For economists, harbingers of a recession can include a slowdown in consumer spending and rising unemployment. For the chronically online, indicators can range from the perceived fall of fake eyelashes to more commercials for online colleges. Or, maybe, it’s a skin care company selling eggs. And for Sydney Brams, a Miami-based influencer and realtor, it’s a decline in prices on clothing resale platform Depop. “I was literally running to my parents and my boyfriend, and I’m like, ‘Look at this. Look, something is very wrong,’” Brams told CNBC after seeing some Depop sellers “come back to Earth,” as she described it. “I feel like Chicken Little.” Making a joke of so-called recession indicators in everyday life has gained traction in recent weeks as the stock market pullback and weak economic data raised anxiety around the health of the economy. This trend also underscores the uniquely sharp sense of financial dissatisfaction among America’s young adults. Many of today’s young adults experienced childhood during the Great Recession and came of age as the pandemic threw everything from in-person work to global supply chains out of orbit. Now, they’re concerned about what’s been deemed a white-collar job market slowdown and President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policies — the latter of which has battered financial markets in recent weeks. To be clear, when they share their favorite recession indicators, they’re kidding — but they don’t see the future path of the U.S. economy as a laughing matter. “It’s gallows humor,” said James Cohen, a digital culture expert and assistant professor of media studies at Queens College in New York. “This is very much a coping mechanism.” These omens can be found across popular social media platforms such as X, TikTok and Instagram. Some users see cultural preludes to a recession in, say, Lady Gaga releasing her latest album or the quality of the new season of HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Others chalk up social trends such as learning to play the harmonica or wearing more brown clothing as forewarnings of a financial downturn on the horizon. Just last week, several social media users saw a slam-dunk opportunity to employ variations of the joke when DoorDash announced a partnership with Klarna for users to finance food delivery orders. A spokesperson for Klarna acknowledged to NBC News that people needing to pay for meals on credit is “a bad indicator for society.” Some content creators have made the humor an entry point to share budget-friendly alternatives for everyday luxuries that may have to go if wallets are stretched. “We are heading into a recession. You need to learn how to do your nails at home,” TikTok user Celeste in DC (@celesteiacevedo) said in a video explaining how to use press-on nail kits as opposed to splurging at a salon. Declining confidence These jokes don’t exist in a vacuum. Closely followed data illustrates how this trend reflects a growing malaise among young people when it comes to the economy. At the start of 2024, 18-to-34-year-olds had the highest consumer sentiment reading of any age group tracked by the University of Michigan. The index of this group’s attitude toward the economy has since declined more than 6%, despite the other age cohorts’ ticking higher.

Fresh out of law school in 2022, Rachel Rothschild wrote a memo laying out the legal justification for a new strategy to fight climate change: States could force oil and gas companies to pay for the damage caused by extreme floods and wildfires that are made worse by the use of their products. Ms. Rothschild’s work was foundational. It provided the basis for the nation’s first “climate superfund” laws, which were passed in New York and Vermont last year and could be adopted by as many as six more states as soon as this year. If implemented, they could cost oil companies billions of dollars. Her work made Ms. Rothschild a target. She is one of a number of lawyers, law professors and judges who have been the focus of a campaign to discredit them led by a conservative group with ties to the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration. Shortly after the passage of the Vermont law last June, the group sued the University of Michigan, where Ms. Rothschild now teaches, after the university refused its request for Ms. Rothschild’s emails related to “climate superfunds.” As a public institution, the university is subject to the state’s public records law. The group, called Government Accountability and Oversight, has also sought to have Ms. Rothschild undergo a deposition. The university, which has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, maintains Ms. Rothschild’s communications are not subject to public records requests because they were written on her private email account. Still, the university told Ms. Rothschild that she must comply with the request for a deposition. Experts said the actions against Ms. Rothschild seemed designed to discourage her or others from similar work. “Legal actions and public records requests may be used in a manner that can intimidate or silence scholars, and when that happens, it threatens not only the targeted individuals but also the progress of knowledge and informed debate,” Kyle Logue, the interim dean of the University of Michigan Law School, said in a statement. The actions regarding Ms. Rothschild appear to be part of a campaign by the fossil fuel industry to quash new legal tools for holding companies accountable for climate pollution. As President Trump moves to end federal efforts to fight climate change, the new state-level “polluter-pays” laws and lawsuits are seen as the next frontier in the battle over global warming. Executives from nearly two dozen oil and gas companies raised their concerns about the climate superfund laws at a meeting last week with President Trump at the White House. They want the Justice Department to file briefs in support of their litigation against the state laws, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting. The campaign is being waged by a group that has largely been funded by the foundation created by Joseph Craft III, chief executive of the nation’s third largest coal company and an ally of and campaign donor to President Trump. Ms. Rothschild’s initial memo — now making its way through statehouses — laid out the case for states to use the model of the 1980 Superfund law, which requires polluters to pay to clean abandoned toxic waste sites, and apply it to the climate damage caused by emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal. Lawmakers in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Connecticut are now considering climate superfund legislation. In addition, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed by