Business

Trump Will Hit Mexico, Canada and China With Tariffs

Published

1 year ago

February 1, 2025

Trump Will Hit Mexico, Canada and China With Tariffs

President Trump plans to impose stiff tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on Saturday, a move aimed at pressuring America’s largest trading partners into accepting more migrants and halting the flow of migrants and drugs into the United States.

Mr. Trump will put a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, along with a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a news briefing Friday.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Mr. Trump said the tariffs were punishment for Canada, Mexico and China allowing drugs and migrants to flood into the United States.

Mr. Trump’s decision to hit America’s trading partners with tariffs could mark the beginning of a disruptive and damaging trade war, one that is far messier than the conflict that defined Mr. Trump’s first term.

Back then, Mr. Trump placed tariffs on nearly two-thirds of Chinese imports, resulting in China hitting the U.S. with levies of its own. Mr. Trump also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, inciting retaliation from the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

While the tariffs against allies were viewed as controversial, they were relatively limited in scope. It remains to be seen exactly what products Mr. Trump’s new tariffs apply to, but the president has implied that they would be expansive and cover imports from Canada and Mexico, close allies of the United States.

Mr. Trump said on Friday that he would also “absolutely” impose tariffs on the European Union, saying they had “treated us so terribly.” He added that the United States would eventually put tariffs on chips, oil and gas — “I think around the 18th of February,” he said — as well as later levies on steel, aluminum and copper.

Canada, Mexico and China are America’s three largest trading partners, supplying the United States with cars, medicine, shoes, timber, electronics, steel and many other products. Together, they account for more than a third of the goods and services imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs.

The three governments have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own on U.S. exports, including Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky peanut butter. All three of those states have Republican senators representing them in Congress and voted for Mr. Trump in 2024.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs would immediately add a surcharge for the importers who bring products across the border, most of which are U.S. companies. In the nearer term, that could disrupt supply chains and lead to shortages, if importers choose not to pay the cost of the tariff.

If importers do pay the tariff, it will probably translate into higher prices for some American goods, as those companies generally pass the cost of tariffs on to their customers.

“Hopes that Trump’s tariffs threats were merely bluster and a bargaining tool are now crumbling under the harsh reality of his determination to deploy tariffs as a tool to shift other countries’ policies to his liking,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University.

Mr. Trump had said in November that he would put the tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, in an effort to halt the flow of migrants and drugs, particularly fentanyl, into the United States.

The threat set off a scramble from Canadian and Mexican officials, who tried to persuade the administration to hold off on tariffs by engaging in last-minute talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and detailing the efforts they were making to police the border.

Auto, agricultural and energy companies have all been pushing the Trump administration hard not to apply tariffs, and have called for an exclusions process that could give some products an exemption.

Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican economy minister, said Friday that tariffs would most likely lead to shortages in specific goods, and that U.S. prices on Mexican goods would increase. He called the move “a strategic mistake” by the Trump administration.

“The main impact is clear: Millions of families in the United States would have to pay 25 percent more,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, in a post on X on Friday afternoon, said that “no one — on either side of the border — wants to see American tariffs on Canadian goods.” He said that “if the United States moves ahead, Canada’s ready with a forceful and immediate response.”

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy said that China firmly opposed tariffs and that any differences or frictions should be resulted through dialogue. “There is no winner in a trade war or tariff war, which serves the interests of neither side nor the world,” the spokesman said.

Mr. Trump’s advisers had been weighing different options for the tariffs, like applying them to specific sectors, such as steel and aluminum, or delaying their effective date for several months, according to people familiar with the planning.

Ms. Leavitt said the president had chosen to impose tariffs because the countries “have allowed an unprecedented invasion of illegal fentanyl that is killing American citizens, and also illegal immigrants into our country.”

“The amount of fentanyl that has been seized at the southern border in the last few years alone has the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans,” she said. “And so the president is intent on doing this.”

At both borders, the number of illegal crossings has dropped sharply.

The number of unauthorized crossings at the southern border in December 2023 reached nearly 250,000, overwhelming the Border Patrol and causing the government to shut down a port of entry. At the northern border, the flow of migrants crossing illegally skyrocketed during the 2024 fiscal year. During that time, more than 23,000 arrests were made of migrants crossing illegally — two years before that figure was around 2,000.

The situation at the border has changed since then.

In December, agents made roughly 47,000 arrests at the southern border and 510 at the northern border.

The economic fallout from the tariffs would depend on how they were structured, but the ripple effects could be broad. Canada, Mexico and the United States have been governed by a trade agreement for more than 30 years, and many industries, from automobiles and apparel to agriculture, have grown highly integrated across North America.

Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the tariffs would be “very costly” for U.S. businesses.

U.S. factories rely on inputs from both countries, including minerals and timber from Canada and auto parts from Mexico. The tariffs would also go against efforts that U.S. companies have made in recent years to move out of China, at the urging of the Trump and Biden administrations, Ms. Lovely said.

