WASHINGTON — US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday she was worried that President-elect Donald J. Trump’s plans to levy broad import tariffs could derail progress in quelling inflation and raise costs for households and businesses.

Ms. Yellen, at a Wall Street Journal Chief Executive Officer Council event, also said she was concerned about US fiscal sustainability and said Congress needed to look for ways to pay for any extensions of Mr. Trump’s 2017 individual and small-business tax cuts, which are due to expire in 2025.

Mr. Trump’s plans to impose new tariffs of 60% on Chinese imports and 10% to 20% on goods from elsewhere would “raise prices significantly for American consumers and create costs pressures” on companies,” Ms. Yellen said.

“So it would have an adverse impact on the competitiveness of some sectors of the United States economy and could significantly raise costs to households,” Ms. Yellen added. “So this is a strategy I worry could derail the progress that we’ve made on inflation and have adverse consequences on growth.”

Regarding the US fiscal picture, Ms. Yellen said that extension of all expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would add $5 trillion to US deficits over 10 years, and that Congress needed to find offsets to avoid an “explosion” of debt.

The Biden administration turned in a $1.83-trillion budget deficit for the 2024 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the largest outside of the COVID-19 era, as debt interest costs topped $1 trillion for the first time.

“I am concerned about fiscal sustainability, and I am sorry that we haven’t made more progress,” Ms. Yellen said. “I believe that the deficit needs to be brought down, especially now that we’re in an environment of higher interest rates.”

DEDICATED STAFF
Ms. Yellen said she had a conversation with Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, and discussed the Treasury’s broad responsibilities, including for economic and tax policy, and international alliances.

She said she told him “what he would find at Treasury is a staff, and particularly civil servants, who are analytical, proficient, professional, operate with high integrity and produce analysis that can be relied on that is important to financial markets and to the economy.”

She said she told Mr. Bessent that the department’s analysis and policies related to the $28-trillion US Treasury debt market help the US economy and financial markets function better.

On the Federal Reserve, Ms. Yellen said she was a “strong proponent of an independent, and non-partisan, non-political Fed.”

Mr. Trump was free to comment on Fed policy, Ms. Yellen said, but recent Democratic administrations have refrained from doing so, while at the same time the Fed has become more communicative, providing more forward guidance about its policy logic, which has helped it steer clear of political influence.

“I think it’s a mistake to become involved in commenting on the Fed and certainly taking steps to compromise its independence,” she said. “I believe it tends to undermine the confidence of the financial markets and ultimately of Americans in an important institution.” — Reuters

BEIJING/TAIPEI — China’s government said on Wednesday that it takes “necessary measures” to defend the country’s sovereignty and will not tolerate “separatist” activities, as Taiwan reported another rise in Chinese warplanes near the island.

Beijing’s military has yet to comment on the military activity and has not confirmed it is carrying out exercises.

A senior Taiwanese official said the surge in activity was meant to send a political message to the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald J. Trump.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, had been expected to launch drills to express its anger at President Lai Ching-te’s tour of the Pacific that ended on Friday, which included stopovers in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam.

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said China was deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games.

However, a US military official said China’s naval deployments in the East China Sea and South China Sea were elevated but consistent with other large exercises in the past.

Asked at a regular news briefing in Beijing about the increased military activities, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said Chinese authorities were “highly vigilant to the trend of separatist Taiwan forces colluding with external forces.”

“We will absolutely not let things go unchecked. We take necessary measures to resolutely defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, safeguard peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and safeguard the fundamental interests of compatriots on both sides,” she added, without directly confirming there were ongoing exercises.

Mr. Lai and his government reject Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

On Wednesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it detected 53 military aircraft operating around the island over the past 24 hours, as well as 11 navy vessels and eight “official” ships, which refers to vessels from ostensibly civilian agencies such as the coast guard.

Taiwan’s military had gone on alert on Monday after saying China had reserved airspace and deployed naval and coast guard vessels.

A senior Taiwan security official, offering the government’s assessment of China’s activities, told a briefing in Taipei that it took China’s military nearly 70 days to plan and deploy the current sea operations and that they were meant for the incoming Trump government and US allies, rather than specifically Mr. Lai’s visit to the Pacific.

“They are trying to draw a red line and exert authority for the new master of the White House,” the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was “extremely rare” for China to deploy sea operations of such scale at this time of the year when sea conditions are usually rough, the official said.

China has not announced any drills so far, and Taiwan’s government believes that could be because Beijing is trying to minimize the impact on two major events with Taiwanese businessmen and politicians, one taking place this week and another next week, the official added.