states and municipalities aimed at forcing oil and gas companies to pay for repairs or adaptations linked to damage from climate change. Many of those cases, some of which could end up before the Supreme Court, argue that the companies knew for years about the dangers of climate change linked to their products but concealed that information. The approach is similar to those of past lawsuits that led to landmark settlements with the tobacco industry and opioid manufacturers. The fossil fuel industry counters that climate change is a global problem and that individual state laws are an unconstitutional attempt to assert control over the nation’s energy system. “These extraordinary, unprecedented laws impose massive retroactive penalties going back decades for lawful, out-of-state conduct that was regulated by Congress,” said Daryl Joseffer, executive vice president and chief counsel for the litigation arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has sued both New York and Vermont to overturn the climate superfund laws. Twenty-two other states, led by their Republican attorneys general, are challenging the New York law in federal court. Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group that is also fighting to overturn the climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont, said they were part of “a coordinated campaign against an industry that is vital to everyday life and serves as the engine of America’s economy.” A key player in the campaign to stop the effort to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for damages is Christopher Horner, a lawyer and conservative activist who served on the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency during Mr. Trump’s first term. For years, Mr. Horner has used public records laws to unearth emails of climate scientists and disseminate them in ways that aim to undermine their work. “Chris Horner is the nation’s most prolific user of FOIA and its state equivalents to go after anyone fighting climate change who works for a public entity,” said Michael Gerrard, an expert in climate law at Columbia University. In 2011, the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science complained that Mr. Horner was making “unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists.” When President Barack Obama tried to pass a climate law, allies of Mr. Horner worked to spread the emails of climate scientists, gathered by Mr. Horner, to Republicans in Congress. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Horner said that had helped kill the bill. Now, Mr. Horner and his allies are focused on the architects behind the “polluter pays” laws. Mr. Horner did not respond to several requests for comment. From 2018 to 2021, Mr. Horner served as a board member for Government Accountability and Oversight, the group that filed suit against Ms. Rothschild. As recently as January, Mr. Horner wrote an article for The Washington Reporter, a conservative media website, in which he said he represented the Government Accountability and Oversight group in federal and state open records matters. According to public records, a major donor to the group is a nonprofit foundation formed by Mr. Craft, the chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners, the country’s third largest coal company. The Joseph Craft III Foundation contributed $300,000 a year to the Government Accountability and Oversight group from 2020 to 2023, for a total of $1.2 million, according to its public tax filings. That appears to make it a major funder of the group’s activities: During those years, G.A.O.’s total annual revenue averaged $576,172. Mr. Craft and his wife, Kelly, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the first Trump administration, have given nearly $3 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns, the Republican Party and a Republican super PAC. The Craft foundation and Alliance Resource Partners did not respond to requests for comment. Matthew Hardin, who serves on the board of Government Accountability and Oversight, wrote in a statement, “Like all nonprofits, G.A.O. relies on contributions from donors to fulfill its independent, charitable mission of seeking transparency in public institutions and educating the public.” The group’s interest in Ms. Rothschild appears focused on her communications with Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a philanthropy that has supported efforts to sue oil companies over what it calls climate deception. It was Mr. Wasserman who first wondered if lawmakers could combine the old Superfund law with new penalties for climate polluters. Mr. Wasserman brought the idea to the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonprofit research organization that is housed in New York University’s law school, where Ms. Rothschild was then working as a fellow. She researched whether the idea could stand up legally. The Rockefeller Family Fund donated $50,000 to the Institute for Policy Integrity to fund her research, which led New York and Vermont lawmakers to propose legislation. When it comes to climate and environmental matters, states often rely on academics for legal advice because many private law firms represent fossil fuel companies, which can create a conflict of interest. After writing her memo, Ms. Rothschild joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she continued to work on climate superfund legislation in her free time, briefing lawmakers and testifying before legislative committees. “I’m proud of the fact that I do a lot of pro bono work in areas where I have particular expertise, and I was glad I could help states like Vermont and New York draft these laws,” she said in a statement. Ms. Rothschild’s pro bono work was “critical” to passage of the law in New York, said Justin Flagg, director of environmental policy for Liz Krueger, a Democratic New York state senator who sponsored the legislation. “This was something that had not yet been tested in court,” he added. “So we really hung our hat on her analysis.” Environmental law professors at other public universities have been targets of similar campaigns. During the Biden administration, Mr. Horner used the state public records law to obtain the emails of Ann Carlson, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Carlson, who had consulted on climate damage lawsuits, was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to run a federal agency that writes rules aimed at reducing climate-warming tailpipe pollution — a position requiring Senate confirmation. Government Accountability and Oversight gave Ms. Carlson’s emails to Fox News, which published stories about her on its website including one titled, “Biden nominee coordinated dark money climate nuisance lawsuits involving Leonardo DiCaprio.” