Your Pulse On America: Live And Unfiltered
On a wet Wednesday morning in April, Ashley Holroyd had a steady but slow stream of customers into his coffee shop in Barrow-in-Furness, an industrial town in northwest England. The cafe, Coffee D’Ash, had been open for only about six months, and it barely filled the cavernous space. Despite the empty storefronts on the same…
Amid a steady stream of new trade policies in President Trump’s first three months in office, there is one that Andy Musliner, who owns a small toy business in Maryland, can get behind. That’s the ending of a duty-free loophole for cheap goods from China. Mr. Trump this month scrapped a provision that had allowed…
When the Covid pandemic hit, factories in China shut down and global shipping traffic slowed. Within a matter of a few weeks, products began disappearing from U.S. store shelves and American firms that depend on foreign materials were going out of business. A similar trend is beginning to play out, but this time the catalyst…
More companies are starting to warn that they will have to pass on higher costs to American consumers, raising prices for products like strollers, mattresses, power tools and cast-iron cookware as President Trump’s tariffs take hold. Some company officials said they had been left with no choice but to raise prices as they pay more…
As much as Amazon may have wanted to dodge the spotlight in President Trump’s trade war, there was no avoiding it for America’s largest online retailer. First, the e-commerce company was entangled in the fleeting spat Tuesday with the White House over a faulty report that Amazon was going to show shoppers the costs of…
A loophole that has allowed American shoppers to buy lots of cheap goods from mainland China and Hong Kong without paying tariffs and filling customs forms is closing on Friday. Prices have already gone up. Orders for many imported goods from retailers like Shein and Temu could dwindle as consumers balk at the higher prices…
With many Americans concerned that President Trump’s tariffs will make most products more expensive and possibly tip the United States into a recession, some consumers say they are opting out of spending on a wide range of items. Instead of shopping lists, they are making “No Buy” lists. No more outfits destined to be worn…
It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars. Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego…
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….
The tariff whiplash continued on Wednesday, with President Trump pausing “reciprocal” tariffs on most countries for 90 days while imposing still higher tariffs on China. The steep China tariffs could ripple through the U.S. economy: Many of the consumer electronics and much of the discounted clothing that Americans buy are shipped from China, and higher…