Business & Education

As the U.S. and China ratchet up a tit-for-tat tariff dispute, it has been said often in the last few weeks: "No one wins a trade war."

Nevertheless, staying out of a war is often the best way to win, or at least not to lose.

Members of Congress have said they want to loosen rules for health savings accounts. Did they do it in the latest spending bill? Do people who were uncovered for one month in 2017 owe a tax penalty? And how can immigrants who move to the U.S. to retire get insurance? These are the questions I'm tackling for readers this week:

I heard that health savings account rules would be loosened under the new spending bill passed by Congress last month. Did that happen?

No. In fact, the standards have become slightly tighter this year.

Have you ever noticed that when something important is missing in your life, your brain can only seem to focus on that missing thing?

Two researchers have dubbed this phenomenon scarcity, and they say it touches on many aspects of our lives.

"It leads you to take certain behaviors that in the short term help you to manage scarcity, but in the long term only make matters worse," says Sendhil Mullaianathan, an economics professor at Harvard University.

The Trump Administration today moved to weaken fuel economy standards for automobiles, saying the current ones are inappropriate and wrong.

The long-anticipated move is a win for auto manufacturers, which had lobbied for lower fuel-economy standards. It's also a rejection of one of former President Barack Obama's biggest efforts to combat climate change by curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, the Chinese government announced tariffs on 128 American products, including food. Pork will be taxed 25 percent, and wine, dried fruit, and nuts are now subject to a 15 percent duty.

The announcement comes in response to the tariffs President Trump recently imposed on steel and aluminum. Trade officials from each country are negotiating, and it's not yet clear how long the duties will be in effect, or what the lasting impact will be for American producers and growers.

China is imposing tariffs on about 3 billion dollars worth of U.S. exports. That's roughly the value of the steel and aluminum exports from China that President Trump taxed last month.

On today's show, we look at the list of goods from the U.S. that China is going to start taxing and we talk to a hog farmer who estimates his pigs have already lost 10 percent of their value.

Updated at 4:15 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 459 points Monday, falling 1.9 percent, as tech stocks led the markets down and investors eyed growing trade tensions with China. Earlier in the day, the Dow was down more than 700 points.

Amazon tumbled more than 5 percent after President Trump criticized the company in tweets. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index lost 2.7 percent. The S&P 500 index lost 59 points, or 2.2 percent.

The Trump administration will ask Congress to make drastic changes to weaken the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, NPR has learned.

Sources familiar with the matter tell NPR that the CFPB's interim director, Mick Mulvaney, will ask lawmakers to restructure the bureau in his upcoming semi-annual report to Congress. The sources asked not to be named, because they aren't authorized to speak on the matter. The bureau officially announced the move Monday afternoon, after this story first published.

One company. One script. Many, many voices.

A video published by sports news site Deadspin over the weekend revealed dozens of TV anchors from Sinclair Broadcast Group reciting the same speech warning against "biased and false news."

It was the latest show of the vast reach of a company that owns local TV stations across the country and has long been criticized for pushing conservative coverage and commentary onto local airwaves.

Updated at 1:30 p.m. ET

China is retaliating against the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods, imposing charges of its own Monday on a list of 128 imports from the United States, including agricultural products ranging from fruit to wine to frozen pork.

China's tariffs add fuel to what many economists fear is a burgeoning trade war between the two economic superpowers.

The gig economy has been criticized for failing to provide workers the benefits and stability of full-time employment and celebrated for its ability to allow workers to supplement their income on a flexible schedule. Ajmal Faqiri, an Afghan immigrant who lives in Virginia, has experienced both types of work arrangements.

He grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan and served as translator for the U.S. military before arriving in San Francisco on a Special Immigrant Visa in 2013. Faqiri has held more than 10 jobs, and started driving for Lyft in 2015.

Multiple companies say they're pulling their advertisements from conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham's show after she sent a tweet mocking Parkland shooting survivor and gun-control activist David Hogg.

Nestle US, Hulu and Nutrish confirmed on Twitter that they are removing advertising from Ingraham's show. Media reports say TripAdvisor, Expedia, Wayfair and Johnson & Johnson are pulling their support as well.

Tech stocks were a growth engine for the market when the economy was tepid, but recently they've been sputtering and their troubles are helping drag the entire market lower.

Some of the biggest names in technology have been swooning.

The U.S. electricity sector is eyeing the developing electric car market as a remedy for an unprecedented decline in demand for electricity.

One of the most puzzling trends of the last few decades has been the unrelenting rise in the number of people who fell out of the labor force because they were disabled.

The number of these disabled Americans went up for so long that the trend seemed like it might be permanent.

Today on the show, the story of a quietly dramatic turnaround in the U.S. economy. And what we can learn from it.

As part of the settlement after it got caught cheating on its emissions tests, Volkswagen has bought back about 350,000 of its U.S. diesel vehicles. The automaker so far has spent more than $7.4 billion on the cars, according to court filings seen by Reuters.