Airlines have been charging hundreds more for tickets as the conflict disrupts global energy supplies, since fuel is typically airlines’ biggest cost along with labor – but JetBlue’s announcement appeared to mark the first sign that carriers could start passing along higher costs in the form of flight add-ons.

“As we experience rising operating costs, we regularly evaluate how to manage those costs while keeping base fares competitive and continuing to invest in the experience our customers value,” a JetBlue spokesperson told The Post in a statement.

JetBlue is hiking its baggage fees to counter higher fuel costs amid the war in Iran. NurPhoto via Getty Images

“Adjusting fees for optional services used by select customers, such as checked baggage, allows us to continue offering more competitive fares while delivering the onboard experience our customers love, including complimentary snacks and drinks, unlimited, high-speed Wi-Fi and seatback entertainment screens.”

JetBlue’s spokesperson did not specifically address the change in baggage fees.

However, the airline’s website on Monday showed a checked bag fee of $49 on domestic flights for passengers in the lowest loyalty tier who check in within 24 hours of departure. If the bag is not added before check-in, then the fee is $54.

That’s a roughly $4 increase from 2024, the last time JetBlue – alongside United Airlines, American Airlines and Alaska Air – hiked its checked luggage fees to offset higher fuel costs and wages.

A spokesperson for Southwest said the airline doesn’t “have any immediate plans to increase fees due to macroeconomic factors.”

American Airlines and Alaska Air did not immediately respond to The Post’s inquiries about whether they are also planning to raise checked bag fees. Delta and United declined to comment.

Jet fuel prices for Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York averaged $4.57 a gallon as of last Friday – up nearly 83% since the day before US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, according to the Argus US Jet Fuel Index.

In a note earlier this month, United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline has “the time and the luxury” to ride out higher fuel prices as customers are continuing to purchase tickets at higher prices – with the past 10 weeks representing the 10 biggest revenue weeks in company history.

But he acknowledged that “it may be a challenge to continue passing through much of the increased fuel price if oil stays higher for longer,” since it would mean an extra $11 billion in annual expenses – $6 billion more than the company made in its best year ever.

Airlines have been charging hundreds more for tickets as the war disrupts global energy supplies. Getty Images

At an investor conference earlier this month, major US airline executives similarly said customers are continuing to show strong demand even as prices skyrocket, according to the New York Times.

Fares are higher almost across the board, especially on last-minute flights that are typically purchased by business travelers, according to an analysis by Deutsche Bank.

The lowest prices for flights within 24 hours to Asia, Europe and beyond have hit $1,900 on average – a huge increase from the $830-to-$1,000 range that prevailed the day before the war started, according to Deutsche Bank.

Prices for domestic flights from one coast of the US to the other have risen by 16%, the analysis found. Part of the change is likely due to a seasonal rise in fares in March around spring break and warmer weather.

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“I really hate to do that,” Ken Silver, the president of Jim’s South St., a Philadelphia institution known for its cheesesteaks, told the Associated Press when asked about raising menu prices.

“Our strategy right now is just absorbing the price and hoping that we see a reduction after the summer months are over, the grilling season and all the rest,” Silver said.

Jim’s South St. in Philadelphia is absorbing rising beef costs to keep its cheesesteaks, now $13.49, as affordable as possible. Facebook/Jim’s South Street

Silver said he is also considering a “market price” strategy whereby cheesesteaks and other menu items would be listed without a fixed cost, allowing the restaurant to adjust the price based on current ingredient costs that are subject to supply fluctuations.

Beef prices in the US have been steadily rising for years, but the pace of increase has accelerated since the pandemic, driven by a shrinking cattle supply, high production costs and persistent consumer demand.

For Silver, whose father founded the business in 1976, that has meant paying $1 more per pound for beef than he did a year ago — on top of a roughly 50% jump in prices in 2024.

Silver’s cheesesteaks currently sell for $13.49, up from $11.49 in 2022, when the business was forced to shut down for nearly two years following a fire.

The popular sandwich, typically made with thinly sliced beef, cheese and onions, remains a staple in Philadelphia’s food scene.

“Crazy,” he called it. Silver said he got hit with “sticker shock” when he reopened last year.

“The price of beef when we left was $4.68 [per pound] for our choice top round beef,” Silver told ABC News.

“And when we came back it was over $7 a pound.”

Silver said that he has been hesitant to raise prices — a decision that has eaten into his bottom line.

Owner Ken Silver says declaring a ‘market price’ for cheesesteaks is on the table as beef costs continue to rise. Facebook/Jim’s South Street

“We’ve taken a hit, profitability-wise, just to maintain what our customers would expect to get when they come to us: a reasonably priced cheesesteak of the best quality they can find,” Silver said.

