WASHINGTON (AP) — The phone rings. It’s the secretary of state calling. Or is it?

For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets.

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age.

Responding to the challenge will require laws, better digital literacy and technical solutions that fight AI with more AI.

“As humans, we are remarkably susceptible to deception,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of the tech firm Pindrop Security. But he believes solutions to the challenge of deepfakes may be within reach: “We are going to fight back.”

AI deepfakes become a national security threat

This summer, someone used AI to create a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an attempt to reach out to foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor over text, voice mail and the Signal messaging app.

In May someone impersonated Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Another phony Rubio had popped up in a deepfake earlier this year, saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service. Ukraine’s government later rebutted the false claim.

The national security implications are huge: People who think they’re chatting with Rubio or Wiles, for instance, might discuss sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations or military strategy.

“You’re either trying to extract sensitive secrets or competitive information or you’re going after access, to an email server or other sensitive network,” Kinny Chan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm QiD, said of the possible motivations.

Synthetic media can also aim to alter behavior. Last year, Democratic voters in New Hampshire received a robocall urging them not to vote in the state’s upcoming primary. The voice on the call sounded suspiciously like then-President Joe Biden but was actually created using AI.

Their ability to deceive makes AI deepfakes a potent weapon for foreign actors. Both Russia and China have used disinformation and propaganda directed at Americans as a way of undermining trust in democratic alliances and institutions.

Steven Kramer, the political consultant who admitted sending the fake Biden robocalls, said he wanted to send a message of the dangers deepfakes pose to the American political system. Kramer was acquitted last month of charges of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.

“I did what I did for $500,” Kramer said. “Can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese government decided to do this?”

Scammers target the financial industry with deepfakes

The greater availability and sophistication of the programs mean deepfakes are increasingly used for corporate espionage and garden variety fraud.

“The financial industry is right in the crosshairs,” said Jennifer Ewbank, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked on cybersecurity and digital threats. “Even individuals who know each other have been convinced to transfer vast sums of money.”

In the context of corporate espionage, they can be used to impersonate CEOs asking employees to hand over passwords or routing numbers.

Deepfakes can also allow scammers to apply for jobs — and even do them — under an assumed or fake identity. For some this is a way to access sensitive networks, to steal secrets or to install ransomware. Others just want the work and may be working a few similar jobs at different companies at the same time.

Authorities in the U.S. have said that thousands of North Koreans with information technology skills have been dispatched to live abroad, using stolen identities to obtain jobs at tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The workers get access to company networks as well as a paycheck. In some cases, the workers install ransomware that can be later used to extort even more money.

The schemes have generated billions of dollars for the North Korean government.

Within three years, as many as 1 in 4 job applications is expected to be fake, according to research from Adaptive Security, a cybersecurity company.

“We’ve entered an era where anyone with a laptop and access to an open-source model can convincingly impersonate a real person,” said Brian Long, Adaptive’s CEO. “It’s no longer about hacking systems — it’s about hacking trust.”

Experts deploy AI to fight back against AI

Researchers, public policy experts and technology companies are now investigating the best ways of addressing the economic, political and social challenges posed by deepfakes.

New regulations could require tech companies to do more to identify, label and potentially remove deepfakes on their platforms. Lawmakers could also impose greater penalties on those who use digital technology to deceive others — if they can be caught.

Greater investments in digital literacy could also boost people’s immunity to online deception by teaching them ways to spot fake media and avoid falling prey to scammers.

The best tool for catching AI may be another AI program, one trained to sniff out the tiny flaws in deepfakes that would go unnoticed by a person.

Systems like Pindrop’s analyze millions of datapoints in any person’s speech to quickly identify irregularities. The system can be used during job interviews or other video conferences to detect if the person is using voice cloning software, for instance.

Similar programs may one day be commonplace, running in the background as people chat with colleagues and loved ones online. Someday, deepfakes may go the way of email spam, a technological challenge that once threatened to upend the usefulness of email, said Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop’s CEO.

“You can take the defeatist view and say we’re going to be subservient to disinformation,” he said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

NEW YORK (AP) — When Amrita Bhasin, 24, learned that products from South Korea might be subject to a new tax when they entered the United States, she decided to stock up on the sheet masks from Korean brands like U-Need and MediHeal she uses a few times a week.

“I did a recent haul to stockpile,” she said. “I bought 50 in bulk, which should last me a few months.”

South Korea is one of the countries that hopes to secure a trade deal before the Aug. 1 date President Donald Trump set for enforcing nation-specific tariffs. A not-insignificant slice of the U.S. population has skin in the game when it comes to Seoul avoiding a 25% duty on its exports.

Asian skin care has been a booming global business for a more than a decade, with consumers in Europe, North and South America, and increasingly the Middle East, snapping up creams, serums and balms from South Korea, Japan and China.

In the United States and elsewhere, Korean cosmetics, or K-beauty for short, have dominated the trend. A craze for all-in-one “BB creams” — a combination of moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen — morphed into a fascination with 10-step rituals and ingredients like snail mucin, heartleaf and rice water.

Vehicles and electronics may be South Korea’s top exports to the U.S. by value, but the country shipped more skin care and cosmetics to the U.S. than any other last year, according to data from market research company Euromonitor. France, with storied beauty brands like L’Oreal and Chanel, was second, Euromonitor said.

Statistics compiled by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, show the U.S. imported $1.7 billion worth of South Korean cosmetics in 2024, a 54% increase from a year earlier.

“Korean beauty products not only add a lot of variety and choice for Americans, they really embraced them because they were offering something different for American consumers,” Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said.

Along with media offerings such as “Parasite” and “Squid Games,” and the popularity of K-pop bands like BTS, K-beauty has helped boost South Korea’s profile globally, she said.

“It’s all part and parcel really of the same thing,” Lovely said. “And it can’t be completely stopped by a 25% tariff, but it’s hard to see how it won’t influence how much is sold in the U.S. And I think what we’re hearing from producers is that it also really decreases the number of products they want to offer in this market.”

