Trump Urges Iran to Make a Deal 'BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE'
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Yahoo
a few seconds ago
- Yahoo
Inside a US guitar string maker's strategy to navigate the trade war
By Timothy Aeppel FARMINGDALE, NY (Reuters) -Once a week, executives of D'Addario & Company, a maker of strings and drumsticks for the world's top musicians, gather at the company's headquarters about 40 miles east of New York to strategize how they should respond to the President Donald Trump's trade war between the U.S. and the rest of the world. 'We literally call it our trade war task force,' said CEO John D'Addario III. Back in April, Trump was generating so much turmoil on trade that they met daily. But as they've gotten the hang of responding to constantly changing rules, they've scaled back to meeting weekly to map out plans to protect their business and take advantage of opportunities that may arise. Strategy sessions like this are happening across corporate America as Trump's tariffs create kinks and extra costs in global supply chains built up over decades. For D'Addario, a family-owned business that has been around for over half a century, this has meant looking at every aspect of their business to assess exposure, resulting in strategies that include setting up their own free trade zone and rerouting shipments to avoid tariffs, Reuters reporting shows. U.S. companies are learning there are no quick fixes to their trade woes. What seems to work one week may be outdated the next as the levies, or threats of levies, shift. In the past few months, the U.S. has slapped a minimum 10% tariff on most imported goods, with higher rates on steel, aluminum, cars, and car parts. The trade war so far has pushed the effective U.S. tariff rate to around 20%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, a level not seen since the 1930s. D'Addario is one of the world's leading makers of music accessories, with annual sales of $235 million and six U.S. factories. Five of those plants are clustered in this Long Island suburb, including one that churns out 750,000 strings a day for everything from bass guitars and banjos to violas and mandolins. The company has a devoted following among professional musicians as well as amateurs. John Oates--of the former rock duo Hall & Oates--uses their strings, as does jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and country singer Chris Stapleton. Neil Peart, the late Rush drummer, used D'Addario's drumsticks--and the company still sells sticks that were designed specifically for his playing style and bear his signature. A set of those hung on the wall of the conference room where the task force met one recent morning. While the company makes nearly all their products in the U.S., their supply chain and distribution are global. They export nearly 45% of what they make to 120 countries. Their biggest foreign market is Japan. TRADE WAR ROOM D'Addario's global footprint means they keep finding new vulnerabilities. For instance, one item on the agenda of the recent meeting was Japanese oak. D'Addario uses the wood, known as Shira Kashi oak, to craft a line of drumsticks coveted for their durability and feel. Some drummers won't play anything else. But the cost of the material is set to jump on August 1 if Trump makes good on his vow to push through a wide range of new tariffs, including 25% on Japanese goods. 'There isn't really any good alternative—people want their Shira Kashi oak,' Hank Sheller, the company's strategic sourcing manager, told the group of eight other executives gathered around a conference table three days after Trump announced the new levies on Japan. The group concluded that, in this case, a price increase to offset tariffs would be readily accepted by consumers because the wood is so unique. 'That's just something people will pay for,' said D'Addario. Other topics under discussion were more difficult to resolve, like what Trump's promise of a 50% copper tariff, announced the day after the Japan duties, would do to their costs. D'Addario doesn't buy raw copper but consumes large amounts of copper rod that it draws out into ultra-fine thread used to wind many types of musical strings. 'The problem is we don't really know the origin of the copper we're getting—whether it's from a domestic source or imported,' said D'Addario. 'But it's more likely there will be a cost increase for us, even if it is a U.S.-based supplier.' And unlike Japanese oak, copper strings are a commodity, so raising consumer prices to cover the tariff cost is unlikely. The task force has found ways to sidestep some tariffs. For example, after the U.S. started raising tariffs sharply on China, they shifted how they ship Chinese-produced goods to customers outside the U.S. It previously imported most of those goods, which account for about 5% of their total sales, to its warehouse on Long Island, where they were stockpiled and then sent on to end customers as they filled orders. The task force realized they could get around U.S. tariffs by having the goods sent directly to foreign customers from the Chinese factories. It helped that the Chinese factories were eager to help. In the past, they resisted directly shipping smaller orders. 'As a result of tariffs, our Chinese suppliers suddenly became much more accommodating,' said D'Addario. 