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Tag: Government policy

  • Trump’s State of the Union seeks to calm economic jitters

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared during the State of the Union on Tuesday that “we’re winning so much,” saying he sparked a jobs and manufacturing boom at home while imposing a new world order abroad — hoping that offering a long list of his accomplishments can counter approval ratings that have been falling.

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    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE – Associated Press

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  • US futures fall while Asian markets are mostly higher after the Supreme Court nixes Trump’s tariffs

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    BANGKOK — U.S. futures fell and most Asian markets climbed Monday after the Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

    Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday.

    Hong Kong led regional gains as its Hang Seng index surged 2.2% to 27,003.47. But the Shanghai Composite index lost 1.3% to 4,082.07.

    In South Korea, the Kospi gained 1.1% to 5,873.07.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4% to 9,041.00.

    Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 1.4%.

    The mixed reactions are “highlighting the winners-and-losers effect of shifts in tariff policy that has just delivered a boost to countries who previously had a comparatively bad deal,” Benjamin Picton of Rabobank said in a commentary.

    “U.S. tariff policy will continue to be a source of uncertainty for markets as traders attempt to price in the implications of what is still a movable feast,” he wrote.

    The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.7% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%. The future for the Nasdaq composite index was down 0.8%.

    On Friday, Wall Street kept calm after the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which had triggered panic in financial markets when they were announced last year.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 6,909.51. It had been flipping between small gains and losses before the court’s ruling, following discouraging reports showing slowing growth for the U.S. economy and faster inflation.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 49,625.97. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.9% to 22,886.07.

    Tariffs also aren’t going away, even with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump in the afternoon said he would use other avenues to put taxes on imports from other countries after calling the court’s decision terrible.

    “Just so you understand, we have tariffs, we just have them in a different way,” Trump told reporters in an afternoon briefing. He said he would sign an executive order to impose a 10% global tariff under a law that could limit it to 150 days. He later raised that to 15%.

    The president also said he’s exploring other tariffs through other avenues, ones that would require an investigation through the Commerce Department.

    The reaction has been tentative given persisting uncertainties over what Trump will do.

    On Wall Street, Akamai Technologies dropped 14.1% for one of the market’s sharpest losses. The cybersecurity and cloud computing company reported stronger results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected, but it gave a profit forecast for the upcoming year that fell short of estimates.

    Akamai plans to spend a bigger percentage of its revenue this upcoming year on equipment and other investments. It’s the latest potential indicator of how shortages of computer memory created by the AI boom are affecting customers throughout the economy.

    Discouraging reports showing slowing U.S. economic growth and accelerating inflation drew a relatively muted response from investors.

    The reports underscore the tricky situation the Federal Reserve faces as it sets interest rates, but did not change traders’ expectations much for what the Fed will ultimately do. Traders are still betting that the Fed will lower rates at least twice this year, according to data from CME Group.

    Lower interest rates would give the economy and investment prices a boost, but they also risk worsening inflation. Fed officials said at their last meeting that they want to see inflation fall further before they would support cutting rates further.

    In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 53 cents to $65.95 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 51 cents to $70.79 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 154.11 Japanese yen f rom 154.99 yen. The euro rose to $1.1828 from $1.1780.

    The price of gold rose 1.9%, while the price of silver was up 5.5%.

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  • US futures fall while Asian markets are mostly higher after the Supreme Court nixes Trump’s tariffs

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    BANGKOK — U.S. futures fell and most Asian markets climbed Monday after the Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

    Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday.

    Hong Kong led regional gains as its Hang Seng index surged 2.2% to 27,003.47. But the Shanghai Composite index lost 1.3% to 4,082.07.

    In South Korea, the Kospi gained 1.1% to 5,873.07.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4% to 9,041.00.

    Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 1.4%.

    The mixed reactions are “highlighting the winners-and-losers effect of shifts in tariff policy that has just delivered a boost to countries who previously had a comparatively bad deal,” Benjamin Picton of Rabobank said in a commentary.

    “U.S. tariff policy will continue to be a source of uncertainty for markets as traders attempt to price in the implications of what is still a movable feast,” he wrote.

    The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.7% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%. The future for the Nasdaq composite index was down 0.8%.

    On Friday, Wall Street kept calm after the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which had triggered panic in financial markets when they were announced last year.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 6,909.51. It had been flipping between small gains and losses before the court’s ruling, following discouraging reports showing slowing growth for the U.S. economy and faster inflation.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 49,625.97. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.9% to 22,886.07.

    Tariffs also aren’t going away, even with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump in the afternoon said he would use other avenues to put taxes on imports from other countries after calling the court’s decision terrible.

    “Just so you understand, we have tariffs, we just have them in a different way,” Trump told reporters in an afternoon briefing. He said he would sign an executive order to impose a 10% global tariff under a law that could limit it to 150 days. He later raised that to 15%.

    The president also said he’s exploring other tariffs through other avenues, ones that would require an investigation through the Commerce Department.

    The reaction has been tentative given persisting uncertainties over what Trump will do.

    On Wall Street, Akamai Technologies dropped 14.1% for one of the market’s sharpest losses. The cybersecurity and cloud computing company reported stronger results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected, but it gave a profit forecast for the upcoming year that fell short of estimates.

    Akamai plans to spend a bigger percentage of its revenue this upcoming year on equipment and other investments. It’s the latest potential indicator of how shortages of computer memory created by the AI boom are affecting customers throughout the economy.

    Discouraging reports showing slowing U.S. economic growth and accelerating inflation drew a relatively muted response from investors.

    The reports underscore the tricky situation the Federal Reserve faces as it sets interest rates, but did not change traders’ expectations much for what the Fed will ultimately do. Traders are still betting that the Fed will lower rates at least twice this year, according to data from CME Group.

    Lower interest rates would give the economy and investment prices a boost, but they also risk worsening inflation. Fed officials said at their last meeting that they want to see inflation fall further before they would support cutting rates further.

    In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 53 cents to $65.95 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 51 cents to $70.79 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 154.11 Japanese yen f rom 154.99 yen. The euro rose to $1.1828 from $1.1780.

    The price of gold rose 1.9%, while the price of silver was up 5.5%.

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  • Murky outlook for businesses after tariff ruling prompts countermoves by Trump

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    NEW YORK — Businesses face a new wave of uncertainty after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump under an emergency powers law and Trump vowed to work around the ruling to keep his tariffs in place.

    The Trump administration says its tariffs help boost American manufacturers and reduce the trade gap. But many U.S. businesses have had to raise prices and adjust in other ways to offset higher costs spurred by the tariffs.

