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Utah’s Republican governor on Friday signed a collective bargaining ban that experts are calling one of the most restrictive labor laws in the country, despite overwhelming opposition from union members.
Beginning July 1, unions serving Utah teachers, firefighters, police officers, transit workers, and other public employees will be banned from negotiating on their behalf for better wages and working conditions.
Gov. Spencer Cox announced his decision Friday evening following a week of rallies outside his office in which thousands of union members from the public and private sectors urged him to veto the bill. The Republican-controlled Legislature had narrowly approved it last week after its sponsors abandoned a proposed compromise that would have removed the outright ban.
“I’m disappointed that, in this case, the process did not ultimately deliver the compromise that at one point was on the table and that some stakeholders had accepted,” Cox said in a statement announcing he had signed the bill.
The measure did not pass with veto-proof margins, meaning that if Cox had rejected it, Republican supporters would have needed to pull in more support to override his veto.
Utah joins North Carolina and South Carolina as the most restrictive states for public sector unions, said John Logan, a labor expert at San Francisco State University.
Many educators, who are the state’s most frequent users of collective bargaining, view the new law as wa ay for Republicans to curb the political influence of teachers unions and clear a path for their own education agenda.
Its GOP sponsors argued it was needed to allow employers to engage directly with all employees, instead of communicating through a union representative.
The Utah Education Association, the state’s largest public education employees’ union, criticized Cox for ignoring the many workers who urged him to issue a veto. The union is exploring a possible ballot referendum to try to overturn the law, though the effort would come with a high price tag.
“Despite overwhelming opposition, Governor Spencer Cox and the Legislature ignored the voices of thousands,” the union said in a statement. “This is a blatant attack on public employees and our right to advocate for the success of our profession and students.”
Cox’s decision comes as President Donald Trump is working to gut the U.S. Education Department to the greatest extent of his power by slashing spending and pressuring employees to quit.
The governor signed another bill Friday prohibiting transgender college students from living in dorms consistent with their gender identity.
Students at the state’s public colleges and universities will only be allowed to enter or live in a gendered space, such as a dorm building, locker room, or bathroom, that corresponds with their sex assigned at birth. It’s the first transgender restriction explicitly aimed at university housing, though some states have broad bathroom laws that could be interpreted to apply to dorms.
President Donald Trump is taking a blowtorch to the rules that have governed world trade for decades. The “reciprocal’’ tariffs that he announced Thursday will likely create chaos for global businesses and conflict with America’s allies and adversaries.
Since the 1960s, tariffs — or import taxes — have emerged from negotiations between dozens of countries. Trump wants to seize the process.
“Obviously, it disrupts the way that things have been done for a very long time,’’ said Richard Mojica, a trade attorney at Miller & Chevalier. “Trump is throwing that out the window ... Clearly this is ripping up trade. There are going to have to be adjustments all over the place.’’
Pointing to America’s massive and persistent trade deficits – not since 1975 has the U.S. sold the rest of the world more than it’s bought -- Trump charges that the playing field is tilted against U.S. companies. A big reason for that, he and his advisers say, is because other countries usually tax American exports at a higher rate than America taxes theirs.
Trump has a fix: He’s raising U.S. tariffs to match what other countries charge.
The president is an unabashed tariff supporter. He used them in his first term, and three weeks into his second he has already slapped 10% tariffs on China; effectively raised U.S. taxes on foreign steel and aluminum; and threatened, then delayed for 30 days, 25% taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico.
Economists don’t share Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs. They’re a tax on importers that usually get passed on to consumers. But it’s possible that Trump’s reciprocal tariff threat could bring other countries to the table and get them to lower their own import taxes.
“It could be win-win,” said Christine McDaniel, a former U.S. trade official now at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “It’s in other countries’ interests to reduce those tariffs.”
She noted that India has already cut tariffs on items from motorcycles to luxury cars and agreed to ramp up purchases of U.S. energy.
What are reciprocal tariffs and how do they work?
They sound simple: The United States would raise its tariff on foreign goods to match what other countries impose on U.S. products.
“If they charge us, we charge them,’’ the president told reporters on Sunday. “If they’re at 25, we’re at 25. If they’re at 10, we’re at 10. And if they’re much higher than 25, that’s what we are too.’’
But the White House didn’t reveal many details. It has directed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to deliver a report on April 1 about how the new tariffs would actually work.
Among the outstanding questions, noted Antonio Rivera, a partner at ArentFox Schiff and a former attorney with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is whether the U.S. is going to look at the thousands of items in the tariff code – from motorcycles to mangos -- and try to level the tariff rates out one by one, country by country. Or whether it will look more broadly at each country’s average tariff and how it compares to America. Or something else entirely.
“It’s just a very, very chaotic environment,” said Stephen Lamar, president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association. “It’s hard to plan in any sort of long-term, sustainable way.’’
How did tariffs get so lopsided?
