The Federal Reserve’s independence from the White House has long been enshrined in the law. But an executive order that President Trump signed this week seeking to extend his administration’s reach over independent agencies is prompting concerns about how much further he will go to challenge that separation. Mr. Trump’s …
The world economy was already grappling with a perplexing assortment of variables, from geopolitical conflicts and a slowdown in China to the evolving complexities of climate change. Then, President Trump unleashed a plan to uproot decades of trade policy. In starting a process to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on American …
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 …
President Trump is pursuing a far more aggressive trade policy than he embraced in his first term, allowing his unfettered instincts about how to put America at the forefront to guide him with little pretense of investigations or extended deliberations. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has threatened tariffs on goods …
Hot inflation has raised the stakes of President Trump’s plans to escalate his use of tariffs on the country’s biggest trading partners, risking even higher consumer prices and pushing back the prospects of the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates soon. New inflation data released this week showed price pressures intensifying. …
President Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday ordering his advisers to calculate new tariff levels for other countries globally, an ambitious task that will shatter the rules of the global trading system and likely set off furious negotiations in the coming months. The president directed his advisers to come up …
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, …
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 …
Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, signaled little urgency to lower interest rates with the economy sturdy and inflation still too high in a hearing with lawmakers on Tuesday. Mr. Powell, who testified before the Senate Banking Committee, confronts an economic and political landscape that is far different …
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 …