'WE'LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS' The task force has also applied for permission to create a free trade zone in part of their warehouse in Farmingdale, which will allow them to hold imported products and only pay tariffs when they need to be used to supply domestic orders. The company also plans to do some assembly work there. 'We'll be able to bring parts from China and assemble them with domestic parts—and then you could re-export that without paying any tariffs,' said D'Addario. Though that won't be a quick fix. D'Addario estimates it will likely take more than a year to get the necessary approvals and to build that facility, which must be secured with fencing and special monitoring equipment. Another effort is aimed at changing how they sell musical strings in China. Until now, they've produced them in New York and had workers here put them into retail packaging. They're testing sending the strings in bulk to China and having a logistics company there do the final packaging. Since the value of bulk strings is lower than the same number of strings packaged for retail, the tariff bill is cut. Savings like that will be crucial if the Chinese retaliate against U.S. tariffs after August 1, said D'Addario. 'At least we'll have the capability proven,' he added, 'so we're able to respond to whatever happens.' Despite the task force's efforts, the company's tariff bill is still expected to hit $2.2 million by the end of this year, compared to just $700,000 last year. Part of that is new costs to import cane from the company's own plantations in France and Argentina, which it uses to make woodwind reeds. The tariff on cane has risen to 10% and is set to go much higher. 'Trump said he'll put a 30% tariff on Mexico and Europe, so we're expecting anything from our plantation in France to cost even more,' said D'Addario. 'Assuming it goes through. We'll see what happens on August first.' Sign in to access your portfolio
Fast Company
2 minutes ago
- Fast Company
The Trump administration is pushing to open new coal mines that will likely never turn a profit
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here. It looked for a while like the coal mining era was over in the Clearfork Valley of East Tennessee, a pocket of mountainous land on the Kentucky border. A permit for a new mine hasn't been issued since 2020, and the last mine in the region shuttered two years ago. One company after another has filed for bankruptcy, with many of them simply walking away from the ecological damage they'd wrought without remediating the land as the law requires. But there's going to be a new mine in East Tennessee—one of a few slated across the country, their permits expedited by President Donald Trump's declaration of an 'energy emergency' and his designating coal a critical mineral. Trump was only hours into his second term when he signed an executive order declaring a national energy emergency that directed federal agencies to 'identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them' to identify and exploit domestic energy resources. The administration also has scrapped Biden-era rules that made it easier to bring mining-related complaints to the federal government. The emergency designation compresses the typically years-long environmental review required for a new mine to just weeks. These assessments are to be compiled within 14 days of receiving a permit application, limiting comment periods to 10 days. The process of compiling an environmental impact statement—a time-intensive procedure involving scientists from many disciplines and assessments of wildlife populations, water quality, and other factors—is reduced to less than a month. The government insists this eliminates burdensome red tape. 'We're not just issuing permits—we're supporting communities, securing supply chains for critical industries, and making sure the U.S. stays competitive in a changing global energy landscape,' Adam Suess, the acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department, said in a statement. A representative of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement told Grist that community safety is top of mind, pointing to the administration's $725 million investment in abandoned mineland reclamation. The Department of Interior ruled that a new mine slated for Bryson Mountain in Claiborne County, Tennessee, would have 'no significant impact' and approved it. It will provide about two dozen jobs. The strip mine will cover 635 acres of previously mined land that has reverted to forest. Hurricane Creek Mining, LLC plans to pry 1.8 million tons of coal from the earth over 10 years. The Clearfork Valley, which straddles two rural counties and has long struggled economically, bears the scars of more than a century's underground and surface mining. Local residents and scientists regularly test the creeks for signs of bright-orange mine drainage and other toxins. The land is part of a tract the Nature Conservancy bought in 2019 for conservation purposes, but because of ownership structures in the coalfields, it owns only the land, not the minerals within it. 'We have concerns about the potential environmental impacts of the operation,' the organization said in a statement. 