Nationwide, the average price of ground beef reached $6.12 per pound last month, according to US government data. That marks an increase of nearly 12% from a year earlier. The average price for all uncooked beef steaks rose 8% over the same period, hitting $11.49 per pound.

Those numbers represent record highs — and they cap off a steady climb in beef prices since the start of the decade. In 2020, the average price of ground beef was $4.63 per pound. By 2021, that figure rose to $4.88, and by 2022, it had jumped to $5.31.

Jim’s South St. reopened in 2024 after a fire. It is now grappling with record-high beef prices amid strong customer demand. Google Maps

Despite a modest 2.3% increase in 2023, the pace picked up again in 2024, with ground beef averaging $5.71 per pound. As of mid-2025, consumers are paying between $6.12 and $6.34 per pound — a rise of approximately 36% since 2020.

Steak prices have followed a similar, though more modest, trajectory. Estimated at around $10.25 per pound in 2020, steak rose to $10.41 in 2021 and $10.64 in 2022.

Prices plateaued in 2023, then resumed climbing to $10.90 in 2024. In 2025, the average for uncooked beef steaks sits at $11.49, reflecting a 12–15% increase over five years.

Behind the surge are several intersecting factors. The US cattle herd has declined to its smallest size since 1951, slashing beef supply and pushing prices upward.

At the same time, farmers have faced higher production costs due to drought conditions, increased grain prices and rising interest rates, which have led many to reduce their herds.

Despite the price hikes, demand for beef has remained strong, particularly during the summer grilling season, which means prices are unlikely to ease in the near future. Some forecasts suggest elevated beef prices could persist into 2026 and beyond, unless herd sizes are rebuilt.

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For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.

Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.

But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.

Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.

The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.

“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”

The elected leaders — some of whom may run for president in 2028 — and their aides said PJM’s executives, board members and committees made many important decisions in secret. And too many decisions, like whether to make it easier or harder for new power projects to join the grid, effectively benefit established energy companies at the expense of residents and businesses that use electricity.

The governors’ fury at PJM is part of broader frustrations expressed by elected officials, residents and businesses over U.S. grids. After decades of modest and gradual rate increases, the price of power has climbed relentlessly over the last several years.

The cost of electricity for residents of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia has increased from 23 to 40 percent over the last five years.

Energy costs rose sharply after natural gas prices spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. But electricity rates continued to climb after that shock because energy demand is growing rapidly, driven largely by new data centers.

In addition, power outages have become more frequent because utility equipment had been poorly maintained and was not upgraded for more intense natural disasters linked to climate change.

A spokesman for PJM said the organization was sensitive to the concerns of the governors but noted that it was regulated by a federal agency.

“The opinions of our governors are very important to PJM, and we share their concern about increasing electricity prices — a phenomenon occurring across much of our country,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey P. Shields. “PJM has no profit motive, no shareholders and no share price. We are fully regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and cannot make any major changes without that body’s approval.”

When it was formed in 1927, the organization was meant to connect the operations of three utilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Utilities in Maryland were later added, forming the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection, or PJM. Working together allowed the utilities to share resources, cutting costs.

The organization’s main job is to oversee the flow of energy over transmission lines that carry electricity from power plants to cities and towns. PJM also devises and enforces policies about when and which types of power plants are added to the grid.

Over nearly 100 years, the PJM grid has grown to encompass all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, stretching roughly from Chicago to Virginia Beach.

PJM has a nine-member board of managers, all of whom have worked in the energy industry or in other senior corporate jobs. It also has more than 1,000 voting members, most of which are utilities, power plant companies, transmission line owners and energy traders.

Most of those voting members have a direct financial stake in the organization’s decisions. Members typically vote on policies and issues. Some of the meetings are public, but others, including smaller committee meetings where preliminary decisions are made, are not.

PJM is one of seven large U.S. grid operators. Each functions differently. Some are confined to single states like California and Texas, and their boards answer to state officials. California is considering expanding the authority of its grid manager to include other Western states under a PJM-style model.

Other grid managers function like PJM, as independent organizations that pick their own board members and chief executives with no input from governors.

“What the problem is at PJM is that it is controlled and influenced by the corporate energy companies that constitute its membership,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a nonprofit research and consumer group started by Ralph Nader. “It puts energy company lobbyists in the driver’s seat at PJM.”

