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WASHINGTON (AP) — Marc Rosenberg, founder and CEO of The Edge Desk in Deerfield, Illinois is getting ready to introduce a fancy ergonomic chair designed to reduce customers’ back pain and boost their productivity. He figures the most expensive one will sell for more than $1,000. But he can’t settle on a price, and he is reluctantly reducing the shipment he’s bringing to the United States from China.

There’s a reason for his caution: President Donald Trump’s ever-changing, on-again, off-again tariff war with America’s three biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China.

Since imposing 25% taxes — tariffs — on all imports from Canada and Mexico two days ago, Trump has been steadily backpedaling. On Wednesday, he exempted autos crossing America’s northern and southern borders — well, for 30 days anyway. Then on Thursday his Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on CNBC that most Canadian and Mexican products likely would also get a 30-day reprieve from the tariffs.

This is after having already postponed Trump's original tariffs against Canada and Mexico in February by 30 days.

Rosenberg and his ergonomic furniture are contending with a 20% tariff on imports from China – which Trump on Tuesday raised from 10% -- but he’s not sure where the tariff will actually land.

“The misdirection is making it very tough to plan for the year,’’ he said.

Tariffs cause economic pain in part because they’re a tax paid by importers that often gets passed along to consumers, adding to inflationary pressure. They also draw retaliation from trading partners, which can hurt all economies involved.

But import taxes can cause economic damage in another way, too: by complicating the decisions businesses have to make, including which suppliers to use, where to locate factories, what prices to charge. And that uncertainty can cause them to delay or cancel investments that help drive economic growth.

“It creates an enormous amount of uncertainty for multinational companies that sell products worldwide, that import from the rest of the world, that run these complex supply chains through multiple countries,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University. “The uncertainty is going to be very unsettling for businesses and ... it will hurt business investment on net.”

During Trump’s first-term trade battles, U.S. business investment weakened late in 2019, convincing the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate three times in second half of the year to provide some offsetting economic stimulus.

Trump 2.0 is even more unnerving to business. The first Trump administration imposed tariffs on specific targets — steel and aluminum and most goods from China — after lengthy investigations.

This time, Trump has invoked his power to declare a national emergency — ostensibly over the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants across U.S. borders — to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China with the stroke of a pen. And he’s expanded his targets. Next month, for example, is intends to impose “reciprocal tariffs’’ on countries that charge higher import taxes than America does.

“Just the threat of those tariff increases and potential retaliations are putting a brake on — on investment, on consumption decisions, on employment, hiring, all the rest of it,’’ European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said after the ECB cut interest rates Thursday to support Europe’s struggling economy.

His tariffs on Canada and Mexico effectively blow up a 2020 North American trade deal he negotiated himself five years ago.

“Past trade agreements simply don’t mean much if the president can unilaterally violate them and impose tariffs with no checks at all,” said Douglas Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth College.

Adding to the uncertainty: It’s unclear what Trump is trying to achieve by plastering tariffs on American trading partners. Sometimes he cites border security. Sometimes he emphasizes the revenue that tariffs can generate for the Treasury — money that can help finance his proposed tax cuts. Sometimes he points to America’s big trade deficits with most other countries. And he’s falsely accused Canada of banning U.S. banks when in fact 16 American banks operate north of the border, according to the Canadian Bankers Association.

Since the goals are cloudy, it’s hard to see what it will take to make Trump’s tariffs go away.

Not only that, but he’s imposed the tariffs erratically, creating even more confusion. For instance, his administration had to reverse itself last month after ending a customs loophole – the “de minimis” exemption -- allowing duty-free entry into the United States of packages from China and Hong Kong worth less than $800. Turned out, the U.S. postal service needed more time to figure out how to collect the duties.

Businesses are baffled. “I’ve talked to multiple companies that are saying, ‘We’re not moving forward with any investment. We need this to be settled,’” said trade lawyer Gregory Husisian at the law firm Foley & Lardner. At least in Trump’s first term “they knew what the ground rules were. Now they don’t know if we’re playing Monopoly or tic-tac-toe.’’

Respondents to the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing survey, out Monday, voiced complaints about the tariff uncertainty. “Customers are pausing on new orders as a result of uncertainty regarding tariffs,” said a transportation equipment company. “There is no clear direction from the administration on how they will be implemented, so it’s harder to project how they will affect business.” A chemicals company griped: “The tariff environment regarding products from Mexico and Canada has created uncertainty and volatility among our customers.’’

“Right now, the tariffs are putting everybody off balance because of their unpredictability and uncertainty,” said John Gulliver, president of the New England-Canada Business Council.