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, used the emails to fight Ms. Carlson’s confirmation, at one point calling her an “ethically challenged, environmental zealot.” He introduced an amendment on the Senate floor to strip the salary from her position. While the amendment failed, she ultimately withdrew her nomination, although she did end up serving in the role in an acting capacity. “It was ruthless, relentless and baseless,” Ms. Carlson said of the experience of having her emails used against her. “This is a tactic designed to dissuade people from working on important climate policies.” The campaign has extended to at least one judge. In 2023, Mark Recktenwald, the chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court, wrote a unanimous decision that the local government in Honolulu could move forward with a climate liability lawsuit against major oil companies. Justice Recktenwald gave a remote presentation to the Environmental Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that runs seminars on environmental litigation. Conservative media outlets including as The Daily Caller and Fox News ran stories noting that a member of the institute’s board had worked at a law firm that defended the climate law in the Honolulu case. The stories did not mention that oil executives also serve on the institute’s board. Justice Recktenwald had also asked both parties in the Honolulu lawsuit for any concerns about his plans to speak at the seminar, and neither side had objected. But in virtually every story, a group called Energy Policy Advocates, which has named Mr. Horner as its lawyer, charged that Justice Recktenwald’s participation showed improper bias. Justice Recktenwald declined to comment. The effort to devalue the legal scholars involved in the climate cases reflects the potential impact of the new laws and litigation, experts said. “These new state laws and this avalanche of lawsuits are threatening the survival of these fossil fuel companies,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

The Biden administration required coal- and oil-burning power plants to greatly reduce emissions of toxic chemicals including mercury, which can harm babies’ brains and cause heart disease in adults. Now, the Trump administration is offering companies an extraordinary out: Send an email, and they might be given permission by President Trump to bypass the new restrictions, as well as other major clean-air rules. The Environmental Protection Agency this week said an obscure section of the Clean Air Act enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, and if it’s in the interest of national security. In its notice to companies, the agency provided a template for companies to use to get approvals, including what to write in the email’s subject line. Then “the president will make a decision on the merits,” said the notice, issued by the E.P.A. on Monday. Joseph Goffman, former executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who served as E.P.A. assistant administrator for air pollution under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he feared the President Trump was “setting up a rubber stamp process” that would allow companies to avoid a long list of rules on air pollution. Normally, the agency would lay down more specific criteria for exemptions to a rule, he said. He also said that Congress had clearly intended for Clean Air Act exemptions to come with conditions that would ensure at least some pollution limits. “Because none of that is present, it strongly suggests that the decisions will be at best ad hoc,” Mr. Goffman said. “That’s in defiance of Congress’s intent, in defiance of the public health needs of the communities that are affected, and in defiance of the E.P.A.’s past practices.” Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., pushed back against that view, saying nowhere in the law was there an explicit requirement for such conditions. “This type of ‘legal analysis’ seems consistent with people who were responsible” for interpretations of laws the Supreme Court has struck down, she said in an email. The latest move is part of an effort led by the E.P.A.’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, to steer the agency away from its original role of environmental protection and regulation. He has described its mission as lowering the cost of purchasing cars, heating homes and running businesses, and encouraging what he has referred to previously as American energy dominance. Under Mr. Zeldin, the E.P.A. has said it plans to slash jobs, eliminate its scientific research arm, ensure enforcement actions don’t interfere with energy production, and reduce the agency’s overall budget by 65 percent. The latest policy allows for companies to apply for exemptions of up to two years, the maximum allowed under the Clean Air Act, from numerous new restrictions on emissions of toxic chemicals like mercury and arsenic. Another is ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that is widely used to sterilize medical devices and is also a carcinogen. Mr. Zeldin, a former member of Congress from New York, has also said he would allow coal-burning power plants to apply for exemptions from a new rule that requires them to address the health risks of coal ash, a toxic substance created by burning coal to produce electricity. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The agency has said it intends to ultimately rewrite many of these same rules, an arduous process that is expected to take time. So the E.P.A. appears to be pursuing “a two-step process where it says it’s going to take the next few years to roll back the rules,” but in the meantime avoid companies having to meet any of them, said James Pew, director of clean air practice at the environmental group Earthjustice. “It’s hard to imagine how these exemptions could be lawful,” Mr. Pew said. For all of the new rules, for example, the Biden administration had already identified alternative technology that was available and affordable. The idea that the ability to pollute was in the national interest was also hard to buy, he said. As of Thursday, it was unclear whether the agency had started to receive exemption applications, whether any had been granted, and if or how they would be disclosed. Companies must apply for exemptions by the end of the month, the E.P.A. said. “We appreciate the Trump E.P.A.’s willingness to consider exemptions for manufacturers that are negatively impacted by these regulations,” Alexa Lopez, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry group, said in a statement. “The NAM stands ready to work with the administration to provide durable solutions that both protect the environment and preserve the ability of manufacturers to compete on the global stage.”