Mr. Slocum added that the federal regulator that oversees PJM and other grid managers was too reactive to adequately police these organizations.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has long pushed PJM to reform and speed up approval of new sources of electricity like wind, solar and battery projects. But progress has been slow. Critics blame PJM for that, but the organization says permitting delays, financing challenges, government decisions and other factors are more to blame.

A spokeswoman for the federal agency said it could not comment because of pending regulatory matters.

But at a meeting last week, the agency’s chairman, Mark Christie, said reforms at PJM and other regional grids were overdue. He asked if the organizations had failed and should be replaced.

“For years I’ve been saying we are heading toward a reliability crisis,” Mr. Christie said. “The crisis is really now on our doorstep.”

A 2024 report by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs concluded that PJM “has experienced the most severe delays and backlog in new generation — projects entering the queue today have little chance of coming online before 2030.”

The time it takes to add new sources of electricity is critical because demand for energy is growing rapidly. PJM’s territory includes northern Virginia, which has the country’s largest collection of data centers. Technology companies want to add many data centers in other PJM states, particularly Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Shields said PJM had reduced the backlog of power projects waiting to join its grid, recently approving new capacity that can serve 40 million homes.

In response to criticism of secrecy, he said that PJM holds more than 400 stakeholder meetings each year and that the vast majority are open to the public. And the organization makes documents available to the public on its website.

But many state officials said PJM existed mainly to benefit the utility industry.

Over the last three years as electricity rates rose sharply in Maryland, a state lawmaker, Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat, pushed for legislation that would force utilities in her state to disclose their votes at PJM. Mr. Moore signed the bill into law last month.

Ms. Charkoudian said a handful of PJM states had drafted or were working on similar legislation.

In interviews, Governor Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Matt Meyer of Delaware — both Democrats — said they supported the legislation and were working on other efforts to reform PJM.

Other states have gone even further.

In December, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania sued PJM after the grid manager conducted an annual auction in which power plant owners submit the price they are offering to supply energy when demand surges, which often happens in summer. The prices set by the auction would have resulted in big price increases for electricity users. The highest bid in the auction contributes to the final price PJM sets for all generators, meaning even power plant owners willing to accept less money would be paid the higher prices.

The state and PJM reached a settlement that caps the price set by the auction. Mr. Shapiro said the deal would save Pennsylvanians $21 billion over two years.

“I do not think PJM is serving the good people of Pennsylvania well,” Mr. Shapiro said in email responses to questions. “We’ve got to re-examine whether or not Pennsylvania should be a member of PJM. We are a net energy exporter, meaning we create more energy than we actually need. That puts us in a strong position to both keep consumer prices low and also create markets in other states.”

Mr. Shields said the complaint had been supported by five of the six states affected by it. He said the settlement maintained the effectiveness of the existing market design while supporting reliability and affordability of the grid for consumers.

But the settlement angered at least one other governor.

In a February letter to the chairman of PJM’s board, Governor Youngkin of Virginia criticized PJM for not consulting other states before settling with Pennsylvania. He said the deal was part of the grid manager’s piecemeal approach to running its system that was driving up electricity costs. Mr. Youngkin also said the organization should fire its chief executive.

“Instead of seeking to resolve these fundamental issues through open and transparent dialogue with all states, including Virginia, as well as other stakeholders, PJM leadership negotiated a one-off deal with a single state that impacts rates for all PJM customers,” Mr. Youngkin wrote.

Mr. Shields said Mr. Youngkin withdrew the letter without formally submitting it to the full organization “at PJM’s request.”

Last month, PJM announced that its chief executive, Manu Asthana, would step down by year’s end. The organization said the decision had preceded Mr. Youngkin’s letter.

“We’re spending our time talking about the wrong things,” Mr. Asthana said in a statement. “Prices are up because of tightening supply and demand driven by generator retirements and data center growth, and it’s impacting consumers. We need to be working together on additional ways to bring supply onto the system rapidly.”

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Major carriers, including Hapag-Lloyd, announced plans to increase shipping rates for a 40-foot container between China and West Coast ports to $6,500 from $3,500, beginning June 1, according to several companies that will be hit by the hike. 

With so many ships setting off from China to the US, there is concern that the supply chain will get backed up. ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The cost for shipping to East Coast ports will rise to $7,500 from $4,500, the sources added.

The increase “will squeeze profit margins and it will result in higher prices for consumers,” said Jay Foreman, CEO of Florida-based toy company Basic Fun, which makes Tonka Trucks.

Typically, shipping represents about 3% of a manufacturer’s cost of goods, according to Foreman, who estimates that the rate increase will double what it costs Basic Fun to ship its toys.

The ports in China are full to capacity. ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Walmart has already warned that tariffs will result in higher consumer prices even as President Trump warned the discount retailer “eat the tariffs.”

