Author: Olivia Martinez

On-again, off-again tariffs, mass government layoffs, funding cuts and immigration crackdowns have seriously spooked Wall Street, which is emphatically rejecting President Donald Trump’s chaotic economic agenda. The market that embraced Trump for most of his first term and in the lead-up to his second has turned on the president. The S&P 500 closed in correction territory Thursday, falling 10% from the all-time high it set just three weeks ago. The Dow is approaching correction too. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell into a correction more than a week ago. And the Russell 2000, made up of smaller businesses, which are typically more exposed to shifting economic winds,…

Bonus season on Wall Street runs through March, and based on estimates released Wednesday morning, it has been a lucrative start to spring for the more than 200,000 people working for New York City-based securities firms. Their total bonus pool hit a record $47.5 billion, up 34% from last year, according to the office of New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. The average bonus paid to employees also hit a record high, at $244,700, up 31.5% from the year before. The big bonus payouts follow a 90% jump in Wall Street profits last year, DiNapoli said in a statement.…

Automakers Volkswagen and Stellantis have confirmed that their vehicles made in North America will be exempt from U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly rolled out 25% tariffs, while BMW says it will face levies, as European car manufacturers grapple with new trade rules. The newly returned White House leader has long been threatening to slap tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and the EU. Last week, new duties on goods from Mexico, Canada and China came into effect. The threat of import tariffs has raised alarm bells in Europe, as vehicles and machinery are the European Union’s biggest exports to the United States. In 2023, the EU…

A car company boss says a new import tariff of 25% on cars and car parts coming into the US would be a “significant shift” for the business. Morgan Motor Company in Malvern exports around 200 sports cars to the US every year, which makes up around a third of its overall revenue. US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the new tariff would come into effect on 2 April. Managing director Matthew Hole said the move would have an impact on the company. “It’s a big chunk of our business; we make a £55m turnover a year so,…

US tariffs on imported steel and aluminium have “spooked” customers of British steel, according to Tata Steel UK. Chief executive Rajesh Nair told MPs some American customers were seeking other suppliers to avoid “tariff warfare”. Tata Steel operates the UK’s largest steelworks in Port Talbot and exports around $100m (£77m) of steel annually to the USA. The company told the business and trade committee there was also a “significant impact” from cheaper steel from around the world being diverted to the UK because of the US tariffs. On 12 March the USA imposed 25% tariffs, or import taxes, on steel…

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced 25% tariffs on all cars shipped to the United States, a significant escalation in a global trade war. The tariffs, set to take effect on April 3 at 12:01 am ET, are aimed at expanding America’s auto manufacturing prowess. For decades, because of a free trade agreement, automakers have treated Canada, Mexico and the United States as one big country, with no tariffs among them. Although the United States is home to a significant automaking industry, Trump wants to grow it. “Frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe. And what we’re going…

The Trump administration’s culling of government programs and agencies has resulted in an unprecedented wave of federal workers joining the ranks of job seekers — and new data shows a spike in job applications from agencies impacted by the Department of Government Efficiency. Those job hunts are coming at a time when rising uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s economic agenda is clouding businesses’ decision-making and further slowing hiring — especially for specialized and white-collar roles. They’re entering a labor market that’s “a little bit frozen,” but stable for now, noted Allison Shrivastava, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. That was underscored in…

Spinning bright red handkerchiefs and dancing in step to folk music, more than a dozen human-like robots took to China’s biggest stage in January, making a splashy debut at the annual Lunar New Year gala. The remarkable performance, watched by more than a billion people, is a high-profile reminder of how far Chinese humanoid robots have come. Over the past two months, videos of the country’s humanoid robots pulling off moves such as bike rides, roundhouse kicks and side flips have blown up the internet, often amplified by state media as a key potential driver of economic growth. Even though…

The US stock market has been the gold standard for decades. But investors around the globe are growing increasingly nervous about the fallout from President Donald Trump’s economic agenda. That has sent traders in search of stocks in Europe and Asia. Wall Street has seen the largest drop in allocation to US stocks on record since data collection began in 1999, according to a Bank of America survey. Meanwhile, the survey showed the largest increase in allocation to European stocks since 2021. That’s in part because investors think US exceptionalism may have peaked, analysts at Bank of America wrote. After the…

South Korea-based Hyundai and President Donald Trump announced a $20 billion investment in US on-shoring on Monday, which includes a $5 billion steel plant in Louisiana, at the White House Monday. The $5.8 billion Louisiana facility will be the car manufacturers’ first steel manufacturing facility in the US and will produce more than 2.7 million metric tons of steel a year and create more than 1,400 jobs. It will supply steel to auto plants in Alabama and Georgia, Trump said in remarks at the White House. The announcement this afternoon at the White House included Trump, Hyundai Chairman Euisun Chung…