A gleaming new data center sits less than half a mile from the electric substation where a fire plunged Heathrow Airport into darkness last week. The data center’s own power was also cut that day. But no one who relied on it would have noticed, thanks to a bank of batteries and backup generators designed to kick in instantly. Meanwhile it took officials at Europe’s busiest airport close to 18 hours to bring its terminals and runways back into operation, causing global travel delays and underscoring the vulnerability of Britain’s infrastructure. It is a striking contrast that energy experts say can be explained largely by one word: Money. “The data center industry is relatively young. They are more attuned to the cost of a catastrophic failure,” said Simon Gallagher, the managing director at UK Networks Services, which advises clients on the resilience of their electricity networks. He said most of the world’s airports — including Heathrow — have not been willing to make the big investments necessary to build total backup systems. Even at an airport the size of Heathrow, which officials have described as equivalent in power use to a small city, it is possible to create backup systems robust enough to maintain normal operations during a catastrophic power failure, Mr. Gallagher and other engineering experts said. But it could cost as much as $100 million and would likely take years to put in place. So far, most airports have chosen not to make the investment. “It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis,” Mr. Gallagher said. “At the minute, there seems to be an assumption that it would cost too much.” The Airport Heathrow officials were quick to point out after Friday’s incident that the airport has backup power in place for its most critical systems: runway lights and the tower’s traffic control safety systems. If a plane had needed to land that day, it could have done so safely. But the airport had no way to power the rest of the sprawling and complicated facility: the vast terminals, filled with shops and restaurants, moving walkways and escalators. Cut from the grid, there was no power to move bags to the claim area, or for ticket counters or bathrooms. First opened at the end of World War II, Heathrow has been expanded and updated over the decades. The result has been a patchwork of older and newer electrical cables and systems carrying an ever-increasing demand for power. “The grid is old,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. “For aviation, for the grid and for other safety critical systems, the older that they get the more important maintenance becomes.” What Heathrow does not have are backup generators that could supply the 40 megawatts of power required at peak times to maintain normal operations. Instead, on Friday, engineers at the airport had to manually reconfigure switches at another substation to temporarily reroute available power to Heathrow. That took hours, and because the airport’s systems had been sitting without power, it took even more time to boot them back up, followed by rounds of testing. The Substation The airport’s primary power source is the Hyde North substation about a mile away, owned and operated by National Grid Electricity Transmission, the private power company responsible for the area. Two of the substation’s transformers were taken offline by the fire. The cause is still under investigation, but the police said Tuesday they had found “no evidence” of suspicious activity. John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, told The Financial Times that there was “no lack of capacity” in the area after the fire. Energy experts said that is correct: The places where there is an actual lack of power tend to be developing countries and war zones. The challenge, though, was making use of the area’s ample power once Heathrow’s connection to Hyde North was severed. Thomas Woldbye, the chief executive of the airport, told the BBC that he was proud of the employees who worked through Friday to switch their systems to use power from two nearby substations. But he said that Heathrow would now assess whether to install “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should.” Heathrow did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The Data Center The airport’s leaders might want to examine their corporate neighbor just to the north. The Union Park data facility, run by Ark Data Centres, is a six-minute walk from the Hyde North substation. Inside, computers run 24 hours a day, powering the cloud services and artificial intelligence that are at the heart of modern banking, commerce, research and government operations. Huw Owen, the company’s chief executive, said its electrical supply was interrupted when the fire broke out. But sophisticated sensors detected the loss of power and instantly shifted to batteries that operate much like an uninterruptible power supply system for a personal computer. That gave the facility’s generators time to spin up, and they soon took over. “It’s a well-rehearsed, well-known process,” Mr. Owen said in an interview. “It’s this mind-set that resilience and keeping everything powered is absolutely front and center of our world.” Mr. Owen said the company installed the costly generator backup system despite expectations it might never be needed. A permitting application prepared for the company in December described the possibility of a power outage as “extremely rare.” “It would require a catastrophic regional failure on the grid, or at the supplying power station, and would likely impact not only the site but the surrounding London area,” the summary notes. “As a result, the grid connection is considered to be highly reliable as demonstrated in the grid reliability letter provided with the application (calculated as 99.999605%).” The Decision Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC after the fire, “I don’t want to see an airport as important as Heathrow going down in the way it did on Friday.” But how to avoid it in the future? The challenge in making electrical upgrades to places like Heathrow is determining how to pay for it when high energy costs are straining consumer budgets. In the past, airport investment has often been passed on to customers in the form of higher ticket prices on airlines. Mr. Gallagher, the consultant on electrical network resilience, noted that new airports in places like Dubai were built with the kind of backups that could keep terminals open. And a few older airports, like Schiphol in Amsterdam, have upgraded their facilities with large generators. But if Heathrow’s management wants to follow suit, experts say, they will need to accept that it requires a large investment to prevent a crisis that may not happen again for many years. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to build it from Day 1 than it is to try and retrofit stuff,” Mr. Owen said of Heathrow and other old airports. “They are as capable of instigating resilience at those sites as I am, but they’re now going to have to retrofit, whereas I built it from Day 1.”

