Business
How Trump’s One-for-One Tariff Plan Threatens the Global Economy
The world economy was already grappling with a perplexing assortment of variables, from geopolitical conflicts and a slowdown in China to the evolving complexities of climate change. Then, President Trump unleashed a plan to uproot decades of trade policy.
In starting a process to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on American trading partners, Mr. Trump increased volatility for international businesses. He broadened the scope of his unfolding trade war.
In basic concept, the argument for reciprocal tariffs is straightforward: Whatever levies American companies face in exporting their wares to another country should apply to imports from that same country. Mr. Trump has long championed this principle, presenting it as a simple matter of fairness — redress to the fact that many American trading partners maintain higher tariffs.
Yet in practice, calculating individual tariff rates on thousands of products drawn from more than 150 countries poses a monumental problem of execution for a vast range of companies, from American manufacturers dependent on imported parts to retailers that buy their goods from overseas.
“It’s potentially a herculean task,” said Ted Murphy, an international trade expert at Sidley Austin, a law firm in Washington. “For every widget, every tariff classification, you can have 150 different duty rates. You’ve got Albania to Zimbabwe.”
The order that Mr. Trump signed on Thursday directed his agencies to study how to proceed with reciprocal tariffs. That raised the risk of increasing costs for American consumers at a time of deepening concern over inflation, challenging the president’s own vows to bring down prices on groceries and other everyday items. And that heightened the possibility of greater delay from the Federal Reserve in lowering borrowing costs.
It also hastens the diminishing of the world trading system, which has long been centered on multilateral blocs and adjudicated by the World Trade Organization. Mr. Trump is aiming to advance a new era in which treaties give way to country-to-country negotiations amid a spirit of nationalist brio.
The transition threatens to add to strains on global supply chains after years of upheaval. International businesses have contended with an unfolding trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China. They have confronted impediments to passage through the Suez and Panama Canals, sending shipping prices soaring.
Now, Mr. Trump has presented them with another formidable puzzle.
Under the system that has held sway for three decades, member countries of the World Trade Organization set tariffs for every type of good, extending the same basic rate to all members. They have also negotiated treaties — with other countries, and via regional trading blocs — that have further eased tariffs.
Mr. Trump has long described the United States as a victim of this structure, citing trade deficits with China, Mexico and Germany. In announcing the advent of reciprocal tariffs on Thursday, he served notice that he claims authority to renegotiate the terms to his liking, absent respect for existing trade agreements.
It seemed no coincidence that Mr. Trump made his announcement on the day that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the White House. The United States runs a substantial trade deficit with India, with the value of its imported goods outweighing its exports last year by $45 billion.
Those imports include plastics and chemical products that incur tariffs of less than 6 percent when shipped to the United States, according to data compiled by the World Bank. When similar categories of American goods are exported to India, they confront tariffs ranging from 10 to 30 percent.
If the Trump administration were to lift American levies to equal levels, that would force American factories to pay more for chemicals and plastics.
The same pattern holds across a broad sweep of consumer and industrial products — footwear from Vietnam, machinery and agriculture from Brazil, textiles and rubber from Indonesia.
A leading electronics industry trade association, IPC, on Thursday warned that increased trade protectionism would damage the American economy.
“New tariffs will raise manufacturing costs, disrupt supply chains, and drive production offshore, further weakening America’s electronics industrial base,” the association’s president, John W. Mitchell, said in a statement.
Some experts see in Mr. Trump’s approach a potential negotiating tactic aimed at forcing trading partners to lower their own tariffs, rather than a prelude to the United States lifting its own. If that proves true, the process of calculating new tariff rates might actually lower prices.
“There are a lot of ways this can go very badly for us,” said Christine McDaniel, a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush and now a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. “But if he can get other countries to open up their markets, there is a narrow path where this could end up promoting trade,” she said.
Still others warn that any process of negotiation could be guided less by national objectives than the interests of Mr. Trump’s allies. Tesla, the electric vehicle company run by the administration loyalist Elon Musk, could benefit from exemptions to increased tariffs on key components.
