Business
Trump Maintains 104% China Tariffs as U.S. Officials Signal Openness to Talks
President Trump’s next round of punishing tariffs on some of America’s largest trading partners was set to go into effect just after midnight on Wednesday, including stiff new levies that will increase import taxes on Chinese goods by at least 104 percent.
Mr. Trump acknowledged on Tuesday that his tariffs had been “somewhat explosive.” But throughout the day he continued to defend his approach, saying that it was encouraging countries with what he calls “unfair” trade practices to offer concessions.
“We have a lot of countries coming in to make deals,” he said during remarks at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. At a dinner with Congressional Republicans in Washington later that evening, he said other countries wanted to make a deal with the United States but he was happy just collecting the revenue from tariffs, which he claimed would reach $2 billion a day.
“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said, adding that he would announce “a major tariff on pharmaceuticals” very shortly.
The president and top administration officials signaled on Tuesday that the White House was ready to negotiate deals, saying that 70 governments had approached the United States to try to roll the levies back. Mr. Trump said officials would begin talks with Japan, South Korea and other nations.
The president, whose punitive and successive tariffs on China have triggered a potentially economically damaging trade war, also said he was open to talking to Beijing about a deal.
“China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”
On April 2, the president imposed a 10 percent global tariff on hundreds of countries and promised far steeper “reciprocal” tariffs on April 9 for nations that he maintains have “ripped off” America. Much of his anger has been directed at China, which exports far more into the United States than it buys. Since February, the president has imposed successive rounds of tariffs on China. On Wednesday, the minimum tax on Chinese imports will hit 104 percent. Some products may face even higher levies if they are subject to tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed during his first term.
The president’s approach has prompted retaliation from China and caused other countries to draw up their own plans to hit American exports. As a result, economists have raised their expectations for a recession in the United States, and many now consider the odds to be a coin flip.
Mr. Trump has dismissed those concerns and said he will not back away from his trade agenda. The president says his approach is necessary to return manufacturing and industrial production to the United States. He and his economic advisers have pointed to recent offers by countries to lower their own tariffs, though some officials have given mixed signals about how willing the president will be to negotiate.
News that the administration was considering reaching agreements with trading partners helped to buoy stock markets after three days of punishing losses. But by Tuesday afternoon the S&P 500 had given up any gains and closed down for the fourth consecutive trading day.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a briefing on Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Trump had spoken with the prime minister of Japan on Monday and that the United States would be seeking deals. She said that the president had asked his advisers to “have tailor-made trade deals with each and every country that calls up this administration to strike a deal.”
But Ms. Leavitt rejected the idea that the request represented an “evolution” from aides’ earlier comments that there would not be a negotiation over tariffs. She said the president was not planning to pause his plan. “He expects these tariffs are going to go into effect,” she said.
Ms. Leavitt also insisted that the United States had the upper hand when it came to negotiations. “America does not need other countries as much as other countries need us, and President Trump knows this,” she said.
Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, made similar comments on Tuesday as he assailed China for retaliating against the United States with tariffs of its own and warned that America had more leverage in a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy.
“What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us?” Mr. Bessent said on CNBC. “We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.”
Jamieson Greer, Mr. Trump’s top trade official, defended the administration’s aggressive tariff moves before a Senate committee on Tuesday morning, arguing that the U.S. economy was facing “a moment of drastic, overdue change” after decades of factories moving overseas and hurting the American working class.
Mr. Greer said that the president had imposed the tariffs to achieve “reciprocal treatment from other countries.” He added that the policy was already working, citing announcements that companies have made in recent weeks of investments in the United States.
He declined to say how long the tariffs would be in effect, saying that the administration was looking at it “country by country.” But he implied that there might not be quick remedies.
“Our large and persistent trade deficit has been over 30 years in the making, and it will not be resolved overnight, but all of this is in the right direction,” Mr. Greer said.
Mr. Bessent, who will oversee negotiations with Japan along with Mr. Greer, also indicated an openness to negotiating deals.
“I think you are going to see some very large countries with large trade deficits come forward very quickly,” Mr. Bessent said. “If they come to the table with solid proposals, I think we can end up with some good deals.”
Other officials have been less optimistic about the possibility of countries finding a way to avoid the tariffs.
“This is not a negotiation,” Peter Navarro, a White House trade adviser who is a strong supporter of tariffs, wrote in an opinion essay on Monday. “For the U.S., it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system.”
Mr. Trump’s aggressive tariffs have prompted sharp blowback from Democrats in Congress and increasing nervousness from Republicans, who are under pressure from constituents to defend their export markets.
A bipartisan group of senators — including Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the committee; the minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York; and one Republican, Rand Paul of Kentucky — plans to introduce a resolution later this week that would terminate the national emergency the president declared to introduce his tariffs.