President Trump issued an executive order on Monday to crack down on countries that buy Venezuelan oil by imposing tariffs on the goods those nations send into the United States, claiming that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent criminals and murderers into America. In the order, the president said the government of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and the Tren de Aragua gang, a transnational criminal organization, posed a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. On or after April 2, a tariff of 25 percent may be imposed on all goods imported into the United States from any country that imports Venezuelan oil, either directly or indirectly through third parties, the order said. The order said the secretaries of state, Treasury, commerce and homeland security, as well as the trade representative, would determine at their discretion what tariffs to impose. The tariffs would expire one year after the last date the Venezuelan oil was imported, or earlier if Trump officials so chose, it said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This unconventional use of tariffs could further disrupt the global oil trade as buyers of Venezuelan oil seek alternatives. The United States and China have been the top buyers of Venezuelan oil in recent months, according to Rystad Energy, a research and consulting firm. India and Spain also buy a small amount of crude from the South American country. But in the case of China, Venezuela’s oil makes up such a small portion of the country’s imports that the threat of higher tariffs will probably cause China to look elsewhere for oil, said Jorge León, a Rystad Energy analyst. American purchases of Venezuelan oil are poised to wind down after the Trump administration said it would revoke a license that allowed Chevron to produce oil there. The Trump administration on Monday gave Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, another two months to produce oil in Venezuela and sell it to the United States. The administration had earlier ordered Chevron to wind down its operations by April 3. The U.S. and Venezuelan governments have been sparring over Mr. Trump’s plans to deport migrants from the United States. Venezuela announced on Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resume accepting deportation flights of migrants who were in the United States illegally. “Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse,” the president wrote. Mr. Trump is planning to impose other new tariffs globally on April 2, when he will introduce what he is calling “reciprocal tariffs.” He has said the United States will raise the tariffs it charges on other countries to match their levies, while also taking into consideration other behaviors that affect trade, like taxes and currency manipulation. The president has taken to calling this “liberation day,” a term he repeated on Monday. Mr. Trump called the new levies he threatened on buyers of Venezuelan oil “secondary tariffs,” a label that echoed “secondary sanctions,” which are penalties imposed on other countries or parties that trade with nations under sanctions. Some trade and sanctions experts said existing secondary sanctions associated with countries such as Russia and Iran already were not well enforced, and questioned whether the United States would have the capacity to pull off new tariff-based penalties. “Given the limited enforcement of existing secondary sanctions, where we have a precedent, I’m not sure how realistic effective deployment of this strategy is,” said Daniel Tannebaum, a partner at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. But other experts said the strategy could help the United States to avoid the type of financial sanctions on foreign banks that could threaten financial stability. Using tariffs could help the United States to be seen as taking tough action without incurring those risks, they said. With typical secondary sanctions, individuals or companies cannot buy oil or other products under sanctions from a blacklisted country. Otherwise, businesses could be subjected to U.S. sanctions themselves, facing fines or being cut off from the U.S. financial system. But Mr. Trump and his advisers have said they think such sanctions can threaten the pre-eminence of the dollar if they are overused, by encouraging other countries to find alternative currencies. They have talked about using tariffs instead. In his confirmation hearing in January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said tariffs, in addition to raising revenue and rerouting supply chains, could provide an alternative to traditional financial sanctions. Mr. Trump “believes that we’ve probably gotten over our skis a bit on sanctions and that sanctions may be driving countries out of the use of the U.S. dollar,” Mr. Bessent said. Tariffs could be used instead, he said.

