Business News

US displaced China as Germany’s biggest single trading partner last year

BERLIN (AP) — The United States was Germany’s biggest single trading partner last year for the first time since 2015, displacing China from the top spot as exports to the Asian power declined. Official figures released Wednesday showed that trade between the U.S. and Germany, which has Europe’s biggest economy, ticked up 0.1% compared with 252.8 billion euros in 2023. Trade with China, Germany’s biggest trading partner every year from 2016 to 2023, dropped 3.1% to 246.3 billion euros. Germany for years expanded exports and dominated world trade in engineered products like industrial machinery and luxury cars. But it’s suffered from increasing competition from Chinese companies, along with many other factors.

Trump’s Labor Department pick has union support. Worker advocates wonder how much power she’d have

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Labor has been hailed by union heads as pro-labor. But advocates for workers’ rights are questioning whether former U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be able to uphold that reputation in an administration that wants to drastically curtail the size and scope of the federal government. The Republican from Oregon is appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions for her confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Committee members grilled Chavez-DeRemer about her past support for a Biden-era law aimed at facilitating union organizing campaigns. She said she backed the PRO Act as a congresswoman but recognized it was “imperfect.”

Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, a key role for Trump’s trade agenda

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed wealthy financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary. The confirmation vote Tuesday puts Lutnick in charge of the Commerce Department, where he will oversee 50,000 employees who do everything from collecting economic statistics to running the census to issuing weather reports. But he’s likely to spend a lot of time managing the president’s aggressive plans to impose import taxes on U.S. trading partners. At his confirmation hearing last month, Lutnick dismissed as “nonsense″ the idea that tariffs contribute to inflation. He expressed support for deploying across-the-board tariffs ”country by country” to strong-arm other countries into lowering barriers to American exports.

As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. But as the number of civilians killed has also soared, so have fears that these tools are contributing to the deaths of innocent people. The Israeli military uses AI to sift through vast troves of intelligence, intercepted communications and surveillance to find suspicious speech or behavior and learn its enemies’ movements. An Associated Press investigation found after the surprise attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, its use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology skyrocketed.

The USAID shutdown is upending livelihoods for nonprofit workers, farmers and other Americans

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is hurting a variety of U.S. companies, nonprofits and farms. They say the cutoff of U.S. money they are owed has left them struggling to pay their workers or cover their bills. Some face financial collapse. USAID Stop-Work, a group tracking the impact, says agency contractors have reported that they have laid off nearly 13,000 American workers. It estimates the actual total is more than four times that. The Trump administration accuses USAID’s programs of being wasteful and promoting a liberal agenda.

Stock market today: Wall Street hovers around its record

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are wavering on Wall Street. The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged, a day after setting an all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 122 points, and the Nasdaq composite was also mostly unchanged. Celanese weighed on the market after the chemical company warned of weaker demand in the auto and other markets. Tesla pushed upward on the market after a rival, Nikola, filed for bankruptcy protection. Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market, even as uncertainty continues amid President Donald Trump’s tariff threats. Stocks fell in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.

Apple unveils a souped-up and more expensive version of its lowest priced iPhone

Apple has released a sleeker and more expensive version of its lowest priced iPhone in an attempt to widen the audience for a bundle of artificial intelligence technology that the company has been hoping will revive demand for its most profitable product lineup. The iPhone 16e unveiled Wednesday is the fourth-generation of a model that’s sold at a dramatically lower price than the iPhone’s standard models. The previous bargain-bin models were called the iPhone SE. The iPhone 16e will boast the souped-up chip needed to run Apple’s AI features, one of several upgrades that will translate into a starting price of $600, a 40% increase from the last iPhone SE.

TV procedurals up their game, with doctors on cruises and quirky single moms solving crimes

NEW YORK (AP) — “Watson” is an unusual TV medical procedural. The CBS series stars Morris Chestnut as the titular character who leads a team of medical detectives set in a present-day Pittsburgh populated with characters from the Sherlock Holmes universe. “Watson” is not alone among the networks jazzing up the tried-and-true procedural. ABC’s “Doctor Odyssey” puts a medical procedural aboard a luxury cruise ship. CBS has Kathy Bates in “Matlock” playing an underestimated retirement-age lawyer with a twist. CBS’ “Elsbeth” and ABC’s “High Potential” are heavy on the quirky but competent crime-solvers. Supercharging network procedurals comes as streaming increasingly offers subscribers a highly curated selection of unconventional series with big names and high production values.

Trump says AP will continue to be curtailed at White House until it changes style to Gulf of America

President Donald Trump says his administration will continue to restrict The Associated Press’ access to cover presidential events until the news agency goes along with his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. It was the first time the president has commented on a dispute that began with the White House blocking AP journalists from events because of its decision to continue using Gulf of Mexico, while also noting Trump has renamed the international body of water the Gulf of America. The White House has also broadened its dispute against the AP for other recommendations it has made for word usage, such as the capitalization of Black and not white in racial references.

Troubled electric vehicle maker Nikola files for bankruptcy protection

Troubled electric vehicle maker Nikola is filing for for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company, once a rising star on Wall Street, became enmeshed in scandal and its founder was convicted in 2022 for misleading investors about its capabilities. Nikola filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and said Wednesday that it has also filed a motion seeking approval to pursue an auction and sale of the business.