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    Companies Ask Supreme Court to Fast-Track Challenge to Tariffs

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    Two toy manufacturers asked the court to greatly expedite their case, in an unusual request.Two toy manufacturers challenging a major piece of President Trump’s tariffs program asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to expedite their case and rule that Congress had not authorized the levies.The request was unusual for several reasons. Petitions seeking review ordinarily come from the losing side, but the companies had won in front of a district court judge. They then sought to leapfrog the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which would ordinarily rule before the justices considered whether to grant review. And they asked the justices to move very quickly, asking that they schedule arguments in September or October.All of this suggests that the court is unlikely to agree to hear the case at this stage.The manufacturers — Learning Resources and hand2mind — argued that the law Mr. Trump relied on, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, does not authorize tariffs. Until Mr. Trump acted, their companies’ brief said, “no president had ever invoked I.E.E.P.A. to impose a single tariff or duty on goods in the statute’s nearly 50-year history.”In a separate and broader challenge, the Court of International Trade also ruled against the administration’s tariffs program. A different appeals court, the Federal Circuit, is set to hear arguments in that case next month. Both lower court rulings have been paused, allowing Mr. Trump to press forward with his tariffs.Once the appeals courts have ruled, appeals to the Supreme Court are all but certain, and the justices are quite likely to take up one or both of them.The toy companies seek to use an unusual procedure to bypass the D.C. Circuit, “certiorari before judgment.” The procedure used to be rare, mostly reserved for national crises like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor or President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel industry.Before 2019, the court had not used it for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University. Since then, he found, the court has used it at least 19 times. More

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    Senate Republicans Propose Key Tax Tweaks to House Bill

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    Party lawmakers proposed changes to the tax code that could offer the greatest benefit to businesses.Two weeks after the House adopted a sprawling package of tax cuts, Senate Republicans on Monday unveiled their legislative vision proposing a series of tweaks that would primarily enhance the benefits provided to businesses.The legislative text released by the Senate Finance Committee mirrors in broad strokes the effort the House adopted. Both aim to extend a set of tax cuts on individuals and corporations that will soon expire, which President Trump signed into law during his first term and has pushed to expand in his second.But the Senate tax proposal — just one piece of a much larger domestic policy bill — is not identical to the approach that House Republicans clinched late last month. In short, the Senate measure offers bigger tax benefits for corporations as well as older Americans. It would also change the way that party lawmakers aim to deliver on Mr. Trump’s promises to end taxes on tips and overtime.The tweaks could carry vast implications for millions of families and business owners, as Republicans continue to calibrate a costly bill that could alter the trajectory of the economy and shape the nation’s financial health for generations.Here are some of the changes to individuals’ and businesses’ taxes under consideration in the Senate.More generous corporate tax breaksIn a major win for businesses, Senate Republicans proposed to make permanent a set of generous deductions for research and development and other expenses, including machinery purchases. The House proposed to extend these measures, which were set to expire at the end of the year, but only on a temporary basis, as Republicans in the chamber looked for ways to shave costs from their already expensive legislation.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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    As Trump Returns to G7, Rift With Allies Is Even Deeper

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    In 2018, the president called for the group to embrace Russia and stormed out of the summit. Now he is seeking to shrink America’s military role abroad and embarking on a more expansive trade war.When President Trump last attended a Group of 7 meeting in Canada, he was in many ways the odd man out.At that meeting, in 2018, Mr. Trump called for the alliance of Western countries to embrace Russia, antagonized allies and ultimately stormed out of the summit over a trade battle he began by imposing metals tariffs on Canada.As he returns on Sunday for the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, those fissures have only deepened. Since retaking office, the president has sought to shrink America’s military role abroad and made threats to annex the summit’s host after embarking on a much more expansive trade war.Mr. Trump is now facing a self-imposed deadline of early July to reach trade deals. His trade adviser even promised in April that the tariffs would lead to “90 deals in 90 days.” Despite reaching framework agreements with Britain and China, the administration has shown scant progress on deals with other major trading partners.The future of the president’s favored negotiating tool is uncertain as a legal battle over his tariffs plays out in the courts. But a failure to reach accords could lead the Trump administration to once again ratchet up tariffs and send markets roiling.“I think we’ll have a few new trade deals,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday as he left for the summit.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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    ‘Golden Share’ in U.S. Steel Gives Trump Extraordinary Control

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    Administration officials secured a deal that will give the president unusual influence over a private company, and could serve as a model for other deals.To save its takeover of U.S. Steel, Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to an unusual arrangement, granting the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary amount of influence over a U.S. company.New details of the agreement show that the structure would give President Trump and his successors a permanent stake in U.S. Steel, significant sway over its board and veto power over a wide array of company actions, an arrangement that could change the nature of foreign investment in the United States.The terms of the arrangement were hammered out in meetings that went late into the night on Wednesday and Thursday, according to two people familiar with the details.Representatives from Nippon Steel — which had been trying to acquire the struggling U.S. Steel since December 2023, but had been blocked by the Biden administration over national security concerns — came around to Mr. Trump’s desire to take a stake that would give the U.S. government significant control over the company’s actions.Nippon had argued that this influence should expire — perhaps after three or four years, the duration of the Trump administration. But in the meetings, which were held at the Commerce Department, Trump officials led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted that the golden share should last in perpetuity, the two people said.Under the terms of the national security pact, which the companies said they signed Friday, the U.S. government would retain a single share of preferred stock, called class G — as in gold. And U.S. Steel’s charter will list nearly a dozen activities the company cannot undertake without the approval of the American president or someone he designates in his stead.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 Steel Tariffs Expand to Hit Home Appliances Like Refrigerators and Dishwashers

