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The Ah Louis Store in San Luis Obispo, California, turns into a winter wonderland every holiday season.Green garlands, giant nutcrackers, baubles and bows go up in early November on the historic downtown building that houses the gift shop. Inside, customers can choose from over 500 different types of ornaments and a variety of holiday gift baskets.“We really just make it a magical spot,” co-owner Emily Butler said. “Whether you come in or not, we want to make sure that we’re spreading that holiday joy.”But Butler says she and her twin sister-business partner had to work harder this year to turn browsers into buyers and to make a profit. Many of the decorations and stocking stuffers they sell are made overseas and either did not arrive or got more expensive when President Donald Trump imposed unusually high taxes on imported goods, she said.In response, the sisters focused their selection on more profitable items like nutcrackers and gift baskets. They’ve also noticed customers cutting back, selecting a $100 gift basket over the $150 version, or buying one ornament instead of several, Butler said.“We’re definitely seeing more cautious spending this year,” she said.Along with the unpredictable tariffs, stubborn inflation and weak hiring have shaken consumer confidence in the U.S. economy. The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts in recent months, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.A Gallup index that summarizes Americans’ assessments of current economic conditions fell to a 17-month low in November. Consumers also indicated less enthusiasm for spending money on holiday gifts; their estimated gift budgets decreased $229 between October and November, the largest drop Gallup has recorded at that point of the holiday shopping season. The survey was conducted in November, partially during the government shutdown, which might have tempered spending plans.However, the worst-case impact on consumer prices that many economists foresaw from the Trump administration’s tariff policies hasn’t materialized. Some products have been affected more than others. Here’s a look at what has happened with supplies and prices in popular gifting categories. Games and toys Game and toys were particularly susceptible to tariff-related price increases since the majority of the ones sold in the U.S. are made in China, according to industry trade group The Toy Association. The tariff rate the Trump administration imposed on Chinese goods became a rollercoaster that started at an additional 10%, peaked at 145% and ended up at 47%.The uncertainty made it hard for toy shops to decide what to order for the holidays. Dean Smith, who co-owns independent toy stores JaZams in Princeton, New Jersey, and Lahaska, Pennsylvania, said the manufacturers in China that he buys toys from did not pass on their tariff costs all at once but he has seen their prices inch higher with every reorder.Smith estimated that wholesale prices for 80% of his inventory went up anywhere from 5% to 20%. Some shoppers who don’t buy toys regularly might be surprised by price increases he adopted in turn, Smith said. A doll that sold for $20 to $25 last year now costs $30 to $35 at JaZams, he said.“For folks with marginal incomes, this is going to be a very difficult holiday,” Smith said. Electronics Consumer electronics are mostly made in China and other Asian countries. In 2023, China accounted for 78% of U.S. smartphone imports, and 79% of laptop and tablet imports, according to the Consumer Technology Association trade group.Best Buy said in May that it was raising prices due to tariffs. But CEO Corie Barry said late last month that the consumer electronics chain made sure to stock computers, phones and other products at different price levels, a decision she credited with helping Best Buy attract more lower-income shoppers.“The consumer is not a monolith,” Barry told reporters.Game consoles are always a popular holiday item, and console makers made news earlier this year when they announced price increases. Sony raised the price of the PlayStation 5 by $50 to $550 in August, following Microsoft and Nintendo raising prices for their game consoles. Jewelry Jewelry shoppers will likely see higher prices, but that has more to do with the soaring price of gold than tariffs so far, according to David Bonaparte, president & CEO of trade group Jewelers of America.The varying tax rates Trump set for countries that import American goods with a total value less than their exports to the U.S. affected jewelry in various ways. Watches from Switzerland, for example, were subject to a 39% tariff from July 31 until the country struck a deal with the Trump administration last month to lower the import tax rate on its products to 15%.India, which refines many of the diamonds sold in the U.S., rushed in shipments of the gemstones before a 50% tariff on the country’s products took effect on Aug. 27. Higher prices for jewelry made with diamonds shipped from India will likely start to be felt in 2026, Bonaparte said.“It’s really a matter of what happens after Jan. 1,” he said. “If these tariffs are still in place, then prices will probably increase.” Holiday decor Holiday decorations are yet another category that mostly comes from overseas, particularly China.Jeremy Rice co-owns House, a home-décor shop in Lexington, Kentucky, that specializes in artificial flowers, wreaths and table decorations. He said the tariffs slowed down production of much of his fall stock and seasonal merchandise like ribbon. Some larger and more expensive items he didn’t order at all because they would have been too expensive to retail.Rice raised prices on the products he did get. The popular red berry stems that House long has carried increased from $8.95 last year to $10.95 due to higher import costs, he said.“We sell thousands of these berry stems, and every time we sold one, I flinched from knowing what it should have been, knowing that our supplier paid more for them, which made us pay more for them, which made our customer pay more for them,” Rice said. Shopping strategically For those looking to avoid tariff-related price increases, John Harmon, managing director of technology research at technology consulting company Coresight Resarch, recommends checking out secondhand stores and discount retailers like T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s and HomeGoods. The off-price chains buy much of their inventory from leftover stock that would have entered the U.S. before new tariffs kicked in.Joe Adamski, senior director at procurement services company ProcureAbility, said books, food and beverages are some of the domestically produced goods that make good gifts. Mae Anderson, AP Business Writer