    It remains to be seen how much relief businesses and consumers will actually get from Friday’s ruling. Within hours of the court’s decision, Trump pledged to use a different law to impose a 10% tariff on all imports that would last 150 days, and to explore other ways to impose additional tariffs on countries he says engage in unfair trade practices.

    “Any boost to the economy from lowering tariffs in the near-term is likely to be partly offset by a prolonged period of uncertainty,” said Michael Pearce, an economist at Oxford Economics. “With the administration likely to rebuild tariffs through other, more durable, means, the overall tariffs rate may yet end up settling close to current levels.”

    Efforts to claw back the estimated $133 billion to $175 billion of previously collected tariffs now deemed illegal are bound to be complicated, and will likely favor larger companies with more resources. Consumers hoping for a refund are unlikely to be compensated.

    With Trump’s unyielding position on tariffs, many business are braced for years of court battles.

    Basic Fun, a Florida-based maker of toys such as Lincoln Logs and Tonka trucks, last week joined a slew of other businesses in a lawsuit seeking to claw back tariffs paid to the government.

    While company CEO Jay Foreman is concerned about any new tariffs Trump may impose, he doesn’t think they will affect toys. Still, he said, “I do worry about some type of perpetual fight over this, at least for the next three years.”

    The new 10% tariff Trump announced Friday immediately raised questions for Daniel Posner, the owner of Grapes The Wine Co., in White Plains, New York. Since wine shipments take about two weeks to cross the Atlantic, he wonders if a shipment arriving Monday will be affected.

    “We’re reactive to what’s become a very unstable situation,” Posner said.

    Ron Kurnik owns Superior Coffee Roasting Co. in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, across the border from Canada. In addition to U.S. tariffs, Kurnik faced retaliatory tariffs from Canada for much of last year when he exported his coffee.

    “It’s like a nightmare we just want to wake up from,” said Kurnik, whose company has raised prices by 6% twice since the tariffs went into effect. While he’s pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling, he doesn’t think he will ever see a refund.

    A wide array of industries, including retail, tech and the agricultural sector, used the Supreme Court ruling as an opportunity to remind Trump of how his trade policies have affected their businesses.

    The Business Roundtable, a group that lobbies on behalf of more than 200 U.S. companies, released a statement encouraging the administration to limit the focus of tariffs going forward to specific unfair trade practices and national security concerns.

    In the retail industry, stores of all stripes have embraced different ways to offset the effects of tariffs — from absorbing some of the costs themselves, to cutting expenses and diversifying their supply network. Still, they have had to pass on some price increases at a time when shoppers have been particularly sensitive to inflationary pressures.

    Dave French, executive vice president of government relations for The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail industry trade group, said he hoped lower courts would ensure “a seamless process” to refund tariffs. That issue wasn’t addressed in Friday’s ruling.

    For the technology sector, Trump’s tariffs caused major headaches. Many of its products are either built overseas or depend on imports of key components. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents a spectrum of technology companies employing more than 1.6 million people, expressed hope that the decision will ease the trade tensions.

    “With this decision behind us, we look forward to bringing more stability to trade policy,” said Jonathan McHale, the association’s vice president for digital trade.

    Farmers, who have been stung by higher prices for equipment and fertilizer since the tariffs went into effect, and reduced demand for their exports, also spoke out.

    “We strongly encourage the president to avoid using any other available authorities to impose tariffs on agricultural inputs that would further increase costs,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall.

    The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give the president authority to tax imports, a power that belongs to Congress. But the decision only affects tariffs imposed under that law, so some industries will see no relief at all.

    The decision leaves in effect tariffs on steel, upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, according to the Home Furnishings Association, which represents 15,000 furniture stores in North America.

    At Revolution Brewing in Chicago, the aluminum they use for cans costs as much as the ingredients that go inside them because of tariffs Trump has placed on metals that are not affected by the Supreme Court ruling. While the cans are made in Chicago, the aluminum comes from Canada, said Josh Deth, managing partner at the brewery.

    Tariffs have been just one challenge for his business, which is also affected by volatile barley prices and a slowdown in demand for craft beer.

    “Everything kind of adds up,” he said. “The beverage industry needs relief here. We’re getting crushed by the prices of aluminum.”

    Italian winemakers hard-hit by the tariffs greeted the Supreme Court decision with skepticism, warning that the decision may just deepen uncertainty around trade with the U.S.

    The U.S. is Italy’s largest wine market, with sales having tripled in value over the past 20 years. New tariffs on the EU, which the Trump administration initially threatened would be 200%, had sent fear throughout the industry, which remained even after the U.S. reduced, delayed and negotiated down.

    “There is a more than likely risk that tariffs will be reimposed through alternative legal channels, compounded by the uncertainty this ruling may generate in commercial relations between Europe and the United States,” said Lamberto Frescobaldi, president of UIV, a trade association that represents more than 800 winemakers.

    Elsewhere in Europe, initial reaction focused on renewed upheaval and confusion regarding costs facing businesses exporting to the US.

    Trump’s tariffs could hit pharmaceuticals, chemicals and auto parts, said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING bank. “Europe should not be mistaken, this ruling will not bring relief,” he said. “The legal authority may be different, but the economic impact could be identical or worse.”

    ___

    Anne D’Innocenzio in New York; Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit; Michael Liedtke in San Francisco; David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany; Jonathan Matisse in Nashville, Tennessee; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

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  • Shein faces EU investigation over illegal products and addictive design features

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    LONDON — European Union regulators are investigating Shein over concerns the online retailer hasn’t done enough to limit the sale of illegal products or protect users from the platform’s allegedly addictive design.

    The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said Tuesday that it opened formal investigation under the bloc’s sweeping rulebook known as the Digital Services Act, which requires the biggest online platforms to take extra steps to protect internet users from dodgy products.

    Shein may be required to alter its actions, or pay a hefty fine if a so-called non-compliance decision is reached following an in-depth investigation, the European Commission said.

    One area its investigation is focusing on is whether Shein has the proper safeguards in place to limit the sale of products that are illegal in the EU, the commission said, including items that amount to child sexual abuse material such as “child-like sex dolls.”

    The the fast-fashion giant came under fire last year in France, where authorities found illegal weapons including firearms, knives and machetes as well as child-like sex dolls for sale on its website. The French government sought to suspend access to the Shein site in France. A court blocked that action and asked the commission to investigate under the bloc’s Digital Services Act.

