Financial Mindset

President Donald Trump promised on Monday that his administration will begin issuing $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks to Americans around the middle of 2026, the most specific timetable he has offered yet on a proposal that can’t seem to find a home within a campaign-esque promise, economic argument and political provocation. “We’re going to be issuing dividends later on, somewhere prior to … probably the middle of next year, a little bit later than that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, according to Axios . The payments, he said, would go to “individuals of moderate income, middle income.” The commitment marks an escalation from Trump’s earlier, vaguer assertions that tariffs are generating enough money to fund direct payments to American households. But turning the idea into actual checks is far more complicated than his easy-going rhetoric suggests. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made that clear over the weekend, saying on Fox News that the administration “needs legi...

New York City Mayor-elect  Zohran Mamdani  said Monday that he hopes to meet with President  Donald Trump  to find ways the  political polar opposites  can work together on the central focus of his winning campaign: affordability. At an appearance at a food pantry in the Bronx, the Democrat confirmed that his team had reached out to the White House to set up a possible sit-down. Trump told reporters Sunday night that he planned meet with Mamdani, saying ”  we’ll work something out ” as he prepared to fly back to Washington after spending the weekend in Florida. Mamdani said the overture reflected his commitment to meet with anyone who could help address the city’s most pressing needs, including controlling soaring costs. “The president ran a campaign where he spoke about a promise to deliver cheaper groceries, a promise to reduce the cost of living,” the mayor-elect said after visiting Part of the Solution, or POTS. “We are seeing his actions and t...

 In justifying  American military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs, President Donald Trump has asserted that the longtime U.S. strategy of interdicting such vessels at sea has been a major failure. “We’ve been doing that for 30 years,” he said last month, “and it’s been totally ineffective.” Trump’s comments came around the same time that the U.S. Coast Guard announced it had set a record for cocaine seizures — a haul of 225 metric tons of the drug over the previous year. That milestone, however, has not dissuaded the Republican president from upending decades of U.S. counternarcotics policy. Under Trump, the U.S. military has blown up  20 suspected drug boats , resulting in  80 deaths , in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea . Trump and other top officials have contended that such boats are being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members with deadly drugs bound for America. The strikes have generated international pushback from  foreign ...

The tariffs that President Donald Trump rolled back this past week will barely move the needle on consumer inflation, but his retreat potentially signals a major shift, according to a Wall Street analyst. On Friday, Trump said he will scrap tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruits and a range of other commodities, even after insisting that his duties haven’t raised prices. That followed off-year elections that delivered stunning defeats to Republicans as voters protested the high cost of living. Given that imported food makes up just 10% of what U.S. households consume, the tariff rollback’s impact on inflation is a “practically a rounding error,” wrote Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, in a note on Friday. But they will have outsized effects beyond the economic data. “Food prices also weigh heavily on consumers’ inflation psychology, not to mention their sentiment,” he explained. “Of all major food categories, consumer sentiment is historically ...

Beef prices have been giving Americans sticker shock at grocery stores lately, and they are poised to reach even more stomach-churning levels next year, according to Omaha Steaks CEO Nate Rempe. In an interview Friday on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria , he pointed out that the U.S. cattle herd is at 70-year lows while beef demand is at all-time highs. To rebuild herds, ranchers must hold on to heifers rather than sending them out to meat processors. There are signs of that happening, but that also means beef supply will shrink in the near term, Rempe warned. “So we are headed for what I’m calling the $10-a-pound reality by third quarter of ’26,” he predicted. “Families are going to see $10-a-pound ground beef in the grocery store.” According to the latest consumer price index data , the average price of ground beef was $6.323 a pound in September. That’s up 14% since January and 26% from January 2024. If ground beef hits $10 a pound, the price would represent a 58% surge from S...

The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late Friday in a sharply worded decision. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to UC based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements. The administration over the summer demanded the  University of California, Los Angeles  pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations. It has also  frozen or paused federal funding  over similar claims against private colleges, including...

Phia, an AI shopping agent co-founded by Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe Gates, has been collecting more than just users’ fashion preferences through its desktop browser extension. Four cybersecurity researchers told Fortune that the company’s browser extension, which is aimed at simplifying price comparisons for users, has been capturing a concerning amount of users’ information. In a previous version of the browser extension, researchers found that a snapshot of every web page a user of visited—including sites containing highly sensitive information such as bank statements and private emails—was transmitted back to Phia’s servers, even when users were not interacting with e-commerce sites. The AI shopping startup is fresh off an $8 million seed round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, with participation from high-profile investors including Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, and Sheryl Sandberg. In October, Phia was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025. Laun...