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Tag: Tariffs

  • BMO report: U.S. tariffs could slow growth or trigger recession in Canada – MoneySense

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    A worst-case scenario with a 35% tariff across the board could mean a moderate recession in the short-term and 5% shaved off long-term economic growth, while a middle scenario of tariffs averaging 15%, similar to other trading partners like Europe or Japan, could mean significantly slower growth in the near-term and 2.5% cut to growth.

    ‘Muddle through’ scenario expected as Canada-U.S. trade talks continue

    BMO chief economist Douglas Porter said the most likely path seems to be a continuation of current tariff rates. “We call it the ‘muddle through’ scenario,” Porter said. “We do believe that something close to the average tariff on Canada is about what we’re going to be left with.” He said there could be some changes in industry-specific tariffs, but that change could go both ways.

    Prime Minister Mark Carney is to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. The pair are expected to talk trade and security as the ongoing tariff dispute shows few public signs of progress.

    “We are hopeful that one of the things that we might hear from this week’s meeting between the prime minister and the president is some sort of relief on steel tariffs,” Porter said. “But on the other hand, it could be replaced with something else down the line, because we know they have a long list of sectoral tariffs that the administration is looking at.”

    CUSMA’s future looms as trade talks signal potential renegotiations

    The bulk of Canadian goods continue to enter the U.S. tariff-free thanks to an exemption under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement; however, the U.S. has continued to expand its use of sector-specific tariffs, including the recent addition of fresh levies on furniture, pharmaceuticals, and lumber. Goods that don’t fall under the trade deal are subject to 35% tariffs, hence the reference point in the report’s worst-case scenario.

    The future of CUSMA is the big question lurking in the background of trade talks, as it’s set for review next year. The extent of those negotiations are still not clear, but a key signal of how much change could be ahead will be if Trump seeks Trade Promotion Authority from Congress, allowing all aspects of the deal to be renegotiated, the report noted.

    Canada uses monetary and fiscal tools to cushion impact of U.S. tariffs

    To soften the hit from tariffs, Canada can respond with easier monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and reoriented trade policies, which the Bank of Canada and federal government have already started doing, Porter said. “Both have to some extent already responded, and that’s one of the reasons why the economy has held up a bit better than we and others were thinking earlier this year.”

    The Bank of Canada dropped its key rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.5% in September, with another cut expected by financial markets before the end of the year. The cut happened as lower oil prices have helped soften inflation fears, while economic indicators suggested the Canadian economy could use the help.

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    Real GDP declined 1.6% on an annualized basis in the second quarter. Statistics Canada has measured July growth of 0.2%, but preliminary data for August suggested no growth. 

    While economic growth has been muted, it hasn’t stopped Canada’s stock market from trading around all-time highs, pointing to the targeted hit of tariffs so far, Porter said. “So far, the effect of the trade war is very narrow on Canada. It’s the steel and aluminum sector, the auto sector, copper, and now lumber. And aside from that, we’ve mostly, not entirely, but mostly been free of tariffs, as long as you’re USMCA compliant.”

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  • Trump administration mulling $10 billion aid package for U.S. farmers, sources say

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    Washington — The Trump administration is considering a significant financial aid package for farmers, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. The package could include more than $10 billion in relief.

    The White House is focusing on soybean farmers, since they’ve been hard hit by the Chinese boycott on American soybeans. Discussions about the package are still in early stages, one of the sources said. 

    The Treasury Department and Agriculture Department are involved in the talks. Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on CNBC on Monday that “we’ve had numerous meetings over the last week or two” about “what we’re going to do” about the hit farmers have taken. He promised the administration would take “big measures” and “those big measures are going to be public really, really soon.”

    Hassett acknowledged, “Right now, the silos are full, and there are soybeans sitting on the ground with tarps over them. That’s unacceptable to the president.” He also said the administration is “calling up all our soybean customers around the world as part of our trade negotiations.”

    In 2024, China purchased $12.6 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S., federal data from the Agriculture Department shows.

    As harvest season gets underway this year, China has made no U.S. soybean purchases.

    Last month, President Trump suggested some financial aid for farmers could come from tariff revenue. The Treasury Department says the federal government has collected roughly $215 billion in tariffs in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October 2024 and ended Sept. 30. 

    “We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers, who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until the tariffs kick into their benefit,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Sept. 25. “So, we’re going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape, because we’re taking in a lot of money.”

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

    Kathryn Watson

    contributed to this report.

    Jennifer Jacobs

    Jennifer Jacobs is a senior White House reporter at CBS News.

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  • Soybean farmers face steep losses: “I’m in the worst shape right now”

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    CBS News has learned the Trump administration could announce a multi-billion dollar financial relief package this week for farmers being hurt by the president’s trade war with China. Lana Zak talked to soybean farmers fearing they may be forced out of business.

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  • Trump’s Tariffs Are Now Screwing Up America’s Libraries

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    The Trump administration’s tariff regime has been accused of royally screwing up all sorts of stuff—from small businesses to big businesses to America’s farms and the price of soup. Now, a new report claims that the president’s dingbat economic policy can claim another victim: America’s libraries.