The tumult is leaving companies that operate in the United States having to guess how events will transpire as they weigh the costs of importing parts or finished goods. Business, as the cliché goes, craves nothing more than certainty. That commodity is getting more scarce.
Ever since Mr. Trump’s first term, when he put tariffs on Chinese imports — a policy that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. extended — companies that sell into the American market have shifted some production out of China.
Surging prices to move cargo by container ship have prompted companies to close the distance between their factories and their American customers, a trend known as nearshoring.
Walmart, a retail empire ruled by the pursuit of low prices, has moved orders from Chinese plants to India and Mexico. Columbia Sportswear has scouted factory sites in Central America. MedSource Labs, a medical device manufacturer, has moved orders from factories in China to a new plant in Colombia.
Mr. Trump has challenged the merits of such strategies by threatening 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and Colombia, before quickly delaying or setting aside such plans. He has imposed across-the-board levies on steel and aluminum. He has delivered 10 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. Where he may turn next is the subject of a potentially expensive parlor game playing out in corporate board rooms.
Some surmise that the uncertainty stemming from these moves is precisely the point. Mr. Trump has long asserted that his ultimate goal is to force businesses to set up factories in the United States — the only reliable way to avoid U.S. tariffs. The more countries he menaces, the greater the risks for any company that invests in a plant somewhere else.
The trouble is that even businesses with factories in the United States depend on parts and raw materials from around the world. More than one-fourth of American imports represent parts, components and raw materials. Making these goods more expensive damages the competitiveness of domestic companies, imperiling American jobs.
Last week, Ford Motor warned that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would wreak havoc with its supply chains.
“A 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” the company’s chief executive, Jim Farley, said.
For now, the business world is again struggling to divine which of Mr. Trump’s pronouncements are merely a gambit, and which portend real changes.
On spreadsheets maintained by multinational companies, the applicable tariff rates for every country on earth suddenly seem subject to reworking.
Or not.
“We take Trump seriously, but not necessarily literally,” said Mr. Murphy, the trade lawyer. “He talks in broad strokes, but we have to watch what actually emerges.”
StubHub is getting a red card from some World Cup fans
Two World Cup customers are suing the New York-based ticket-selling company, alleging “false and misleading” advertising that left them without tickets or a refund for the World Cup games they paid to attend.
In federal court in New York last week, two Californians — Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria — sued StubHub seeking monetary damages and a ban on the company selling World Cup tickets. The lawsuit aims to become a class action and comes after weeks of fierce criticism and complaints from customers regarding the company’s practices.
Throughout the World Cup, videos have emerged on Instagram and TikTok of StubHub customers describing their nightmare experiences with the ticket-selling platform.
Some said they had purchased tickets to World Cup games as early as November of last year, booked flights and hotels and arranged travel plans, then StubHub notified them days to weeks before the match of a refund for their tickets, which they never requested.
There were similar complaints about last-minute cancellations from people who bought Coachella tickets on StubHub.
In the lawsuit, Moghal said she had purchased three tickets for nearly $2,000 for the June 18 match between Switzerland and Bosnia-Herzegovina at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which were then canceled by StubHub. Moghal said she was contacted by StubHub and told her tickets would remain canceled, then was later told the tickets would be available one hour before the game.
When the match began, Moghal said she was at SoFi Stadium, but the tickets never came.
Renteria said he paid around $2,300 for the June 18 Mexico versus South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but they were canceled
“Devoted soccer fans have traveled from around the world to attend World Cup matches — and they reasonably relied on StubHub to provide the tickets they paid for as well as on StubHub’s warranty,” Blake Hunter Yagman, the attorney representing the two, said in a statement. “Instead of rewarding their business, StubHub sold them World Cup tickets that they either could not provide or on speculation, only to be stranded, in many cases, at the stadium gates without any recourse.”