    The commission says it will also determine whether Shein has systems to mitigate risks related to what it says is the platform’s addictive design, which includes giving users points or rewards “for engagement.”

    And regulators are also targeting the transparency of Shein’s recommendation systems that suggest more products to consumers. They’re concerned that the company doesn’t clearly explain to users why they’re being recommended specific products.

    Shein said it takes its obligations seriously and will continue to cooperate with the commission.

    The company said it has invested significantly in strengthening compliance with the DSA. The measures “comprehensive systemic-risk assessments and mitigation frameworks, enhanced protections for younger users, and ongoing work to design our services in ways that promote a safe and trusted user experience.”

    “Protecting minors and reducing the risk of harmful content and behaviours are central to how we develop and operate our platform,” the company said in a press statement.

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  • Shein faces EU investigation over illegal products and addictive design features

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    LONDON — European Union regulators are investigating Shein over concerns the online retailer hasn’t done enough to limit the sale of illegal products or protect users from the platform’s allegedly addictive design.

    The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said Tuesday that it opened formal investigation under the bloc’s sweeping rulebook known as the Digital Services Act, which requires the biggest online platforms to take extra steps to protect internet users from dodgy products.

    Shein may be required to alter its actions, or pay a hefty fine if a so-called non-compliance decision is reached following an in-depth investigation, the European Commission said.

    One area its investigation is focusing on is whether Shein has the proper safeguards in place to limit the sale of products that are illegal in the EU, the commission said, including items that amount to child sexual abuse material such as “child-like sex dolls.”

    The the fast-fashion giant came under fire last year in France, where authorities found illegal weapons including firearms, knives and machetes as well as child-like sex dolls for sale on its website. The French government sought to suspend access to the Shein site in France. A court blocked that action and asked the commission to investigate under the bloc’s Digital Services Act.

    The commission says it will also determine whether Shein has systems to mitigate risks related to what it says is the platform’s addictive design, which includes giving users points or rewards “for engagement.”

    And regulators are also targeting the transparency of Shein’s recommendation systems that suggest more products to consumers. They’re concerned that the company doesn’t clearly explain to users why they’re being recommended specific products.

    Shein said it takes its obligations seriously and will continue to cooperate with the commission.

    The company said it has invested significantly in strengthening compliance with the DSA. The measures “comprehensive systemic-risk assessments and mitigation frameworks, enhanced protections for younger users, and ongoing work to design our services in ways that promote a safe and trusted user experience.”

    “Protecting minors and reducing the risk of harmful content and behaviours are central to how we develop and operate our platform,” the company said in a press statement.

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  • Trump administration reaches a trade deal to lower Taiwan’s tariff barriers

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said.

    The agreement comes as the U.S. remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly $127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau.

    Most of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. will be taxed at a 15% rate, the USTR’s office said. The 15% rate is the same as that levied on other U.S. trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Japan and South Korea.

    Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended the signing of the reciprocal agreement, which occurred under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Taiwan’s Vice Premier Li-chiun Cheng and its government minister Jen-ni Yang also attended the signing.

    “President Trump’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region continues to generate prosperous trade ties for the United States with important partners across Asia, while further advancing the economic and national security interests of the American people,” Greer said in a statement.

    The Taiwanese government said in a statement that the tariff rate set in the agreement allows its companies to compete on a level field with Japan, South Korea and the European Union. It also said the agreement “eliminated” the disadvantage from a lack of a free trade agreement between Taiwan and the U.S.

    The deal comes ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to China in April and suggests a deepening economic relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan.

    Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy that China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. Beijing prohibits all countries it has diplomatic relations with — including the U.S. — from having formal ties with Taipei.

    Under the deal, Taiwan will make investments of $250 billion in U.S. industries, such as computer chips, artificial intelligence applications and energy. The Taiwanese government says it will provide up to an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to help smaller businesses invest in the U.S.

    The agreement would make it easier for the U.S. to sell autos, pharmaceutical drugs and food products in Taiwan. But the critical component might be that Taiwanese companies would invest in the production of computer chips in the U.S., possibly helping to ease the trade imbalance.

    The investments helped enable the U.S. to reduce its planned tariffs from as much as 32% initially to 15%.

    Taiwan’s government said it will submit the deal and investment plans to its legislature for approval.

    The U.S. side said the deal with Taiwan would help create several “world-class” industrial parks in America in order to help build up domestic manufacturing of advanced technologies such as chips. The Commerce Department in January described it as “a historic trade deal that will drive a massive reshoring of America’s semiconductor sector.”

    In return, the U.S. would give preferential treatment to Taiwan regarding the possible tariffs stemming from a Section 232 investigation of the importing of computer chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

    TSMC, the chip-making giant, is expected to be the key investor. It has committed to $165 billion in investments in the U.S., including not only fabrication plants but also a major research and development center that would help build a supply chain to power U.S. artificial intelligence ambitions. Major U.S. tech companies such as Nvidia and AMD rely on TSMC for manufacturing highly advanced chips.

    Taiwan also said the investments will be two-way, with U.S. companies also investing in key Taiwanese industries. Nvidia this week signed a land deal in Taipei to build a headquarters office there.

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  • Trump administration presses efforts to ensure supply of critical minerals outside of China

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected to unveil its grandest plan yet to rebuild supply chains of critical minerals needed for everything from jet engines to smartphones, likely through purchase agreements with partners on top of creating a $12 billion U.S. strategic reserve to help counter China’s dominance.

    Vice President JD Vance is set to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations. The U.S. is expected to sign deals on supply chain logistics, though details have not yet been revealed. Rubio met Tuesday with foreign ministers from South Korea and India to discuss critical minerals mining and processing.

    The meeting and expected agreements will come just two days after President Donald Trump announced “Project Vault,” or a stockpile of critical minerals to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export and Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.

    The Trump administration is making such bold moves after China, which controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing, choked off the flow of the elements in response to Trump’s tariff war. The two superpowers are in a one-year truce after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in October and agreed to pull back on high tariffs and stepped up rare earth restrictions.

    But China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.

    “We don’t want to ever go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said on Monday when announcing Project Vault.

    Other countries might join with the Trump administration in buying up critical minerals and taking other steps to spur industry development because the trade war revealed how vulnerable Western counties are to China, said Pini Althaus, who founded Oklahoma rare earth miner USA Rare Earth in 2019.

    “They’re looking at setting up sort of a buyers’ club, if you will,” said Althaus, who now is working to develop new mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as CEO of Cove Capital. “The key producers and key consumers of critical minerals will sort of get together and work on pricing structures, floor pricing and other things.”