“It’s a carrot and stick approach,” the official said, pointing to Beijing’s annual charm offensive programs towards Taiwan, including a visit to Taipei by one of Shanghai’s deputy mayors next week.

China says the Taiwan issue is the “core of its core interests” and a red line the United States should not cross.

China has held two rounds of major war games around Taiwan so far this year. — Reuters

ALTOONA, Pennsylvania — Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged with murder in the shooting of a top UnitedHealthcare executive, briefly struggled with officers and angrily shouted while being escorted into a Pennsylvania courthouse on Tuesday, as a clearer picture of his motives began to emerge a day after his arrest ended a massive manhunt.

Mr. Mangione, 26, turned toward a group of reporters and yelled in part, “…completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people!” before deputies pushed him away. It was not clear to what he was referring.

At the court hearing, his defense lawyer told a judge that Mr. Mangione would oppose extradition to New York, where he is charged with murder and other crimes. That decision could delay the process by weeks but is unlikely to block his eventual transfer; for now, Mr. Mangione will remain in jail in Pennsylvania, where he faces gun and forgery charges.

His attorney, Tom Dickey, said at a news conference that Mr. Mangione planned to plead not guilty to the charges.

Brian Thompson, the chief executive officer (CEO) of UnitedHealthcare’s insurance arm, one of the largest health insurers in the US, was shot dead on the morning of Dec. 4 outside a hotel in Manhattan in what police said was a targeted attack, sparking a manhunt that led to Mr. Mangione’s arrest.

More clues about his possible motivation were coming to light on Tuesday.

When arrested, Mr. Mangione was in possession of a handwritten manifesto that offered insight into his mindset, according to police. The New York Times reported that an internal New York City police report analyzing the document concluded that Mr. Mangione viewed the killing as a justified response to what he believed to be corruption in the healthcare industry.

“These parasites simply had it coming,” the manifesto said, according to the Times.

Mr. Mangione suffered from chronic back pain that limited his daily life, according to friends, his social media postings and other news reports. His profile on X shows a background image of an X-ray with what appears to be screws and plates inserted in a lower back.

An employee at TrueCar told Reuters that Mr. Mangione worked at the car-buying website as a data engineer from 2022 to late 2023. In mid-2023, Mr. Mangione took about two months off for what the employee’s manager described as back-related issues.

The employee, who asked not to be named, described Mr. Mangione as “incredibly smart” and very friendly to his co-workers.

He said that the company offered employees health insurance through UnitedHealthcare as well as other choices, such as Aetna.

From January through June 2022, Mr. Mangione lived at the Surfbreak co-living community in Honolulu, where he led a book club and surfed, hiked and rock-climbed, the founder of the group, R.J. Martin, told the Hawaiian outlet Civil Beat.

Mr. Martin said Mr. Mangione had suffered back pain caused by misaligned vertebrae pinching Mr. Mangione’s spinal cord, and he left for the mainland at some point for surgery.

But he went “radio silent” in June or July, Mr. Martin told Civil Beat.

Mr. Mangione never showed any indication of violence, Mr. Martin later told MSNBC.

“The Luigi that I knew is completely incompatible with an assassin,” he said, describing him as funny, kind and thoughtful.

At one point, Mr. Mangione suggested Surfbreak’s book club read the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski — the US domestic bomber known as the Unabomber — as a joke, according to Mr. Martin.

On the book-themed social media site Goodreads, a poster with Mr. Mangione’s name praised Mr. Kaczynski’s book Industrial Society and Its Future as “prescient” about modern society, called him an “extreme political revolutionary” and suggested violence was a legitimate form of resistance in some circumstances.

GHOST GUN, BRAZEN ESCAPE
Mr. Mangione was spotted at a McDonald’s on Monday by an employee who thought he looked like the gunman in surveillance images released by police.

Mr. Mangione, an Ivy League graduate who was also the valedictorian of a private all-boys school in Maryland, had a loaded ghost gun — an untraceable firearm assembled from parts — and a silencer, officials said on Monday. Both the weapon and his clothing closely resembled those used by the gunman.

He also had multiple fake identifications, including a fraudulent New Jersey ID that matched the one used by the gunman to check into a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting, according to authorities.

Mr. Mangione’s family released a statement saying they knew only what had been reported in the media.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” the family said in a statement posted to the X account of Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

The gunman managed to elude capture for days after the attack last Wednesday outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Mr. Thompson’s murder unleashed a wave of frustration from Americans struggling to afford medical care and those who have been denied claims or care.

Mr. Thompson, a father of two, had been CEO of UnitedHealthcare since April 2021, part of a 20-year career with the company. He had been in New York to attend the company’s annual investor conference. — Reuters