Politics
California businesses are reeling from Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs
Tariffs haven’t yet hit the supply chain at Anawalt in Malibu, but the hardware store and lumber seller is bracing for steep price hikes in the coming weeks.
The majority of the lumber that the store sells comes from Canada and nearly all of its steel products are made in China, general manager Rieff Anawalt said. Those countries, along with Mexico, have been targeted in sweeping tariffs imposed by President Trump during his second term, sparking a global trade war that intensified this week.
“These tariffs are 100% going to impact us,” Anawalt said. Wholesale reps for the family-run hardware company, which has five locations around Los Angeles County, have warned him to expect prices to go up by April 1 — costs that he said he’ll have to pass on to customers.
“We’re going to see major increases: 15% to 25% across the board in this industry,” he said. “It’ll make COVID prices seem cheap.”
Across California, businesses of all kinds — farmers, automakers, home builders, tech companies and apparel retailers — are reeling from weeks of on-again, off-again tariff chaos as Trump has announced a slew of levies against the country’s top three trading partners, implementing some while modifying, delaying or reversing others.
“It’s a day-by-day soap opera, and just like a soap opera, you get relief, then it heats up again,” said Jonathan D. Aronson, a professor of international communication and international relations at USC.
As a result, business owners “don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “They can’t plan. They don’t know how much to produce. They don’t know who their business partners are going to be.”
This month has been particularly tumultuous. On March 4, Trump’s 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico kicked in, with a limit of 10% on Canadian energy; he also doubled the tariff on all Chinese imports to 20%. All three countries vowed to strike back with their own measures.
A lumber yard in British Columbia, Canada, last month. Canada is the largest foreign supplier of lumber to the U.S.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The next day, Trump granted a one-month exemption for U.S. automakers on his new tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico. The day after that, he said he was postponing many of the tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports for a month.
On Monday, in a blow to farmers in California and across the U.S., China imposed retaliatory duties of up to 15% on American agricultural products including chicken, corn, beef, pork, wheat and soybeans. Then on Wednesday, Trump’s 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports went into effect.
To counterbalance the effects of the tariffs on their bottom lines, businesses may have to overhaul their operations, said Jerry Nickelsburg, faculty director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
“The way in which firms react to that uncertainty is to not put all their eggs in one basket,” he said. “So they cut back on how much they would order, which means they’re going to produce less and they need fewer people — or if not fewer people, fewer hours for the people they have.”
The latest volley came Thursday morning, when Trump threatened to place a 200% tariff on wine and liquor from the European Union in response to the EU proposing a 50% tariff on American whiskey. About an hour later, he wrote in a follow-up post on Truth Social that the U.S. “doesn’t have Free Trade. We have ‘Stupid Trade.’”
“The Entire World is RIPPING US OFF!!!” he said.
Bolstering the economy was one of Trump’s core promises during the election, and tariffs are key to his strategy. He threatened to slap tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on his first day back in office, explaining the decision as a way to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.
But the escalating trade tensions have pummeled Wall Street for three weeks. On Thursday, the S&P 500 closed in correction territory, ending the day down 1.39%; the index is now 10.1% below its record close Feb. 19. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 537.36 points, or 1.3%, closing at 40,813.57.
The fallout for farmers
The prolonged back-and-forth has also unsettled companies, both those that import goods from abroad and those that sell their products to foreign clients. California’s economy could be especially hard hit because of its heavy reliance on trade with China and Mexico, and because of its position as a global agricultural powerhouse.
Farmer Joe Del Bosque holds a raw almond in Firebaugh, Calif.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
California farmers grow the largest share of the nation’s food — more than a third of the country’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts are grown here — and the state’s fertile ground is a major supplier of produce to countries around the world. Farmers also rely heavily on fertilizer from Canada, which could cost more as the tariffs take hold.
“Farmers in California are going to be hurt particularly badly because almonds, soybeans and things like that are huge exports of the United States,” Aronson said.
The state also accounts for about 85% of wines produced in the United States and is home to thousands of grape growers and wineries, many of them small and generations-old. The Wine Institute says the industry supports employment for more than 420,000 Californians and generates $73 billion in economic activity in the state. Canada is the largest market for California wine.