Another shipping rate hike to as much as $8,500 per container is expected by June 15, according to a Journal of Commerce report.

The carriers were accused of gouging to make up for lost revenue after US companies curtailed shipments to avoid paying the 145% tariff imposed on China imports by President Trump last month. 

The White House and Beijing reached a trade truce on May 12 that reduces the tariffs to 30% until August 10. 

“The ocean carriers are taking advantage of the back-log of shipments” that were left at Chinese ports or factories, Lou Lentine, chief executive of fitness equipment maker, Echelon, told The Post.

Importers, including fitness equipment maker Echelon will be facing huge shipping costs by June 1. Echelon

Lentine said his freight company told him to expect to pay $6,000 — twice as much to fill up a container with Echelon’s treadmills and other equipment that are made in China and Vietnam.

“It’s a lot,” Lentine said, adding, “We have to ship goods. We have no way around it.”

Even though most importers have negotiated fixed shipping rates, the carriers can slap them with “add-on” fees for peak season surcharges or spot rate increases when volume surges.

“Some of the Chinese ports are full, so they have to get freight out of the country,” said customs broker Bobby Shoule of JW Hampton Jr. & Co., a 160-year old logistics company in Jamaica, Queens.

The major shipping companies have warned about rate increases starting on June 1. Getty Images

The proposed rate hikes, announced last week, could possibly be negotiated down by major companies like Home Depot, he added. 

But smaller businesses don’t have the same leverage.  

“We have no choice but to pay this,” Foreman complained.

“There are no controls or regulations that limit how much these shipping companies can charge.”

Basic Fun makes the iconic Tonka truck in factories in China. WireImage for Fathom Communications

The prices for containers are far below what was being charged during the pandemic. They soared to more than $20,000 in 2021.

But the logjam that is expected at the ports in the coming weeks could strain the supply chain to levels not seen since those dark days, Shoule predicted.

The ports are already behind schedule by seven to 10 days, which is how long it’s taking to get containers onto the rail system, he said.

US ports are already experiencing delays in moving containers out of the ports onto rail cars. Getty Images

“Once the glut of ships that have been sitting at all the ports in China get loaded up and start moving across the Pacific, the knock on effects will start to kick in,” Foreman also warned.

“These include too many boats hitting the West Coast ports at one time, too many container boxes being out of place, [and a] lag of boats getting back to China to pick up the next waves of product flow for the back half of the year.” 

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The El Segundo, California-based company said the increases are necessary even though it is speeding up its plans to diversify its manufacturing base away from China. Trump imposed a 145% tariff on most Chinese-made products.

Mattel also withdrew its annual earnings forecast, citing the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the president’s trade policies. The company said it would be “difficult to predict” consumer spending and the company’s US sales for the remainder of the year without more information.

Mattel said increases are necessary even though it is speeding up its plans to diversify its manufacturing base away from China. 8th – stock.adobe.com

The company reported larger-than expected first-quarter sales but also a wider loss. Mattel said sales rose 2% to $827 million for the quarter that ended March 31.

The company’s loss expanded to $40.3 million, or 12 cents per share, in the quarter. That compares with a loss of $28.3 million, or 8 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Analysts expected a loss of 10 cents on sales of $786.1 million for the first quarter, according to FactSet.

Mattel reported larger-than expected first-quarter sales but also a wider loss. Sales rose 2% to $827 million. REUTERS

Mattel’s shares were down nearly 3% in after markets trading.

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President Trump and Elon Musk promised taxpayers big savings, maybe even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes, when the Department of Government Efficiency was let loose on the federal government. Now, as he prepares to step back from his presidential assignment to cut bureaucratic fat, Mr. Musk has said without providing details that DOGE is likely to save taxpayers only $150 billion.

That is about 15 percent of the $1 trillion he pledged to save, less than 8 percent of the $2 trillion in savings he had originally promised and a fraction of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spent in the 2024 fiscal year.

The errors and obfuscations underlying DOGE’s claims of savings are well documented. Less known are the costs Mr. Musk incurred by taking what Mr. Trump called a “hatchet” to government and the resulting firings, agency lockouts and building seizures that mostly wound up in court.

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. At the Internal Revenue Service, a DOGE-driven exodus of 22,000 employees would cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to figures from the Budget Lab at Yale University. The total number of departures is expected to be as many as 32,000.

Neither of these estimates includes the cost to taxpayers of defending DOGE’s moves in court. Of about 200 lawsuits and appeals related to Mr. Trump’s agenda, at least 30 implicate the department.

“Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating,” said Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service. “He’s inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come.”