'We seek assurance that there will be adequate bonding, consistent and transparent environmental monitoring, and good reclamation practices.' Matt Hepler, an environmental scientist with environmental advocacy group Appalachian Voices, has been following the mine's public review process since the company applied for a permit in 2023. He remains skeptical that things will work out well for Hurricane Creek Mining. Despite Trump's promise that he is 'bringing back an industry that's been abandoned,' coal has seen a steady decline, driven in no small part by the plummeting price of natural gas. The number of people working the nation's coal mines has steadily declined from 89,000 or so in 2012 to about 41,300 today. Production fell 31 percent during Trump's first term, and has continued that slide. 'What is this company doing differently that's going to allow them to profitably succeed while so many other mines have not been able to make that work?' he said. 'All the time I've been working in Tennessee there's only been a couple of mines permitted to begin with because production has been on the downswing there,' Hepler added. Economists say opening more mines may not reverse the global downward trend. Plentiful, cheap natural gas, along with increasingly affordable wind and solar, are displacing coal as an energy source. The situation is so dire that one Stanford University study argued that the gas would continue its climb even with the elimination of coal-related regulations. Metallurgical coal, used to make steel—and which Hurricane Creek hopes to excavate —fares no better. It has seen flat or declining demand amid innovation in steel production. Expedited permits are leading to new mines in the West as well. The Department of Interior just approved a land lease for Wyoming's first new coal mine in 50 years. Ramaco Resources will extract and process the material in order to retrieve the rare earth and other critical minerals found alongside it. The Trump administration also is selling coal leases on previously protected federal land. Shiloh Hernandez, a senior attorney at the Northern Rockies office of the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, thinks it is a fool's errand. 'I don't see them changing the fundamental dynamics of coal,' he said. 'That's not to say that the Trump administration won't cause lots of harm in the process by both making the public pay more money for energy than they should and by keeping some of these coal plants and coal mines that really are zombies.' Still, Hernandez said he isn't seeing many new permits, just quicker approval of those already in the pipeline. That said, the Trump administration's moves to streamline environmental review will reduce oversight and the time the public has to scrutinize coal projects. 'The result is there's just going to be it's going to be more difficult for the public to participate, and more harm is going to occur,' Hernandez said. 'There's going to be less attention to the harm that's caused by these operations.'
Chicago Tribune
2 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
ICE arrests increase across Chicago under Trump, many with no convictions, data shows
With the Trump administration pushing far more aggressive immigration enforcement across the country and in Chicago, a Tribune analysis of newly released data shows a significant increase in the number of immigrants detained in the Chicago area — particularly those with no known criminal background. The findings come from a Tribune analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained and shared by the research group Deportation Data Project. The analysis shows that, as President Donald Trump's administration has pushed enforcement in sanctuary cities such as Chicago, ICE saw notable spikes in the number of people initially detained at two ICE processing centers in the area. The figures peaked at 88 bookings on an early June day that, at the time, drew attention for clashes between Chicago community members and federal immigration agents. Of the 88 booked that day, the latest analysis found, three-fourths had no criminal record logged by ICE. The surge in detentions — including immigrants with no known criminal record — mirrors broader trends across the country. The second Trump administration has increasingly focused on boosting the number of people arrested who lack legal status to be in the country, even if the efforts ensnared more people who didn't fit the traditional ICE focus on tracking down and deporting those who committed serious crimes. The analysis suggests that the efforts locally have done both — with ICE agents under the second Trump administration detaining double the rate of those convicted of violent felonies and sex crimes, while detaining nine times as many immigrants with no known criminal past. Local ICE officials have not released such detailed data on their enforcement efforts. When told about the Tribune's analysis and asked about its findings, a spokesman for ICE's local office did not immediately respond. The data used by the Tribune in its analysis was obtained by the law school of the University of California at Los Angeles, as part of a December 2024 lawsuit it filed to force ICE to release the data under the Freedom of Information Act. Court records show that ICE produced the raw data in batches this summer, and the law school shared