Amazon’s stock price had already been dropping in after-hours trading on Thursday despite better-than-expected results when Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak prefaced his questions on an earnings call with a disclaimer that made it clear this wasn’t going to be a “Congrats on the quarter, guys” type of analyst—CEO interaction.
“I have two [questions] for you on AWS; they’re a little tough but I’m going to throw them at you,” Nowak told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. “There is a Wall Street finance person narrative right now that AWS is falling behind in Gen AI with concerns about share loss to peers. What is your rebuttal to that and talk to us about your and the team’s most important focal points just to ensure that AWS stays on the knife’s edge of innovation versus hyperscaler peers?”
Nowak also pressed Jassy on why it wouldn’t be fair to assume that AWS’ revenue growth shouldn’t accelerate in the back half of the year given all of AWS’ generative AI offerings and widespread demand from companies of all sizes to cash in on this transformational technology.
Jassy responded by stressing that this is the early stages of a technological transformation that will extend far into the future. While some of the top frontier model providers do use AWS in some capacity, non-AI AWS customers that are rushing to build generative and agentic AI services using AWS are “quite early, and many of them are just smaller in terms of usage relative to some of those top heavy applications I mentioned earlier.” That is bound to change.
So if you follow Jassy’s thinking, as more enterprises figure out what they want to build and how they want to build it, they’re going to start having different needs. For the largest model makers, like Open AI or Anthropic, Jassy foresees their costs shifting from a mix between training their models and the cost associated with “inference,” or the customer-facing part where the model spits out a prediction, answer or action, to mostly inference expenses. And Jassy maintains AWS is positioned well for this transition because of the low-cost AI chip line Trainium.
“It’s about 30% and 40% better price performance than the other GPU providers out there right now, and we’re already working on our third version,” he said.
For others, who want to use another company’s model to create their own generative AI applications, Jassy argued that Amazon Bedrock, which offers models from a wide selection of companies, has become a go-to destination and “is growing very substantially.”
Jassy continued on the this-is-just-the-first-inning thread, by noting that companies are just starting to think about deploying AI agents and that, with its recent agentic AI announcements, AWS will be well-positioned to capitalize.
The Amazon CEO, and former AWS chief, added that AWS cloud leadership position also provides some lock-in as AI “inference” becomes just another component of a company’s cloud services stack.
“[P]eople are going to actually want to run those [AI] applications close to where their other applications are running, where their data is,” Jassy said. “There’s just so many more applications and data running in AWS than anywhere else.”
As for Nowak’s question about the possibility of AWS’ growth rate accelerating in the back half of the year, Jassy wouldn’t directly answer it but stressed his optimism, in part stemming from more AWS starting to deploy more AI products at sale that should continue to ramp in coming quarters.
Earlier in the call, Jassy had defended AWS’ 18% revenue growth rate in light of Microsoft reporting 34% annual revenue growth for its Azure cloud unit and Alphabet recently reporting 32% quarterly growth for Google Cloud. Azure generates around 2/3 the revenue that AWS does, while Google Cloud registers less than half the annual revenue of Amazon’s cloud behemoth.
“You look at the business, it’s a $123 billion annual revenue run rate business and it’s still early,” he said. “How often do you have an opportunity that’s $123 billion in annual revenue run rate where you say it’s still early? It’s a very unusual opportunity that we’ve very bullish about.”
Andy Jassy, who sent shockwaves through the jobs market as one of the first major chief executives to say that “AI will mean fewer jobs,” sounded a different tone on the earnings call accompanying Amazon’s earnings on July 31. He reiterated his view that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a transformative force, saying it “is going to change very substantially the way we work” and emphasizing sweeping impacts already under way. It’s changing the way Amazon does coding, finance, all sorts of things, he said: “really the way we do business process automation, the way we do customer service.”
But then he pivoted.
Jassy said AI “will make all our teammates’ jobs more enjoyable,” freeing them up from having to do the “rote” functions that could not previously be automated. Companies have a choice in the AI revolution, he added: they can embrace the change that’s happening and help shape the new era, “or you can wish it away and have it shape you.” He said he has worked to make clear, internally and externally, that Amazon will embrace this moment.
‘Much more advanced’
While AI’s promise and pitfalls have dominated tech headlines for the past two years, Jassy’s comments detailed concrete examples of how Amazon is rapidly embedding advanced AI into both its internal workflows and customer-facing services. He highlighted the company’s investments in generative AI agents that can assist with—or even independently perform—complex coding tasks.
“Coding agents, having AI do a lot of the coding for us … allows our teammates to start from a much more advanced starting spot,” Jassy explained.
This philosophy of combining human creativity with AI-powered efficiency is reshaping other vital departments as well. In research and finance, Jassy described AI tools that can quickly synthesize vast quantities of information or flag anomalies in financial data, freeing up skilled employees for strategic work.
Jassy also spotlighted AI’s growing influence in Amazon’s expansive call center and customer service operations. He pointed to services like AWS Connect—the company’s cloud-based call center solution—which now has deep AI integrations for more natural customer interactions and automated issue resolution.
Jassy’s transformative outlook
Jassy has been emphasizing the increasing impact of AI for several months now, for instance suggesting that employees attend AI trainings while promising investors that AI will make them “very happy” down the road.
Amazon had delivered strong earnings earlier on July 31, yet investors sent the stock down roughly 7% in post-market trading with investors concerned about trade headwinds and Amazon’s long-term spending plans. Jassy told analysts on the call that, with regard to the impact of tariffs through the first half of the year, “we haven’t yet seen diminishing demand, nor prices meaningfully appreciating.”
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
With President Donald Trump’s dramatic tariff hikes on the cusp of starting, countries around the world scrambled on Thursday to finalize their trade frameworks with the United States, figure out the tax rates their goods might face and prepare for the unknown.
Shortly before Friday deadline for the tariffs beginning, Trump said he would enter into a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico, one of the nation’s largest trading partners, with the current 25% tariff rates staying in place, down from the 30% he had threatened earlier.
“We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue,” Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on X after a call with Trump that he referred to as “very successful” in terms of the leaders getting to know each other better.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Thursday’s news briefing that Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” would sign an order to impose new rates starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday. Countries that had not received a prior letter from Trump or negotiated a framework would be notified of their likely tariff rates, either by letter or executive order, she said.
The unknowns created a sense of drama that have defined Trump’s rollout of tariffs over several months, with the one consistency being his desire to levy the import taxes that most economists say will ultimately be borne to some degree by U.S. consumers and businesses.
“We have made a few deals today that are excellent deals for the country,” Trump told reporters on Thursday afternoon without detailing the terms of those agreements or nations involved.
Trump said that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had called ahead of 35% tariffs being imposed on many of his nation’s goods, but “we haven’t spoken to Canada today.”
