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Credit…Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
The United States and the European Union said Monday they had begun discussions to resolve a conflict over steel and aluminum imports that was a major front in the Trump administration’s trade wars and a serious burden on trans-Atlantic relations.
As part of a truce announced Monday, the European Union will not, as planned, increase tariffs on products like United States whiskey, orange juice and motorcycles, which the bloc imposed in 2018 in retaliation for duties that the Trump administration imposed on European steel and aluminum. The higher tariffs were scheduled to take effect June 1.
The talks about steel and aluminum are part of an effort by the Biden administration to rebuild relations between the United States and Europe after the Trump administration treated the bloc like an adversary, sometimes threatening to leave NATO and citing national security as a justification for charging 25 percent tariffs on imports of European steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
In March, the United States and European Union temporarily suspended tariffs on billions of dollars of each others’ aircraft, wine, food and other products as they worked to settle a long-running dispute involving Boeing and Airbus, the two leading airplane manufacturers. The United States also temporarily suspended retaliatory tariffs against British products like Scotch whisky that had been imposed as part of the dispute over aircraft subsidies.
Some European officials had hoped President Biden would simply lift the Trump-era tariffs, which are unpopular with businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. But the administration is moving cautiously and is likely to seek something in return, mindful that the tariffs are welcomed in steelmaking regions like Pennsylvania.
In a joint statement, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative; Gina M. Raimondo, the secretary of commerce; and Valdis Dombrovskis, the top European Union trade official, said they would discuss how to address a global glut in steel products that poses “a serious threat to the market-oriented E.U. and U.S. steel and aluminum industries and the workers in those industries.”
The United States and European Union are “allies and partners, sharing similar national security interests as democratic, market economies,” the officials said, adding that they would work together to “hold countries like China that support trade-distorting policies to account.”
Credit…Eze Amos for The New York Times
Target on Monday joined a growing list of retailers, restaurants and theme parks that will allow fully vaccinated customers to go mask free, following new coronavirus safety guidance from the federal government last week that said vaccinated people rarely transmit the virus.
[Answers to your questions about vaccines and masks at work.]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday took many businesses by surprise when it said that people who are vaccinated could go maskless in most places, including indoors. For businesses, the announcement was complicated by the fact that C.D.C. guidance does not override state and local rules. But several major companies have already moved to relax mask requirements. Businesses for the most part have not said they would require customers to show proof that they have been vaccinated.
Here’s the latest on companies that are changing their mask policies.
Costco
Costco, which has more than 500 U.S. stores, said it would allow fully vaccinated customers to go mask-free where state and local guidance allowed. The retailer said it would “not require proof of vaccination” but would ask for its customers’ “responsible and respectful cooperation with this revised policy.”
Publix
Publix, which has 1,270 grocery stores in the Southeast, said “face coverings are optional for fully vaccinated individuals inside Publix stores” subject to local regulations.
Starbucks
Starbucks, which has 32,000 cafes worldwide, said that facial coverings would be optional for vaccinated customers beginning on Monday, unless local regulations requireed them. Employees at Starbucks locations in the United States and Canada will still be required to wear masks.
Target
Target, which has 1,909 stores in the United States, said it would no longer require fully vaccinated customers and employees to wear face coverings, except where required by local ordinances. The retailer said that it masks would still be “strongly recommended” for both shoppers and staff members who were not fully vaccinated.
Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe’s, which operates 517 grocery stores across the country, said that customers who were fully vaccinated no longer needed to wear masks in its stores. It will not require proof of vaccination “as we trust our customers to follow C.D.C. guidelines,” a spokeswoman, Kenya Friend-Daniel, said in an email. Masks are still required for store employees.
Walmart and Sam’s Club
Walmart said that vaccinated customers were allowed to go maskless starting May 18 in areas that did not have stricter mandates. A spokesman for the company, which operates more than 4,000 Walmart and nearly 600 Sam’s Club stores in the United States, said it expected its customers to abide by the honor system. Employees can also go mask-free by answering “yes” to a vaccination question that is part of a daily health assessment.