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    The move is one of the first times this year that consumer products were specifically targeted with higher import taxes.Washing machines, refrigerators and other common household appliances made with steel parts will soon be subject to expanded tariffs, the Commerce Department said Thursday.The department said in a notice that levies would take effect on so-called steel derivative products on June 23 and will be set at 50 percent, the current level for all other steel and aluminum imports. The new tariffs will apply to the value of steel content in each import, the notice said.While many products have become subject to higher import taxes since President Trump began implementing his aggressive trade policy, Thursday’s announcement marked one of the first times this year that everyday consumer goods were specifically targeted. The result will also apply to imported dishwashers, dryers, stoves and food waste disposals, and could translate into higher costs for American households.Thursday’s move came one week after the Trump administration doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum products — and it follows wave after wave of similar moves that have targeted cars, auto parts and other goods from many of America’s trading partners. The government said that the action was necessary to address “trade practices that undermine national security.” The new tariffs are meant to shield American-made appliances that are made with steel from cheaper foreign-made products. More

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    Where’s the Inflation From Tariffs? Just Wait, Economists Say.

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    Are predictions for a jump in consumer prices too early, or just wrong?Tariffs raise consumer prices. It’s a view held by most economists since long before President Trump entered the White House.Prices rose when Mr. Trump imposed levies on China in his first term, though that did not translate to noticeably higher inflation overall. Forecasters have been bracing for months for it to happen again on a much larger scale, given that his tariffs this time are substantially larger and more widespread.But data released this week showed that inflationary pressures remained more muted than expected at this stage, raising an uncomfortable question for economists: Are their predictions wrong?Economists are undeterred — for now. It’s not that tariffs aren’t affecting prices, they say. It’s that this isn’t happening in a significant enough way just yet to show up in broad measures of inflation like the Consumer Price Index. They argue that the impact will be much more significant this summer.“Inflation is very likely going to increase,” said Marc Giannoni, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, who formerly worked at the Federal Reserve’s regional banks in Dallas and New York. “It is a question of time, not so much of if.”Mr. Trump’s tariffs have already rippled through the economy in several ways.Businesses rushed to stock up on products before levies were imposed, and now imports of foreign goods are down sharply. Uncertainty has skyrocketed, stoked by the administration’s frequent pivots on its trade policy. On Thursday, it announced that steel tariffs would soon apply to appliances made with the metal, including dishwashers, washing machines and refrigerators. More

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    How Immigrants and Labor, Long Joined in L.A., Set the Stage for Protest

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    Unions have backed immigrant rights in California and have been on the forefront of resisting the Trump administration’s deportations.Los Angeles is a city of immigrants. It is also a city of unions. And in California, those two constituencies have essentially melded into one.So it should come as no surprise that federal immigration raids on workplaces around Los Angeles County this week set off the largest protests to date against President Trump’s immigration crackdown.On the first day of the protests, David Huerta, the president of the California chapter of the Service Employees International Union and the grandson of Mexican farmworkers, was arrested and hospitalized for a head injury after being pushed by a federal agent. Officials said he was blocking law enforcement carrying out an immigration raid, and his detention touched off a series of mobilizations nationwide.At a hastily convened rally in front of the Justice Department in Washington on Monday, some of the labor movement’s top brass passed around a microphone to decry immigration enforcement operations and demand his release.“Our country suffers when these military raids tear families apart,” said Liz Shuler, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., standing in a cluster of signs reading, “Free David.” “One thing the administration should know about this community is that we do not leave anybody behind!” Mr. Huerta was released on bail later in the day and still faces charges.It wasn’t always this way in American unions. Historically, they often viewed immigrants with suspicion, likely to undercut wages and to be unwilling to stand up to employers. While those attitudes still exist, union leadership has aligned itself with immigrants’ rights — and placed itself squarely in opposition to the Trump administration’s agenda of mass deportation.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. Court Agrees to Keep Trump Tariffs Intact as Appeal Gets Underway

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    The appeals court’s decision delivered an important but interim victory for the Trump administration.A federal appeals court agreed on Tuesday to allow President Trump to maintain many of his tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, extending a pause granted shortly after another panel of judges ruled in late May that the import taxes were illegal.The decision, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, delivered an important but interim victory for the Trump administration, which had warned that any interruption to its steep duties could undercut the president in talks around the world.But the government still must convince the judges that the president appropriately used a set of emergency powers when he put in place the centerpiece of his economic agenda earlier this year. The Trump administration has already signaled it is willing to fight that battle as far as the Supreme Court.The ruling came shortly after negotiators from the United States and China agreed to a framework intended to extend a trade truce between the two superpowers. The Trump administration had warned that those talks and others would have been jeopardized if the appeals court had not granted a fuller stay while arguments proceeded.At the heart of the legal wrangling is Mr. Trump’s novel interpretation of a 1970s law that he used to wage a global trade war on an expansive scale. No president before him had ever used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose tariffs, and the word itself is not even mentioned in the statute.But the law has formed the foundation of Mr. Trump’s campaign to reorient the global economic order. He has invoked its powers to sidestep Congress and impose huge taxes on most global imports, with the goal of raising revenue, bolstering domestic manufacturing and brokering more favorable trade deals with other countries.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