Trump imposed the Friday deadline after his previous “Liberation Day” tariffs in April resulted in a stock market panic. His unusually high tariff rates unveiled in April led to recession fears, prompting Trump to impose a 90-day negotiating period. When he was unable to create enough trade deals with other countries, he extended the timeline and sent out letters to world leaders that simply listed rates, prompting a slew of hasty deals.
Trump reached a deal with South Korea on Wednesday, and earlier with the European Union, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that there were agreements with Cambodia and Thailand after they had agreed to a ceasefire to their border conflict.
Among those uncertain about their trade status were wealthy Switzerland and Norway.
Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said it was “completely uncertain” whether a deal would be completed before Trump’s deadline.
But even the public announcement of a deal can offer scant reassurance for an American trading partner.
EU officials are waiting to complete a crucial document outlining how the framework to tax imported autos and other goods from the 27-member state bloc would operate. Trump had announced a deal Sunday while he was in Scotland.
“The U.S. has made these commitments. Now it’s up to the U.S. to implement them. The ball is in their court,” EU Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said. The document would not be legally binding.
Trump said as part of the agreement with Mexico that goods imported into the U.S. would continue to face a 25% tariff that he has ostensibly linked to fentanyl trafficking. He said autos would face a 25% tariff, while copper, aluminum and steel would be taxed at 50% during the negotiating period.
He said Mexico would end its “Non Tariff Trade Barriers,” but he didn’t provide specifics.
Some goods continue to be protected from the tariffs by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term.
But Trump appeared to have soured on that deal, which is up for renegotiation next year. One of his first significant moves as president was to tariff goods from both Mexico and Canada earlier this year.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the U.S. ran a $171.5 billion trade imbalance with Mexico last year. That means the U.S. bought more goods from Mexico than it sold to the country.
The imbalance with Mexico has grown in the aftermath of the USMCA as it was only $63.3 billion in 2016, the year before Trump started his first term in office.
Besides addressing fentanyl trafficking, Trump has made it a goal to close the trade gap.
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
Numerous countries around the world are facing the prospect of much higher duties on their exports to the United States on Friday, a potential blow to the global economy, because they haven’t yet reached a trade deal with the Trump administration.
Some of the United States’ biggest trading partners have reached agreements, or at least the outlines of one, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Even so, those countries face much higher tariffs than were in effect before Trump took office. And other large trading partners — most notably China and Mexico — received an extension to keep negotiating and won’t be hit with new duties Friday, but they will likely end up paying more.
President Donald Trump intends the duties to bring back manufacturing to the United States, while also forcing other countries to reduce their trade barriers to U.S. exports. Trump argues that foreign exporters will pay the cost of the tariffs, but so far economists have found that most are being paid by U.S. companies. And measures of U.S. inflation have started to tick higher as prices of imported goods, such as furniture, appliances, and toys rise.
For those countries without an agreement, they could face duties of as much as 50%, including on large economies such as Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, and India. Many smaller countries are also on track to pay more, including South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even tiny Lesotho.
The duties originated from Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement that the United States would impose import taxes of up to 50% on nearly 60 countries and economies, including the 27-nation European Union. Those duties, originally scheduled for April 9, were then postponed twice, first to July 9 and then Aug. 1.
Will the deadline hold this time?
As of Thursday afternoon, White House representatives — and Trump himself — insisted that no more delays were possible.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” will sign an order to impose new tariff rates starting midnight on Friday.
Countries that have not received a prior letter on tariffs from Trump or negotiated a trade framework will be notified of their likely tariff rates, Leavitt said, either in the form of a letter or Trump’s executive order. At least two dozen countries were sent letters setting out their tariff rates.
On Wednesday, Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social, “THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE IS THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE — IT STANDS STRONG, AND WILL NOT BE EXTENDED.”
Which countries have a trade agreement?
In a flurry of last minute deal-making, the Trump has been announcing agreements as late as Thursday, but they are largely short on details.
On Thursday, the U.S. and Pakistan reached a trade agreement expected to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves and lower tariffs for the South Asian country.
And on Wednesday, Trump announced a deal with South Korea that would impose 15% tariffs on goods from that country. That is below the 25% duties that Trump threatened in April.
Agreements have also been reached with the European Union, Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. The agreement with the Philippines barely reduced the tariff it will pay, from 20% to 19%.
And which countries don’t?
The exact number of countries facing higher duties isn’t clear, but the majority of the 200 have not made deals. Trump has already slapped large duties on Brazil and India even before the deadline was reached.
In the case of Brazil, Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday imposing a 50% duty on imports, though he exempted several large categories, including aircraft, aluminum, and energy products. Trump is angry at Brazil’s government because it is prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting to overturn his election loss in 2022. Trump was indicted on a similar charge in 2023.
While Trump has sought to justify the widespread tariffs as an effort to combat the United States’ chronic trade deficits, the U.S. actually has a trade surplus with Brazil — meaning it sells more goods and services to Brazil than it buys from that country.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Canada have been complicated by the Canadian government’s announcement that it will recognize a Palestinian state in September. Trump said early Thursday that the announcement “will make it very hard” for the U.S. to reach a trade deal with Canada.
Late Wednesday, Trump said that India would pay a 25% duty on all its exports, in part because it has continued to purchase oil from Russia.
On Thursday, the White House said it had extended the deadline to reach a deal with Mexico for another 90 days, citing the complexity of the trade relationship, which is governed by the trade agreement Trump reached when he updated NAFTA in his first term.
For smaller countries caught in Trump’s cross hairs, the Aug. 1 deadline is particularly difficult because the White House has acknowledged they aren’t able to negotiate with every country facing tariff threats. Lesotho, for example, a small country in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% duty on April 2, and even though it was postponed, the threat has already devastated its apparel industry, costing thousands of jobs.
“There’s 200 countries,’’ the president acknowledged earlier this month. “You can’t talk to all of them.’’
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AP Writers Josh Boak and Wyatte Grantham-Philipps contributed to this report.
In 2020, a disgruntled litigant posing as a deliveryman opened fire at the New Jersey home of District Judge Esther Salas, killing her 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl. Five years later, as President Donald Trump steps up hiscriticism of federal judges who have blocked some of his agenda, dozens of judges have had unsolicited pizzas delivered to their homes, often in Daniel Anderl’s name.
District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of Rhode Island, who stalled Trump’s initial round of across-the-board spending cuts, is among those who received pizzas in Anderl’s name. His courtroom also has been flooded by threatening calls, including one profanity-laced one that called for his assassination.
McConnell, Jr. played a recording of the call during an unusual discussion Thursday where multiple federal judges discussed threats they have received — a notable conversation because judges usually only speak publicly from the bench and through their rulings, and rarely if ever, about personal threats and attacks. Salas and others said the number of attacks has escalated in recent months.
Without using his name, Salas called on Trump and his allies to tone down the rhetoric and stop demonizing the judiciary, for fear of what more could happen.
“We’re used to being appealed. But keep it on the merits, stop demonizing us,” Salas said. “They’re inviting people to do us harm.”