A flurry of activity at the ports
Some L.A.-area companies have been stockpiling inventory to get ahead of expected price hikes tied to the tariffs, said Stephen Cheung, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
“A lot of them were hit pretty hard during the last trade war with China,” he said, “so they knew better than to wait and hope for the best.”
That has been reflected in shipping data from the ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles, which continue to record huge numbers thanks to several months of front-loading cargo ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
The Port of Long Beach moved 765,385 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, in February, a 13.4% increase from the previous year. January’s year-over-year growth was even larger: 952,733 TEUs — a unit of measurement based on the volume of a standard shipping container — were moved, representing a 41.4% increase.
An aerial view of the Port of Long Beach.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
After Trump launched a trade war with China during his first term, the Port of Long Beach lost about 20% of expected Chinese cargo in 2019, Chief Executive Mario Cordero said. That was supplemented by a 10% increase in imports from countries in Southeast Asia including Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. He expects the same thing to happen this time around.
In the coming months, Cordero said, the local economy could see supply chain disruptions, similar to what occurred during the pandemic, “if we continue on the path of aggressive and high” tariffs.
The Port of Los Angeles expects a 10% reduction in volume from last year amid Trump’s tariffs against China, Executive Director Gene Seroka said.
It’s a day-by-day soap opera, and just like a soap opera, you get relief, then it heats up again.
— Jonathan D. Aronson, a professor of international communication and international relations at USC
One of the largest seaports in the country, the L.A. port has seen sharp increases in cargo since last summer as businesses stocked up in anticipation of potential Trump tariffs. Just under 10.3 million TEUs, a near record, passed through the port last year.
Those numbers are likely to trend downward as tariffs take hold and the economy adjusts, Seroka said. “Fewer containers mean fewer jobs.”
L.A. businesses try to adjust
Economists say it’s difficult for companies to quickly change suppliers, and some may be loath to upend their supply chains given the ever-changing nature of Trump’s trade policies.
Some are trying anyway.
Francesca Grace, an interior designer and home stager in Los Angeles, said tariffs have already affected the availability and price of items including fabrics, wood and other building materials, and smaller decor pieces.
Supply chain delays have extended her project timelines in some cases to three to six weeks from immediate availability, and she’s contending with “at least a 25% rise” in costs for materials from China. As a result, she’s now trying to source all of her products locally, up from 75%.
“While this shift aligns with our values, it will also cause our pricing to increase,” Grace said. “We are doing everything we can to avoid increasing our pricing too much. The last thing we want is for these changes to negatively impact our business or make our designs inaccessible.”
Other businesses say they have little choice when it comes to where they get their merchandise.
“Lumber prices are what they are. There’s no sourcing it somewhere else, so we’re going to have to deal with it as it comes,” said Anawalt, the general manager at the Malibu hardware store. “It’s so beyond my control, there’s nothing I can do. I was panicked at first, but now I’m just going to wait.”
Politics
Expert reveals how companies are rebranding 'toxic' DEI policies to skirt Trump-era bans: 'New wrapper'
EXCLUSIVE: As the Trump administration and Republicans across the country push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies across the board, the executive director of a top consumer advocacy group spoke to Fox News Digital about what companies and institutions are doing to skirt those efforts.
“Over the last few months, we’ve sort of seen a phase shift in the ways that they’re trying to keep this DEI grift going,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital about companies, organizations, hospitals and other entities that are attempting to rebrand DEI and environmental, social and governance in the Trump era.
“At first, they just pushed back on, tried to defend DEI itself, but when that became so obvious that what DEI really was was anti-White, anti-Asian, sometimes anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring and promotion, they abandoned that,” Hild said. “Now what they’re trying to do is simply change the terminology that has become so toxic to their brand. So we’re seeing a lot of companies move from having departments of DEI, for example, to ‘departments of belonging’ or ‘departments of inclusivity.’”
Several major companies have publicly distanced themselves from DEI in recent months as the new administration signs executive orders eliminating the practice while making the argument that meritocracy should be the focus.
RED STATE TREASURER REVEALS WHY STATE FINANCIAL OFFICERS HAVE ‘OBLIGATION’ TO COMBAT ESG, DEI
Fox News Digital spoke to Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild about the state of DEI in the U.S. (Getty)
However, FOX Business exclusively reported in April on Consumers’ Research warning that some businesses appear to be rebranding the same efforts rather than eliminating them.
