Stellantis idles vegetation in Mexico and Canada as a result of tariffs

The Stellantis Windsor Assembly Plant is shown on April 1, 2025 in Windsor, Canada. 

Bill Pugliano | Getty Images

DETROIT — Stellantis is pausing production at two assembly plants in Canada and Mexico as the company attempts to navigate President Donald Trump’s new round of 25% automotive tariffs, the company confirmed Thursday.

The actions are the swiftest and most drastic by an automaker regarding the new tariffs, which took effect Thursday and are imposed on all vehicles imported to the U.S., including from Canada and Mexico.

Stellantis’ downtime starts Monday and is set for two weeks at the automaker’s Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, and the entire month of April at its Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico.

As a result of the pause in production, about 900 workers in the U.S. at supporting plants will be temporarily laid off, in addition to about 4,500 hourly workers at the Canadian plant, according to a company spokeswoman. Workers at the plant in Mexico will still report to the facility but not produce vehicles due to their contract terms, the spokeswoman said

In an email to employees Thursday, Stellantis North American chief Antonio Filosa said the plant downtime is tied to the tariffs, as the company reviews its options.

“We are continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some immediate actions, including temporarily pausing production at some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants,” Filosa said. “Those actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations.”

Shares of Stellantis closed Thursday at $10.21, down 9.4%. It’s the stock’s worst day since September.

The Canadian plant produces the Chrysler Pacifica minivan and the recently released Dodge Charger Daytona EV. The Mexico plant produces the Jeep Compass SUV and Jeep Wagoneer S EV.

Unifor National President Lana Payne, whose union represents the Canadian workers, on Thursday condemned the tariffs and voiced concerns for her members.

“Unifor warned that U.S. tariffs would hurt auto workers almost immediately and in this case the layoffs were announced before the auto tariff even came into effect,” she said in a release. “Trump is about to learn how interconnected the North American production system is the hard way, with auto workers paying the price for that lesson.” 

Filosa said the “current environment creates uncertainty,” but assured employees that the company, which continues to search for a new CEO, is “very engaged with all of our key stakeholders, including top government leaders, unions, suppliers and dealers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.”

Halting production also will help Stellantis lower vehicle inventory levels that have built up amid lackluster sales for many of its brands.

Stellantis’ Detroit rivals Ford Motor and General Motors also responded to the tariffs, but not by idling production.

GM ups truck production

GM plans to temporarily increase pickup truck production at a plant in Indiana.

The increase in workers is in addition to those who the company was already hiring for the plant as supplemental workers to support summer breaks and time off for their regular employees, according to a person familiar with the plans.

GM, in an emailed statement, confirmed the plans Thursday without mentioning tariffs.

The Detroit automaker produces its crucial, highly profitable pickup trucks such as the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra at various plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

GM has not cut production at any plants as a result of the tariffs like Stellantis is doing, said the person, who was not authorized to speak to media.

Ford employee discount

Hours after Trump’s tariffs went into effect, Ford announced it will offer its employee discount to all customers.

Ford said the sales program — running from April 3 through June 2 — includes “significant savings” but did not release exact details on the discounts.

The program, which it’s calling “From America, For America,” excludes some larger vehicles like the Ford Raptor, 2025 Ford Expedition, Ford Super Duty trucks and Lincoln Navigator SUVs.

“We understand that these are uncertain times for many Americans,” the company said in a statement. “We have the retail inventory to do this and a lot of choice for customers that need a vehicle.”

U.S. auto sales in the first quarter came in higher than expected as consumers flocked to buy cars ahead of auto tariffs taking effect, which many expect will lead to higher vehicle prices.

— CNBC’s Michele Luhn contributed to this article.

Europe’s pharma {industry} braces for tariffs as carve-out hopes fade

SEIZED OZEMPIC, WEGOVY AND OTHER WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS AT JFK AIRPORT’S INTERNATIONAL MAIL FACILITY.

CNBC

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Europe’s pharmaceutical sector is bracing for the potential impact of U.S. tariffs as hopes of an industry-wide exemption by U.S. President Donald Trump fade.

The pharmaceutical industry has until now been exempt from trade levies, but Trump confirmed last week that he would soon impose tariffs on the sector.

Drugmakers are now lobbying the president for a phased approach to duties on imports to the U.S., Reuters reported Tuesday, citing four sources familiar with the discussions. The sources said the levies may not be announced Wednesday but were likely inevitable.

