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Trump makes tariff changes

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Monday adjusted tariffs on some steel, aluminum and copper imports, lowering some tariffs on farming equipment and extending tariffs on other equipment. In an executive order, Trump lowered tariffs on agricultural equipment, including combines and harvesters, to 15% from 25%. He expanded the existing category of industrial equipment that is subject to a 15% tariff to include mobile industrial equipment like bulldozers and forklifts.

Ohio suspends data center tax break

Ohio, one of the nation’s data center destination hot spots, is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states to attract the massive new facilities that power and train artificial intelligence chatbots. The move Wednesday by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets and the industry is under pressure to pay the full costs of the vast network of its computing warehouses needed to power AI. The size of Ohio’s tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous ...

US stocks gain ground, adding to their records, as Dell soars

Wall Street pushed further into the record books Friday, as the major stock indexes extended the market’s recent winning streak and closed out a solid month of gains. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%, notching its seventh consecutive gain and ninth straight winning week — the longest such streak since 2023. The benchmark index set an all-time high for the fourth day in a row. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7% and the Nasdaq composite added 0.2%. The Dow and Nasdaq also reached new heights after posting record highs earlier in the week. Big technology stocks have been behind ...

Key inflation gauge accelerates in April

WASHINGTON — A key inflation gauge accelerated in April to the highest level in three years, squeezing Americans’ finances and creating political challenges for President Trump and congressional Republicans with midterm elections just five months away. Inflation jumped to 3.8% in April compared with a year ago, the Commerce Department said Thursday, up from 3.5% in March and the highest since May 2023. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.4%, down from the 0.7% jump in March but still higher than the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve would prefer. Thursday’s inflation report ...

Piece of Italy: Newest Graystone complex now open

Developer Jeff Long has recently completed a $40 million, nine-story, market-rate apartment building for seniors on ground that was formerly part of the Bon Secours hospital campus. The 340,000-square-foot Casa Bella on the 2600 block of Eighth Avenue is part of Long’s Grande Palazzo ...

US jobless claims rise to 215,000

WASHINGTON — More Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, but layoffs remain low despite economic uncertainty caused by the Iran war. The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims were up to 215,000, up from 210,000 the week before. The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, rose by nearly 6,300 to 209,000. “Initial claims are still impressively low, near historic lows,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary. “The uptick from last week to this week is trivial in a labor ...