“It is the exact same toxic nonsense under a new wrapper, and they’re just hoping to extend the grift because a lot of these people, I would say most of the people working in DEI are useless,” Hild told Fox News Digital.
KEY BIDEN AGENCY DROPPED $60K ON OVERSEAS CONFERENCE WITH DEI WORKSHOP: ‘SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN’
DEI = Diversity, equity & inclusion. (Dzmitry Dzemidovich)
“They are mediocrities who have managed to get very high-level positions that they’re not qualified for by running this DEI grift, and they’re desperate,” he continued. “They can’t just move into running logistics for Amazon because that takes actual competence and intelligence and if you’re in a DEI department, you probably don’t have either of those things. So they are desperate to keep this grift going so they can justify their own existence. So they’re changing it into a new wrapper.”
Hild, who spoke to Fox News Digital at the State Financial Officers Foundation conference in Orlando, Florida, also explained some of the other issues Consumers’ Research is focused on going forward, including fighting “woke” hospitals in three different areas.
Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, in Bethesda, Maryland, on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. (Getty Images)
“One is net zero pledges and activities that raise costs for consumers, patients having to pay more because these hospitals are investing millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, into green boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the treatment of patients and the improvement of their health, but they do raise prices,” Hild said.
Secondly, Hild said that his group is concerned about DEI quotas at hospitals.
Hild explained that the third and “worst” issue is transgender surgeries and procedures being forced onto children.
“Pushing of radical left transgender ideology onto kids, and not just pushing it ideologically and rhetorically, but pushing it physically, and what I mean by that is the injection of damaging, lifelong damaging hormones into children to, quote, unquote, change their sex, which is impossible, and even worse, the actual surgical application, removal and mutilation of their genitals, which is a grotesque violation of the Hippocratic Oath,” Hild said.
Consumers’ Research has been actively involved in launching advertising campaigns against hospitals across the United States, including a recent campaign against Henry Ford Health in Michigan, calling out what it says are situations where hospitals are putting “politics over patients.”
The Trump administration’s executive order to limit birthright citizenship is a serious challenge to the 14th Amendment, which enshrined a radical principle of our democratic experiment: that anyone born here is an American. But the order will most affect average Americans — whose own citizenship, until this point, has been presumed and assured — rather than the intended target, illegal immigrants. The irony is hiding in plain sight.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, birthright citizenship is not entirely settled U.S. law. The executive order states, “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States” and it is very narrowly drafted to exploit this uncertainty by rejecting citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or legal permanent residents. Federal law and practice has recognized American citizenship to anyone born here since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark. But that case did not specifically protect the birthright of children born in the United States to noncitizen, nonresident aliens.
This is a massive blind spot that states are sleep-walking into. They are depending on weak legal precedent, federal code, policy and hair-splitting over the meaning of “subject of the jurisdiction thereto.” In a brief, the states argue that the “understanding of birthright citizenship has permeated executive agency guidance for decades — and no prior administration has deviated from it.” But that won’t matter to this Supreme Court, which has demonstrated a certain glee in dismantling precedent. There is a clear risk that the justices could fundamentally restrict the definition of birthright citizenship and overturn the 1898 ruling.
The executive order directs the federal government not to issue or accept documents recognizing U.S. citizenship for children born to parents unlawfully present here — but also to parents who are here legally but temporarily. This second group is a potentially vast population (the State Department issued 14.2 million nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2024) that includes students, artists, models, executives, investors, laborers, engineers, academics, tourists, temporary protected status groups, ship and plane crews, engineers, asylees, refugees and humanitarian parolees.
A limited change targeting a specific population — nonresident aliens — will have huge effects on those who will least expect it: American citizen parents giving birth to children in the United States. Until this point, a valid, state-issued birth certificate established prima facie evidence of U.S. citizenship to every child born in the country. That would no longer be the case if citizenship depended on verifying certain facts about every U.S.-born child’s parents. With that presumption removed by executive order, citizenship must be adjudicated by a federal official.
I know what that adjudication involves. I was a U.S. consular officer in Latin America, and both of my children were born overseas to married U.S. citizen parents carrying diplomatic passports. But because they did not have the presumption of citizenship conferred by an American birth certificate, we had to go to the U.S. Consulate for adjudication of transmission to demonstrate to the U.S. government that our children were American citizens.
