- Cash Flow Management: Deferring duties frees up capital, crucial when tariffs inflate costs. For example, a $100,000 shipment from Canada at a 25% tariff saves $25,000 upfront.
- Supply Chain Flexibility: Businesses can stockpile goods before tariffs take effect, avoiding price hikes or shortages.
- Re-Export Advantage: Goods destined for international markets bypass U.S. tariffs, maintaining competitiveness.
- Mitigating Uncertainty: With tariff policies fluctuating, bonded warehouses provide a buffer to adapt strategies.
- E-commerce: Retailers can store high-demand goods, deferring duties until sales are confirmed.
- Manufacturing: Companies can import raw materials, process them, and re-export finished products duty-free.
- Strategic Sourcing: Firms can shift to suppliers in countries with lower tariffs, using bonded facilities to manage transitions.
- Costs: Renting bonded warehouse space and managing compliance add expenses.
- Complexity: CBP regulations require meticulous documentation and oversight.
- Limitations: Not all goods qualify, and time limits (typically five years) apply.
The IMF, Goldman Sachs, and Wall Street are forecasting a slowdown. So, what would a recession do to Work From Home?
Will it lead CEOs to get tough and force employees back into the office 5-days a week? Or perhaps CEOs will double down on hybrid to cut office costs and maintain staff moral?
We surveyed over 400 US firms in February 2025 to ask them this question. If the US went into a recessio,n how would this impact their WFH policies?
In summary, not much. Firms would marginally reduce WFH from 22% to 20% of days. The simple reason is that hybrid WFH is profitable as it controls costs and helps employee morale. These matters are just as much in recessions as in booms.
President Donald Trump makes no secret of his love of tariffs. He heralds them as a way of bringing in revenue, striking back at countries he sees as taking advantage of the U.S. in trade, and as a cudgel to push countries to do what he wants. Even Canada and Mexico have been handed heavy taxes.
On April 2, Trump announced far-reaching new tariffs on nearly all trading partners, only to roll most of them back on April 9 after the stock market tanked.
Still, he claims that tariffs, a tax on imported goods, are bringing in billions of dollars a day. On April 8, speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner, he said, “We’re making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day. Do you believe it? I was told $2 billion a day.”
Here’s a look at the facts.
—
CLAIM: The U.S. is earning $2 billion per day from tariffs.
THE FACTS: That’s false. Trump began raising tariffs in February. That month, about $7.247 billion in customs duties were collected, or $258.82 million per day. In March, the most recent monthly figure available, a total of about $8.168 billion in customs duties was collected, or approximately $263.48 million per day. A customs duty is a type of tariff.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in an April 8 statement that as a result of 13 tariff-related presidential actions taken by Trump, it was collecting each day “over $200 million in additional associated revenue.” The agency is responsible for collecting tariffs.
Those numbers are in line with what the U.S. has taken in thus far during fiscal year 2025, which started Oct. 1 under the Biden administration. According to the latest Treasury Department numbers, $56.215 billion in customs duties and certain excise taxes have been collected, or $283.91 if broken out per day. An excise tax is also a type of tariff.
The U.S. has collected approximately $3.076 billion in customs and certain excise taxes so far this month, coming out to about $180.94 million per day, according to the Treasury Department’s data.
Economists suggest that Trump’s number is likely based on the value of imported goods from fiscal year 2024, disregarding the impact higher tariffs will have on supply and demand.
“It’s almost certainly the case we’re collecting less than that,” said Robert Johnson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, of Trump’s $2 billion per day figure.
The U.S. took in about $3.3 trillion worth of goods in fiscal year 2024, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Applying the average tariff rate Trump announced on April 2 — 20% — to that figure comes out to $660 trillion worth of goods. That’s roughly $1.8 billion of revenue per day.
But, economists note, this calculation does not account for behavioral changes. For example, if tariffs increase and make a product less profitable, importers may cease importing it altogether. And if consumers face higher prices due to increased tariffs, they may choose not to buy certain items.
“That’s the most optimistic scenario, because that won’t happen,” said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University, of Trump’s $2 billion figure. “You can’t do a calculation of expected tariff revenue off past trade flows and then multiply with it by a currently applied tariff and expect that the past trade flow remains the same.”
