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John Gutierrez had been thinking about buying a new laptop for the past year. The Austin, Texas, resident needed a computer with faster processing and increased storage for his photography work and had his sights set on a product from a Taiwanese brand.Then President Donald Trump announced expansive new import tariffs Wednesday, including a 32% tax on imports from Taiwan. That same day, Gutierrez ordered the laptop, with a base price of $2,400, from a retailer in New York specializing in photo and video gear.“I thought I’d bite the bullet, buy it now, and then that way I’ll have the latest technology on my laptop and don’t have to worry about the tariffs,” he said.Gutierrez was among the U.S. consumers rushing to buy big-ticket items before the tariffs take effect. Economists say the tariffs are expected to increase prices for everyday items, warning of potentially weakened U.S. economic growth.The White House hopes the tariffs prod countries to open their economies to more American exports, leading to negotiations that could reduce tariffs, or that companies increase their production in the U.S. to avoid higher import taxes.Rob Blackwell and his wife needed a new car that could handle long drives from Arlington, Virginia, to their son’s college. Their current electric vehicle is older with a limited range, and it will soon be used by his daughter, who is on the verge of getting her driver’s license.“I have been telling my wife that for some time we were going to need to do it,” he said, “and I was watching to see what the president did with tariffs.”Blackwell wanted another EV, but said leasing made more economic sense because the technology is ever-changing. He had his eye on the new General Motors Optiq; it’s an American car but made in Mexico, which could be subject to tariffs on supply chains that might increase the cost.After hearing that tariffs would be announced, they made plans the weekend before to lease the car. He said the dealership honored the agreement they worked out before the tariffs were finalized. And although he said the salespeople were a pleasure to deal with, Blackwell sensed a shift in their stance.“They know what we know, which is suddenly it flips from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market very quickly,” Blackwell said, adding that he is happy with his choice.“It was just a simple rational decision,” he said. “If this is what the government’s going to do, I need to get my act together.”Lee Wochner, CEO of the Burbank, California-based Counterintuity marketing and strategy firm, also needed a new vehicle. He wanted a more presentable car for business meetings, but kept putting it off because of his busy work schedule.On March 27, a Thursday, he told his firm’s car broker: “Ed, I need a car pronto and it’s got to happen by Sunday.”The broker gave him some car and pricing options and he leased an Audi Q3, which was delivered Sunday to his house by a nearby dealership.A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed how much he saved by leasing before the tariffs were implemented. If he had waited, Wochner said, it would have cost about another $4,300.“One of the things my car broker said was that deals that were already written, some of the dealerships were ripping them up already and renegotiating them because they were afraid that they weren’t going to be able to get enough new inventory at a price anybody would buy,” he said.He believes prices will continue to increase because the U.S. has lost the trust of the international trade market.“If you need a new car, if you can get that pre-tariff deal still, you should go get it,” he said, “because who knows what next Wednesday might be like.” Claire Rush and Mark Thiessen, Associated Press
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President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across a wide swath of American society. So when Trump sent a White House invitation to the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgersthe franchise of Jackie Robinson, a team whose identity is indelibly linked to its role in dismantling racial segregation in sportsit surprised some that the Dodgers accepted. Less than a week before they did so the Defense Department removed a tribute to Robinson on its website, a move apparently linked to its DEI purge. (The page was restored following a public outcry.) Author and retired urban policy professor Peter Dreier is among those who have criticized the Dodgers decision to celebrate their World Series victory with Trump. Dreier, who has chronicled the history of baseball and social activism in two books, co-wrote an opinion piece in the L.A. Times making the case for why the Dodgers should decline an invite from Trumpeven before one was issued. Capital & Main spoke with Dreier the weekend before the Dodgers were scheduled to visit the Oval Office. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Capital & Main: Dodger manager Dave Roberts says that visiting the White House isnt about the current president but about the office itself. Why do you disagree with that? Peter Dreier: Every president likes to get his picture taken with famous athletes. This is a photo opportunity for Trump to be seen with popular athletes and to bask in the reflected glory of the Dodgers victory. So its clearly not just about the office, its about the occupant. Hes sliding in the polls right now, and I assume he thinks that being seen with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani will give him some free publicity that can help his presidency. So I think its naive and somewhat disingenuous for Dave Roberts to say that, and I doubt he believes it. Given the Dodgers history of breaking the color barrier by making Jackie Robinson the first Black Major League Baseball player, should that history and Trumps targeting of DEI have been a factor in the Dodgers decision about going to the White House? The Dodgers pat themselves on the back all the time for being the first team to integrate, and theyve ridden the Jackie Robinson reputation for a long time since 1947. So thats clearly something that