Senti Senti, a retailer that sells international beauty products at two New York boutiques and through an e-commerce site, saw a bit of “panic buying” by customers when Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on goods from specific countries, manager Winnie Zhong said.

The rush slowed down after the president paused the new duties for 90 days and hasn’t picked up again, Zhong said, even with Trump saying on July 7 that a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea would go into effect on Aug. 1.

Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia subsequently reached agreements with the Trump administration that lowered the tariff rates their exported goods faced — in Japan’s case, from 25% to 15% — still higher than the current baseline of 10% tariff.

But South Korea has yet to clinch an agreement, despite having a free trade agreement since 2012 that allowed cosmetics and most other consumer goods to enter the U.S. tax-free.

Since the first store owned by Senti Senti opened 16 years ago, beauty products from Japan and South Korea became more of a focus and now account for 90% of the stock. The business hasn’t had to pass on any tariff-related costs to customers yet, but that won’t be possible if the products are subject to a 25% import tax, Zhong said.

“I’m not really sure where the direction of K-beauty will go to with the tariffs in place, because one of the things with K-beauty or Asian beauty is that it’s supposed to be accessible pricing,” she said.

Devoted fans of Asian cosmetics will often buy direct from Asia and wait weeks for their packages to arrive because the products typically cost less than they do in American stores. Rather than stocking up on their favorite sunscreens, lip tints and toners, some shoppers are taking a pause due to the tariff uncertainty.

Los Angeles resident Jen Chae, a content creator with over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, has explored Korean and Japanese beauty products and became personally intrigued by Chinese beauty brands over the last year.

When the tariffs were first announced, Chae temporarily paused ordering from sites such as YesStyle.com, a shopping platform owned by an e-commerce company based in Hong Kong. She did not know if she would have to pay customs duties on the products she bought or the ones brands sent to her as a creator.

“I wasn’t sure if those would automatically charge the entire package with a blanket tariff cost, or if it was just on certain items,” Chae said. On its website, YesStyle says it will give customers store credit to reimburse them for import charges.

At Ohlolly, an online store focused on Korean products, owners Sue Greene and Herra Namhie are taking a similar pause.

They purchase direct from South Korea and from licensed wholesalers in the U.S., and store their inventory in a warehouse in Ontario, California. After years of no duties, a 25% import tax would create a “huge increase in costs to us,” Namhie said.

She and Greene made two recent orders to replenish their stock when the tariffs were at 10%. But they have put further restocks on hold “because I don’t think we can handle 25%,” Namhie said. They’d have to raise prices, and then shoppers might go elsewhere.

The business owners and sisters are holding out on hope the U.S. and Korea settle on a lower tariff or carve out exceptions for smaller ticket items like beauty products. But they only have two to four months of inventory in their warehouse. They say that in a month they’ll have to make a decision on what products to order, what to discontinue and what prices will have to increase.

Rachel Weingarten, a former makeup artist who writes a daily beauty newsletter called “Hello Gorgeous!,” said while she’s devoted to K-beauty products like lip masks and toner pads, she doesn’t think stockpiling is a sound practice.

“Maybe one or two products, but natural oils, vulnerable packaging and expiration dates mean that your products could go rancid before you can get to them,” she said.

Weingarten said she’ll still buy Korean products if prices go up, but that the beauty world is bigger than one country. “I’d still indulge in my favorites, but am always looking for great products in general,” she said.

Bhasin, in Menlo Park, California, plans to keep buying her face masks too, even if the price goes up, because she likes the quality of Korean masks.

“If prices will go up, I will not shift to U.S. products,” she said. “For face masks, I feel there are not a ton of solid and reliable substitutes in the U.S.”

AP audience engagement editor Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The changes are significant, but not immediate. Most will go into effect from July 1, 2026, to July 1, 2028, including:

• Big cuts to federal loans for grad students and parents.
• A new repayment plan landscape.
• Limits to relief options for struggling borrowers.

Since Congress wrote these changes into law, they’re not susceptible to legal challenges, says Stanley Tate, a lawyer who specializes in student debt issues. (Many Biden-era policies, like mass student loan forgiveness and the SAVE plan, were not explicitly authorized by Congress. This opened them up to lawsuits.)

“The one silver lining on all of this is that the road ahead, as far as your options, is clearer than it has been throughout this entire administration thus far,” Tate says. “Now that we have rules, it’s incumbent upon us to look at those rules and take the optimal approach for our situation moving forward.”

The bill will impact nearly all student loan borrowers. Take time to fully research the changes and decide on a course of action. Here are the eight top takeaways to know.

1. Severe cuts to graduate student borrowing

Federal PLUS loans for graduate and professional students will no longer be offered starting July 1, 2026.

Since 2006, these loans have been available to graduate and professional students, up to their total cost of attendance.

Starting next summer, graduate borrowers can only take out direct loans that have a lower borrowing cap. These are the new limits for graduate school borrowing:

• For graduate students: up to $20,500 per year; $100,000 total.
• For professional and medical students: up to $50,000 per year; $200,000 total.
• Lifetime maximum (undergraduate plus graduate studies): up to $257,500.

Without grad PLUS loans, these borrowers may turn to private student loans to cover costs each year beyond $20,500 or $50,000. Private loans offer fewer borrower protections and are not eligible for forgiveness programs.

“Private student loan access is by no means guaranteed, and even if a student can access private student loans, the interest rate may be quite a bit higher than the interest rate for federal student loans,” says Lesley Turner, an associate professor of public policy, focused on higher education finance, at the University of Chicago.

Timing, impact and next steps

These changes impact students who begin their graduate program on or after July 1, 2026.

If you’re in the middle of grad school right now, or if you’ll start your program by June 30, 2026, you can still take out grad PLUS loans for up to three years, or for the duration of your program — whichever period is shorter.

If you’re planning on grad school in the future, compare program costs, ask your institution about grants, and look to private student loans as a last resort.