    404 Media reports that, since the elimination of the de minimis exemption—the policy that previously allowed imports worth less than $800 to go tariff-free—the flow of exchange for libraries that loan out books internationally has been all messed up. See, there are a large number of libraries, including many university libraries, that allow books to be exchanged with other academic institutions, including those in other countries. However, since Trump’s tariff nonsense began, some of those countries have stopped shipping materials to and from the U.S., stranding many of the books abroad, the report says.

    404 interviewed several librarians who spoke about how the Trump administration’s tariff policy had begun to screw with the nation’s book-borrowing:

    “The tariffs have impacted interlibrary loans in various ways for different libraries,” Heather Evans, a librarian at RMIT University in Australia…[said] in an email. “It has largely depended on their different procedures as to how much they have been affected. Some who use AusPost [Australia’s postal service] to post internationally have been more impacted and I’ve seen many libraries put a halt on borrowing to or from the US at all.”

    Another librarian, Jessica Bower Relevo, associate director of resource sharing and reserves at Yale University Library, told the outlet that the practice of sharing books internationally is a longstanding practice that has been beneficial to academia:

    “Interlibrary loans has been something that libraries have been able to do for a really long time, even back in the early 1900s,” Relevo said. “If we can’t do that anymore and we’re limiting what our users can access, because maybe they’re only limited to what we have in our collection, then ultimately could hinder academic progress.”

    Gizmodo reached out to the White House for comment. We received an automated email explaining that response times might be impacted by the government shutdown. “As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open,” the email states.

    It’s not as if MAGA has ever been particularly kind to libraries or librarians. Over the past several years, many high-profile campaigns have been waged against public libraries, with rightwing activists targeting LGBTQ books and other supposedly “woke” materials, demanding that such tomes be cleansed from the shelves. Earlier this year, as part of the DOGE purges, the Trump administration also fired many federal library employees. Now, in addition to demonizing librarians and firing their staff, the Trump administration can also brag of having helped curb the internationalism of America’s library system—an act which is pretty on brand for them.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Colorado companies, execs charged in Chinese forklift scheme tried to avoid $1M in tariffs, feds say

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    Two Denver-area companies face federal wire fraud charges in a scheme to sell imported Chinese forklifts to the federal government as American-made equipment, according to an indictment released Tuesday.

    Endless Sales and Octane Forklifts, along with current executives Brian Firkins and Jeffrey Blasdel and former executive J.R. Antczak, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on Aug. 21, Department of Justice officials announced this week.

    According to the indictment, Octane’s main business was buying forklifts made in China, rebranding them as American-made and selling them through Endless Sales to local, state and federal government clients.

    The scheme started in Aug. 2018 and continued until at least July 2024. Investigators say the companies and executives also worked with a Chinese manufacturer to create fake invoices that undervalued the imported forklifts to avoid paying more than $1 million in tariffs and fees.

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    Katie Langford

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  • Senior US Senator Wants to Boost Pressure on China Over Taiwan

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    By Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Friday he will introduce legislation to deter aggression against Taiwan by identifying targets for economic measures that could be deployed rapidly if China acts against the island.

    Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho said his “Deter PRC Aggression Against Taiwan Act” would create a State and Treasury Department-led task force that would identify Chinese military and non-military targets for sanctions, export controls and other economic measures to use against Beijing in case of Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

    “Using lessons learned from the challenges in U.S. and partner country sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, this legislation will ensure America is prepared to hit China where it hurts should China follow through on its threats to use violent force against Taiwan,” Risch said in a statement.

    An aide said he planned to introduce the measure on Monday.

    News of the proposed bill comes ahead of an expected meeting this month between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, with the U.S. leader seeking to conclude a major trade deal with Washington’s biggest economic and geopolitical rival.

    China claims the democratically governed island as its own and has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. Beijing has stepped up military and political pressure against the island in recent years.

        The U.S. is Taipei’s main foreign backer and some foreign policy experts and people in Taiwan are concerned that Trump may not be as committed to defense of the Chinese-claimed island as past U.S. presidents and might be willing to offer Beijing concessions to secure a significant trade deal.

    The U.S. State Department says the U.S. position on Taiwan has not changed and that Washington opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. 

    Analysts say China would particularly like the Trump administration to state explicitly that it opposes Taiwan’s independence rather than say, as did the Biden administration, that it did not support it.

        Risch’s bill is one of several legislative initiatives in the Senate and House of Representatives that supporters say underscore support in Congress for continuing to take a hard line against any Chinese moves on Taiwan.

    (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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    Reuters

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  • Trump’s planned farm bailout should require congressional approval

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    By hiking tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States earlier this year, President Donald Trump effectively imposed one of the largest tax hikes in American history—and did so without congressional approval.

    Now, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to spend some of the revenue from those tax increases—also without congressional approval.

    The White House is preparing a bailout for farmers harmed by the trade war. The exact contours of the package remain unclear for now, but Politico and The Wall Street Journal both report that the administration is eying at least $10 billion in aid. We’ll know more early next week, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says an announcement of “substantial support” is expected on Tuesday.

    This much seems clear: tariffs paid by American importers will be used to fund some of the bailout.

