Coffee Prices Are Soaring, but Growers Aren’t Celebrating

Coffee Prices Are Soaring, but Growers Aren’t Celebrating

These should be wonderful times at Finca El Puente, a coffee plantation carved into the mountains of southwestern Honduras. On world markets, the price of ordinary coffee has more than doubled over the past year. The specialty varieties of coffee harvested at the farm have long commanded a hefty premium, …

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California’s Push for Electric Trucks Sputters Under Trump

California’s Push for Electric Trucks Sputters Under Trump

President Trump’s policies could threaten many big green energy projects in the coming years, but his election has already dealt a big blow to an ambitious California effort to replace thousands of diesel-fueled trucks with battery-powered semis. The California plan, which has been closely watched by other states and countries, …

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Uncertainty About Economic Policy Is Hampering Business Decisions

Uncertainty About Economic Policy Is Hampering Business Decisions

It is an axiom heard countless times in business school lecture halls and on corporate earnings calls: Uncertainty is bad for business. The U.S. economy is about to test that proposition like never before. The first weeks of the second Trump administration have been a dizzying whirlwind of economic policy …

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Whiskey Offers Window Into the Pain of a Trade War

Whiskey Offers Window Into the Pain of a Trade War

Liquor lobbyists gathered in a ritzy private club on a recent rainy evening in Brussels to swill cocktails with names like “Toasts Not Tariffs” and fret over the potential disaster confronting their industry. Again. Seven years ago, the spirits industry found itself a casualty in a worldwide trade war as …

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Donald Trump’s Chicken-and-Egg Inflation Problem

Donald Trump’s Chicken-and-Egg Inflation Problem

Just in: Lawyers for Elon Musk said he’d withdraw his $97.4 billion bid for control of OpenAI if the company halted its efforts to become a for-profit enterprise. More below. Separately: You might recall that several years ago I wrote a series of columns, following a raft of mass shootings, …

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Trump Softens Tone on Inflation After Pledging to Lower Prices

Trump Softens Tone on Inflation After Pledging to Lower Prices

President Trump promised voters that, if elected, he would enact policies that would bring prices down on “Day 1” in office. But three weeks into his term, Mr. Trump and White House officials have become more measured in how they discuss their efforts to tame inflation. They have begun downplaying …

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Steel and Aluminum Tariffs May Raise US Manufacturing Costs

Steel and Aluminum Tariffs May Raise US Manufacturing Costs

America has seen this movie before: President Trump, who imposed stiff tariffs on Monday on imported steel and aluminum, did so once before, in 2018. So domestic industries have a pretty good idea of how the story ends. Manufacturers of trucks, appliances and construction equipment scramble to find U.S. sources …

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Trump Prepares to Take On the US Trade Deficit, a Familiar Nemesis

Trump Prepares to Take On the US Trade Deficit, a Familiar Nemesis

To President Trump, one economic number represents everything that is wrong with the global economy: America’s trade deficit. That deficit is the total value of what the United States imports from other nations, minus its exports to other countries. The fact that America runs a trade deficit reflects how the …

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Trump’s Trade Move Could Increase Costs for Many Online Goods

Trump’s Trade Move Could Increase Costs for Many Online Goods

President Trump’s decision to impose hefty tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China included a little-noticed but significant change to how online purchases will be taxed when they enter the United States. One provision of Mr. Trump’s executive order will increase costs for more than 80 percent of U.S. e-commerce imports. …

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