Taylor Samuels, the owner of Las Almas Rotas, a bar and restaurant in Dallas, depends on Mexico for much of the alcohol he offers.

The uncertainty surrounding the tariffs, including the potential impact on the price of raw materials like steel and lumber, are forcing him to review his plans to build a new restaurant.

“That construction budget is now under review and may likely be delayed ... as I recalculate costs that have already been budgeted,” he said.

Similarly, Sandya Dandamudi of GI Stone, a stone supplier in Chicago for projects ranging from the Obama Presidential Center to private homes and affordable housing developments, said developers are having to rethink their plans.

“Developers of commercial projects like high-rises and hotels budget two years in advance, so they don’t account for new tariffs,” she said. “Those budgets will be blown.’’

Dandamudi said that companies will either succeed in passing the tariffs along to their customers or they will be forced to cancel projects.

“The tariffs will be devastating for small businesses like ours,” she said. “Going forward, we won’t be able to sign any new contracts unless clients address the tariffs.”

Holly Seidewand, owner of First Fill Spirits, a specialty spirits shop in Saratoga Springs, New York, that sells Canadian whisky and other specialty spirits, said her plans for the future have been put on hold due to the tariffs. Her original plan for 2025 was to almost double her inventory and the selection she offered.

“For now, we have no plans of adding more shelving or space for new items, we will stick to the footprint we have,” she said. “This will delay the growth of our business, making us a bit stagnant.’’

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D’Innocenzio and Anderson reported from New York. Associated Press Staff Writers Rodrique Ngowi in Billerica, Massachusetts and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — This year’s finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame include trailblazers in esports, electronic pets and portable gaming, as well as the arcade favorite brought to life in a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld.”

The Hall of Fame revealed the 12 finalists up for induction on Thursday and opened a week of public voting. The winners will be enshrined May 8 at the hall's new space inside The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester.

The 2025 finalists are: Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Defender, Frogger, Golden Eye, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, Quake, NBA 2K and Tamagotchi.

“This year’s finalists span the decades and range from arcade classics to one of the most popular mobile games of all time,” Jon-Paul C. Dyson, director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, said in a news release. “All of these games have enormously influenced pop culture or the game industry itself."

Released in 1977, Mattel Football was the first blockbuster handheld electronic game. It paved the way for systems like Nintendo’s Game Boy and today’s mobile devices, according to the hall. Three decades later, cellphones put another nominee into the hands of countless players. Rovio’s 2009 Angry Birds was downloaded billions of times and launched movies and merchandise.

Notable for their influence on esports, according to the Hall of Fame, are nominees: Golden Tee: Fore! by Incredible Technologies, the 1989 arcade golf game whose sequels included a 1995 version that allowed for tournaments; Sega’s 1999 NBA 2K, which inspired a professional esports league, and Id Software’s Quake, one of the first esports whose first-person shooter’s 3D engine became an industry standard.

Tamagotchi, which created a digital pet for its owner to raise, earned a nomination for bridging toys and video games in 1996. It was reborn as an app in 2013.

The nominees also include two arcade games released in 1981: Defender, by Williams Electronics, which the Hall of Fame said proved players would embrace more complex and challenging games; and Frogger, developed by Konami. Frogger cemented a place in pop culture with a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld,” in which George navigates a Frogger-style arcade cabinet across a busy road, mimicking the game's frogs.

Microsoft’s 1997 Age of Empires was the company’s bestselling PC game to that date and is still played by millions around the world, the Hall of Fame said. Farming game Harvest Moon, released in 1996, offered a peaceful alternative to the combat and action games that dominated the industry — and would be central to fellow nominees Goldeneye 007, released by Rare and Nintendo in 1997; and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the 2007 installment of Activision’s hit franchise.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame gets thousands of nominations online each year for arcade, console, computer and handheld games. Staff members choose the finalists based on the their longevity, geographical reach and influence on game design and pop culture. The inductees are then chosen in a ballot vote by an international committee of experts.

The three games that receive the most public votes count as one ballot in the final tally. Public voting closes March 13.

NEW YORK (AP) — Much like all the upheaval shaking the world, the huge swings rocking Wall Street may feel far from normal. But, for investing at least, all this is typical.

Sharp moves for the U.S. stock market, like its recent 6% drop in just a couple of weeks, happen regularly. Stomaching them is the price investors have to pay for the bigger returns that stocks can offer over other investments in the long term.

This time doesn't look much different, experts say. Here's a glimpse at what's behind the market's wild moves and what experts are advising investors young and old to consider:

It has certainly struggled. The stock market's main benchmark, the S&P 500, has been dropping since setting an all-time high last month, largely because of worries about President Donald Trump's tariffs and signals that the U.S. economy is running less powerfully than economists expected.