America’s tariffs are generally lower than those of its trading partners. After World War II, the United States pushed for other countries to lower trade barriers and tariffs, seeing free trade as a way to promote peace, prosperity, and American exports around the world. And it mostly practiced what it preached, generally keeping its own tariffs low and giving American consumers access to inexpensive foreign goods.
Trump has broken with the old free trade consensus, saying unfair foreign competition has hurt American manufacturers and devastated factory towns in the American heartland. During his first term, he slapped tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and almost everything from China. Democratic President Joe Biden largely continued Trump’s protectionist policies.
The White House has cited several examples of especially lopsided tariffs: Brazil taxes ethanol imports, including America’s, at 18%, but the U.S. tariff on ethanol is just 2.5%. Likewise, India taxes foreign motorcycles at 100%, and America just 2.4%.
Does this mean the U.S. has been taken advantage of?
The higher foreign tariffs that Trump complains about weren’t sneakily adopted by foreign countries. The United States agreed to them after years of complex negotiations known as the Uruguay Round, which ended in a trade pact involving 123 countries.
As part of the deal, the countries could set their own tariffs on different products – but under the “most favored nation’’ approach, they couldn’t charge one country more than they charged another. So the high tariffs Trump complains about aren’t aimed at the United States alone. They hit everybody.
Trump’s grievances against U.S. trading partners also come at an odd time. The United States, running on strong consumer spending and healthy improvements in productivity, is outperforming the world’s other advanced economies. The U.S. economy grew nearly 9% from just before COVID-19 hit through the middle of last year — compared with just 5.5% for Canada and just 1.9% for the European Union. Germany’s economy shrank 2% during that time.
Trump’s plan goes beyond foreign countries’ tariffs
Not satisfied with scrambling the tariff code, Trump is also going after other foreign practices he sees as unfair barriers to American exports. These include subsidies that give homegrown producers an advantage over U.S. exports; ostensible health rules that are used to keep out foreign products; and loose regulations that encourage the theft of trade secrets and other intellectual property.
Figuring out an import tax that offsets the damage from those practices will add another level of complexity to Trump’s reciprocal tariff scheme.
The Trump team is also picking a fight with the European Union and other trading partners over so-called value-added taxes. Known as VATs, these levies are essentially a sales tax on products that are consumed within a country’s borders. Trump and his advisers consider VATs a tariff because they apply to U.S. exports.
Yet most economists disagree, for a simple reason: VATs are applied to domestic and imported products alike, so they don’t specifically target foreign goods and haven’t traditionally been seen as a trade barrier.
And there’s a bigger problem: VATs are huge revenue raisers for European governments. “There is no way most countries can negotiate over their VAT ... as it is a critical part of their revenue base,’’ Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, posted on X.
Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist for Capital Economics, says that the top 15 countries that export to the U.S. have average VATs topping 14%, as well as duties of 6%. That would mean U.S. retaliatory tariffs could reach 20% — much higher than Trump’s campaign proposal of universal 10% duties.
Tariffs and the trade deficit
Trump and some of his advisers argue that steeper tariffs would help reverse the United States’ long-standing trade deficits.
But tariffs haven’t proven successful at narrowing the trade gap: Despite the Trump-Biden import taxes, the deficit rose last year to $918 billion, the second-highest on record.
The deficit, economists say, is a result of the unique features of the U.S. economy. Because the federal government runs a huge deficit, and American consumers like to spend so much, U.S. consumption and investment far outpaces savings. As a result, a chunk of that demand goes to overseas goods and services.
The U.S. covers the cost of the trade gap by essentially borrowing from overseas, in part by selling treasury securities and other assets.
“The trade deficit is really a macroeconomic imbalance,” said Kimberly Clausing, a UCLA economist and former Treasury official. “It comes from this lack of desire to save and this lack of desire to tax. Until you fix those things, we’ll run a trade imbalance.”
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Chanting “Stop the coup” and carrying signs including “I Love Democracy” and “Resist,” hundreds of people rallied Friday in Boston against the policies of President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
The peaceful rally in freezing conditions was supported by 100 civil rights, environmental, and progressive groups from Massachusetts. Speaker after speaker decried administration policies targeting marginalized communities and urged the crowd to oppose what they called an attack on democracy.
“I’m here because I’m extremely concerned about my grandchildren, especially my granddaughter who’s not going to have the same rights that I have had in terms of controlling my body and all the rights that we’ve experienced and I’ve grown up with,” said Diane Bleier, a 76-year-old from Lexington, at the rally in Boston Common.
“They’re going to be taken away if this evildoer continues to run rampant over the government and destroy our rights and destroy our democracy,” she continued.
Others criticized what they see as a dismantling of the federal government.
“It’s important to stand up and protest and not just stay home and do nothing,” said Ellen Epstein, a Medford resident holding a sign that read “Stop the Trumpster Fire.” “I feel compelled to stand up for what’s right. What is happening now is very wrong.”
Others stressed the need to support and protect immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities, which have been the target of Trump administration policies in the early days of the administration.