Increased federal spending in recent years has helped to improve U.S. ports, roads, parks, public transit and levees, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers. But that progress could stagnate if those investments, some of which were put on hold after President Trump took office in January, aren’t sustained. Overall, the group gave the nation’s infrastructure a C grade, a mediocre rating but the best the country has received since the group’s first report card in 1998. Most infrastructure, including aviation, waterways and schools, earned a C or D grade; ports and rail did better. The group also projected a $3.7 trillion infrastructure funding shortfall over the next decade. “The report card demonstrates the crucial need for the new administration and Congress to continue sustained investment in infrastructure,” Darren Olson, the chairman of the society’s committee on America’s infrastructure, said on a call with reporters. “Better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The report, which is now released every four years, has long noted that the United States spends too little on infrastructure. But that started to change in 2021, the group said, thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized $1.2 trillion in funding under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That investment is showing results, with grades having improved since the last report, in 2021, for nearly half the 18 categories that the group tracks. But in January, Mr. Trump froze much of the funding under that law and another aimed at addressing climate change, pending a review by his agencies. That halted a variety of programs, including those intended to help schools, farmers and small businesses. The engineering group expressed optimism that the federal spending would ultimately continue because it benefited most Americans and enjoyed bipartisan support. “The investment levels that we saw under the last administration have really started to move the needle, and we’re looking forward to advancing that conversation as we move into this administration,” said Kristina Swallow, a former president of the group. The nation’s ports received the highest grade of any form of infrastructure, a B, indicating that they are generally safe, reliable and in good condition. Rail received a B–, a decline from its B in 2021. Editors’ Picks Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Everybody Knew His Name: ‘Norm!’ Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Bridges, broadband, drinking water systems, hazardous waste treatment, inland waterways, public parks and solid waste received grades of C+, C or C–, reserved for infrastructure that is in mediocre condition and needs attention. Dams, levees, roads, schools and infrastructure for aviation, energy, storm water, transit and wastewater received grades of D+ or D, indicating that they are in poor condition. Some aviation infrastructure is widely considered outdated, and the Federal Aviation Administration has faced a shortage of air traffic controllers for years. Energy was the only category besides rail that received a declining grade, to D+. The group said power plants and other sources of electricity had failed to keep up with rising demand from electric vehicles and artificial intelligence. “Each data center uses the same amount of energy needed to power 80,000 homes,” said Otto Lynch, an engineer who led the energy chapter of the report. “Our generation capacity has remained stagnant as new sources are merely replacing sources like coal that have been retired in recent years.”

Chances that the U.S. is heading for a recession are close to 50-50, according to a Deutsche Bank survey that raises more questions about the direction of the U.S. economy. The probability of a downturn in growth over the next 12 months is about 43%, as set by the average view of 400 respondents during the period of March 17-20. Though unemployment remains low and most data points suggest continued if slowing growth, the survey results reinforce the message from sentiment surveys that consumers and business leaders are increasingly concerned that a slowdown or recession is a growing risk. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week acknowledged the worries but said he still sees the economy as “strong overall” featuring “significant progress toward our goals over the past two years.” Still, Powell and his colleagues at the two-day policy meeting that concluded Wednesday lowered their estimate for gross domestic product this year to just a 1.7% annualized gain. Excluding the Covid-induced retrenchment in 2020, that would be the worst growth rate since 2011. Additionally, Fed officials raised their outlook for core inflation to 2.8%, well above the central bank’s 2% goal, though they still expect to achieve that level by 2027. The combination of higher inflation and slower growth raise the specter of stagflation, a phenomenon not experienced since the early 1980s. Few economists see that era replicated in the current environment, though the probability is rising of a policy challenge where the Fed might have to choose between boosting growth and tamping down prices. Markets have been nervous in recent weeks about the prospects ahead. Bond expert Jeffrey Gundlach at DoubleLine Capital told CNBC a few days ago that he sees the chances of a recession at 50%-60%. Recommended Business News A man once sued by the SEC wins Trump crypto contest to have dinner with the president Autos Cadillac's EVs are attracting new buyers, including more customers trading in Teslas “The recent equity market correction was punctuated by the ‘uncertainty shock’ of ever-evolving tariff policy, with investors concerned it could morph into a slowdown or even recession,” Morgan Stanley said in a note Monday. “What’s really at the heart of the conundrum, however, is that the U.S. might be at risk for a bout of stagflation, where growth slows and inflation remains sticky.” Powell, though, doubted that a repeat of the previous bout of stagnation is in the cards. “I wouldn’t say we’re in a situation that’s remotely comparable to that is likely,” he said. Barclays analysts noted that “market-based measures are consistent with only a modest slowing in the economy,” though the firm expects a growth rate this year of just 0.7%, barely above the recession threshold. UCLA Anderson, a closely-watched and widely-cited forecasting center, recently turned heads with its first-ever “recession watch” call for the economy, based largely on concerns over President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Clement Bohr, an economist at the school, wrote that the downturn could come in a year or two though he said one is “entirely avoidable” should Trump scale back his tariff threats. “This Watch also serves as a warning to the current administration: be careful what you wish for because, if all your wishes come true, you could very well be the author of a deep recession. And it may not simply be a standard recession that is being chaperoned into existence, but a stagflation,” Bohr said.