    That’s likely to happen, in part, because the slush fund that Trump tapped to bail out farmers during his first term is running dry. That fund—the Commodity Credit Corporation, a New Deal-era program within the Department of Agriculture—has just $4 billion in it, according to Politico. Meanwhile, the government has collected about $150 billion in tariff revenue during the first eight months of the year.

    It also seems likely because that’s what Trump keeps saying he wants to do. “We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers,” he said last month.

    Regardless of how it is funded, a farm bailout would be a wasteful and counterproductive bit of policy—and one that could inspire other tariff-hurt industries to start looking for their own handouts. If the bailout is funded with the tariff revenue (without congressional approval), then it would also be another attack on the separation of powers that are fundamental to our constitutional system of government.

    It is Congress that has the sole authority to lay and collect taxes, per Article I of the Constitution. It is also Congress that has the sole authority to determine how tax dollars are spent. If the Trump administration wants to use some of that $150 billion to bail out farmers, it must ask Congress to approve that spending—ideally as part of a budget bill, but even a one-off emergency or supplemental bill would be better than having the executive branch make this decision on its own.

    There is one other complication that should stop the administration from unilaterally spending the tariff revenue, even if the White House decides to ignore the constitutional argument.

    If the Supreme Court rules that Trump’s tariffs are unlawful—as lower courts already have—then it is possible that the federal government would have to refund all that money to the people and businesses that paid the tariffs in the first place.

    If that money has been given away to farmers, then taxpayers will be on the hook to refund the tariff payments—the same American taxpayers who are already paying higher prices because of the tariffs. That’s literally adding insult to injury.

    There is, of course, an easy way out of this mess. If the Trump administration wants to spare farmers the consequences of the trade war, it doesn’t need a messy, possibly unconstitutional bailout. It just needs to end the tariffs.

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    Eric Boehm

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  • Long Island construction jobs fall for 6th straight month | Long Island Business News

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    THE BLUEPRINT:

    • Long Island lost 4,900 from August 2024 to 2025

    • Sixth consecutive month of decline

    • , labor shortages, and zoning issues cited as main factors

    • Nationally, job growth slows with only 177 of 360 metros seeing gains

     

    Construction employment on Long Island saw another year-over-year drop in August, the sixth straight month of decline, according to a new report from the Associated General Contractors of America, blaming the shrinking number of jobs nationally on tariffs and workforce shortages. 

    Nassau and Suffolk counties lost 4,900 construction jobs from August 2024 to August 2025, a 6 percent year-over-year decline, falling from 84,600 to 79,700, the AGCA reports.  

    Regionally, the number of construction jobs in New York City was down 5 percent, losing 7,900 jobs from August 2024 to August 2025, falling from 145,500 to 137,600. New York City’s was the largest of the 360 metro areas in the report.  

    Nationally, construction employment rose in 177 of 360 metro areas between August 2024 and August 2025, while it declined in 125 metro areas and was unchanged in 58 areas, according to AGCA and new government employment data. It’s the fewest number of metro areas adding jobs since 2021. 

    Association officials noted that many private-sector developers appear to be putting projects on hold amid rising prices caused by tariffs, workforce shortages and higher . 

    “Construction employment has stalled or retreated in more and more areas as owners pull back on projects in the face of higher costs,” Ken Simonson, the AGCA’s chief economist, said in a written statement. “Workforce shortages, tariffs and higher interest rates are inflating construction costs and schedules to the point where many projects no longer appear to make sense to developers.” 

    Here on Long Island, industry experts say the biggest obstacle is the lack of multifamily zoning that limits opportunities to build housing, the type of construction that’s in the greatest demand. 

    “We face the same challenges, same material costs, same labor costs, all that stuff that everyone else across the nation faces,” Mike Florio, CEO of the Long Island Builders Institute, told LIBN. There is greater opportunity when you go to the Carolinas and Austin, Texas and Florida and the Southeast, when here there’s not as much opportunity to build. The lack of approvals and permitted jobs is holding Long Island’s economy back.” 

    Nationally, there were 188,000 job openings in construction, seasonally adjusted, at the end of August, according to a government report, that’s a 38 percent decline from a year earlier and the lowest total since 2017. The data suggests even fewer areas are likely to have construction employment increases in the near future, Simonson said. A prolonged federal shutdown could also impact construction employment if public works projects are suspended or fail to get needed approvals to start because federal officials are unavailable to sign off, according to the statement. 

    Metro areas adding the most construction jobs over the last year include the Arlington-Alexandria-Reston, Va. Area, which added 8,200 jobs for a 9 percent increase; followed by the Washington D.C area, which added 6,600 jobs for a 14 percent gain; and the Chicago area gaining 5,400 jobs for a 4 percent rise. 

    Besides New York City, the metro areas seeing the largest drops in construction employment from August 2024 to August 2025 include the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. area which lost 6,500 jobs for a 6 percent drop; the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Calif. area dropping 6,000 jobs for a 6 percent decline; and the Baton Rouge, La. area, which was down 5,700 jobs in an 11 percent decline. 


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    David Winzelberg

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  • South Korea Foreign Minister Says Rough Agreement on Security Reached With US

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    SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said his country and the United States had reached a rough agreement on security in tandem with ongoing tariff negotiations, Yonhap news agency reported.

