Author: News Room

Vivian Hoffman has worked in retail for a half-century, including 25 years as a buyer for Century 21 and the last eight running Whim, a chain selling affordable women’s clothing in the suburbs of New York City. She has adapted to recessions, the turmoil after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Covid-19 pandemic.But the last few weeks have presented a set of challenges that are confounding even for an industry veteran. The bulk of the clothing and accessories that Ms. Hoffman sells are produced in China, facing import duties of 145 percent for now, and Vietnam, which could…

The escalating trade war between the United States and China has created deep uncertainty for U.S. companies that rely on Chinese suppliers. Retaliations in recent days by the two countries have resulted in huge average tax rates on their each other’s imports, with tariffs often costing more than the price of the goods themselves.But because of an ever-changing patchwork of trade rules, not every product will be charged an astronomical tariff, trade lawyers, customs brokers and importers say. In some cases, tariffs will pile on other tariffs. In other instances, they can reduce costs, while other times they can cancel…

Radhika Jones shocked the magazine industry last week when she said she would be stepping down from the top job at Vanity Fair after more than seven years. Names of possible successors shot back and forth among insiders.A question also swirled in the wake: Is it still a good job?Once one of the most coveted positions in American journalism, the editorship of Vanity Fair for decades has held a sheen of sophistication and cultural sway, with seemingly limitless expense accounts and budgets for lavish photo shoots.But as the magazine industry has contracted, many of the more decadent parts of the…

As the fallout from President Trump’s rewiring of global trade sets in across Europe, governments are putting in place billions of euros’ worth of “tariff shields” to protect their economies, companies and workers from uncertainty and the growing prospect of a recession.Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain announced more than 50 billion euros’ worth of financial support this week as businesses paused exports to the United States, warned of a hit to their finances and reckoned with putting employees on furlough. More European countries are expected to follow.Mr. Trump’s 90-day suspension of U.S. tariffs this week raised hopes in Europe for…

A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees.Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office director, was named the consumer bureau’s acting director in February and immediately began gutting the agency. He closed its headquarters and sought to terminate its lease, canceled contracts essential to the bureau’s operations, terminated hundreds of employees and sought to lay off nearly all of the rest.In a lawsuit brought by the bureau’s staff union and other…

Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday.Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials said.Dr. Robert Montgomery, Ms. Looney’s surgeon and the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said that the so-called explant was not a setback for the field of xenotransplantation — the effort to use organs from animals to replace those that have failed in humans.“This is…

President Trump’s latest tariffs are about to become an unavoidable and expensive reality for American businesses and for people who rely on foreign goods.Shoppers buying clothes from retailers in China may soon pay more than twice as much, now that a special exemption for lower-value imports is disappearing. And companies involved in international trade must now make even more complicated calculations to decide how much they owe in tariffs.“Maybe 3 percent of the people are well prepared,” said Jeremy Page, a founding partner of Page Fura, an international trade law firm, whose clients include large companies. “And that might even…

Even before President Trump’s tariffs threatened to upend Apple’s manufacturing business in China, the company’s struggle to make new products was leading some people inside its lavish Silicon Valley headquarters to wonder whether the company had somehow lost its magic.The tariffs, which were introduced April 2, caused Apple to lose $773 billion in market capitalization in four days and briefly lose its standing as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. But investors had already started to sour on the company, sending its share price down 8 percent in the first four months of the year, double the…

Stocks on Wall Street ended a volatile week with a bounce on Friday, while government bond markets continued to signal investor worry about the impact of new import taxes, as China raised its tariffs on American-made products to 125 percent.The S&P 500 fell as much as 0.9 percent in morning trading before rallying through the afternoon to a gain of 1.8 percent, taking the week’s rise to 3.8 percent. Last week, the index recorded its worst tumble since the 2008 financial crisis.Markets around the world have veered sharply between large gains and losses amid the turmoil and confusion caused by…

Rick Levine, an award-winning television commercial director who brought a big-screen sensibility to the small screen with widely celebrated spots, like a Diet Pepsi Super Bowl ad from the 1980s featuring Michael J. Fox risking life and limb for love, died on March 11 at his home in Marina del Rey, Calif. He was 94.The death was confirmed by his daughter Abby LaRocca.Mr. Levine was a product of what is often called the golden age of advertising, rising in the business through the “Mad Men” era of the 1960s and founding his own company, Rick Levine Productions, in 1972. It…