Gradual implementation of tariffs on the sector could reduce the immediate financial hit and allow companies time to relocate their manufacturing stateside. Nevertheless, some firms have warned that the lack of clarity is already having negative secondary effects.

“For us, what is more important is not only the impact of tariffs, it’s also the impact it makes on the market,” Ester Baiget, CEO of Danish biotech firm Novonesis, told CNBC Tuesday.

“When you bring tariffs, it drives uncertainty, and when you [are] uncertain, you pause, you pause innovation, you post launches, you pause investments,” said Baiget, whose firm derives around 30% of its sales from the U.S. but has also been boosting its manufacturing presence in the country.

Denmark is one of Europe’s largest pharma and biotech hubs, home to companies including Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk and vaccine-producer Bavarian Nordic — both of which have high exposure to the U.S.

Novo Nordisk’s chairman told CNBC last week that the company was not speculating ahead of Trump’s tariff announcement and was instead focused on remaining flexible.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to speculate too much,” Chairman Helge Lund told CNBC on the sidelines of the Danish pharmaceutical giant’s Annual General Meeting. “We are laser-focused on what we can impact.”

Still, questions have been asked about how tariffs might impact U.S. sales of Novo’s hugely popular obesity and diabetes treatments — and the implications for U.S. rival and Zepbound-maker Eli Lilly. Lund would not be pressed on what share of its weight-loss drug sales derived from U.S. plants, instead pointing to the firm’s “very significant” manufacturing set-up in the U.S.

‘No. 1 question on investors’ minds’

The threat of tariffs has added to uncertainty within the investment landscape too. Speaking to CNBC Monday, Emily Field, head of European pharmaceuticals research at Barclays, cited tariffs as the “No. 1 question on investors’ minds.”

Pharma tariffs the 'number one question' on investors' minds, Barclays says

Morten Bødskov, Denmark’s minister for industry, business and financial affairs, told CNBC Tuesday that he was liaising with the country’s pharmaceutical industry and corporates more broadly about the potential impact of tariffs on the small, export-heavy economy.

“We are, of course, in close dialog with them,” Bødskov said. “It’s our job to bring them into discussions on the way the world is changing. Many of them are world-leading companies, so it’s our job to help them to see the perspectives of future markets,” he added.

However, he noted that it was unclear whether the Trump administration could be persuaded to roll back on its protectionist policies, or make allowances for certain sectors.

For companies like Novonesis, meanwhile, Baiget said it was a matter of watching events “very closely” — and readying for action if needed.

“There is a lot of volatility, and there is a lot of rapidly moving trends,” she said. “It’s important that we decouple, and we also learn how to maybe buffer some of them.”

Airline shares slide as issues develop over client journey

A Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-332(ER).

Joan Valls | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Airline stocks slid further on Tuesday as Wall Street’s concerns about weaker-than-expected travel demand amid looming tariffs and a sharp drop in consumer confidence continue to weigh on the sector.

Shares of Delta Air Lines were down more than 3% in afternoon trading after Jefferies downgraded the carrier, the most profitable in the U.S., to a hold rating from buy, and nearly halved its price target to $46, several weeks after the airline cut its first-quarter guidance.

The bank said Delta would “likely” reduce its 2025 forecasts. While concerns have grown, particularly about more price-sensitive travelers, Delta executives have said the airline has been growing its share of revenue from its higher-end cabins like first class, as well as its lucrative credit card partnership with American Express.

Delta kicks off U.S. airlines’ earnings season when it reports results next Wednesday morning.

Read more CNBC airline news

Jefferies also cut its rating on American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Air Canada, which has outsize exposure to a slowdown in cross-border travel with the U.S.

American was also down about 3% in afternoon trading, while Southwest sank more than 5%.

United Airlines remains Jefferies’ sole buy airline of the U.S. carriers, though it also slashed its price target by 48%.

Airline executives at a JPMorgan industry conference in mid-March warned about softer-than-expected demand, particularly for domestic travel, which makes up the bulk of the U.S. travel industry’s revenue.

U.S. household credit and debit card spending overall was up 1.5% over last year as of March 22, but spending on airlines dropped 7.2%, according to a Bank of America report last week.

On Monday, the Bank of America Institute wrote in a report that the decline in travel card spending “could be that the recent drop in consumer confidence is translating into people hesitating to book trips, or considering paring them back” but added that “bad weather and a late Easter this year are also likely playing a part.”

