 1” as a candidate. His administration now acknowledges it will take more time.President Trump promised voters that, if elected, he would enact policies that would bring prices down on “Day 1” in office.But three weeks into his term, Mr. Trump and White House officials have become more measured in how they discuss their efforts to tame inflation. They have begun downplaying the likelihood that consumer costs like groceries will decline anytime soon, reflecting the limited power that presidents have to control prices. Those are largely determined by global economic forces.The shifting tone could allow Mr. Trump to reset expectations about how fast prices will come down as he pursues policies like tariffs and tax cuts, which economists say could exacerbate inflation.Mr. Trump and his advisers believe that expanding American energy production and rolling back regulations will reduce costs. They also argue that some of Mr. Trump’s tax proposals, such as eliminating taxes on overtime, would curb inflation by giving workers more incentives to work longer hours, therefore expanding the labor force.But in an interview this week, Mr. Trump demurred when pressed about when families struggling with high prices would start to feel some relief. He suggested that his policies would make America a rich country, which would reduce the burden on consumers by, in theory, increasing their earnings.“I think we’re going to become a rich — look, we’re not that rich right now,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News. “We owe $36 trillion. That’s because we let all these nations take advantage of us.”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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    Steel and Aluminum Tariffs May Raise US Manufacturing Costs

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    Duties of 25 percent on steel and aluminum will flow through to car buyers, beer drinkers, home builders, oil drillers and other users of metal goods.America has seen this movie before: President Trump, who imposed stiff tariffs on Monday on imported steel and aluminum, did so once before, in 2018. So domestic industries have a pretty good idea of how the story ends.Manufacturers of trucks, appliances and construction equipment scramble to find U.S. sources of metal inputs, keeping steel and aluminum producers busier than they were before. Companies that need specific alloys that aren’t made domestically are forced to pay more. Prices rise, making end products more expensive.But there may be plot twists along the way. Will Mr. Trump cut deals with some countries, allowing large shipments in without the new duties? Will he set up a process to give companies a reprieve if they can demonstrate a hardship? (On Monday, a White House official said there would be no exclusions.)All of those could affect the outcome, which is why steel users are proceeding with caution. Angela Holt, who runs a precision machining company and heads the board of the Indiana Manufacturers Association, says the potential impacts on businesses are “complex.”“It could affect not only the cost but the availability, depending on their situation,” Ms. Holt said. “It’s highly varied, even among industries — I think it’s going to depend on an individual basis where they source their materials, what the competition looks like.”Lessons From Last TimeAlthough the American steel and aluminum industries are far weaker than they were in their heyday in the 1970s, U.S. companies import only about 26 percent of the steel they use, according to the International Trade Administration, and that number has been falling.Aluminum and Steel Prices Remain Elevated PostpandemicProducer price indices show a slight increase after tariffs were imposed in 2018, but lockdowns and increased demand for goods made a bigger impact two years later.

    Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy 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

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    U.S. Hiring Slowed to 143,000 Jobs in January

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    U.S. employers added 143,000 jobs last month, somewhat fewer than forecast, while unemployment fell to 4 percent and hourly earnings rose.Can a labor market be hot and cool at the same time? That’s the picture painted by the latest federal hiring figures, which show a step down in job creation last month — as well as a drop in joblessness.Employers added 143,000 jobs in January, slightly fewer than expected, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But with large upward revisions to the prior two months and a decline in the unemployment rate to 4 percent, American workers still appear to be in good shape.“We have robust fundamentals, and relatively moderate hiring, but it’s very judicious,” said Gregory Daco, the chief U.S. economist with the accounting firm EY-Parthenon. “The unemployment rate is historically low, but frozen in the sense that you’re not seeing much churn — businesses are being cautious as to how they manage their work force.” More

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    The report will revise figures from 2023 and 2024. Here’s what to know.

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    The Labor Department’s latest monthly report on hiring and unemployment will include revisions for previous months. The revised figures should provide a more accurate picture of the U.S. job market, but they could also sow confusion.The monthly job figures are based on two surveys, one of employers and one of households. Those surveys are generally reliable, but they aren’t perfect. So once a year, the government reconciles the numbers with less timely but more reliable data from other sources.Figures in the employer survey will be revised sharply downward to align with data from state unemployment offices showing that employers added hundreds of thousands fewer jobs in 2023 and 2024 than initially reported. The updated figures should show slower but still healthy job growth in those years.The other change applies to the household survey. It will reflect an updated methodology that the Census Bureau considers a better reflection of recent immigration in its population estimates. That will show up as a huge, one-month jump in virtually every measure that is based on them, and preclude comparisons with previous months. But measures based on ratios — like the unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate — should be mostly unaffected. More

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    Friday’s Jobs Report Will Be Confusing. Here’s How to Make Sense of It.

