A New Mexico state court jury on Tuesday held Meta liable for nearly $400 million in civil damages after a trial where the state attorney general accused the Facebook and Instagram operator of failing to safeguard kids who use its apps from child predators.

The civil trial, which began with opening arguments in Santa Fe last month, centered on allegations that Meta violated state consumer protections laws and misled residents about the safety of apps like Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 following an undercover operation involving the creation of a fake social media profile of a 13-year-old girl that he previously told CNBC “was simply inundated with images and targeted solicitations” from child abusers.

Deliberations began Monday, and jurors were tasked with ruling in favor or against the defendant Meta. Jury members found that Meta willfully violated the state’s unfair practices act, and decided the company should pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations.

Linda Singer, an attorney representing New Mexico, urged jury members during closing statements to impose a civil penalty against Meta that could top $2 billion.

“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”

Meta denied the state of New Mexico’s allegations and previously said that it is “focused on demonstrating our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”

“The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” Torrez said in a statement. “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”

When the New Mexico trial’s second phase, conducted without a jury, commences on May 4, a judge will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance and should fund public programs intended to address the alleged harms. The state’s lawyers are also urging Meta to implement changes to its apps and operations, including “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors.”

During the trial, New Mexico prosecutors revealed legal filings detailing internal messages from Meta employees discussing how CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 announcement to make Facebook Messenger end-to-end encrypted by default would impact the ability to disclose to law enforcement some 7.5 million child sexual abuse material reports.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday before the verdict was revealed, Torrez discussed Meta’s argument that the prosecutors cherry picked certain materials to paint an unfair picture about the company, and that Meta has been updating its various apps with safety features.

Torrez said he didn’t think that the jury would “be convinced that they’ve done as much as they can or should have, and that they should be held responsible for it.”

“One of the things that I am really focused on is how we can change the design features of these products, at least within New Mexico, and that would create a standard that could then be modeled elsewhere in the country, and, frankly, around the world,” Torrez said during the sidelines of the Common Sense Summit held in San Francisco.

Torrez said that a similar child-exploitation related suit involving Snap, filed by his office in 2024, is still in the discovery stages and that his team was “able to overcome section 230 motions” in both the Meta and Snap case. The tech industry has argued that the Section 230 provision of the Communications Decency Act should prevent them from being held liable for content shared on their respective services, resulting in prosecutors testing new legal strategies focusing on the design of the apps instead.

Regarding Meta’s criticism that prosecutors are picking certain corporate documents and related materials, Torrez said, “What’s interesting is they accuse us of doing that, but all we’re doing is showing the world what they knew behind closed doors and weren’t willing to tell their users.”

The New Mexico case is one of multiple social media-related trials taking place this year that experts have compared to the Big Tobacco suits from the 1990s due in part to allegations that the companies misled the public about the safety and potential harms of their products.

Jury members in a separate, personal injury trial involving Meta and Google’s YouTube have been deliberating in a Los Angeles Superior court since last Friday. The companies are alleged to have misled the public about the safety and design of their respective apps. The jury must determine whether one or both of the companies implemented certain design features that contributed to the mental distress of a plaintiff who alleged that she became addicted to social media apps when she was underage.

A separate federal trial in the Northern District of California will commence later this year. Multiple school districts and parents across the nation allege that that the actions and apps of Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap caused negative mental health-related harms to teenagers and children.

WATCH: Would be surprised in Meta workforce cuts are as big as reported, says Evercore’s Mark Mahaney.

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Working with the Security Cabinet, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit has identified 13 casinos as part of an investigation into organized crime and money laundering. It uncovered signs relating to cash operations, international transfers, and the use of unsupervised digital platforms that labelled the casinos “high financial risk”.

La Secretaría de Hacienda refuerza acciones institucionales para impedir el lavado de dinero a través del uso de casinos por presuntos grupos de la delincuencia organizada.https://t.co/zH9tCLLe2U#ComunicadoHacienda pic.twitter.com/a29WCtkByD

— Hacienda (@Hacienda_Mexico) November 12, 2025

The findings of the investigation have led to Mexican authorities blocking the casinos to protect users and remove any risk of them being used by organized crime groups.

