Author: News Room

Ben Whelan is not the kind of carpenter to wax poetic about the joys of framing a wall or redoing a roof. Like a lot of men he knows, he started working in residential construction as a teenager because it was a reliable way to earn money. But he has a craftsman’s pride in knowing the details that go into great work: where to place the nails on a shingle, how to seal a house against drafts. His own home in Connecticut is built so tightly that he can heat the entire place through a whole New England winter using…

President Trump’s announcement last week that he will impose a 20 percent tariff on goods coming from the European Union sent shock waves across the 27-nation bloc, the latest move in an unfolding trade war that is tearing the close partners apart.This week, Europe will push ahead with its first countermaneuver — one of potentially several to come.E.U. officials have spent the last several weeks refining a list of countertariffs that they plan to put into place on April 15. They are showing member states’ foreign and trade ministers their suggestions in Luxembourg on Monday, and a vote on the…

China’s leaders have sent a clear message about the effects of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs: Things will be painful, but it is nothing that the country cannot handle.A commentary on Sunday in the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, said Beijing had prepared for a trade war with the United States and that China could potentially come out stronger as a result.“The abuse of tariffs by the United States will have an impact on China, but ‘the sky will not fall,’” it said. “China is a super economy. We are strong and resilient in the face of the U.S.…

China’s leaders have sent a clear message about the effects of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs: Things will be painful, but it is nothing that the country cannot handle.A commentary on Sunday in the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, said Beijing had prepared for a trade war with the United States and that China could potentially come out stronger as a result.“The abuse of tariffs by the United States will have an impact on China, but ‘the sky will not fall,’” it said. “China is a super economy. We are strong and resilient in the face of the U.S.…

U.S. oil prices fell sharply, briefly dipping below $60 a barrel on Sunday — their lowest level in almost four years — as the economic fallout from President Trump’s latest round of tariffs reverberated around the world.Crude oil now costs around 15 percent less than it did last Wednesday, just before Mr. Trump revealed his plans to impose stiff new tariffs on imports from most countries. That prices have fallen so far so quickly reflects deepening concern that high tariffs could slow economic growth and perhaps even cause recessions in the United States and the countries it trades with.Cheaper oil…

Kanda, a small town encircled by mountains on Japan’s southeast coast, is hundreds of miles from any major centers of business or politics. But recently, the only thing on its residents’ minds is President Trump.In restaurants and bars and around Kanda’s small city office, people chatter nervously about the 25 percent tariffs he declared on car imports to the United States.The reason for the anxiety is impossible to miss: The town’s lifeblood is a sprawling car factory owned by Japan’s Nissan Motor.On a plot of land two-thirds the size of Central Park, more than 4,000 Nissan line workers produce hundreds…

Virtually everyone in the cryptocurrency world celebrated the second election of President Trump, an enthusiastic booster of the industry who promised to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.”But now the man nicknamed “the first Bitcoin president” is presiding over a Bitcoin crash.Since Mr. Trump announced his global tariffs last week, the price of Bitcoin has plunged 10 percent, dropping below $78,000 on Sunday night. In January, Bitcoin reached a record price of nearly $110,000 on the day that Mr. Trump was inaugurated.The rapid drop shows that Bitcoin, often pitched as a stable long-term source of…

Financial markets were hit by another wave of selling on Sunday evening, with investors and economists grappling with rising odds of a severe economic downturn caused by President Trump’s significant new tariffs on imports.Futures on the S&P 500, which allow investors to bet on the index before the official start of trading on Monday, dropped roughly 4 percent on Sunday evening. In oil markets, which also open for trading on Sunday evening, prices fell more than 3 percent — adding to steep losses last week. And the price of copper, considered a broad economic indicator, slid more than 5 percent.The…

The article of which he was most proud was “The Woman Who Beat the Klan,” published in The Times Magazine in 1987, about Beulah Mae Donald, who sued the Ku Klux Klan for the 1981 murder of her son — he was hanged from a tree, with his throat slit, and no one was charged with the crime — and won.In 2023, he wrote about how he came to that story. The Southern Poverty Law Center had sent a postcard photo of 19-year-old Michael Donald, hanging from a tree, as a fund-raising request. It was a horrific image, yet for…

There was little rest on Wall Street this weekend. There was plenty of anger, anxiety, frustration, and fear.Anger at President Trump for a brash and chaotic rollout of tariffs that erased trillions of dollars in value from the stock market in two days. Anxiety about the state of the private equity industry and other colossal funds with global investments. Frustration among Wall Street’s elite at their sudden inability to influence the president and his advisers.And fear of what may come next.Hedge funds tallied up their losses, and bragged if they only lost a little. Bankers and lawyers tore up already…