San José, CA – After a weekend of negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng announced on Monday, May 12 that the United States would roll back its tariffs on Chinese imports by 115%, from 145% to 30%.
The Chinese agreed to match this tariff reduction, reducing China’s tariffs on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%. China did not agree to any of the U.S. trade demands and many U.S. news reports had to admit that China did well, with one headline from Bloomberg News reading, “Xi Defiance Pays Off as Trump Meets Most China Trade Demands.”
San José, CA – Two U.S. economic reports showed that the manufacturing sector shrank in April, despite (or more likely because of) Trump’s trade war – one that is meant to increase manufacturing in the United States.
San José, CA – Look out – while the storybook villain who stole Christmas presents was green, the real life villain is orange. Donald Trump is coming for our holiday shopping season.
He is trying to brace Americans for hard times to come, saying that you might only get two dolls for Christmas instead of 30. Now, I didn’t know anyone who got 30 dolls for Christmas when I was growing up, but maybe having a multi-millionaire father gave Trump a different gift experience as a child.
San José, CA – Two recent reports on the state of the economy gave early hints of stagflation, or rising inflation and rising unemployment. The broadest report was the advanced report on Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, for the first three months of the year.
The GDP deflator, a measurement of the change in prices of all the final goods and services produced in the United States, rose at a 3.7% annual rate, much higher than the 2.4% over all of 2024.
San José, CA – One of the biggest issues that propelled Donald Trump to a comeback victory in 2024 was the economy and inflation in particular. While Trump hammered at the issue, saying that he was going to make America affordable again, Biden, Harris and most Democrats tried to deny that there was a problem, repeating over and over that the economy was in great shape.
San José, CA – Once again, President Trump backed off in his trade war. On Tuesday, April 22, President Trump said that he would not fire Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, and that the current 145% tariffs are “not sustainable”. This led to a rally in U.S. stocks and bonds, and the U.S. dollar rose as investors showed signs of relief.
San José, CA – Can the Trump administration win its trade war with China? This question is coming up more and more. On one hand, the Trump administration uses simple math to argue that the United States has the upper hand. Their logic is that since the United States has a large trade deficit with China in goods – that is the United States buys a lot more, almost $300 billion more from China in 2024, than China buys from the United States – then tariffs can reduce China’s exports a lot more than China can reduce U.S. exports.
San José, CA – On Wednesday, April 9, one week after President Trump declared a universal 10% tariff and for all the countries that the United States ran trade deficits with, he announced even higher tariffs of up to 50%. Even while members of his administrators were saying the tariffs were going to stick, Trump blinked and declared a 90-day pause for all countries except China.
San José, CA – Over the last few days, since President Trump’s latest tariffs were announced on April 2, comments have often called them “bizarre,” “weird” or similar terms. But there is a method to what might seem to be Trump’s madness.
The tariff rates announced were calculated on the basis of the U.S. trade deficit with each country, or how much more the United States imports from said country than the amount of U.S. goods it buys. This was often dismissed as “nonsense,” but it reflects President Trump’s longstanding obsession with U.S. trade deficits.
San José, CA – Why are so many Republicans in Congress going along with Trump’s tariffs? For decades the Republican Party has been a party of free trade and “lower” taxes, so why the support, or at most silence, from Republicans in Congress?
San José, CA – The day after President Trump levied tariffs on virtually every country in the world, the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, hit back. The PRC matched Trump’s tariff of 34% announced on Thursday with the same 34% tariff on imports from the United States. These are mainly soybeans and other foods, electrical machinery, petroleum and civilian aircraft. In addition, China put restrictions on exports of seven rare earth metals to the United States that are used in making lasers, wind turbines, radar other technology goods.
San José, CA – On Thursday, April 3, one day after Trump’s newest tariffs announcement, prices did start to fall as candidate Trump promised. The only problem is that it was the prices of stocks, not groceries.
Commerce City, CO – This March, United Parcel Service laid off 70 employees in the Commerce City Hub. Another 20 from one shift were laid off temporarily as a part of their recent efforts to automate buildings across the country.
This is the next step of UPS’s national “Network of the Future” campaign, which sees the displacement of workers from their jobs, the closure of up to 10% of its buildings in 2025, and, consequently, the elimination of a large section of the workforce to meet its automation goals. The recent layoffs came in a more unpredictable way to workers compared to the layoffs in January, with workers getting informed of their layoff dates with less than a week's notice and no cooperation or meetings with Teamsters beforehand. This has left many workers in the building feeling uncertain about their futures.
San José, CA – On Monday, March 10, U.S. stock markets fell. The S&P 500, which includes 500 of the largest U.S. corporations, dropped 2.7% for the worst trading day of the new Trump administration. The NASDAQ, which is over-weighted in technology stocks, fell even more, dropping 4% as high-flying technology stocks continued their descent to earth. Both the broader market and the technology sector were led down by a 15% drop in Tesla share prices, bringing that stock down about 50% from its high just months ago.
San José, CA – On Friday, March 7, the Department of Labor released its report on the job market in February. This is the first report based on the labor market in the first weeks of the new Trump administration. Overall, the job market looked a little softer; job creation was a bit less, at 151,000 rather than economists’ expectations of 170,000 net new jobs. The unemployment rate also ticked up to 4.1% from 4.0% in January.
San José, CA – At the stroke of midnight on Tuesday morning, President Trump’s trade war was launched against the three largest trading partners of the United States. Canada and Mexico were hit with across the board 25% tariffs, with the exception of Canadian energy products: oil and electricity, which were given 10% tariffs. China was hit with an additional 10% tariff, bringing the total rate to 20% with the initial 10% tariffs back in February.
San José, CA – Consumers cut back on purchases in January 2025, the largest decline since February 2021. The Bureau of Economic Analysis report on Personal Income and Outlays released February 28 said that household spending fell by 0.5%, adjusted for inflation. This is much greater than the 0.2% drop expected.
San José, CA – On Thursday, February 27, the Department of Labor reported that new claims for unemployment insurance jumped by 22,000, or 10% in the week ending February 22. New claims for UI have risen substantially in the first weeks of the new Trump administration. The total increase in new claims has been 34,000 or 15%.
San José, CA – On Monday, February 24, Denny’s, one of the three largest breakfast chains in the United States, announced that it would be rolling out an extra surcharge on eggs. Denny’s followed Waffle House, another large breakfast chain. Both are trying to pass along the rising costs of eggs, which are up almost 20% just since December. This is mainly because of the spreading bird flu, where quarantine measures have meant the killing more than 100 million poultry, including 20 million of chickens, just in the last three months of 2024.
San José, CA – On Friday, February 21, all the major U.S. stock indices fell. The broadest measure, the S&P 500, dropped more than 100 points. What scared the stock markets were a pair of indicators showing signs of rising inflation and a slowdown in the economy, which is commonly called stagflation.