Multimillion-dollar organized crime transactions spotted

In addition, signs of international money laundering were detected at gaming establishments across various regions, including Jalisco, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, State of Mexico, Chiapas, and Mexico City. Some of those casinos are alleged to have carried out multimillion-dollar cash transactions, with transfers going to the US, Romania, Albania, Malta, and Panama.

Further suspicion was raised when it was found that apparent users of digital platforms were not in line with the amount of money being transferred. For example, housewives, students, retirees, and the unemployed were seemingly transferring large sums of money to the real recipient in exchange for a percentage fee, in an attempt to make the income appear as though it had come from casino games.

The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit now plans to file the complaints with the Attorney General, as well as notify the tax authorities.

“With this, the Ministry of Finance reaffirms the commitment of the Government of Mexico to strengthen inter-institutional coordination, prevent criminal infiltration in vulnerable sectors, and consolidate joint actions with security and law enforcement authorities to prevent casinos and betting platforms from being used by alleged organized crime groups, as well as to protect users and the population,” reads the official statement from the Ministry.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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Canada and Mexico will be hit with a 25% tariff on all imports, while Chinese products will receive a more modest 10% tariff.

The US will also impose 10% tariffs on energy products from Canada, including natural gas, oil and electricity.

President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China. Getty Images

The three Executive Orders have a retaliation clause that will boost the tariffs should the three countries respond.

The tariffs are in response to the three nations’ tolerance of illegal immigrants and fentanyl, the later of which has flooded the United States in recent years, leading to the deaths of “tens of millions” of Americans, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Friday.

“We need to protect Americans, and it is my duty as President to ensure the safety of all. I made a promise on my Campaign to stop the flood of illegal aliens and drugs from pouring across our Borders, and Americans overwhelmingly voted in favor of it,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The tariffs are being brought down through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEA), which “authorizes the President to regulate imports during a national emergency declared under the National Emergencies Act.”

Trump invoked NEA last month, citing a national crisis at the southern US border.

Trump’s tariffs will likely lead to more expensive cars at least in the short term before American suppliers can ramp up to fill the shortfall. ZUMAPRESS.com

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) blasted Trump over tariffs — which he said would only make life harder for Americans.

“It would be nice if Donald Trump could start focusing on getting the prices down instead of making them go up,” he told CNN, adding that the tariffs “will likely hit Americans in their wallets” and said lawmakers should instead be focusing on “going hard against competitors who rig the game, like China, rather than attacking our allies.”

The Democrat then went on an X tirade, warning Americans in a series of posts that the new tariffs will raise already-high prices ranging from gas to pizza: “Wait till Trump’s tariffs raise your pizza prices.

Trump’s trade war on Canada is expected to officially kick in Tuesday by imposing the 25% tariff on nearly all goods from the US’s northern neighbor.

The US will also impose 10% tariffs on energy products from Canada. AP

Canada, however, was expected to hit back later Saturday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing retaliatory tariffs against America, its biggest customer for trade, the outlet reported.

It was unclear Saturday when the United States will begin imposing tariffs on Mexico and China.

Trump has long been a fan of taxing imports from other nations as a way to correct trade imbalances, raise revenues and be used as leverage for unrelated policy battles.

Earlier this month when Colombia initially refused to accept a plane load of their citizens in the United States illegally, Trump vowed to implement tariffs as high as 50% — a move that would likely have sent the small Colombia nation into depression.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro immediately buckled under pressure and even offered his presidential plane to assist in the deportations.

The tariffs could mean significant price increases for ordinary Americans on everyday products.

Cars and car parts

In 2024, the United States imported more than $100 billion worth of cars and vehicle parts from Mexico, with another $34 billion coming from Canada.

