Accounting
Trump’s tariff shift has markets, industry groups panicked
President Donald Trump is casting his latest tariff plan as a strategic win. Markets and business leaders only see more chaos ahead.
Stock plunged on Thursday, as
As the dust settled the next morning, the scope of Trump’s trade war was driven home anew when the White House published an order clarifying Trump’s second-term China tariffs would be at least 145%. Even with temporary relief for other trading partners, the rate will still drive up the average U.S. duty rate to
Trump on Thursday acknowledged
The president demurred when asked about the stock selloff, saying he hadn’t seen details and directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to answer a reporter’s question during a cabinet meeting. Bessent downplayed the pullback.
“Up two, down one is not a bad ratio,” Bessent said. “We will end up in a place of great certainty over the next 90 days on tariffs.”
Trump’s advisors continued to publicly frame his turnabout on tariffs as an intentional negotiating play, rather than a retreat fueled by market panic — especially in bonds — as the president himself has
Trump said the first deal with a trading partner on tariffs is “very close” and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said earlier on CNBC that trade talks with some U.S. counterparts are “really, really advanced,” including agreements that were close to done last week. He predicted “quite a bit of movement of world leaders into the White House for the next three to four weeks.”
Still, there were signs of economic pitfalls nearly everywhere one looked.
The highest average tax rate on imports in more than a century could raise prices and stunt economic growth, potentially blunting any momentum after new data showed inflation
And the U.S. clash with China showed no signs of abating, putting a trade relationship worth $690 billion on the precipice of decimation. Online retail giant
Trump previously argued that tariffs would lead to a boom in U.S. manufacturing and jobs and insisted that Americans should deal with short-term pain for long-term gain. His reversal cast doubt about his resolve to follow through.
He acknowledged Wednesday that he put the pause in place as he watched the reaction of the Treasuries market, noting that people were getting “a little queasy.”
While the pause made investors giddy, at least for a few hours, many executives pointed out it was temporary. Trump could change course again.
The prospects of any deal with China remained dim with President Xi Jinping digging in his heels. His government expanded retaliation on Thursday to include curbs on
It’s also unclear if Trump will be able to reach agreements with other nations. He said Thursday “we have to have a deal that we like” but has said little publicly about the specific parameters of what he would accept.
Steve Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, expressed concerns about an “on again, off-again tariff policy” and said that while he welcomes the pause, “it is only a first step in a policy that needs to be more comprehensive, predictable, and durable if we want to encourage the kind of investments that will support more U.S. jobs.”
Trump also injected more uncertainty into the system by floating the notion of exemptions for certain companies, saying he would consider negotiating on the baseline 10% tariff and indicating the higher rates would go back into place by early July if negotiations fail.
The president said he planned to assess the situation and make decisions “just instinctively, more than anything else.”
The slapdash process has sometimes amplified shocks to the system. The White House order implementing his latest tariff levels, published Thursday morning, revealed that Trump’s 125% rate on China did not include a previously imposed duty related to fentanyl. That pushed the new rate on China to 145%, on top of previous tariffs, including those from the president’s first term.
Even as Trump backed away from higher tariffs on nearly 60 trading partners, he threatened to move forward on others. The president is planning other levies on pharmaceutical drugs, lumber, semiconductor chips, copper and perhaps critical minerals. All of those would add to the overall new import taxes.
David French, executive vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation, said the group and its members appreciated the 90-day pause, but that the 10% across-the-board duty would still cause economic pain.
“The global tariff remains in place and is a significant tax increase on imports,” French said. “The escalation with China is concerning as well, especially for companies that are not able to shift their sourcing. We agree on the need for better trade, but we need to use tools other than tariffs to achieve those deals.”
Other business groups have remained silent. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers held off fresh public statements since the president’s announcement Wednesday. Both warned previously about the impacts of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump’s team continued to put on a united front. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the administration is watching the impact of Chinese retaliation “hour by hour.”
She predicted “we’ll see a little bit more movement and adjustment by the market as we move forward” but reiterated the administration was open to
A Republican attempt to block states from enforcing new artificial intelligence rules over the next decade has drawn growing bipartisan objections, exposing tension in Washington over allowing for more unchecked AI development.
