Chipotle downplays looming Trump tariffs, says only half of its avocados are from Mexico
Chipotle Mexican Grill said Tuesday that it does not expect costs to rise much if tariffs on key imported ingredients go into effect next month, noting that only about half of its avocados come from Mexico.
A day earlier, President Donald Trump paused his plans for 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. If implemented after the one-month suspension, imports such as avocados and beef would be more expensive for restaurants, which would likely try to pass on the increased cost to their diners.
But Chipotle executives shook off the tariff fears during the company's earnings conference call on Tuesday. If tariffs aimed at Mexico, Canada and China all go into effect, Chipotle expects that its cost of sales would rise about 60 basis points, or 0.6 percentage points, according to Chief Financial Officer Adam Rymer.
Chipotle only sources about 2% of its sales from Mexico, importing produce such as avocados, tomatoes, limes and peppers, Rymer said.
In fact, while Mexico supplies roughly 90% of the avocados eaten in the U.S., Chipotle buys about half of its avocado supply from Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic, according to CEO Scott Boatwright. In recent years, Chipotle has taken steps to buy more of its avocados outside of Mexico, he told analysts.
Looking beyond Chipotle's guacamole supply, less than 0.5% of Chipotle's sales are sourced from Canada and China. Trump has already imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports.
In recent quarters, Chipotle has shown that it has pricing power, even as diners become more value-conscious.
For the fourth quarter, the company reported same-store sales growth of 5.4%, fueled by a traffic increase of 4%. Chipotle's earnings topped Wall Street estimates, but a conservative forecast for its same-store sales growth sent shares down 5% in extended trading.
The outlook did not include the effect of any tariffs.
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The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Putin tells Trump Russia ‘will have to respond' to Ukraine drone attack
Donald Trump has spoken for more than an hour with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, but he conceded the talks would not lead 'to immediate peace' in Ukraine, and warned that Russia would respond to Ukraine's successful attacks this week on its airfields. The US president, who repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours during his election campaign, did not attempt to discourage the Russian leader from retaliation, according to his description of the discussion on his Truth Social platform. He noted instead that Putin had offered to participate in US talks with Iran about its nuclear programme, which the Trump claimed Tehran had been 'slowwalking'. In separate remarks on Wednesday, Putin once again ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine, claiming that it would just give Kyiv time to regroup and rearm, while Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Moscow's peace proposals presented earlier this week as nothing more than an 'ultimatum'. The comments from both leaders confirmed that negotiations in Istanbul on Monday had made no headway towards a truce, but the two sides signalled progress on other issues, including the transfer of captives and bodies. Russia said it was 'working' on the return of more than 300 Ukrainian children who the Kyiv government and the international criminal court (ICC) say were abducted by invading forces. It also confirmed there would be a prisoner exchange in the coming days, and that were ongoing discussions on plans to repatriate thousands of bodies of fallen soldiers from both sides. Zelenskyy said he expected 500 PoWs to be swapped this weekend, but he said that the broader peace proposal put forward by Russia in Istanbul amounted to 'an ultimatum from the Russian side to us'. Immediately after Monday's meeting, Ukrainian officials said they needed more time to study the document handed over by the Russians, but press reports at the time said that it simply restated Russia's maximalist demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from four regions under partial Russian occupation. Putin stated his position on Wednesday in the form of a televised virtual meeting with his aides. After being informed that Ukraine had proposed an unconditional ceasefire of 30 to 60 days, Putin asked: 'Why reward them by giving them a break from the combat, which will be used to pump the regime with western arms, to continue their forced mobilisation and to prepare different terrorist acts?' He pointed to recent Ukrainian