Ryan Monarch, an assistant professor of economics at Syracuse University, agreed, noting, “It’s a very bad assumption to assume that purchases are just completely unchanged.”
Not to mention, it is U.S. importers — American companies — that pay tariffs, not foreign governments. That money goes to the U.S. Treasury, and those companies, in turn, typically pass their higher costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices.
Still, tariffs can hurt foreign countries by making their products pricier and harder to sell abroad. Foreign companies might have to cut prices — and sacrifice profits — to offset the tariffs and try to maintain their market share in the U.S.
The federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights is classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority, essentially putting them on indefinite hold, according to two agency employees.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a meeting on Wednesday clarifying how it would treat new worker complaints of gender-identity discrimination in view of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes — male and female.
Staff who handle incoming charges, or intakes, were directed to code them as “C,” the lowest categorization in the EEOC’s system that is usually reserved for meritless charges, according to the agency employees who attended the Microsoft Teams meeting for intake supervisors, district directors and support staff that was led by the EEOC’s national intake coordinator. The employees asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to reveal the meeting details.
An EEOC spokesman declined to comment on the meeting, saying that “per federal law, we cannot discuss investigatory practices.”
The decision is the latest step by the EEOC to back away from defending the rights of transgender and nonbinary workers in a major shift in civil rights enforcement under the Trump administration. In February, the EEOC moved to drop seven of its own pending lawsuits alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people.
EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, a Republican, has said one of her priorities will be implementing Trump’s executive order on gender and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.” She had previously ordered that any worker discrimination charge that “implicates” Trump’s executive order on gender should be elevated to headquarters for review.
This latest decision to bury gender identity-related complaints leaves transgender and nonbinary people experiencing discrimination at work with limited recourse. U.S. workers must file discrimination complaints through the EEOC in most cases before they can seek other legal avenues.
Giving gender identity-related cases the lowest priority essentially pre-determines that they are meritless, said Chai Feldblum, who was an EEOC commissioner from 2010-2019.
“If they say they are bringing it to a central location to give them due consideration, they at least have the facade of doing something,” Feldblum said of Lucas’ previous directive on gender identity cases. “If they are sweeping them out the door as 'C” charges, they are not doing their job.”
The EEOC has said that it will still issue “right to sue” notices in gender-identity-related cases upon request, meaning workers can decide to pursue a lawsuit on their own. The agency will also honor requests for mediation, according to the employees who attended Wednesday’s meeting. But if mediation fails, the EEOC will take no further action on the case, the employees said.
The EEOC’s new approach to gender-identity related discrimination has raised a debate over whether the agency is acting in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark case that established that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination based on gender identity.
Civil rights activists have accused the EEOC of illegally defying the Supreme Court and abdicating its duty to enforce anti-discrimination laws by abandoning gender-identity related lawsuits. Lucas has previously told The AP that the EEOC has a duty to comply with Trump’s executive orders but she has not directly addressed the criticism that the agency’s handling of gender-identity cases are in tension with the Supreme Court.
The EEOC in fiscal year 2024 received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and 3,000-plus in 2023, according to the agency’s website.
Among the threats tariffs pose to the U.S. economy, none may be as strange as the sell-off in the dollar.
Currencies rise and fall all the time because of inflation fears, central bank moves and other factors. But economists worry that the recent drop in the dollar is so dramatic that it reflects something more ominous as President Donald Trump tries to reshape global trade: a loss of confidence in the U.S.
The dollar’s dominance in cross-border trade and as a safe haven has been nurtured by administrations of both parties for decades because it helps keep U.S. borrowing costs down and allows Washington to project power abroad — enormous advantages that could possibly disappear if faith in the U.S. were damaged.
“Global trust and reliance on the dollar was built up over half a century or more,” says University of California, Berkeley, economist Barry Eichengreen. “But it can be lost in the blink of an eye.”
Since mid-January, the dollar has fallen 9% against a basket of currencies, a rare and steep decline, to its lowest level in three years.
Many investors spooked by Trump don’t think the dollar will be pushed quickly from its position as the world’s reserve currency, instead expecting more of a slow decline. But even that is scary enough, given the benefits that would be lost.