The proposal, buried on pages 278 and 279 in the sweeping tax bill passed by the House last month, has drawn sharp criticism from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Marsha Blackburn, as well as Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. More than 200 state lawmakers from both parties also urged Congress this week to scrap the measure.
“We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years,” Greene
Markey and Warren have also been forceful in pushing back against the measure, arguing that it violates Senate rules that bill language included in the budget reconciliation process must relate to spending. “This backdoor AI moratorium is not serious. It’s not responsible. And it’s not acceptable,” Markey said. Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has said he’s “not certain if that provision will survive,” though he has expressed support for it.
Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has taken steps to
But bipartisan resistance to the proposed moratorium on AI rules highlights a fierce divide in Washington over how much to let the industry regulate itself.
Congress has yet to pass a federal framework on AI, which has effectively left the states to take the lead on figuring out how to set rules around the technology. California, New York, Utah and dozens of others have introduced or enacted AI laws in recent years, including bills to address concerns about data privacy, copyright and bias raised by the technology.
If Congress backs away from the proposal, it would mark a setback for top AI developers. In March, OpenAI asked the White House to
So far, the leading AI companies have largely stayed quiet as the fight over the measure plays out. Meta Platforms Inc. declined to comment. Alphabet Inc.’s Google didn’t respond to a request for comment. OpenAI declined to comment beyond its previous policy suggestions.
TechNet, a trade group representing Google, OpenAI and other tech companies, echoed the ChatGPT maker’s concerns about the “developing patchwork” of state AI bills. “In 2025, over 1000 AI bills have been introduced in state legislatures — many containing incompatible rules and requirements,” Linda Moore, chief executive officer of TechNet, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “A consistent national approach is critical,” she added, to address AI risks and “ensure America remains the global leader in innovation for generations to come.”
Anthropic, a safety-focused AI startup that has called for more regulation generally,
“Ten years is a long time,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said at the company’s developer conference on May 22, speaking about the moratorium. “It’s one thing to say, ‘We don’t have to grab the steering wheel now.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘We’re going to rip out the steering wheel and we can’t put it back in for 10 years.'”
Some Republican senators have raised doubts that the AI provision can pass through the reconciliation process, but this camp has also expressed support for an interim ban on state rules to avoid an overly fragmented and complex regulatory landscape.
“I wouldn’t put my money on anything right now until it actually passes,” John Curtis, a Republican senator from Utah, previously
State legislators, however, worry that the provision would rob them of the ability to protect their constituents from the rapidly evolving technology.
“Over the next decade, AI will raise some of the most important public policy questions of our time,” state lawmakers from 49 states wrote in a
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This week’s stats focus in part on the job titles seeing the greatest losses at the IRS during layoffs; as well as the states that have proposed or passed alternatives to the 150-hour rule; the percentage of master’s in accounting program applicants since 2020; the number of PwC employees laid off in May; the projected size of Deloitte’s new New York City headquarters; and the amount of 2026 HSA annual contribution limits, depending on coverage.
CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. said U.S. officials have asked for information related to the accounting of deals it’s made with some customers and said the cybersecurity firm is cooperating with the inquiry.
The Austin, Texas-based company said in a filing Wednesday that it has gotten “requests for information” from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission “relating to the company’s recognition of revenue and reporting of ARR for transactions with certain customers.” ARR refers to annual recurring revenue, a measure of earnings from subscriptions.
The company said the federal officials have also sought information related to a CrowdStrike update last year that crashed Windows operating systems around the world.
“The company is cooperating and providing information in response to these requests,” the filing states.
U.S. prosecutors and regulators have been investigating a $32 million deal between CrowdStrike and a technology distributor, Carahsoft Technology Corp., to provide cybersecurity tools to the Internal Revenue Service, Bloomberg News first reported in February. The IRS never purchased or received the products, Bloomberg News
The investigators are probing what senior CrowdStrike executives may have known about the $32 million deal and are examining other transactions made by the cybersecurity firm, Bloomberg News
Asked for comment about the filing, CrowdStrike spokesperson Brian Merrill said, “As we have told Bloomberg repeatedly, this is old news and we stand by the accounting of the transaction.”
A lawyer for Carahsoft previously declined to comment on the federal investigations, and representatives didn’t respond to subsequent requests for comment about them.
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