“Graduate programs vary a lot in terms of prices and in terms of outcomes, and so it often can be worth it to shop around,” Turner says. “Oftentimes, even in a given geographic area for a given program type, like masters in social work, there’s going to be more expensive and less expensive programs.”

We don’t yet know how exactly programs will be classified as “professional” or “graduate.” More programs may try to label themselves as “professional” programs so students can access a higher loan limit, Turner says.

2. Repayment plans get complete overhaul

Millions of borrowers may be forced to change their student loan repayment plan. Most income-driven repayment (IDR) plans will no longer be available, effective July 1, 2026. That includes:

• The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.
• The Pay as You Earn (PAYE) plan.
• The Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan.

Existing borrowers can keep access to a modified version of the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan (a specific kind of IDR plan). This law also removes the “financial hardship” requirement to enroll in IBR.

New borrowers will have access to just two repayment options: a modified version of the standard plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP).

• The modified standard plan splits monthly payments between 10, 15, 20 or 25 years, based on the amount of debt owed.
• The RAP plan caps monthly payments based on adjusted gross income and family size. It also offers forgiveness of remaining debt after 30 years of payments.

Timing, impact and next steps

Current borrowers who want to stay on an IDR plan must switch to Income-Based Repayment (IBR) no later than July 1, 2028. If they don’t act, they will be moved to the RAP plan.

The modified standard plan and the RAP plan will become available to new and existing borrowers on July 1, 2026.

A note for current students: If you take out a new loan after July 1, 2026, you’ll be cut out from IDR and only have access to RAP and the standard plan. That’s because all loans must be repaid under the same plan.

3. Parent borrowers face lower borrowing limits, blocked from income-driven repayment

Parents of undergraduates who take out a parent PLUS loan will no longer be able to borrow up to the cost of attendance. This may force some families into private student loans, which are not available to everyone.

Here are the new parent PLUS borrowing limits per student, effective July 1, 2026:

• Per year: up to $20,000.
• Overall: up to $65,000.

Repayment options will also become significantly more limited. Borrowers who take out new parent PLUS loans on or after July 1, 2026, can only repay their loans with the standard plan. They won’t have access to an IDR plan or the RAP.

This applies to all of your parent PLUS loans, even if you took some loans out before the July 1, 2026, cutoff. For example, say you took out one parent PLUS loan in 2023, and then decide to borrow another parent PLUS loan in 2027. Both of those loans would become ineligible for income-driven repayment and the RAP.

“That gets very precarious if you’re someone who already has a sizable balance and is still borrowing, say, for child number two, child number three, et cetera,” Tate says.

Timing, impact and next steps

Consolidate your existing parent PLUS loans, and enroll in the Income-Contingent Repayment plan before July 1, 2026. Once you are on the ICR plan, you can move to the Income-Based Repayment plan, which is the only income-driven plan that will remain for the long haul. If you miss this consolidation deadline, you will be permanently blocked from any income-driven repayment plan, including RAP.

There’s also a legacy provision for the loan limit change. If you took out a parent PLUS loan prior to July 1, 2026, you can continue borrowing up to your student’s cost of attendance for up to three years, or until your kid finishes school — whichever period is shorter.

Going forward, families who rely on parent PLUS loans need to think long-term about college financing to avoid unexpected funding gaps, explains Megan Walter, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

You can borrow up to $20,000 per year, but only $65,000 total. So, if you borrow $20,000 for the first three years of your kid’s education, you’ll have $5,000 for their fourth year.

4. Pell Grants for short-term workforce training programs

Students who qualify for the Pell Grant — a need-based federal grant program that goes up to $7,395 per year — may use it for short-term workforce training programs. Those programs can range from HVAC and plumbing training courses to coding bootcamps, Walter says.

Programs will have to meet certain benchmarks. English language learning programs and study abroad courses don’t count.

The workforce Pell Grant is the result of “one of the only bipartisan conversations that we’ve seen Congress have in the student aid arena in the past few years,” Walter says. “Actually seeing it go through was pretty surprising.”

Timing, impact and next steps

The workforce Pell Grant will be available starting July 1, 2026.

You must submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to qualify for the Pell Grant. Unlike a loan, you don’t need to pay the Pell Grant back.

If you’re considering using your Pell money for a short-term workforce training program, thoroughly research programs to avoid scams.

5. Stricter limits on forbearance, deferment and other relief options

Future borrowers will find it more difficult to get temporary student loan relief through deferment (a payment pause during which interest does not accrue on subsidized loans) and forbearance (a payment pause in which interest does usually accrue on all loans).

Deferments for unemployment and economic hardships will be eliminated entirely. These two deferment programs had allowed borrowers to pause payments for up to three years.

Forbearances to pause payments will be limited to nine months in any 24-month period. Previous rules were more generous: borrowers could request forbearances of up to 12 months, renewable up to a cumulative maximum of three years.

Timing, impact and next steps

The deferment and forbearance restrictions impact borrowers who receive a new loan on or after July 1, 2027.

If you face a financial emergency, check if you qualify for the remaining types of student loan deferments, like those for cancer treatment, military service or returning to school. You can still ask your servicer for a forbearance, but only use what you need, since you have a limited amount available. If neither of those options work, see if IBR or RAP are options.

“We may see a rise in defaults and potentially bankruptcy filings down the road, simply because there’s a huge swath of people where Income-Based Repayment and RAP aren’t affordable under their scenarios,” Tate says. For example, borrowers who earn a high income but have substantial housing expenses could have trouble affording payments under these plans.

6. More difficult to get student loan forgiveness

It will take longer to get income-driven repayment plan forgiveness. Instead of reaching the forgiveness finish line in 20 or 25 years under existing IDR plans, new borrowers must make payments on the Repayment Assistance Plan plan for 30 years. (Parent PLUS borrowers won’t qualify for RAP, so they’ll be cut out from this type of forgiveness.)

