Business
How Trump’s Closing a Tariff Loophole Will Hurt UPS and FedEx
Less than a year ago, executives from FedEx and UPS were talking about how they were handling a flood of packages from China to American consumers.
“Explosive” is how Carol Tomé, UPS’s chief executive, in July described the volume of shipments from e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods in the United States. And FedEx’s chief customer officer, Brie Carere, said about those companies in June, “No one carrier can serve their entire needs.”
But that torrent is expected to slow to a trickle after President Trump on Friday closed a loophole that had allowed cheap goods from China to enter the United States without paying tariffs.
The business of transporting hundreds of millions of low-value shipments on as many as 60 freighter flights a day between China and the United States could now wither.
A falloff in such shipments could deprive companies like UPS, FedEx and DHL of a big source of revenue. Airlines, mainly those that carry only cargo, and smaller logistics companies could also suffer. Passenger airlines may also be hurt somewhat because they carry some of those packages, too.
UPS said last week that it expected the revenue from shipping packages from China to the United States — its most profitable trade lane — to decline roughly 25 percent in the second quarter of this year, from a year earlier. UPS also announced that it would cut 20,000 jobs this year as part of a long-term plan to reduce costs, and said “macroeconomic uncertainty” prevented it from updating its forecasts for revenue and profits for 2025.
Ms. Tomé said UPS’s China-to-U.S. business was responsible for 11 percent of the company’s international revenue. She suggested that the company could take the trade tensions in stride, saying that, when trade between China and the United States declined during Mr. Trump’s first term, it increased between China and rest of the world.
But because Mr. Trump is now waging a more aggressive and broader trade war, logistics companies may not be able to easily make up for lost sales in other places, as they were able to during his first term, analysts said.
“It was a bit of a bumpy ride the last time,” said Jay Cushing, an analyst for Gimme Credit. “It took a little while for things to level out, but this is probably going to take even longer.”
The tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term helped set off the gusher of inexpensive goods from China.
To avoid those tariffs, Chinese sellers increasingly sent products to the United States under the loophole that was closed on Friday for imports from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Known as the de minimis exemption, the loophole allowed buyers to import goods worth $800 or less without paying tariffs or filling out detailed customs paperwork. Now that the exemption is gone, American shoppers will have to pay tariffs of as much as 145 percent on Chinese goods, adding $14.50 to the cost of a $10 T-shirt.
Temu, one of the biggest e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods, said last week that it was no longer shipping orders from China directly to American consumers. “All sales in the U.S. are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country,” Temu said in a statement.
As the ending of the exemption loomed, Wall Street analysts pressed delivery companies to predict the impact.
When asked on an investor call in March what share of revenue came from de minimis shipments, FedEx’s chief executive, Raj Subramaniam, said it was a “minority.”
Isabel Rollison, a FedEx spokeswoman, declined to offer a more precise estimate. “In terms of our revenue split by geography, we serve an extremely diversified customer base across more than 220 countries and territories,” she said in a statement.
DHL, based in Bonn, Germany, also declined to say to say what percentage of its business came from de minimis shipments from China. Glennah Ivey-Walker, a DHL spokeswoman, said they represented “only a small portion of our overall U.S.-bound volume and our overall business volume in the U.S. market.”
Ending the exemption might have been worse for the carriers had it not been for a late change to the rules by the Trump administration.
The lower-value goods were set to become subject to strict customs rules that require detailed paperwork. But the administration late last month issued a waiver that allowed the goods to be treated more leniently.
Some trade experts said the administration’s change undermined tariff collection because it deprived Customs and Border Protection of information it needed to make sure that importers were paying the correct amount of import duties.
“If you don’t know exactly what the good is, it’s hard to know what the right potential value is or what the right tariff should be,” said Lori Wallach, director of a trade program at American Economic Liberties Project, an organization that seeks to curb the power of large corporations.
But some customs lawyers said that, even after the waiver, detailed information would still be required.
The waiver came after DHL stopped making some shipments that were subject to the paperwork requirement, and after it had spoken to members of the Trump administration.
Ms. Ivey-Walker, the DHL spokeswoman, said the waiver would not “make it harder to collect tariffs or in any way impede the government’s ongoing efforts to protect its borders.” She added that DHL had spoken to the administration to highlight the delays that might occur if the detailed paperwork requirement was enforced.
A sharp decline in low-value shipments could also shake airlines.
Air cargo shipments had already slowed even before the end of the exemption on Friday.
By mid-April, air cargo traffic from mainland China and Hong Kong to the United States was down about 16 percent from a year earlier, according to WorldACD, an industry data firm. And experts say that traffic is likely to slow further in the coming weeks.
“We expect to see as much as 30 to 40 percent of China-to-U.S. capacity come out of the market,” said Derek Lossing, the founder of Cirrus Global Advisors, an e-commerce and supply chain consulting firm.
The carriers most active in e-commerce trade between China and the United States include two U.S. cargo airline companies, Atlas Air Worldwide and Kalitta Air; Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways; and the cargo divisions of Chinese airlines, according to several air cargo experts.
U.S. passenger airlines are not as vulnerable because they operate relatively few flights between the United States and mainland China and Hong Kong.
To make up for the losses, Chinese businesses may try to sell more goods to customers elsewhere, including in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, experts said.
There are already signs of such a shift. While air cargo shipments from China to the United States were down in the weeks leading up to the expiration of the exemption, flights into Miami, a hub for flights to Latin America, were up slightly, according to Mr. Lossing.
Business
Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.
President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.
The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.
The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.
Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”
Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.
Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.
Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.
In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.
Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.
The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.
Business
Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center
Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.
Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.
Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.
Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.
At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.
Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.
Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,
Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.
The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.
Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.
Business
Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment
Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.
At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.
Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”
“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”
Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.
Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.
“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.
The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.
“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”
Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.
Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.
The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.
But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.
Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.
“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”
What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.
Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”
Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.
Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.
While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.
In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.
“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.
Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
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