The Democrats, casting about for an anti-Trump narrative, have found a word: “oligarchy.” It was part of Joe Biden’s farewell address; it’s central to Senator Bernie Sanders’s barnstorming; it shows up in the advice given by ex-Obama hands. It aspires to fold together President Trump’s self-enrichment, Elon Musk’s outsize influence, the image of Silicon Valley […]
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It’s Will Smith announcing a new album. It’s “Mamma Mia!” returning to Broadway. It’s the uptick in law school applications. And it’s absolutely spring breaking in Houston. In recent weeks, as the finance world has been nervously watching the S&P 500 fall, nonexperts and the chronically online are seeing signs of a possible recession in […]
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Republicans have a math problem. There’s a long list of taxes they want to cut. But they can’t cut them all, because House Republicans have set a $4.5 trillion limit on the amount of money the federal budget can lose over the next 10 years to tax cuts. Even such a huge figure is not […]
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Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with four Times Opinion columnists about the Trump administration’s popularity among Republicans and why so many in the party believe the country is heading in the right direction. Patrick Healy: David, Bret, David, Ross: Donald Trump is the only president in our lifetimes who’s had […]
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When President Trump ordered military strikes last weekend against the Houthi militia in Yemen, he said the militia’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea had harmed global trade. “These relentless assaults have cost the U.S. and World Economy many BILLIONS of Dollars while, at the same time, putting innocent lives at risk,” he […]
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When inflation was too high and the economy was resilient in the aftermath of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve’s decision to sharply raise interest rates beginning in 2022 seemed like a no-brainer. The same was true just over two years later when inflation had fallen sharply from its recent peak and the labor market had […]
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President Trump has been operating with complete impunity and disregard for American institutions. In this episode of “The Opinions,” the Times Opinion deputy editor Patrick Healy and the columnist Thomas L. Freidman discuss the repercussions of such behavior on America’s national and international policy. Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We […]
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Federal Reserve officials are scheduled to release their first set of economic projections this year, alongside their interest rate decision, on Wednesday. Those forecasts will offer a fresh glimpse of the trajectory for monetary policy at a highly uncertain moment for the central bank. Policymakers paused interest rate cuts in January after reducing borrowing costs […]
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Since taking office, President Trump and his advisers have explained the president’s aggressive economic approach to tariffs with a litany of conflicting ideas. Other countries are “ripping off” America and need to be stopped. The United States is fighting a drug war with Canada, Mexico and China. Tariffs will help pay down the nation’s $36 […]
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Oil and gas executives will meet with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday as they seek to influence him on tariffs, tax credits and deregulation. Some executives in the industry, which spent more than $75 million to help elect Mr. Trump, are increasingly frustrated with Mr. Trump’s agenda. Tariffs are making essential materials […]
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The Federal Reserve is set to extend its pause on interest rate cuts on Wednesday as President Trump’s aggressive approach to tariffs and other economic policies fuel extreme uncertainty about the outlook for inflation, growth and unemployment. A decision to stand pat would keep interest rates at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, a level that […]
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The stock market has fallen fast over the past month. Business and consumer sentiment is souring, and investors are afraid that economic data will soon start to show deeper cracks. The question on Wednesday: Will the Federal Reserve also express concern about the path ahead? So far, Fed officials have largely avoided commenting on an […]
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More than one million Canadians visited New York City last year, injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy. Now, they are canceling trips in droves. School groups have called off end-of-semester trips. So have busloads of retirees, as well as newlyweds planning honeymoons, friends celebrating birthdays and a family from Quebec that […]
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The wholesale price of eggs has dropped sharply since the beginning of March after soaring for months, but it may take a few weeks for grocery shoppers to see the decline. Wholesale egg prices, which is what retailers pay to procure eggs, have fallen to a national average of just over $4 for a dozen […]
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The Trump administration plans to confront countries around the world with a reciprocal tariff “number” on April 2, a figure that will reflect what the White House considers the cost of foreign trade barriers, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday. Mr. Bessent said the administration would then carry out negotiations with those countries with the […]
