POINTE À LA HACHE, La. (AP) — Oil company Chevron must pay more than $740 million to restore damage it caused to southeast Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, a jury ruled on Friday following a landmark trial more than a decade in the making.

The case was the first of dozens of pending lawsuits to reach trial in Louisiana against the world’s leading oil companies for their role in accelerating land loss along the state’s rapidly disappearing coast. The verdict – which Chevron says it will appeal – could set a precedent leaving other oil and gas firms on the hook for billions of dollars in damages tied to land loss and environmental degradation.

What did Chevron do wrong?

Jurors found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh.

“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” the plaintiff’s lead attorney John Carmouche told jurors during closing arguments.

A 1978 Louisiana coastal management law mandated that sites used by oil companies “be cleared, revegetated, detoxified, and otherwise restored as near as practicable to their original condition” after operations ended. Older operations sites that continued to be used were not exempt and companies were expected to apply for proper permits.

But the oil company did not obtain proper permits and failed to clean up its mess, leading to contamination from wastewater stored unsafely or dumped directly into the marsh, the lawsuit said.

The company also failed to follow known best practices for decades since it began operating in the area in the 1940s, expert witnesses for the plaintiff’s testified. The company “chose profits over the marsh” and allowed the environmental degradation caused by its operations to fester and spread, Carmouche said.

The jury awarded $575 million to compensate for land loss, $161 million to compensate for contamination and $8.6 million for abandoned equipment — a total of $744.6 million. The amount earmarked for restoration exceeds $1.1 billion when including interest, according to attorneys for Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello, the firm behind the lawsuit.

Plaquemines Parish, the southeast Louisiana district which brought the lawsuit, had asked for $2.6 billion in damages.

Chevron’s lead trial attorney Mike Phillips said in a statement following the verdict that “Chevron is not the cause of the land loss occurring” in Plaquemines Parish and that the law does not apply to “conduct that occurred decades before the law was enacted.”

Phillips called the ruling “unjust” and said there were “numerous legal errors.”

How are oil companies contributing to Louisiana’s land loss?

The lawsuit against Chevron was filed in 2013 by Plaquemines Parish, a rural district in Louisiana straddling the final leg of the Mississippi River heading into the Gulf of Mexico, also referred to as the Gulf of America as declared by President Donald Trump.

Louisiana’s coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency has warned.

Thousands of miles of canals cut through the wetlands by oil companies weakens them and exacerbates the impacts of sea level rise. Industrial wastewater from oil production degrades the surrounding soil and vegetation. The torn up wetlands leave South Louisiana – home to some of the nation’s biggest ports and key energy sector infrastructure — more vulnerable to flooding and destruction from extreme weather events like hurricanes.

Phillips, Chevron’s attorney, said the company had operated lawfully and blamed land loss in Louisiana on other factors, namely the extensive levee system that blocks the Mississippi River from depositing land regenerating sediment — a widely acknowledged cause of coastal erosion.

The way to solve the land loss problem is “not suing oil companies, it’s reconnecting the Mississippi River with the delta,” Phillips said during closing arguments.

Yet the lawsuit held the company responsible for exacerbating and accelerating land loss in Louisiana, rather than being its sole cause.

Chevron also challenged the costly wetlands restoration project proposed by the parish, which involved removing large amounts of contaminated soil and filling in the swaths fragmented wetlands eroded over the past century. The company said the plan was impractical and designed to inflate the damages rather than lead to real world implementation.

Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, Jr., who represented the state of Louisiana, which has backed Plaquemines and other local governments in their lawsuits against oil companies, told jurors from the parish that Chevron was telling them their community was not worth preserving.

“Our communities are built on coast, our families raised on coast, our children go to school on coast,” Faircloth said. “The state of Louisiana will not surrender the coast, it’s for the good of the state that the coast be maintained.”

What does this mean for future litigation against oil companies?

Carmouche, a well-connected attorney, and his firm have been responsible for bringing many of the lawsuits against oil companies in the state. Industry groups have accused the firm of seeking big paydays, not coastal restoration.

Louisiana’s economy has long been heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry and the industry holds significant political power. Even so, Louisiana’s staunchly pro-industry Gov. Jeff Landry has supported the lawsuits, including bringing the state on board during his tenure as Attorney General.

Oil companies have fought tooth and nail to quash the litigation, including unsuccessfully lobbying Louisiana’s Legislature to pass a law to invalidate the claims. Chevron and other firms also repeatedly tried to move the lawsuits into federal court where they believed they would find a more sympathetic audience.