    In an interview published on Thursday, Cho also said the U.S. was reviewing a currency swap deal, which was a key demand from South Korea in tariff talks, but signalled it was not optimistic.

    Washington had agreed to lower tariffs on imports from South Korea in return for a $350 billion investment package, but follow-up negotiations to hammer out details, including the structure of the investment package, have stalled.

    Meanwhile, Seoul and its ally Washington have also been looking at a deal in security areas such as an increase in South Korean defence spending, which is part of the broader package aimed to push down U.S. tariffs.

    U.S. President Donald Trump has said South Korea should be paying for its own military protection and suggested it needed to pay more for the U.S. troop presence there.

    South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Monday that the country would boost next year’s defence budget by 8.2%, highlighting the importance of stronger self-defence.

    “In the security field, an agreement has already been reached in general, which allows us to increase our national defence capabilities in necessary areas,” Cho told Yonhap.

    Working towards the security deal, top South Korean officials have said the two countries are making progress on giving more rights to South Korea on nuclear fuel processing for industrial purposes.

    That is currently not allowed under an existing agreement between the two countries.

    Cho said in the interview that he did not rule out a possibility of Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as some “speculative” media reports suggested.

    Trump is expected to attend the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group in Gyeongju, South Korea in late October, and Lee suggested the U.S. president try to meet with Kim during the trip.

    Last month, Kim said he was open to talks with the U.S. if Washington stopped insisting his country give up nuclear weapons, North Korean state media reported.

    (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Jamie Freed)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • Why This Top Trade Representative Doesn’t See ‘Any Problems From Tariffs’

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    November will be a big test for President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. The Supreme Court will be ruling on whether his usage of emergency powers to institute broad tariffs was legal. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, however, tariffs will remain a part of the president’s economic policy agenda.

    That’s according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who said on Tuesday at the New York Economic Club that he was confident that the court would rule in Trump’s favor. 

    “Win or lose at the Supreme Court, wherever we end up, this is the structure,” Greer said. “This is how it’s going to be.”

    Greer said tariffs are a necessary action to fix domestic economic struggles and stand up to China’s economic dominance, especially on rare earth mineral refining. The tech standoff between the US and China centers on semiconductor chips and rare earth minerals.

    Most American semiconductor chips are made by Intel or TSMC, which is based in Taiwan. Taiwan has used this as a diplomatic shield from China, but now, the U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is pushing to reduce American reliance on TSMC. 

    The U.S. government took a 10 percent stake in Intel in August. Asked on Tuesday whether there had been discussion of the U.S. government taking a stake in Nvidia, Greer said they’re “trying to get it,” but didn’t expand further.

    “If you talk to President Trump, he’d love a stake in every company that’s doing well,” Greer said.

    Tariffs are the way moving forward, Greer said, because “we aren’t seeing any problems from tariffs.” He cited GDP increases, manufacturing and working class wage increases, and the Big Beautiful Bill as positive economic indicators. Hiring numbers in the U.S. manufacturing industry are still down, however, and consumer prices have risen since last year.

    Greer noted that jobs numbers are “going to be interesting for some time,” as immigration raids disrupt the labor market and government jobs decrease. The jobs market growth rate slowed in August, the same month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner was fired by Trump for allegedly manipulating data, which economists have refuted.

    Greer added that he also isn’t worried about the looming government shutdown. The entirety of USTR is essential in his view, and if the government does shut down on Tuesday night, he said The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is “going to be fully functioning.” The shutdown would delay critical labor market data if it takes effect.

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    Ben Butler

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  • Coffee chain grapples with tariffs as java prices boil over

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    The first Gregory’s Coffee opened in 2006 on Manhattan’s Park Avenue. Nineteen years later, the family-owned business has expanded to over 54 locations around the U.S. as well as a roastery in Queens, New York, that handles coffee beans from Brazil, Rwanda, Nicaragua and other major global producers.

    For Gregory Zamfotis, founder of the New York City-based chain, the business is about more than just dollars and cents — it’s also about recognizing the special place coffee has long had in American culture as a driver of social connections.

    “Coffee is built into the fabric of our society,” Zamfotis told CBS News. “People come together over coffee. When it’s a meeting or interview, or we just want to get some work done, coffee tends to be the centerpiece of those conversations.”

    With many Americans still feeling the effects of elevated inflation, for many coffee drinkers one of those conversations is likely to center on the drink’s soaring costs. 

    Prices have leaped nearly 21% over the past 12 months, with the average retail price of 100% ground roast coffee recently reaching a record high of $8.87 per pound, up from $7.02 in January USDA data shows. 

    Several factors are behind the spike in coffee prices, including droughts in Brazil and volatile weather in other regions where the bean is cultivated. More recently, heavy U.S. tariffs on coffee-producing countries — including a hefty 50% levy on Brazil — have also driven up prices. 

    Though coffee is a staple of American daily life, the vast majority of the beans is imported. Much of that is sourced from Latin America, with Brazil alone accounting for 35%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    By contrast, the U.S. produces relatively little coffee compared to the rest of the world. Hawaii, the top-producing state, harvested 21 million pounds during the 2024–25 season, according to the USDA. Yet Americans consumed a whopping 3.3 billion pounds of coffee during the same period, the agency said.

