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Europe and the United States are meeting in Paris to negotiate a settlement of a tense tariff spat with global economic ramifications between two global economic powerhouses.The European Union’s top trade negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, met Wednesday with his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.“We’re advancing in the right direction at pace,” Šefčovič said at a news conference. He said ongoing technical meetings between EU and U.S. negotiators in Washington would be soon followed by a video conference between himself and Greer to then “assess the progress and charter the way forward.”Brussels and Washington are unlikely to reach a substantive trade agreement in Paris. The issues dividing them are too difficult to resolve quickly.President Donald Trump regularly fumes about America’s persistent trade deficit with the European Union, which was a record $161 billion last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.Trump blames the gap between what the U.S. sells and what it buys from Europe on unfair trade practices and often singles out for criticism the EU’s 10% tax on imported cars. America’s was 2.5% until Trump raised it to 25% in April. The EU has argued its purchases of U.S. services, especially in the technology sector, all but overcome the deficit.After the Trump administration’s surprise tariffs last week on steel rattled global markets and complicated the ongoing, wider tariff negotiations between Brussels and Washington, the EU on Monday said it is preparing “countermeasures” against the U.S.The EU has offered the U.S. a “zero for zero” deal in which both sides end tariffs on industrial goods, including autos. Trump has rejected that idea, but EU officials say it’s still on the table.The EU could buy more liquefied natural gas and defense items from the U.S., and lower duties on cars, but it isn’t likely to budge on calls to scrap the value added tax, which is akin to a sales tax, or open up the EU to American beef.“We still have a few weeks to have this discussion and negotiation,” French Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin said in Paris on Wednesday ahead of the OECD meeting. “If the discussion and negotiation do not succeed, Europe is capable of having countermeasures on American products and services as well.”Greta Peisch, who was general counsel for the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, said the zero-for-zero proposal could provide a way to make progress if the Trump administration “is looking for a reason not to impose tariffs on the EU.”But Peisch, now a partner at the Wiley Rein law firm, wondered: “How motivated is the U.S. to come to a deal with the EU?” Trump, after all, has longstanding grievances and complaints about EU trade practices.One target of his ire is the value-added tax, similar to U.S. state sales taxes.Trump and his advisers consider VATs unfair protectionism because they are levied on U.S. products. But VATs are set at a national level, not by the EU, and apply to domestic and imported products alike, so they have not traditionally been considered a trade barrier. There is little chance governments will overhaul their tax systems to appease Trump.Likewise, the Europeans are likely to balk at U.S. demands to scrap food and safety regulations that Washington views as trade barriers. These include bans on hormone-raised beef, chlorinated chicken and genetically modified foods.“When you start talking about chickens or GMOs or automobile safety standards, you’re talking about the ways countries choose to regulate their economies,” Peisch said. “We think that’s protectionist. They think it’s keeping their citizens healthy . . . It’s been a sore point for 60 years.” McNeil reported from Barcelona and Wiseman reported from Washington, D.C. Catherine Gaschka, Sam McNeil and Paul Wiseman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
TikTok, a platform where misinformation and dangerous rhetoric often spreads far and wide, has officially removed the #SkinnyTok hashtag from its search results. The hashtag had become a space for creators to promote restrictive eating and other forms of unhealthy weight-loss content. TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino told Politico that the move was part of a regular review of the platforms risks, but it followed considerable pressure from the European Union. Fast Company has reached out to TikTok for comment and will update this post if we hear back. ‘Revolting and absolutely unacceptable’ In April, Frances minister for digital media, Clara Chappaz, requested that the nations media regulator, Arcom, look into the hashtag. The agency teamed up with the European Commission to review the revolting and absolutely unacceptable videos, as Chappaz described them. The European Commission has also been investigating TikToks risk management of addictive design and harmful content since February 2024. Users searching #SkinnyTok will now see a landing page that reads, If you or someone you know has questions about body image, food, or exerciseit is important to know that help is out there and you are not alone. If you feel comfortable, you can confide in someone you trust or check out the resources below. Please remember to take care of yourselves and each other. It also has a resources link with an explainer on eating disorders, steps to take if you or your friend needs support, and emergency information. TikTok’s community guidelines prohibit videos that promote eating disorders and dangerous weight loss behaviors, and selling or promoting products to lose weight. Last year, TikTok even banned Liv Schmidt, a popular user known for posting controversial eating habits, for violating community guidelines. However, she freely posted to her 670,000 followers until The Wall Street Journal sent questions to TikTok for a profile on Schmidt. She created a new account following her ban. Could other platforms see a #SkinnyTok spillover? Now, #SkinnyTok might be gone from TikTok’s search results, but whos to say that users wont migrate to another hashtag or platform to keep sharing these harmful videos? Despite the community guidelines, this content continued out in the open through a well-known hashtag. Before regulatory agencies stepped in, users who searched for #SkinnyTok would see a message from TikTok stating, You are more than your weight, accompanied by a resources button. But the harmful content followed right behind it, violating the rules and risking the health of the users who absorbed it. TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, has 1.58 billion monthly users, according to data from SproutSocial. Its largest audience is in the United States.