Thursday’s event was sponsored by Speak up for Justice, a nonpartisan group supporting an independent judiciary. District Judge John C. Coughenour of Washington recalled having a police SWAT team called to his home to respond to a false report of an attack after Coughenour in January halted Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of people in the country illegally.
District Judge Robert S. Lasnik of Washington also had pizzas delivered in Anderl’s name to both his home and those of his two adult children, each in different cities, after an article in which he was quoted as being critical of attacks on judges was picked up by a television station in the Pacific Northwest, where he hears cases.
“The message to me was ‘we know where you live, we know where your kids live, and they could end up dead like Daniel Anderl did,’” Lasnik said in an interview.
Salas says U.S. Marshals have told her of more than 100 cases of so-called “pizza doxings,” unwanted deliveries to the homes of federal judges and their families, since 2024, with most occurring this year. Salas added that she’s heard of additional cases targeting state judges in states ranging from Colorado to Florida, incidents that wouldn’t be tracked by Marshals, who protect federal judges.
“This is not some random, silly act, this is a targeted, concentrated, coordinated attack on judges,” Salas said in an interview, “and yet we don’t hear any condemnation from Washington.”
Salas, nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, in 2022 was critical of protests at the homes of Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices who revoked women’s right to have an abortion, which were followed by the arrest of a man at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh who said he was there to assassinate the justice. Salas said both sides of the political aisle have used worrying rhetoric about judges, but it’s reached a new peak since Trump took office.
“I’ve often referred to it as a bonfire that I believe the current administration is throwing accelerants on,” Salas said.
Trump himself has led the charge against judges, often going after them by name on social media. He’s said judges who’ve ruled against his administration are “sick,” “very dangerous” and “lunatic.” Trump’s allies have amplified his rhetoric and called for impeaching judges who rule against the president or simply disobeying their rulings. Earlier this year, several judges at the panel noted, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee had a “wanted” poster of judges who’d crossed the president hanging outside his congressional office.
Lasnik said many judges appointed by presidents of both parties have told him of concerns but are nervous about discussing the issue openly.
“A lot of them don’t know how to speak up and are afraid of crossing a line somewhere where they would get a judicial complaint like judge Boasberg did,” Lasnik said, referring to District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C., who infuriated the Trump administration by finding they likely committed criminal contempt by disobeying his order to turn around a deportation flight to El Salvador.
Though Chief Justice John Roberts has come to Boasberg’s defense, Trump’s Department of Justice this week filed a complaint against Boasberg over comments he made at a judicial conference that other judges worry the Trump administration won’t obey their orders. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department took the extraordinary step of suing every federal judge in Maryland over rules governing how they handle immigration cases.
More than five dozen judges who’ve ruled against Trump are receiving enhanced online protection, including scrubbing their identifying information from websites, according to two Trump-appointed judges who wrote Congress urging more funding for judicial security. In 2022, Congress passed a law named after Daniel Anderl allowing judges to sue internet sites to take down identifying information.
Apple blew past Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter earnings report released Thursday, revealing robust growth driven by persistent iPhone demand, surging services revenue, and resilience in key international markets—even as tariff anxieties and questions over its artificial intelligence (AI) roadmap loomed over the industry.
For the quarter ended June 28, 2025, Apple posted revenue of $94 billion, representing a 10% increase compared to the same period last year. Net income soared to $1.57 per share—up 12% from a year ago and significantly ahead of analyst forecasts, which had pegged earnings per share at $1.43 on expected revenue of $89.22 billion. Gross margin nudged up to 46.5%.
CEO Tim Cook celebrated the results, noting “Apple is proud to report a June quarter revenue record with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and Services and growth around the world, in every geographic segment.” Apple’s board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per share, payable August 14 to shareholders of record as of August 11.
The installed base of active devices hit a “new all-time high,” according to CFO Kevan Parekh, underscoring Apple’s customer loyalty amid intensifying market competition. Apple shares climbed more than 2.5% post-market on the results.
Segment highlights
Apple’s signature iPhone business was the principal engine of growth, generating $44.6 billion in sales—up from $39.2 billion the previous year. This far exceeded most forecasts and reinforced the iPhone’s dominance, even as competitors ramp up their global push.
The Services segment, encompassing the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple TV+, Apple Music, and iCloud, also set a new record: revenue there hit $27.4 billion, a 13% increase over last year. The success of Apple TV+ was underscored by the summer box office triumph of “F1: The Movie,” which has grossed nearly $513 million worldwide. Mac sales also posted double-digit growth, rising to $8 billion.
In contrast, iPad and Wearables revenue both saw modest declines, but these were more than offset by the core and services businesses.
International & trade dynamics
Growth was broad-based—notably including China, where Apple outperformed expectations with $15.4 billion in sales. This comes amid a tense geopolitical environment: President Donald Trump, seeking to enact tariffs of at least 25% on non-U.S.-made iPhones, had warned Apple to “manufacture in the U.S., not India, or anyplace else.” The company had projected a $900 million headwind from tariffs this quarter but successfully navigated the challenge, in part by accelerating its shift in device manufacturing from China to India.
Looking ahead
Despite these achievements, investor scrutiny remained focused on Apple’s comparative lag in artificial intelligence rollouts—especially as competitors like Meta and Microsoft grab headlines for major AI advances.
Apple’s stock, while buoyed after the earnings beat, has fallen 16% year-to-date, underperforming the broader S&P 500. Still, many analysts remain bullish, citing Apple’s ecosystem strength, user retention, and ability to deftly manage global headwinds. Some analysts have expressed impatience with Tim Cook, even arguing for him to be replaced. Longtime Apple bull Dan Ives has thrown his support behind Cook but argued for a transformative M&A deal for Apple to get a leg up in the AI race, slamming a recent presentation as something that “felt like an episode out of ‘Back to the Future,'” although though that was a film, not an episodic TV series.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Financial innovation has come full circle. The blockchain is bringing the U.S. back to the era of private money, when banks and companies could issue their own currencies. This time, instead of gold and silver coins, corporate America is eager to issue their own stablecoins.
The U.S.’s decision to embrace cryptocurrency through legislation like the GENIUS Act doesn’t just matter domestically. Washington’s move is placing pressure on countries around the world to signal their own stance on stablecoins and cryptocurrency.
In recent months, financial officials and academics within China have spoken up on the need to at least consider authorizing stablecoins, which Zhiguo He, a professor of finance at Stanford University, says is motivated by the “fear of missing out.”
And on Friday, the autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong—which is betting on cryptocurrencies to bolster its status as a financial center—will start accepting applications for a Hong Kong-dollar backed stablecoin, potentially opening the door for a renminbi-backed token too.
With the U.S. going all-in on crypto, Beijing now faces a difficult decision: Does it match the U.S.’s risky bet on a stablecoin-centric future? Or does it play it safe, and risk missing out oncutting-edge financial technology?
A crypto-happy U.S.