    The government last week also made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer when it extended $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment agreement.

    Seeking government funding these days is like meeting with private equity investors because officials are scrutinizing companies to ensure anyone they invest in can deliver, Althaus said. And the government is demanding terms designed to generate a return for taxpayers as loans are repaid and stock prices increase, he said.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board this week approved the $10 billion loan — the largest in its history — to help finance the setup of the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve. It is tasked with ensuring access to critical minerals and related products for manufacturers, including battery maker Clarios, energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, digital storage company Western Digital and aerospace giant Boeing, according to the policy bank.

    Bank President and Chairman John Jovanovic told CNBC that the project creates a public-private partnership formula that “is uniquely suited and puts America’s best foot forward.”

    “What it does is it creates a scenario where there are no free riders. Everybody pitches in to solve this huge problem,” he said.

    Manufacturers, which benefit the most from the reserve, are making a long-term financial commitment, Jovanovic said, while the government loan spurs private investments.

    The stockpile strategy may help spark a “more organic” pricing model that excludes China, which has used its dominance to flood the market with lower-priced products to squeeze out competitors, said Wade Senti, president of the U.S. permanent magnet company AML.

    The Trump administration also has injected public money directly into the sector. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China.

    A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals. The lawmakers applauded the steps by the Trump administration.

    “It’s a clear sign that there is bipartisan support for securing a robust domestic supply of critical minerals that both reduces our reliance on China and stabilizes the market,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Todd Young, R-Ind., said in a joint statement Tuesday.

    Building up a stockpile will help American companies weather future rare earth supply disruptions, but that will likely be a long-term effort because the materials are still scarce right now with China’s restrictions, said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book “The Elements of Power.”

    The Trump administration has focused on reinvigorating critical minerals production, but Abraham said it’s also important to encourage development of manufacturing that will use them. He noted that Trump’s decisions to cut incentives for electric vehicles and wind turbines have undercut demand for these elements in America.

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  • He left the US for an internship. Trump’s travel ban made it impossible to return

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    The first time Patrick Thaw saw his University of Michigan friends together since sophomore year ended was bittersweet. They were starting a new semester in Ann Arbor, while he was FaceTiming in from Singapore, stranded half a world away.

    One day last June he was interviewing to renew his U.S. student visa, and the next his world was turned upside down by President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from 12 countries, including Thaw’s native Myanmar.

    “If I knew it was going to go down this badly, I wouldn’t have left the United States,” he said of his decision to leave Michigan for a summer internship in Singapore.

    The ban was one of several ways the Trump administration made life harder for international students during his first year back in the White House, including a pause in visa appointments and additional layers of vetting that contributed to a dip in foreign enrollment for first-time students. New students had to look elsewhere, but the hurdles made life particularly complicated for those like Thaw who were well into their U.S. college careers.

    Universities have had to come up with increasingly flexible solutions, such as bringing back pandemic-era remote learning arrangements or offering admission to international campuses they partner with, said Sarah Spreitzer, assistant vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education.

    In Thaw’s case, a Michigan administrator highlighted studying abroad as an option. As long as the travel ban was in place, a program in Australia seemed viable — at least initially.

    In the meantime, Thaw didn’t have much to do in Singapore but wait. He made friends, but they were busy with school or jobs. After his internship ended, he killed time by checking email, talking walks and eating out.

    “Mentally, I’m back in Ann Arbor,” the 21-year-old said. “But physically, I’m trapped in Singapore.”

    When Thaw arrived in Ann Arbor in 2023, he threw himself into campus life. He immediately meshed with his dorm roommate’s group of friends, who had gone to high school together about an hour away. A neuroscience major, he also joined a biology fraternity and an Alzheimer’s research lab.

    His curiosity pushed him to explore a wide range of courses, including a Jewish studies class. The professor, Cara Rock-Singer, said Thaw told her his interest stemmed from reading the works of Philip Roth.

    “I really work to make it a place where everyone feels not only comfortable, but invested in contributing,” Rock-Singer said. “But Patrick did not need nudging. He was always there to think and take risks.”

    When Thaw landed his clinical research internship at a Singapore medical school, it felt like just another step toward success.

    He heard speculation that the Trump administration might impose travel restrictions, but it was barely an afterthought — something he said he even joked about with friends before departing.

    Then the travel ban was announced.

    Thaw’s U.S. college dream had been a lifetime in the making but was undone — at least for now — by one trip abroad. Stuck in Singapore, he couldn’t sleep and his mind fixated on one question: “Why did you even come here?”

    As a child, Thaw set his sights on attending an American university. That desire became more urgent as higher education opportunities dwindled after a civil war broke out in Myanmar.

    For a time, tensions were so high that Thaw and his mother took shifts watching to make sure the bamboo in their front yard didn’t erupt in flames from Molotov cocktails. Once, he was late for an algebra exam because a bomb exploded in front of his house, he said.

    So when he was accepted to the University of Michigan after applying to colleges “around the clock,” Thaw was elated.

    “The moment I landed in the United States, like, set foot, I was like, this is it,” Thaw said. “This is where I begin my new life.”

    When Thaw talked about life in Myanmar, it often led to deep conversations, said Allison Voto, one of his friends. He was one of the first people she met whose background was very different from hers, which made her “more understanding of the world,” she said.

    During the 2024-25 school year, the U.S. hosted nearly 1.2 million international students. As of summer 2024, more than 1,400 people from Myanmar had American student visas, making it one of the top-represented countries among those hit by the travel ban.

    A Michigan official said the school recognizes the challenges facing some international students and is committed to ensuring they have all the support and options it can provide. The university declined to comment specifically on Thaw’s situation.

    While the study abroad program in Australia sparked some hope that Thaw could stay enrolled at Michigan, uncertainty around the travel ban and visa obstacles ultimately led him to decide against it.

    He had left Myanmar to get an education and it was time to finish what he started, which meant moving on.

    “I cannot just wait for the travel ban to just end and get lifted and go back, because that’s going to be an indefinite amount of time,” he said.

    He started applying to colleges outside the U.S., getting back acceptance letters from schools in Australia and Canada. He is holding out hope of attending the University of Toronto, which would put his friends in Ann Arbor just a four-hour drive from visiting him.

    “If he comes anywhere near me, basically on the continent of North America, I’m going to go see him,” said Voto, whose friendship with Thaw lately is defined by daylong gaps in their text conversations. “I mean, he’s Patrick, you know? That’s absolutely worth it.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Trump stirs talk of ‘new world order’

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gives. And he takes away.