The bill does not directly impact Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which Trump targeted with a March executive order that hasn’t been implemented. An earlier version of the bill would have removed PSLF eligibility for medical and dental residents, but that provision was removed in the final version.

Timing, impact and next steps

This largely impacts borrowers with large amounts of debt relative to their income, who are good candidates for income-driven repayment forgiveness. If you’re a current borrower, switch to the IBR plan before 2028 to get forgiveness in 25 years, instead of 30 years under RAP.

7. Borrowers get second chance after repeat student loan default

Borrowers in student loan default can rehabilitate their loans a second time, returning them to good standing. Previously, student loan rehabilitation was a one-time deal.

That being said, the bill also removes guardrails that prevent borrowers from defaulting in the first place — like income-driven repayment and generous forbearance options.

Timing, impact and next steps

Second chance rehabilitation will open on July 1, 2027.

Roughly 10 million borrowers (1 in 4) could default by the end of this summer, according to an Education Department announcement from April. If you default on your student loans, reach out to the Default Resolution Group to make plans to get your loans back into good standing.

8. Families who own farms, businesses could get more financial aid

The FAFSA will no longer count the value of a family farm, small business or commercial fishery when calculating a student’s financial need. As a result, students from these families may qualify for more financial aid.

This reverses a FAFSA change from 2024, which added these assets to the financial aid formula.

Timing, impact and next steps

This FAFSA change will take effect on July 1, 2026, and be applied to all financial aid calculations starting in the 2026-27 academic year. It will impact a relatively small group of families — but for those affected, it can make a big difference, like making a student eligible for the Pell Grant, Walter says.

All students and families should submit the FAFSA each year they’re in school, even if they don’t think they’ll qualify for aid. The form opens the door to federal loans, grants, scholarships and work-study.

Eliza Haverstock writes for NerdWallet. Email: ehaverstock@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @elizahaverstock.

The article 8 Major Student Loan Changes From Trump’s Budget Bill: Next Steps for Borrowers originally appeared on NerdWallet.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting on Monday after the United States agreed to tax cars and other products coming from the European Union at a 15% rate, lower than President Donald Trump had earlier threatened. Many details are still to be worked out, though, and Wall Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could shake markets.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in midday trading after setting an all-time high every day last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 8 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher, coming off its own record.

Tesla added 3.5% after its CEO, Elon Musk, said it signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide chips for the electric-vehicle company. Samsung’s stock in South Korea jumped 6.8%.

Other companies in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on AI chips and other investments by $10 billion to $85 billion this year. Chip company Advanced Micro Devices rose 3.7%, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 6.7%.

They helped offset a 9.7% drop for Revvity. The company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected, but it also gave a forecasted range for profit over the full year whose midpoint fell below analysts’ estimates.

Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the broad U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies produce bigger profits to justify the moves.

Many more fireworks may be ahead this week. “This is about as busy as a week can get in the markets,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of all the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates. That includes market heavyweights Apple, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft. Those companies have grown so huge that their stock movements can almost solely dictate what the overall S&P 500 index does. Microsoft alone is worth roughly $3.8 trillion,

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will announce its latest decision on interest rates.

Trump has been loudly and angrily calling for the Fed to cut interest rates, a move that could give the economy a boost. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs are affecting the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move. Lower interest rates can give inflation more fuel, and the economy only recently came out of its scarring run where inflation briefly topped 9%.

The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump’s appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.

This week will also feature several potentially market-moving updates about the economy. On Tuesday will come reports on how confident U.S. consumers are feeling and how many jobs openings U.S. employers were advertising. Wednesday will show the first estimate of how quickly the U.S. economy grew during the spring, and economists expect to see a slowdown from the first three months of the year.

On Thursday, the latest measure of inflation that the Federal Reserve prefers to use will arrive. A modest reading could give the Fed more leeway to cut interest rates in the short term, while a hotter-than-expected figure could make it more cautious.

And Friday will bring an update on how many more workers U.S. employers hired during June than they fired.

Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market ahead of all that action. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.41% from 4.40% late Friday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, rose to 3.93% from 3.91%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following the announcement of the trade deal’s framework.

Chinese stocks rose as officials from the world’s second-largest economy prepared to meet with a U.S. delegation in Sweden for trade talks. Stocks climbed 0.7% in Hong Kong and 0.1% in Shanghai.

Indexes were mixed across the rest of Asia, where Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.1% for one of the world’s bigger losses.

AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have announced a sweeping trade deal that imposes 15% tariffs on most European goods, warding off Trump’s threat of a 30% rate if no deal had been reached by Aug. 1.

The tariffs, or import taxes, paid when Americans buy European products could raise prices for U.S. consumers and dent profits for European companies and their partners who bring goods into the country.

Here are some things to know about the deal:

Unresolved details

Trump and von der Leyen’s announcement, made during Trump’s visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland, leaves many crucial details to be filled in.

The headline figure is a 15% tariff rate on about 70% of European goods brought into the U.S., including cars, computer chips and pharmaceuticals. It’s lower than the 20% that Trump initially proposed, and lower than his threats of 50% and then 30%.

The remaining 30% is still open to further decisions and negotiations.

Von der Leyen said that the two sides agreed on zero tariffs on both sides for a range of “strategic” goods: Aircraft and aircraft parts, certain chemicals, semiconductor equipment, certain agricultural products and some natural resources and critical raw materials. Specifics were lacking.

She said that the two sides “would keep working” to add more products to the list.

Additionally, EU companies would purchase what Trump said was $750 billion (638 billion euros) worth of natural gas, oil and nuclear fuel over three years to replace Russian energy supplies that Europe is seeking to exit in any case.

Meanwhile, European companies would invest an additional $600 billion (511 billion euros) in the U.S. under a political commitment that isn’t legally binding, officials said.

Not yet in writing

Brussels and Washington will shortly issue a joint statement that frames the deal but isn’t yet legally binding, according to senior officials who weren’t authorized to be publicly named according to European Commission policy.