Mr. Stier and other experts on the federal work force said it did not have to be this way. Federal law and previous government shutdowns offered Mr. Musk a legal playbook for reducing the federal work force, a goal that most Americans support. But Mr. Musk chose similar lightning-speed, blunt-force methods he used to drastically cut Twitter’s work force after he acquired the company in 2022.

“The law is clear,” said Jeri Buchholz, who over three decades in public service handled hiring and firing at seven federal agencies, including NASA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. “They can do all the things they are currently doing, but they can’t do them the way they’re doing them. They can either start over and do it right, or they can be in court for forever.”

Harrison W. Fields, a White House spokesman, defended DOGE’s cuts and called the $150 billion that the administration had saved “monumental and historic.”

“It’s important to realize that doing nothing has a cost, too, and these so-called experts and groups are conveniently absent when looking at the costs of doing nothing,” he said.

On the I.R.S., he said, “Every single cut has been done to make the government more efficient and not to be a burden to the American people or cut any critical resources or programs they rely on.”

Based on the latest available information, the DOGE cuts have targeted at least 12 percent of the 2.4 million civilian employees in the federal work force. But a wide gap exists between DOGE’s planned cuts and the number of people who actually leave.

Buyouts and firings initially trimmed about 100,000 workers — thousands fewer people than those who typically retire in a year, according to Office of Personnel Management figures. At least one-quarter of those 100,000 workers have been rehired at full pay, most after judges ruled that their firings were illegal and some after Mr. Musk said DOGE had “accidentally” sacked workers safeguarding nuclear weapons, ensuring aviation safety and combating bird flu and Ebola.

When judges ordered that the workers be hired back, the government put them on paid leave, meaning taxpayers would foot the cost of rehiring them, plus the salaries they collected while staying home.

Layoffs of 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services wiped out the entire team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention combating H.I.V. among mothers and children around the world. In an interview, two public health physicians said they were caught off guard because the team’s work always had bipartisan support. They were facing termination on June 2 and said they wanted to return to work but did not know to whom to make their case.

Mr. Musk’s methods have cast a pall over the latest effort by an American president to trim the federal bureaucracy, as most Americans say they want. In congressional town halls and interviews, even Trump voters have said they are tired of Mr. Musk’s bloodletting. In a poll released this month, 58 percent of those surveyed said they disapproved of how Mr. Musk was handling DOGE’s work, and 60 percent disapproved of Mr. Musk himself.

‘We Will Make Mistakes’

A week after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Office of Personnel Management sent a now infamous email to more than two million federal workers with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” They were told they could either resign and be paid through September or risk being sacked down the road.

The email ignited anger and confusion over whether DOGE had the legal authority to pay workers through September. Federal employee unions sued, but a judge allowed the program to go forward. About 75,000 people left, or about three percent. If the administration does not renege on its offer, it will be paying their salaries into the fall.

The mass buyout did not favor highly rated performers nor distinguish crucial jobs from nonessential ones, practices that guided furloughs during past government shutdowns. Consequently, the administration wound up trying to reverse an exodus of people in vital roles.

“We will make mistakes,” Mr. Musk told cabinet members in February. After he boasted of feeding the United States Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper,” a move a judge later found violated the Constitution, Mr. Musk discovered that “one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention.” But his claim to have swiftly repaired the damage was inaccurate.

Separately, a New York Times investigation into cuts to the National Nuclear Security Administration illustrate the effect of the buyouts on efforts to safeguard and modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons. Of more than 130 people who were fired or accepted DOGE’s invitation to quit, at least 27 were engineers, 13 were program or project analysts, 12 were program or project managers, and five were physicists or scientists.

Four of these employees were specialists handling the secure transport of nuclear materials, and a half dozen worked in the agency unit that builds reactors for nuclear submarines.

“Those are such hard jobs to fill, because people could make as much or more money working for the plant or laboratory itself,” said Jill Hruby, who led the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Biden administration.

Several people on the nuclear safety team found new jobs with the government contractors they once supervised. Across government, a disproportionate number of professionals in high demand by the private sector have quit, according to Mr. Stier.

“There are plenty of people who are best in class who are sticking it out because they’re so purpose-driven,” he said. “But it’s easier for someone who has options to say, ‘This is crazy, I’m not going to do this anymore,’ and go someplace else.”

‘Money Being Deliberately Wasted’

In mid-February, the Office of Personnel Management targeted all 220,000 of the federal government’s probationary employees, who are new or newly promoted professionals serving a one- to two-year trial period with fewer worker protections. They included a cadre of younger, tech-savvy professionals hired at great expense to replace a wave of baby boomer retirees. Hiring and training them cost about $10,000 for a clerical worker to more than $1 million for an elite spy.