But the heavy price Chevron is set to pay could hasten other firms to seek settlements in the dozens of other lawsuits across Louisiana. Plaquemines alone has 20 other cases pending against oil companies.

The state is running out of money to support its ambitious coastal restoration plans, which have been fueled by soon-expiring settlement funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and supporters of the litigation say payouts could provide a much-needed injection of funds.

Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, said the verdict against Chevron “undermines Louisiana’s position as an energy leader” and “threatens our country’s trajectory to America-first energy dominance across the globe.” He warned that “businesses here are at risk of being sued retroactively tomorrow for following the laws of today.”

Attorneys for the parish said they hope that big payout will prompt more oil companies to come to the table to negotiate and channel more funding towards coastal restoration.

“We continue to fight to restore the coast,” said Don Carmouche, an attorney with the firm representing the parish and other local governments which have filed suit. “All the parishes want is for the companies to come together for reasonable restoration of the coast.”

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday said he is signing an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 75 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.

Congress had mandated that the platform be divested from China by Jan. 19 or barred in the U.S. on national security grounds, but Trump moved unilaterally to extend the deadline to this weekend, as he sought to negotiate an agreement to keep it running. Trump has recently entertained an array of offers from U.S. businesses seeking to buy a share of the popular social media site, but China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its closely-held algorithm, has insisted the platform is not for sale.

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”

Trump added: “We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal.”

TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritizes user safety, and China’s Foreign Ministry has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries.

Trump’s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the 2024 law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for ByteDance to divest. That law that was passed with bipartisan support in Congress and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.

If the extension keeps control of TikTok’s algorithm under ByteDance’s authority, those national security concerns persist.

Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak, said that if the algorithm is still controlled by ByteDance, then it is still “controlled by a company that is in a foreign, adversarial nation state that actually could use that data for other means.”

“The main reason for all this is the control of data and the control of the algorithm,” said Pierson, who served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade. “If neither of those two things change, then it has not changed the underlying purpose, and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented.”

The Republican president’s executive orders have spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office, but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep. None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok.

The law allows for one 90-day reprieve, but only if there’s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress. Trump’s actions so far violate the law, said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota.

Rozenshtein pushed back on Trump’s claim that delaying the ban is an “extension.”“He’s not extending anything. This continues to simply be a unilateral non enforcement declaration,” he said. “All he’s doing is saying that he will not enforce the law for 75 more days. The law is still in effect. The companies are still violating it by providing services to Tiktok.

“The national security risks posed by TikTok persist under this extension, he said.

The extension comes at a time when Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.

Daniel Ryave, in Washington, D.C., runs the TikTok account @SATPrepTutor with about 175,000 followers. It offers testing advice and helps Ryave find tutoring students. He has Instagram and YouTube accounts, but TikTok is better for reaching people, he said.

“Almost all of my new students come through TikTok,” he said. “A big chunk of my revenue is from one-on-one tutoring, and that’s a great way to source clients.”

When he heard about the extension, he was “relieved,” he said.

“This extension will allow students to continue accessing high quality short form educational content that they aren’t seeking out elsewhere,” he said.

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AP Business Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this story.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — The Trump administration‘s expansive new tariffs will likely lead to higher inflation and slower growth, and the Federal Reserve will focus on keeping price increases temporary, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Friday.

Powell said that the tariffs, and their likely impacts on the economy and inflation, are “significantly larger than expected.” He also said that the import taxes are “highly likely” to lead to “at least a temporary rise in inflation,” but added that “it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent.”

“Our obligation is to … make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” Powell said in remarks delivered in Arlington, Virginia.

Powell’s focus on inflation suggests that the Fed will likely keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at about 4.3% in the coming months. Wall Street investors, meanwhile, now expect five interest rate cuts this year, a number that has increased since President Donald Trump announced the tariffs Wednesday.

Powell also emphasized that the full impact of the tariffs on the economy aren’t yet clear, and the Fed will likely stay on the sidelines until it has more clarity about the economy.

“There’s a lot of waiting and seeing going on, including by us,” Powell said during a question and answer session. “And that just seems like the right thing to do in this period of uncertainty.”

Trump, separately, urged Powell to cut rates, citing lower inflation and energy prices on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates,” Trump wrote. “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!”

Economists expect that the tariffs will weaken the economy, possibly threaten hiring, and push up prices. In that scenario, the Fed could cut rates to bolster the economy, or it could keep rates unchanged — or even hike them — to combat inflation. Powell’s comments suggest the Fed will mostly focus on inflation.