The joint statement will have “some very precise commitments and others which will need to be spelled out in different ways,” a senior European Commission official said.

EU officials said that the zero tariff list would include nuts, pet food, dairy products and seafood.

Steel tariff remains

Trump said that the 50% U.S. tariff on imported steel would remain. Von der Leyen said that the two sides agreed to further negotiations to fight a global steel glut, reduce tariffs and establish import quotas — that is, set amounts that can be imported, often at a lower rate or tariff-free.

Trump said that pharmaceuticals, a major import from the EU to the US, weren’t included in the deal. Von der Leyen said that the pharmaceuticals issue was “on a separate sheet of paper” from Sunday’s deal.

And von der Leyen said that when it came to farm products, the EU side made clear that “there were tariffs that could not be lowered,” without specifying which products.

‘Best we could do’

The 15% rate removes Trump’s threat of a 30% tariff. But it effectively raises the tariff on EU goods from 1.2% last year to 17% and would reduce the 27-nation’s gross domestic product by 0.5%, said Jack Allen-Reynolds, deputy chief eurozone economist at Capital Economics.

Higher tariffs, or import taxes, on European goods mean sellers in the U.S. would have to either increase prices for consumers — risking loss of market share — or swallow the added cost in terms of lower profits. The higher tariffs are expected to hurt export earnings for European firms and slow the economy.

Von der Leyen said that the 15% rate was “the best we could do” and credited the deal with maintaining access to the U.S. market, and providing “stability and predictability for companies on both sides.”

Mixed reaction

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the deal which avoided “an unnecessary escalation in trans-Atlantic trade relations” and said that “we were able to preserve our core interests,” while adding that “I would have very much wished for further relief in trans-Atlantic trade.”

Senior French officials on Monday criticized the accord. Strategy Commissioner Clément Beaune said that the deal failed to reflect the bloc’s economic strength.

“This is an unequal and unbalanced agreement,” he said. “Europe didn’t wield its strength. We are the world’s leading trading power.”

While the rate is lower than threatened, “the big caveat to today’s deal is that there is nothing on paper, yet,” said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING bank.

“With this disclaimer in mind and at face value, the agreement would clearly bring an end to the uncertainty of recent months. An escalation of the U.S.-EU trade tensions would have been a severe risk for the global economy,” Brzeski said.

“This risk seems to have been avoided.”

Car prices

Asked if European carmakers could still profitably sell cars at 15%, von der Leyen said the rate was much lower than the current 27.5%. That has been the rate under Trump’s 25% tariff on cars from all countries, plus the preexisting U.S. car tariff of 2.5%.

The impact is likely to be substantial on some companies, given that automaker Volkswagen said that it suffered a 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) hit to profits in the first half of the year from the higher tariffs.

Mercedes-Benz dealers in the U.S. have said they were holding the line on 2025 model year prices “until further notice.” The German automaker has a partial tariff shield, because it makes 35% of the Mercedes-Benz vehicles sold in the U.S. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but the company said that it expects prices to undergo “significant increases” in coming years.

Trade gap

Before Trump returned to office, the U.S. and the EU maintained generally low tariff levels in what is the largest bilateral trading relationship in the world, with around 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in annual trade.

Together the U.S. and the EU have 44% of the global economy. The U.S. rate averaged 1.47% for European goods, while the EU has averaged 1.35% for American products, according to the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

Trump has complained about the EU’s 198 billion-euro ($232.5 billion) trade surplus in goods, which shows Americans buy more from European businesses than the other way around, and has said that the European market isn’t open enough for U.S.-made cars.

However, American companies fill some of the trade gap by outselling the EU when it comes to services such as cloud computing, travel bookings and legal and financial services. And about 30% of European imports are from American-owned companies, according to the European Central Bank.

Sam McNeil and Samuel Petrequin reported from Brussels. Thomas Adamson in Paris, and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Top trade officials from China and the United States arrived for a new round of talks in Stockholm on Monday in a bid to ease tensions over tariffs between the world’s two biggest national economies.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting at the offices of Sweden’s prime minister for two days of talks that Bessent has said will likely to lead to an extension of current tariff levels.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson greeted He, followed by Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, as the two teams arrived in separate motorcades.

Analysts say the talks led by Bessent and He could set the stage for a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year to cement a recent thaw in trade tensions.

The talks are the third of their kind this year — nearly four months after Trump upended global trade with his sweeping tariff proposals, including an import tax that shot up to 145% on Chinese goods. China retaliated, sending global financial markets into a temporary tailspin.

The Stockholm meeting — following similar talks in Geneva and London in recent months — is set to extend a 90-day pause on those tariffs. During the pause, U.S. tariffs have been lowered to 30% on Chinese goods, and China set a 10% tariff on U.S. products.

The Trump administration, fresh off a deal on tariffs with the European Union, wants to reduce a trade deficit that came in at $904 billion overall last year — including a nearly $300 billion trade deficit with China alone.

China’s Commerce Ministry said last week that the “consultations” would raise shared concerns through the principles of “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.”

On Friday, Trump told reporters “we have the confines of a deal with China” — just two days after Bessent told MSNBC that a “status quo” had been reached between the two sides. Without an extension of the pause, the respective tariff levels could snap back to punishingly high rates.

While the Chinese side has offered little guidance about the specifics of its aims in Stockholm, Bessent has suggested that the situation has stabilized to the point that China and the U.S. can start looking toward longer-term balance between their two economies.

For years, since China vaulted into the global trading system about two decades ago, the United States has sought to press various leaders in Beijing to encourage more consumption in China and wrest greater market access to foreign-made — including American — goods.

Other sticking points in the relationship include overcapacity in China — by far the world’s largest manufacturer — and concerns about whether Beijing is doing enough to control chemicals used to make fentanyl, analysts say.

Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said Stockholm could be the first real opportunity for the two governments to address structural reform issues, including market access in China for U.S. companies.