attacks on bridges inside Russia, one of which helped cause a train crash that killed seven people. On Sunday, Ukraine also carried out a remote-controlled mass drone attack on four Russian airfields, which Kyiv claims knocked out more than a third of Moscow's heavy bombers capable of firing cruise missiles. Ukrainian officials said 41 Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and other types of combat aircraft, were destroyed or damaged in Sunday's operation, which they claimed had taken 18 months to plan. On Wednesday, they released additional drone footage of the attack, codenamed Operation Spiderweb. Satellite photos analysed and published by the Associated Press showed aircraft wreckage and scorched areas at Belaya base, one of the four airfields targeted. It said the images showed at least three Tu-95 and four Tu-22M bombers – both capable of firing cruise missiles – had been destroyed on the runway. Other aircraft at the base appeared unscathed. In his Truth Social post, Trump said the drone attacks on Russian airfields had come up in his hour-and-15-minute conversation with Putin on Wednesday. 'We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,' Trump said. 'It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.' Trump told Putin that Ukraine did not inform him before the drone attacks, a Kremlin spokesperson said. Before the Istanbul talks, Russia stepped up its aerial attacks on cities, and pushed further into Ukraine's northern region of Sumy, seizing more than 150 sq km (58 sq miles) of the area in less than two weeks, according to Russian claims and Ukrainian open-source mapping. During his election campaign, Trump claimed more than 50 times he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day, but his comments on Wednesday did not involve any calls for restraint. Instead, he noted that Putin had offered his help in direct talks the US has been holding with Iran over its nuclear programme, which has expanded considerably since 2018, when Trump walked out of a multilateral agreement to constrain it in exchange for sanctions relief. While Putin has ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire, Russia has suggested two- to three-day local truces on different parts of the frontline, to allow the opposing armies to collect their dead, a proposal Moscow says Kyiv has rejected. However, both sides showed on Wednesday they were ready to continue with the exchange of PoWs, the bodies of dead soldiers, and to offer some cooperation on Kyiv's priority, the return of Ukrainian children. In the televised government meeting on Wednesday, the chief Russian negotiator in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia was 'working' on the return of Ukrainian children, noting that Kyiv had presented a list of 339 of them. Russia has claimed Ukrainian children were taken to Russia for their safety, while Kyiv insisted they had been abducted. The Ukrainian view was underpinned by the ICC, which issued arrest warrants in March 2023 for Putin and his 'commissioner for children's rights', Maria Lvova-Belova, for their role in the 'unlawful deportation' of the Ukrainian children. After the Istanbul meeting, Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian delegation had handed the Russians a list of nearly 400 names of abducted Ukrainian children, but claimed that Russia had only offered to resolve the cases of 10 of them. After Monday's talks, Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that he wanted to host a Putin-Zelenskyy summit also involving Trump. Zelenskyy has been challenging his Russian counterpart to meet him face to face for some months. 'We are ready for such a meeting any day,' the Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday, adding that it was 'pointless' to hold further talks with the midlevel Russian delegates Putin has sent to the talks – who Zelenskyy has previously dismissed as 'empty heads' – since they were not empowered to agree a ceasefire. Putin maintained his opposition to a personal meeting with Zelenskyy however, on the grounds of the recent attacks on railways in the Kursk and Bryansk border regions, which he described as 'terrorist acts'. 'How can any such [summit] meetings be conducted in such circumstances? What shall we talk about?' Putin asked in his video call with his officials. Since Trump's return to the White House in January, European capitals have sought to take more of a leading role in bolstering Ukraine's defence, and on Wednesday, a series of military industrial support measures were announced at a meeting of the 52-country strong Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Nato headquarters in Brussels, chaired jointly by the UK and Germany.