According to economists at S&P Global, the auto and electric equipment sectors in Mexico would be most exposed to disruption if tariffs were enacted, as would mineral processing in Canada. In the United States, the largest risks would be to the farming, fishing, metals and auto sectors.

Jonathan Samford, the president of Global Business Alliance, which represents international companies, said the tariffs might result in rising costs for U.S. consumers, slowdowns for U.S. businesses and lost opportunities for future investment.

In his remarks from the Oval Office Friday, Mr. Trump said he would “probably” reduce the tariff on Canadian oil to 10 percent. Roughly 60 percent of the oil that the United States imports comes from Canada, and about 7 percent comes from Mexico, and experts have warned that cutting off those flows could cause American energy prices to spike.

While the United States is the world’s largest oil producer, refineries need to mix the lighter crude produced in domestic fields with heavier oil from places like Canada to make fuels like gasoline and diesel.

The potential economic implications from tariffs are also complicating matters for the Federal Reserve, which is still trying to wrestle inflation down to its 2 percent target. The Fed this week held interest rates steady, after a series of cuts, amid persistent inflation and questions about how the tariffs would play out.

On balance, most economists expect higher trade barriers to raise prices for U.S. businesses and households, which could lead to a temporary burst of higher inflation. Whether that escalates into a more pernicious problem will depend on whether Americans’ expectations about future inflation start to shift higher in a meaningful way.

Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab, estimates that a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imported goods — paired with a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports — would lead to a permanent 0.8 percent bump in the price level, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index. That translates to roughly $1,300 per household on average. Those estimates assume that the targeted countries enact retaliatory measures and that the Federal Reserve does not take action by adjusting interest rates.

Mr. Tedeschi expects tariffs on that level to eventually shave 0.2 percent off gross domestic product once inflation is taken into account.

Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers have disputed the idea that the tariffs fuel inflation, and argued that exporters from countries such as China would lower their prices in the face of higher U.S. tariffs.

In the press briefing, Ms. Leavitt said inflation had remained subdued in Mr. Trump’s first term, despite tariffs being imposed. And she said the president was undertaking other policies that would lower inflation, like passing tax cuts and encouraging energy production.

Hamed Aleaziz, Vjosa Isai and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.

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Business

Commentary: Trump wants to let companies make fewer disclosures, thus keeping investors in the dark

Published

9 hours ago

July 9, 2026

Press Room

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?

Business

Fire-damaged Pacific Palisades shopping center sets reopening date

Published

19 hours ago

July 8, 2026

Press Room

Fire-damaged Pacific Palisades shopping center sets reopening date

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 in Pacific Palisades.

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

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.”

Business

Walmart’s EV chargers are coming to California with discounts for members

Published

1 day ago

July 8, 2026

Press Room

Walmart’s EV chargers are coming to California with discounts for members

Walmart is rapidly expanding its network of electric vehicle chargers designed for customers to use while they shop.

The network could help fill gaps in EV infrastructure in states with greater need for chargers. Walmart, which has more than 5,000 locations in the U.S. and hundreds in California, says more than 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.

The chargers also offer an incentive for customers to choose Walmart — Walmart Plus members will receive a 10% discount off an average price of $0.46 per kilowatt-hour of energy at the company’s chargers.

Walmart chargers are already available at more than 75 locations in 17 states, with Texas boasting the most charging stations, followed by Florida and Arizona.

Matthew Nelson, Walmart’s director of energy policy, said last week on LinkedIn that the network will soon reach 29 states, including California.

“We are delivering on the promise of affordable, reliable and convenient charging,” Nelson said in his post.

According to Walmart’s website, six charging stations are coming to California soon, though the company did not offer a specific timeline.

The chargers will be installed at stores in Antelope, Brea, Fresno, Stockton, Suisun City and Vallejo.

Most charging sites in California will include eight to 16 fast-charging stalls, said Walmart spokesperson Kelsey Bohl.

The company first announced plans in April 2023 to install its own EV chargers at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, with a goal of installing thousands of chargers by 2030. Partnering with ABB E-Mobility and Alpitronic, it added 25 new charging sites this past May and six more in June.

“Walmart is building a leading retail-integrated EV fast-charging network, focused on delivering an affordable, reliable and convenient charging experience where customers already shop,” Bohl said in an emailed statement. “Customers can charge while they shop, access stations through the Walmart app they already use, and benefit from affordable pricing.”

The charging stations already available include 612 individual charging stalls using 400-kilowatt chargers. Each stall has a dual charging cord with both Combined Charging System and North American Charging Standard connectors. The standard connectors, designed by Tesla, are smaller and lighter than the combined systems.

The primary way to pay for the chargers is through the Walmart app, but the company is also experimenting with built-in credit card readers to allow those without the app to use the stations.

Customers can check charger availability on the Walmart app. The company said the chargers will be available 24 hours a day.