What businesses will be seeking coming out of Stockholm would largely be “the atmosphere” — how the two sides characterize the discussions. They will also look for clues about a possible leaders’ summit, because any real deal will hinge on the two presidents meeting each other, he said.

In Stockholm, Beijing will likely demand the removal of the 20% fentanyl-related tariff that Trump imposed earlier this year, said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

Bessent has also said the Stockholm talks could address Chinese purchases of Russian and Iranian oil.

Didi Tang and Josh Boak in Washington and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — The United States and the European Union agreed on Sunday to a trade framework setting a 15% tariff on most goods, staving off — at least for now — far higher import duties on both sides that might have sent shock waves through economies around the globe.

The sweeping announcement came after President Donald Trump and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen met briefly at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland. Their private sit-down culminated months of bargaining, with the White House deadline Friday nearing for imposing punishing tariffs on the EU’s 27 member countries.

“It was a very interesting negotiation. I think it’s going to be great for both parties,” Trump said. The agreement, he said, was “a good deal for everybody” and “a giant deal with lots of countries.”

Von der Leyen said the deal “will bring stability, it will bring predictability, that’s very important for our businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Many facets will require more work

As with other, recent tariff agreements that Trump announced with countries including Japan and the United Kingdom, some major details remain pending in this one.

Trump said the EU had agreed to buy some $750 billion worth of U.S. energy and invest $600 billion more than it already is in America — as well as make a major military equipment purchase. He said tariffs “for automobiles and everything else will be a straight across tariff of 15%” and meant that U.S. exporters ”have the opening up of all of the European countries.”

Von der Leyen said the 15% tariffs were “across the board, all inclusive” and that “indeed, basically the European market is open.”

At a later news conference away from Turnberry, she said the $750 billion in additional U.S. energy purchases was actually over the next three years — and would help ease the dependence on natural gas from Russia among the bloc’s countries.

“When the European Union and the United States work together as partners, the benefits are tangible,” Von der Leyen said, noting that the agreement “stabilized on a single, 15% tariff rate for the vast majority of EU exports” including cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

“15% is a clear ceiling,” she said.

But von der Leyen also clarified that such a rate wouldn’t apply to everything, saying that both sides agreed on “zero for zero tariffs on a number of strategic products,” like all aircraft and component parts, certain chemicals, certain generic drugs, semiconductor equipment, some agricultural products, natural resources and critical raw materials.

It is unclear if alcohol will be included in that list.

“And we will keep working to add more products to this list,” she said, while also stressing that the “framework means the figures we have just explained to the public, but, of course, details have to be sorted out. And that will happen over the next weeks.”

Further EU approval needed

In the meantime, there will be work to do on other fronts. Von der Leyen had a mandate to negotiate because the European Commission handles trade for member countries. But the Commission must now present the deal to member states and EU lawmakers, who will ultimately decide whether or not to approve it.

Before their meeting began, Trump pledged to change what he characterized as “a very one-sided transaction, very unfair to the United States.”

“I think both sides want to see fairness,” the Republican president told reporters.

Von der Leyen said the U.S. and EU combined have the world’s largest trade volume, encompassing hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars and added that Trump was “known as a tough negotiator and dealmaker.”

“But fair,” Trump said.

Trump has spent months threatening most of the world with large tariffs in hopes of shrinking major U.S. trade deficits with many key trading partners. More recently, he had hinted that any deal with the EU would have to “buy down” a tariff rate of 30% that had been set to take effect.

But during his comments before the agreement was announced, the president was asked if he’d be willing to accept tariff rates lower than 15%, and he said “no.”

First golf, then trade talk

Their meeting came after Trump played golf for the second straight day at Turnberry, this time with a group that included sons Eric and Donald Jr. In addition to negotiating deals, Trump’s five-day visit to Scotland is built around golf and promoting properties bearing his name.

A small group of demonstrators at the course waved American flags and raised a sign criticizing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who plans his own Turnberry meeting with Trump on Monday.

Other voices could be heard cheering and chanting “Trump! Trump!” as he played nearby.

On Tuesday, Trump will be in Aberdeen, in northeastern Scotland, where his family has another golf course and is opening a third next month. The president and his sons plan to help cut the ribbon on the new course.

The U.S. and EU seemed close to a deal earlier this month, but Trump instead threatened the 30% tariff rate. The deadline for the Trump administration to begin imposing tariffs has shifted in recent weeks but is now firm and coming Friday, the administration insists.

“No extensions, no more grace periods. Aug. 1, the tariffs are set, they’ll go into place, Customs will start collecting the money and off we go,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told “Fox News Sunday” before the EU deal was announced. He added, however, that even after that “people can still talk to President Trump. I mean, he’s always willing to listen.”

Without an agreement, the EU said it was prepared to retaliate with tariffs on hundreds of American products, ranging from beef and auto parts to beer and Boeing airplanes.

If Trump eventually followed through on his threat of tariffs against Europe, meanwhile, it could have made everything from French cheese and Italian leather goods to German electronics and Spanish pharmaceuticals more expensive in the United States.

“I think it’s great that we made a deal today, instead of playing games and maybe not making a deal at all,” Trump said. “I think it’s the biggest deal ever made.”

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim in Cincinnati and Samuel Petrequin in London contributed to this report.

One side says the move will put low-income people at risk of losing their housing in an already tough market. While another says capping the program will actually improve the rental market for everyone, incentivizing landlords to lower rent.

Carol Ott is the tenant advocacy director of the Economic Action Maryland Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for economic and housing justice for lower-income communities. She predicted this policy would be “disastrous” for their clients, around 10% of whom receive some kind of housing assistance. In her opinion, cost-cutting measures weren’t the point of this new policy, she said.

“It’s not about saving money; it’s not about taxpayer dollars — none of that,” she said. “It’s about being cruel.”

But Norbert Michel, vice president and director for the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, which is part of the Libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said the proposed limit would help decrease the cost of rent overall.

