business

China’s top leaders sought to project confidence in the country’s economy on Wednesday despite sluggish growth, an escalating trade war with the United States and growing geopolitical uncertainty caused by the Trump administration. The government set a bold target for the year, with Premier Li Qiang, China’s highest-ranking official after Xi Jinping, saying that China … Read more

President Trump made one of the biggest gambles of his presidency Tuesday by initiating sweeping tariffs with no clear rationale on imports from Canada, Mexico and China, triggering a trade war that risks undermining the United States economy. His actions have upended diplomatic relations with America’s largest trading partners, sent markets tumbling, and provoked retaliation … Read more

Sweeping tariffs imposed by President Trump threatened economic upheaval for consumers and businesses in the United States on Tuesday as the country’s biggest trading partners struck back on Tuesday, raising fears of a burgeoning trade war. Canada and China swiftly condemned the U.S. tariffs and announced retaliatory tariffs against American exports. President Claudia Sheinbaum of … Read more

Canada and China retaliate against Trump’s tariffs Canada and China yesterday condemned the sweeping tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and said they would retaliate against U.S. exports. President Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10 percent on imports from China on top of a previous 10 percent. President … Read more

Refugee, prisoner, wine merchant, spy: Peter Sichel was many things in his long, colorful life, but he was probably most often identified as the man who made Blue Nun one of the most popular wines in the world in the 1970s and ’80s. At its peak, in 1985, 30 million bottles of this slightly sweet … Read more

The sweeping tariffs on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese products that President Trump imposed on Tuesday could strain the system that collects import duties and the government agencies that enforce those fees, trade and legal experts said. Collecting import duties is usually a routine task, but the new tariffs are being imposed on Mexican and Canadian … Read more

An investment group led by BlackRock, a giant American asset manager, has agreed to buy two ports in Panama that are owned by a Hong Kong company and that have become the subject of tensions between Panama and the Trump administration. BlackRock will buy the ports, which sit at either end of the Panama Canal, … Read more

At 17, Liu Jiakun was sent to labor in the countryside as part of China’s “re-education” efforts during the Cultural Revolution. “I didn’t see a clear future for me — a lot of things were quite meaningless,” Liu said through a translator (his son, Martin) in a recent phone interview from his office in Chengdu, … Read more

China signaled on Tuesday that it is willing to go further than before in its trade tit-for-tat with President Trump by hitting a top American biotechnology company. China’s Ministry of Commerce said it would ban Illumina, a San Diego company, from importing its gene-mapping products in China. Illumina is the world’s leading producer of gene-sequencing … Read more

Minutes after President Trump’s latest tariffs took effect, the Chinese government said on Tuesday that it was imposing its own broad tariffs on food imported from the United States and would essentially halt sales to 15 American companies. China’s Ministry of Finance put tariffs of 15 percent on imports of American chicken, wheat, corn and … Read more