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An Israeli spyware company is ordered to pay Meta $167 million. A federal jury in California awarded Meta damages from the NSO Group, whose Pegasus software was used to hack 1,400 WhatsApp accounts belonging to journalists, human-rights activists and government officials. NSO plans to appeal, but the company has already been blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department.
Republicans plan to expand a college pressure campaign beyond the Ivy League. Presidents of schools including Haverford College and DePaul University are set to testify on Wednesday before the House Education Committee about their efforts to combat antisemitism, suggesting that Republicans aren’t stopping at elite schools. Separately, universities including Harvard and Princeton are seeking to sell stakes in private equity funds on the secondary market as they face funding pressures, including from President Trump.
DealBook Series: How tariffs are affecting U.S. businesses
‘Tariffs have never worked unless you want to punish your own population’
We asked DealBook readers how tariffs have affected their companies. On Wednesday, we’re featuring a response from Thomas Johns, an owner of National Roofing, a private business based in Albuquerque that installs and repairs roofing for commercial clients, such as government and military buildings, hospitals, airports, manufacturing centers, data communications buildings and other facilities.
The business generates as much as $20 million a year and employs between 100 and 150 people.
He writes:
I started this company 50 years ago. I left the day-to-day running of the business, but I’m still an owner. Tariffs directly affect only 1 percent to 2 percent of products we provide in our roofing business. But the uncertain economic conditions have forced our clients to change their posture from growth and renovation programs to a no-spending mode.
That means our costs are ultimately two to five times higher because we’ve had to absorb more risk. We’ve stockpiled material that we may not be able to sell since it appears our clients will pull back on their spending.
That’s what we saw during the pandemic and we’re seeing it again. Back then, we kept our people on the payroll even with the pullback in jobs. We lost $2 million in two years to keep everyone employed. That was to keep families fed and able to get vaccinations. We were buying lunches.
While most of the products we use are made in this country, most of our tools are manufactured overseas. For example, a critical robotic welder we use will go from $10,000 to $30,000 — who can afford that?
There’s also been an issue with manufacturers withholding supplies to drive up prices, something we saw during Covid. We ended up taking a hit of $5 million to $12 million because of that. We expect more of that again.
Right now, I’d say the situation has added an additional 10 to 20 percent to our costs. That of course could get much worse. We do everything we can to not pass on price increases. But that is cutting into our margins.
The other difficulty is in our federal contracts. Most of our economy in this part of New Mexico is driven by government dollars with all the air force bases around here and national laboratories such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But the Federal government can be deceptive in its contracts with vendors like us. You sign an agreement to do the project for X dollars, and it’s etched in stone. That’s all you’re getting. If our costs go up, there’s no recourse.
Tariffs have never worked unless you want to punish your own population — which is what this is doing.
