STAMFORD, CT — Shipping industry executives are considering options to address Trump administration policy changes, under consideration or enacted, that could significantly disrupt operations, speakers said here this week at the 40th annual Connecticut Maritime Association annual meeting.
Containership operators, for example, are weighing radical reconfiguration of ship schedules to avoid costly ship call-based port fees being considered by the Trump administration.
Should operators decide to reroute their vessels to major US “load center” ports, at the expense of smaller secondary ones, to reduce exposure to new fees, “it would absolutely crush us,” said Bethann Rooney, port director for the Port of New York and New Jersey. “We need to prepare to work effectively,” she said.
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Rendering of the KRONOS MMR at the University of Illinois (Image: NANO Nuclear)
By World Nuclear News
US microreactor technology company NANO Nuclear Energy Inc has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to construct the first research KRONOS micro modular reactor on the university’s campus.
The agreement formally establishes the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a partner in the licensing, siting, public engagement, and research operation of the KRONOS MMR, while also identifying the university campus as the permanent site for the reactor as a research and demonstration installation.
The university plans to re-power partially its coal-fired Abbott power station with the KRONOS MMR, providing a zero-carbon demonstration of district heat and power to campus buildings as part of its green campus initiative. The project team aims to demonstrate how microreactor systems integrate with existing fossil fuel infrastructure to accelerate the decarbonisation of existing power-generation facilities.
Following initial arrangements, NANO Nuclear will begin the process of geological characterisation, including subsurface investigations, to support preparation of a Construction Permit Application (CPA) for submission to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The company said this preparatory work is essential to understanding the environmental parameters of the site, including critical inputs to safety analysis, to ensure the utmost reliability and safety of the facility, and support NANO Nuclear’s Preliminary Safety Analysis Report (PSAR) and Environmental Report (ER).
As part of the agreement, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will lead the regulatory engagement with the NRC as well as public engagement, support licensing activities including the PSAR and ER, and play a key role in site layout, constructability assessment, and future operator training programmes. NANO Nuclear will oversee plant design, construction, system integration, and commercial pathway development.
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Wall Street opened sharply lower on Thursday, after a slump in global markets in response to President Trump’s major round of tariffs on U.S. imports. The world’s biggest economies reacted swiftly to the new levies, a significant escalation of trade tensions with the United States, and some countries warned of retaliation.
The S&P 500 opened more than 3 percent lower, a huge drop for the index, echoing sharp declines in Asia and Europe as investors balked at the tariffs. China vowed to take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its state media described the tariffs as “self-defeating bullying.”
Mr. Trump had said for weeks that he would impose “reciprocal tariffs” on allies and adversaries, but the tariffs announced on Wednesday were far higher than experts had expected, and are likely to drive up prices for American consumers and manufacturers.
In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the bloc would be united in its response to the tariffs. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said. The duties posed a particular threat to attempts to revive the largest economy in Europe, Germany’s, which has been stagnant.
The response from Japan, the largest overseas investor in the United States, was more restrained. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely regrettable.” But he refrained from talk of retaliation, saying that his government was trying to impress upon the Trump administration that Japan is helping the United States to industrialize again.
Britain also did not suggest it would immediately retaliate. Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said negotiations toward a trade deal with the United States would continue.
Business groups, trade experts, economists, Democratic lawmakers and even a few Republicans swiftly denounced the tariffs, while some industries scrambled to understand how they would be affected.
Mr. Trump framed his policies as a response to a national emergency, saying that tariffs were needed to boost domestic production.
Mr. Trump could have tried to fix the rules governing global trade, which he says allies have abused to the detriment of the U.S. economy and American consumers, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. Instead, he said, “Trump has chosen to blow up the system governing international trade.”
Here’s what else to know:
Tariff rates: The United States will subject Chinese goods to a staggering new tariff of 34 percent, on top of the tariffs that Mr. Trump had already imposed since January. The European Union’s tariff was set at 20 percent, Japan’s at 24 percent, Britain’s at 10 percent and India’s at 26 percent. Mr. Trump said little about the methodology behind those calculations.