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E-Commerce
Discount store operator Dollar Tree forecast its second-quarter adjusted profit to be down as much as 50% from a year ago, accounting for volatility caused due to changing tariffs. Shares of the company were down about 3% in premarket trading. The Trump administration’s roller coaster tariff swings have thrown businesses into turmoil and unsettled consumers worldwide, who now brace for price hikes on everything from groceries to sneakers. Dollar Tree said on Wednesday that its second-quarter profit from continuing operations, which exclude its Family Dollar business, could be down as much as 45% to 50% year-over-year before re-accelerating in the second half of the year. In March, the company said it would sell its less-profitable Family Dollar banner for $1 billion to a group of private equity investors. Dollar Tree maintained its annual comparable store sales forecast, a day after rival Dollar General raised its full-year targets after beating quarterly estimates on resilient demand. However, Dollar Tree raised its annual profit forecast, benefiting from lower freight costs and resilient demand for affordable essentials. It expects fiscal 2025 adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $5.15 to $5.65, compared with its prior forecast of $5.00 to $5.50. However, Dollar Tree reiterated that the company’s full-year earnings per share will be hurt by 30 cents to 35 cents related to the Family Dollar sale, with that impact concentrated in the first two quarters of the fiscal year. The company posted first-quarter revenue of $4.64 billion, compared with analysts’ estimates of $4.54 billion, as per data compiled by LSEG. Its adjusted profit of $1.26 per share topped estimates of $1.20. Anuja Bharat Mistry, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Smoke from Canadian wildfires carried another day of poor air quality south of the border to the Midwest, where conditions in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were rated “very unhealthy” Tuesday.The fires have forced more than 27,000 Canadians in three provinces to flee their homes, and the smoke has even reached Europe.The smell of smoke hung over the Minneapolis-St. Paul area on Tuesday morning despite rain that obscured the full measure of the dirty air. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an alert for almost the entire state into Wednesday, but the Twin Cities area got the worst of it in the Midwest on Tuesday.“As the smoke continues to move across the state Tuesday, air quality will slowly improve from northwest to southeast for the remainder of the alert area,” the agency said. “The smoke is expected to leave the state by Wednesday at noon.”The Iowa Department of Natural Resources warned that air quality in a band from the state’s southwest corner to the northeast could fall into the unhealthy category through Thursday morning. The agency recommended that people, especially those with heart and lung disease, avoid long or intense activities and to take extra breaks while doing strenuous actions outdoors.Smoky conditions that have reached the U.S. periodically in recent weeks extended as far east Tuesday as Michigan, west into the Dakotas and Nebraska, and as far to the southeast as Georgia. Conditions at ground level are unhealthy The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow map showed a swath of red for “unhealthy” conditions across the eastern half Minnesota into western Wisconsin and northern Iowa. The map also showed purple for “very unhealthy” across much of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, where the Air Quality Index numbers of 250 and were common, though conditions started to improve slightly by late morning.The Air Quality Index AQI measures how clean or polluted the air is, focusing on health effects that might be experienced within a few hours or days after breathing polluted air. It is based on ground-level ozone, particle pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. Particulates are the main issue from the firesThe index ranges from green, where the air quality is satisfactory and air pollution poses little or no risk, to maroon, which is considered hazardous. That level comes with health warnings of emergency conditions where everyone is more likely to be affected, according to AirNow.While Minnesota officials warned on Monday that conditions in the northwest part of the state could reach the maroon category on Tuesday, conditions there were generally yellow, or moderate. There were a few scattered locations in the Twin Cities area that temporarily hit maroon on Tuesday morning. But by midday Tuesday, most of the remaining maroon spots in the region were on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.Hospitals are seeing more patients with respiratory symptomsHennepin Healthcare, the main emergency hospital in Minneapolis, has seen a slight increase in visits by patients with respiratory symptoms aggravated by the