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    The Labor Department’s January survey will include revisions making data for previous months look stronger in some cases and weaker in others.The Labor Department’s latest monthly report on hiring and unemployment will include revisions for previous months that should give a more accurate picture of the U.S. job market — but that could also sow confusion.When the data is released on Friday, one major measure of employment will be revised up. Another will be revised down. Some historical numbers will be revised, but others won’t. And the updates, though part of a routine process, will be taking place in a political environment where both sides have at times expressed skepticism of government economic statistics.“There is going to be a massive amount of confusion,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution.Here is what economists say you will need to know about the revisions to make sense of the numbers.The revisions are part of a longstanding annual process.The monthly job figures are based on two surveys, one of employers and one of households. Those surveys are generally reliable — they involve a number of interviews far larger than a presidential election poll, for example — but they aren’t perfect. And so, once a year, the government reconciles the numbers with less timely but more reliable data from other sources. Similar processes are in place for revising other government statistics, like gross domestic product and personal income.“Revisions are how statistical agencies achieve both timeliness and accuracy,” said Jed Kolko, who oversaw economic statistics at the Commerce Department during the Biden administration. “Near-real-time data like the jobs report later get revised to match other data sources that are more accurate but take longer to collect and publish.”The revisions being released on Friday were scheduled far in advance and will use methodologies that were announced ahead of time, allowing economists, including Mr. Kolko and Ms. Edelberg, to publish detailed forecasts of what the new figures will show.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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    U.S. Trade Deficit Hit Record in 2024 as Imports Surged

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    A strong dollar helped drive an uptick in U.S. imports last year, while export growth remained modest.The U.S. trade deficit in goods hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, as American consumers snapped up imported products and a strong U.S. dollar weighed on export growth.Data released Wednesday morning by the Commerce Department showed that U.S. imports of goods and services grew 6.6 percent to a record $4.1 trillion, as Americans bought large amounts of auto parts, weight-loss drugs, computers and food from other countries.U.S. exports of goods and services to the world also hit a record, reaching $3.2 trillion in 2024.That was driven by record sales of U.S. services, like business and financial advising, as well as foreign spending on travel in the United States. But exports of goods taken on their own grew more sluggishly, as a strong U.S. dollar made it more expensive for other countries to buy American products, and the United States sold fewer cars, car parts and industrial supplies, like raw materials and machinery, to the world.Competition from automakers in China and strikes in the U.S. auto industry weighed on exports of vehicles, parts and engines, which fell $10.8 billion compared with the year before.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said Chinese electric vehicle sales had taken off in 2024, in China and elsewhere, and were siphoning market share from other producers. Companies like General Motors have been under pressure in China, where more than four-fifths of the electric and plug-in hybrid cars sold are now Chinese brands.“The Chinese auto industry has really come on and is very competitive in the E.V. space,” Mr. Zandi said. “And that’s a real problem for U.S. manufacturers that are producing and exporting to the rest of the world.”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 Prepares to Take On the US Trade Deficit, a Familiar Nemesis

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    The trade deficit has long drawn the president’s ire. Now, he’s preparing to take it on again.To President Trump, one economic number represents everything that is wrong with the global economy: America’s trade deficit.That deficit is the total value of what the United States imports from other nations, minus its exports to other countries. The fact that America runs a trade deficit reflects how the nation’s appetite for foreign goods now far outpaces what U.S. factories and farms send abroad.Official data set for release on Wednesday morning is expected to show that the U.S. trade deficit widened to nearly $1.2 trillion in 2024. For Mr. Trump, the fact that the United States imports more goods than it exports is a sign of economic weakness and evidence that the world is taking advantage of America. While the country’s trade deficit has been widening for years, that gap could end up being a key reason Mr. Trump decides to impose tariffs on Europe, China, Canada, Mexico and other governments.Mr. Trump rolled out a dramatic series of trade actions against Canada, Mexico and China in recent days, signing executive orders to put tariffs on all three nations in what he said was an effort to stem the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States.But he also cited the trade deficit as he talked about tariffs writ large, making clear that the gap between what America sells and what it buys remains top of mind for Mr. Trump.

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    America’s Trade Deficits and Surpluses With Other Countries
    Note: Data is adjusted for inflation and shows 2023 trade in goods, the latest available full year of data.Source: Census BureauBy 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

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    Trump Wields U.S. Power With Unclear Economic Consequences

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    President Trump is brandishing the U.S. economy like a weapon, threatening to put more than a trillion dollars of trade on the line with economic wars on multiple fronts.In a high-stakes confrontation that lasted over the weekend and into Monday, Mr. Trump promised to put tariffs on the United States’ closest trading partners, which are together responsible for more than 40 percent of American imports, to try to force them to accede to his demands.Mr. Trump was pushing Canada, Mexico and China to stop flows of migrants at the border — one of his major domestic policy issues — as well as to stem shipments of deadly drugs, and offer the United States better terms when it comes to trade relationships.Both Canada and Mexico earned slight reprieves on Monday after Mr. Trump agreed to delay tariffs of 25 percent — which were supposed to go into effect on Tuesday — for a month. That decision came after President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico promised to reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border with 10,000 members of its National Guard. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, said Canada would appoint a fentanyl czar, launch a joint strike force to combat organized crime and list cartels as terrorists, among other steps.China has not received any such reprieve and Mr. Trump on Monday said that the 10 percent tariffs that will go into effect on Tuesday were simply an “opening salvo.”Speaking from the Oval Office, the president also made clear that he would use tariffs liberally to get other governments to give him what he wants, essentially saying he would leverage America’s economic strength to bully other nations.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