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    Trump Administration Looks to Take Steps to Ease Pain From Car Tariffs

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    The planned concessions to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States would still leave substantial tariffs on imported cars and car parts.The Trump administration said it plans to announce measures as early as Tuesday to ease the impact of tariffs on imported cars and car parts to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States.Tariffs of 25 percent on imported vehicles and on auto parts will remain in place. But the tariffs will be modified so that they are not “stacked” with other tariffs, for example on steel and aluminum, a White House spokesman said. Automakers will not have to pay tariffs on those metals, widely used in automobiles, on top of the tariffs on cars and parts.In addition, automakers will be reimbursed for some of the cost of tariffs on imported components. The reimbursement will amount to up to 3.75 percent of the value of a new car in the first year, but will be phased out over two years, the spokesman confirmed.A 25 percent tariff on imported cars took effect April 3. On Saturday, the tariffs are set to be extended to include imported parts.“President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a statement. “This deal is a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically, while providing runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment to invest in America and expand their domestic manufacturing.”But even with these changes, there will still be substantial tariffs on imported cars and auto parts, which will raise prices for new and used cars by thousands of dollars and increase the cost of repairs and insurance premiums.The modification to the tariffs was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Lutnick helped automakers secure a major exemption from tariffs in March and has taken on a role advocating relief for some industries hit by the levies.Automakers welcomed the change. “We believe the president’s leadership is helping level the playing field for companies like G.M. and allowing us to invest even more in the U.S. economy,” Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of General Motors, said in a statement on Monday. “We appreciate the productive conversations with the president and his administration and look forward to continuing to work together.” More

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    Why the Economic Disruption From Trump’s Tariff War Will Be Hard to Reverse

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    The president’s turnover of the economic order has unleashed changes that could prove lasting, because other countries will adjust.President Trump has made clear his intent to smash the reigning global economic order. And in 100 days, he has made remarkable progress in accomplishing that goal.Mr. Trump has provoked a trade war, scrapped treaties and suggested that Washington might not defend Europe. He is also dismantling the governmental infrastructure that has provided the know-how and experience.The changes have been deep. But the world is still churning. Midterm elections in two years could erode the Republican majority in Congress. And Mr. Trump’s reign is constitutionally mandated to end in four years. Could the next president come in and undo what the Trump administration has done?As Cardinal Michael Czerny, a close aide to Pope Francis, said of the Catholic Church: “There is nothing that we have done over 2,000 years that couldn’t be rolled back.”The same could be said of global geopolitics. Yet even at this early stage, historians and political scientists agree that on some crucial counts, the changes wrought by Mr. Trump may be hard to reverse.Like the erosion of trust in the United States, a resource that took generations to build.“The MAGA base and JD Vance will still be around long after Trump’s gone,” said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. No matter who occupies the White House next, the conditions that propelled the “Make America Great Again” movement — widening inequality and economic insecurity — remain. For the rest of the world, there is still a worry, he said, that there could be “another Trump in the future.”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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    In Trade War Clash With Trump, China Refuses to Take the Bait

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    The Trump administration has been saying that the two countries are engaged in talks to resolve the dispute, but Beijing asserts that no such discussions are happening.If the trade war between China and the United States is a game of high-stakes brinkmanship, it is currently a game that Beijing is not willing to play.Faced with growing claims by President Trump and administration officials that the two countries are engaged in talks and that a deal could be reached in a matter of weeks, China’s Foreign Ministry pushed back forcefully on Friday by posting on X: “China and the U.S. are NOT having any consultation or negotiation. The U.S. should stop creating confusion.”The post came hours after a foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, said the United States was “misleading the public.” A day earlier, Mr. Guo called the rumors of talks “fake news.”The response was the latest sign that China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, intends to hold firm in his standoff with Mr. Trump, sensing that his position is strengthening. Beijing is betting that it can stomach the pain of a trade war better than the Trump administration can because of U.S. political pressure and volatility on Wall Street, analysts say.“The Chinese are not eager to climb down the ladder,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “They see Trump as wanting to climb down and are happy to let him stew in his own juice.”Ms. Sun said Beijing will not come to the negotiation table without any U.S. concessions or a good-will gesture. That could include scaling back tariffs, or making clear that Mr. Trump is reaching out to Mr. Xi first.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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    The Business Playbook for Tariff Chaos

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    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

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    Peter Navarro: The Architect of Trump’s Tariffs

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    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

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    Meloni and Trump Oval Office Meeting Cements Special Rapport

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    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

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    Trump Has Mixed Emotions Toward Japan

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    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