Stablecoins, unlike their more volatile counterparts in the cryptocurrency space, are meant to be a bit boring. These virtual assets are pegged to the value of a reference asset, such as a fiat currency. Almost all stablecoins are pegged to the U.S. dollar, the world’s reserve currency. Users can tap stablecoins to easily transfer funds between different cryptocurrencies without needing to resort to real-world money.
Users trust stablecoin issuers to have enough liquid reserves to redeem coins for fiat currency at any time. But unlike banks, stablecoin issuers don’t have a lender of last resort to fall back on. The 2022 collapse of TerraUSD, a so-called algorithmic stablecoin, spread concerns about other cryptocurrencies, including more well-established tokens.
The potential for stablecoins to spark the cryptocurrency version of a financial panic has led governments to be wary of stablecoins. But now U.S. president Donald Trump, in his second term, wants to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”
“Trump has done a 180 for the United States and just said, ‘deregulate, deregulate, deregulate,’” says Harvard professor and former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff.
The U.S. Congress passed the GENIUS Act on July 17th, establishing the first regulatory framework for dollar-pegged stablecoins. The Act requires issuers to maintain reserves, such as in cash or U.S. Treasury bills, to back their stablecoins on at least a 1:1 basis.
China considers crypto
The U.S.’s sudden crypto-happy stance could worry other nations. Dollar-backed stablecoins will be appealing in “really poor countries where people don’t trust the currency and central bank,” says Paul Blustein, journalist and author of King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World’s Dominant Currency. But even countries with strong local currencies could face a future where “citizens prefer to transact with this type of instrument.”
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is now in a frustrating position. China has banned all cryptocurrency transactions since 2021, citing the risks they could post to the country’s financial system.
But China doesn’t want to find itself behind the curve—or behind the U.S.—if stablecoins and blockchain technology really are the future of finance.
Wang Yongli, former vice president of Bank of China, wrote to WeChat in June that it “would be a strategic risk if cross-border yuan payment is not as efficient as dollar stablecoins.” Yongli recommended a “proactive response from other countries, particularly China” to U.S. legislation, according to the Pekinology newsletter.
PBOC governor Pan Gongsheng similarly noted the rising use of stablecoins for cross-border payments at the 2025 Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai on June 18.
Days later, the Securities Times, a newspaper owned by state media outlet People’s Daily, wrote that industry insiders “generally believe that, as an emerging payment tool, the unique advantages and potential risks of stablecoins cannot be ignored, and that the development of [renminbi-pegged] stablecoins should be sooner rather than later.”
The South China Morning Post reported on July 14 that China was exploring the feasibility of allowing the launch of stablecoins. Two local officials told the newspaper that state-owned entities including the securities firm Guotai Haitong and data infrastructure firm Shanghai Data Group were looking into a trial run of renminbi-pegged tokens.
“It’s not the fact that the U.S. is going into crypto, per se, that matters,” Evan Auyang, group president of Hong Kong-based blockchain technology company Animoca Brands, says. “It’s really what started as a result of this change…Stablecoins became institutional” after gaining legitimacy from the U.S. (Animoca Brands intends to apply for a license to issue stablecoins in Hong Kong.)
De-dollarization
There’s a geopolitical element to the stablecoin conversation. If adoption of U.S. dollar stablecoins grows, issuers will need to hold more dollars and dollar-based assets to back the peg. Tether, which issues the world’s largest stablecoin, was already the world’s seventh largest purchaser of U.S. debt in 2024.
After chipping away at the dollar’s global dominance for decades, China does not want to give the U.S. an opportunity to regain ground.
“They’re very concerned about the U.S. exercising power, expanding the use of the dollar,” says Rogoff.
China has tried to promote greater use of the renminbi for cross-border trade, with limited success. Trade with isolated countries like Russia and Iran may be conducted in the renminbi, but most countries in the world still prefer using the U.S. dollar. The popularity of dollar stablecoins could “smother” Beijing’s efforts to develop its own financial networks, Rogoff says.
Trump’s trade war has spurred talks of “de-dollarization,” or reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, due to concerns about the future of the U.S. economy and fears of dollar weaponization. Even Trump himself is worried about challengers to the dollar, threatening massive tariffs against the BRICS bloc if it considered creating an alternative currency.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that stablecoins can help keep the U.S. dollar as the dominant reserve currency.
Some Chinese officials agree with Bessent: former vice minister of finance Zhu Guangyao argued in June that “the strategic purpose behind the United States’ promotion of stablecoins—closely tied to U.S. dollar liquidity—is to preserve dollar supremacy,” as translated by the East is Readnewsletter,
Can China launch a stablecoin?
But even if Beijing is open to launching a stablecoin, it must overcome another hurdle: its closed capital account, which means officials can’t authorize a Chinese yuan renminbi (CNY)-pegged stablecoin.
There are “still a lot of concerns over capital flight issues” that make the liberalization of China’s capital account unlikely, Auyang says.
China could authorize a stablecoin pegged to the offshore renminbi (CNH). And since over 70% of offshore renminbi payments are processed in Hong Kong, Huang Yiping, an advisor for the PBOC, suggested using the city as a testing ground for China’s stablecoin launch. Chinese tech giant JD.com reportedly proposed a similar scheme in its discussions with the PBOC.
Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Ordinance, due to go into effect on August 1st, already establishes a legal framework for leveraging the city’s offshore renminbi pool, if the PBOC chooses to go in that direction and provide sufficient liquidity for offshore renminbi-pegged stablecoin issuers.
Although the law requires issuers to hold reserves in their stablecoin’s reference currency, since the Hong Kong dollar itself is pegged to the U.S. dollar, HKD-pegged stablecoin issuers can hold U.S. dollar reserves.
“Hong Kong is pegging to the USD. So, in some sense, they are basically helping the U.S.,” He, from Stanford, explained. “This is perhaps why Beijing [could say], when you do the HKD [stablecoin], I want you to do the CNH as well.”
‘Rein in the euphoria’
Currency experts are worried about how stablecoins could end up posing a threat to the economy—whether in the U.S. or in China.
Blustein points to the risk of “currency substitution.” If the appeal of stablecoins outweighs the appeal of the local currency, it “screws up the central bank’s ability to control the economy,” he argues, as everyone is engaging in transactions in an instrument outside the bank’s control.
And without a central bank or lender of last resort, stablecoins are vulnerable to runs—users rushing to redeem their tokens for fiat currency all at once. Thepossibility of astablecoin crisis is “very parallel to the U.S.’s free banking era in the 1800s,” says Rogoff.
“The risk of a financial crisis is high,” he says.
Blustein, for his part, is less worried about stablecoins messing things up—in part because they make up “a tiny part of international payments.”
“Stablecoins cannot possibly buy that many short-term treasuries” to compete with central banks and multinational companies, he suggests.
Another person expressing some skepticism about stablecoins? Eddie Yue, the head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the city’s de facto central banker.
