CNBC: Mattel CEO says toy manufacturing won’t come to America, but price hikes will

  • Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz told CNBC he does not foresee toy manufacturing coming to America.
  • Instead, the company expects to raise prices in the U.S. to offset President Donald Trump’s 145% tariff on Chinese imports.
  • By the end of the year, less than 40% of Mattel’s product will be sourced from China, with a goal of reducing that to below 25% in the next two years.

One of the goals of President Donald Trump‘s 145% tariffs against China is to drive manufacturing back to America. But the odds of that are low, at least when it comes to toys.

“We don’t see that happening,” Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, less than a day after the company withdrew annual financial targets.

“We need to remember that a significant part of toy creation happens in America,” he said. “Design, development, product engineering, brand management all happens in America. Making product, producing product in other countries, allows us to create quality products at affordable price points.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/06/mattel-ceo-toy-manufacturing-trump-tariffs.html

CNN: The first boats carrying Chinese goods with 145% tariffs are arriving in LA. Shipments are cut in half. Expect shortages soon

American consumers are on the cusp of tough choices because of President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Ships now pulling into US harbors from China are the first to be subject to the massive tariffs that America is imposing on most Chinese imports. That means, in a matter of weeks, consumers will face higher prices and shortages of certain items.

Imports from China have fallen dramatically since Trump imposed steep tariffs – particularly since last month, when the tit-for-tat trade war sent the tariff on most Chinese goods up to 145%.

“This week, we’re down about 35% compared to the same time last year, and these cargo ships coming in are the first ones to be attached to the tariffs that were levied against China and other locations last month,” Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, told CNN Tuesday. “That’s why the cargo volume is so light.”

The drop-off in imports from China on the boats now coming into port is more than 50%, Seroka said. Many importers have canceled previous orders because US businesses aren’t interested in paying the steep tariff, which can more than double the price of Chinese goods.

The Port of LA had expected 80 ships to arrive in May, but 20% of those have been canceled, Seroka said. Customers have already canceled 13 sailings for June.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/ar-AA1EgCdN

Barron’s: Global Shipping Is Grinding to a Standstill. It’s a Matter of Time Until Americans Feel It.

There aren’t shortages of goods in U.S. stores yet, but if the deterioration in global shipping is any indication, they are on the way. That could complicate the White House’s pleas for Americans to be patient as trade officials rush to strike dozens of deals.

Cargo has dropped, or is expected to, at major ports including those of Los Angeles; Long Beach, Calif.; and New York-New Jersey, primarily on shipments from China, which exports more than any other country to the U.S.

U.S. import booking volumes have dropped 35% since late March, according to the shipping data company Vizion, including a 26% drop between the week ended April 21 and the following week. Shipments from China dropped nearly 43% in the last full week of April, the sharpest decline of the year. During April, several weeks saw China import bookings down by more than half, Vizion said.

The potential impact on companies and consumers is broad. Imports of Chinese electronics, plastics, vehicles, steel, and textiles have all fallen by more than half.

Perhaps just as concerning for some farmers and 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ar-AA1EhmJR

CNBC: 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows

  • 58 wallets have made over $10 million each from President Donald Trump’s meme coin, totaling $1.1 billion in profits, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said.
  • 764,000 wallets of mostly small holders have lost money on $TRUMP, according to the firm.
  • The $TRUMP event, set for May 22 at Trump National Golf Club, Washington, D.C., includes a reception for the 25 wallets with the largest balance, along with a White House tour.

About 764,000 wallets that purchased President Donald Trump‘s $TRUMP meme coin have lost money on the investment, according to fresh data shared with CNBC by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Most of the wallets that lost money held smaller amounts of the token, according to the firm’s on-chain analysis. …

Chainalysis said that while around 2 million wallets have bought into the token, 58 wallets made more than $10 million apiece, totaling roughly $1.1 billion in gains.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/06/trump-meme-coin-crypto.html

Politico: Trump’s Controversial US Attorney Is Coming for Medical Marijuana

The Donald Trump era has cost the District of Columbia thousands of jobs, blown a billion-dollar hole in its budget and caused a downgrade of the city’s AAA bond rating.

Now Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin, is coming for the capital’s weed, too — and threatening to upend a tacit agreement where federal prosecutors have respected Washington’s local marijuana laws.

