https://www.washingtonian.com/2024/04/23/foxtrot-is-closing-its-dc-area-stores/



The corner store chain Foxtrot is ceasing retail operations in the Washington, DC, area. “After much consideration and evaluation, we regret to announce that Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market will be closing their doors starting on April 23, 2024,” the company says in an announcement. Stores are also closing in Illinois and Texas, Eater Chicago reports



A Washingtonian reporter visited two stores in downtown DC. At the store near Farragut Square park, the doors were closed and employees were handing out free wine, she said, but they wouldn’t answer questions about the store’s future. At the Dupont location, she says, someone who said they had been employed at the market said general managers got the news from corporate HQ on a call at 11 AM. “This place is an institution,” he said. “Everyone comes here.”

Foxtrot opened its first DC-area shop in 2021 and opened about nine more locations in the region after that. Its corporate HQ has not replied to emails from Washingtonian requesting comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/11/economy/trump-tariffs-trade-jobs-inflation/index.html

New York
CNN
—
Tariff Man could be back in the White House next year – and he’s promising the sequel will be even bigger than the original.

Former President Donald Trump, who labeled himself “Tariff Man” in 2018, has made clear he wants to pursue a more aggressive trade strategy if he’s elected in November. Trump has floated a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports, a 60% tariff on imports from China and a 100% tariff on foreign cars – including from Mexico.

Trump’s proposals, if enacted, could easily set off a new trade war with China and potentially other nations, too.

Some economists are warning Trump’s trade agenda and the ensuing retaliation from trading partners would hurt the US economy by worsening inflation, killing jobs, depressing growth and spooking investors.

In a worst-case scenario, economists fear these policies could set the stage for a recession.

“The policy is very bad. Tariffs make consumers poorer. They shrink the economy,” Alex Durante, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, told CNN in a phone interview. “This would probably be the most damaging part of a Trump 2.0 economic agenda.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/investing/trump-stock-net-worth-truth-social/index.html?utm_source=business_ribbon



New York
CNN
—
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group continue to rapidly fall back to Earth.

The Truth Social owner dropped by another 10% on Monday, adding to a brutal week that wiped out a third of the stock’s value.

The selloff has shrunk former President Donald Trump’s stake in the controversial company to about $2.9 billion. That’s down sharply from a peak of $5.2 billion based on the closing high of $66.22 on March 27, the day after it went public.

Trump owns a dominant stake of 78.8 million shares in Trump Media, which launched in 2021. Its plan to go public by merging with a shell company was delayed for years by regulatory and legal scrutiny.

When Trump Media finally went public late last month, experts immediately warned that Wall Street was drastically overvaluing the company based on traditional fundamental metrics like revenue and users.

Last week, Trump Media disclosed losing $58 million last year on very light revenue of just $4.1 million. By comparison, Twitter (now known as X) generated more than 100 times as much revenue – $665 million — in 2013 ahead of its initial public offering in November of that year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/03/jacob-flickinger-world-central-kitchen-gaza-strike/

https://wapo.st/4cKr684



When Jacob Flickinger went to the Gaza Strip three weeks ago to distribute food with World Central Kitchen, he asked his father to tell his mother he was in Cyprus instead. He didn’t want her to worry.

He planned to leave at the end of this week, he told his father, John, on Sunday via text. The two wished each other a happy Easter.

The next day, the 33-year-old dual U.S.-Canadian citizen was dead, one of seven World Central Kitchen workers killed by Israeli airstrikes on the aid group’s convoy.

“He was a good man,” his father said. “He was doing what he loved and just wanted to serve and help others.”



When a friend told him about the WCK mobilization in Gaza, he volunteered to help distribute food shipments arriving by sea. The work combined the skills he learned in the military and his desire to help, his father said.

“Women and children are starving to death, it’s all over the news every day,” said John Flickinger, 67. “He felt he could make a small difference.”

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/transportation/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-future-KGI3FSAVRZH6TKEHEX6SBIAS4Q/

In the mid-1960s, with the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel regularly clogged with traffic, the state highway agency recommended completing the Baltimore Beltway’s loop by connecting Sollers Point and Fort Armistead with a second, two-lane tunnel underneath the Patapsco.

The legislature in 1966 enacted a bill authorizing the new harbor tunnel, along with a second span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Then-Gov. J. Millard Tawes said the tunnel would “tie together and make possible orderly development of highly important industrial areas in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.”

But, when the tunnel costs ballooned, a four-lane bridge reemerged as a cheaper alternative and the project changed course in 1971.

It was first known as the Outer Harbor Bridge, but veterans groups and historians lobbied to name it for Francis Scott Key, because it was believed Key had written a poem that would become “The Star-Spangled Banner” after watching the bombing of Fort McHenry in 1812 from within 100 yards of the bridge’s eventual footprint.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/02/economy/baltimores-regional-economy-francis-scott-key-bridge/index.html



Washington
CNN
—
The tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last week claiming the lives of construction workers who were all Hispanic has rattled the Baltimore region to its core.

As the local community begins the difficult work needed to return to some sense of normality, experts say that, at the very least, the local economy will likely withstand the effects of the bridge’s collapse.

The collapse will indeed have some economic impact, but it will likely be limited. Baltimore’s regional economy has a lot going for it such as low unemployment and low inflation.

The Port of Baltimore is a key economic engine, employing tens of thousands, but it is currently immobilized with debris littering the Patapsco River. Officials have said they’re tapping into billions in emergency federal dollars to remove the wreckage to allow ship traffic and rebuild the bridge as quickly as possible. Insurers are also stepping in to cover costs.

“Baltimore County and the city have very high credit ratings, which means they have broad, diverse and strong tax bases that would be resilient to one-time shocks like this,” Orlie Prince, a senior vice president and manager at Moody’s Ratings, told CNN.