Any kind of uncertainty around the economy will give Wall Street pause. These tariffs have had a particularly jostling effect because no one knows how long Trump will go through with them. When worries are high, stocks sink sharply. When Wall Street goes back to thinking Trump is using tariffs as just a negotiating tactic, stocks have bounced back, such as on Wednesday.

Yes. The S&P 500 has regularly seen declines bigger than this recent one, of 10% or more, every year or so. Often, experts view them as a culling of optimism that can otherwise run overboard, driving stock prices too high.

Before this recent stumble, many critics were already saying the U.S. stock market was too expensive after prices rose faster than corporate profits. They also pointed to how only a handful of companies was driving so much of the market's returns. A group of just seven Big Tech companies accounted for more than half of the S&P 500's total return last year, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Anytime an investor sees they’re losing money, it feels bad. This recent run feels particularly unnerving because of how incredibly calm the market had previously been. The S&P 500 is coming off a second straight year where it shot up by more than 20%, the first time that's happened since baggy pants were last in style before the millennium.

Selling may offer some feeling of relief. But it also locks in losses and prevents the chance of making the money back over time. Historically, the S&P 500 has come back from every one of its downturns to eventually make investors whole again. That includes after the Great Depression, the dot-com bust and the 2020 COVID crash.

Some recoveries take longer than others, but experts often recommend not putting money into stocks that you can't afford to lose for several years, up to 10.

“Data has shown, historically, that no one can time the market,” said Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of WalletHub. “No one can consistently figure out the best time to buy and sell.”

Put another way: “Keep on keeping on,” suggests Chris Fasciano, vice president, investment management and research, and chief market strategist at Commonwealth Financial Network.

Even as the overall U.S. stock market has dropped, some corners outside the Magnificent Seven have done much better, Fasciano said. So have stocks outside the United States.

It could all be a reminder that investors often do best when they have a mixed set of investments rather than going all-in on just a few. And investors may no longer be as diversified as they thought after years of sheer dominance by the Magnificent Seven over the U.S. stock market and by Wall Street over global markets.

“Now’s the time to revisit some of the old tried-and-true of portfolio construction, like diversification,” Fasciano said.

The proliferation of online trading platforms and the ease of smartphones has helped create a new generation of investors who may not be used to such volatility.

But the good news is younger investors often have the gift of time. With decades to go until retirement, they can afford to ride the waves and let their stock portfolios hopefully recover before compounding and eventually growing even bigger.

“We would advise younger investors to not worry about this at all,” said Phil Battin, CEO of Ambassador Wealth Management. "It’s just background noise. If you have 30 to 50 years until you need the money, the economy has survived world wars, oil embargoes, presidential assassinations, Y2K, and a global pandemic. It will survive the Trump tariffs as well.”

This is a little trickier. “In theory, part of the appeal of crypto is that it’s supposed to be a hedge investment that isn’t correlated with the stock market or the fiat-currency economy,” said Sam Taube, who advises investors for NerdWallet.

But in reality, at least recently, crypto has often gone down in price when stocks have gone down, instead of offering that hoped-for protection during Wall Street's sell-offs. "So, young investors may need to rethink the idea that crypto’s value is completely independent of the stock market and broader economy,” Taube said.

Older investors have less time than younger ones to allow their investments to bounce back. But even in retirement, some people will need their investments to last 30 years or more, said Niladri “Neel” Mukherjee, chief investment officer of TIAA Wealth Management.

People who have already retired may want to cut back on spending and withdrawals after sharp market downturns, because bigger withdrawals will remove more potential compounding ability in the future. But even retirees, at least in the early part of retirement, should still be invested in stocks to prepare for the possibility of decades of spending ahead.

“You may want to slow that down and pick that back up once the market recovers,” Mukherjee said, “but it all comes down to having that conversation with your adviser and your portfolio manager.”

No one knows, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is granting a one-month exemption on his stiff new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada for U.S. automakers, as worries persist that the newly launched trade war could crush domestic manufacturing.

The pause comes after Trump spoke with leaders of the “big 3” automakers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, on Wednesday, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Asked if 30 days was enough for the auto sector to prepare for the new taxes, Leavitt said Trump was blunt with the automakers seeking an exemption: “He told them that they should get on it, start investing, start moving, shift production here to the United States of America where they will pay no tariff.”

Shares of big U.S., Asian and European automakers jumped as much as 6% after the announcement.