Disney parks
Walt Disney World Resort in Florida said that it was no longer requiring visitors to wear masks in most outdoor areas as of this weekend, though masks are still required in indoor locations. Disneyland in California continues to require masks indoors and out because of state mandates. Disney’s chief executive, Bob Chapek, said on an earnings call Thursday that the company had begun to increase capacity and that the C.D.C.’s new guidance “is very big news for us, particularly if anybody’s been in Florida in the middle of summer with a mask on.” About 150 million people visited Disney’s parks in 2019.
Hershey Park
Hershey Park in Pennsylvania said it would no longer require masks nor social distancing for fully vaccinated guests. The theme park, which drew 3.4 million visitors in 2019, said it would rely on its guests to “accurately follow the guidelines based on their vaccination status.”
Universal Studios
Universal Orlando Resort said masks were no longer required when outdoors but still must be used in “all indoor locations.” Its theme park in California will still require masks both outside and inside because of the state rules.
Credit…Stuart Isett for The New York Times
Redbox, the company best known for its DVD-rental kiosks, is going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a deal that values the company at $693 million, the DealBook newsletter was the first to report.
Redbox’s parent, Outerwall, was acquired by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2016 at a $1.6 billion valuation; it later separated the group’s businesses, which included Redbox, Coinstar and ecoATM. Apollo is rolling over all of its equity in Redbox as part of the deal, which also includes a $50 million investment led by Ophir Asset Management.
Redbox has some 40,000 kiosks across the United States, more than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. Are they needed in the age of Netflix? Redbox gets its DVDs long before many movies arrive on subscription services, said its chief executive, Galen Smith, and its customers are more value-conscious than the typical Netflix streamer. Many are also late adopters to streaming, perhaps because they can’t afford broadband access, Mr. Smith said.
The physical rental business was in decline at the time of Apollo’s acquisition, and revenue from DVDs fell more than a third last year, to around $500 million, as the pandemic held up new releases. As the backlog clears, the company is expecting a rebound. There is a “very long tail for the physical business,” Mr. Smith said.
Redbox is also hoping to convert loyal customers to its own streaming business, which accounted for about 8 percent of its revenue last year. It partners with brands like Showtime and is also creating its own content. Once seen as a threat to the studios, Redbox is now considered an important buyer. “We can create value in helping these studios reach consumers that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach through our platform,” Mr. Smith said.
Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated Press
It’s May 17 and it’s Tax Day, the deadline for filing your 2020 taxes. The Internal Revenue Service in March said that Americans who needed it could take extra time to file their taxes. That time has arrived.
The one-month delay from the usual April deadline did not offer as much extra time as the I.R.S. gave people last year, when the filing deadline was pushed to July 15. But the aim was the same: to make it easier for taxpayers to get a handle on their finances — as well as tax changes that took effect this year with the signing of the American Rescue Plan.
Still have questions? Here are some articles that might help.
How the Pandemic Has Changed Your Taxes
New rules for a new reality, from stimulus payments to retirement withdrawals to unemployment insurance, could cut your bill or even generate extra refunds.
The Tax Filing Deadline Was Delayed, but Read the Fine Print
The federal government and most states pushed back the date to May 17, but others have gone their own way. It’s a good idea to double-check deadlines.
The Tax Headaches of Working Remotely
“Each state has its own rules,” one tax expert says. So if you worked in a state other than your usual one in 2020, here are some tips on dealing with the tax season.
For Gig Workers and Business Owners, Taxes Are Even Trickier Now
Filing taxes has never been simple for freelancers and business owners, but the pandemic has made it far more complex.
A Break for Working Families
The government is allowing people who qualify for the earned-income tax credit to use income from either 2020 or 2019, whichever will result in a bigger credit.
Credit…Albert Gea/Reuters
U.S. stocks slipped in early trading on Monday and most European equity indexes were lower, reversing some of Friday’s rally.
The S&P 500 fell about 0.2 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 0.1 percent.
The Wall Street benchmark rose on Friday, but the increase was not enough to reverse a decline of 1.4 percent for the week, when faster-than-expected inflation data rattled markets.
Traders are watching inflation data closely because if it shows signs of a substantial and sustained rise central bank policymakers might pull back on monetary stimulus. On Wednesday, the central bank will publish minutes of its April policy meeting.
