Author: News Room

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that will temporarily allow low-cost products from China to continue coming into the United States tariff-free.The order reverses, at least for now, a decision that he made last Saturday, when he signed an executive order eliminating so-called de minimis treatment for goods from China. The de minimis rule had allowed products under $800 to come into the United States without being subject to tariffs and with less information given to customs.That change, which went into effect Tuesday, meant that hundreds of thousands of packages coming into the United States each day from…

At the end of his third week bulldozing through the federal government, Elon Musk sat down to give Vice President JD Vance a 90-minute briefing on his efforts to dismantle the bureaucracy. Mr. Musk was not alone.Invited to join him on Thursday morning in Mr. Vance’s stately ceremonial office suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, were a clutch of young aides whose presence at federal agencies has served as a harbinger of the upheaval that would follow them.Across the federal government, civil servants have witnessed the sudden intrusion in the last two weeks of…

Can a labor market be hot and cool at the same time? That’s the picture painted by the latest federal hiring figures, which show a step down in job creation last month — as well as a drop in joblessness.Employers added 143,000 jobs in January, slightly less than expected, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But with large upward revisions to the prior two months and a decline in the unemployment rate to 4 percent, American workers still appear to be in good shape.“We have robust fundamentals, and relatively moderate hiring, but it’s very judicious,” said Gregory Daco, the chief…

Here is my annual critical ranking of the Super Bowl commercials. This is the pregame edition, with all the available national ads that I could track down; the list will be updated after Sunday’s game.The trends so far? Nothing controversial, as you would expect, but also — and perhaps for associated reasons — very little creativity. It’s a bad year for ads; the ones at the top of this list aren’t much better than average. More spots than usual depend entirely on the appeal of a relatable celebrity (who is almost certainly male). Concepts beat ideas — there is a…

Until recently, almost every edition included a pouting selfie of Ms. Sundberg, even if the headline was about Goldman Sachs interns. (“There’s a lot of guys,” she said of her subscriber base.) Feed Me is preoccupied with a certain slice of millennial culture in New York City. The restaurants they patronize, the media they consume, their picturesque vacations, their online shopping habits, their obsession with Gen Z.“She’s almost like a Carrie Bradshaw of her generation,” said Ms. Min, whose company also publishes its flagship newsletter, The Ankler, on Substack. On the platform’s leaderboard of popular business publications, Feed Me is…

A 311-year-old Stradivarius violin sold for $11.25 million at Sotheby’s on Friday, in a closely watched auction that drew interest from investors, collectors and classical musicians.The violin was made by the famed Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari in 1714, during the so-called golden period of violin making. It was owned later owned by one of the greatest violinists of the 19th century, the Hungarian-born virtuoso Joseph Joachim, a close associate of Johannes Brahms.The Stradivarius was sold by the New England Conservatory, which plans to use the proceeds of the sale to endow a student scholarship program. The instrument was previously owned…

We’ve got a whirlwind of news out of Washington — the carried interest tax exemption in the cross hairs, the latest on DOGE and an update on settlement talks between CBS and President Trump — but you should also pay attention to this news out of Washington State.Amazon said it planned to spend $100 billion on capital expenditures this year, the “vast majority” of which was meant to capture a “once-in-a-lifetime type of business opportunity” in artificial intelligence. That level of spending eclipses what Google, Meta and Microsoft each have committed to spending on A.I. infrastructure.It shows yet again that…

Ms. Harris suggests that her clients try “Frugal February” — avoiding discretionary spending and impulse purchases, and putting the money toward debt reduction or savings — because it’s a short month, and people often stay home anyway because of cold weather. The steps can be small, she said, like watching a movie on a streaming service you already pay for instead of going out to a theater. Since it’s now tax season, she said, filers expecting a refund can consider using it to pay down debt and set aside cash for unplanned expenses.Another option, popularized on TikTok, is a “no…

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two giant mortgage finance firms, have been controlled by the federal government for nearly 17 years, but a long-dormant idea of making them private businesses is starting to make the rounds in Washington again.Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview this week that coordinating the effort to privatize the two firms would be his priority. One of President Trump’s backers, the hedge fund investor William A. Ackman, is calling on the president to quickly move forward on the privatization.But Fannie and Freddie underpin the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market,…

Less than six months ago, Federal Reserve officials were wringing their hands about the state of the labor market. No major cracks had emerged, but monthly jobs growth had slowed and the unemployment rate was steadily ticking higher. In a bid to preserve the economy’s strength, the Fed took the unusual step of lowering interest rates by double the magnitude of its typical moves.Those concerns have since evaporated. Officials now exude a rare confidence that the labor market is strong and set to stay that way, providing them latitude to hold rates steady for awhile.The approach constitutes a strategic gamble,…