    “Prices are going to have to go up”

    Jake Leonti, director of coffee at Gregory’s Coffee, said it’s also far pricier to grow and produce coffee in the U.S.

    “It’s exponentially [more] expensive because it’s Americans farming,” he said. “Whereas we can get super high-quality coffee from different parts of the world at a price that’s much more friendly to the consumer.”

    Gregory’s Coffee has not raised prices yet despite the jump in costs. But Leonti said that could change soon. 

    “Prices are going to have to go up — there’s no other way around it,” he said. “We’re seeing tariffs from the places where we get our bags printed as well. So everything around the coffee business is getting tariffs at some point.”

    Like other retailers, Gregory’s prices vary depending on where a store is located, reflecting regional labor and other costs. In New York City, the chain charges $3.45 for a regular cup of coffee, while at its New Jersey and Washington, D.C., outlets the same item runs $3.15.

    Other retailers are also preparing for increased coffee costs. Mark Smucker, CEO of The J.M. Smucker Co., whose portfolio includes the Folgers Coffee, Café Bustelo and Dunkin’ at-home brands, said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in June that prices will likely increase for a third time this year “due to higher green coffee costs.”

    Meanwhile, Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Catherine R. Smith said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call in July that, due to the company’s coffee buying and hedging practices, customers shouldn’t expect price increases until the first half of fiscal 2026.

    At Gregory’s Coffee, “The last thing we want to do is just keep raising prices on our guests,” Zamfotis said. “We’re hoping that if prices go up a few pennies across the board, that doesn’t turn off our everyday customers. We’re not doing this to make more money — we’re doing this to protect our business.”

    How fast are prices rising?

    Kelly O’Grady

    Kelly O’Grady is a CBS News MoneyWatch correspondent.

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  • The Stunning Reversal in U.S.-India Relations

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    Why is Donald Trump turning on his ideological ally Narendra Modi?

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    Isaac Chotiner

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  • Trump Doubles Down on International Film Tariff, Just in Time for Oscar Season

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    Thirty years after his cameo in Home Alone 2, it seems Donald Trump still has no idea how Hollywood works. As part of his nativist campaign against all things international, the president has vowed once again to impose a poorly explained “100% tariff” on films made outside of America—an idea he first introduced in May.

    On Monday, Trump once again declared his intent to tax internationally made films. “Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote on September 29 on Truth Social. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor [Gavin Newsom], has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT.”

    Trump’s new missive comes 78 days before the Oscars shortlist nominations are announced on December 16, and less than six months before the 2026 ceremony takes place March 15. Should a tariff take effect before then, it could have reverberations far beyond the best international feature category. The increasingly international Academy has gotten in the habit of rewarding more and more movies produced entirely or partially abroad, especially in the years since Parasite took home best picture in 2020. At last year’s ceremony, films that were produced in other countries, including Poland, Hungary, France, and the UK, won Oscars in three out of four acting categories, though best picture, actress, and director went to the all-American Anora.

    According to the president, international features are a parasitic plague upon Hollywood. Trump has called internationally made films a “National Security threat” that have led to the “very fast death” of American cinema. He has said that Hollywood is “being destroyed” because of “other nations … stealing the moviemaking capabilities from the United States.”

    Most of Hollywood agrees that American-made films are struggling—though it’s not clear whether penalizing features made internationally will give domestic features a boost. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s calculations, the US has produced 10% less feature films in 2025 than it did the year prior. The United Kingdom and Canada are also experiencing year-over-year production spend declines; Australia is the only listed nation that has increased its output, but that country’s film market is only a fraction of Hollywood’s. Australia spent $1.1 billion USD in the first half of 2025 on films, compared to the $7.2 billion spent in the US. All of the aforementioned nations also give large-scale Hollywood productions generous tax incentives to shoot there rather than in the US.

    Trump isn’t alone in pushing for more projects to be shot in the US: California governor Gavin Newsom, whom Trump once again singled out in his latest social media tirade, is already working on increasing tax incentives for Hollywood productions. Newsom doubled the amount of funding for state-filmed projects in 2024, and his administration further expanded the Film and Television Tax Credit Program for California in August 2025. An August 27 announcement estimated that $1.1 billion will be generated in spending across California, with $413 million in qualified wages, thanks to 22 TV series currently being filmed in-state.

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    Samantha Bergeson

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  • UK treasury chief says ‘harsh global headwinds’ from wars and tariffs are harming the country’s economic outlook | Fortune

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    Britain’s Treasury chief warned Monday that “harsh global headwinds” from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have worsened the U.K.’s economic outlook since the governing Labour Party won power last year.

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves told Labour’s annual conference that her economic plans must be “fit for an uncertain world,” a hint she will raise taxes in her autumn budget on Nov. 26.

    “In the last year the world has changed, and we are not immune to that change,” she told the BBC before the speech. “Whether it is wars in Europe and the Middle East, whether it is increased barriers to trade because of tariffs coming from the United States, whether it is the global cost of borrowing, we’re not immune to any of those things.”

