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    Why the Shipping Industry Isn’t Rushing Back to the Red Sea

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    The companies that operate large container ships say they plan to keep going around Africa as violence flares in the region.When President Trump ordered military strikes last weekend against the Houthi militia in Yemen, he said the militia’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea had harmed global trade.“These relentless assaults have cost the U.S. and World Economy many BILLIONS of Dollars while, at the same time, putting innocent lives at risk,” he said on Truth Social.But getting shipping companies to return to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal could take many months and is likely to require more than airstrikes against the Houthis. For over a year, ocean carriers have overwhelmingly avoided the Red Sea, sending ships around Africa’s southern tip to get from Asia to Europe, a voyage that is some 3,500 nautical miles and 10 days longer.The shipping industry has largely adapted to the disruption, and has even profited from the surge in shipping rates after the Houthis began attacking commercial ships in late 2023 in support of Hamas in its war with Israel.Shipping executives say they do not plan to return to the Red Sea until there is a broad Middle East peace accord that includes the Houthis or a decisive defeat of the militia, which is backed by Iran.“It’s either a full degradation of their capabilities or there is some type of deal,” Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of Maersk, a shipping line based in Copenhagen, said in February.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 Has Hinted at a Xi Visit. China Is Still Wondering What He Wants.

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    Chinese experts say Beijing is open to talks but is being stonewalled by the State Department and other official channels.President Trump fueled new speculation this week about a meeting with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, when he told reporters that Washington needed to be cleaned up to prepare for a summit between the two leaders in the “not too distant future.”Mr. Trump provided no details, and China has said nothing publicly about any such meeting. The stakes of a visit would be high: President Trump has imposed 20 percent tariffs on China’s shipments to the United States, and may order another round next month. China wants to try to head off further escalations in the trade war that would set back its efforts to revive the country’s beleaguered economy, experts say.But before any summit can take place, China still needs answers to two pressing questions: What does Mr. Trump want? Who can Beijing talk to in Washington who Mr. Trump might listen to?To try to answer these questions, China sent scholars to the United States to take part in unofficial diplomatic talks last month with Trump administration officials and American foreign policy experts. China has grown concerned that the officials Beijing have been dealing with at the State Department and the National Security Council, who are outside Mr. Trump’s inner circle, are not conveying their messages to him, some of the scholars said.“We talk through the diplomatic channel. That’s the normal channel. But can that reach President Trump? Do those people we talked to really know what President Trump is thinking?” said Da Wei, the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who was among the scholars.China has also been publicly signaling its interest in talks. The Chinese commerce minister said earlier this month that he wrote a letter to the U.S. commerce secretary and U.S. trade representative inviting them to meet. And Chinese officials describing Beijing’s efforts to curtail the production of fentanyl last week urged the United States to return to dialogue.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 Unpredictable Tariffs Cloud Europe’s Economic Outlook

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    Policymakers are grappling with “exceptionally high” uncertainty, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said on Wednesday, just hours after the European Commission announced tariffs on U.S. imports in response to levies imposed by the Trump administration. Later, Canada announced a new round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports.The unpredictability of trade policy and geopolitics, which is likely to mean more large economic shocks, will make it harder for central bankers to keep inflation at their 2 percent target, Ms. Lagarde said.There was a somewhat bewildered mood among some of the E.C.B. officials, economists and analysts at an annual gathering held in Frankfurt, where Ms. Lagarde delivered her speech. Participants reflected on the rapidly shifting economic environment stemming from the escalating trade tensions and a substantial increase in military spending planned by European countries, particularly Germany.Under different circumstances, this year’s conference could have seemed like more of a celebration: Inflation in the eurozone slowed to 2.4 percent in February, near the central bank’s target, and policymakers have been able to cut interest rates six times since the middle of last year.Instead, President Trump’s imposition of sweeping tariffs, and his shifting policies on military aid to Ukraine, are unnerving European leaders. In response, European officials are proposing to borrow more to fund defense and infrastructure investments, significantly altering the region’s fiscal situation. The conference began with one speaker emphasizing the importance of preparing for war in order to avoid war.“Established certainties about the international order have been upended,” Ms. Lagarde said. “Some alliances have become strained while others have drawn closer. We have seen political decisions that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago.”When introducing a panel, François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the French central bank, said, “We are aware this environment can change tweet by tweet from one day to the next.” He invited panelists to begin their presentations but noted they could be referring to something that may be reversed by the same afternoon.“We live in a world not only of uncertainty, but still more unpredictability and still more, these last days, irrationality,” he said. More

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    What Products Could Europe Levy in Retaliation to Trump’s Tariffs?

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    The European Union is putting tariffs on a range of products from the United States in retaliation to President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, and items that come from Republican-held states rank high on the hit list.The European Union plans to institute the tariffs in two phases: The first wave will take hold on April 1, and will impact goods that already had tariffs applied during Mr. Trump’s first term, such as bourbon, boats and motorcycles. For certain products like whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, those tariffs would be as much as a crushing 50 percent.The second wave is still being figured out, though the list of products that could be affected is already public — and is 99 pages long. In that phase, the E.U. is planning to add levies to goods worth about 18 billion euros, or 19.6 billion dollars, and is aiming for them to go into effect on April 13.The proposed goods include:Poultry, beef and porkSoybeansWine and sparkling wineBeerPants, shirts and other clothingHandbagsRefrigeratorsWashing machinesMowersExactly what those tariffs will look like remains to be seen. For now, Europe is consulting consumers, companies and policymakers across the 27-nation bloc as it finalizes the list. Many of the potential targets are largely produced in Republican-held areas, such as crops from the Louisiana district that elected Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and livestock from Nebraska and Kansas.The goal? Officials want to hit America where it hurts in order to force the United States to the negotiating table, while doing as little damage as possible to Europeans. More