dirty air.Dr. Rachel Strykowski, a pulmonologist, said there is usually a bit of a delay before patients come in, which is unfortunate because the sooner those patients contact their doctors, the better the outcome. Typical symptoms, she said, include “increase in shortness of breath, wheezing, maybe coughing a bit more, and flares of their underlying disease, and that’s usually COPD and asthma.”What happens, Strykowski said, is that the fine particulate matter from the wildfire smoke triggers more inflammation in patients’ airways, aggravating their underlying medical conditions.Strykowski noted that this is usually a time those patients can go outside and enjoy the summer weather because there are fewer triggers, so the current ones forcing them to stay inside can feel “quite isolating.”People can protect themselves by staying indoors or by wearing N95 masks, she said. Strykowski added that they must be N95s because the cloth masks many people used during the COVID-19 pandemic don’t provide enough filtration. The Canadian fire situation Canada is having another bad wildfire season, and more than 27,000 people in three provinces have been forced to evacuate. Most of the smoke reaching the American Midwest has been coming from fires northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg in Manitoba.Winnipeg hotels opened Monday to evacuees. More than 17,000 Manitoba residents have been displaced since last week, including 5,000 residents of the community of Flin Flon, nearly 400 miles (645 kilometers) northwest of Winnipeg. In neighboring Saskatchewan, 2,500 residents of the town of La Ronge were ordered to flee Monday, on top of more than 8,000 in the province who had been evacuated earlier.In Saskatoon, where the premiers of Canada’s provinces and the country’s prime minister met Monday, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said all of Canada has come together to help the Prairie provinces.Two people were killed by a wildfire in mid-May in Lac du Bonnet, northeast of Winnipeg.Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season was in 2023. It choked much of North America with dangerous smoke for months. The smoke reaches Europe Canada’s wildfires are so large and intense that the smoke is even reaching Europe, where it is causing hazy skies but isn’t expected to affect surface-air quality, according the European climate service Copernicus.The first high-altitude plume reached Greece and the eastern Mediterranean just over two weeks ago, with a much larger plume crossing the Atlantic within the past week and more expected in coming days, according to Copernicus.“That’s really an indicator of how intense these fires are, that they can deliver smoke,” high enough that they can be carried so far on jet streams, said Mark Parrington, senior scientist at the service.The fires also are putting out significant levels of carbon pollution an estimated 56 megatonnes through Monday, second only to 2023, according to Copernicus. Associated Press writers Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, and Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report. Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to hike nearly all of his tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum to a punishing 50% on Wednesday, a move that would hammer businesses from automakers to home builders, and likely push up prices for consumers.Foreign-made steel and aluminum is used in household products like soup cans and paper clips as well as big-ticket items like a stainless-steel refrigerators and cars. Economists warn that the latest tariffs will significantly squeeze the wallets of both companies and shoppers alike.Here’s what we know. What’s the tariff rate on imported steel and aluminum now? Steel and aluminum imports are currently taxed at 25%a rate that both metals have faced across the board since March 12 when Trump’s order to remove steel exemptions and raise aluminum’s levy from his previously-imposed 2018 import taxes went into effect.That’s about to double. In a proclamation issued Tuesday, Trump confirmed that the U.S. will begin taxing nearly all steel and aluminum imports at 50% after the clock strikes midnight Wednesday. Steel and aluminum from the U.K., meanwhile, will continue to be levied at 25% due to a recent trade deal. Why is Trump raising these tariffs? Trump says it’s all about protecting U.S. industries. He reiterated that argument on Friday, when he first announced the 50% tariff during a visit with steelworkers in Pennsylvania, where he also discussed a “planned partnership” between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel.In his speech at U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley WorksIrvin Plant in suburban Pittsburgh, Trump said that the tariff hike would “further secure the steel industry in the U.S.” Shortly after, he took the same tone when sharing plans to also raise tariffs on imported aluminum.In Tuesday’s proclamation, Trump also said that the higher tariffs would ensure that imported steel and aluminum would “not threaten to impair the national security.”