Powell’s remarks come two days after Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs that have upended the global economy, prompted retaliatory moves by China, and sent stock prices in the U.S. and overseas plunging.

Weaker growth and higher prices are a tricky combination for the Fed. Typically the central bank would reduce its key interest rate to lower borrowing costs and spur the economy in the event of slower growth, while it would raise rates — or keep them elevated — to slow spending and combat inflation.

“The Fed is in a tough spot with inflation set to accelerate and the economy poised to slow,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

Powell said the economy and hiring remain solid, for now, but he noted that consumers and businesses have become more pessimistic about the future.

He also said inflation has fallen sharply from its peak in 2022, but said that recently progress toward the central bank’s 2% target “has slowed.”

Some positive news arrived Friday when the government reported that hiring accelerated in March, with 228,000 jobs added, though the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%, from 4.1%.

Yet those figures measure hiring in mid-March, before the scope of the duties became clear. The tariffs have also raised uncertainty about how the economy will fare in the coming months, which could limit businesses’ willingness to invest and hire.

NEW YORK (AP) — Stock markets worldwide are careening even lower Friday after China matched President Donald Trump‘s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war. Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

The S&P 500 was down 3.5% in morning trading, coming off its worst day since COVID wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,226 points, or 3%, as of 10:20 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 3.4% lower.

So far there are few, if any winners, in financial markets from the trade war. European stocks saw some of the day’s biggest losses, with indexes sinking more than 4%. The price of crude oil tumbled to its lowest level since 2021. Other basic building blocks for economic growth, such as copper, also saw prices slide on worries the trade war will weaken the global economy.

China’s response to U.S. tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China by imposing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.

Markets briefly recovered some of their losses after the release of Friday morning’s U.S. jobs report, which said employers accelerated their hiring by more last month than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the U.S. job market has remained relatively solid through the start of 2025, and it’s been a linchpin keeping the U.S. economy out of a recession.

But that jobs data was backward looking, and the fear hitting financial markets is about what’s to come.

“The world has changed, and the economic conditions have changed,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock.

The central question is: Will the trade war cause a global recession? If it does, stock prices will likely need to come down even more than they have already. The S&P 500 is down roughly 15% from its record set in February.

Much will depend on how long Trump‘s tariffs stick and what kind of retaliations other countries deliver. Some of Wall Street is holding onto hope that Trump will lower the tariffs after prying out some “wins” from other countries following negotiations. Otherwise, many say a recession looks likely.

For his part, Trump has said Americans may feel “some pain” because of tariffs, but he has also said the long-term goals, including getting more manufacturing jobs back to the United States, are worth it. On Thursday, he likened the situation to a medical operation, where the U.S. economy is the patient.

“For investors looking at their portfolios, it could have felt like an operation performed without anesthesia,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

But Jacobsen also said the next surprise for investors could be how quickly tariffs get negotiated down. “The speed of recovery will depend on how, and how quickly, officials negotiate,” he said.

Vietnam said its deputy prime minister would visit the U.S. for talks on trade, while the head of the European Commission has vowed to fight back. Others have said they were hoping to negotiate with the Trump administration for relief.

Trump criticized China’s retaliation on Friday, saying on his Truth Social platform that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED – THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”

On Wall Street, stocks of companies that do lots of business in China fell to some of the sharpest losses.

DuPont dropped 14.5% after China said its regulators are launching an anti-trust investigation into DuPont China group, a subsidiary of the chemical giant. It’s one of several measures targeting American companies and in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs.

GE Healthcare got 12% of its revenue last year from the China region, and it fell 13.3%. United Airlines, which is in an alliance with Air China and got a third of its passenger revenue last year from flights across the Pacific, lost 11.7%.

In the bond market, Treasury yields continued their sharp drop as worries rise about the strength of the U.S. economy, along with expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to cushion it.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled to 3.92% from 4.06% late Thursday and from roughly 4.80% early this year. That’s a major move for the bond market.

The Fed could cut its main interest rate to relax the pressure on the economy, as it was doing late last year before pausing in 2025. But it may have less freedom to move than it would like.

Lower rates can goose the economy by making it easier for U.S. companies and households to borrow and spend. But they can also push upward on inflation. And worries are already worsening about that because of tariffs, with U.S. households in particular bracing for sharp increases to their bills.

In stock markets abroad, Germany’s DAX lost 4.6%, France’s CAC 40 dropped 4.1% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.8%.

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AP Writers Jiang Junzhe, Huizhong Wu and Matt Ott contributed.