Latest news with #CHIPS&ScienceAct
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bipartisan Trump critics highlighting rising costs
A bipartisan group of President Trump's critics is launching a new coalition seeking to counter the Trump administration's messaging on the economy by highlighting rising costs since Trump returned to office just over 100 days ago. The group, dubbed the Cost Coalition, will showcase stories of everyday Americans who say the president's policies are harming them personally and will lift 'up the voices of community leaders who see Trump's financial damage and broken promises firsthand,' according to a press release. 'We support common-sense policies that secure economic opportunity for the middle class, and are outraged at a president who is taking advantage of hard-working families for his own benefit,' the release reads. The group is expected to highlight 'growing economic burdens' — including rising costs of groceries, gas, homeownership, child and elder care — which, according to the group, 'are putting the American Dream out of reach for hardworking families in every state.' The critics are also targeting Trump on his tax plan, workforce cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his sweeping tariff policies and rollbacks of certain aspects of Biden administration laws like the CHIPS & Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. 'The affordability crisis is being worsened by a billionaire president intent on enriching himself at the expense of the Americans he guaranteed he'd help; and by an out-of-touch Congress beholden to the Washington swamp,' the press release continued. The group will be active in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 2025 and expand into other areas in 2026. Their main push will come through social media, press interview, events and paid advertising, per the coalition. Members will also directly 'call out supporters of policies that are increasing prices, inflation, and the national debt, while reducing economic growth.' The group is made of various political operatives and former congressional aides who have worked for both parties and faith and military community outreach staffers. The group includes two communications advisers: Democrat Andrew Bates, who was former President Biden's senior deputy press secretary; and Republican Terry Holt, who served as a spokesperson for former President George W. Bush's campaign and for former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). 'In 100 days, Donald Trump put the best-performing economy in the world on a crash course toward recession. Trump's tariffs — the biggest middle class tax hike in modern history — are making everyday prices skyrocket and wreaking havoc for businesses large and small,' Bates and Holt said in a joint statement. 'Next up are grossly inflationary tax cuts for the wealthy that will only saddle future generations with staggering debt.' 'Whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or anything else, Donald Trump's agenda is an economic crisis threatening your livelihood and standard of living,' they added. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The Hill
06-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Bipartisan Trump critics highlighting rising costs
A bipartisan group of President Trump's critics is launching a new coalition seeking to counter the Trump administration's messaging on the economy by highlighting rising costs since Trump returned to office just over 100 days ago. The group, dubbed the Cost Coalition, will showcase stories of everyday Americans who say the president's policies are harming them personally and will focus on 'lifting up the voices of community leaders who see Trump's financial damage and broken promises firsthand,' according to a press release. 'We support common-sense policies that secure economic opportunity for the middle class, and are outraged at a president who is taking advantage of hard-working families for his own benefit,' the release reads. The group is expected to highlight 'growing economic burdens' — including rising costs of groceries, gas, home ownership, child and elder care — which, according to the group, 'are putting the American Dream out of reach for hardworking families in every state.' The critics are also targeting Trump on his tax plan, workforce cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his sweeping tariff policies and rollbacks of certain aspects of Biden administration laws like the CHIPS & Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. 'The affordability crisis is being worsened by a billionaire president intent on enriching himself at the expense of the Americans he guaranteed he'd help; and by an out-of-touch Congress beholden to the Washington swamp,' the press release said. The group will be active in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 2025 and expand into other areas in 2026. Their main push will come through social media, press interview, events and paid advertising, per the coalition. Members will also directly 'call out supporters of policies that are increasing prices, inflation, and the national debt, while reducing economic growth.' The group is made up of various political operatives and former congressional aides that have worked for both parties and faith and military community outreach staffers. The group includes two communications advisers: Democrat Andrew Bates, who was former President Biden's senior deputy press secretary; and Republican Terry Holt, who served as a spokesperson for former President George W. Bush's campaign and for former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). 'In 100 days, Donald Trump put the best-performing economy in the world on a crash course toward recession. Trump's tariffs — the biggest middle class tax hike in modern history — are making everyday prices skyrocket and wreaking havoc for businesses large and small,' Bates and Holt said in a joint statement. 'Next up are grossly inflationary tax cuts for the wealthy that will only saddle future generations with staggering debt.' 'Whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or anything else, Donald Trump's agenda is an economic crisis threatening your livelihood and standard of living,' they added.