“This is the equivalent of a major-league baseball franchise firing all of their minor-league players,” said Kevin Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer and lawyer who represents some of the fired workers. “It’s a huge amount of money being deliberately wasted.”

About 24,000 probationary employees across nearly 20 agencies had been fired by March 13, when a federal judge in Maryland ruled that the cuts were illegal and ordered the agencies to rehire the workers, but the government appealed and the legal wrangling continues. By law, probationary employees can only be fired for cause, typically for poor performance, Judge James K. Bredar of the Federal District Court in Maryland said in a lengthy ruling.

He ordered the government to recall the fired workers, including 7,600 from the Treasury Department, 5,700 at the Agriculture Department and more than 3,200 at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to court filings. But the administration instead put them on paid leave, where they collect annual salaries averaging $106,000 while waiting in limbo.

For each probationary worker DOGE idled, the government lost thousands of dollars it spent on recruitment, hiring incentives, security clearances and training, an investment normally recouped over years of service. In one case, a fired probationary employee with the Department of Health and Human Services received a pay raise after she was reinstated and put on paid leave.

The administration cut about 400 probationary workers at the Federal Aviation Administration after multiple plane crashes, including one in Washington in January that killed 67 people. The layoffs included maintenance mechanics and aviation safety assistants.

The C.I.A. confirmed last month that some officers hired in the past two years had been summoned to a location away from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and asked to surrender their credentials to security personnel. About 80 officers were let go.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said it cost $400,000 to get a C.I.A. recruit through the security clearance process and specialized training.

Inflicting Pain

The theatrics around the firings, including an appearance by Mr. Musk at a conservative political convention waving a chain saw, suggest they are also about inflicting pain on a bureaucracy Mr. Trump perceives as a subversive “deep state.”

That was a goal for federal employees set by Russell T. Vought, who now leads the Office of Management and Budget. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” Mr. Vought told a conservative gathering in 2023.

Ms. Buchholz and Mr. Stier emphasize that the government is indeed inefficient and needs reform. But by “gleefully torturing people,” Ms. Buchholz said, DOGE has hurt the government’s ability to recruit young, talented workers to lead a modernization.

“This country historically has had an independent public service that attracts people focused on service to Americans,” Ms. Buchholz said. “But this administration values the kind of service you get from political appointees, who serve at the president’s pleasure.”

Reporting was contributed by Eileen Sullivan, Andrew Duehren, Sharon LaFraniere, Minho Kim, Julie Tate, Zach Montague and Adam Goldman from Washington. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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President Trump’s latest tariffs are about to become an unavoidable and expensive reality for American businesses and for people who rely on foreign goods.

Shoppers buying clothes from retailers in China may soon pay more than twice as much, now that a special exemption for lower-value imports is disappearing. And companies involved in international trade must now make even more complicated calculations to decide how much they owe in tariffs.

“Maybe 3 percent of the people are well prepared,” said Jeremy Page, a founding partner of Page Fura, an international trade law firm, whose clients include large companies. “And that might even be charitable.”

Imports from China have been hit with tariffs of 145 percent. That means for every $100 worth of goods a business buys from that country, it has to pay $145 to the federal government. Goods from most other countries have a new 10 percent tax, though that could rise if the countries do not reach trade agreements with the United States by July. And there are separate tariffs on cars, steel and aluminum. Mr. Trump has also said he wants to impose new tariffs on pharmaceuticals and computer chips.

Mr. Trump contends that the tariffs will encourage businesses to produce goods in the United States. The tariffs on Chinese goods will almost certainly reduce imports from the country. But American businesses will not be able to quickly get goods from elsewhere — U.S. imports from China totaled $439 billion last year — and they will end up owing huge amounts in tariffs.

Who pays the tariffs?

Mr. Trump has said tariffs are a tax on other countries, but, overwhelmingly, American businesses importing the goods pay the tariffs to the Customs and Border Protection when goods enter the United States. Importers may pass some or all of the cost of the tariff to consumers through higher prices.

“In the short term, prices are definitely going to increase,” said Daniel J. Barabino, chief operating officer at Top Banana, a fruit distributor based at the Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx, which imports bananas and other produce from Central America.

Importers may also try to negotiate lower prices with foreign suppliers, which would reduce the tariff.

How are the tariffs paid?

Most importers employ customs brokers who calculate the tariffs owed based on the goods’ value and where they were exported from. Other factors — like whether a product has components from China — can complicate the tariff calculation.

