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Sweeping taxes on imports have cost the average American household nearly $1,200 since Donald Trump returned to the White House this year, according to calculations by Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.Using Treasury Department numbers on revenue from tariffs and Goldman Sachs estimates of who ends up paying for them, the Democrats’ report Thursday found that American consumers’ share of the bill came to nearly $159 billion or $1,198 per household from February through November.“This report shows that (Trump’s) tariffs have done nothing but drive prices even higher for families,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the economic committee. “At a time when both parties should be working together to lower costs, the president’s tax on American families is simply making things more expensive.”In his second term, Trump has reversed decades of U.S. policy that favored free trade. He’s imposed double-digit tariffs on almost every country on earth. According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, the average U.S. tariff has shot up from 2.4% at the beginning of the year to 16.8%, the highest since 1935.The president argues that the import taxes will protect U.S. industries from unfair foreign competition, bring factories to the United States and raise money for the Treasury.“President Trump’s tariffs have actually secured trillions in investments to make and hire in America as well as historic trade deals that finally level the playing field for American workers and industries,” said White House Spokesman Kush Desai. “Democrats spent decades complaining about lopsided trade deals undermining the American working class, and now they’re complaining about the one president who has done something about it.”The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the higher costs to their customers.Democrats did well in elections last month in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because voters blame Trump and the Republicans for the high cost of living, just as they’d blamed Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the same thing a year earlier.Economist Kimberly Clausing of the UCLA School of Law and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, last week told a House subcommittee that Trump’s tariffs amount to “the largest tax increase on American consumers in a generation, lowering standards of living for all Americans.” Clausing, a Treasury Department tax official in the Biden administration, has calculated that Trump’s import taxes “amount to an annual tax increase of about $1,700 for an average household.” Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Coca-Cola said Wednesday that its chief operating officer will become its next CEO in the first quarter of 2026.The Atlanta beverage giant said its board elected Henrique Braun as CEO effective March 31. James Quincey, Coke’s current chairman and CEO, will transition to executive chairman of the company.Braun, 57, has worked at Coca-Cola for three decades. Prior to assuming the COO role earlier this year, he led operations in Brazil, Latin America, Greater China and South Korea. He has held positions overseeing Coke’s supply chain, new business development, marketing, innovation, general management and bottling operations.Braun was born in California and raised in Brazil. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from the University Federal of Rio de Janeiro, a master of science degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from Georgia State University.David Weinberg, Coca-Cola’s lead independent director, called Quincey, 60, a “transformative leader” who will continue to remain active in the business.During Quincey’s nine years as CEO, Coke added more than 10 additional billion-dollar brands, including BodyArmor and Fairlife. He also brought Coke into the alcoholic drink market with Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, which went on sale in 2021.In 2020, Quincey led a restructuring that reduced Coke’s brands by half and laid off thousands of employees. Quincey said Coke wanted to streamline its structure and focus its investments on fast-growing products like its Simply and Minute Maid juices.But as Quincey steps down as CEO, Coke is facing numerous challenges, including tepid demand for its products in the U.S. and Europe and increasing customer scrutiny of its ingredients. This summer, after a nudge from President Donald Trump, Coke said it would release a version of its trademark Cola with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.Weinberg said the board is confident that Braun will build on the company’s strengths and seek out growth opportunities globally.Coke shares were flat in after-market trading. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Vibe coding has come to Washington. Figma’s AI prototyping tool Figma Make is now available to its Figma for Government users, letting government product managers and designers build and iterate on prototypes and apps with a prompt. The development comes as federal agencies face a loomingand possibly impossibledeadline. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in August that established a National Design Studio and an initiative to improve government services by Independence Day next year, but government cuts mean there are fewer federal workers to get the job done. It’s a huge undertaking, considering the government’s digital footprint, which includes more than 10,000 websites used by more 400 million people, businesses, and organizations annually. The hope is that Figma Make will cut the production time of prototypes from weeks to hours, as federal teams will be able to use vibe coding, or letting an AI application make code for them, to iterate faster on mockup elements like a website user flow. Figma received FedRAMP authorization earlier this year, a clearance that gives its software a stamp of approval for use across the U.S. government. Already, the San Franciscobased design software company says it has more than 100 federal, regional, and local government agencies around the world as customers, including several U.S. federal government agencies, though they declined to name them. The news shows how Silicon Valley is taking a growing role in government design work in Trump’s second term. Trump named Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia chief design officer, and on Tuesday, the Defense Department announced it would use Google’s Gemini for its AI platform. Figma reported 38% year-over-year growth of $274 million in its November quarterly earnings call. CEO Dylan Field said about 30% of its biggest customers spending $100,000 or more in annual recurring revenue were using Figma Make on a weekly basis.
Category:
E-Commerce
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