Buzz Feed
08-04-2025
- Business
- Buzz Feed
Donald Trump's Rationales For His Tariffs Are Incoherent And Completely Contradict Each Other
President Donald Trump and his economic team justified last week's sweeping 'Liberation Day' tariffs with multiple conflicting explanations that, when considered together, make no sense at all. The administration wants the public to believe three different things, all of which are in tension. First, Trump's tariffs are designed to launch a renaissance for American manufacturing replaced by overseas imports, bringing back long lost working class jobs and reinvigorating the blue collar middle class. Second, that the tariffs are meant to raise massive amounts of revenue to replace the progressive income tax. And third, Trump's advisers and various online sycophants also claim that the purpose is to use the tariffs as pressure on foreign nations to cut bilateral trade deals with the U.S. These ideas may make varying levels of sense, in that they may do what those promoting them claim if executed strategically (albeit with differing levels of pain for the average American). But put together they make zero sense. Each is in conflict with the other. It can either be one thing or the other thing, but not all three things or even two out of three. But since 'Liberation Day,' the administration has flailed from one rationale to another, often with the administration openly contradicting itself within the hour. The main line from the Trump administration is that these tariffs are designed to restore America's place as a manufacturing hub by bringing back the factory jobs that have been leaving the country since the 1960s. 'If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America,' Trump said when announcing his blanket tariffs on April 2. The U.S. would now 'charge countries' for 'taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they have been taking over the years,' he added. (Tariffs are paid by the companies purchasing the imports, not their originating countries.) This is what Trump ran on in 2024 when he called tariffs the 'most beautiful word in the dictionary.' 'We're going to bring the companies back,' Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg in October 2024. 'I think tariffs are a means to an end, and that end is bringing the manufacturing base back to the U.S.,' Bessent said on Fox Business in February. This is, quite plainly, the point of tariffs. A country imposes a levy on imports as protection for the domestic market. This disincentives imports while incentivizing domestic production, especially if paired with an industrial policy that subsidizes or promotes domestic industry. That is what the Biden administration did with its combination of tariffs and industrial policy enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS & Science Act. Those two laws provided subsidies to build domestic production of microchips, electric vehicles, batteries and various other products for the clean energy sector. To protect these infant industries, Biden imposed tariffs, largely on goods from China where the industry is more developed. The most stringent of these was a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. That was a targeted and strategic pairing of tariff policy and industrial policy aimed at reshoring jobs and building entirely new manufacturing industries. This is not what Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs look like. Rather than strategically designed tariffs on countries with known unfair trade practices or targeting China's unbalanced export economy, Trump's tariffs hit almost every country in the world, including those that export products to the U.S. that cannot be manufactured or acquired here. No one can grow bananas in the United States nor do we have vast diamond mines. At the same time, Trump is doing nothing to promote domestic industries or protect American workers. He is trying to unilaterally gut or not implement the Inflation Reduction Act's subsidies meant to build domestic manufacturing capacity in the clean energy sector, and he's called for Congress to repeal the CHIPS & Science Act. He is also actively working to undermine workers through National Labor Relations Board rulemakings and other anti-union and worker practices. Still, there's a reason this is the main rationale the administration promotes: It makes sense to the public and has public support. But it makes no sense when you look at the other explanations. One of those other rationales is that tariffs will raise so much revenue that the U.S. will be able to eliminate the income tax. 'Wouldn't it be amazing to stop paying taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and have the External Revenue Service of Make America Great Again replace our taxes,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in March. The thinking, if you can call it that, is that tariff revenue will be so high that the government can eliminate most income taxes. 