The Trump administration is dropping the hammer on cheap imports of disposable food containers from China and Vietnam, announcing massive trade penalties that experts say will lead to safer products while simultaneously protecting U.S. companies from unfair competition. 

‘America continues to thrive when fair competition occurs,’ attorney Yohai Baisburd of Cassidy Levy Kent, counsel to the American Molded Fiber Coalition, told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘The Trump Administration is using every tool in the toolbox to enforce U.S. trade laws and cheaters beware because they are coming after you.’ 

Baisburd, whose legal background focuses on trade litigation, was reacting to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announcing recently that its board voted to rule that U.S. industry is materially injured by importing ‘thermoformed molded fiber products from China and Vietnam.’ Baisburd argued on behalf of U.S. companies as the International Trade Commission considered the case. 

Thermoformed molded fiber products are common food containers — including disposable bowls, plates, cups and containers for ready to make meals or take-out containers — made from natural fibers and recycled products, such as wood pulp. The fibers are turned to pulp before they’re molded, and then shaped using heat and pressure. 

The U.S. market has been flooded with such products from China and Vietnam, with the nations ‘dumping’ the containers at unfairly low prices that affect American businesses, according to the ITC. 

Following the vote from the ITC, the Commerce Department will issue final antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CVD) duty orders on those imports from China and Vietnam. Antidumping and countervailing duties are special trade penalties — in addition to typical tariffs — that the U.S. imposes on imports found to be unfairly underpriced in order to level the playing field for American companies.

The new orders are expected in the coming weeks, with ITC expected to release its report by Jan. 23. 

The duties will include an upward of 540% tax on certain Chinese producers — including a 477%-plus tax for ‘dumping’ alone — and a 260%-plus tax on Vietnamese producers of the thermoformed molded fiber packaging products, ITC data shows.

‘The ITC vote will give the U.S. industry at least five years of duties on unfairly traded products from China and Vietnam,’ Baisburd said. ‘The ITC confirmed that the U.S. industry is severely injured by the corrosive impact of Chinese and Vietnamese imports. The ITC also authorized retroactive duties on Vietnamese imports.  This is only one of a handful of times they have done so in the past 25 years, sending a message to importers that they cannot surge into the U.S. market to try to get ahead of potential duties.’ 

Baisburd said the upcoming duties will ‘level the playing field’ for U.S. industry against cheap imports. 

‘U.S. workers/companies can compete against anyone, anywhere. What they can’t do is outcompete Chinese and Vietnamese government subsidies that violate U.S. trade laws. The duties allow U.S. manufacturers to reinvest in their workers, operations, technology, because they can now compete on a level playing field,’ he said. 

The duty orders are separate from the Trump administration’s tariffs on foreign nations, Fox News Digital learned. The tariffs are subject to change and negotiation, while the duties are legally binding trade enforcement mechanisms based on investigative findings by the U.S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission, and enforced by Border Patrol. The duties are applicable for the next five years minimum and are not subject to presidential discretion, Fox News Digital learned. 

Other presidential administrations have used antidumping and countervailing duties to level the playing field for U.S. companies, including the Biden administration touting in 2024 that it leveled more than 30 new antidumping and countervailing duties on steel-related products alone. 

Baisburd argued that the Trump administration broadened its tool chest for an all-encompassing approach to protecting U.S. manufacturing. 

‘The Trump administration is taking advantage of all the enforcement tools available across the federal government to support U.S. manufacturing.  We are seeing increased customs enforcement (both civil and criminal), a new DOJ Trade Fraud Taskforce, and greater scrutiny of supply chain shifts that circumvent duties,’ the attorney said. 

In addition to business concerns about the Asian nations boxing out the U.S. market for food service containers, health concerns also have simmered. China and Vietnam have been identified as nations that produce containers with ‘forever chemicals,’ or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs). An ITC report published in 2024 found that while some foreign nations claim products are PFAs-free, studies indicate that it is not always true, while the U.S. ‘generally produces PFA-free products.’

The vote marks the third recent trade ruling that affects disposable food service containers. The U.S. Department of Commerce ITC issued antidumping and countervailing duties on disposable aluminum containers, pans, trays and lids imported from China and elsewhere, as well as leveling antidumping and countervailing duties on low-cost white paper plates from China, Thailand and Vietnam in March. 

For years, Washington has spoken about reducing its Middle East footprint, yet analysts told Fox News Digital that 2025 proved the opposite: American force — not retreat — reshaped the region.

Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), said the past year confirmed a long-standing strategic lesson. ‘2025 underscored what Middle East watchers have long known, and U.S. policymakers never seemed to want to admit: that strength is the currency of the realm and there is no substitute for U.S. leadership,’ he said.

Israeli political analyst Nadav Eyal said the shift was unmistakable. ‘What we have seen in 2025 is an increased role of the United States, rather than a withdrawal,’ Eyal said. ‘It delivered a hostage deal and a ceasefire in Gaza. It brought a certain level of stability in Syria. We see increased cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.’

‘The idea that the U.S. is out of the Middle East is just out the window,’ he added.