According to StubHub’s website, its Fan Protect Guarantee states the platform will deliver valid tickets or refund in the event of a ticket issue, and that it will “go out of our way to find replacement tickets” of a comparable value. The lawsuit alleges the replacement tickets many fans were given by StubHub were worse than their original tickets.
FIFA, the World Cup organizer, states in its terms and conditions that the FIFA Marketplace, its own ticket-selling platform, is the only authorized platform for World Cup tickets, and that only tickets purchased through it are guaranteed by FIFA to be valid.
Despite the risk of purchasing through a third-party platform such as StubHub, many fans opted to do so to avoid the 30% FIFA resale tax, believing that the Fan Protect Guarantee would safeguard their order.
Since World Cup tickets began selling on FIFA Marketplace last September, fans have expressed disappointment in the expensive price tag. FIFA utilized a dynamic pricing system for the sale, and as sales phases progressed leading up to the games, the cost of tickets increased tremendously. In March, the extreme cost of tickets prompted 69 members of Congress to write a letter to FIFA urging them to lower their prices.
Tickets for the upcoming Friday match between Spain and Belgium in Los Angeles are selling on StubHub for over $1,300.
StubHub said in various statements to the news and in legal proceedings that ticket cancellations were a result of transfer problems and issues with FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
StubHub did not respond to requests for comment.
A FIFA spokesperson responded to this accusation in a statement, saying, “FIFA has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms. The transactions facilitated on these platforms occur entirely independently of FIFA’s official ticketing platform. With reference to the reliability of the services available to fans on FIFA’s official ticket platform, FIFA rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms with respect to FIFA World Cup 2026 tickets are the result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.”
Business
Commentary: Trump wants to let companies make fewer disclosures, thus keeping investors in the dark
Trump’s SEC is considering eliminating the mandate for quarterly corporate financial reports, but even some big investors call it a lousy idea.
This being the “information age,” it would be understandable if investors sometimes feel inundated with too much information to wade through about the stocks in their mutual fund portfolios.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, bowing like a puppy to the urgings of President Trump, is considering exactly the wrong solution to this supposed burden. It’s proposing to allow public companies to give their investors less information, as though that’s a good thing.
On May 8, the SEC proposed rescinding its mandate that public companies report financial results on a quarterly schedule. Instead, it suggests, semiannual and annual reports should suffice.
This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.
— Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets
The SEC left its proposal open for public comment for 60 days, meaning the window closed Monday. By then, the agency had received more than 68,000 comments, according to a tracker posted online by accounting professor Tzachi Zach of Ohio State.
Almost 99.9% of the comments were negative. Several organizations of institutional investors and auditing professionals, as well as a tsunami of individual investors, expressed opposition.
A similar initiative the SEC aired in 2018, during Trump’s first term, received an overwhelmingly negative response and was eventually dropped.
The tide of opposition coming from individual investors shouldn’t be surprising. “Taking away basic quarterly information means investors are blind for six months at a time,” says Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and chief executive of the investor advocacy nonprofit Better Markets.
That’s especially true for small investors, though perhaps not so much for major institutions, insiders or deep-pocketed individuals. “If you’re a big dog, you’ll get the information anyway,” Kelleher told me. “And insiders, who are trading in their own stock all the time, will have the information. This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.”
Trump set off the latest initiative with a social media post on Sept. 15, advocating the move to a six-month reporting schedule. It read, in part, “This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies. Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???’ Not good!!!”
As was usual with Trump, his argument was a string of uninformed and irrelevant non sequiturs.
It’s doubtful that eliminating quarterly reports will save much, if any, money. Most 10-Qs are cookie cutter documents disclosing financial figures already embedded in corporate records.
The idea that managers would become empowered to “focus on properly running their companies” if only they were relieved of the burden of preparing a report every three months is just malarkey: Any CEOs who feel the impulse to drop everything and involve themselves in what is essentially an automated process can’t be very good at their jobs.