The opening salvo came via a letter from Martin to a D.C. medical-marijuana vendor. “Your dispensary appears to be operating in violation of federal law,” he wrote, “and the Department of Justice has the authority to enforce federal law even when such activities may be permitted” by local laws. So much for the store’s legal license.

It’s a turn of events that ought to petrify anyone who thinks Washington’s deep-blue local electorate should be free to choose permissive blue-state rules.

But it’s very on-brand for Martin. A longtime anti-abortion activist who previously represented Jan. 6 defendants, he’s been at the center of constant culture-war controversies ever since Trump made him D.C.’s top federal prosecutor in January.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-s-controversial-us-attorney-is-coming-for-medical-marijuana/ar-AA1E3otC

RBC Ukraine: Trump may skip NATO summit if Europe fails to meet his demands

US President Donald Trump may skip the upcoming NATO summit, which will take place in The Hague this June. This will happen if European member states of the Alliance do not increase defense spending, Der Spiegel reports.

According to the outlet, the new US ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, has been pressing allies at every NATO ambassadors’ meeting to raise their defense budgets to 5% of GDP.

Would the buffoon’s absence really be a negative?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-may-skip-nato-summit-if-europe-fails-to-meet-his-demands/ar-AA1E4Nf1

Light Wave Reports: Trump Slammed With More Bad News in Impeachment Poll

A new poll from Data for Progress indicates that a majority of American voters support a third impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Conducted between April 18 and 21, the survey found that 52% of respondents favored impeaching Trump, reflecting a sharp partisan divide.

Throw the bum out!!!!!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-slammed-with-more-bad-news-in-impeachment-poll/ss-AA1E2kXI

WCCO Radio Minneapolis: Possible Trump executive order could target sanctuary cities. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says it’s not the city’s problem

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says President Donald Trump is wrong and told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News says that it would be against Minnesota state law, and is also a violation of a separation ordinance between the city and the federal government.

“Look, I’m the mayor of this city and my responsibility is to make sure that people are safe and I want our officers, I want them stopping violent crime,” Frey explains. “I don’t want our officers spending a single second assisting someone who’s undocumented, and that’s the only issue.”

Mayor Frey says that the Minneapolis police department has more important things to do and adding immigration enforcement duties would be unsafe for the city.

“I’ll just ask kind of the, the basic question like what’s more dangerous? A serial killer who’s on the loose or a guy that’s just dropping his kids off at school and then going to work a landscaping job? There are more important things that we need our officers to do and we’re able to prioritize that,” Frey said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/possible-trump-executive-order-could-target-sanctuary-cities-minneapolis-mayor-jacob-frey-says-it-s-not-the-city-s-problem/ar-AA1DQWek

MSNBC: Trump’s treasury secretary accidentally summed up the bitter truth about his tariffs

Amid his verbal squirming in Tuesday’s news conference, Bessent offered a perhaps unintended revelation. “President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past,” the secretary said. “We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back.”

But textiles and other low-cost goods that rely on cheap foreign labor are subject to Trump’s tariffs, which means higher prices for consumers even if Americans won’t ever make those products again. And while precision manufacturing is great, it tends to be much more automated, which requires a smaller number of highly skilled employees. That means Americans won’t be working in that kind of factory by the tens of millions. 

In other words, Bessent accidentally summed up the effects of Trump’s tariffs: we’ll pay higher prices, but get little in return. Even before we feel the worst of it, Americans already understand. They aren’t happy and, if a recession comes, Trump will really feel their wrath.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-s-treasury-secretary-accidentally-summed-up-the-bitter-truth-about-his-tariffs/ar-AA1DUn0r

Associated Press: Trump administration sues Colorado and Denver for allegedly interfering in immigration enforcement

The Department of Justice sued Colorado and Denver on Friday for allegedly interfering with federal efforts to enforce immigration laws, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to crack down on what some call sanctuary cities and policies.

The lawsuit claims the state and its most populous city, Denver, have passed “sanctuary laws” violating the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help, particularly for large-scale deportations, and requests that police and sheriffs alert ICE to people it wants to deport and hold them until federal officers take custody.

Read up on the Tenth Amendment, bozos. Local officials don’t have to do federal officials’ work.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-sues-colorado-and-denver-for-allegedly-interfering-in-immigration-enforcement/ar-AA1E5gA8