    Offended by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s increasingly assertive posture toward the U.S., Trump revoked an invitation to join his Board of Peace. Many Western allies are suspicious of the organization, which is chaired by Trump and was initially formed to focus on maintaining the ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas but has grown into something skeptics fear could rival the United Nations.

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    By STEVEN SLOAN – Associated Press

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  • Some Republicans express concern over the tactics used in Minnesota and urge shooting investigation

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    WASHINGTON — A handful of Republicans expressed growing concern Sunday about the tactics that federal immigration officials are using in Minnesota after a U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot a man in Minneapolis.

    Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the killing Saturday of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, was a “real tragedy.” Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois.

    “I think the death of Americans, what we’re seeing on TV, it’s causing deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability,” Stitt told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now.”

    When asked if he thought the president should pull immigration agents from Minnesota, Stitt said Trump has to answer that question.

    “He’s getting bad advice right now,” Stitt said.

    The governor said the Republican president needed to tell the American people what the solution and “endgame” are, and that there needed to be solutions instead of politicizing the situation. “Right now, tempers are just going crazy and we need to calm this down,” Stitt said.

    Other Republicans, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, also conveyed unease. In a social media post, Cassidy called the shooting “incredibly disturbing” and that the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.” Tillis urged a “thorough and impartial investigation.”

    “Any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy,” Tillis said in a post.

    Administration officials were firm in their defense of the hard-line immigration tactics.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said “it’s a tragedy when anyone dies” but he blamed Democratic leaders in Minnesota for “fomenting chaos.”

    “There are a lot of paid agitators who are ginning things up and the governor has not done a good job of tamping this down,” Bessent said on ABC’s “This Week.”

    __

    Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report

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  • Trump highlights false claims as he reviews past year

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    President Donald Trump marked his first year back in office Tuesday by presiding over a meandering, nearly two-hour press briefing to recount his accomplishments, repeating many false claims he made throughout 2025.

    Among the topics about which he continued to spread falsehoods were the 2020 election, foreign policy, the economy and energy.

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    By MELISSA GOLDIN – Associated Press

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  • In their words: European governments criticize Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark — European governments blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that eight countries will face 10% tariff for opposing American control of Greenland beginning next month.

    Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland are on Trump’s list, though it was not immediately clear if the tariffs would impact the European Union as a bloc.

    Trump’s threat sets up a potentially dangerous test of U.S. partnerships in Europe. The U.S. president indicated the tariffs were retaliation for the deployment of symbolic levels of troops from the European countries to Greenland. Europeans said the troops were sent in response to Trump’s call for strengthened Arctic security.

    Here’s a look at what the governments of the eight countries said:

    “We agree with the U.S. that we need to do more since the Arctic is no longer a low tension area,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement. “That’s exactly why we and NATO partners are stepping up in full transparency with our American allies.”

    “Threats have no place among allies,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre wrote on social media. “Norway’s position is firm: Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Norway fully supports the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark. There is broad agreement in NATO on the need to strengthen security in the Arctic, including in Greenland.”

    “We will not allow ourselves to be blackmailed,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on social media. “I will always stand up for my country, and for our allied neighbors. This is an EU issue that concerns many more countries than those now being singled out.”

    “No intimidation or threats will influence us, whether in Ukraine, Greenland or anywhere else in the world when we are faced with such situations,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media. “Tariff threats are unacceptable and have no place in this context.”

    “The Federal Government has taken note of the statements made by the U.S. President,” German federal government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius wrote on social media. “It is in closest coordination with its European partners. Together, we will decide on appropriate responses at the appropriate time.”

    “Our position on Greenland is very clear — it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and its future is a matter for the Greenlanders and the Danes,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. “We have also made clear that Arctic security matters for the whole of NATO and allies should all do more together to address the threat from Russia across different parts of the Arctic. Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong.”

    “It’s inappropriate, because we’re not in favor of using trade tariffs in situations that have nothing to do with trade,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said during an interview on current affairs show “WNL op Zondag.” “As allies, I don’t think this is how you should treat each other; not seek dialogue with each other, but try to put pressure on each other. So no, I’m very unhappy about this.”

    “Among allies, issues are best resolved through discussion, not through pressure,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who famously bonded with Trump over their shared love of golf, wrote on social media. “Tariffs would undermine the transatlantic relationship and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”

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  • People inside Iran describe heavy security in first calls to outside world

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranians could call abroad on mobile phones Tuesday for the first time since communications were halted during a crackdown on nationwide protests in which activists said at least 646 people have been killed.

    Several people in Tehran were able to call The Associated Press and speak to a journalist there. The AP bureau in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was unable to call those numbers back. The witnesses said SMS text messaging still was down and that internet users in Iran could connect to government-approved websites locally but nothing abroad.

    The witnesses gave a brief glimpse into life on the streets of the Iranian capital over the four and a half days of being cut off from the world. They described seeing a heavy security presence in central Tehran.

    Anti-riot police officers, wearing helmets and body armor, carried batons, shields, shotguns and tear gas launchers. They stood watch at major intersections. Nearby, the witnesses saw members of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force, who similarly carried firearms and batons. Security officials in plainclothes were visible in public spaces as well.

    Several banks and government offices were burned during the unrest, they said. ATMs had been smashed and banks struggled to complete transactions without the internet, the witnesses added.

    However, shops were open, though there was little foot traffic in the capital. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, where the demonstrations began Dec. 28, was to open Tuesday. However, a witness described speaking to multiple shopkeepers who said the security forces ordered them to reopen no matter what. Iranian state media had not acknowledged that order.

    The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

    U.S. President Donald Trump has said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its crackdown.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to the Qatar-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera in an interview aired Monday night, said he continued to communicate with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

    The communication “continued before and after the protests and are still ongoing,” Araghchi said. However, “Washington’s proposed ideas and threats against our country are incompatible.”

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Iran’s public rhetoric diverges from the private messaging the administration has received from Tehran in recent days.

    “I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” Leavitt said. “However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”

    Meanwhile, pro-government demonstrators flooded the streets Monday in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, which appeared to number in the tens of thousands, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

    Others cried out, “Death to the enemies of God!” Iran’s attorney general has warned that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge.

    Trump announced Monday that countries doing business with Iran will face 25% tariffs from the United States. Trump announced the tariffs in a social media posting, saying they would be “effective immediately.”

    It was action against Iran for the protest crackdown from Trump, who believes exacting tariffs can be a useful tool in prodding friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.

    Brazil, China, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are among economies that do business with Tehran.

    Trump said Sunday that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

    “I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

    Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.