the data with the Deportation Data Project, which posted the latest batch online Tuesday to share with reporters and researchers. (ICE refused earlier this year to directly provide the Tribune with similar raw data the newspaper had requested under the open records law.) The raw data has limitations. It does not identify detained people by name — unlike traditional jail logs or prison rosters, which by law typically must identify the people being held behind bars. And while the data lists details of each detention and some biographical information on who was detained, it does not list the cities, or even the counties, where people were arrested. That makes it impossible to tally the precise numbers of arrests in Chicago and the suburbs. The data, however, does log when people were booked into ICE's facilities in Broadview and Chicago, offering a proxy to gauge the number of people detained in the Chicago region, and the type of person being detained in a second Trump administration in a city that Trump's 'border czar,' Tom Homan, called 'ground zero' for enforcement. The Tribune analysis found that in Trump's first 150 days, ICE detained three times the number of immigrants convicted of crimes than in President Joe Biden's last 150 days in office. But, under Trump, ICE detained nine times as many immigrants without any known criminal past. A deeper look at ICE data finds that, among those deemed convicted of crimes, agents in Trump's first 150 days booked nearly double the number of people convicted of violent felony or sex crimes, compared with Biden's last 150 days. But the data also shows that, under Trump, a far higher proportion of the bookings for convicted immigrants were for those who'd committed lesser crimes, with a nearly fivefold uptick in drunken-driving or traffic offenses. That trend could be seen on ICE's busiest day for booking in the Chicago area — June 4. On that Wednesday, ICE data logged no known criminal convictions for three-fourths of the 88 people. Of the remaining 22, half had pending charges and half had convictions. Of the 11 with convictions, two had convictions for violent felony or sex crimes. Three had convictions for drug or property crimes. Three had convictions for drunken-driving or traffic offenses. Two had listed convictions illegally entering or reentering the country. And one had violated probation for an unspecified crime. On that day, ICE sent text messages requesting immigrants to report to a downtown office for check-ins, and advocates said about 20 of those immigrants never came out of the building. Over two dozen aldermen and community organizers gathered to protest outside before clashing with immigration agents who pulled those inside the building into unmarked white vans. One alderman reported that the agents shoved protesters and used batons like the 'Gestapo.' At the time, an ICE spokesperson said in a statement to the Tribune that everyone arrested had a deportation order by an immigration judge and 'had not complied with that order.' As of three weeks later — the most recent update to the ICE data — of the 88 detained, 25 had either been deported or left the country voluntarily, in a category deemed 'removals,' according to ICE data. That included four convicted of a crime: someone convicted of firing a weapon, another of shoplifting, one of drunken driving, and another for illegally reentering the country when previously deported, according to the ICE data analyzed by the Tribune. Six more with pending criminal charges were removed before they could be tried. And 15 people with no criminal background were removed. More broadly, of those booked into Chicago-area facilities, the data shows that nearly half of those removed during the second Trump administration had a criminal conviction, while about a third of those removed had no known criminal background. And while Trump, as a candidate, railed against the recent arrival of Venezuelan immigrants, and particularly claims of a violent Venezuelan street gang overrunning the country, the vast majority of Chicago-area removals under his second administration were of immigrants born in Mexico — 302 — compared with 136 born in Venezuela. And of the smaller group with violent felony or sex convictions, nearly all were born in Mexico. But the majority of people removed since inauguration day who had no criminal background were born in Venezuela, albeit with a significant number born in Mexico, too. Of those with no criminal record, the youngest removed was a boy born in 2021. The data doesn't specify if he was traveling with relatives but shows that the boy entered and exited the country with a married Venezuelan woman in her 30s and three other children — all of whom also had no known criminal record. All five entered the country in July 2023, were ordered to be deported in March 2024, and were detained somewhere in Illinois on June 11 and then sent to Venezuela five days later. The oldest was a married man born in Mexico in 1957, putting him in his late 60s. ICE records show he had been ordered to leave the country in 2009 and was arrested roughly 16 years later — on April 11 — by ICE. He was then shipped between three different facilities over five days — from Broadview to two jails in central Indiana before he was deported out of Texas. Little else is known about the man.