Trump’s tariffs will likely lead to more expensive cars at least in the short term before American suppliers can ramp up to fill the shortfall.

Food and Alcohol

Your margaritas and sipping tequilas will also likely take a nasty bump.

In 2024, the United States imported $46 billion of agricultural products from Mexico, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture. Of that figure, fresh fruits totaled $9 billion, and cost for fruit will likely become more expensive at grocery stores across the country when the tariffs kick in.

Consumer electronics

The tariffs could also reduce consumer spending power by $90 billion on smartphones, TVs, laptops and tablets, video game consoles, headphones and other popular electronics, according to the Consumer Technology Association. 

Laptops and tablets could see 45% price increases while similar double-digit increases for smartphones and video games could also be on the offing.

“The likelihood of retailers or any importer absorbing the tariff cost is very low, so the pass through to consumers will be quick,” Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade at CTA told CBS News “On all the products we looked at, there are going to be price increases.”

The Peterson Institute has estimated Trump’s proposed tariffs would cost the typical US household over $2,600 a year.

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President Trump plans to move forward with imposing stiff tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on Saturday, in an attempt to further pressure America’s largest trading partners to accept more deportees and stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the country.

In a news briefing on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president would put in place a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.

Ms. Leavitt said the president had chosen to impose tariffs because the countries “have allowed an unprecedented invasion of illegal fentanyl that is killing American citizens, and also illegal immigrants into our country.”

“The amount of fentanyl that has been seized at the southern border in the last few years alone has the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans,” she said. “And so the president is intent on doing this.”

The tariffs are likely to mark the beginning of the kind of disruptive trade wars that defined Mr. Trump’s first term, but perhaps on an even bigger scale.

Mr. Trump placed tariffs on nearly two-thirds of Chinese imports in his first term and China fired back, placing tariffs on U.S. exports. He also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum from various countries, inciting retaliation from the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

While the tariffs against allies were viewed as controversial they were relatively limited in scope. It remains to be seen exactly what products Mr. Trump’s new tariffs apply to, but the president has threatened a higher tariff against Canada and Mexico, close allies of the United States, than China.

Canada, Mexico and China are America’s three largest trading partners, supplying the United States with cars, medicine, shoes, timber, electronics, steel and many other products. Together, they account for more than a third of the goods and services imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs.

All three governments have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own on U.S. exports, including Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky peanut butter. All three of those states have Republican senators representing them in Congress and voted for Mr. Trump in 2024.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs would immediately add a surcharge for the importers who bring products across the border, most of which are U.S. companies. In the nearer term, that could disrupt supply chains and lead to shortages, if importers choose not to pay the cost of the tariff.

If importers do pay the tariff, it will probably translate into higher prices for some American goods, as those companies generally pass the cost of tariffs on to their customers.

“Hopes that Trump’s tariffs threats were merely bluster and a bargaining tool are now crumbling under the harsh reality of his determination to deploy tariffs as a tool to shift other countries’ policies to his liking,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University.

Mr. Trump had said in November that he would put the tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, in an effort to halt the flow of migrants and drugs, particularly fentanyl, into the United States.

The threat set off a scramble from Canadian and Mexican officials, who tried to persuade the administration to hold off on tariffs by engaging in last-minute talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and detailing the efforts they were making to police the border.

Auto, agricultural and energy companies have all been pushing the White House and the administration hard not to apply tariffs, and have called for an exclusions process that could give some products an exemption.

Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican economy minister, said Friday that tariffs likely would lead to shortages in specific goods, and that U.S. prices on Mexican goods would increase. He called the move “a strategic mistake” by the Trump administration.

“The main impact is clear: millions of families in the United States would have to pay 25 percent more,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, in a post on X on Friday afternoon, said that “No one — on either side of the border — wants to see American tariffs on Canadian goods.” He said that “if the United States moves ahead, Canada’s ready with a forceful and immediate response.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers had been weighing different options for the tariffs, like applying them to specific sectors, such as steel and aluminum, or delaying their effective date for several months, according to people familiar with the planning.