The NYSE Arca Airline Index, which tracks mostly U.S. carriers, fell 18% in the first quarter, outpacing the S&P 500′s decline and marking the sector index’s biggest percentage drop since the third quarter of 2023.

Correction: The NYSE Arca Airline Index fell 18% in the first quarter. A previous version misstated the drop.

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Beyoncé & Solange’s Mother Tina Knowles Interview on Motherhood

Tina Knowles Defends Family After Kanye West Tweets About Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Kids

Tina Knowles knows that Beyoncé was born to be a protector for her kids.

In fact, one of the 71-year-old’s favorite things about her daughter—who shares daughter Blue Ivy, 13, and twins Rumi and Sir, 7, with husband Jay-Z—is how she places her children first amid her busy life in the spotlight.

“They are always her first priority,” Tina exclusively told E! News The Rundown’s Erin Lim Rhodes at Billboard’s Women in Music Awards in Los Angeles March 29, “no matter what else is going on.”

Beyond Beyoncé’s ability to focus on her kids, Tina—who shares the Cowboy Carter singer, 43, and Solange Knowles, 38, with ex Mathew Knowles—is adamant about shining a light on the important job of being a mom.

“Mothers take on the role of being behind the scenes and doing what they can to support,” the matriarch continued in the interview airing April 2. “It’s nice to be recognized for that.” 

Trump pardons BitMEX crypto trade convicts

Arthur Hayes, chief executive officer of BitMEX, speaks during the Consensus: Invest event in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017. 

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump granted pardons to three co-founders of the BitMEX global cryptocurrency exchange, as well as to a former high-ranking employee of the company, CNBC has learned.

The co-founders, former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, and former head of business development Gregory Dwyer, previously pled guilty to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act related to failure to maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs.

The founders received criminal sentences of probation of varying lengths and were ordered to pay civil fines totaling $30 million related to a lawsuit by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Dwyer, who received a sentence of 12 months of probation, agreed to pay $150,000 in fines.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

Prosecutors accused the men of effectively operating BitMEX as a “money laundering platform” and that its purported withdrawal from the U.S. market was “a sham.”

Trump issued the pardons on Thursday, more than three months after BitMEX was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish and maintain anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer programs.

Hayes, in a tweet on Friday, wrote, “Thank you POTUS,” using the term for “President of the United States.”

Delo, in a statement, said, “The US Department of Justice wrongfully targeted BitMEX and its co-founders.”

“This full and unconditional pardon by President Trump is a vindication of the position we have always held – that BitMEX, my co-founders and I should never have been charged with a criminal offense through an obscure, antiquated law,” Delo said.

“As the most successful crypto exchange of its kind, we were wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals.”

“I’m sincerely grateful to the President for granting this pardon to me and my co-founders,” Delo said. “A legal wrong has been righted today and despite the distress I have been through over the past few years I’m pleased to have cleared my name and to be able to continue my life and philanthropic work without the burden of an unfounded conviction.”

Hayes, Delo and Reed founded BitMEX in 2014. Prosecutors said the executives knew that the exchange was required to implement an anti-money laundering plan because it served U.S. customers “but chose to flout those requirements, requiring only that customers provide an email address to use BitMEX’s services.”

“Indeed, senior executives each knew that customers residing in the U.S. continued to access BitMEX’s trading platform through at least in or about 2018, and that BitMEX policies nominally in place to prevent such trading were toothless or easily overridden to serve BitMEX’s bottom line goal of obtaining revenue through the U.S. market without regard to U.S. criminal laws,” the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement in January.

Delo, the former chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of BitMEX, had been sentenced to 30 months of probation after his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Hayes was sentenced to six months of home confinement, followed by two years of probation.

Reed, who is the exchange’s former chief technology officer, was sentenced to 18 months of probation.

Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of electric truck maker Nikola, revealed Thursday night that Trump had pardoned him for his criminal conviction for securities fraud. Milton had been sentenced to four years in prison in that case, but remained free on appeal.

Meta is concentrating on ‘tons of of tens of millions’ of companies for agentic AI

Meta Platforms is among the U.S. tech giants leading the race to invest in generative AI and the foundational large language models that the AI breakthroughs rely on, and it’s also taken an open-source approach to its AI development, allowing the tech innovations to be shared widely.

Those innovations are occurring rapidly. “Not just daily. It’s evolving multiple times a day,” says Clara Shih, head of business AI at Meta.

Its Llama LLMs, available to developers around the world, have been downloaded over 800 million times. Earlier this week, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said the upcoming open-source Llama 4 AI will help power AI agents, the latest trend in generative AI.