Gaza: The ceasefire and the hostages

During 2025, the Trump administration brokered a ceasefire that ended the two-year war in Gaza and returned all Israeli hostages except for the body of Ran Gvili, which still remains in Hamas’ hands. The deal was initially met with deep skepticism inside Israel. 

President Donald Trump traveled to both Israel, where he addressed the Knesset, and Cairo to finalize the agreement, coordinating with Arab leaders and mediators in a complex process that included an exchange of Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons for hostages.

‘There is absolutely no doubt that without President Trump’s intervention, this could have lasted much longer, or maybe not have ended at all, or ended in tragedy,’ Eyal said, adding that the administration fundamentally changed what had been considered possible.

‘He expanded the realm of possibilities,’ Eyal said. ‘If someone had told us six months earlier that this would be the framework of the deal, and that all the living hostages would be back home within 72 hours, we would have said it’s a great idea, but Hamas would never agree.’

According to Eyal, the breakthrough came from Israeli military pressure combined with U.S. insistence and regional coordination. ‘The military pressure put by Israel, enabled by the White House, together with the White House’s insistence and the enlistment of Qatar and Turkey, is what made the breakthrough,’ he said.

Misztal also argued that the outcome was not the result of diplomacy alone. ‘The relative calm that the region is now enjoying, after two years of war, is not the result of diplomacy, which failed on its own to stop Iran’s nuclear advance or convince Hamas to return Israeli hostages,’ Misztal said. ‘It is the result of Israeli and U.S. willingness to use force, and do so together in pursuit of common objectives.’

‘Operations Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer, coupled with the Israeli strike in Doha, unlocked the path to peace,’ he added.

The ceasefire remains fragile but intact, with the U.S. now deeply involved in shaping the postwar phase in Gaza.

Regional shockwaves

On Dec. 8 last year, after Israel defeated Hezbollah, the Assad regime in Syria collapsed, signaling a dramatic shift in the regional balance of power.

That momentum carried into 2025. Operation Rising Lion known as the 12-day war, underscored Israel’s air superiority, with Israeli aircraft striking Iranian military infrastructure and eliminating senior IRGC commanders.

The campaign also highlighted the depth of U.S.-Israel coordination, culminating in a U.S. strike that targeted Iran’s nuclear program and curtailed Tehran’s ability to support its proxies.

Eyal said Iran now faces a period of profound uncertainty. ‘Iran will, without doubt, try to rebuild its influence after its proxy system was shattered,’ he said. ‘It was defeated in war with Israel and lost most of its nuclear program.’

Two questions now dominate. ‘Can Iran rebuild its alliances, its prestige and its sources of power, like the nuclear program or air defenses, and stabilize itself again as a regional power?’ Eyal asked. ‘The deeper question,’ he added, ‘is what happens to the regime.’

He described Iran as increasingly unstable, with a devastated economy and growing public discontent. ‘It seems like almost everything is ripe for a substantial change in Iran,’ he said. ‘Whether the Islamic Republic can survive without significant reform, or whether there will be a coup or counterrevolution, will take us well into 2026.’

‘The sands of the Middle East are always shifting’: What to expect in 2026

Eyal said the past year forced a reckoning about Hamas’ future. ‘In 2025, Israelis, and to a certain extent countries in the Middle East, woke up from a fantasy that Hamas would cease to exist completely as a functioning body,’ he said.

‘Everybody understands there will be some sort of presence of Hamas, and unfortunately, they will hold some sort of armed power,’ Eyal added. ‘The question is, to what level can you reduce it?’

At the same time, he stressed the scale of Hamas’ losses. ‘In 2025 they suffered tremendous defeats and were wiped out as a functioning military body,’ Eyal said. ‘This is the year in which it happened.’

‘Even after losing half of Gaza, with Gaza devastated, and the hostages returned, they are still functioning as a military organization,’ he added. ‘That means they are incredibly resistant or flexible.’

Misztal warned that the calm will not hold without sustained U.S. engagement. ‘The sands of the Middle East are always shifting,’ he said. ‘Today’s calm will not last without consistent effort applied to uphold it.’

He warned that 2026 could see renewed pressure from multiple fronts. ‘Adversaries will seek to reassert themselves and find new advantages,’ Misztal said. ‘Iran will test the boundaries of U.S. and Israeli patience and ISIS or other Sunni extremists may seek a spectacular attack to mark their comeback.’

‘These will all be tests for the U.S. appetite to continue applying the ‘peace through strength’ approach,’ Misztal said. ‘If Washington takes its eyes off the region, the progress of the last year might quickly be lost.’

Obamacare subsidies that have dominated the conversation on Capitol Hill are set to expire after Congress failed to act, but a cohort of bipartisan senators are quietly working to find a solution for when lawmakers return next year.

It has engulfed Congress since September and played a starring role in the longest-ever government shutdown. And both Republicans and Democrats tried, and failed, to pass their partisan plans to either extend or replace the Biden-era enhanced tax credits.

They are guaranteed to expire, and millions of Americans who use the subsidies are set to experience hikes to their out-of-pocket costs for healthcare that can vary widely depending on the state.

