'A definitive backslide.' Inside fashion's worrying runway trend

04/06/23 8:53 PM

Now that the Fall-Winter 2023 catwalks have been disassembled, it's clear one trend was more pervasive than any collective penchant for ruffles, pleated skirts or tailored coats.

'He doesn't understand': Major Texas paper tears apart Trump's plan for diesel crisis

09/24/26 1:17 PM

The editorial board for the Houston Chronicle raked President Donald Trump over the coals Thursday morning for his plan to ban diesel exports from the United States for three months — a plan that even some of his own advisers have warned will only make the fuel crisis even worse.Trump's solution, wrote the board, only proves he doesn't understand how energy markets work."There isn’t one big, frictionless domestic oil and gas market for Trump to micromanage," wrote the board. In Houston, they continued, there is surplus production of diesel, "but infrastructure bottlenecks and regulatory barriers like the Jones Act make it difficult to easily transport it to, say, Boston and the rest of the East Coast, so we export the rest to buyers across the planet. Hang out in Galveston and you can watch those diesel-filled tankers sail across the horizon."At the same time, the board wrote, East Coast states are reliant on importing diesel because they can't make enough to meet demand. "Banning U.S. exports would make those global prices skyrocket — sending the price at the pump along the Atlantic coast skyrocketing, too."States and cities that produce a lot of petroleum might temporarily get relief at the pump, the board noted, but it wouldn't last: "Because we make more than we can use, stockpiles would build, storage tanks fill up, and refiners would have the untimely incentive to actually produce less. Meanwhile, the energy industry could be scared away from making any future investments in refining or export capacity."The actual solution to the crisis, the board continued, is to end the Iran war that Trump started, which is destabilizing global energy markets in the first place.

'Mind-boggling' drop hits as new data shows US massively shunned by travelers: expert

09/28/26 5:48 PM

Add the travel industry to the growing list of economic casualties of President Donald Trump's policies, joining farmers and manufacturers as sectors bleeding cash under his trade wars and border crackdowns.Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, laid out the damage in blunt terms to Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei: even America's "closest allies" are refusing to visit. Despite the U.S. hosting the World Cup this summer, overseas travel still fell — the country is on pace to lose 2 million overseas visitors compared with last year, a drop that leaves visitation 20 percent below its 2019 peak. "We're the only major country in the world losing visitation," Freeman told VandeHei. "It's mind-boggling."The falloff is concentrated among traditional allies. Canada is down 23 percent over two years, while Germany and France have each dropped double digits year to date. Freeman said the exodus is "largely out of protest and fear" rather than economics, as travelers shun a country whose tariffs and immigration enforcement have made headlines abroad. Meanwhile, China is "capturing the visitors America is losing by expanding visa-free entry," and Japan is riding the "cheap yen" and surging reputation to a long-term tourism boom.The hit to travel — an industry that supports millions of U.S. jobs — lands alongside mounting anger from farmers squeezed by Trump's tariff fights and cut off from major agricultural buyers, and manufacturers still waiting for the factory jobs Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs promised but never delivered.