In a press conference last week, Yue told the public to “rein in the euphoria” over stablecoins, pointing to “overly idealistic” discussions on how they might “disrupt the mainstream financial system.”
Amazon reported robust second-quarter 2025 financial results on July 31, surpassing Wall Street expectations with sharp revenue growth and notable gains in key business segments. Yet, investor enthusiasm was tempered as the company’s shares dropped as much as 3% in after-hours trading, reflecting lingering concerns about retail headwinds and long-term spending plans.
For the April-June period, Amazon posted revenue of $167.7 billion, climbing 13% year-over-year and outpacing analyst predictions of $162.1 billion. Earnings per share came in at $1.68, also topping the expected $1.33. Net income for the quarter reached an impressive $18.2 billion, more than a 10% increase from last year.
Amazon’s financial outperformance stems from strong execution across several areas. Though its sprawling retail operations remain the largest part of its business, the real engine of profit growth continues to be Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud-computing arm.
AWS and AI power profitability
AWS generated $30.9 billion in revenue, marking a 17.5% increase year-over-year and landing squarely in line with industry forecasts. The unit contributed $10.2 billion in operating profit—more than half of Amazon’s total $19.2 billion operating income for the quarter. This confirms AWS’s role as Amazon’s financial powerhouse, driven by surging demand for AI and cloud infrastructure as businesses accelerate technology investments.
Chief executive Andy Jassy has spotlighted AI as a transformative force for Amazon, with the majority of 2025’s planned $100 billion in capital expenditures dedicated to expanding AWS’ capacity for generative AI and machine learning. As major clients move more workloads to the cloud and adopt AI-driven services, AWS remains positioned for long-term leadership, despite short-term margin pressures from its heavy investments.
Retail and advertising show resilience
Despite ongoing concerns about tariffs and consumer spending, Amazon’s core online store sales grew 11% to $61.5 billion. The company’s third-party seller services also expanded, with revenue rising 11% to $40.3 billion. Physical stores, including Whole Foods, delivered a 7% increase to $5.6 billion, while subscription revenue—such as Prime memberships—rose 12% to $12.2 billion.
Amazon’s advertising segment was a standout performer, raking in $15.6 billion in revenue, up 23% from the prior year. This ad business is becoming an increasingly critical pillar within Amazon’s profit structure, as brands compete for consumer eyeballs on the platform’s massive shopping interface.
Challenges and outlook
The company is navigating a complex macroeconomic climate that includes inflation, changing trade policies, and labor market constraints. Shipping expenses climbed 6% to $23.4 billion, reflecting both global cost pressures and heightened demand for fast delivery.
Although Amazon’s Q2 earnings don’t reflect the impact of July’s Prime Day—held after quarter’s end—the company remains optimistic, projecting third-quarter revenue in the range of $174 billion to $179.5 billion, above analyst expectations. Operating income is forecast between $15.5 billion and $20.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s headcount inched up 1% year-over-year to 1.55 million, with CEO Andy Jassy signaling further workforce streamlining as automation and generative AI gain traction internally. “Our AI progress across the board continues to improve our customer experiences, speed of innovation, operational efficiency, and business growth, and I’m excited for what lies ahead,” he said in the earnings press release.
Investor response
Despite the upbeat earnings report, Amazon stock fell in extended trading, illustrating Wall Street’s wariness about continued retail volatility, capital-intensive growth, and competitive dynamics in cloud and AI. Still, analysts remain bullish on Amazon’s strategic direction, citing leadership in cloud innovation, resilient retail fundamentals, and an aggressive expansion into the future of artificial intelligence.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
The tariffs planned by President Donald Trump on Friday touched off a feverish bout of activity among trade partners as key details remained unclear and nations didn’t know the taxes their goods could face — keeping an element of surprise to an event long hyped by the U.S. leader.
Just hours before the deadline, Trump on Thursday said he would enter a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico over trade as 25% tariff rates stay in place, providing a bit of clarity to a massive rewiring of the global economy that will require the president to sign a new executive order.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that his phone conversation with Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum was “very successful in that, more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.”
The Republican president had threatened tariffs of 30% on goods from Mexico in a July letter, something that Sheinbaum said Mexico gets to stave off for the next three months.
“We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue,” Sheinbaum wrote on X.
The leaders’ morning call came at a moment of pressure and uncertainty for the world economy. As Trump’s deadline loomed, nations were scrambling to finalize the outlines of trade frameworks so he would not simply impose higher tariff rates that could upend economies and governments.
Trump reached a deal with South Korea on Wednesday, and earlier with the European Union, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that there were agreements with Cambodia and Thailand after they had agreed to a ceasefire to their border conflict.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “at some point this afternoon or later this evening” will sign an order to impose new rates starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday. Countries that have not received a prior letter from Trump or negotiated a framework will be notified of their likely tariff rates, either by letter or executive order, she said.
Among those uncertain about their trade status were wealthy Switzerland and Norway.
Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said it was “completely uncertain” whether a deal would be completed before Trump’s deadline.
But even the public announcement of a deal can offer scant reassurance for an American trading partner.
EU officials are waiting to complete a crucial document outlining how the framework to tax imported autos and other goods from the 27-member state bloc would operate. Trump had announced a deal Sunday while he was in Scotland.
“The U.S. has made these commitments. Now it’s up to the U.S. to implement them. The ball is in their court,” EU commission spokesman Olof Gill said. The document would not be legally binding.
Trump said as part of the agreement with Mexico that goods imported into the U.S. would continue to face a 25% tariff that he has ostensibly linked to fentanyl trafficking. He said autos would face a 25% tariff, while copper, aluminum and steel would be taxed at 50% during the negotiating period.
He said Mexico would end its “Non Tariff Trade Barriers,” but he didn’t provide specifics.
Some goods continue to be protected from the tariffs by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term.
But Trump appeared to have soured on that deal, which is up for renegotiation next year. One of his first significant moves as president was to tariff goods from both Mexico and Canada earlier this year.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the U.S. ran a $171.5 billion trade imbalance with Mexico last year. That means the U.S. bought more goods from Mexico than it sold to the country.
The imbalance with Mexico has grown in the aftermath of the USMCA as it was only $63.3 billion in 2016, the year before Trump started his first term in office.
Besides addressing fentanyl trafficking, Trump has made it a goal to close the trade gap.
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
A rural Texas county was missing some of its key leadership in the initial hours of a catastrophic flood that came barreling through the region, causing widespread destruction and killing more than 130 people earlier this month.
Kerr County’s sheriff and its emergency management director both acknowledged Thursday during a legislative hearing that they were asleep when it first became apparent that a major flood event was unfolding. Moreover, Judge Rob Kelly, the top executive of Kerrville County, was out of town on July 4, the day of the flood.
Their testimony, which came during a joint House and Senate panel of lawmakers who visited the hard-hit Texas Hill Country, revealed a lack of on-duty leadership in the key initial moments of the flooding that killed at least 136 people, including 27 youths and counselors at an all-girls camp.
