Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what the incoming Trump administration might mean for two industries that are highly visible in New York: art and fashion. We’ll also look at a new social services center in Brooklyn with an online ordering system for its food pantry.
How will President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda be translated into law and policy — and how will that affect New York?
Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday that she had called the president-elect and said, “I think we can work together on some significant projects.” She said that “he immediately started listening to my priorities.” She said she had mentioned Pennsylvania Station — “an eyesore” and “a blight,” she called it.
“He understands that these infrastructure projects cannot be ignored any longer,” the governor said during a conversation organized by Crain’s New York Business and the Partnership for New York City, a business group.
Hochul said they had not discussed SALT, the state and local tax deduction, which Trump has said he wants restored. It mainly benefits residents of high-tax states like New York and California. Republicans capped it at $10,000 in 2017.
Those tax cuts will expire at the end of next year. For now, let’s look at how two highly visible New York industries — fashion and art — might fare under the new administration.
The fashion industry is bracing for high tariffs. Trump has threatened a levy of at least 60 percent on goods from China — a move with the potential to decimate small American brands. “I don’t know how we could function,” said Chris Gentile, the owner of Pilgrim Surf + Supply in Brooklyn, whose padded work coats and fleece zip-ups are made in China.
The thinking behind tariffs is that they would drive companies to shift production to the United States. My colleague Jacob Gallagher writes that clothing designers don’t expect that to happen. “The best cut and sew in the world comes from China,” Gentile told him. “China is so advanced in that space that there’s really no place to go.” Some designers are looking at options in Nepal, Mexico or Vietnam, but many are fretting about how much tariffs would drive up their prices.
The art world got its first taste of post-election bidding on Tuesday night as the November auction season got underway. Interest rates have dipped lately, making financing easier for collectors. Ultrarich buyers “are keenly alert to how macro trends influence their wealth,” said Doug Woodham, a New York-based art adviser, adding that their wealth has gone up since the election. Lower taxes would also benefit them and could buoy the art market — which my colleagues Zachary Small, Scott Reyburn and Julia Halperin write has been hoping for a bounce after nearly two years of declining sales.
One indication involved a piece Trump might wish he had not turned down in 1981: a silk-screen print of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, which was then new. The Pop artist Andy Warhol had spent much of that year persuading Trump and his wife at the time, Ivana Trump, to commission a series of prints. Warhol did eight in black, gray and silver.
The Trumps did not like the colors. Warhol did not like the Trumps, calling Donald Trump “sort of cheap.”
One of the paintings, “New York Skyscrapers,” was ultimately sold to a European collector in the early 2000s. It went on the block on Tuesday at Phillips, whose presale estimate was $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $952,500.
Weather
Mostly cloudy with temperatures in the high 50s. Tonight, expect up to an inch of rain, with temperatures in the mid-50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Nov. 28 (Thanksgiving Day).
The latest New York news
Drought warning: The drought watch has been elevated to a drought warning in New York City and 10 counties, including much of the Hudson Valley. After eight weeks with less than a quarter-inch of rain, the city’s reservoirs are down to around 60 percent of their capacity.
Trump’s sentencing: Manhattan prosecutors rebuffed President-elect Donald Trump’s request to dismiss his criminal conviction in his hush-money case but signaled that they were willing to freeze the case while he is in the White House.
Prosecution rests in Penny trial: Prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in the trial of Daniel Penny, who faces charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the choking death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man, on the subway.
A food pantry’s novel ordering system
More than 1 in 4 households in Borough Park and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, are below the poverty line. Inflation has made it especially difficult to put food on the table, with surveys suggesting that hard-pressed households are buying less meat and fish and fewer eggs — and more rice and other “filler” foods.
A food pantry in a social services center that is opening today, on 60th Street between 12th and 13th Avenues, is using a novel approach to providing staples. It has an online ordering system, “as opposed to a standard pantry, where you’d stand on line in a very undignified way and get a random box of food you might or might not like,” said Eric Goldstein, the chief executive of the UJA-Federation of New York, which built the $12.5 million center.
Alexandra Roth-Kahn, a managing director of the UJA-Federation, said the ordering system was “almost like FreshDirect”: It will let people select the food they want, ideally meaning that less will go to waste.
“In the old days,” Roth-Kahn said, “we used to see products that were discarded,” because recipients could not see what was in their packages ahead of time, and those who had food allergies, for example, could not always eat what they were given.
Goldstein said the ordering system had been configured to incentivize healthy choices by awarding points. The points are like calories — a user spends fewer points on fresh produce, protein and dairy products than on processed items. “If you want to have cookies, there are cookies,” he said, “but fruits are worth fewer points than cookies.”
Roth-Kahn said the system was tied to a warehouse in Canarsie, Brooklyn, that is run by the Met Council on Jewish Poverty, a nonprofit that developed the online system, called Market by Met Council, and will manage the new center in Brooklyn. David Greenfield, the Met Council’s chief executive, said it was already using online ordering at 20 other sites in the city and reached 100,000 orders last week.
Roth-Kahn said the online system would let users schedule pickup times, “so they’re not missing work.”
The new center is not just a food pantry. Goldstein said that users could also go there to find out whether they are eligible for government benefits and emergency cash assistance, and that there would be support for victims of domestic violence, Ukrainian refugees and Holocaust survivors.
The idea for the center came when the UJA-Federation was planning for its 100th anniversary in 2017. It built a hub in Queens that opened in 2021 and wanted to build one in Brooklyn as well. Greenfield, of the Met Council, worked with the group to find a location.
“It took us almost two years to scout out that actual spot,” he said, noting that 60th Street is “the actual border” between Bensonhurst — which has a large immigrant community that includes Ukrainian refugees and Asian Americans — and Borough Park, with its Orthodox Jewish residents.
A person might initially come to the center for food, Goldstein said, but once there, could take advantage of services like job counseling that could point to a higher-paying job. “People who come in for the food after seven or eight months no longer come in for the food,” he said. “The results in Queens have shown us this is an effective model.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Bronx Contemplation
Dear Diary:
In the heart of the Bronx — a forest
rung by droning avenues and old-style tenements.
At the center of the forest, a crickety wooden bridge.
Below the bridge a bullfrog squatting on the muddy bank
of a vernal rivulet that trickles into a stream,
a stream that runs toward a river, a river that flows to the sea.
The bullfrog knows nothing of the sea, and little
of the forest where it dwells, this remnant patch
of old growth at the city’s core. The city is my
throbbing body, the subways are my arteries and veins.
Today they all converge on this lush forest —
my verdant heart.
I want to make that squat lump jump.
I want to touch its side, like doubting Thomas,
to feel the amphibial ooze slip beneath my fingertips.
But I resist this adolescent urge. Today it is enough
to stand on an old plank bridge and watch
an old bullfrog sit there like a green Buddha
and do nothing at all.
— Richard Schiffman
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post How Two High-Profile New York Industries Might Fare Under Trump appeared first on New York Times.