    Since ending 14 years of Conservative rule in July 2024, Labour has struggled to deliver the economic growth it promised. Inflation remains stubbornly high and the economic outlook subdued, frustrating efforts to repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living.

    Labour pledged during the election not to raise taxes on working people, but has since hiked levies on employers.

    Reeves told the BBC she was “determined not to increase those key taxes that working people pay,” stopping short of ruling out any hikes at all.

    In her speech, interrupted by repeated standing ovations from hundreds of Labour members — and by a lone pro-Palestinian protester — Reeves leavened her sober assessment of the country’s finances with a touch of optimism. She outlined the government’s investments in defense, transport, energy and education, claiming they were making a difference to millions of people.

    She pledged to end long-term youth unemployment, saying everyone under 25 who has been unemployed for 18 months will be offered guaranteed paid work. One in eight 16–24-year-olds in Britain — about 1 million people — is currently not in education, work, or training.

    Reeves also said the government was working on an “ambitious agreement on youth mobility” with the 27-nation European Union. British citizens lost the right to move and work freely in the EU when the country left the bloc in 2020.

    Thousands of Labour members are in Liverpool, northwest England, for the party conference -– a mix of policy forum and pep rally that this year is lacking in pizazz.

    The hard right is a key concern

    Labour lags behind Nigel Farage ’s hard-right Reform UK party in opinion polls, and some party members are losing faith in Prime Minister Keir Starmer, even though there may be four years until the next election.

    Many are rallying around Andy Burnham, the ambitious Labour mayor of Manchester, who said Sunday that the party is in “peril” and needs to change direction.

    Reeves took aim at those in Labour, such as Burnham, who argue the government should borrow more to spend more on public services. She cited former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss’ disastrous 2022 plan for unfunded tax cuts, which sent the value of the pound plunging and the cost of government borrowing soaring.

    “When spending gets out of control, when market confidence is lost … it is felt immediately in the growing cost of essentials, and rising interest rates,” Reeves said.

    The threat posed by Reform is top issue among Labour delegates at the four-day conference, which ends Wednesday. Farage’s party has only five lawmakers in the 650 seat House of Commons, and Labour has more than 400. Nonetheless, Starmer said Reform is now Labour’s chief opponent, not the main opposition Conservatives.

    Starmer has described the fight between Labour and Reform as “a battle for the soul of this country.” On Sunday he accused Farage of sowing division with plans by Reform to deport immigrants who are in the U.K. legally. Starmer said such a policy would be “racist” and “immoral.”

    The U.K. government has toughened its own language about immigration, though. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the conference the government must question some of “the assumptions and legal constraints” around migration.

    She said she plans to raise the bar immigrants must meet to gain permanent residency. Under the proposals, people will have to have a “high standard” of English, no criminal record and give back to their communities to get the right to settle in the U.K.

    “Unless we have control of our borders, and until we can decide who comes in and who must leave, we will never be the open, tolerant and generous country that I know we all believe in,” she said.

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  • Expect to pay more for furniture, home remodels with new tariffs set to kick in

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    Fresh tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities recently announced by President Trump on social media could cause already high prices to rise even further, and deter some Americans from embarking on home renovation projects. 

    Mr. Trump on Thursday said his administration will levy a 50% tariff on all imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and “associated products,” plus a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture from abroad.

    Preventing what he called the “flooding” of such goods into the U.S. is a matter of national security, the president added. Both sets of tariffs will kick in Oct. 1, he said. “It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for National Security and other reasons, our Manufacturing process,” Mr. Trump wrote.  

    Prices for living room, kitchen and dining room furniture — much of which is imported — rose 9.5% from August 2024 to August 2025, the latest CPI data shows, driven by Mr. Trump’s country-based tariffs, according to economists. Furniture and bedding also rose 4.7% over the same period, and 2.8% for household furnishings and supplies.

    If the new levies go into effect, furniture makers will feel the hit, and some will likely pass the costs on to consumers, industry analysts told CBS News. The sectoral tariffs could also hinder business activity and growth, they added, as companies wait to see if tariff policies change and defer investment decisions.  

    “Higher prices are an inevitable consequence of these tariffs,” Zak Stambor, a retail analyst at market research company eMarketer, told CBS News. “People undergoing bathroom or kitchen renovations are in a tough spot right now because there was so little warning. The costs of those things will now be higher, and people might not have already bought them because they were waiting for permits.”

    Low-income consumers will feel the squeeze the most, not just because they have less discretionary income but because lower-cost furniture sold in the U.S. tends to be imported from Southeast Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Malaysia and India. 

    Some higher-end furniture is manufactured in the U.S., and therefore less exposed to tariffs, according to Telsey Advisory Group managing director and senior retail analyst Cristina Fernández. She said retailers will have no choice but to raise prices on imported goods once the tariffs take effect.

    “They are trying not to raise prices too much ahead of holiday season. But they can’t absorb 30% tariffs on top of other tariffs that are already in place,” she told CBS News. “They’ll have to pass through pricing, probably in the form of a double-digit price increase.” 

    The White House did not respond to CBS News’s request for comment on analysts’ claims the tariffs could drive up prices or inhibit business investment.