    More than 10,700 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the latest death toll early Tuesday. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 512 of the dead were protesters and 134 were security force members.

    With the internet down in Iran, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government hasn’t offered overall casualty figures.

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  • Trump delays increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year

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    President Donald Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks.

    Trump’s order signed Wednesday keeps in place a 25% tariff he imposed in September on those goods, but delays for another year a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture and 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets and vanities.

    The increases, which were set to take effect Jan. 1, come as the Republican president instituted a broad swath of taxes on imported goods to address trade imbalances and other issues.

    The president has said the tariffs on furniture are needed to “bolster American industry and protect national security.”

    The delay is the latest in the roller coaster of Trump’s tariffs wars since he returned to office last year, with the president announcing levies at times without warning and then delaying or pulling back from them just as abruptly.

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  • Consumer confidence slides in December to lowest level since US tariffs rolled out

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    WASHINGTON — Consumers confidence in the economy was shaken in December as Americans grow anxious about high prices and the impact of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

    The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell 3.8 points to 89.1 in December from November’s upwardly revised reading of 92.9. That is close to the 85.7 reading from April, when Trump rolled out his import taxes on U.S. trading partners.

    A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market remained stable at 70.7, but still well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. It was the 11th consecutive month that reading has come in under 80.

    Consumers’ assessments of their current economic situation tumbled 9.5 points to 116.8.

    Write-in responses to the survey showed that prices and inflation remained consumers’ biggest concern, along with tariffs, despite repeated claims by President Trump that inflation is a hoax.

    Perceptions of the job market also declined this month.

    The conference board’s survey reported that 26.7% of consumers said jobs were “plentiful,” down from 28.2% in November. Also, 20.8% of consumers said jobs were “hard to get,” up from 20.1% last month.

    Last week, the government reported that the U.S. economy gained a healthy 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October. Notably, the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% last month, the highest since 2021.

    The country’s labor market has been stuck in a “low hire, low fire” state, economists say, as businesses stand pat due to uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of elevated interest rates. Since March, job creation has fallen to an average 35,000 a month, compared to 71,000 in the year ended in March. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said recently that he suspects those numbers will be revised even lower.

    Despite the broad pessimism, the proportion of those surveyed who think a recession in the next year is is unlikely grew.

    The December survey showed that respondents’ views of their family’s current financial situation sank into negative territory for the first time in close to four years. On the flip side, expectations about their future financial situation were the most positive since January.

    Also Tuesday, the government reported that the economy expanded at a 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter, though economists expect a much more sluggish fourth quarter.

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  • A look at the experts racing to decode Trump’s tariff rules

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    NEW YORK — After a half-century immersed in the world of trade, customs broker Amy Magnus thought she’d seen it all, navigating mountains of regulations and all sorts of logistical hurdles to import everything from lumber and bananas to circus animals and Egyptian mummies.

    Then came 2025.

    Tariffs were imposed in ways she’d never seen. New rules left her wondering what they really meant. Federal workers, always a reliable backstop, grew more elusive.

    “2025 has changed the trade system,” says Magnus. “It wasn’t perfect before, but it was a functioning system. Now, it is a lot more chaotic and troubling.”

    Once hidden cogs in the international trade machine, customs brokers are getting a rare spotlight as President Donald Trump reinvents America’s commercial ties with the world. If this breathless year of tariffs amounts to a trade war, customs brokers are its front lines.

    Few Americans have been exposed as exhaustively to every fluctuation of trade policy as the customs broker. They were there in the opening days of Trump’s second term, when tariffs were announced on Canada and Mexico, and two days later, when those same levies were paused. They were there through every rule on imports of steel and seafood, on cars and copper, on polysilicon and pharmaceuticals, and on and on. For every tariff, for every carve-out, for every order, brokers have been left to translate policy into reality, line by line and code by code, in a year when it seemed every passing week brought change.

    “We were used to decades of a certain way of processing, and from January to now, that universe has been turned kind of upside-down on us,” says Al Raffa, a customs broker in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who helps shepherd containerloads of cargo into the U.S. packed to the brim with everything from rounds of brie to boxes of chocolate.

    Each arrival of products imported to the country requires filings with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and often, other agencies. Importers often turn to brokers to handle the regulatory legwork and, with a spate of new trade rules unleashed by the Trump administration, they’ve seen their demand grow alongside their workloads.

    Many shipments that entered duty free now are tariffed. Other imports that had minimal levies that might cost a company a few hundred dollars have had their bills balloon to thousands. For Raffa and his crew, the ever-expanding list of tariffs means a given product could be subjected to taxes under multiple separate tariff lines.

    “That one line item of cheese that previously was just one tariff, now it could be two, three, in some cases five tariff numbers,” says 53-year-old Raffa, who has had jobs in trade since he was a teenager and who has a button emblazoned with “Make Trade Boring Again.”

    Government regulations have always been a reality for brokers, and the very reason for their existence. When thick tomes of trade rules changed in the past, though, they typically were issued long ahead of their effective dates, with periods for comment and review, each word of policy crafted in an attempt to project clarity and definition.

    With Trump, word of a major change in trade rules might come in a Truth Social post or an oversized chart clutched by the president in a Rose Garden appearance.

    “You’d be remiss not to be looking at the White House website on a daily basis, multiple times a day, just to see what executive order is going to be announced,” Raffa says.

    Each announcement sends brokerage firms into a scramble to attempt to dissect the rules, update their systems to reflect them and alert their customers who may have shipments en route and for whom any shift in tariffs could mean a major hit to their bottom line.

    JD Gonzalez, a third-generation customs broker in Laredo, Texas, and president of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, says the volume and speed of changes have been challenging enough. But the wording of White House orders has often left more unanswered questions than brokers are accustomed to.

    “The order is kind of vague sometimes, the guidance that’s being provided is sometimes murky, and we’re trying to make the determination,” 62-year-old Gonzalez says.

    Gonzalez rattles off 10-digit tariff codes for alcohol and doors and recites the complicated web of rules that determine the duties on a chair with a frame made of steel produced in the U.S. but processed in Mexico. As brokers’ work has grown tougher, he says some of their firms have begun charging customers more for their services because each item they’re responsible for tracking on a bill of lading takes longer.

    “You double the time,” he says.

    Brokers can’t help but see the imprints of their work everywhere they go. Gonzalez looks at a T-shirt tag and thinks of what a broker did to get it into the country. Magnus sees Belgian chocolate or Chinese silk and is awed, despite all the things that could have kept something from landing on a store shelf, that it still arrived. Raffa walks through the supermarket, picks up a can of artichoke hearts, and considers every possible regulation that might apply to secure its import into the country.