William “Dub” Thomas, Kerr County’s emergency management coordinator, told lawmakers that he was sick the day before the flooding occurred and missed two calls with Texas Emergency Management officials. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha and Thomas both acknowledged being asleep as a crisis was unfolding.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expressed his frustration.
“I’m not pointing a finger, I’m not blaming you, I just want to set the record straight. Everyone was here that day working their ass off, and you were nowhere to be found,” Patrick said as the audience applauded.
Thomas said on the morning of July 4, he was first awakened by his wife around 5:30 a.m., about two hours after emergency rescue operations were underway, and quickly drove to the sheriff’s office.
“There was no visible flooding on my drive into the office, but it quickly became clear that the situation was escalating,” he said.
In other testimony, local officials said they needed but lacked an updated warning system, when flash flooding swept away homes and vehicles and left families begging for rescue on the roofs of their homes earlier this month.
Others who testified Thursday before an audience of hundreds of people — some who wore green ribbons in memory of the victims — called for urgent improvements for better flood warnings and flood mitigation.
Kelly said residents had virtually no warning of the impending weather catastrophe until it was too late.
“We need stronger communications and better broadband so we can communicate better,” he said, adding that poor cell service did not help those along the river. “What we experienced on July 4 was sudden, violent and overwhelming.”
Leitha presented a timeline of events to lawmakers and said emergency responders realized they had an “all-hands-on-deck” situation as early as 3:30 a.m., when dispatchers received a call from a family stranded on their roof requesting air evacuation. But Leitha acknowledged he was not alerted of the flooding until about an hour later, at around 4:20 a.m.
Kelly, who holds a position in Texas that functions as the county’s chief executive officer, testified that he was out of town at Lake Travis on the morning of the flood and woke up around 5:30 a.m.
Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Houston, asked Leitha whether the county should have a protocol in place for when three of the top county officials are not available during an emergency.
“Yes, ma’am, we can look at that real hard,” Leitha said. “Yes, I can look and maybe they can call me earlier.”
Residents along the Guadalupe River have said they were caught off guard and had no warning when rainfall struck. Kerr County does not have a warning system along the river after several missed opportunities by state and local agencies to finance one.
The hearing comes as authorities have begun publicly releasing records and audio — including 911 calls — that have provided new glimpses into the escalating danger and chaos in the early hours of the July Fourth holiday. They include panicked and confused messages from residents caught in trees as well as families fleeing with children from homes with water creeping up to the knees.
“People are dying,” one woman tells a 911 operator in call logs released by nearby Kendall County. She says she had a young relative at a church camp in Kerr County who was stranded along with his classmates because of the high waters.
“I don’t want them to get stuck in a low-water crossing. And what are they going to do? They have like 30 kids,” the woman says.
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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Attendees wait for a Senate and House Select Committees on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding public hearing to begin, in Kerrville, Texas, Thursday, July 31, 2025.
Figma, the design software company led by CEO and cofounder Dylan Field, saw its stock price more than triple in a stunning debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.
Shares of Figma were trading as high as $107 within minutes after it began trading under the ticker FIG. The company and its early shareholders raised $1.2 billion in its IPO on Wednesday, with shares priced at $33. The stock began trading Thursday at $85 a share, and took off like a rocket from there.
The surge gave Figma a market cap of roughly $46 billion, eclipsing the $20 billion price that Adobe had planned to acquire the company for before the merger was abandoned in 2023 due to regulatory pushback. Adobe, with a market cap of around $152 billion, will now be Figma’s key public markets competitor as the upstart chases market share. Praveer Melwani, Figma’s CFO, told Fortune on Thursday morning that it will be business as usual for Figma moving forward, with possible acquisitions in the pipeline.
“Candidly, the way we’re running this—or the way the offering shaped up—it’s a majority secondary transaction with a small portion of primary that facilitates to pay the tax that’s owed on the RSU [restricted stock unit] settlement,” said Melwani, who became Figma’s first business operations head in 2017. “So, we’re net neutral from a cash impact on technology. The story stays the same. We have been acquisitive in the past—primarily small teams and talent.”
Figma’s securities filing for its public debut showed a growing, profitable business, with revenue up in Q1 2025, 46% year-over-year to $228.2 million and a net income for the quarter at $44.8 million.
Figma’s opening pop reflects not only optimism about Figma, but optimism about the venture-backed IPO landscape overall. Muted in recent years, tech IPOs have been in the midst of a slow but decisive recovery. Recently, VC-backed darlings like Circle, Chime, Hinge Health, and CoreWeave have all gone public, with varying degrees of success.
Figma itself is backed by a number of Silicon Valley stalwarts, including Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and Sequoia Capital, all of whom hold stakes worth north of $1 billion in the company. For Figma moving forward, the biggest question is how the company will adapt to and capitalize on AI. Greylock venture partner John Lilly told Fortune that Figma and Field are well-positioned.
“The way we’re going to be interacting with more systems and technology over time means interfaces have to be designed right,” said Lilly. “Figma is the way organizations design together, it’s sort of the operating system… As long as we keep investing and keep making sure that we’re on top of AI—integrating the best tools and creating some of them—then AI looks like a huge opportunity to me.”
Ebay turns 30 this September and the company is showing some signs that it’s starting to turn back the clock.
The auction giant’s stock surged more than 19% on Thursday to an all-time high of $92 a share on the back of revenue growth and earnings that both surpassed analyst expectations, and an outlook that was far less gloomy than it could have been.
That’s the top-line good news.
The reality check, though, is that Ebay still accounts for less than 4% of the overall e-commerce market in the U.S., compared to around 40% for Amazon, 6% for Walmart, and pressure from a collection of discount or product-specific apps and marketplaces from Temu to Whatnot, a live-streaming commerce startup valued at $5 billion.
So what gives? Where is the eBay optimism coming from and is this current moment an aberration and blip or, as the internet analyst Mark Mahaney wrote in a research note on Thursday, “something of an inflection point”?
As Mahaney wrote, eBay’s gross volume and revenue growth rates, excluding the impact of foreign exchange rate changes, both rose 4% year-over-year in the past quarter. Those numbers sound meager because they are, but it’s the fastest that the commerce marketplace has grown in two years—which is…something.
The one-time e-commerce darling has been trying to lean into its historic strengths or “focus areas”—product categories where it can win—and that seems to be paying off. Those categories grew 10% in the quarter compared to about 1% for everything else.
“Collectibles was once again the largest contributor to growth as year-over-year growth in trading cards GMV accelerated for the 10th straight quarter on the back of continued momentum in both collectible card games and sports trading cards,” CEO Jamie Iannone told analysts on the earnings call.
Collectible categories have been booming across the board since the onset of the pandemic, as nostalgia coupled with new shopping experiences and sales tactics drive renewed interest in trading cards like Pokemon as well as sports cards. Startups like Whatnot, Fanatics, and Courtyard, which is selling $50 million in cards and comics a month, are playing a role. But eBay is still the biggest online player in the space and also capitalizing on the consumer interest.