they are proud of. Trump has called for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. Los Angeles is a city with a very large number of immigrants and whose economy relies in large part on immigrant labor, including that of undocumented immigrants. Should that have played a role in the teams decision? There are quite a few players on the Dodgers who are from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. If they have any social conscience or awareness, which Im sure most of them do, they arent happy with the way Trumps administration is treating immigrants. Will you stop going to Dodger games? If I stopped going to sports events because I didnt like the politics of the players or organization, I wouldnt go to sports events. Just like if I only bought clothes made by union labor Id be naked. Itll be interesting to see whether Billie Jean King or Magic Johnson [part owners of the Dodgers] go to the White House. They explicitly campaigned for Harris. Are you disappointed that neither Johnson nor King nor any of the more prominent Dodger players have spoken out against the teams decision to go visit Trump in the White House? Yes. Im disappointed that they didnt have the courage to speak out. Maybe Billie Jean King and Magic will speak out at some point, but so far, they havent. When it comes to sports and politics, where do you think individual players or teams should draw the line and either take a stand or not? If youre a big star, you can speak out. You might lose some fans, but you might gain some fans. Trump barely got half of the votes in the United States and got very few in the L.A. area, so it would not be that harmful to the careers of Dodger players for them to speak out against the Dodgers going to meet Trump. And its very disappointing that none of them have stepped up to the plate, so to speak. Would Jackie Robinson have gone with the Dodgers to visit Donald Trump and the White House, were he alive today? Jackie Robinson would be outraged by the Dodgers meeting with Trump. Jackie Robinson was a liberal Republican. He went to the Republican convention [in 1964] supporting the liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller when they nominated Barry Goldwater, and he heard people say things in that convention that so angered him that he came out of that event and said I know what it must have felt like to be at a Nazi rally. Donald Trump is a lot worse. Robinson always had the courage of his convictions regardless of what impact it had on him. He was criticized during his playing career for speaking out, and he said Im always going to speak out against injustice and if you dont like it, its too bad. So Im 100% sure Jackie Robinson would be upset that the Dodgers are going to the White House, and I think hed be extremely disappointed in [Black superstar] Mookie Betts in particular. Doesnt every player and executive on a team have equal responsibility for their decision to go or not to go to visit a controversial president in the White House? Betts was the one that I thought would be most likely to speak out first and then hed bring other players along with him. Hes sort of the moral leader of the team. After George Floyd was killed he got the team, white and Black, not [to] play for a game. And what theyre all saying is, Im doing this for the team, but theres a bigger team called America or a bigger team called society. And theyre playing under a fascist president, and I would hope that people that have a public platform like Major League Baseball players would speak out. Danny Feingold, Capital & Main language at top of story: This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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Four space tourists who orbited the north and south poles returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down in the Pacific to end their privately funded polar tour.Bitcoin investor Chun Wang chartered a SpaceX flight for himself and three others in a Dragon capsule that was outfitted with a domed window that provided 360-degree views of the polar caps and everything in between. Wang declined to say how much he paid for the 3 1/2-day trip.The quartet, who rocketed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday night, returned off the Southern California coast. It was the first human spaceflight to circle the globe above the poles and the first Pacific splashdown for a space crew in 50 years.The Chinese-born Wang, now a citizen of Malta, invited Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian polar guide Eric Philips, all of whom shared stunning vistas during their voyage.“It is so epic because it is another kind of desert, so it just goes on and on and on all the way,” Rogge said in a video posted by Wang on X while gazing down from orbit.Mikkelsen packed the capsule with camera equipment and spent much of her time behind the lens.All four suffered from space motion sickness after reaching orbit, according to Wang. But by the time they woke up on day two, they felt fine and cranked open the window cover right above the South Pole, he said via X.Besides documenting the poles from 270 miles (430 kilometers) up, Wang and his crew took the first medical X-rays in space as part of a test and conducted two dozen other science experiments. They named their trip Fram2 after the Norwegian sailing ship that carried explorers to the poles more than a century ago. A bit of the original ship’s wooden deck accompanied the crew to space.Their medical tests continued at splashdown. All four got out of the capsule on their own, heaving bags of equipment so researchers could see how steady returning space crews are on their feet. They pumped their fists in jubilation.SpaceX said its decision to switch splashdown sites from Florida beginning with this flight was based on safety. The company said Pacific splashdowns will ensure that any surviving pieces of the trunkjettisoned near flight’s endfalls into the ocean.The last people to return from space to the Pacific were the three NASA astronauts assigned to the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer
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