“If the government says, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll pay for all of your housing,’ and it always does that, then that’s taking a big chunk of market incentives out, and it becomes less affordable in the end,” he said.

More than 50,000 Maryland households utilize the federal housing voucher program, also known as Section 8. The program, funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, provides rental subsidies to people with disabilities or low incomes. Participants pay at least 30% of their adjusted monthly income, and the housing agency covers the difference.

The cap is part of President Donald Trump’s 2026 fiscal year budget, which has not been voted upon yet by Congress, and is still being worked on in committee. If passed, the cap, as part of the budget, will go into effect Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year.

Housing prices in Maryland, while less costly than in states like New York, California or Florida, hasn’t been static. In Maryland, the average rental price rose 20.5% between 2019 to 2024, according to a Sun analysis of the Apartment List rent estimates monthly report.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development responded to a request for comment by The Baltimore Sun by sending links to previous X posts from Sec. Scott Turner and a recent New York Times opinion essay.

“Compassionate common sense says those who are able to work, should work,” wrote Sec. Turner in a post. “Allowing generations of able-bodied Americans to remain on welfare is not compassionate to them, nor is it fair to the American taxpayer.”

“We can’t disincentivize work and allow able-bodied Americans to settle for welfare benefits,” read one post. “One Big Beautiful Bill work requirements that lift Americans out of dependency and toward a life of self-sustainability,” read another.

Pros and cons of housing vouchers

The majority of those eligible for these services are already unable to receive help because there isn’t enough funding on the federal level, said Daniel Teles, a principal research associate in the housing and communities division at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.,-based think tank that conducts social and economic policy research.

Only one in every four low-income households eligible for federal housing services actually gets benefits because the demand is larger than the supply, according to a 2021 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C. -based nonpartisan research and policy institute.

Yet a 2015 study published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that there wasn’t any significant effect on market rents after the last voucher expansion in the early 2000s.

Still, Teles said he saw some pros and cons to the proposed time limit. On one hand, it would allow housing agencies to cycle through their years-long waitlists more quickly and provide momentary relief in the short term for more individuals, he said.

However, those exiting the voucher program would still not be able to afford their current rental because their income would not be able to match the unsubsidized price, he said.

Landlords must meet the long list of eligibility criteria before they receive tenants, but the benefit they can receive is the guaranteed payments from the housing authority. With the time limits, they could experience higher turnover costs and missed payments from tenants that can discourage them from renting to voucher holders in the future, Teles said.

The time limit could help improve the nation’s rental market, said Cato Institute’s Michel, as landlords enjoying the subsidies will now have to compete with the rest of the market. These landlords would have to lower the prices to attract tenants, dropping rental prices overall, he said.

When the government steps in to cover the rent, it takes away the competitive pressure that landlords would feel to lower prices, Michel said, and as a result, these subsidies artificially inflate rental costs.

“If somebody had rental assistance and now they don’t have rental assistance, that is going to make it more difficult for them,” Michel said. “But the flip side is that the landlord can’t charge as much anymore, so you have to take your pick.”

Bottom line, he said: “If you want to make housing more affordable, you can’t keep subsidizing.”

Daraius Irani is the chief economist for the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University. While he agreed that the federal housing subsidies do lead to higher rents, he said that the housing supply shortage in Maryland plays a larger role within the state. Ultimately, he said, he believes that the vouchers do more good than harm.

“Many individuals who are in these programs are working adults, but the housing costs in some places mean that if they didn’t have Section 8, they’d have to pay fifty percent or more of their income towards housing,” Irani said.

More administrative burdens for housing agencies

In Maryland, the cap could have a significant impact on the population, some of the state’s housing experts said.

The Howard County Housing Commission reopened its waitlist for its federal voucher program after 12 years in 2023 for a month, said its Executive Director Peter Engel. But of the 16,000 applications received, only 3,500 randomly selected received vouchers, he said, before they had to close the waitlist.

“It makes me feel extremely sad for the thousands of people in our county, much less millions of people in the country, who will be hurt by this,” Engel said. “It makes me feel a little hopeless for the future of the country, because we know that that sort of instability hurts kids, makes them do worse in school, makes their prospects for the future worse, and therefore hurts us all as a country going forward.”

In Prince George’s and Howard counties, officials said the voucher time limits will create a burden on the administrative level for housing agencies around the state.

The Housing Authority of Prince George’s County would have increased costs and logistical challenges in enforcing rental time limits and identifying new eligible homes to rent on the program, said Alexis Revis-Yeoman, public information officer for the Prince George’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

The time limit also could force evictions for households that could still be financially struggling — which could have a major impact on the budget resources of all county services, Revis-Yeoman said.

Several of Maryland’s elected leaders spoke out against the two-year cap, urging the Trump administration to rethink its decision, citing rising rental costs and an uncertain economy.

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, called the cap an example of the White House’s lack of connection with the middle class.

“It is clear this Administration does not care about working class Americans and is more focused on giving tax breaks to billionaires,” Alsobrooks said in a statement provided to The Sun.

“Now is not the time to impose arbitrary restrictions on critical resources that help families afford their homes,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, in a statement to The Sun. “Instead, we should work to increase access to affordable housing and good-paying jobs in order to help more Americans achieve financial stability.”

Have a news tip? Email Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com

The 50,000-square-foot vehicle processing center will be built at Tradepoint Atlantic in the Port of Baltimore, and will be equipped to customize, inspect and prepare McLaren vehicles for distribution.

The first McLaren vehicle processing center in the U.S., the center will facilitate shipments to the 26 McLaren dealerships in the U.S. The project is a “more than $10.5 million” investment and will provide more than 20 new jobs for automotive technicians, logistics personnel, management personnel and automotive painters, according to a news release from Moore’s office.

“We are thrilled to welcome McLaren to the great state of Maryland,” Moore said in the release. “Today, we mark the latest chapter in our work to grow our state’s economy by building out high-tech manufacturing in every corner of the state. This new facility at Tradepoint Atlantic in the Port of Baltimore will turbocharge Maryland’s economic engine, and is a vivid example of how we can create new opportunities by uplifting international partnerships and attracting foreign investment.”