Payments are made electronically, from the bank accounts of either importers or the brokers, who later recoup the money from their clients. As Mr. Trump has piled on tariffs, some brokers are becoming more cautious and demanding customers pay up quickly.

“With changing tariffs and increased risk, many brokers are tightening their credit policies — asking for upfront payments or requiring funds to be held on account,” said Adam Lewis, a co-founder and president of Clearit, a customs broker.

Where does the money go?

The tariffs end up at the Treasury Department, which also receives taxes and other government fees, and spends the money on things like salaries, weapons and equipment.

What happens if a business pays less than it owes?

Calculating tariffs can be difficult, especially when tariff rates change a lot in a matter of days, as they have recently.

Trade rules allow for some leeway, said Mr. Page, the lawyer. Importers who realize they have made a mistake and inform Customs and Border Protection are usually allowed to pay what they owe, plus interest.

But, Mr. Page said, Mr. Trump’s recent executive orders on metals tariffs were stricter than that. The order said Customs and Border Protection could impose much higher monetary penalties if importers misclassified goods, an approach that, in Mr. Page’s view, defies the law.

“That mandate says, ‘We’re going to hammer you no matter what,’” he said.

Will the new tariffs cause delays?

Customs and Border Protection’s systems are already showing signs of strain.

On Friday, the agency said importers had not been able to submit tariffs owed on certain goods. The glitch appeared to be preventing importers from applying a lower tariff rate on goods that were in transit to the United States before some of Mr. Trump’s new levies took effect.

Customs and Border Protection said it was releasing the goods affected by this problem and allowing importers to submit their customs duties later.

“This won’t be the last time that something like this happens,” Mr. Lewis said, adding that there may be backlogs when customs officials do more checks to see if the tariffs on Chinese goods are being paid correctly.

Countries that don’t strike trade deals with the United States by July may face higher tariffs, and Mr. Trump may suddenly decide to introduce new tariffs. Fears of such levies could extend a monthslong rush to get goods into the United States before the new tariffs take effect.

Supply chains have so far handled the higher volumes without major snags.

Trucking activity around Laredo, Texas, one of the busiest border crossings in the United States, was 46 percent higher than it was a year earlier, according to Motive, which gets its data from the tracking devices it provides to trucking companies. Local truckers said their networks had not been strained.

At the Port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles, trucks took 71 minutes on average to pick up cargo from terminals in the first three months of this year, according to data from the Harbor Trucking Association, a trade group. That was slightly up from 68 minutes in the first three months of last year. In the first quarter of 2022, when the pandemic trade boom caused backlogs at the ports, pickups took an hour and a half.

Danielle Kaye contributed reporting.

The post What to Know About Who Pays the Higher Costs of Trump’s Tariffs appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced wide-ranging cutbacks at federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, that would eliminate duplicative services and paper pushers.

But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former F.D.A. staff members, a different picture emerged of the far-reaching effects of the layoffs that would ultimately reduce the agency work force by 20 percent. Among them are experts who navigated a maze of laws to determine if an expensive drug can be sold as a low-cost generic; lab scientists who tested food and drugs for contaminants or deadly bacteria; veterinary division specialists investigating bird flu transmission; and researchers who monitored televised ads for false claims about prescription drugs.

In many areas of the F.D.A., no employees remain to process payroll, to file retirement or layoff paperwork and to help overseas inspectors who are at risk of maxing out agency credit cards. Even the agency’s library, where researchers and experts relied on medical journal subscriptions that have now been canceled, has been shut down.

The F.D.A.’s new commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, showed up for a long-awaited appearance at the agency’s Maryland headquarters on Wednesday. He delivered a speech outlining broad problems in the health care system, including a rise in chronic diseases. Employees were not given a formal opportunity to ask questions.

About 3,500 F.D.A. employees are expected to lose their jobs under the reductions. A spokesman for Health and Human Services did not respond to questions.

When the Trump administration executed its first round of cuts to the F.D.A. in February, it gutted teams of scientists who did the delicate work of ensuring the safety of surgical robots and devices that infuse insulin in children with diabetes. Some of the layoffs and cutbacks, described by former F.D.A. officials as arbitrary, were rapidly reversed.

Dr. David Kessler, a former agency commissioner and White House adviser on the pandemic response under President Biden, said the latest round of layoffs sheared decades of crucial experience and knowledge from the agency.

“I think it’s devastating, haphazard, thoughtless and chaotic,” he said. “I think they need to be rescinded.”

It remains uncertain if any of the jobs lost will be restored by the administration. In interviews, 15 current and former staff members, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing job loss or retaliation, described the layoffs and their expected effects on the nation’s food, drugs and medical supplies.