At both borders, the number of illegal crossings has dropped sharply.

The number of unauthorized crossings at the southern border in December 2023 reached nearly 250,000, overwhelming the Border Patrol and causing the government to shut down a port of entry. At the northern border, the flow of migrants crossing illegally skyrocketed during the 2024 fiscal year. During that time, more than 23,000 arrests were made of migrants crossing illegally — two years before that figure was around 2,000.

The situation at the border has changed since then.

In December, agents made roughly 47,000 arrests at the southern border and 510 at the northern border.

Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump suggested he would be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico “for a number of reasons.”

“We don’t need what they have,” Mr. Trump said. He added that tariff rates could increase over time and suggested that the tariffs might not apply to oil imports, a decision that could avoid a spike in gas prices.

While the United States is the world’s largest oil producer, refineries need to mix the lighter crude produced in domestic fields with heavier oil from places like Canada to make fuels like gasoline and diesel. Roughly 60 percent of the oil that the United States imports comes from Canada, and about 7 percent comes from Mexico.

According to Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service, if fuel producers respond to the tariffs by cutting production, gasoline prices in the Midwest could climb 15 to 20 cents a gallon, with more muted effects in other parts of the country.

The economic fallout from the tariffs would depend on how they were structured, but the ripple effects could be broad. Canada, Mexico and the United States have been governed by a trade agreement for more than 30 years, and many industries, from automobiles and apparel to agriculture, have grown highly integrated across North America.

Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the tariffs would be “very costly” for U.S. businesses.

U.S. factories rely on inputs from both countries, including minerals and timber from Canada and auto parts from Mexico. The tariffs would also go against efforts that U.S. companies have made in recent years to move out of China, at the urging of the Trump and Biden administrations, Ms. Lovely said.

According to economists at S&P Global, the auto and electric equipment sectors in Mexico would be most exposed to disruption if tariffs were enacted, as would mineral processing in Canada. In the United States, the largest risks would be to the farming, fishing, metals and auto sectors.

Jonathan Samford, the president of Global Business Alliance, which represents international companies, said the tariffs might result in rising costs for U.S. consumers, slowdowns for U.S. businesses and lost opportunities for future investment.

“Hammering U.S. consumers with tariffs on products from major trading partners is highly disruptive to the U.S. economy,” he said.

The potential economic implications from tariffs are also complicating matters for the Federal Reserve, which is still trying to wrestle inflation down to its 2 percent target. The Fed this week held interest rates steady, after a series of cuts, amid persistent inflation and questions about how the tariffs would play out.

Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs protect domestic manufacturers. But on balance, most economists expect higher trade barriers to raise prices for U.S. businesses and households, which could lead to a temporary burst of higher inflation. Whether that escalates into a more pernicious problem will depend on whether Americans’ expectations about future inflation start to shift higher in a meaningful way.

Over time, economists also worry about broader economic effects, warning that trade tensions are likely to lead to less investment, more subdued business activity and slower growth.

Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab, estimates that a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imported goods — paired with a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports — would lead to a permanent 0.8 percent bump in the price level, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index. That translates to roughly $1,300 for households on average. Those estimates assume that the targeted countries enact retaliatory measures and that the Federal Reserve does not take action by adjusting interest rates.

Mr. Tedeschi expects this to eventually shave 0.2 percent off gross domestic product once inflation is taken into account.

Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers have disputed the idea that the tariffs fuel inflation. In the press briefing, Ms. Leavitt said inflation had remained subdued in Mr. Trump’s first term, despite tariffs being imposed. And she said the president was undertaking other policies that would lower inflation, like passing tax cuts and encouraging energy production.

At his confirmation hearing this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed concerns from Democrats about Mr. Trump’s trade policy, suggesting that exporters from countries such as China would lower their prices in the face of higher U.S. tariffs.

Hamed Aleaziz, Vjosa Isai and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.

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