'You're going to see billions of dollars, even trillions of dollars coming into our country very soon in the form of tariffs,' Trump said in March. This, in and of itself, doesn't add up. The IRS raised $2.96 trillion in from individual and corporate income taxes in 2024 while the total cost of imports of foreign goods was $3.3 trillion. A 100% tariff on all imported goods might make up the entirety of individual and corporate income tax revenue, but, realistically, it would simply mean that those imports would just not come into the U.S. at all: Few people are willing to keep paying for something that has suddenly doubled in price. Which gets at the conflict between the revenue raising rationale and the bring back manufacturing rationale. If you want to raise lots of revenue then you would not want to see domestic manufacturing replace those imports: The imports must flow for the revenue to keep coming in, and you don't want a cheaper alternative that avoids the tax. And if you want to bring back manufacturing, you want a cheaper domestic product that is an appealing alternative, allowing companies and consumers to avoid the pricier imports entirely. The administration is also fond of arguing that the U.S. used to do both ― impose tariffs for revenue and use them to build up domestic industries. But when Alexander Hamilton proposed this combo, as administration officials like to cite, the country was relatively poor and underdeveloped. Developed economies don't rely solely on tariff revenue because they have the state capacity and knowledge base to implement a progressive income tax. Negotiate Better Deals Or maybe this whole thing isn't about rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity or raising revenue, but instead to force countries to make deals to get Trump to waive the tariffs. 'The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,' Trump said after imposing his 'Liberation Day' tariffs. 'They always have.' 'If you take it to zero, we'll take it to zero,' Bessent said in February. Deals, deals, deals. That's what Trump is known for, so this rationale seems like common sense. But if you make deals with every country in the world to remove tariffs, you also undermine the other two rationales: less protection to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity and less revenue from tariffs. And there is a larger (theoretical) plan here, which Trump and his advisers do not talk about much publicly: to lower the value of the U.S. dollar. That plan, known as the Mar-a-Lago Accord, is to smash the global economic system with massive tariffs in order to force countries to negotiate currency deals that lower the value of the dollar, which would help restore American manufacturing by making domestic products cheaper to export. Countries would then want to buy up American goods, like military equipment, cars and so on. This is all outlined in a paper by Miran. But this plan doesn't fully account for the alienation that Trump is creating from these would-be markets for U.S. goods. The tariffs combined with the U.S.' foreign policy pivot to Russia have succeeded in getting the Europeans to actually invest in their economies and militaries, as evidenced by Germany's recent constitutional change. But these countries are not looking for American goods. They are rather spurning the U.S. because of Trump's belligerence. Miran dismissed public speculation that Trump is pursuing his plan during a speech at the Hudson Institute on Monday. 'It's not important,' Miran said about his paper outlining the plan to devalue the dollar. 'It does not reflect administration policy.' The end result of all of this is a muddled mess. The public has been fed at least three conflicting policy rationales while Trump insiders appear to pursue a broader, less-publicized plan to crater the dollar's value by alienating the rest of the world. Of course, Trump has harped on the importance of tariffs and protectionist policies as far back as the late-1980s. This is one of the few policies that he has a strong attachment to. There's also the possibility these tariffs come not from a fully realized policy plan, but his own personal impulses. Impulses are rarely coherent. If we're to take these varying rationales literally, all signs point to impulse rather than serious policy. But that's going to have serious long-term consequences for the entire world.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariff odds, TSMC's foundry goals, new Intel CEO: Top Chip Stories
Investors weigh the US position in the AI chip landscape after President Donald Trump took aim at the CHIPS & Science Act, a Biden-era policy that invested billions into the sector and domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Tufts University international history professor at the Fletcher School Christopher Miller examines the future of the CHIPS Act, as well as other top themes and stories in the chip space, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSM) reported talks to run Intel's foundry business (INTC), Intel's new CEO, and more. Miller is also the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariff odds, TSMC's foundry goals, new Intel CEO: Top Chip Stories
Investors weigh the US position in the AI chip landscape after President Donald Trump took aim at the CHIPS & Science Act, a Biden-era policy that invested billions into the sector and domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Tufts University international history professor at the Fletcher School Christopher Miller examines the future of the CHIPS Act, as well as other top themes and stories in the chip space, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSM) reported talks to run Intel's foundry business (INTC), Intel's new CEO, and more. Miller is also the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Sign in to access your portfolio