Nicolas Brown, the Americas president for McLaren, said the company is prepared to invest in the community as the center helps McLaren expand its brand. The automaker’s vehicles, known for their engineering, power and agility, retail starting around $225,000, according to Car and Driver.

“As a manufacturer of high tech, innovative vehicles we are proud to be creating well-paid and highly trained technical jobs to ensure that our customers in the U.S. get the highest quality service for their new McLaren supercar,” Brown said. “The new McLaren VPC will enable us to fully check and sign off every single car, install local accessory packs and bring full paint protection film installment directly on site with the additional bonus of helping to revitalize a brownfield site.”

Have a news tip? Contact Chevall Pryce at cpryce@baltsun.com

Finding a way to cut down on screen time is arguably a health intervention for young brains. The U.S. surgeon general last year called for social media platforms to include health warnings for children, and smartphone use has been found to intrude on sleep.

With three teenage boys in my home — well, one is 11, but he is furiously trying to keep up with his brothers — there are lessons I’ve learned in keeping their screen time down to a minimum. These tactics are not always successful, and it takes constant vigilance. But when I see one kid doing origami while waiting, or the other working on his art projects, and the other competing in not one, not two, but three different sports, it feels worth it. Exhausting, but also worth it.

Get to know your router

It’s not uncommon for people to get a router, set up the Wi-Fi and never look at it again. But parents should see the router as an untapped resource when it comes to limiting screen time. Newer routers have built-in features that allow the identification and labeling of individual devices that are logged in — even the ones that come from your internet provider. For example, Spectrum, which I have used in the past, offers the ability to examine each device, match it in the router settings to the device’s IP address, and turn the wireless connection off and on at will.

If your internet provider doesn’t offer this feature, you can go the extra step and set up a wireless mesh network. These devices expand your Wi-Fi’s reach with a second network using your router as the source, creating a chokepoint for every connected device. The $100 Deco mesh network I use has a parental feature on its accompanying app that allows me to group multiple devices under each child’s name and turn off internet access to multiple devices at once.

And while you are in your router’s settings, take a minute to change the password. It’s a step a lot of people don’t take and is a small thing to additionally secure your home, especially if you have multiple smart devices tapping into your Wi-Fi.

Stick to old phones

There is a movement toward “dumb phones” or feature phones, but some of these can cost hundreds of dollars — and I would blow a gasket if I lost a phone that cost that much. I cannot imagine what my reaction would be if one of my kids lost one.

So, when it came time to give the oldest kid, now 15, a smartphone, he got my hand-me-down, first-generation iPhone SE, also known as an OGSE. It’s tiny in his big hands and it can’t download the latest apps. But it can make phone calls, text and access the internet via its browser.

That wasn’t his first phone, though — his first phone was a 4G Nokia 225, a bar phone with the mobile game “Snake” on it, and that’s pretty much it. We serviced it with Mint Mobile and later with RedPocket’s $10 1 GB per month plan. This route took more effort and possibly was less cost efficient than simply adding him to our family cell phone plan. Sometimes the texts took forever to transmit, and the calls didn’t go through. But the goal was to teach him to use the phone only as a tool to call and text us, and if it was absolutely necessary, bring up the internet on his very slow browser. Even though it was only $50, we still haven’t let him live it down that he lost it after just one year of use.

And yes, his younger brother, who received an identical pre-owned Nokia, also lost his phone about a year later. He is entering freshman year of high school, so all of our children’s phones will soon make their way into different hands — the middle kid will get the OGSE and the oldest will get my husband’s older, but later model phone, an iPhone XR, plus a slightly bigger phone plan to accommodate the increased demands of his academic and athletic pursuits. He’s a conscientious student, a voracious reader, and is responsible in most things, so expanding the data plan is an appropriate step for him.

As for the youngest, I have already identified a new $50 feature phone to purchase for him. Such phones can be found by scouring eBay or websites like dumbwireless.com, which also offers service plans. If you’re interested in learning more about so-called dumb phones, Jose Brioness has a robust YouTube channel discussing all things dumb phone, and Reddit’s r/dumbphones community has helpful tips for beginners.

Make heavy use of screen usage apps

My husband and I have iPhones, so we use Apple’s Screen Time. Screen Time allows you to set up a family across Apple devices, with parents being able to set up restrictions for child users. You can set it up so any new app download requires permission from an adult and set a time limit for app use outside of restricted times. For my purposes, I do wish Screen Time allowed parents to set specific times an individual app can be used, not just bedtime limits, but this deficiency is why I have my mesh network to fall back on.

Microsoft Family Safety can be used across Android devices, Windows PCs and Xbox consoles in the same way Screen Time can be used across Apple products. Google Family Link is available on both Apple and Android devices, as long as everyone has a Google account.

All three are free of cost on their respective platforms and allow parents to control which apps children can download and set time limits. However with Apple’s Screen Time, categories of apps can be fully blocked for periods of time. A child can get around web browsing restrictions by using a non-Edge browser or a non-Chrome browser restricted by Microsoft Family or Google Family Link, respectively.

And if all else fails, there’s always the option to simply take the device away.

Remember this is an ongoing battle

Unfortunately, limiting screen time is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise. Kids are ingenious when it comes to circumventing restrictions, and I have much less control over their school-distributed Chromebooks, which are a necessary evil now. Trying to safeguard your children’s online safety and mental health will also require regular monitoring of their behavior and habits. Are they hiding out in their bedrooms, being quiet? Just like when they were toddlers, it probably means they are sneaking, but now with a school laptop or other device.

However, parents alarmed at the growing drumbeat of negative news concerning children’s smartphone and internet usage have options. It takes more work in many respects, but the payoff is healthy, safe children and their freedom to enjoy a childhood without a device in hand.