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    Trump Pulls Back Plans to Double Canadian Metal Tariffs After Ontario Relents

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    President Trump escalated his fight with Canada on Tuesday, threatening to double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and pressing to turn one of America’s closest traditional allies into the 51st state. After several tense hours, both sides backed down, at least for now.It was the latest in a week of chaotic trade moves, in which the president startled investors and businesses that depend on trade and clashed with some of the country’s closest trading partners.In a post on his social media platform Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump wrote that Canadian steel and aluminum would face a 50 percent tariff, double what he plans to charge on metals from other countries beginning Wednesday. He said the levies were in response to an additional charge that Ontario had placed on electricity coming into the United States, which was in turn a response to tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on Canada last week.By Tuesday afternoon, leaders had begun to relent. The premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said he would suspend the electricity surcharge, and Mr. Trump said at the White House he would “probably” reduce the tariff on Canadian metals.Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Trump’s threats had succeeded in getting Canada to back down. “President Trump has once again used the leverage of the American economy, which is the best and biggest in the world, to deliver a win for the American people,” he said.As a result, he said that Canada would face the same 25 percent tariff on metals as all of America’s trading partners will when they go into effect at midnight. More

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    Trump’s Tariffs by Whim Keep Allies and Markets Off Balance

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    On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox Business to reassure nervous allies and even more twitchy investors that the Trump administration was negotiating a deal to avoid tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and that the president is “gonna work something out with them.”“It’s not going to be a pause” for Mr. Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, he insisted. “None of that pause stuff.”On Thursday, the world got what the president characterized as more of that pause stuff.Mr. Trump’s announcement that he had a good conversation with Mexico’s president, and would delay most tariffs until April 2, was only the latest example of the punish-by-whim nature of the second Trump presidency. A few hours after the Mexico announcement, Canada got a break too, even as Mr. Trump on social media accused its departing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, of using “the Tariff problem” to “run again for Prime Minister.”“So much fun to watch!” he wrote.Indeed, it appears that Mr. Trump is having enormous fun turning tariffs on and off like tap water. But others are developing a case of Trump-induced whiplash, not least investors, who sent stock prices down again on Thursday amid the uncertainty over what Mr. Trump’s inconstancy means for the global economy. (A later rise in stock futures pointed to rosier expectations for Friday.)When the White House finally released the text of Mr. Trump’s orders on Thursday evening, it appeared that some of the tariffs — those covered in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and celebrated in his first term — were indeed permanently suspended. Other tariffs were merely paused.Most everyone involved was confused, which may well have been the point.As Mr. Trump hands down tariff determinations and then pulls them back for a month or so, world leaders call to plead their case, a bit like vassal states appealing to a larger power. Chief executives put in calls as well, making it clear that Mr. Trump is the one you need to deal with if you are bringing in car parts from Canada or chips from China.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 Suspends Mexico and Canada Tariffs on USMCA Goods for a Month

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    Two days after imposing sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico, President Trump on Thursday abruptly suspended many of those levies, sowing confusion with investors and businesses that depend on trade with the countries.The president said he would allow products that are traded under the rules of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade pact he signed in his first term, to avoid the stiff 25 percent tariffs he imposed just days ago on two of America’s largest trading partners.The suspension effectively abandons many of the tariffs that Mr. Trump had placed on Canadian and Mexican products — levies he said were necessary to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States.His decision came a day after he said he would grant a 30-day reprieve to automakers, who had complained to the president that the levies would cause severe damage to U.S. carmakers. Mr. Trump implied that any relief would be short-lived, saying that other tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products are coming in April.Mr. Trump’s chaotic, stop-and-start approach has sent stock markets tumbling and generated anxiety among industries that depend on trade with Canada and Mexico, which account for more than a quarter of U.S. imports and nearly a third of U.S. exports. After Mr. Trump imposed his tariffs, Canada retaliated with levies on $20.5 billion worth of American goods, including agricultural products, and Mexico was threatening to impose its own import taxes on U.S. goods on Sunday if Mr. Trump did not relent.Still, the decision to suspend the tariffs did little to calm financial markets, which have been jittery since Mr. Trump ratcheted up his trade war earlier this week. In addition to hitting Canada and Mexico, Mr. Trump placed a second 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, prompting another round of retaliation from Beijing on American products. The president has not suspended any of his levies on China. More

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    South Africa’s Play to Ease Tensions With Trump: A New Trade Deal

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    Lawmakers were warned that the United States is planning more punitive actions against the country. Officials hope a new trade deal will help repair the icy relations.South Africa is preparing a new trade offer to present to President Trump, hoping to appeal to his transactional approach to foreign policy and ease boiling tensions with Washington, a spokesman for South Africa’s president said this week.The spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, said in an interview that South African officials are anticipating Mr. Trump will call for an end to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a decades-old trade agreement that has been an economic boon to the 32 African nations that it includes.The act allows billions of dollars worth of goods — from produce to cars — from sub-Saharan Africa to enter the United States without duties. It is scheduled to expire this year but could be reauthorized by Congress.Although officials in South Africa hope the program will be renewed, they plan to offer the United States a bilateral deal that would increase trade in sectors such as energy, Mr. Magwenya said.A future without the African Growth and Opportunity Act would represent a significant shift for the continent’s largest economy. South Africa has for years lobbied against threats to expel it from the program on the grounds that its economy had grown too advanced. South African officials argue that the African Growth and Opportunity Act has kept businesses confident in the South African economy, helped maintain stability across the continent and fostered a healthy relationship with the United States.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