A refinery in New Mexico that the federal government has accused of some of the worst air pollution in the country. A chemical plant in Louisiana being investigated for leaking gas from storage tanks. Idaho ranchers accused of polluting wetlands. Under President Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency took a tough approach on environmental enforcement by investigating companies for pollution, hazardous waste and other violations. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has said it wants to shift the E.P.A.’s mission from protecting the air, water and land to one that seeks to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” As a result, the future of long-running investigations like these suddenly looks precarious. A new E.P.A. memo lays out the latest changes. E.P.A. enforcement actions will no longer “shut down any stage of energy production,” the March 12 memo says, unless there’s an imminent health threat. It also curtails a drive started by President Biden to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities nationwide. “No consideration,” the memo says, “may be given to whether those affected by potential violations constitute minority or low-income populations.” Those changes, said Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, would “allow the agency to better focus on its core mission and powering the Great American Comeback.” David Uhlmann, who led enforcement at the agency under the Biden administration, said the memo amounted to the agency announcing that “if companies, especially in the oil and gas sector, break the law, this E.P.A. does not intend to hold them accountable.” That would “put communities across the United States in harm’s way,” he said, particularly poorer or minority areas that often suffer the worst pollution. Molly Vaseliou, a spokesperson for the E.P.A., said she could not comment on ongoing investigations or cases. The Department of Justice, which has faced its own staff and budget cuts, declined to comment. Conservatives have argued that E.P.A. regulations have hurt economic growth and investment. “Bold deregulatory action at E.P.A. will unleash American energy and reduce costs for American families,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax organization, in a statement. “The government’s expensive web of overregulation is being unwoven.” To be sure, enforcement cases brought by the Biden administration are still winding their way through courts. On Wednesday, the Japanese truck manufacturer Hino Motors pleaded guilty to submitting false emissions-testing data in violation of the Clean Air Act and agreed to pay more than $1.6 billion in fines stemming from a probe first opened by California in 2019. At the same time, a wider reframing of the purpose of the E.P.A. is underway. The agency was created a half-century ago, during the Republican presidential administration of Richard M. Nixon, with a mandate to protect the environment and public health. Last week, the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, and protections for wetlands. In a video posted to X, the social media site, Mr. Zeldin said his agency’s mission was now to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” Project 2025, a blueprint for overhauling the federal government that was produced by the Heritage Foundation and written by many who are serving in the Trump administration, goes further, seeking to eliminate the E.P.A. office that carries out enforcement and compliance work. Mr. Zeldin has also said he intends to cut the agency’s spending by 65 percent and eliminate its scientific research arm. Some on-site inspections, which form a vital part of enforcement investigations, are already being delayed or suspended, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are unauthorized to speak publicly. Investigations related to air pollution were particularly vulnerable, they said. There has already been one significant reversal. This month the Trump administration dropped a federal lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer, a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant. The Biden administration filed the lawsuit after regulators determined that emissions of chloroprene, used to make synthetic rubber, were contributing to health concerns in a region along the Mississippi River with some of the highest cancer risk in the United States. “I honestly wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers,” said William K. Reilly, E.P.A. administrator under President George H.W. Bush, speaking to reporters this month. He was referring to a fire on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio in the late 1960s that helped galvanize environmental awareness. And while the E.P.A. said it remained committed to addressing imminent health threats, the risks from pollution tend to play out over longer periods of time, in the form of increased rates of cancer, birth defects or long-term respiratory and cardiac harm, said Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA School of Law. “The memorandum is essentially a wink, wink to coal and oil interests that they can pollute with what may be close to impunity,” she said. That would be a stark reversal after the Biden administration had worked to build up the agency’s enforcement work. In 2024, the E.P.A. concluded 1,851 civil cases and collected $1.7 billion in administrative and judicial penalties, both the highest levels since 2017. That same year, 121 criminal defendants were charged. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The agency had also prioritized policing greenhouse gas emissions, toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, as well as the disposal of coal ash, the toxic material left over from burning coal. The new Trump E.P.A. will pull back both from a focus on coal ash disposal, and from emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas facilities, the recent memo said. Other Biden-era enforcement settlements are waiting to be finalized, including one involving the decades-old HF Sinclair refinery in Artesia, N.M., accused of causing some of the worst concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the country. The E.P.A., together with the Department of Justice and the state of New Mexico, proposed a $35 million settlement in the final days of the Biden administration as part of an effort to protect people living in Artesia, a city of 13,000 people with a long history of pollution. HF Sinclair, which processes about 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day in Artesia, was also required to invest in fixes at the refinery that would reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants. So far, the Trump administration has not moved to finalize that settlement. In a statement, the Texas-based operator said it had already invested in fixes and monitoring to address the allegations. The New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality said it supported moving forward with the settlement “as expeditiously as possible,” adding that, “due to the change in administration at the federal level, timing is unclear.” Investigations just getting started face even greater uncertainties, because the agency has leeway not to follow up on violations. In March 2023, E.P.A. officials discovered leaks and other alleged violations of pollution laws during an inspection at a refinery and chemicals plant operated in Norco, La., by Shell, the Dutch oil and gas giant. According to a notice later issued by the E.P.A., and obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group, one chemical storage tank was found with “severe pitting across the entire fixed roof, as well as cracks/openings with detectable emissions.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The E.P.A. has declined to say whether investigations were continuing. Shell declined to comment. Some cases may be shaped by wider changes. In 2021, E.P.A. inspectors found signs that a cattle ranch in Bruneau, Idaho, had disrupted protected wetlands by constructing road crossings and by mining sand and gravel from a local river. The agency sued, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act, in particular a bitterly contested rule adopted by the Obama administration known as “waters of the United States,” which extended existing federal protections to smaller bodies of water such as rivers, waterways and wetlands. A federal judge dismissed the original case after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling curtailed the federal government’s authority to regulate smaller bodies of water. President Biden’s E.P.A. filed an amended lawsuit in September. Last week, the E.P.A. said it would rewrite the rule to lower permitting costs for developers. Ivan London, an attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation who is helping to defend the ranchers in the case, said that he expected his clients’ arguments to prevail regardless of the E.P.A.’s new rule-making. The ranchers argue that the E.P.A. has no authority to regulate the wetlands in question. Still, the current Trump administration would certainly side more with the defendants, and that could affect the case, he said. “I’ve been surprised before, and I’m sure I’ll be surprised again,” he said.