To that end, the company is pushing aggressively into live-streaming commerce, with eBay Live, where Fanatics and Whatnot are finding success, and the early signs are encouraging, according to Iannone.
“We have already seen significant evidence that live commerce can deepen engagement among eBay enthusiasts and unlock even greater velocity in our strongest verticals, which validates our continued investment in this experience,” he told analysts.
(For what it’s worth, top live-streaming card seller Rene Nezhoda, of Storage Wars fame, had this to say about eBay Live when I interviewed him about his business on Whatnot, where he sells $15 million to $18 million a year in sports cards. “I wouldn’t be surprised if eBay Live might become the market leader because they just have such a big user database,” he told Fortune in June.)
Ebay’s Iannone said his company is also seeing both top-line and bottom-line benefits from integrating the Klarna Buy Now Pay Later payment method into the shopping site, by expanding its on-site advertising business, and by integrating generative and agentic AI experiences into the shopping marketplace for both buyers or sellers, though it’s too early to tell how much the latter will boost the business long term.
No, eBay isn’t immune to the U.S.-China tariff war, though it shouldn’t be crippled by it. No, it’s not a threat to giants like Amazon and Walmart that specialize in everyday, new goods. But riding hot, historically strong product categories, while keeping up with new industry tablestakes like Gen AI integrations for sellers and buyers, and popular payment types like Klarna, has the 30-year-old company’s future looking brighter than it has in a long while. And that’s not nothing.
Mortgage rates have remained stubbornly high: hovering near 7%, well above the sub-3% rates during the pandemic. That makes homeownership increasingly unaffordable for many Americans, as home prices have risen over 50% since 2020.
During the pandemic, home buyers got accustomed to sub-3% mortgage rates, which made purchasing a house feel more achievable. But in the past couple of years, buyers have had no such luck.
In late 2023, mortgage rates peaked at 8%. While they’ve let up some, today’s 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.75%, according to Mortgage News Daily. Economists and real-estate groups have warned they don’t see that figure budging much in the near future. And to make matters worse, some have said the mortgage rate it would take to make homes feel affordable again isn’t achievable.
On Tuesday, Zillow economic analyst Anushna Prakash reported mortgage rates would need to drop to 4.43% for a typical home to be affordable to an average buyer. But “that kind of a rate decline is currently unrealistic,” Prakash wrote. Meanwhile, not even a 0% interest rate would make a typical home affordable in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Diego, or San Jose, she added.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices also said in an early July report that mortgage rates are one of the main deterrents for both home buyers and sellers.
“Many homeowners are reluctant [to] put their homes on the market and give up the low mortgage rates they already have,” according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. “To them, high price gains won’t mitigate their ability to pay more for another home at significantly higher interest rates.”
This issue is also referred to as golden handcuffs—or the locked-in mortgage rate effect. The idea is that current homeowners have no incentive to put their homes on the market, even if they want to move, because they’d forgo a much lower mortgage rate they had locked in years ago.
This causes a litany of other problems in the housing market, namely inventory.
The number of unsold existing homes for sale rose 9% month-over-month in April, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, to 1.45 million; that’s equal to 4.4 months’ supply on hand at the current sales pace and the highest level in five years. That’s shown itself in more sellers delisting their properties after sitting on the market for longer than expected.
“Homes are sitting on the market nearly three weeks longer than last year,” Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel recently told Fortune. “That’s a sign of sellers still anchored to pandemic-era prices even though the market is telling them otherwise.”
That doesn’t mean there’s an influx of housing in the U.S.; in fact, we’re still short millions of units. It just means there aren’t enough people who can actually afford to buy a home.
The factors influencing housing affordability
Although inventory levels are increasing, home prices and mortgage rates continue to be a roadblock for potential home buyers. Mortgage rates have remained “stubbornly high,” Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices said, deterring new buyers from the market.
According to a Realtor.com report published Thursday, the typical home spent 58 days on the market in July, which is 7 days longer than the same time last year.
Mortgage rates are certainly a factor among buyers when deciding to make an offer, and home prices are also up more than 50% since the onset of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Case-Shiller Home Price Index.
All the while, wages haven’t grown at the same pace as home appreciation, making buying a house feel even more unaffordable. And if nothing changes like mortgage rates, inventory, or wage growth, it’s likely the housing affordability crisis in the U.S. will persist, Alexandra Gupta, a real-estate broker with The Corcoran Group, told Fortune.
“Some first-time buyers are turning to long-term renting or even co-living models because the idea of owning a home has become so out of reach. Others are relying more on family support to get into the market,” Gupta said. “We’re seeing a reshaping of the housing ladder.”
The small glimmer of hope, though, is home price growth appears to be slowing, according to the Case-Shiller indices.
“With affordability still stretched and inventory constrained, national home prices are holding steady, but barely,” Nicholas Godec, head of fixed-income tradables and commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.
There should be only one true place to buy a Birkin bag, according to Hermès CEO Axel Dumas. The chief executive told investors this week the luxury handbag’s secondhand marketplace was a “real cause for concern,” as many customers were purchasing the item just to resell it for exponentially higher than its retail price.
Hermès CEO Axel Dumas wants to make one thing clear: There’s only one Birkin bag and one place to get it.
The luxury brand boss expressed his frustration with the resale market that has emerged for the collectible handbag, telling investors during a second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday buyers purchasing the arm candy just to hike up its price for a secondhand sale are diluting Hermès’ true consumer base.
“Sometimes we have false customers come to our stores to buy them, to resell them, and they prevent us from serving our real customers, and that is a real cause for concern for us,” Dumas said.
“So, I’m not at all happy to see this development of new bags that are sold in the secondhand market,” he added. “I pull a face, and I’m not happy, and it doesn’t make me feel in a good mood.”
The Birkin bag, which can run buyers at least $12,000 and up to six figures, has been worn by a litany of celebrities like Cardi B and Victoria Beckham, with its exclusivity making the accessory a status symbol. In Q2 2025, Hermès reported a 9% sales bump, largely due to the continued popularity of its Birkin, Kelly, and Constance bags, which have helped it weather the luxury slowdown.
While the bag’s coveted status has buoyed Hermès’ sales, it’s also encouraged an active secondhand market for the bag. Because of the bag’s limited production and Hermès’ elusive criteria to even be allowed to purchase the item, resellers have jumped at the opportunity to auction off the bags. The Birkin’s resale cost can exponentially appreciate beyond its sticker price, comfortably doubling in cost and, by some measures, outpacing the S&P 500 and the price of gold.
The original Birkin bag, once owned by late British actress and singer Jane Birkin, sold earlier this month at Sotheby’s Paris for a cool $10 million.
Hermès did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
The behavior of buying to sell may be viewed by Dumas as taking “opportunistic advantage” of the brand, according to Marie Driscoll, an equity analyst focused on luxury retail.
