MicroWave

The findings suggest U.S. consumers will continue to struggle with high prices — something Trump had promised to address in the run-up to his re-election.

Six months into Donald Trump’s unprecedented gambit to impose sizable tariffs on imports, U.S. consumers are already shouldering as much as 55% of their costs, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs analysts.

And with new tariffs likely on the way, the cost burden could rise even higher, they said.

The findings, released Sunday, suggest U.S. consumers will continue to struggle with high prices — something Trump had promised to address in the run-up to his re-election. While inflation rates have come down from the post-Covid peak, they have remained stuck above levels economists consider healthy, causing consumers and businesses alike to continue to report feeling burdened by price increases.

KEY POINTS

“The root cause of the tension is due to a lack of mutual trust,” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie, said in a note Monday.

Hu and other analysts describe the announcements of the last few days as a “misperception” on both sides.

“On the specific episode the market is focused on, the two sides may still return to the table to find a short-term fix. However, it won’t be a lasting solution,” said Jianwei Xu, senior economist for Greater China at Natixis.

Department of Health and Human Services rescinds more than half of the 1,300 termination notices it sent, reports say

The firings of hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been reversed, according to several reports citing officials familiar with the matter, and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers.

On Friday, the White House budget office announced that as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, reductions in force (RIFs) across agencies have begun.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses the CDC, initially said that all employees that received layoff notices “were designated non-essential by their respective divisions”.

However, over the weekend, the administration rescinded more than half of the 1,300 termination notices it sent to public health officials at the CDC, according to Axios and Reuters, citing sources familiar. Around 600 people at the agency remain fired.

China’s exports to the United States fell 27% in September from the year before, even though growth in its global exports hit a six-month high.

Customs figures released Monday showed that China’s worldwide exports were 8.3% higher than a year earlier, at $328.5 billion, surpassing economists’ estimates. That was markedly better than the 4.4% year-on-year increase in August.

Imports grew 7.4% last month, significantly better than a 1.3% increase by year in August, although a weaker domestic economy and a real estate sector downturn continue to weigh on demand and consumption.

China’s exports to the United States have fallen for six straight months. In August they dropped 33%.

Research comparing Adirondack mountain lakes in New York suggests foot traffic is significant source of pollution

Hiking shoes and outdoor gear are likely a significant source of microplastic pollution in the wilderness, new research that checked for the pernicious material in several Adirondack mountain lakes in upstate New York suggests.

Researchers measured microplastic levels in two lakes that are the among highest sources of water for the Hudson River – one that sees heavy foot traffic from hikers, and another lake that is far away from a path and rarely touched by human activity.

The samples from the lake that sees heavier foot traffic showed levels that were about 23 times higher.

Opponents of Trump — from street protesters to elected officeholders — are increasingly turning to a different tactic to try to push back on his agenda: humor and mockery.

But there’s nothing light-hearted about their efforts.

Instead, the satirical or absurdist pushback is aimed at undercutting Trump’s preferred self-image of strength and instead rendering him and his allies as fundamentally ludicrous.

In recent days, Portland’s “Freedom Frog” — a protester dressed in a giant frog costume — has taunted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the city, drawing enormous social media attention and inspiring other costumed comrades, frogs and otherwise, to join him.

Separately, dancing protesters have mocked ICE and other law enforcement personnel in part by adopting the sexually suggestive slogan “Arrest me, Daddy” and recording their efforts — a tactic that seems to be gaining steam on TikTok in particular.

Trump’s speech at Israel’s Knesset, its parliament, was briefly interrupted by lawmakers who were expelled from the plenum after shouting slogans during Trump’s remarks.

The Jerusalem Post identified those protesting as Aymen Odeh, an Arab Israeli and member of the Hadash alliance and Ofer Cassif, a far-left politician who is also a member of the Hadash coalition.

Odeh held up a sign that said “Recognize Palestine,” when he was ejected from the room. He later said in a social media post on X that he is calling for recognition of a Palestinian state as “the simplest demand, a demand that the entire international community agrees on… There are two peoples here, and neither is going anywhere.,” the post read in Hebrew, and that was translated by Grok on X.

Cassif also posted on X that their protest was “to demand justice,” accusing the Israeli government of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.

Gov. JB Pritzker called out the Trump administration on Sunday for defending its decision to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as necessary to fight violent crime in the city, even though the federal government has emphasized in court and Pentagon memos that the mission is mainly to protect federal immigration enforcement agents and federal property.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Pritzker said President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s ultimate goal is to bring in the National Guard to cities like Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to militarize the country’s Democratic-controlled enclaves as a form of political payback.

“They’re claiming in court that this is about protecting (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facilities and ICE agents and not about crime on the streets,” the governor told the program’s host, George Stephanopoulos. “But then you hear Vice President Vance and the president of the United States contravening that and saying exactly what they actually think. They just want troops on the ground because they want to militarize, especially blue cities and blue states.”

Tim Haugh, the retired general and ousted former head of both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, warns that China has hacked into U.S. computer networks to an astonishing degree, targeting not just the U.S. military and industries, but also every American.

Experts describe findings as deeply concerning and predict 70% increase in related deaths by 2050

Hospitals across the world have recorded an alarming rise in common infections that are resistant to antibiotics, with doctors saying the number of deaths driven by drug resistance will increase sharply in the years ahead.

One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections were resistant to antibiotic treatments in 2023, with more than 40% of antibiotics losing potency against common blood, gut, urinary tract and sexually-transmitted infections between 2018 and 2023, records show.

The problem was most severe, and worsening, in low and middle-income countries and those with weaker healthcare systems, according to the World Health Organization’s Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance report, which gathered data on more than 23m bacterial infections from 104 countries.

Krone says ‘alarming’ levies on about 400 goods including hair dryers and combine harvesters have forced pause

One of Europe’s biggest farm machinery companies, Krone, has been forced to pause exports of large equipment to the US because of “alarming” and little-known new tariffs that are hitting hundreds of products from knitting needles and hair dryers to combine harvesters.

Among the products on the steel derivatives list drawn up in consultation with US manufacturers, Donald Trump is taxing 407 specific products ranging from tiny embroidery stilettos to cooker hoods, barbecues, fridges, freezers, dishwashers, hair curling tongs, grills, elevators, bridge and railway structures, agriculture equipment and wind turbines.

It has meant that since 18 August, companies such as Krone and the construction company Liebherr in Germany have to provide an unprecedented level of detail to customs border authorities certifying the origin, weight and value of any steel in their products right down to nuts and bolts.

Lord Stern says fossil-fuelled growth is futile as the damage it causes ends in economic self-destruction

Investment in climate action is the economic growth story of the 21st century, while growth fuelled by fossil fuels is futile because the damage it causes ends in self-destruction, the economist Nicholas Stern has said.

The plummeting costs of clean technologies, from renewable energy to electric cars, plus the healthier and more productive societies they enable, meant investments could simultaneously tackle the climate crisis and faltering economic growth, and bring millions of people out of poverty, he said.

This requires big changes in policies and levels of investment and Stern, at the London School of Economics, acknowledged that the geopolitical environment was currently difficult but he said making the rational argument was vital. The US president, Donald Trump, recently called climate change a “con job” and is backing fossil fuel companies to “drill, baby, drill”.