The AI agents won’t just be responding to prompts. They will be capable of new levels of reasoning and action — surfing the web and handling many tasks that might be of use to consumers and businesses. And that’s where Shih comes in. Meta’s AI is already being used by over 700 million consumers, according to Shih, and her job is to bring the same technologies to businesses.

“Not every business, especially small businesses, has the ability to hire these large AI teams, and so now we’re building business AIs for these small businesses so that even they can benefit from all of this innovation that’s happening,” she told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an interview for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series.

She expects the uptake among businesses to happen soon, and spread far and wide.

“We’re quickly coming to a place where every business, from the very large to the very small, they’re going to have a business agent representing it and acting on its behalf, in its voice — the way that businesses today have websites and email addresses,” Shih said.

While major companies across sectors of the economy are investing millions of dollars to develop customer LLMs, “doing fancy things like fine tuning models,” as Shih put it, “If you’re a small business — you own a coffee shop, you own a jewelry shop online, you’re distributing through Instagram — you don’t have the resources to hire a big AI team, and so now our dream is that they won’t have to.”

For both consumers and businesses, the implications of the advances discussed by Cox and Shih will be significant in daily life.

For consumers, Shih says, “Their AI assistant [will] do all kinds of things, from researching products to planning trips, planning social outings with their friends.”

Rival OpenAI recently launched its Operator AI for tasks like travel planning.

On the business side, Shih pointed to the 200 million small businesses around the world that are already using Meta services and platforms. “They’re using WhatsApp, they’re using Facebook, they’re using Instagram, both to acquire customers, but also engage and deepen each of those relationships. Very soon, each of those businesses are going to have these AIs that can represent them and help automate redundant tasks, help speak in their voice, help them find more customers and provide almost like a concierge service to every single one of their customers, 24/7.”

The more AI does, the less people have to do, at least in traditional definitions of roles. Shih says every person must prepare now for the changes that will be coming. “There isn’t a single job that hasn’t been completely transformed by the internet and by mobile and by social media. I think we’re at the same juncture now with AI, where it’s clear that there are certain professions where AI will significantly change the job. But my prediction is that over time, AI will change every job function across every industry,” she told Boorstin.

Her advice for every individual and every company is “to learn, to experiment, to understand and to almost define what that [AI transformation] could look like for their particular job.”

“Just like in 1990 we had to learn email, we had to learn search. I think today, everyone, regardless of where they live, what job they have or want to have, needs to learn AI,” she said.

The good news? According to Shih, AI makes it easier to learn. “You can talk to it. You can literally talk to it.”

She’s been doing that herself. “Something that I often do is, if there’s long research papers, AI research papers, or there’s developments, you can ask AI. You can use Meta AI, and it’ll break it down for you. You can ask it, ‘Explain this at a ninth grade level, explain this at a fifth grade level,’ and it’ll do it. And you can kind of go back and forth. And so that’s how I learn a lot of the more complicated topics.”

The full interview with Shih is available at CNBC Changemakers and on CNBC’s YouTube channel.

We’re shopping for extra shares of two shares because the broader market sinks additional

Trump to announce new auto tariffs Wednesday

U.S. President Donald Trump holds paperwork he signed during an Ambassador Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Win McNamee | Getty Images

President Donald Trump will announce new tariffs on auto imports Wednesday, the White House said.

Trump will unveil the new tariffs during a press conference in the Oval Office at 4 p.m. ET, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Trump on Monday had hinted that the auto tariffs could arrive prior to April 2, the day his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” plan is set to begin.

“We’ll be announcing that fairly soon over the next few days, probably, and then April 2 comes, that’ll be reciprocal tariffs,” he said at a Cabinet meeting.

Stocks fell to session lows after the new tariff plans were announced.

A truck carrying vehicles prepares to cross into the US from Canada at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, on March 8, 2025. 

Geoff Robins | Afp | Getty Images

Trump has long signaled his plans to impose heavy tariffs on foreign trading partners. But his unpredictable and frequently shifting policy rollouts have stirred turmoil in the stock market and left business leaders uncertain about how to plan for the future.

Trump has hyped April 2 as “liberation day” and “the big one.” His plan, as originally described, would slap reciprocal tariffs on all countries that have their own import duties on U.S. goods, while also imposing tariffs in response to other disfavored trade policies, such as the use of value-added taxes.

But Trump and his officials have recently suggested that the tariffs coming April 2 could end up being softer than they first appeared.

