Trump favors stiffest tariffs, report says
President Donald Trump has told confidants that he wants to impose the harshest tariffs on steel and aluminum imports recommended by the Commerce Department, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Trump has said he wants to slap a global tariff of 24 percent on steel imports, the most severe of three options presented to him in a report in January. He is also considering as much as a 10 percent duty on all aluminum entering the U.S., which would be more than 2.5 percentage points higher than the harshest of Commerce's recommendations.
The process is ongoing, White House officials said on Friday.
Tariffs on such widely used commodities could spark retaliation from nations including China and allies like Canada, while potentially raising prices on everything from cars to beer cans. Some political analysts and economists have speculated that the president would take a targeted approach to the tariffs, and he's under pressure from members of his own Republican Party to refrain from measures that may antagonize other countries and disrupt supply chains.
The Commerce Department concluded in a report last month that steel and aluminum imports imperil U.S. national security because they undercut domestic production.
-- Bloomberg News
General Mills pays $8B for Blue Buffalo
MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills for 15 years has bought fast-growing makers of natural and organic foods, repositioning itself as food habits changed. On Friday, it bought the biggest name in premium pet foods, Blue Buffalo.
The deal, valued at $8 billion, is the second-biggest in the 151-year history of General Mills. General Mills' bought Pillsbury for $10.5 billion in 2000.
The company is paying substantially above average for Blue Buffalo, as measured by a multiple of that company's profits. But the deal is expected to immediately increase General Mills' sales by about 10 percent.
"We were looking for a company that was growing, that was purpose-driven, that would fit into the rest of our portfolio of brands, something that would be consistent with what we did," said Jeff Harmening, chief executive of General Mills. "Blue Buffalo fit all those criteria."
With Blue Buffalo, General Mills is getting a company that is still in a period of very fast growth. Blue Buffalo reported 2017 sales growth of 11 percent and expects another double-digit increase this year. Its full-year adjusted profit rose 25 percent..
-- Tribune News Service
Owe card users $330M, Citigroup says
Citigroup is preparing to issue $330 million in refunds after the bank discovered it had overcharged nearly 2 million credit card accounts on their annual interest rates, a spokesman said Friday.
The bank, which has about 150 million credit card accounts, said it caught the error in a routine internal review mandated under federal law. Citigroup said it had notified regulators about the mistake.
Citigroup disclosed the error in its annual report, filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bank said it had discovered "methodological issues" in its calculations of some customers' annual interest rates.
Bank spokesman Elizabeth Fogarty said the average refund would be $190 and that 1.75 million accounts were affected.
-- The New York Times
Fed report: Many prime-age men idle
Men in their prime working years -- those 25 to 54 years old -- have left the labor force at an astonishing rate and they may never return if the state of the U.S. job market holds, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
A decline in demand for middle-skilled work -- a phenomenon dubbed "job polarization," because more positions are concentrated at the higher and lower ends -- has played a role in keeping prime-age men out of the job market, Didem Tuzemen, an economist at the Kansas City Fed, wrote in the paper released this week. Without job polarization, Tuzemen estimated that 1.9 million more prime-age men would have been employed in 2016.
Middle-skilled jobs are those that often involve routine tasks and are procedural or rule-based, making them easier to automate. On the other hand, low-skilled jobs are mostly service-oriented and high-skilled jobs involve analytical or managerial skills.
The participation rate of prime-age men has steadily decreased in the last half century. As of January, 89 percent of prime-age men were in the labor force, down from around 97 percent after World War II, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That includes people who are working, or are unemployed and actively looking for a job.
-- Bloomberg News
S&P upgrades Russia from 'junk' status
Russia won its first upgrade from S&P Global Ratings since 2006, a milestone decision that returns the world's biggest energy exporter to investment grade after three years at junk.
The sovereign rating was lifted to BBB- from BB+, with a stable outlook, S&P said in a statement on Friday. That puts it on par with Kazakhstan, Bulgaria and Indonesia. Fitch Ratings, which already has an investment-grade score for Russia, on Friday affirmed the rating at BBB- with a stable outlook.
"The upgrade reflects the track record of prudent policy response that has allowed the Russian economy to adjust to lower commodity prices and international sanctions," S&P said in the statement.
Russia's spell in junk at S&P and Moody's started in 2015, as a slump in crude and international sanctions drove it toward recession. Oil prices are now recovering, fragile economic growth is back and more U.S. sanctions are off the table for the immediate future. While investors predicted it was only a matter of time before Russia won an upgrade, few anticipated the move would come as early as it did.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 02/24/2018