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Presidents usually do all they can to avoid recessions, so much so that they avoid even saying the word. But President Trump and his advisers in recent weeks have offered a very different message. Yes, a recession is possible, they have said. Maybe one wouldn’t even be that bad. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has […]
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The line fell silent. In a phone call from the Oval Office, President Trump had just delivered unwelcome news to three of America’s most powerful auto executives: Mary Barra of General Motors, John Elkann of Stellantis and Jim Farley of Ford. Everyone needs to buckle up, Mr. Trump said on the call, which took place […]
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The growing trade war and rapid policy shifts are expected to drag down economic growth in the United States and around the world, according to projections released on Monday. The resilience that was evident last year is slipping, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its latest interim economic report, which estimated that […]
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Just days after President Trump won the 2024 election, Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, sidestepped a question about how the central bank would grapple with a toxic combination of high inflation, stagnating growth and rising unemployment. “The whole plan is not to have stagflation,” Mr. Powell told reporters. “Knock on wood, we’ve […]
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The Trump presidency has taken on a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” quality. Pushing through a vast remake of the federal government and disruption of the global trade system is clearly something President Trump has wanted for a long time and now feels he has a mandate to pursue after the November election. But […]
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President Trump has promised to create an age of American exceptionalism with policies that put the United States first, and ahead of other nations. But Mr. Trump’s moves in the early days of his administration have had the opposite outcome for the American stock market. The S&P 500, which for years had been soaring above […]
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Top U.S. representatives told a Canadian delegation on Thursday that there was no way Canada, or any other country in President Trump’s cross hairs, could avoid a new round of sweeping tariffs on April 2, according to two people with direct knowledge of their conversation. Any negotiations to remove some tariffs or even strike a […]
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Policy uncertainty and tariff whiplash are making consumers less confident about the economic outlook and more worried about inflation, new data from the University of Michigan showed on Friday, the latest evidence that Americans are bracing for pain in President Trump’s second term. A new survey released on Friday showed consumer sentiment plummeting 11 percent […]
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Investors watching the S&P 500’s plunge this week are processing a mix of signals. Will the threat of tariffs push the economy into a recession or is this simply a retrenchment from the highly valued technology companies that some analysts and investors argued were due for a pullback? There is a different stock index that […]
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For the second time this week, President Trump has threatened to disrupt trade with a close ally for retaliating in a trade war that he started — a tactic that could lead to compromise, or to economic spats that spiral further out of control. On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump tried to cow the European Union […]
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The world’s most widely followed stock-market benchmark slid into a correction on Thursday, a drop that underscores how the two-year-long bull market is running out of steam in the early days of the Trump administration. The move stems from investors’ growing pessimism about the whipsawing policy pronouncements from Washington over the past few weeks. On-again, […]
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Nervous investors seeking news about the plunging markets on Monday afternoon would have been out of luck if they turned to the websites of The New York Post, The Daily Caller, One America News or The Blaze. Not one of those right-leaning outlets featured articles about the sell-off as the closing bell rang, cementing Wall […]
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President Trump is no fan of the European Union. He has repeatedly claimed that the bloc was created to “screw” America, has pledged to slap big tariffs on its cars, and this week enacted global steel and aluminum levies that are expected to hit some $28 billion in exports from the bloc. But for months, […]
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Inflation eased more than expected in February, a welcome sign for the Federal Reserve as it grapples with the prospect of higher prices and slower growth as a result of President Trump’s trade war. The Consumer Price Index was up 2.8 percent from a year earlier, after rising another 0.2 percent on a monthly basis. […]
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Egg prices continued their upward climb in February despite some easing in overall inflation, further straining consumers seeking relief from rising prices in the grocery aisles. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Wednesday showed that egg prices rose 10.4 percent from the previous month, to nearly $5.90 for a dozen large Grade […]
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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is one of the most powerful Democrats in America, but this week he used his perch not to push back on the Trump administration but to instead podcast with an intellectual architect of the MAGA movement: Stephen K. Bannon. Their fast-paced, hourlong discussion was both good-natured and peppered with predictable […]
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