“President Donald Trump’s tariff regime is making everything from American-made steel weights, imported yarn, and Amazon’s “everyday essentials” more expensive while his immigration crackdown is causing worker shortages in key industries. These policies will work in tandem to slow down already expensive deliveries of your favorite goods.
“Denver’s high minimum wage, especially its low tip credit, has unintentionally undermined the financial viability of full-service, labor-intensive restaurants. As costs outpace revenue and margins evaporate, once-thriving independent establishments are closing in droves, eroding the city’s cultural fabric and economic diversity.
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Restaurant operators and advocacy groups agree that Covid sparked the decline, but rising costs since have continued to cripple the industry. Property taxes, utilities, insurance, food and drink prices, rent, and one of the highest minimum wages in the country — higher than in Los Angeles or New York — are straining already razor-thin margins.
The city’s low tip credit, which results in a high minimum wage for tipped workers, is a particular pain point.
Denver City Council unanimously passed a minimum wage increase in November 2019 — just four months before the pandemic hit — and it was fully implemented citywide by 2022. Today, the base minimum wage is $18.81 an hour and the tipped wage is $15.79 — increases of about 70 percent and 95 percent, respectively.
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Per 2019 legislation, wage increases are uncapped and rise annually with the Consumer Price Index. In 2026, the base wage will be $19.29. For operators like Ms. Tronco and Mr. Seidel, who said that labor now consumes more than half his revenue, the math no longer works.
“When you force an operator to give raises every January 1 to the group of people who’s already making the most money, it chokes our ability to give a salaried person or an hourly cook a raise,”
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To keep her business alive, Ms. Tronco has cut the hosts and bussers she hired when opening and reduced weeknight server shifts. She raises her menu prices every six months to keep up with costs. Her numbers have taken a hit: Sales are down an average of 10 percent this year.
“It just feels like whack-a-mole,” Ms. Tronco said. “Inflation has affected everyone … Now we’ve got a tariff situation and all my wine importers are telling me that everything is going to go up $3, $4 a bottle.”
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Mr. Padró said the small tip credit is the industry’s biggest burden. He supports a higher base wage, even up to $25, because most of his employees already earn above that. He said that his servers and bartenders average $38 and $44, respectively. Expanding the tip credit would alleviate some of the burden faced by operators.
“I have 17-year-old kids pouring coffee for their teachers, making more than them,” he said.”
“Senate Republicans have already said they plan to move quickly to confirm Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran to fill one current vacancy. If Cook loses a pending legal challenge and is dismissed — and her replacement is confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate —Trump-appointed Fed governors would hold four of the seven seats on the central bank’s board.
That majority, in turn, would be enough to control the reappointment of the 12 regional bank presidents throughout the country who also have a say on rates and whose five-year terms are scheduled to expire in February.
And that, in effect, could give Trump control of the Fed’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee, whose refusal to lower interest rates throughout his second term has put the president on the warpath with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Any exertion of White House control over the reappointment process for regional bank presidents would represent an extraordinary break in precedent.”
“Overall, the producer price index (PPI), which measures the prices paid to domestic producers for their output, climbed by 0.9 percent last month (well above expectations) and 3.3 percent on an annualized basis. A few categories saw particularly large increases. Wholesale prices for food, for example, rose by 1.4 percent, while wholesale prices for consumer electronics increased by over 3 percent.
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Lots of domestic products rely on imports of raw materials and intermediate goods. You can’t make a chocolate bar without cocoa beans, for example, and over half of all imports are things that domestic businesses use as inputs.
Economists have warned that tariffs would increase the cost of importing component parts and force domestic firms to increase the prices they charge for their outputs. That seems to be exactly what today’s PPI report shows.
Second, the PPI is often seen as an advance warning system for higher inflation at the consumer level—because higher prices at the wholesale level will likely be passed along at the retail level.”
“Even as some Republicans mocked economists for predicting prices would rise as a result of tariffs, there was a whistling-past-the-graveyard quality to the snickering. Yes, tariffs that had been threatened, delayed, and only partially implemented hadn’t yet much increased costs for consumers, but there were clear signs that importers were rushing to beat high customs duties, and that trouble was on the way. Now we’ve had a weak jobs report and a higher-than-expected producer price index (PPI), and it’s clear that tariffs perform just as we were warned: They raise prices for domestic businesses and consumers.”
Trump’s Federal police action in DC is costing one million dollars a day.
Right wing media uses a deadly car accident where an illegal immigrant with a driver’s license made a driving mistake and people died…as evidence of illegals killing people. JD Vance refers to this deadly car accident as murder.
“President Donald Trump and his allies have spent months promising that higher tariffs will usher in a “golden age” of wealth and prosperity for America.
Now, the administration and one of its biggest allies in Congress are pushing for a new round of stimulus checks seemingly aimed at easing the economic pain caused by…yes, those same tariff policies.
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The proposal to send out tariff-funded stimulus checks should at least put an end to two of the more nonsensical claims that the president and his pro-tariff allies have been making. First, this should confirm that Americans—not foreign governments or corporations—are footing the bill for the tariffs.
Second, the idea that tariffs can be used to close the budget deficit should be similarly put to bed. Some estimates suggest that tariffs are likely to widen the deficit (even without any stimulus checks being mailed out), as they will slow economic growth and reduce future tax revenue. Even if you ignore those dynamic projections, there’s a big problem: The $150 billion in tariff revenue collected so far this year can’t be used to pay down the budget deficit if it is first going to be redistributed to Americans in the form of rebate checks.
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If Trump and Hawley want to spare Americans the pain caused by tariffs, there is a much simpler solution here: Get rid of the tariffs.”
“Inflation accelerated again last month with global trade turmoil exacting a toll on consumer prices.
The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% over the prior year in July, and 0.2% from June.
Airfares, used cars, and shelter costs all marched higher, while food prices held fairly steady. (Except for coffee — the morning staple continues to see steep price hikes.)”
The Japanese trade deal is actually bad for U.S. car companies. Cars manufactured in Japan will have a 15% tariff on them, but cars made in Mexico by U.S. companies will have a 25% tariff, giving U.S. companies a disadvantage. They could move that back to the U.S., but the move itself is costly, and the cost to make the cars in the U.S. is even costlier.