Weaker monitors for food safety

The agency eliminated scientists at several product safety labs, including a lab near San Francisco that tested food. These cuts come in addition to the recent elimination of a key food safety committee and reduced funding for state-based food inspectors.

The San Francisco lab did routine checks for deadly bacteria on food to support inspections and investigations and had expertise in detecting heavy metals and toxic elements. It also analyzed food colorings and additives — a stated priority of the new administration.

Another casualty at the food division involved nearly all of the staff in the Office of Policy and International Engagement. It shared data with other nations to head off outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that were detected overseas before the products could reach the United States.

“If Canada has a big outbreak, will they notify F.D.A. and share that information?” asked Susan Mayne, a former top F.D.A. food official and adjunct professor of epidemiology at Yale University. “And if so, who would they even notify? The channels of communication have been broken.”

The international food office also worked with developed nations to share inspection records of food-manufacturing plants overseas — so that more federal dollars could go to investigate food processors in developing countries. It remains unclear whether anyone will pick up the work of the shuttered divisions.

Drug review funding jeopardized

The F.D.A. is heavily funded by the industries it regulates, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and tobacco. The industry fees, which accounted for about half of the agency budget, are paid under the terms negotiated between the agency and the industries. The agreements are monitored and approved by Congress.

Criticized by many, including Mr. Kennedy, as a way for these industries to wield undue influence, the agreements do not obligate F.D.A. staff reviewers to approve new drugs. But staff reviewers are required to meet strict deadlines during the approval process.

Those steep reductions could jeopardize user fees amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The losses could result in hitting a “trigger” in the law that would close off the fees altogether.

That could leave virtually no one to review lengthy drug approval applications or to authorize new medications for cancer and rare diseases.

Though the trade association for the drug industry, PhRMA, declined an interview request, Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs, said the substantial changes at the F.D.A. “raise questions about the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to bring new innovative medicines to patients.”

Complicating matters, the billing-and-accounting staff members who managed the industry fee program and the officials who negotiated terms around the fees were laid off.

Fewer checks on drug safety

Other labs that were decimated included one in Chicago where scientists studied food packaging and how chemicals migrated into food.

Nearly all the staff members were laid off at a drug safety lab in Detroit that supported the work of agency inspectors. They tested samples of medications picked up by facility inspectors checking to see if a plant was ready to open for mass production — or investigating a potential problem. Staff members also analyzed products that were subject to consumer complaints.

“The lab scientists at the F.D.A. are very important to the fabric of the agency,” said Dr. Namandjé N. Bumpus, the principal deputy commissioner who left the agency in December.

Staff members who monitored drug safety and efficacy were also laid off at a lab in San Juan, Puerto Rico, specializing in assessing eye drops, nasal sprays and drugs administered with a patch on the skin

Potential delays in cheaper, generic drugs

Across the F.D.A., offices with the term “policy” in the title were targeted for elimination. Though the work seems trivial on paper, it was particularly important in the highly contested world of generic drugs — which account for about 90 percent of the medications used in the United States.

Staff members in the generic drug policy office did the painstaking work of sifting through existing law, ever-changing court rulings and scientific data to determine which drugs could be approved as generics or, in the case of biologically active therapies, as biosimilars. (Biosimilars are drugs deemed interchangeable with brand-name drugs that are biologically active.)

Such approvals save consumers billions of dollars collectively. The layoffs of the generic drug policy team could delay those savings.

John Murphy III, the president of the Association for Accessible Medicines, which represents makers of generic drugs, said in a statement that he supported efficiency efforts to get medications to patients faster, but “many of the reported cuts appear to do the opposite.”

Some work on bird flu ends

The staff in the director’s office in the Center for Veterinary Medicine was dismissed, bringing some work on responding to the bird flu to a halt. The office had studied how pasteurization kills bird flu in milk. It had also been investigating bird flu transmission from raw-meat pet food to pets and was managing recalls of the products.

Scientists in the veterinary office were also helping the U.S. Agriculture Department sort through proposals to develop vaccines and treatments for poultry and animals aimed at combating the virus and reducing egg prices.

Loss of watchdogs on misleading drug advertising

Mr. Kennedy has sharply criticized televised drug ads. But his new layoffs folded the division that monitors them for false or misleading claims. The office received complaints from the public and issued warning letters to companies making problematic claims. Though drug companies have balked at the staff cuts, this change could be viewed as a win.

“Drug companies must love the defanging of the F.D.A.,” Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center, said in an email. “The Trump administration is destroying an agency crucial to public health.”

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