    It has been heartening for brokers, who existed in the gray arcana of hidden bureaucracy unseen by most Americans, to now earn a bit more recognition.

    “It was maybe taken for granted how that wonderful piece of gourmet cheese got on the shelf, or that Gucci bag,” says Raffa. “Up until this year, people were clueless what I did.”

    Magnus, who is in her 70s and based on Marco Island, Florida, spent 18 years at U.S. Customs before starting at a brokerage in 1992. She came to find comfort in the precision of rules governing every import she cleared the way for, from crude oil to diamonds.

    “We don’t like to have any doubt, we don’t like to leave anything up to interpretation,” she says. “When we ourselves are struggling, trying to interpret and understand the meaning of some of these things, it is a very unsettling place to be.”

    It’s not just the White House orders that have complicated her work.

    The Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting blitz under billionaire Elon Musk led to layoffs and retirements of trusted government workers that brokers turn to for guidance. A shutdown slowed operations at ports. And fear of being out of step with the administration has some federal employees cautious about decoding trade orders, making answers on interpretation of tariff rules sometimes tough to come by.

    Magnus was befuddled by moves that seemed at odds with everything she knew of trade policy. Canada as adversary? Switzerland subjected to 39% tariffs? It defied how she had come to see the choreography of cargo and what it says about the world.

    “It’s like an incredible ballet to be able to trade with all these countries all over the world,” she says. “In my own mind, I always felt that as long as we were trading and we were friendly with each other, we were reducing the chance of war and killing each other.”

    Work has been so hectic this year that Magnus hasn’t managed to take a vacation. Weekends have so frequently been upended by Friday afternoon edicts announcing a tariff is going into effect or being taken away that it has become an inside joke with colleagues.

    “It’s Friday afternoon,” she says. “Is everybody watching?”

    A couple hours after Magnus repeats this, the next White House order is posted, undoing a slew of tariffs on agricultural products and sending brokers into another scurry.

    ___

    Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky

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  • Cloudy future for bourbon has Jim Beam closing Kentucky distillery for a year

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    Bourbon maker Jim Beam is halting production at one of its distilleries in Kentucky for at least a year as the whiskey industry navigates tariffs from the Trump administration and slumping demand for a product that needs years of aging before it is ready.

    Jim Beam said the decision to pause bourbon making at its Clermont location in 2026 will give the company time to invest in improvements at the distillery. The bottling and warehouse at the site will remain open, along with the James B. Beam Distilling Co. visitors center and restaurant.

    The company’s larger distillery in Boston, Kentucky, will continue to operate, the company said.

    “We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand,” the company said in a statement that added they were talking with the distillery’s union to determine whether there will be layoffs or other reductions.

    Bourbon makers have to gamble well into the future. Jim Beam’s flagship bourbon requires at least four years of aging in barrels before being bottled.

    Whiskey makers are dealing with back-and-forth arguments over tariffs in Europe and in Canada, where a boycott started after the Trump administration suggested annexing the country into the U.S.

    Overall exports of American spirits fell 9% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to a year ago, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. The most dramatic decrease came in U.S. spirits exports to Canada, which fell 85% in the April-through-June quarter

    Bourbon production has grown significantly in recent years. As of January, there were about 16 million barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky warehouses — more than triple the amount held 15 years ago, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

    But sales figures and polling show Americans are drinking less than they have in decades.

    About 95% of all bourbon made in the U.S. comes from Kentucky. The trade group estimated the industry brings more than 23,000 jobs and $2.2 billion to the state.

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  • What to know about the Bank of Japan’s interest rate hike

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    The Bank of Japan raised its key policy rate to a 30-year high on Friday to help curb inflation, as widely expected, and financial markets took the move in stride.

    The 0.25 percentage point hike took the BOJ’s benchmark short-term rate to 0.75%, its highest level since September 1995. It will raise costs for mortgages and other loans, but also boost yields on savings deposits.

    “It is highly likely that wages and prices will continue to rise moderately,” BOJ Gov. Kazuo Ueda told reporters. “Risks to the economy have diminished, but we must remain vigilant.”

    Inflation has long remained above the BOJ’s target of about 2%. It was 3% in November, excluding volatile fresh food costs.

    The 0.75% rate is still low by most standards, but the BOJ has kept that rate near or below zero for years, trying to pull the economy out of a deflationary funk. Since the pandemic, most other central banks, like the U.S. Federal Reserve, have raised rates to counter spiking inflation and then begun cutting them to help their slowing economies recover momentum.

    Japan’s own economy contracted at a 2.3% annual rate in the last quarter, but improved business sentiment and price pressures have led the BOJ to relent and raise rates. Here are some things to know about its decision.

    Since Japan’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, the central bank has kept borrowing costs low to encourage more spending by businesses and consumers.

    Lower interest rates have also helped the central bank manage the country’s massive national debt, which amounts to nearly triple the size of the economy.

    As Japan’s population has aged and begun declining, its economy has slowed and that led to deflation, or falling prices due to weak demand. Even with cheap credit, investment has lagged, stunting economic growth.

    In early 2013, the central bank launched what was dubbed a “big bazooka” of monetary easing, cutting interest rates and purchasing government bonds and other securities to help channel more money into the economy. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the benchmark interest rate was at minus 0.1%. The BOJ only began raising it in 2024, the first hike in 17 years, after inflation stabilized above its target of about 2%.

    The Japanese yen has weakened against the U.S. dollar and many other major currencies. So Japanese consumers and companies pay more now for imported food, fuel and other items needed to keep the world’s fourth largest economy running.

    The strong appetite for investing in dollar-denominated shares of companies linked to the artificial intelligence boom has also pulled money out of the yen and into dollars.

    So inflation has risen faster than wages, squeezing household budgets and raising costs for businesses.

    Higher interest rates will raise the value of the yen against the dollar, likely drawing investment into Japan seeking higher yen-denominated yields. That could push the yen higher, given that the BOJ has signaled it expects to continue raising rates.

    “The BOJ’s stance towards rate hikes reflects the fact that inflation is becoming entrenched,” Kei Fujimoto, a senior economist at SuMi Trust, said in a commentary. “If drivers such as a further depreciation of the yen accelerate inflation going forward, it is possible that the pace of rate hikes will also increase accordingly.”

    The planned rate hike was reported by Japanese media ahead of time, giving investors a head start on adjusting their portfolios.

