When Congress voted to normalize trade relations with China at the beginning of this century, U.S. manufacturers braced for a stream of cheap goods to begin flowing into U.S. ports. Instead, they got a flood. Imports from China nearly tripled from 1999 to 2005, and American factories, with their higher wages and stricter safety standards, couldn’t compete. The “China shock,” …
Read More »Tag Archives: Factories and Manufacturing
Trump’s Tariffs Could Impact Apparel Companies That Make Clothing in the U.S.
On the open 15th floor of a loft building in Midtown Manhattan, about a dozen skilled workers make their way through piles of pants, stitching each piece together with focus and precision. Some of the items are designed by Outlier, a fashion brand that produces its smaller runs and experimental products with the garment district’s ecosystem of contract manufacturers. It’s …
Read More »Inside Factories in China, a Struggle to Survive Trump’s Tariffs
As President Trump ratcheted up new tariffs on goods from China to 125 percent this week, the mood in the dusty streets and small factories of southeastern China was a mixture of anger, worry and resolve. Thousands of export-oriented small factories in or near Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southeastern China, have played a central role in the country’s rapid …
Read More »Lesotho Has Few Options to Counter 50% U.S. Tariffs
In Lesotho, the small southern African nation that is among the countries hardest hit by President Trump’s new tariffs, business owners were meeting on Wednesday to strategize their response. For a country with an economy worth just $2.1 billion, few options are on the table. Mr. Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on Lesotho, owing to the trade deficit between …
Read More »Global Leaders Rush to Woo Trump, Hoping to Sway Him on Tariffs
President Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on most of America’s trading partners has governments across the globe racing to schedule phone calls, send delegations to Washington and offer up proposals to lower their import taxes in order to escape the levies. On Monday, European officials offered to drop tariffs to zero on cars and industrial goods imported from the …
Read More »Trump’s Next Tariffs Target Could be Foreign-Made Pharmaceuticals
Newer and more expensive medications are more likely to be made in the United States or Europe. Ireland, in particular, has become a hub because it is a tax haven. Many of the industry’s biggest blockbusters are manufactured at least partly in Ireland. Among them are: Keytruda, Merck’s cancer drug; Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drug; and Stelara, Johnson & Johnson’s …
Read More »Why Did Trump Impose Tariffs, and What’s Next? Everything to Know.
President Trump announced what could be one of the most drastic economic policy changes in decades on Wednesday, when he substituted America’s longstanding system of taxing imports with a new tariff system of his own devising. The president said the tariffs would reverse decades of what he called unfair treatment by the rest of the world and result in factories …
Read More »After Trump Tariffs, Volkswagen to Add ‘Import Fees’ to Cars Sold in U.S.
Volkswagen, the German automaker, has told its car dealers that it plans to add an import fee later this month to the price of imported cars sold in the United States. The company’s move is one of the first and clearest examples of automakers using price increases to deal with the 25 percent tariffs President Trump imposed on car and …
Read More »Trump’s Tariffs Hit Garment Makers in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka Hard
Through Covid, political chaos, and economic disarray, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh kept one industry central to their hopes of prosperity afloat: the manufacturing of ready-made garments, with the United States as their main market. Then came President Trump’s tariffs. The two countries are reeling after Sri Lanka was hit with 44 percent tariffs and Bangladesh subjected to 37 percent levies. …
Read More »Trump Tariffs Aim to Revive U.S. Manufacturing. Is That Possible?
President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on a scale unseen in nearly a century is more than a shot across the bow at U.S. trading partners. If kept in place, the import taxes will also launch an economic project of defiant nostalgia: an attempt to reclaim America’s place as a dominant manufacturing power. In the postwar heyday of American manufacturing, which …
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