This was document-intensive and time-consuming. Each time, we filled out forms. We photographed the baby in triplicate. We swore an oath before the consular officer. We brandished our passports. We presented the baby to the consular officer. We surrendered the local birth certificate. We demonstrated our hospital stay. Only then did we receive a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and only with that report could we apply for U.S. passports for our children. Without the report or a passport, our children could neither leave the country of their birth nor enter the United States.
That is an evidentiary and bureaucratic burden that all natural-born American citizens have until now not had to bear. The Trump administration’s change, if allowed by courts, will require those same parents to prove their own citizenship to the federal government. Good luck, because showing your birth certificate wouldn’t be sufficient in the new regime: The government would require proof not only that you were born in the U.S., but also that at least one of your parents was a U.S. citizen at the time. (Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed skepticism over this “practical question” during oral arguments last week.)
Americans several generations removed from their immigrant forebears — even those whose ancestors came to North America 10,000 years ago — will suddenly be treated like the unlawfully present parents they thought this rule was designed to exclude.
This rule will lead to chaos, even danger. The federal bureaucracy will have to expand drastically to adjudicate the 3.5 million children born here every year. (For comparison, 1 million people are issued permanent residency status each year and 800,000 become naturalized citizens. This population is typically much better documented than a newborn.) Fearing immigration enforcement, undocumented parents will avoid hospitals for childbirth, dramatically escalating medical risk for mother and baby. Because hospitals also generate birth certificates — as Justice Sonia Sotomayor also noted last week — those babies will form a large, new and entirely avoidable population of stateless children.
It is a truism in some communities that ancestors and family members came to this country legally. But the administration is prepared to dismantle the presumption of citizenship that has been a literal birthright for 125 years. U.S. citizenship is on the brink of becoming a privilege rather than a right, bestowed on those who can afford protracted bureaucratic struggles. Most of the burden will fall on those who least expected it: American parents themselves.
James Thomas Snyder is a former U.S. consular officer and NATO International Staff member.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The executive order targeting birthright citizenship undermines the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen, potentially overturning 125 years of legal precedent established by U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). This creates uncertainty for children born to noncitizen parents, including those lawfully present on temporary visas[3][4].
- Removing the presumption of citizenship for U.S.-born children forces American parents to undergo burdensome bureaucratic processes to prove their own citizenship status, a requirement previously avoided due to automatic birthright recognition. This disproportionately impacts multi-generational citizens who may lack documentation proving their parents’ status[3][5].
- The policy risks creating stateless children, as undocumented parents might avoid hospitals to evade scrutiny, leading to unregistered births and heightened medical dangers. Hospitals, which issue birth certificates, could see reduced attendance, exacerbating public health risks[4][5].
- Federal agencies would face chaos adjudicating citizenship for 3.5 million annual births, a logistical challenge far exceeding current capacities for naturalization or permanent residency processes. This could delay critical documents like passports and Social Security cards[4][5].
Different views on the topic
- The Trump administration argues the 14th Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes children of noncitizens, particularly those unlawfully present or on temporary visas, claiming this narrow interpretation aligns with constitutional intent[1][2].
- Supporters contend the order preserves citizenship’s value by closing perceived loopholes, ensuring it is reserved for those with permanent ties to the U.S. rather than temporary visitors or undocumented individuals[1][2].
- Legal briefs from the administration emphasize that prior agencies’ broad interpretations of birthright citizenship lack explicit constitutional or judicial endorsement, framing the order as correcting longstanding executive overreach[3][5].
- Proponents dismiss concerns about statelessness, asserting that children born to temporary visitors would inherit their parents’ nationality, though this fails to address cases where foreign nations restrict citizenship by descent[2][5].
(ORDER LIST:
605 U.S.)
24A1059
MONDAY, MAY 19, 2025
ORDER IN PENDING CASE
NOEM, SEC., DHS, ET AL. V. NAT. TPS ALLIANCE, ET AL.
The application for stay presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is granted. The March 31, 2025 order entered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, case No. 3:25-cv-1766, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.
This order is without prejudice to any challenge to
Secretary Noem’s February 3, 2025 vacatur notice insofar as it purports to invalidate EADS, Forms I-797, Notices of Action, and Forms I-94 issued with October 2, 2026 expiration dates.
8 U. S. C. §1254a(d) (3).
Justice Jackson would deny the application.
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