“Our government is trying to erase our people, the people that make up our beautiful country including queer people, trans people, immigrants, Black and Indigenous people of color,” Logan Rubio, a 27-year-old Boston resident holding a sign that said, “Queerness is Healing.” “It’s vile and disgusting.”
Rally organizers said they hoped to pressure political leaders to show moral courage and resist Trump’s agenda.
The rally came the same day that layoffs were implemented across federal agencies as part of an effort to reduce the government workforce and a day after vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as health secretary.
OpenAI and Chinese search giant Baidu announced they would make the latest versions of their artificial intelligence services available for free as the AI race heats up. Competition reached new heights last month when Chinese startup DeepSeek debuted a powerful, cheaper-to-produce AI model that’s become a hit with consumers. Baidu’s AI chatbot will be available for free starting April 1, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said users will get unlimited access to its latest model, GPT-5, at no cost.
Black-owned brands with products at Walmart, Target, Sephora and other chain stores are concerned about what the retailers' DEI rollbacks will mean for them, CNBC reports. And for those aspiring to break into mainstream retail, DEI pullbacks on incubator programs at Target and Walmart make the dream even harder to realize. Still, there are green shoots: Sephora's effort to boost founders' lives, and Target is launching 2,000 beauty products, including some from Black and Latino founders, this month.
Arm, a chip designer backed by SoftBank, skyrocketed to prominence by licensing chip blueprints to companies including Nvidia and Qualcomm. The company now plans to launch its own chip this year and has already secured Meta as a customer, the Financial Times reports, citing anonymous sources, in a play that has major implications for the chip-dependent AI industry. By selling its own chip instead of licensing chip designs, Arm will directly compete with some of its biggest customers, including Nvidia.
Retail sales fell the most in two years in January amid massive wildfires in Los Angeles and harsh winter weather elsewhere. The value of purchases, not adjusted for inflation, dropped 0.9%, the Commerce Department reported Friday, led by declines in nine out of 13 product or service categories. Severe conditions can impede sales at brick-and-mortar stores. Also weighing on purchases are sticky inflation and high interest rates, with consumer debt delinquencies having notched their highest in five years during the last quarter.
Airbnb shares surged Friday after it posted strong fourth-quarter financial results and announced ambitious expansion plans. “We want the Airbnb app, kind of similar to Amazon, to be one place you go for all of your traveling and living needs,” CEO Brian Chesky said during an earnings call. To this end, the company is investing up to $250 million in launching new businesses on the app, with the latest offerings set to debut in May.
Most of an estimated 200,000 probationary workers faced layoffs on Thursday and into Friday as the Trump administration and “special government employee” Elon Musk continued their efforts to downsize federal agencies. Some workers were given just 30 minutes to collect their belongings and exit the premises, The Guardian reports. The mass terminations are being challenged in court, while separately a federal judge has allowed the administration’s deferred resignation program to proceed, with some 75,000 workers accepting the terms.
During the Covid-era tech boom in 2021, over 1,000 venture-backed startups — including Impossible Foods and MasterClass — achieved unicorn status with valuations exceeding $1 billion, Bloomberg reports. But in subsequent years, rising interest rates, dwindling initial public offerings and a heavy focus on artificial intelligence ushered in “the era of the zombie unicorn.” The number of venture capital-backed unicorns yet to be listed for IPOs or be acquired has now reached a record 1,200.
Starbucks' free coffee offer the Monday following the Super Bowl was one of the chain's biggest-ever promotions, according to the company. Teased in a pair of commercials, the promotion — part of a broader effort to "reintroduce" the struggling chain under new CEO Brian Niccol — brought an 11.3% increase in-store traffic, as well as a single-day record for signups to its Starbucks Rewards loyalty program.
Fast-fashion giant Shein's long-rumored initial public offering could face delays thanks to new U.S. trade rules, according to a report in the Financial Times, citing anonymous sources. Valued at $66 billion in 2023, Shein's U.S. business was recently disrupted by U.S. tariffs and uncertainty surrounding the "de minimis" trade loophole, which allows it to cheaply ship products from China. The IPO is likely to be pushed back to the second half of 2025.
As the job market tightens, many U.S. employees eyeing new jobs are open to switching industries. Four in 10 say they would consider changing industries — and 14% have either already made the jump or are actively pursuing one, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence survey. Younger workers are more likely to be looking to make a switch: About 27% of Gen Z workers said so, compared to 17% of millennials, 13% of Gen X and 10% of baby boomers.
As the job market tightens and shifts, many U.S. employees open to changing jobs are also considering switching industries, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence survey. In fact, four in 10 would consider changing industries — and 14% have either already made the career jump or are actively looking for new opportunities in another industry.
Younger workers may be more accepting of the winding career path of industry-hopping compared to their older colleagues. About 27% of Gen Z workers say they are likely to be actively looking to make a switch (or already have), compared to 17% of millennials, 13% of Gen X and 10% of baby boomers.
Previous survey findings show that it's taking most job seekers at least six months to find a new role, suggesting some workers have had to branch out beyond their current industries to find stronger opportunities.
What advice would you offer to those contemplating a switch?