With much of the world’s goods exchanged in dollars, demand for the currency has stayed strong even as the U.S. has doubled its federal debt in a dozen years and does other things that would normally send investors fleeing. That has allowed the U.S. government, consumers, and businesses to borrow at unnaturally low rates, which has helped speed economic growth and lift standards of living.
Dollar dominance also allows the U.S. to push around other countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Russia by locking them out of a currency they need to buy and sell with others.
Now that “exorbitant privilege,” as economists call it, is suddenly at risk.
The dollar drop is odd
“The safe haven properties of the dollar are being eroded,” said Deutsche Bank in a note to clients earlier this month, warning of a “confidence crisis.” Added a more circumspect report by Capital Economics, “It is no longer hyperbole to say that the dollar’s reserve status and broader dominant role is at least somewhat in question.”
Traditionally, the dollar would strengthen as tariffs sink demand for foreign products.
But the dollar not only failed to strengthen this time, it fell, puzzling economists and hurting consumers. The dollar lost more than 5% against the euro and pound, and 6% against the yen since early April.
As any American traveler abroad knows, you can buy more with a stronger dollar and less with a weaker one. Now, the price of French wine and South Korean electronics, and a host of other imports, could cost more not only due to tariffs but also a weaker currency, too.
And any loss of safe-haven status could hit U.S. consumers in another way: Higher rates for mortgages and car financing deals as lenders demand more interest for the added risk.
Federal debt troubles
More worrisome is possible higher interest rates on the ballooning U.S. federal debt, which is already at a risky 120% of U.S. annual economic output.
“Most countries with that debt-to-GDP to would cause a major crisis, and the only reason we get away with it is that the world needs dollars to trade with,” says Benn Steil, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”At some point, people are going to look seriously at alternatives to the dollar. ”
They already have, with a little help from a U.S. economic rival.
China has been striking yuan-only trading deals with Brazil for agricultural products, Russia for oil and South Korea for other goods for years. It has also been making loans in yuan to central banks desperate for cash in Argentina, Pakistan and other countries, replacing the dollar as the emergency funder of last resort.
Another possible U.S. alternative in future years, if their market grows: cryptocurrencies.
Said BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink in his annual shareholder letter about dollar dominance, ”If deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.”
Not everyone is convinced that a big reason the dollar is falling is because of lost faith in the U.S.
Steve Ricchiuto, an economist at Mizuho Financial, says dollar weakness reflects the anticipation of higher inflation due to tariffs. But even if investors aren’t as comfortable holding dollars, he says, they really don’t have much of a choice. No other currency or other asset, like yuan or bitcoin or gold, is vast enough to handle all the demand.
“The U.S. will lose the reserve currency when there is someone out there to take it away,” Ricchiuto says. “Right now, there isn’t an alternative.”
Erratic policy spooks investors
Maybe so, but Trump is testing the limits.
It’s not just the tariffs, but the erratic way he’s rolled them out. The unpredictability makes the U.S. seem less stable, less reliable, and a less safe place for their money.
There are also questions about his logic justifying the policy. Trump says U.S. tariffs will drive down trade deficits, which he cites as evidence that countries are “ripping off” America. But in calculating the tariffs, he looked at trade deficits only in goods, not services in which the U.S. excels. Most economists think trade deficits are not a sign of national weakness anyway because they do nothing to impede economic growth and prosperity.
Trump has also repeatedly threatened to chip away at the independence of the Federal Reserve, raising fears that he will force interest rates lower to boost the economy even if doing so risks stoking runaway inflation. That is a sure fire way to get people to flee the dollar. After Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that he would wait to make any rate moves, Trump blasted him, saying “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”
Economists critical of Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement recall another event, the Suez Crisis of 1956, that broke the back of the British pound. The military attack on Egypt was poorly planned and badly executed and exposed British political incompetence that sank trust in the country. The pound fell sharply, and its centuries-long position as the dominant trading and reserve currency crumbled.
Berkeley’s Eichengreen says Liberation Day, as Trump called April 2, could be remembered as a similar turning point if the president isn’t careful.
“This is the first step down a slippery slope where international confidence in the U.S. dollar is lost.”