Still, some in Congress haven’t given up on the issue.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, held bipartisan confabs last week as lawmakers readied to leave Washington, D.C., to hash out a framework for an Obamacare fix that could meet the desires of both sides of the aisle.

There are several political landmines that the group will have to overcome, like Democrats’ demands for a relatively clean, multiyear extension of the subsidies and Republicans’ desires to add income caps and anti-fraud measures.

‘We have some momentum to enact a bipartisan bill that includes reforms,’ Collins said. ‘As you know, Senator Moreno and I convened an ideologically diverse group of both Democratic and Republican senators who met for nearly two hours on Monday night, and we’re now working on drafting a specific bill to incorporate those conversations that will include reforms as well as the two-year extension.’

The plan has yet to see the light of day, but Collins and Moreno both already have a public proposal, as do several other lawmakers in the upper chamber.

Their original plan, released earlier this month, would extend the subsidies by two years, put an income cap onto the subsidies for households making up to $200,000 and eliminate zero-cost premiums as a fraud preventive measure by requiring a $25 minimum monthly payment.

That initial offering could give a glimpse into the final product, but there are still hurdles to getting a bill on the floor that could pass.

Namely, Senate Republicans are largely against any kind of extension to the subsidies without major reforms and a built-in off-ramp to wean off the credits, which they say are rife with fraud and funnel money directly to insurance companies rather than patients.

There’s also another wrinkle in the House, where Democrats and a handful of Republicans rebelled to force a vote on their own extension to the subsidies. That bill is expected to get a vote next month.

Lawmakers see it as changing the dynamic of negotiations in the Senate, but whether it ever makes it to a vote in the upper chamber is an open question.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. ‘We’ll obviously cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Some Republicans in the upper chamber see the momentum building in the House as a pressure point on them that could further drive the conversation around the subsidies and, more broadly, healthcare.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said, ‘It will apply pressure on us, which isn’t a bad thing.’

‘I’m ready to start talking about healthcare at any time,’ Kennedy said. ‘I just don’t, I mean, I’m a pragmatist. I live in the real world, and I just don’t see a lot of appetite to make reforms. I just don’t — I see the vast majority of my Democratic colleagues just want an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies.’

And Senate Democrats welcome the development, given that the House’s plan mirrors their own, three-year extension of the subsidies, which already failed in the upper chamber earlier this month.

‘Well, it seems to me the basic proposition is, is it progress or not? And I think it is, because what we have felt all along is the only timely tool is the tax credits,’ Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.

The Department of Justice warned Tuesday that some documents in the latest batch of files it published related to Jeffrey Epstein included false and unverified information about President Donald Trump.

The DOJ wrote in a statement that the material included ‘untrue and sensationalist claims’ about the president that the FBI received ahead of the 2020 election.

‘To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,’ the DOJ wrote on social media, adding that it published the documents because of its ‘commitment to the law and transparency.’

The documents included an email sent by an unnamed federal prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 7, 2020, saying Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least eight times in the 1990s. Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell accompanied Trump on some of the flights, and two of the flights included passengers who were ‘possible witnesses in a Maxwell case,’ the prosecutor wrote.

The U.S. attorney’s office ‘didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road,’ the prosecutor wrote. 

The documents also indicated a number of tips that were provided to the FBI about Trump’s alleged involvement with Epstein in the early 2000s. Trump has said he ended his friendship with Epstein before Epstein faced charges. It is unclear what was done with the information provided in the documents, or whether any of it was corroborated or used in the prosecutions of Epstein and Maxwell.

The DOJ has been sharing on a public website since Friday tens of thousands of pages of files related to Epstein’s and Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases. Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of trafficking minors, while Epstein died in 2019 in prison by suicide, authorities say.

Among the files was also a letter Epstein appeared to have written to former physician Larry Nassar, a convicted child molester, that was postmarked three days after Epstein died and referenced Trump.

‘Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls,’ the letter read. The document’s authenticity is unknown. Accompanying it was an FBI request to conduct a handwriting analysis of it.

The latest trove of documents came as part of the DOJ’s response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law passed last month that imposed a 30-day deadline on the department to release all unclassified material related to the cases.

The last batch of documents included several photos of former President Bill Clinton, who was pictured in a pool and hot tub. A woman whose face was redacted was featured in the latter. A Clinton spokesperson responded by demanding the DOJ release all the files and that refusal to do so would confirm the DOJ was ‘not about transparency, but about insinuation.’ The spokesperson noted that Clinton’s name has ‘repeatedly’ been cleared by prosecutors.

The transparency bill allowed the DOJ to withhold information about potential victims and material that could jeopardize open investigations or litigation. Officials could also leave out information ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,’ the bill said. But the bill explicitly directed the DOJ not to redact any details that could be damaging to high-profile and politically connected people.

The file rollout has stirred controversy as critics have aired grievances about over-redactions and the law’s lapsed deadline. Trump signed the bill into law on Nov. 19, meaning the statutory deadline for all the files to be released was Dec. 19. The DOJ has said more files are forthcoming by the new year.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday there was ‘well-settled law’ that supported the DOJ missing the bill’s deadline because of a need to meet other legal requirements, like redacting victim-identifying information.

Bill Mears contributed to this report.