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Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally ” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78.Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirmed their identities but could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.Authorities were investigating an “apparent homicide,” said Capt. Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Fire Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30 p.m.Reiner grew up thinking his father, Carl Reiner, didn’t understand him or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in his father’s footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father,'” Reiner said, recalling the temptation to change his name to “60 Minutes” in October. “And he says, ‘What do you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to be like him.”After starting out as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” Reiner’s breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic. But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any, era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic “This Is Spinal Tap,” remains the quintessential mockumentary.After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made “Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally ” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the most often quoted movies of the 20th century. A legacy on and off screen For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including “Seinfeld” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the turn of the century, its success rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it earlier this decade. This fall, Reiner and Castle Rock released the long-in-coming sequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry’s most passionate Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on tobacco products. Reiner was also a critic of President Donald Trump.That ran in the family, too. Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner told the Guardian in 2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.” ‘All in the Family’ to ‘Stand By Me’ Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a young man, he quickly set out to follow his father into entertainment. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles film school and, in the 1960s, began appearing in small parts in various television shows.But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in “All in the Family,” it came as a surprise to the elder Reiner.“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was anyway,” Reiner told “60 Minutes.”On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was five times nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show, winning in 1974 and 1978. In Lear, Reiner also found a mentor. He called him “a second father.”“It wasn’t just that he hired me for ‘All in the Family,'” Reiner told “American Masters” in 2005. “It was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.”Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance “Stand By Me,” Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of King.With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman’s 1973’s “The Princess Bride,” a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from François Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman’s book, but it ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman’s own script) to capture the unique comic tone of “The Princess Bride.” But only once he had Goldman’s blessing.“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?'” Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.”Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin Wright would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya’s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia. ‘When Harry Met Sally ” Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera.After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested a comedy about dating. In writing what became “When Harry Met Sally ” Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman (layed in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) over the course of 12 years.Along the way, the movie’s ending changed, as did some of the film’s indelible moments. The famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” said after witnessing Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Delicatessen, was a suggestion by Crystal delivered by none other than Reiner’s mother, Estelle.The movie’s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met Singer, a photographer, on the set of “When Harry Met Sally ” In 1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake and Romy.Reiner’s subsequent films included another King adaptation, “Misery” (1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military courtroom tale “A Few Good Men” (1992) and 1995’s “The American President.”By the late ’90s, Reiner’s films (1996’s “Ghosts of Mississippi,” 2007’s “The Bucket List”) no longer had the same success rate. But he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). In 2023, he directed the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing.“All I’ve ever done is say, ‘Is this something that is an extension of me?’ For ‘Stand by Me,’ I didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not. All I thought was, ‘I like this because I know what it feels like.'” Jake Coyle, AP Film Writer
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Platforms from Amazon to YouTubeand, of course, the headline-dominating Spotify Wrappedhave spent much of December rolling out year-end recaps that show users how they engaged with the platforms’ services throughout 2025. Today, one of the last anticipated recaps of the year makes its debut: Snapchat Recap 2025. Heres what you need to know. What is Snapchat Recap 2025? Snapchat Recap is Snapchats annual year-in-review feature for users of the Snapchat app. Users are able to see a special year-end Story that showcases how they spent their time Snapchating throughout 2025. Snapchat owner Snap Inc. says the 2025 recap features insights and highlights on how a user communicated, connected, and expressed themselves over the past 12 months. When does Snapchat Recap 2025 launch? Snapchat Recap 2025 is available today, Monday, December 15. How do I get my Snapchat Recap 2025? If youre a Snapchat user, you can access your Snapchat Recap 2025 just like you have your Snapchat Recaps of previous years. You can see your Snapchat Recap 2025 year-end story by swiping up from the Camera. There, youll find your Snapchat Recap 2025, which features your favorite memories from the year. Snapchat in 2025 by the numbers In addition to releasing its annual Snapchat Recap 2025 today, Snap also unveiled additional metrics about how people used the platform this year, including: Snapchatters talked to each other for nearly 1.7 billion minutes each daythats around a 30% daily talk time increase from last year. The heart was the most popular chat reaction in 2025. The 6/7 Bitmoji Sticker became the most-used sticker on the platform.
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