Reuters
44 minutes ago
- Reuters
State Department shifts $250 million from refugee aid to 'self-deportations'
WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has moved $250 million to the Department of Homeland Security for voluntary deportations by migrants without legal status, a spokesperson said, an unprecedented repurposing of funds that have been used to aid refugees uprooted by war and natural disasters. The money has been transferred "to provide a free flight home and an exit bonus to encourage and assist illegal aliens to voluntarily depart the United States," the State Department spokesperson told Reuters. Historically, those funds have been used "to provide protection to vulnerable people" overseas and to resettle refugees in the U.S., said Elizabeth Campbell, a former deputy assistant secretary of state. The re-routing of the money comes as President Donald Trump pushes to reshape U.S. government agencies to serve his 'America First' agenda. The State Department's planned reorganization explicitly states that the agency's refugee bureau now largely will focus on efforts to 'return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status.' The funds came from Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) overseen by the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration. Its website says its mission is to "reduce illegal immigration," aid people "fleeing persecution, crisis or violence and seek durable solutions for forcibly displaced people." Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, citing the law authorizing the funding, said in a May 7 Federal Register notice that underwriting the repatriation of people without legal status will bolster the "foreign policy interests" of the U.S. He did not mention the $250 million transfer to DHS. The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump's administration is working to speed up deportations in a crackdown that the Republican president vowed during the 2024 campaign would expel millions of people illegally in the U.S. It has encouraged migrants to leave voluntarily by threatening steep fines and deporting migrants to notorious prisons in Guantanamo Bay and El Salvador. But the volume of deportations since he took office in January appears to be less than those overseen by his predecessor Joe Biden in the February-May period of 2024, about 200,000 people versus 257,000. On May 9, Trump announced Project Homecoming, an initiative overseen by DHS that offers $1,000 stipends and travel assistance to migrants who "self-deport." DHS said in a May 19 news release that 64 people had "opted to self deport" to Honduras and Colombia on a charter flight under the program. Some experts said that while legal, sending the money to DHS for deportation operations was an unprecedented use of MRA funds. The main purpose of the funds historically has been "to provide refugee and displacement assistance, refugee processing and resettlement to the U.S., and respond to urgent and emerging humanitarian crises - not to return those very people to the harm or persecution they fled,' said Meredith Owen Edwards, senior director of Policy and Advocacy at the Refugee Council USA.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Value of Stormont Executive's office in Beijing questioned
The Executive also has offices in Washington DC and Brussels. It has had a presence in Beijing since 2014, before then-first minister Arlene Foster opened an Executive bureau in December 2016. Executive Office chair Paula Bradshaw (Brian Lawless/PA) Executive Committee chair Paula Bradshaw said she had concerns around its value for money, after the committee heard from the three bureaux during a meeting last month. Executive Office official Brenda Henderson said she appreciated there is frustration around transparency and accounting for what they do. 'One of the things that I want to do is to get that coherency across all three bureaux and with the international relations team in Belfast to make sure that we have a clear narrative, that our communications plans can let you see, and let our ministers see, exactly who we're meeting, what is the outcome of that, what does it mean, the 'so what' question in terms of the Programme For Government,' she told MLAs. 'Work is already under way on that.' Ms Bradshaw followed up by asking at what point would they conclude it is not value for money, and that they could be doing other things with that money. Ms Henderson said there are different ways to measure value for money. 'One of the things that I know that the overseas offices do is that they build relationships, you have to build those relationships before you utilise them, but there are things about companies, investment, increased student places they bring,' she said. 'I think what we need to do is be more absolutely transparent about that and be clear about the metrics, what we can measure and that we stand in front of those.' Permanent Secretary David Malcolm said he can 'see behind the curtain', and knows what the Beijing office is doing, He expressed frustration it was not communicated. He said last month the vice minister for education in China visited Northern Ireland and signed an agreement with the Confucious Institute in Belfast and the Department for the Economy for a £34 million programme over the next 10 years. He also said in Beijing this St Patrick's Day, there were two community organisations led by Chris Hazzard, including young people who had never left Ireland before. 'There is significant work we're doing,' he said. 'We are also talking to the Chinese Consul about a mini conference here later on,' he said. 'The Chinese have agreed to fund three placements in Beijing through the Arts Council to give people the opportunity to break into the Chinese market. There is a tremendous amount we're doing.' He added: 'Not just in Beijing, in Washington, we punch miles above our weight in the representational role we get, and indeed in Brussels.'