But the measure would face a tough path to passage. If the House approves it, Congress will need enough votes to override the president’s veto. And the House may take action so it is not forced to vote on the resolution.
Last week, the Senate approved a similar measure to scrap the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Canada, but House Republicans moved pre-emptively to shut down the requirement that they vote on such a measure.
Representatives Don Bacon of Nebraska and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, both Republicans, introduced a bipartisan House bill on Monday that would give Congress the final say on any proposed tariffs. The measure, cosponsored by two Democrats, Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Gregory W. Meeks of New York, has not yet drawn any other Republican supporters.
But Mr. Bacon said on Monday that he had spoken to several other colleagues — “like, 10 to 20” — who said they liked the proposal but wanted to wait and hear from Mr. Greer on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Mr. Greer will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee.
Several Senate Republicans had forceful exchanges with Mr. Greer on Tuesday about whether the tariffs were a negotiating tool and whether businesses that depend on imported products might find relief.
“We need to think strategically about tariff policy, including how to minimize unnecessary costs on American families,” Senator Michael D. Crapo, the Republican chairman of the finance committee, said. “I also recognize that although it is easy to see the costs arising from tariffs, it is far more difficult to assess the cost of denied market access opportunities.”
Senator Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, said he was concerned about the inflationary effect of tariffs on consumers. But he said he was encouraged that other countries were approaching the United States to negotiate. He said that stock markets were rebounding Tuesday because “there’s hope that these tariffs are means and not solely an end,” he said.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, one of the few Republicans who have signed on to legislation opposing Mr. Trump’s tariffs, said that agriculture “is usually the first place of retaliation.”
During the trade fight with China in Mr. Trump’s first term, U.S. agricultural exports plummeted after China imposed high retaliatory duties on soybean, corn, wheat and other American imports, and the United States spent about $23 billion to support American farmers.
Mr. Grassley said that he supported the president generally but believed that Congress had delegated too much authority to him over trade. He said he had taken a “wait and see” approach to tariffs because he believed Mr. Trump and Mr. Greer were using them as a tool to get fairer trade.
“If that’s not the case, level with me,” Mr. Grassley told Mr. Greer.
The Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents major companies like Walmart, Target, Starbucks and Best Buy, released a statement ahead of Mr. Greer’s testimony saying that the tariffs had caused “disruption and uncertainty in the markets and with consumers” and could drive up prices for products like baby clothes, handbags and paper plates.
“Americans elected President Trump to lower inflation and grow the economy,” the group said. “Instead, these broad-based tariffs threaten family pocketbooks and risk destabilizing confidence in the economy.”
For Democrats, the tariffs have provided plenty of fodder to argue that Mr. Trump is mismanaging the economy.
“The U.S. economy has gone from the envy of the world to a laughingstock, in less time than it took to finish March Madness,” Mr. Wyden said on Tuesday. “Through it all, Donald Trump and his advisers have yet to provide any understandable explanation at all for what his tax hike on the American people is supposed to accomplish.”
“Donald Trump is single-handedly driving this economy off a cliff with no evidence to back him up,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Maya C. Miller, Tony Romm and Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google.
Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House.
Gaming prediction markets
In the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call.
They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed on Wednesday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing.
What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data.
“Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint.
A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.”
Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in.
Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.)
Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices.
What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.)
Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators.
Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds.
Investors brace for Thursday’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show on Thursday that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards.
Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?
Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion.
While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Here are three possibilities:
Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
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Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management division, told analysts in February that her unit had reviewed 25 potential deals last year and passed on all of them.
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added.
Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted.
There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad.
Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said on Wednesday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added.
Dimon did not suggest any potential targets on Wednesday.
Here are some guesses:
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Aberdeen Group, Invesco or Julius Baer in wealth management?
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Revolut is too big, but how about Wise or Toast in payments?
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Or what about Monzo or Bunq, fintech banks that have grown rapidly in Europe?
Meta will charge for its chatbot
Meta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses.
Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years.
Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year.
Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier:
Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers.
The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers.
Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close on Wednesday.
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Elsewhere, shares in the software maker Snowflake are soaring in premarket trading on Thursday after it reported strong quarterly results that suggested that A.I. agents weren’t clobbering its core subscription business. Salesforce’s analyst call on Wednesday, however, renewed fears that this sector was still vulnerable to A.I. disruption.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South Lawn
This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week.
U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”)
The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.
How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House?
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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“SpaceX-Tesla Merger Is ‘Only a Matter of When,’ Early Investor Says” (Bloomberg)
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Shares in the European food-delivery company Delivery Hero are down sharply on Thursday after Uber, which is pursuing a takeover bid for the company, raised its stake to nearly 37 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
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The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over soaring World Cup ticket prices. (WSJ)
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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he would impose a 100 percent tax on payouts to state residents from the $1.8 billion fund tied to the Justice Department’s settlement with President Trump. (Politico)
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