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By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tariffs paid by midsize U.S. businesses tripled over the course of past year, new research tied to one of America’s leading banks showed on Thursday — more evidence that President Donald Trump ‘s push to charge higher taxes on imports is causing economic disruption.

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The additional taxes have meant that companies that employ a combined 48 million people in the U.S. — the kinds of businesses that Trump had promised to revive — have had to find ways to absorb the new expense, by passing it along to customers in the form of higher prices, employing fewer workers or accepting lower profits. read more

Filing your income tax return can be, for many, a dreaded annual task. And paying to file unnecessarily can only add insult to injury. Still, many eligible filers fail to take advantage of a free federal tax filing program, potentially overspending on filing fees every year to do something that’s required by law.

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The Free File program — a partnership between the IRS and Free File Alliance — has been around for 23 years, plenty of time for the general public to be aware of its existence. Yet in 2024, the most recent year with available data, only 2% of federal returns were filed through Free File, even though 70% of filers qualified for the service, according to NerdWallet analysis of IRS data. read more

It will be business as usual for SpaceX when it tries to send up a rocket from the Space Coast Thursday night, but not so much for when the rocket comes back down.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-36 mission with 29 Starlink satellites is aiming for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:41 p.m. near the end of a four-hour launch window that runs through 9 p.m.

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a better than 95% chance for good conditions at the launch site.

This will be the 26th flight of the first-stage booster, which will aim for a recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed in the Atlantic off the coast of the Bahamas.

It will only be the second booster landing off the island nation coming one year and one day since the first landing.

“There is the possibility that residents of and visitors to the Bahamas may hear one or more sonic booms during the landing, but what may be experienced will depend on weather and other conditions,” the company posted on its website. read more

By MATT OTT, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last week as layoffs remain at historically low levels.

The number of Americans filing for jobless aid for the week ending Feb. 14 fell by 23,000 to 206,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly fewer than the 225,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

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Filings for unemployment benefits are viewed as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. read more

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit slipped modestly in 2025, a year in which President Donald Trump upended global commerce by slapping double digit tariffs on imports from most countries. But the gap in the trade of goods such as machinery and aircraft — the main focus of Trump’s protectionist policies — hit a record last year despite sweeping import taxes.

Overall, the gap the between the goods and services the U.S. sells other countries and what it buys from them narrowed to just over $901 billion, from $904 billion in 2024, but it was still the third-highest on record, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Exports rose 6% last year, and imports rose nearly 5%.

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