Trump said Friday that “there’ll be flexibility” on those tariffs, and on Tuesday night suggested the duties will be more “lenient than reciprocal.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that countries can pre-negotiate with the U.S. to avoid facing new tariffs on April 2.

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Trump Points Absurd Toothless Govt Order On Elections

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Donald Trump loves to issue executive orders that have no legal authority. The president has never understood the difference between executive orders and laws and that was never made more clear by Trump’s latest executive order that requires proof of citizenship to use the federal registration form, insists that no ballots can be counted after election day, and threatens states that do not comply with his order with a loss of federal funds.

The most absurd part of the order is in section 7 where Trump claims to have enforcement powers:

To achieve full compliance with the Federal laws that set the uniform day for appointing Presidential electors and electing members of Congress:

(a) The Attorney General shall take all necessary action to enforce 2 U.S.C. 7 and 3 U.S.C. 1 against States that violate these provisions by including absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day in the final tabulation of votes for the appointment of Presidential electors and the election of members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

(b) Consistent with 52 U.S.C. 21001(b) and other applicable law, the Election Assistance Commission shall condition any available funding to a State on that State’s compliance with the requirement in 52 U.S.C. 21081(a)(6) that each State adopt uniform and nondiscriminatory standards within that State that define what constitutes a vote and what will be counted as a vote, including that, as prescribed in 2 U.S.C. 7 and 3 U.S.C. 1, there be a uniform and nondiscriminatory ballot receipt deadline of Election Day for all methods of voting, excluding ballots cast in accordance with 52 U.S.C. 20301 et seq., after which no additional votes may be cast.

Sec. 8. Preventing Foreign Interference and Unlawful Use of Federal Funds. The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, shall prioritize enforcement of 52 U.S.C. 30121 and other appropriate laws to prevent foreign nationals from contributing or donating in United States elections. The Attorney General shall likewise prioritize enforcement of 31 U.S.C. 1352, which prohibits lobbying by organizations or entities that have received any Federal funds.

As The Guardian put it, “Many of the provisions in the order are likely to be quickly challenged and are legally suspect. The US constitution explicitly gives states and Congress the authority to set the rules for election and does not authorize the president to do so.”

That is a very restrained way of saying that this order is a big pile of nonsense.

United Airways Pilot Turns Airplane Round For His Forgotten Passport

Roommates, weigh in on this one! United Airlines is going viral after a pilot turned an international flight headed to China back around. And what was the reason? The pilot left his passport behind. But the internet is really chattin’ about what the company decided to offer the passengers on the delayed flight.

RELATED:  Wayment! Man Faces Charge After Wildin’ Like THIS On A United Airlines Flight

Here’s What Happened In The United Airlines Incident

According to NBC Los Angeles, the flight incident happened on Saturday, March 22. The United Airlines plane was traveling toward Shanghai, China. It departed from Los Angeles at around 2 p.m. Two hours in the sky, one of the pilots realized his passport was back in the U.S.

Additionally, the plane was diverted to the San Francisco International Airport and landed at around 5 p.m. local time. About 270 people were on the plane then, including 257 passengers and 13 crew members. After landing in San Francisco, a new crew boarded, and the airline resumed its travel to China. It reportedly landed about six hours behind schedule.

“The pilot did not have their passport onboard,” United Airlines said in a statement, per CNN. “We arranged for a new crew to take our customers to their destination that evening.”

Additionally, the airline said it offered its passengers “meal vouchers and compensation.”

Passenger Reveals Experience With Airlines Offer

However, several passengers, including Yang Shuhan, have already spoken about how United Airlines handled the pilot incident. Yang told CNN that United Airlines only offered her two meal vouchers, totaling $30. She spent the vouchers on a Japanese meal at the airport. Yang took it further by complaining to United Airlines through their website. The company has given her a 14-day time frame for a response.

Air Travel Has Been In Shambles In 2025 

According to CNN, UA is one of the largest air-bound companies in global travel, with about 140 million passengers across six continents every year. Air travel has been concerning in recent weeks, with incidents ranging from crash landings to fires, missing aircraft, and even two-plane collisions.

Last month, United Airlines joined the list of flight companies that have experienced plane-related troubles. As previously reported, a flight from Houston to New York had to be evacuated for engine trouble. One wing of the plane appeared to be covered in smoke and flames.

RELATED: United Airlines Flight Evacuated At Houston Airport After Catching Fire Before Takeoff

What Do You Think Roomies?