“In my judgment, the increased tariffs will more effectively counter foreign countries that continue to offload low-priced, excess steel and aluminum in the United States,” he said in the proclamation. How is the industry responding? While some analysts have credited the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term with strengthening domestic production of steel and aluminum, many others have warned that stark new levies can make it difficult for the industry to adjust.Some organizations representing metal workers also note that tariffs aren’t the only solution needed to boost U.S. manufacturing.“While tariffs, used strategically, serve as a valuable tool in balancing the scales, it’s essential that we also pursue wider reforms of our global trading system,” David McCall, international president of the United Steelworkers union said in a statement, noting that work must be done “in collaboration with trusted allies” like Canadathe top exporter of steel and aluminum to the U.S.to help “contain the bad actors.”Matt Meenan, vice president of external affairs at the Aluminum Association, added that the trade group “appreciates President Trump’s continued focus on strengthening the U.S. aluminum industry,” but that “tariffs alone will not increase U.S. primary aluminum production.”“We also need consistent, predictable trade and tariff policy to plan for current and future investment,” Meenan said. What kinds of products could be impacted by heightened steel and aluminum tariffs? A range of businesses that rely on foreign-made steel and aluminum have already begun feeling the impacts of Trump’s previously-imposed levies. But the latest anticipated hikes could drive up costs even more.Steel and aluminum are used in a range of products like washing machines, consumer electronics and cars. Much of the auto industry relies on a global supply chain. And even if you aren’t in the market to buy a new vehicle, repairs could involve parts that use imports of either metal, driving up overall maintenance and ownership costs.In the grocery aisle, steel and aluminum are ubiquitous in the packaging for many foods, including canned tuna, soup and nuts. Experts warn that hiking import taxes on these materials could led to higher grocery prices overall, further straining consumers wallets.The aluminum and metal tariffs also carry wider implications for construction and transportation as a whole, as many key building parts and materials are made with these metals. Economists further warn of spillover impacts. Even if a product isn’t directly packaged in steel or aluminum, there could be higher costs to build the shelf it’s sold on, for example, or truck used to transport it to the store. And all of that could trickle down to the consumer down the road.If foreign competition becomes “priced out” due to these new tariffs, U.S. steel and aluminum producers may also find room to raise their own prices. As a result, even companies that don’t buy these foreign metals could end up paying more.Steel prices have already climbed 16% since Trump became president in mid-January, according to the government’s Producer Price Index. And as of March 2025, steel cost $984 a metric ton in the U.S., significantly higher than than in Europe ($690) or China ($392), per the U.S. Commerce Department. Will there be any exceptions? The new 50% tariff rate will apply to nearly all steel and aluminum coming into the U.S. from other countries. But the U.K., which recently reached a sweeping trade agreement with the U.S., will see an exception.As part of trade deal reached between the two nations on May 8, the U.K. said that the U.S. had agreed to eliminate its current 25% duties on British steel and aluminum down to zero. That exemption had yet to go into effect in the weeks followingbut in his proclamation issued Tuesday, Trump acknowledged that it was “necessary and appropriate” to implement the deal, and would “accordingly provide different treatment” for these metals coming from the U.K.Per Trump’s proclamation, the duty on British steel and aluminum will now stay 25%. But that rates could be adjusted starting on July 9 if the U.S. government determines that Britain has not complied with the framework.Trump’s planned hikes for steel and aluminum tariffs for the rest of the world could spark retaliation from other trading partners. In response to levies imposed on these metals earlier in the year, for example, the European Union previously outlined countermeasures.The 27-nation bloc later delayed those actions until July 14 in efforts to ease negotiations, but said on Monday that was preparing a list of measures to enact if a trade deal with the U.S. crumbles. AP Writers Jill Lawless in London, Josh Boak and Michelle Price in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP Business Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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