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Tag: Commerce Department

  • 107% tariffs on Italian pasta no longer set to take effect

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    (CNN) — The United States Commerce Department is poised to significantly reduce the tariffs set to take effect on over a dozen Italian pasta makers’ products later this year.

    Most products from the European Union are already subject to tariffs of at least 15%. The pasta-specific tariffs, initially proposed in October at 92%, would have subject Italian pasta to a total rate of 107%. The newly announced rates would put the levies between 24% and 29%.

    The final rates, set to be announced on March 12 the Commerce Department said in a post-preliminary report published Wednesday, stem from an investigation some producers sold pasta at unfairly low prices. The decision to recommend lower rates before then results from an “evaluation of additional comments received following a preliminary determination,” a Commerce official told CNN.

    “Italian pasta makers have addressed many of Commerce’s concerns raised in the preliminary determination, and reflects Commerce’s commitment to a fair, transparent process,” the official added.

    The potential tariffs, which impact 13 Italian pasta makers, are due to an antidumping complaint two American companies filed with the US Commerce Department last July. In the complaint, two Midwestern companies, 8th Avenue Food & Provisions and Winland Foods, alleged that several Italian companies underpriced pasta that was shipped to the United States.

    The preliminary investigation published by the Commerce Department in September stated that two companies, La Molisana and Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, made sales to the United States “at less than normal value.” It also said both were “uncooperative” during the investigation and provided “incomplete and unreliable” data.

    The two companies accounted for the largest volume of pasta sales to the United States, according to the department. Neither immediately responded to CNN’s request for comment.

    “The redetermination of the tariffs is a sign of the recognition by US authorities of our companies’ willingness to cooperate,” the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.

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    Elisabeth Buchwald and CNN

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  • Trump announces a 25% tariff on trucks and a 30% tariff on furniture

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    (CNN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced sweeping tariffs on various household products, including imported kitchen cabinets and certain kinds of furniture – potentially adding even more costs to a category that has surged in price in recent months. Trump also announced heavy truck tariffs and pharmaceutical tariffs Thursday.

    “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday evening.

    Various tariffs that Trump has imposed have already boosted furniture prices considerably over the past year. Overall, furniture last month cost 4.7% more than in August 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Living room and dining room furniture in particular has grown more expensive – rising 9.5% over the past 12 months, the BLS reported.

    Furniture prices have surged as Trump hiked tariffs on China and Vietnam, the top two sources of imported furniture. Both countries exported $12 billion worth of furniture and fixtures last year, according to US Commerce Department data.

    Furniture prices had largely fallen for the past two and a half years prior to Trump’s tariffs. But Trump said Thursday that foreign manufacturers have oversupplied the US market, and the tariffs were necessary to regain US manufacturing prowess.

    “The reason for this is the large scale ‘FLOODING’ of these products into the United States by other outside Countries,” Trump said. “It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for National Security and other reasons, our Manufacturing process.”

    Shares of Wayfair (W), RH (RH) and Williams-Sonoma (WSM) tumbled in after-hours trading.

    Trucks

    Trump on Thursday also announced a 25% tariff on heavy trucks imported into the United States, a trade levy designed to level the playing field for America’s truck-making industry that has been hit relentlessly by the White House’s compounding tariffs.

    “In order to protect our Great Heavy Truck Manufacturers from unfair outside competition, I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all ‘Heavy (Big!) Trucks’ made in other parts of the World,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday.

    Previous tariffs that Trump has levied — including 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper — have raised costs considerably for US truck manufacturers. Foreign-built trucks, including those made by Germany’s Daimler Truck and International Motors, are typically manufactured in Mexico and imported tariff-free because of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement — so long as roughly two-thirds of the truck’s parts were made in North America.

    Tariffs were, in part, designed to boost US manufacturing and give American factories a leg up over foreign-made products. But steel and aluminum tariffs have shifted the supply-demand balance, raising the price of all metals — both imported and domestic. That means Trump’s tariffs have made some US-built trucks more costly than trucks made by foreign manufacturers.

    “Our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected from the onslaught of outside interruptions,” Trump said in his post on Thursday. “We need our Truckers to be financially healthy and strong, for many reasons, but above all else, for National Security purposes!”

    It’s not clear, however, whether the 25% tariff would apply to all heavy-duty trucks or only those that do not comply with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

    If there is no such exemption for Mexico, then it will be the country most severely affected by these tariffs, as 78% of imported heavy trucks come into the US from Mexico, Neil Shearing, chief economist at consultancy Capital Economics, wrote in a note Friday.

