Daily Business Report: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Tariff Front-Running Caused Massive Import Surge in March
By John Carney & Alex Marlow| Breitbart
When the government reports first quarter GDP this week, brace yourself: the headline number could look downright recessionary. But don’t be fooled. The American economy, like Mark Twain, may be forced to declare that rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Blame it on tariffs — or more precisely, on businesses behaving rationally ahead of them. Faced with the prospect of new duties later this year, U.S. companies did what any rational economic actor would do: they pulled forward massive quantities of imports. If you know prices are going up, you buy now, not later.
The Census Bureau’s March Advance Economic Indicators Report confirmed it Tuesday morning. Imports surged a jaw-dropping 5.0 percent month-over-month. Consumer goods imports rocketed up 27.5 percent from February, capital goods imports rose 3.8 percent, and automotive vehicle imports jumped 6.6 percent. Meanwhile, exports grew only modestly, up 1.2 percent. The result: the international trade deficit widened sharply to $162.0 billion, up from $147.8 billion in February.
California’s New Oil Drilling Permits Drop From Thousands to Dozens per Year
By Brad Jones | The Epoch Times
As the whir of pumpjacks break the silence at the Poso Creek oil fields near Bakersfield in Kern County, the crisp morning air is unmistakably clean and fresh as crews monitor the equipment that measures any possible emissions.
In 2019, Kern County ranked first among California’s oil-producing counties and seventh overall in the nation with 76 active oil fields producing 119 million barrels of oil and 129 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a lawsuit that the county Board of Supervisors filed in 2021 against Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The county contributed 71 percent of California’s oil production and 78 percent of its natural gas production annually at the time, the lawsuit noted.
Susan Shelley: Yes to more housing, no to social engineering
By Susan Shelley |The OC Register
Once again, Sacramento is trying to force high-density living down the throats of people who have worked their whole lives to own a single-family home in a low-density neighborhood.
You may remember that in 2021, Sen. Toni Atkins, now a candidate for governor, abolished single-family zoning throughout California with her Senate Bill 9, which required cities to approve lot splits that turned one single-family home into four residences on the same parcel of land.
This week, the Senate Housing Committee considered SB 677, a bill from Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) that would make changes to SB 9. In a statement, Wiener said that although the law sought to “functionally end single family zoning,” it has “at times proved difficult to utilize effectively, and as a result, too few applications have been submitted.”