Markets fall: The market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs had come as a surprise. Futures on the S&P 500 slumped over 3 percent, as benchmark indexes dropped more than 3 percent in Japan and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong and South Korea. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down more than 2 percent and Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped by 3 percent.
Loophole closed: Mr. Trump also scrapped a loophole called the de minimis rule, which has been used by many e-commerce companies to send low-cost goods to the United States from China without having to pay taxes.
Auto tariffs: New tariffs on all automobiles made outside the United States took effect, adding to previous tariffs on steel, aluminum and other imports that Mr. Trump has imposed since returning to office in January.
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The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law requires EPA and DOE to develop a national EPR framework for batteries that addresses battery recycling goals, cost structures for mandatory recycling, reporting requirements, product design, collection models, and transportation of collected materials.
EPA and DOE welcome experts across the battery life cycle, including battery producers, manufacturers of batteries and battery containing products, retailers, recyclers, and collectors or processors; states and municipalities; and others such as environmental, energy, or consumer organizations to participate in the EPR conversations.
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Phoenixville’s school board president says he’s “fighting back.” Other local districts are quietly trying to defy Trump’s orders to end DEI programs.
By Maddie Hanna, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 2025
As President Donald Trump attacks diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and threatens to strip funding from schools that promote “discriminatory equity ideology,” the Phoenixville Area School District has been analyzing everything from its curriculum to after-school activities to see what might run afoul of the new administration’s orders.
But it hasn’t made any changes. “The way we’re fighting back is what we’re not doing,” said Scott Overland, president of the Phoenixville school board. Trump is trying “to bully us into compliance,” Overland, a Democrat, said. “We need to show him that he’s wrong.”
Colleges have been wiping diversity initiatives from websites and overhauling policies as Trump halts their federal fundingand pushes to dismantle DEI efforts. But signs of compliance are less evident in K-12 schools around Philadelphia — and some school leaders say they’re carrying on as normal.
That’s partly because many rely less on federal money: Unlike universities, public schools are largely supported by local and state taxes. Some local officials have also noted they’re navigating conflicts between Trump’s orders and state law, including existing antidiscrimination rules in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s administration has launched investigations into at least two non-Pennsylvania school districts, including the Ithaca City School District in New York, where a complaint alleged that a district event for students of color “reflected systemic discrimination against white students.”
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Sen. Cory Booker has not sat down, or even wandered far from his desk on the Senate floor, where he has been delivering a marathon speech railing against President Donald Trump and his administration’s sweeping policy changes.
Since he started speaking at 7 p.m. on Monday night, the senior senator from New Jersey has not eaten. He has periodically sipped from two glasses of water that sit on his desk near five three-ring binders and a box of tissues. And he has not left the chamber to go to the bathroom.More: How long has Cory Booker been speaking? Senator continues marathon speech Tuesday morning
“I’m going to go for as long as I am physically able to go,” Booker said in a video posted to X before taking to the floor.
He added, “I’ve been hearing from people all over my state and indeed all over the nation calling upon folks in Congress to do more. To do things that recognize the urgency, the crisis of the moment. So we all have a responsibility, I believe, to do something different. To cause, as John Lewis said, ‘good trouble.’ And that includes me.”
Booker can and has allowed other Democratic senators to give short speeches and ask questions to give him a rest from speaking. But he cannot leave the chamber – and as long as he doesn’t, no other senator can force him to stop.
A few hours in, Booker had a Senate page remove his chair to reduce the temptation to sit. By Tuesday afternoon, he was rocking back and forth in his black tennis shoes and leaning lightly on his desk in between monologues.
Booker’s speech is already the fifth-longest in recorded Senate history. If he speaks until 7:19 p.m. EDT, he will break the record for the longest known floor speech: Then-Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1957 speech against the Civil Rights Act went 24 hours and 18 minutes.
Booker’s office says he did not begin speaking with an end time in mind.
But “we have plenty of material left,” said Booker spokesperson Jeff Giertz.
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