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- in Economy
The Business Playbook for Tariff Chaos
President Trump’s trade war is forcing companies to cut costs, raise prices, shrink profits, discontinue products and find other suppliers.Shock. That was the first response to the Trump administration’s barrage of tariffs.Businesses that rely on imported products expected duties, which President Trump had promised. Just not this high, this universal or this sudden, with almost no time to adjust. A 145 percent tariff on all Chinese products, after all, is more like a trade wall than a mere barrier. But shock is settling into reality, and corporate leaders are trying to manage. Here are the main tacks that businesses are taking — at least for now, given that whatever duties the White House declares today may change tomorrow.Move out of China, preferably yesterdayFor many importers, this round of tariffs isn’t as painful as it might have been eight years ago. Mr. Trump’s first trade war, in 2018, while milder, pushed many to diversify their sourcing beyond China. The Covid-19 pandemic sent yet another signal that dependence on a single market, however cheap and efficient, is unwise.For William Westendorf, the chief executive of the medical supply distributor Air-Tite Products, the final straw was a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made syringes imposed by the Biden administration last fall. He sent a staff member to scour Europe for a factory that could meet the Food and Drug Administration’s exacting standards.After six months of hunting and hoop-jumping — and with Chinese syringes now tariffed at 245 percent total — Mr. Westendorf has a shipment on the way from Turkey. It’s lucky timing, because factories outside of China are getting flooded with orders.“It’s not something you can do real quickly because of the regulatory environment,” Mr. Westendorf said. “Fortunately, we were there early.”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
- in Economy
Peter Navarro: The Architect of Trump’s Tariffs
On a clear day last July in Miami, Peter Navarro emerged from four months in federal prison, where he’d been imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Mr. Navarro had refused to testify in an investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an action he described as a defense of the Constitution.Just hours after his release from prison, Mr. Navarro flew to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention in support of Donald J. Trump’s re-election.“They convicted me, they jailed me. Guess what? They did not break me,” he said that night, punctuating each word as the crowd roared. It was an exercise in loyalty to Mr. Trump that seems to have paid off.For much of Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Navarro, a trade adviser, had been sidelined, mocked and minimized by other officials who saw his protectionist views on trade as factually wrong and dangerous for the country.But in the second Trump administration, Mr. Navarro, 75, an economist and trade skeptic, has been newly empowered. He returned to government more confident in his revanchist vision for the American economy, more dismissive of his critics, and with more than a dozen trade-related executive orders already drafted, many of which the president has since signed. Mr. Trump also came back to Washington more determined to finally realize the trade views he has held for decades, that an unfair trading system was ripping America off and needed to be radically changed.Why Peter Navarro switched sidesAna Swanson explains how China’s entry into the World Trade Organization turned Navarro, a Southern California professor, into President Trump’s biggest trade warrior.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
- in Economy
Meloni and Trump Oval Office Meeting Cements Special Rapport
In Washington, President Trump inundated Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy with praise. She said he had accepted an invitation to go to Rome.For international leaders, visiting the White House these days is an unpredictable undertaking that comes with a risk of being embarrassed, or worse, berated, by President Trump. For Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Thursday’s meeting in the Oval Office was largely a smooth affair, with Mr. Trump covering her in hyperbolic praise and making clear he is fond of her.But beyond the friendly anti-immigration banter, and shared optimism that the European Union and the United States would reach a trade deal, neither leader indicated that they had made substantial progress on negotiations over tariffs and other issues.“We’re in no rush,” Mr. Trump said.Ms. Meloni was the first European leader to visit the White House since Mr. Trump imposed and then partly paused sweeping tariffs against the European Union. And the meeting dispelled any remaining doubts on the special relationship between the two leaders. But what the rapport could yield for Italy and for Europe remained unclear.“She was treated like a first-rank ally,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political scientist at Luiss Guido Carli university in Rome, adding that it was unusual for Italy, which is not a military or economic powerhouse.“She became a de facto mediator,” he added, “but in concrete terms, she did not bring anything home.”The European countries’ trade policy is conducted collectively through the European Union, and Ms. Meloni made it clear that she could not look for a deal on behalf of the bloc. So perhaps her biggest achievement was having Mr. Trump accept her invitation to pay an official visit in the “near future” to Rome, where she hoped he would meet with European officials. If that happens, it could help cement her position as a conduit between Europe and the United States. For now, though, as she said, Mr. Trump had offered no guarantee that he would meet with European officials.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
- in Economy
Trump Has Mixed Emotions Toward Japan
The president at turns praises and criticizes Japan, a U.S. ally that decades ago stirred his anger over the unequal balance of trade and his penchant for tariffs.This month in the White House’s Rose Garden, as he held up a placard showing the global wave of tariffs he wanted to impose, President Trump paused to fondly recall a fallen friend.“The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo, was — Shinzo Abe — he was a fantastic man,” Mr. Trump said during the tariff announcement on April 2. “He was, unfortunately, taken from us, assassination.”The words of praise for Mr. Abe, who was gunned down three years ago during a campaign speech, did not stop Mr. Trump from slapping a 24 percent tariff on products imported from Japan. But they were unusual, nonetheless, coming from a president who has had few nice things to say these days about other allies, particularly Canada and Europe.Now, Japan will be one of the first countries allowed to bargain for a possible reprieve from Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, many of which he has put on hold for 90 days. On Thursday, a negotiator handpicked by Japan’s current prime minister is scheduled to begin talks in Washington with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others.Japan’s place at the front of the line reflects the different approach that Mr. Trump has taken toward the nation. While the president still accuses it of unfair trade policies and an unequal security relationship, he also praises it in the same breath as a close ally, an ancient culture and a savvy negotiator.“I love Japan,” Mr. Trump told reporters last month. “But we have an interesting deal with Japan where we have to protect them but they don’t have to protect us,” referring to the security treaty that bases 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan.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