Pausing the 25% taxes on autos traded through the North American trade pact USMCA would only delay a broader reckoning to take place on April 2, when Trump is set to impose broad “reciprocal” tariffs to match the taxes and subsidies that other countries charge on imports.

Leavitt said the president is “open” to hearing requests from other industries seeking exemptions as well.

The White House repeatedly insisted that it would not grant exemptions and the sudden turnaround reflects the economic and political problems being created by Trump's day-old tariffs. While the Republican president sees them as enriching the United States, his plans to tax imports have alienated allies and caused anxiety about slower economic growth and accelerating inflation.

Trump has long promised to impose tariffs, but his opening weeks in the White House have involved aggressive threats, surprise suspensions and allies unclear at what the U.S. president is actually trying to achieve. Based off various Trump administration statements, the tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China imposed on Tuesday are about stopping illegal immigration, blocking fentanyl smuggling, closing the trade gap, balancing the federal budget and other nations showing more respect for Trump.

The U.S. president engaged in a phone call on Wednesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had suggested that the administration was looking to meet Canada and Mexico “in the middle.”

But Trudeau refused to lift Canada’s retaliatory tariffs so long as Trump continues with his new taxes on imports from Canada, a senior government official told The Associated Press. The official confirmed the stance on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

“Both countries will continue to be in contact today,” Trudeau’s office said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford earlier told The AP that the auto sector in the U.S. and Canada would last approximately 10 days before they start shutting down the assembly lines in the U.S. and in Ontario.

“People are going to lose their jobs,” he said.

The prospect of a trade war appears to be an ongoing feature of the Trump administration, rather than a brief skirmish. In addition to his upcoming reciprocal tariffs that could strike the European Union, India, Brazil, South Korea, Canada and Mexico, Trump wants to tax imports of computer chips, pharmaceutical drugs and autos. He also closed exemptions on his 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs and is investigating tariffs on copper as well.

Tariffs are taxes paid by importers in the countries receiving the goods, so the cost could largely be passed along to U.S. consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices. In his Tuesday night speech to a joint session of Congress, Trump tried to minimize the financial pain as a “ little disturbance.”

“It may be a little bit of an adjustment period,” he said after claiming that farmers would benefit from reciprocal tariffs on countries that have tariffs on U.S. exports. “You have to bear with me again and this will be even better.”

The U.S. president has predicted that tariffs will lead to greater investment inside the United States, creating more factory jobs and boosting growth in the long term.

On Tuesday, Trump put 25% taxes on imports from Mexico and Canada, taxing Canadian energy products such as oil and electricity at a lower 10% rate. The president also doubled the 10% tariff he placed on China to 20%.

The administration has claimed that the tariffs are about stopping the smuggling of drugs such as fentanyl, with aides asserting that this is about a “drug war” rather than a “trade war.” U.S. customs agents seized just 43 pounds (19.5 kilograms) of fentanyl at the northern border the last fiscal year.

Trudeau said on Tuesday that his country would plaster tariffs on over $100 billion (U.S. dollars) of American goods over the course of 21 days, stressing that the United States had abandoned a long-standing friendship.

“Today, the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they are talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense,” Trudeau said on Tuesday.

Mexico indicated it would announce its own countermeasures on Sunday.

Beijing responded with tariffs of up to 15% on a wide array of U.S. farm exports. It also expanded the number of U.S. companies subject to export controls and other restrictions by about two dozen.

“If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” China’s embassy to the United States posted on X on Tuesday night.

In response to China, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that the United States is “prepared” for war against the world's second largest economy.

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war,” Hegseth said Wednesday morning. "If we want to deter war with the Chinese or others, we have to be strong."

Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

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Gillies reported from Toronto.

NEW YORK (AP) — An insider account being billed as an “explosive dispatch” about “seven critical years” at Facebook/ Meta will be published next week.

Flatiron Books announced Wednesday that “Careless People” is scheduled for Tuesday. The memoir is written by Meta's former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, who left what was then Facebook in 2018.

“'Careless People' takes readers inside Meta’s board rooms, private jets, and meetings with heads of state, revealing the appetites, excesses, blind spots, and priorities of executives Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan,” the publisher's announcement reads in part. “Wynn-Williams paints a portrait of this group as profoundly flawed, self-interested, and careless human beings, callously indifferent to the price others would pay for their own enrichment.”

According to Flatiron, Wynn-Williams will describe in detail Zuckerberg’s efforts to allow Meta in China and her own efforts to get the company to monitor hate speech and misinformation on social media. She will add everything from “shocking accounts of workplace harassment and misogyny to the grueling demands and humiliations of working motherhood during the same time that Sheryl Sandberg, was winning international acclaim for urging women to ‘Lean In.’”