    Initially, the yen weakened after Friday’s rate hike, as the dollar rose to 157 yen, nearly twice its level in 2012 and near its highest level this year.

    Still, even small changes in interest rates can have a big impact. Analysts have forecast that higher rates in Japan may undermine an investment strategy known as the “carry trade.” That involves investors borrowing cheaply in yen and then using that money to invest in higher paying assets elsewhere.

    Carry trades are lucrative when stocks and other investments are climbing, but losses can snowball if many traders face pressure to sell stocks or other assets all at once.

    Higher rates in Japan may also crimp demand for other assets, including cryptocurrencies. Last week, expectations about the rate hike caused the price of bitcoin, for example, to drop below $86,000. It had bolted to record highs near $125,000 in early October. Bitcoin was trading at about $88,000 early Friday.

    Judging the timing and scale of changes to interest rates and other monetary policies is the biggest challenge for central banks, given the time it takes for such moves to ripple throughout the real economy and financial markets.

    Like the Federal Reserve, Japan’s central bank struggles to balance the need to boost business activity and create jobs with the imperative of containing inflation.

    The BOJ held off on raising rates earlier given uncertainties over how U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs might hit automakers and other exporters. A deal setting U.S. duties on imports from Japan at 15%, down from the earlier plan for a 25% rate, has helped ease those concerns.

    Ueda, the BOJ governor, noted that with inflation at about 3%, real interest rates remain in negative territory.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Trump says tariffs can eventually replace federal income taxes. Experts disagree

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    President Donald Trump has long praised tariffs as key to increasing wealth in the United States, idealizing Gilded Age policies that preceded the implementation of a modern federal income tax.

    Among the potential benefits, Trump claims, is the ability to replace revenue from federal income taxes with money the U.S. is taking in from tariffs — a concept he has touted since his 2024 presidential campaign, most recently at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.

    But tariff revenue doesn’t even come close to where it would need to be if federal income taxes were eliminated, and experts say such a plan isn’t at all feasible.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: The U.S. is earning enough revenue from tariffs to eventually eliminate federal income taxes.

    THE FACTS: This is false. Individual income taxes brought in trillions more dollars than tariffs did in the last fiscal year, accounting for more than 50% of total U.S. revenue, according to Treasury Department data. Tariffs made up only 3.7% of the total. In the first month of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, individual income taxes accounted for 54% of total revenue. Tariffs made up 7.75%.

    Trump’s proposal wouldn’t work regardless, according to experts, given the unreliability of tariff revenue as well as the harmful effects of tariffs on economic growth and their outsize impact on lower earners.

    “It’s not possible. It’s not feasible mathematically or economically,” said Brandon DeBot, senior attorney adviser and policy director at New York University’s Tax Law Center. “And analysts from a range of different perspectives agree with that conclusion. Even the very substantial tariffs imposed this year, which are at the highest levels in the postwar era, raise nowhere near the revenue that income tax does.”

    Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, called the idea “nonsensical.”

    But Trump has floated it twice in the last week — first during remarks on Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago and then again at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

    “And I believe that at some point in the not too distant future, you won’t even have income tax to pay. Because the money we’re taking in is so great, it’s so enormous, that you’re not going to have income tax to pay,” he said at the meeting, which lasted more than two hours.

    The numbers don’t add up

    In the last fiscal year, Treasury Department data shows that revenue from individual income taxes was approximately $2.66 trillion out of about $5.23 trillion in total revenue. Corporation income taxes added approximately $452 billion. Customs duties earned nearly $195 billion. That’s a difference of around $2.8 trillion.

    The current fiscal year is shaping up in a similar fashion. Individual income taxes took in about $217 billion out of approximately $404 billion in total revenue the first month, with about $15 billion in additional funds from corporation taxes. Tariffs, meanwhile, earned around $31 billion.

    Trump has boasted of additional income from investments in the U.S. by other countries and international companies. But the precise terms of these investments have yet to be fully codified and released to the public, and some numbers are under dispute or involve potentially fuzzy math.

    The modern federal income tax was created with the ratification of 16th Amendment in 1913, ending the 43-year era when Trump says the country was wealthiest. He has not expressly detailed plans to end a national income tax since retaking the White House, and he can’t do so without an act of Congress and upending the federal budget.

    “President Trump is set to raise trillions in revenue for the federal government in the coming years with his tariffs — whose costs will ultimately be paid by the foreign exporters who rely on the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. He also cited “trillions in historic investment commitments to make and hire in America” that have been fueled by tariffs.

    It is actually importers — American companies — that pay tariffs. Those companies typically pass their higher costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices. Still, tariffs can hurt foreign countries by making their products pricier and harder to sell abroad. Foreign companies might have to cut prices — and sacrifice profits — to offset the tariffs and try to maintain their market share in the United States.

    A burden on lower-income households

    Even if the numbers were made to add up, replacing revenue from federal income taxes with that of tariffs — a Republican talking point since the 1990s — poses many risks. Tariffs, especially at rates needed to make up for a loss in federal income taxes, could lead to retaliation from other countries and a lack of imports. In fact, revenue could start going down the more tariffs go up. There is also a lot of uncertainty about how much revenue tariffs will actually take in, given periodic changes to Trump’s policies.

    “We would be talking about living in a completely different world than the one we live in now,” said Wamhoff. “There was a time when the government’s finances were provided through tariffs. But I believe people were getting around with a horse and buggy back then and not cars. I mean, that was a completely different time.”

    Another reality is currently playing out. Trump’s tariffs are the subject of a Supreme Court case and could be struck down if the justices decide he does not have the authority to implement them. However, the president will still have plenty of options to keep taxing imports aggressively even if the courts rule against him. For example, he can reuse tariff powers he deployed in his first term and can reach for others, including one that dates back to the Great Depression. Many companies — including Costco — aren’t waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court. Instead, they’re filing suits against the Trump administration demanding refunds on the tariffs they’ve paid.

    Experts say there is also an issue of fairness, noting that tariffs would shift the tax burden to lower-income households given their propensity to increase costs on consumer goods. Plus, they lack the flexibility of income taxes, which can be set at any desired rate, and they wouldn’t allow for incentives such as charitable donations or child tax credits.

    “Inequality is very highly skewed toward the top,” said Michael Graetz, a professor of tax law at Yale University. “We’ve got more billionaires than we’ve ever had. We’ve got more millionaires than we’ve ever had. So it’s a strange time to be reducing the tax burden on the top and increasing it on the middle. It’s a proposal that is very effective for fundraising for Republicans and it always has been.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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