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said Friday he still sees interest rate cuts in the cards though risks are rising to that outlook. Speaking two days after he and his colleagues again voted to keep short-term rates steady, Goolsbee told CNBC that he’s been hearing more concerns from businesses in his region about the impact of tariffs and their potential to raise prices and slow growth. “When you got a lot of uncertainty, I do think you need to wait to see some of these things get cleared up on the policy side,” the central banker said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I’m out talking to business people and civic leaders throughout this region, and there’s been a decided turn in these conversations over the last six weeks, of anxiety, of pausing, waiting on capital projects, capex, etc., until they figure out tariffs, other fiscal policy.” Nevertheless, Goolsbee said he still expects future rate cuts even if the Fed is taking a wait-and-see approach for now as issues play out over President Donald Trump’s tariff plans as well as deregulation and tax cuts. “If we can continue to make progress on inflation over the long run, I believe that rates 12 to 18 months from now will be lower than where they are today,” he said. Speaking separately Friday morning, New York Fed President John Williams also noted the high level of uncertainty around decision-making and economic trends, particularly inflation. “Recent data — both hard and soft — are sending mixed signals. Measures of policy uncertainty have increased sharply in recent months,” Williams said during a speech in Nassau, the Bahamas. Recommended Business News A man once sued by the SEC wins Trump crypto contest to have dinner with the president Autos Cadillac's EVs are attracting new buyers, including more customers trading in Teslas Both policymakers voted with the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee to hold the short-term fed funds rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%. In its post-meeting statement, the FOMC noted that “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased” and Chair Jerome Powell used the term “uncertainty” 10 times in his post-meeting news conference. One question that has come up in recent days has been whether the U.S. economy is headed toward stagflation, or slow growth and rising inflation. “Tariffs, raise prices and reduce output. So that’s a stagflationary impulse, which is different from saying this is stagflation,” Goolsbee said. “The unemployment rate is barely 4% and inflation is in the 2s. So the hard data that we start from is not the stagflation of the 1970s. It’s just the ... the uncomfortable environment is when it’s moving directionally the wrong way.” FOMC meeting participants kept their projections for two rate cuts through 2025. Markets, though, think the Fed will be more aggressive, pricing in the equivalent of three quarter percentage point reductions, according to CME Group data.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it was leaving interest rates unchanged — but warned of rising uncertainty about the direction of the economy, in part because of President Donald Trump's tariff agenda. The Fed said its key federal funds rate, which serves as a benchmark for interest rates throughout the economy, would remain at about 4.5%. Though it said current economic conditions were solid, the central bank lowered its forecast for gross domestic product, a measure of the total value of all goods and services produced within the United States, for the rest of the year, to 1.7%, down from 2.1% in December. It also warned that a key measure of inflation would now be closer to 3% than 2%. Eighteen of 19 policymakers now say there's increased risk that GDP will fall, compared with just five in December. Meanwhile, 11 policymakers say the unemployment rate could climb to as much as 4.5% this year, up from five previously. "Uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased," the Fed's statement said. At a news conference after the statement was released, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the dynamic between Trump's tariffs and stronger near-term price growth wasn't totally clear given other trends in the economy. But the tariffs are certainly a factor in rising expectations that price hikes will accelerate, he said — though for now, firmer inflation would most likely be "transitory." “Inflation has started to move up now, we think, partly in response to tariffs, and there may be a delay in further progress in the course of this year,” he said. Stocks surged on the news — but bond purchases also increased, the latter reflecting concerns about growth prospects. Investors seek out bonds when they believe they can get better returns on them than other assets. “The Fed is as lost in the wilderness as the rest of us trying to decipher the continual shifts in economic policy from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Omair Sharif, managing director of Inflation Insights consultancy, said in a note to clients following Wednesday’s rate decision. A host of indicators, not to mention comments from Trump administration officials themselves, suggest that consumer spending and employers’ hiring are both slowing. After an initial burst of optimism upon Trump’s election, growth now looks to be more subdued. Meanwhile, federal workforce cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have also raised concerns about pressure on local economies, not to mention the ability of newly jobless workers to receive unemployment assistance. Sweeping White House policy changes have already unnerved investors. Last week, the S&P 500 slipped into correction territory, marking a 10% drop from its latest peak, for the first time in three years.