Author: News Room

Faster coffee. More baristas. More seating.Despite headwinds from higher coffee prices and tariffs on certain products, Starbucks is seeing progress on its turnaround strategy, its chief executive, Brian Niccol, told investors and Wall Street analysts on a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday.“We’re not just building back our business,” he said. “We’re building back a better business.”Global same-store sales for the first three months of the year fell 1 percent from a year earlier, an improvement from recent quarters. Global revenues rose 2.3 percent to $8.7 billion in the quarter while net earnings fell 50 percent, to $384.2 million, from year-earlier…

SXSW, which began as a music festival in Austin, Texas, in 1987, has expanded to a two-week event that now features three tracks of programming: music, film and interactive. Penske, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter and events like the Golden Globes, first invested in the festival in 2021. At the time, it bought 50 percent of the company with a partner, MRC. The two partners took control of the festival two years ago by buying another 1 percent.Many of the people laid off in the past week had been with the festival for decades, including…

I first met Dane Chapin, a San Diego-area entrepreneur, in 2012, when he gave me a ride in his Prius and told me I was dead wrong about climate change. We’ve been close friends ever since. Sometimes he’s to my left politically, sometimes to my right. I’ve always admired his curiosity, optimism and independent thinking, especially when we disagree — as we did over his vote for Donald Trump in the last election.One hundred days into this administration, Dane isn’t happy. “With Trump I thought, maybe, there might be a method to the madness,” he told me on Saturday. “I’m…

Census Bureau data released on Tuesday showed a surge in U.S. imports starting last fall, from $268 billion at the end of October to $343 billion at the end of March, reflecting a push by major American companies to buy goods ahead of anticipated tariffs. The U.S. trade deficit for goods widened in March to a record high.Finished consumer goods that wholesalers and retailers import directly from China make up the bulk of the items expected to be most affected at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, said Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State…

President Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday that will walk back some tariffs for carmakers, administration officials said, removing some levies that Ford, General Motors and others have complained would backfire on U.S. manufacturing by raising the cost of production and squeezing their profits.The changes will modify Mr. Trump’s tariffs so that carmakers who pay a 25 percent tariff on imported cars are not subject to other levies, for example on steel and aluminum, officials said in a call with reporters Tuesday.Carmakers will also be able to qualify for tariff relief for a proportion of the cost of…

A loophole that has allowed American shoppers to buy lots of cheap goods from mainland China and Hong Kong without paying tariffs and filling customs forms is closing on Friday.Prices have already gone up.Orders for many imported goods from retailers like Shein and Temu could dwindle as consumers balk at the higher prices and new inconveniences. But, like much of President Trump’s trade war, the administration’s policy on the loophole has gone through changes. The president had ordered that the loophole be closed in February, but then reinstated it within a few days. Logistics experts said the short closure caused…

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally trying to fire three members of the company’s board.In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, the media organization said that the White House emailed three of the company’s five directors on Monday, telling them that their positions had been terminated. The administration did not offer any justification for the dismissals.The lawsuit argues that President Trump does not have the authority to fire directors from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which was created by an act of Congress more than a half-century…

President Trump has expressed little interest in fighting climate change. One of his key cabinet officials has even sought to evaluate whether humanity benefits from a warming climate, in a bid to undermine environmental rules.Yet even as he works to accelerate oil and gas production, Mr. Trump’s economic approach may inadvertently reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as consumption slows in response to a global trade war.Any reprieve for the planet, however, would be brief. Over the longer term, tanking the economy with tit-for-tat tariffs is likely to impede progress, because of how much clean energy deployment depends on overseas supply chains…

Travelers to Europe, mark your calendars (and bring your raincoats). On June 15, activist groups across southern Europe are planning to stage protests against tourism. Although the precise form of those demonstrations has not been decided, it’s a pretty safe bet that water guns will be involved.At workshops held in Barcelona last weekend that brought together about 120 representatives from Venice; Lisbon; Palermo, Italy; and a dozen other cities, leaders of the Southern Europe Network Against Touristification, called for a coordinated day of actions to raise awareness about what they called “the urgent need to limit the growth of tourism.”…

UPS said on Tuesday that it would cut 20,000 jobs this year as part of a long-term plan to reduce costs and bolster profit.The cuts come as President Trump’s tariffs are prompting some UPS customers to ship fewer goods. The company said “macroeconomic uncertainty” prevented it from updating its forecasts for revenue and profits for 2025.UPS already cut 12,000 jobs last year. It now has some 490,000 employees, many of whom are members of the Teamsters union. In its latest cuts, the company said it would shed “operational” employees, or those who sort or deliver packages.UPS has been trying to…