As for China’s “50 to 100 year view on management of a company,” what would that even mean, even if it were true? China doesn’t operate on a 50 to 100 year corporate horizon, but rather on a string of five-year plans. The most recent of these was adopted by the government in March, covers the period up to 2030, and is its 15th in a row.
Despite the flaws in Trump’s arguments, Trump’s SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, a former corporate lawyer and securities industry consultant, fell into line. Within a few days of Trump’s post, he showed up on CNBC to minimize the potential effect of the change. Private companies rely on semiannual reports, after all, he noted, although the idea of taking private companies as models for publicly traded corporations might not strike experienced investors as the wisest thing.
Atkins cited an enduring chestnut, for which there’s no evidence, that quarterly reporting is responsible for “short-term thinking” in corporate suites (though he admitted that his evidence was “anecdotal”). And he suggested that small investors have ample access to corporate information even without quarterly reports — why, he said, they can just tune in to CNBC!
“To propose change in what our rules are now would be a good way forward,” he said. “So I welcome the president’s putting this up for discussion.”
Something more insidious undergirds the SEC’s proposal than its immediate effect on corporate behavior. The agency rationalizes its proposal as seeking “a tradeoff between reducing regulatory burdens … and promoting efficient financial markets through timely disclosure.”
The problem here, Kelleher points out, is that “reducing regulatory burdens” isn’t part of the SEC’s mission in any way, shape or form. It’s a regulatory agency, and its mission since its founding in 1934 has been to protect investors, not to make things fluffier for stock issuers.
The history of financial disclosure in the U.S. shows a long-term trend favoring more disclosure, not less. In the 1880s, quarterly reporting by railroads and other transportation companies were common.
Early on, pressure for more frequent disclosure came not from government regulators, who barely existed before 1934, but from investors. The reporting of quarterly earnings, notes corporate finance expert Owen Lamont of Acadian Asset Management, was “a bottom-up historical phenomenon reflecting voluntary arrangements between firms and investors, not a top-down phenomenon imposed by law.”
By 1931, according to financial historians, 63% of New York Stock Exchange-listed firms were publishing their quarterly earnings. The Big Board mandated that frequency for most listed companies in 1939. The SEC mandated semiannual reports in 1955 and quarterly reports, as Atkins said, in 1970.
The evidence in favor of dropping the quarterly reports is uniformly thin. Some advocates cite a 2018 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett that was headlined “Short-Termism Is Harming the Economy.”
Couple of points about this: First, the target of Dimon and Buffett wasn’t quarterly financial reporting, but quarterly earnings guidance — that is, the practice of some top executives who project their earnings into the future. (This guidance usually comes at the same time they issue their SEC disclosures.)
It’s guidance, they wrote, that is “a major driver” of short-termism in corporate behavior. That’s because management is giving itself a target it feels obligated to meet, even if factors outside its control interfere with the quest.
Furthermore, Dimon and Buffett wrote, “Our views on quarterly earnings forecasts should not be misconstrued as opposition to quarterly and annual reporting.” They called transparency about financial and operating results “an essential aspect of U.S. public markets … so that the public, including shareholders and other stakeholders, can reliably assess real progress.”
Individual investors may be unmoved by the SEC’s proposal because — let’s be candid — how many of them read quarterly earnings reports, anyway? But that’s unimportant, Kelleher says, because other market participants are reading them. “So that information is in the marketplace, and that’s what actually enables price discovery, so stock prices roughly reflect what’s going on at a company, most of the time.”
More to the point, the quarterly reports reflect the highest-quality, detailed information, the information the SEC requires executives to disclose on pain of facing a civil lawsuit from the agency or even criminal liability for faking data. “Main Street investors, whether they read quarterly reports or not, are the real beneficiaries,” Kelleher says.
That’s so. The bottom line is that quarterly financial reporting helps investors. It doesn’t promote short-term behavior and its costs, modest as they are, don’t outweigh its benefits.
Over the decades, scandal-ridden corporations have hidden fraudulent behavior in the interstices between mandated disclosures—think Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, among others. Why give any corporation, even an honest one, the opportunity to disclose less?