    Uncertainty persists

    From retailers’ point of view, the levies could make investing in new inventory a riskier and more difficult proposition, according to Stambor, as costs and consumer demand could shift.

    “Retailers’ only certainty is that uncertainty is here to stay. What’s true today very well may not be true tomorrow and that makes life incredibly challenging,” he said.

    Naturepedic, an Ohio-based maker of organic mattresses and bedroom furniture, said it had been planning to launch an upholstered product line in late 2025 or early 2026, including headboards. However, as of Thursday, it is reconsidering that expansion.

    “We are having to go back to the drawing board a little bit,” Naturepedic Chief Growth Officer Arin Schultz told CBS News. “We might drop it if it doesn’t make sense, even though we’re pretty far along in the process.” 

    Of the tariffs announced on Thursday, he said, “If they could turn around and not do it, that would be great.” 

    Cost to consumers

    John Mercer, head of global research at Coresight Research, a provider of retail industry insights, doesn’t expect all manufacturers to pass on all tariff-related costs to the consumer, and says some will likely take steps to mitigate the impact. 

    Firms with larger inventories will be able to sell through what they have in stock before implementing any price hikes, while on-demand furniture makers may have to raise prices sooner, rather than later, he said. 

    Mr. Trump has promoted tariffs as a way of reducing trade deficits with other nations and bolstering domestic jobs in manufacturing.

    Mercer, however, doesn’t expect the levies to compel makers of upholstered furniture and cabinetry to quickly move production to the U.S. 

    “Generally, that’s not easy, and it’s more expensive,” he said. “There is a reason why companies have offshored production, and that’s because because it’s traditionally much cheaper.”

    Megan Cerullo

    Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

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  • U.S. farmers in a bind as crop prices crash and tariffs drive higher equipment costs

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    America’s farmers are caught in a crisis between a combination of high operating costs, low commodity prices and lost markets. Lana Zak reports.

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    Former FBI Director James Comey indicted; Texas teen confesses to stabbing twin in 911 call.

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  • Tariffs are starting to crush America’s small liquor businesses

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    The alcohol industry recently dodged an attempt to smuggle a neo-Prohibitionist agenda into the U.S. Dietary Guidelines revisions. While the industry was able to breathe a sigh of relief thanks to this rule, its reprieve has been short-lived: President Donald Trump’s tariff policies have started to hammer the industry once again.

    On August 1, a 15 percent tariff went into effect on most European goods imported to America. Despite some initial hope that alcohol might be spared as part of a Trump-E.U. trade deal, the tariff remains in effect for booze, and it’s U.S. small businesses that are bearing some of the highest costs.

    During the first Trump administration, alcohol producers were hit hard by Trump’s tariff policies, facing price increases on beer cans (from the aluminum tariffs) as well as painful retaliatory tariffs from other countries that targeted American alcohol. So far, the second Trump presidency appears to promise more of the same.  

    With the tariffs now officially in effect, small- and medium-sized wineries in California are reporting price increases on key input materials, including glass, corks, and barrels. The day after the tariffs took effect, Dresser Winery in Paso Robles, California, was informed by its Portugal-based cork maker that cork prices would increase by 15 percent—the manufacturer offered to pay 2 percent of the cost increase, leaving the winery to cover the remaining 13 percent.

    Dresser Winery also sources its glass abroad, either from China or Mexico, and its barrels come from France or Hungary. As the winery’s owner Kory Burke pointed out to The Columbian, simply swapping these goods for American-made products is far from simple. American glass bottles are expensive and harder to find, while American-made oak barrels would noticeably alter the flavor profile of the wine. Another California winery reported that the tariffs will raise their production costs by 50 cents per bottle.

    The impact on the alcohol industry started being felt even before the tariffs officially went into effect, with prominent bourbon brands such as Brown-Forman (owner of Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve), Wild Turkey, and Bulleit all experiencing drops in bourbon sales over the summer in anticipation of the tariffs, partly due to export markets becoming more politically fraught. And none of this even includes the decision by Canada earlier this year to yank all U.S. alcohol from the shelves of its municipal-run liquor stores, which resulted in devastating sales declines for U.S. booze in Canada. (In 2024, Canada was the second-largest export market for American spirits.)

    There are also lesser-known effects that are starting to have an impact. As Kevin D. Williamson noted recently in The Washington Post, the American three-tier system of alcohol distribution presents particular challenges for the industry when it comes to weathering tariffs. American alcohol distributors—who operate as a government-mandated middleman between producers and consumers—often derive higher profit margins on wines coming from countries like France and Italy.

    As Williamson puts it, these imported wines help “sustain the distribution ecosystem that lower-margin U.S. producers rely on to get their products to market,” which means that “European imports don’t just compete with U.S.-made wines—they effectively subsidize their distribution.” Williamson goes on to quote an alcohol distributor who derives 75 percent of its profits from European wine. “We need French, Spanish and Italian wines to make our business work,” said Harry Root, co-founder of the South Carolina and Alabama distributor Grassroots Wine. “Remove any piece of the puzzle, and the whole thing doesn’t work.”