    Thursday’s announcement follows an investigation that Trump ordered the Commerce Department to begin in April to determine whether medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks imports pose a national security threat.

    Trump has also threatened several other tariffs, including on lumber, semiconductors and other products.

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    David Goldman and CNN

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  • The US government drops its CHIPS Act requirements for Intel

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    Intel no longer has to fulfill certain requirements or meet milestones that it was originally supposed to under the CHIPS Act, now that the government is taking a stake in the company. According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel said in a filing that it can now receive funding from the government, as long as it can show that it has already spent $7.9 billion on projects that it agreed to take on under a deal with the Commerce Department last year. Reuters notes that Intel has already spent $7.87 billion on eligible CHIPS Act-funded projects.

    In addition, the company doesn’t have to share a percentage of the total cumulative cash flow it gets from each project with the Commerce Department anymore. It doesn’t have to adhere to some of the CHIPS Act’s workflow policy requirements and most other restrictions, as well. However, it still can’t use the funds it gets from the government for dividends and to repurchase shares.

    If you’ll recall, the government recently decided to take a 10 percent stake in Intel instead of proceeding with their original CHIPS Act deal. President Donald Trump previously called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, prompting a meeting between them that led to the new agreement. “He walked in wanting to keep his job and he ended up giving us 10 billion dollars for the United States,” Trump said. “So we picked up 10 billion.” Intel eventually announced that the US government will “make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock.” The purchase will be made up of the $5.7 billion previously earmarked for Intel as part of the CHIPS act, while the rest ($3.2 billion) will be awarded as part of the Secure Enclave program.

    Intel CEO David Zinser recently revealed that the company already received $5.7 billion from the government on Wednesday night. The government also previously awarded Intel $2.2 billion in grants under the CHIPS Act, bringing the government’s total involvement with the company to $11.1 billion.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • Supreme Court overturns 1984 Chevron precedent, curbing power of federal government

    Supreme Court overturns 1984 Chevron precedent, curbing power of federal government

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    (CNN) — The Supreme Court on Friday significantly weakened the power of federal agencies to approve regulations in a major decision that could have sweeping implications for the environment, public health and the workplace.

    The 6-3 ruling, overturning a precedent from 1984, will shift the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches and hands an important victory to conservatives who have sought for years to rein in the regulatory authority of the “administrative state.”

    The lawsuits were filed by two groups of herring fishermen challenging a Commerce Department regulation requiring them to pay the salaries of government observers who board their vessels to monitor the catch. But the decision will net a far wider swath of federal regulations affecting many facets of American life.

    The decision overturns the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council precedent that required courts to give deference to federal agencies when creating regulations based on an ambiguous law. Congress routinely enacts open-ended laws that give latitude to agencies to work out — and adjust — the details to new circumstances.

    “Chevron is overruled,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”

    Justice Neil Gorsuch, the son of a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, wrote separately to call Chevron Deference “a grave anomaly when viewed against the sweep of historic judicial practice.”

    The 1984 decision, he said, “undermines core rule-of-law values ranging from the promise of fair notice to the promise of a fair hearing,” adding that it “operated to undermine rather than advance reliance interests, often to the detriment of ordinary Americans.”

    Liberals say ruling is ‘judicial hubris’

    Justice Elena Kagan, writing a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberals said that, with the overturning of Chevron, “a rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris.”

    “In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar,” Kagan wrote.

    The majority, she added, “disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described the outcome as “yet another deeply troubling decision that takes our country backwards.”

    Jean-Pierre said that “Republican-backed special interests have repeatedly turned to the Supreme Court” and that “once again, the Supreme Court has decided in the favor of special interests.”

    Conservatives have long sought to rein in regulatory authority, arguing that Washington has too much control over American industry and individual lives. The justices have been incrementally diminishing federal power for years, but the new case gave the court an opportunity to take a much broader stride.

    In the case of the fishermen who brought the case, the law allowed the government to mandate the observers but was silent on the question of who had to pay their salaries, which the fisherman argue added roughly $700 a day to their costs. They encouraged the court to rule that agencies couldn’t enact such a requirement without explicit approval from Congress.

    The Supreme Court had been trending in that direction for years, knocking back attempts by federal agencies in other contexts to approve regulations on their own. In 2021, for instance, the court’s conservatives struck down a Biden administration effort to extend an eviction moratorium first approved during the Trump administration. Last year, the court’s conservatives similarly invalidated a Biden plan to wipe out student loans of millions of Americans.

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    CNN

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