The luxury shopping center in Pacific Palisades will reopen next month after more than $100 million in renovations forced by the January 2025 wildfire that devastated the Los Angeles neighborhood.
Palisades Village will reopen Aug. 15, owner Rick Caruso announced Wednesday. The outdoor center survived the blaze that destroyed homes and other businesses but needed refurbishment to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread.
Crews are putting finishing touches on mall buildings after tearing them down to the studs, treating the wood and rebuilding the walls, Caruso said.
“Everybody’s working, and stores are moving their products in,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling that people have really locked arms and are working together.”
An electrician installs lighting for a restaurant at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pacific Palisades resident Allison Polhill, who is rebuilding the home of 30 years that her family lost in the blaze, said she is “thrilled” at the prospect of returning to the mall she used to frequent. Its comeback is a boost for the community, she said.
“Every single step that we make to reopen our commercial corridors is going to bring more people back into the Palisades,” said Polhill, who expects to move back into her home at the end of August.
A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction.
The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon, which may be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood when it opens.
Caruso’s company was able to fill the mall with tenants despite the long shutdown.
Palisades Village is 99% leased, with the majority of tenants returning, said Jackie Levy, chief financial and revenue officer. Nearly one-third of the shops and restaurants are new to the property.
A firefighter carries a hose back to his rig while walking through a destroyed home from the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street to the inferno.
Other neighborhood shops destroyed in the fire that are reopening at the mall include K Bakery and Loomey’s Toys, which caters to children up to age 12 and used to be across the street from Palisades Elementary Charter School.
“It’s been a journey and I’m excited because I wasn’t sure that there was going to be a place to come back to,” said toy store owner Amanda Rastegar. “Hopefully we can bring some of that magic back.”
Rastegar’s home in the Palisades survived but was damaged by the fire. The family returned about eight weeks ago. Her last memory of the fire was a burning supermarket.
“I just couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening,” she said. “By the time I left, Gelson’s was on fire.”
Among the returning tenants is Angelini Ristorante & Bar. Well-known Los Angeles chef Gino Angelini said he will be in the kitchen next month for a return of the Italian restaurant.
“We won’t do a big celebrity open,” he said. “We want to have a very soft opening and see our customers come back.”
Construction takes place at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
An elaborate celebration would not feel “correct for me,” Angelini said, because the devastation has been “very sad” for so many.
Other new tenants include local chef Nancy Silverton, who has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto. Women’s activewear retailer LESET will open its first West Coast location.
Caruso said he is optimistic that customers will return to the center, even though many Pacific Palisades residents are still dispersed. One tracking system estimated that about 30% of the Village’s customer base was impacted by the fire, he said.
“That means 70% did not get impacted, so there’s a lot of customers still left out there,” Caruso said. Historically, the center drew customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, as well as Malibu, Brentwood and Santa Monica.
He also hopes many will be inspired to visit the revived mall.
“I believe in the goodness of people and I believe that people are going to want to support the Palisades,” he said. “They’re going to want to be there and support the businesses that have had the courage and the heart to reopen.”
-
Michigan32 seconds agoMenominee, Michigan man arrested on sexual assault charges involving a minor
-
Massachusetts8 minutes agoHealey administration vows to appeal as Trump rejects Massachusetts blizzard aid request – The Boston Globe
-
Minnesota10 minutes agoMinnesota Looks to Add 1,100 Child Care Slots, With Melrose Among the 11 Funded Communities
-
Mississippi16 minutes agoDeath of Mississippi teen Nolan Wells under investigation
-
Missouri23 minutes agoMissouri realtors hold statewide rally to vote no on Amendments 4 & 5
-
Montana25 minutes agoDistrict court judge blocks new Montana GOP bylaws – WTOP News
-
Nebraska31 minutes agoNebraska ag experts say early detection for livestock parasites, illnesses will be important during summer show season
-
Nevada38 minutes agoLocal artists on Northern Nevada stages, now through Labor Day weekend
