Author: News Room

Paper checks issued for tax refunds, Social Security payments and other government benefits have been dwindling and will soon be eliminated, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans.President Trump signed an executive order on March 25 directing the federal government to stop issuing paper checks as of Sept. 30. Instead, government agencies must make payments electronically, by direct deposit to a bank account, debit card or digital wallet.“This executive order will defend against financial fraud and improper payments, increase efficiency, reduce costs and enhance the security of federal payments,” a White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in an emailed statement.Most…

I went to Costco on a tariff run, and did not stock up on anything.It was tempting. Mark Cuban was on social media telling people it was not a “bad idea” to stock up on consumables as President Trump’s trade war unfolded. I love beating the system as much as the next person — it’s my literal beat in journalism.But let’s really think this one through for a minute.First of all, these tariffs may not persist at anything like the amounts currently in the headlines. For stocking up to make sense, you have to assume that price increases will be…

Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that President Trump’s tariffs risk stoking even higher inflation and slower growth than initially expected, as he struck a more downbeat tone about the outlook, despite the economy so far remaining in a “good place.”“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”Mr. Powell characterized the risks of that outcome, which he warned could include higher unemployment, as “elevated.”“While…

Bostonians like to brag about their celebrities with big personalities — David Ortiz, Mindy Kaling, Mark Wahlberg, to name a few. And then there’s Eliot Tatelman of Jordan’s Furniture.While not well known outside New England, Mr. Tatelman has been a fixture for years on local television, hawking mattresses and sofas in humorous, relatively low-budget ads that made him one of the region’s instantly recognizable personalities, an avuncular pitchman with a ponytail guaranteeing “underprices.”Now, Mr. Tatelman is stepping away from his job, relinquishing his crown as New England’s king of couches.He announced this week that he was retiring as president of…

President Trump’s new tariffs on more than 100 countries used the same simple formula to calculate the rate for each of them.The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024. The slightly more detailed math looks like this: Mr. Trump has said these tariffs will reduce trade imbalances and level the international playing field.But his one-size-fits-all formula is blunt: It applies the exact same math to countries whether they have hefty trade barriers or wide-open markets. It considers only the size of a trade…

“Inflation is a low drip, like boiling a frog: The impact kind of creeps up on you, but when it hits, it doesn’t feel good,” Mr. Haynes said.Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can bail out of stocks now, then jump back in when the market stabilizes. Gains historically have come in unpredictable spurts, and the biggest advances often come within days of the worst declines. If you missed the 10 best days over the 20 years from 2005 to 2024, you would have reduced your returns by more than 40 percent, according to J.P. Morgan; if you missed 30…

The U.S. agricultural industry is bracing for the potential of tens of billions of dollars in losses after China on Friday announced a 34 percent retaliatory tariff on imports from the United States.China’s counterpunch to worldwide levies announced by the Trump administration this week will hit American farmers hard. China, which consumes 14 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports, took in more than $27 billion worth of those and related products last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is the third-largest importer of American farm goods, behind Mexico and Canada.During the first Trump administration, a two-year trade…

At 11 a.m. on Friday, the S&P 500 was down about 4 percent, on top of a nearly 5 percent drop the day before.On Fox News, Harris Faulkner opened her 11 a.m. newscast with the following pronouncement:“President Trump is keeping another campaign promise. He tilted the global economy, and he’s done that to balance unfair trade and bring back manufacturing to the United States. And it’s getting response around the globe.”That’s one way to put it.As Ms. Faulkner continued — “President Trump is still confident his plan will revitalize the economy” — there was no onscreen stock ticker so that…

More than 500 law firms on Friday threw their support behind some of their embattled peers, declaring that President Trump’s recent crackdown on the law firm industry poses “a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself.”The firms, 504 in all, signed a so-called friend of the court brief that was filed on behalf of Perkins Coie, the first firm to receive an executive order restricting its business.Perkins Coie sued the Trump administration, and a judge has temporarily blocked the president’s order, which jeopardized its ability to represent government contractors and limited its…

Some Republican senators on Capitol Hill, including one of President Trump’s most ardent supporters, have signaled their uneasiness to the sweeping global tariffs that the president announced this week and that sent global markets reeling.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, warned on Friday that a future where other countries slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, as China has already done, was a “very real possibility” and would be a “terrible outcome” for the country.“It’s terrible for America,” Mr. Cruz said on the latest episode of his podcast. “It would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the…