- in Economy
As Trump Upends Global Trade, Europe Sees an Opportunity
President Trump has big ambitions for the global trading system and is using tariffs to try to rip it down and rebuild it. But the European Union is taking action after action to make sure the continent is at the center of whatever world comes next.As one of the globe’s biggest and most open economies, the E.U. has a lot on the line as the rules of trade undergo a once-in-a-generation upheaval. Its companies benefit from sending their cars, pharmaceuticals and machinery overseas. Its consumers benefit from American search engines and foreign fuels.Those high stakes aren’t lost on Europe.Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, has spent the past several weeks on calls and in meetings with global leaders. She and her colleagues are wheeling and dealing to deepen existing trade agreements and strike new ones. They are discussing how they can reduce barriers between individual European countries.And they are talking tough on China, trying to make sure that it does not dump cheap metals and chemicals onto the European market as it loses access to American customers because of high Trump tariffs.It’s an explicit strategy, meant to leave the economic superpower stronger and less dependent on an increasingly fickle America. As Ms. von der Leyen and her colleagues regularly point out, the U.S. consumer market is big — but not the be-all-end-all.“The U.S. makes up 13 percent of global goods trade,” Maros Sefcovic, the E.U.’s trade commissioner, said in a recent speech. The goal “is to protect the remaining 87 percent and make sure that the global trade system prevails for the rest 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
- in Economy
Trump Has Added 145% Tariff to China, White House Clarifies
The White House on Thursday clarified that China faced a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent on all imports to the United States.A day earlier, President Trump had said that he was increasing tariffs on China to 125 percent after Beijing retaliated against his previous levies. On Thursday, the White House explained that the 125 percent is on top of a 20 percent tariff the president had previously put on goods coming from China for its role in supplying fentanyl to the United States.That is a drastic increase on a country that supplies much of what Americans buy. China is the second largest source of imports for the United States and the primary global manufacturer of cellphones, toys, computers and other products.The 145 percent figure is also just a floor, not a ceiling. That amount is on top of other pre-existing levies that Mr. Trump already put in place including:25 percent tariffs on steel, aluminum, cars and car partsTariffs of up to 25 percent on certain Chinese goods that Mr. Trump imposed during his first termTariffs of varying ranges on certain products in response to violating U.S. trade rulesThe rapid changes in tariffs have caused significant confusion for importers, many of whom depend on Chinese products, including major retailers as well as small businesses. For an importer bringing in a container of products, the difference between a 125 percent tariff and a 145 percent tariff can amount to thousands of dollars.The Trump administration has exempted goods that were already in transit from the new tariffs, meaning importers have not yet started to incur them. In the case of goods shipped by air, this will happen in the next few days, while goods moving by ship will take several weeks to arrive. More
- in Economy
After Trump’s Pause on Tariffs, EU Delays Retaliation to Allow Talks
E.U. officials announced on Thursday that they would delay their plans for retaliatory tariffs after President Trump’s abrupt decision to hit pause on some of the levies he had placed on Europe and much of the rest of the world.Mr. Trump’s announcement, a day before, had signaled what European leaders were hoping for: a possible willingness to negotiate.Washington’s pivot came just hours after European officials had approved retaliatory levies of 10 to 25 percent on about $23 billion of U.S. imports. But given the American shift in stance, E.U. leaders said on Thursday that they would take a 90-day pause of their own.“If negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced in a statement. “Preparatory work on further countermeasures continues.”The Trump administration is specifically pausing what it has called “reciprocal” tariffs — across-the-board taxes that apply in different amounts to different countries. Mr. Trump announced those levies on April 2 and said that the European Union would face a levy of 20 percent. With his about-face on Wednesday, the bloc would most likely instead face a 10 percent across-the-board tariff for the next 90 days.But the 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on both cars and on steel and aluminum seemed to be still in place — and the retaliation that Europe approved on Wednesday was in response to those metal-sector tariffs, not to the tariffs that Mr. Trump has now delayed. The retaliation plan would have applied tariffs of 10 to 25 percent on a wide range of goods, including soybeans, peanut butter and hair spray. Officials will now “take a bit of time to think, take a bit of time to analyze, take a bit of time to reflect,” Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, said at a news conference on Thursday.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
- in Economy
Delta Warns Trump’s Trade War Will Weigh on the Economy
Delta Air Lines on Wednesday became one of the largest American companies to warn that President Trump’s escalating trade war was weighing on its business and the global economy.Speaking before Mr. Trump reversed many of the tariffs he had just imposed on most countries, Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said a recession was possible as companies pulled back spending. “Everyone’s being prepared for uncertainty,” he told CNBC, “if that continues, and we don’t get resolution soon, we will probably end up in a recession.”Mr. Trump’s announcement helped send Delta stock up over 20 percent on Wednesday and prompted a broad rally in stocks. The president said he would pause the high tariffs for 90 days but kept a 10 percent tariff on most countries in place.Still, the president’s reversal might not be enough to dispel the uncertainty that has made it hard for companies to plan ahead. The Trump administration also said on Wednesday that it would significantly raise tariffs on China. The United States might not strike trade deals with other countries within 90 days.Airlines are highly sensitive to changes in the economy because air travel is among the first things that individuals and businesses can cut back on when they are worried about their paychecks or profits.Mr. Bastian expressed shock at the speed at which the trade tensions had taken the wind out of the economy.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