    The cost of tariffs on the alcohol industry is no longer merely speculative. “It has real impacts,” Burke said. “We’ve thought deeply about selling our property. We’ve thought deeply about…charging double our price for our bottle.”

    As has been the theme of Trump’s trade war, in the end, it’s American businesses and consumers that suffer.

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    C. Jarrett Dieterle

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    Former FBI Director James Comey indicted; Texas teen confesses to stabbing twin in 911 call.

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  • All bark, no bite: Trump’s latest trade war turns into another TACO salad for Wall Street | Fortune

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    When President Donald Trump made his “Liberation Day” speech on April 2, announcing sweeping tariffs across a range of sectors, markets reacted sharply. Investors feared a replay of the disruptive trade battles of his first term, and stocks dropped as they tried to assess how new levies might ripple through global supply chains.

    But six months on, the story looks different. Much of the initial panic has faded, replaced by recognition that the real economic impact of Trump’s tariffs has been softened by carve-outs, negotiated deals, and exemptions. In fact, stocks snapped out of a multi-day losing streak on Friday, reacting almost with disregard to the latest surprise from Trump’s social media account.

    Now, as Trump tries to reignite the trade war with an overnight announcement of a slew of tariffs, including a 100% tariff on branded and patented pharmaceuticals and a 50% tariffs on furniture imports, markets are barely reacting. 

    Michael Browne, global investment strategist at Franklin Templeton, said that the markets regard tariffs as “over.”

    “The real level of tariffs is much lower, which is one of the reasons the impact has been muted,” Browne told The Financial Times.

    The other reason could be that consumers have proven far more resilient to higher prices than economists once expected.

    Pharma scare eases quickly

    At first, the news rattled European and Asian drugmakers. Zealand Pharma dropped nearly 3%, Novo Nordisk lost 1.6%, and India’s Sun Pharmaceutical and Divi’s Laboratories fell more than 3% in early trading. The Stoxx 600 Healthcare index swung between gains and losses before closing flat.

    Yet European equities as a whole closed higher, underscoring how investors now discount Trump’s tariff announcements. 

    The pan-European Stoxx 600 finished the day up 0.8%, with the CAC 40 in Paris up 0.97%, the DAX in Frankfurt up 0.87%, and Madrid’s IBEX 35 leading gains with a 1.3% rise.

    JPMorgan strategists quickly told clients the pharma tariff was “largely avoidable” for companies that expand U.S. manufacturing. 

    “We continue to see a very manageable overall impact from tariffs to our large-cap coverage,” the note said, according to CNBC.

    The resilience reflects the numerous carveouts from the pharma tariffs. Generics — which account for nine out of ten U.S. prescriptions — are excluded from the new levies. A U.S.–EU trade agreement limits duties on most European drug exports to 15%. And companies actively investing in U.S. manufacturing, such as Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Roche, GSK, and Amgen, are exempt as soon as they break ground on new facilities.

    Analysts were quick to highlight those caveats.

    “Many large-cap biopharmaceutical companies should not be exposed because they are engaged in some sort of U.S. facility construction activity,” Leerink Partners’ David Risinger told BioPharma Dive.

    The White House pushed back on the “carve-out” framing, saying these are Section 232 national-security tariffs aimed at reshoring critical manufacturing.

    The exemptions for companies “building” U.S. plants are temporary, intended to give firms runway to relocate production without immediately hiking prices, spokesperson Kush Desai told Fortune. He added that the 15% caps on many European (and Japanese) pharma exports reflect broader trade agreements that included “significant concessions that favor the U.S.,” not a softening of the tariff stance.

    Resilient consumers 

    For investors, the reaction was familiar. Initial volatility gave way to a recognition that tariffs rarely land as broadly as advertised. 

    Imports account for only around 10% of the U.S. economy, giving businesses and consumers room to adjust. Many companies stocked up on goods ahead of deadlines, while others shifted to alternative suppliers.

    “It may be that inflation comes through, but there is no sign of that yet,” Browne told Financial Times.

    The muted market response also reflects a larger truth: consumers have been much more resilient than most economists expected. Commerce Department data released Thursday showed the U.S. economy grew at a 3.8% annual pace last quarter, its strongest stretch since 2023, powered by robust household spending and business investment.

    Economists note that Americans’ willingness to keep shopping, even amid high borrowing costs, has repeatedly surprised forecasters.

    As Boston wealth manager Gina Bolvin put it, the real lesson may be that “don’t fight the Fed” has become “don’t fight the U.S. consumer.”

    TACO

    Markets’ calm also reflects a trade they’ve come to rely on — what analysts call the TACO trade (Trump Always Chickens Out). After April’s “Liberation Day” shock, investors assumed Trump would follow his familiar pattern: issue sweeping tariff threats, then pull back once markets started to wobble. That confidence helped stocks rebound to record highs.

    Exemptions have reinforced that bet. The effective average tariff rate has stayed well below headline figures, thanks to carve-outs fand exemptions for companies breaking ground on U.S. plants.

    Economists caution that tariffs often take months to ripple through supply chains, so some price pressure could still emerge later this year. But so far, inflation data has remained stable, undercutting predictions that trade policy would deliver a consumer shock.

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    Eva Roytburg

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