Stocks
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Discovery shares rose 8 percent in early trading after confirming it would merge with AT&T’s media business, including the WarnerMedia assets, to create a new giant company. AT&T shares rose more than 3 percent.
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The FTSE 100 in Britain fell 0.4 percent even as England entered the next stage of its exit from lockdown. Indoor dining and hotels reopened as well as entertainment venues such as museums and cinemas. But an increase in the number of cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India has raised concerns about the easing of restrictions.
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Ryanair shares rose slightly after the airline reported a loss of 815 million euros (or $991 million) in the year through March but said that it expected a “strong recovery” in air travel and tourism in the second half of this fiscal year. “The recent strong increases in weekly bookings since early April suggests that this recovery has already begun,” the earnings release said.
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Taiwan’s stock index dropped 3 percent as the island battles its worst coronavirus outbreak. Its government imposed tougher restrictions, including closing cinemas and limiting the size of gatherings, and encouraged people not to panic buy essentials.
Elsewhere in markets
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Oil prices rose slightly. The West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, rose 0.3 percent to $65.58 a barrel.
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Bitcoin fell to about $45,000 on Monday morning, though it recovered some of its losses from the weekend after Elon Musk said Tesla hadn’t sold any Bitcoin. The electric carmaker bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency earlier this year but Mr. Musk recently suspended plans to accept Bitcoin for car payments.
Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
Two economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute conclude in a new paper that the government is to blame for the fact that pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s.
“Intentional policy decisions (either of commission or omission) have generated wage suppression,” write Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens.
Included among these decisions are policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment and to let employers fight unions aggressively, trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad and the tacit or explicit blessing of new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs.
Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens argue that a decades-long loss of leverage largely explains the gap between the pay increases that workers would have received had they benefited fully from rising productivity, and the smaller wage and benefit increases that workers actually received, Noam Scheiber reports for The New York Times.
Drawing on existing measures of the relationship between unemployment and wages, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens estimate that excess unemployment lowered wages by about 10 percent since the 1970s, explaining nearly one-quarter of the gap between wages and productivity growth.
They perform similar calculations for other factors that undermined workers’ bargaining power: the decline of unions; a succession of trade deals with low-wage countries; and increasingly common arrangements like “fissuring,” in which companies outsource work to lower-paying firms, and noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which make it hard for workers to leave for a competitor.
Together, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens conclude, these factors explain more than three-quarters of the gap between the typical worker’s actual increases in compensation and their expected increases, given the productivity gains.
Credit…Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times
Are companies responsible for making sure that every employee without a mask is vaccinated against the coronavirus?
What if unvaccinated employees infect their co-workers — is the company potentially liable? Will companies ask their employees to take Covid-19 tests?
Millions of office workers who have been able to do their job from home during the pandemic are now thinking seriously about returning to work. The prospect raises myriad health safety and workplace protocol questions for employees and companies.
Lauren Hirsch of The New York Times’s DealBook team spoke to lawyers, employers and human resources professionals about some of the questions.
Generally, employers are allowed to require employees to be vaccinated. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance in December stating that vaccine mandates are legal. But this is complicated by proposed legislation in a number of states that would restrict companies’ abilities to set such requirements.
Whether executives are prepared to follow through on the implications of a vaccine mandate is also up for debate.
“If they want to permit employees to remove masks indoors, yes, I believe it does put the burden on the employer to verify,” said Kristin White, a lawyer at Fisher Phillips who specializes in workplace safety regulations.
The White House is also reviewing a new emergency standard on Covid workplace protections from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Labor groups have been pushing for new rules for about a year. OSHA suggests social distancing and masks in the workplace — but a temporary standard would establish requirements. Any new standard now needs to consider the new C.D.C. guidance.
As vaccination numbers rise and the number of Covid-19 cases drop, it’s natural for companies to rethink their workplace plans, said Joseph Allen, who is the director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program and advises companies on Covid-19 strategy.
“What was state-of-the-art last year is not state-of-the-art right now,” he said. “The science has changed, the plans should change.”