“He looks at the product and the brand as something more than a commodity,” Driscoll told Fortune. “Intrinsically, he thinks these are artistic pieces that are a product of someone’s imagination and someone’s hard work and labor and some of the best that Hermès can do. I think some of it has taken on a life of its own.”
Dumas has long been an advocate for the sustained exclusivity of the Birkin. Last year, Walmartlaunched a lookalike—or “dupe” of the bag for $78, which quickly emptied off the discount retailer’s shelves. The Hermès CEO told investors in February he was “irritated” by the copy-cat’s popularity, though he said he understood consumers weren’t buying the “Wirkin” believing it was the real deal.
“Making a copy like this is quite detestable—it’s stealing the creative ideas of others,” Dumas said.
Still, the luxury brand’s exclusivity has drawn the ire of some shoppers, including two California customers who sued Hermès in 2024, claiming the company engaged in “anti-competitive” practices by requiring prospective Birkin buyers to establish themselves as “worthy” customers by purchasing ancillary Hermès products.
While some luxury brands like Gucci and Balenciaga have engaged more with the certified resale market to attract new customers, Hermès likely won’t, Driscoll said. There’s still sustained demand for the bag and, therefore, little reason for Hermès to disturb the mystique it has worked so hard to create.
“You’re going to have to have a longer engagement, which is kind of, in a very romantic sense, like being engaged to someone before the culmination of the wedding night,” she said. “You’re just going to have to postpone gratification.”
Welcome to Eye on AI. AI reporter Sharon Goldman here for the Thursday newsletter! In this edition...
This week, I got a sneak peek at ChatGPT’s new Study Mode during an OpenAI press demo on Zoom, ahead of its Tuesday release.
Toggling the tool button in the “Ask Anything” chat to “Study and Learn” transforms ChatGPT from a straightforward Q&A assistant into a personalized tutor. Instead of simply spitting out answers, it uses Socratic questioning, hints, and step-by-step guidance to encourage active learning. Tell it what you want to study, and it will assess your skill level and even remember your progress across chats.
As I watched the demo, my eyes widened and my breath quickened. Study Mode may have been designed with college students in mind—powered by system instructions crafted with input from teachers, scientists, and learning experts. But while it’s been several decades since my own academic experience, I instantly knew that I wanted to use Study Mode. And I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for: high school algebra.
My math failure shaped my life
Along with the rest of the math curriculum in those years, I completely bombed in algebra—and I can’t overstate how much that failure shaped my life. I carried a deep sense of shame about how hard math was for me, even with tutors. It stood in stark contrast to how easily I excelled in subjects like English and social studies, and it felt like no one really understood how curious I actually was about math. There were so many questions that were never answered. What is algebra, anyway? Why do we learn it in the first place? Why does it come before geometry and trigonometry? What’s the point of all these rules about x and y?
It might seem ironic, given that I now write about AI and regularly interview researchers with PhDs in mathematics who casually reference linear algebra in conversation. But I’ve always wished I could get a do-over on high school math.
Yes, there are real concerns about how AI will affect student learning—from cheating and over-reliance to privacy and bias. New reporting this week from Rest of World found that when students in rural Colombia gained access to AI, students started failing exams.
But for me, ChatGPT’s new Study Mode is already becoming something deeply personal: a long-overdue redemption arc.
Study Mode at my own pace
I started where I never really could before, and Study Mode immediately had a refreshing response:
“Let’s treat this like the first day of Algebra 1—only better. This time, you get to ask questions whenever you want, and we move at your pace.”
I was on board with that: What is algebra, I asked.
Algebra is the part of math where we stop just working with numbers and start working with relationships between numbers.
Instead of asking: What’s 3 × 5? We ask: What number x would make this equation true?
It’s like math with mystery—something is hidden, and our job is to solve for it.
“Math with mystery”—ooh, I loved that. After giving me the lowdown on the “big ideas” in algebra–everything from solving equations to graphing lines and word problems, Study Mode offered a few options:
Want to: A) Ask questions about any of this? B) Choose a puzzle type to start with? C) Keep going with the intro and build slowly from here? Your call!
I said I’d like to solve equations. Study Mode dove right in:
🔍 Solving Equations: What’s the Goal?
An equation is like a balance scale—whatever you do to one side, you have to do to the other.
Here’s your first equation: 3x + 4 = 19
👉 What do you think we should do first to start solving for x? (Just take a guess—we’ll figure it out together.)
The promise of AI-powered personalized learning
I sat back and smiled. Apparently, it’s never too late to solve for x—even for a journalist who always thought she was good with words but terrible with numbers. I spent a couple of hours progressing through one-step and two-step equations; equations with variables on both sides; equations with parentheses; and equations combining like terms. I asked lots of questions along the way and occasionally peppered my responses with “Wow!” and “I never knew that!”
Like every AI use case, there are tradeoffs. The risks of over-reliance on AI and diminished critical thinking are real. But I find myself leaning toward the view of my colleague Jeremy Kahn, who, in his recent book Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future, highlights the promise of AI-powered personalized learning. He frames the idea of AI as a one-on-one tutor as one of its most powerful educational opportunities.
My late-in-life return to algebra may not have been OpenAI’s target use case. But who knows—maybe I’ll make it to calculus.
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase gave a shout out on Wednesday to stablecoins, one of the buzziest sectors in the crypto. “I’m a believer in stablecoins, believer in blockchain, not personally, a believer in Bitcoin itself,” Jamie Dimon said in an interview with CNBC.
He added that his bank “will have” a stablecoin, or cryptocurrency pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar. “There are things that stablecoins maybe can do that your traditional cash can’t,” Dimon said, adding later: “It’s what the customer wants. It’s not what JPMorgan personally wants.”
Dimon has long drawn a distinction between the technology of blockchain, or decentralized ledgers, and Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency. His Wednesday comments with CNBC are in line with his prior thinking, but his disavowal of Bitcoin was softer than his previous takedowns.
In 2017, he said that he would fire JPMorgan Chase employees who were trading Bitcoin because it was evidence that they were “stupid.” In 2023, he said Bitcoin was “hyped-up fraud,” compared the token to a “pet rock,” and said that cryptocurrencies are a “waste of time.” Still, he conceded that blockchains were useful.
“Blockchain is a technology ledger system that we use to move information. We’ve used it to do overnight repo, intraday repo, we’ve used it to move money, right? So that’s a technology ledger that we think will be deployable,” he said.
Dimon heads the largest bank in the U.S and his comments on stablecoins add further legitimacy to the fast-growing crypto industry, especially after the landmark passage of GENIUS Act in Congress, a bill that regulates stablecoins.
JPMorgan Chase has long had its own blockchain division. The team, originally called Onyx, has rebranded to Kinexys and has started to expand beyond the bank’s “walled garden,” an industry term for blockchains that are private.
In May, the bank settled its first transaction on a public blockchain. And, in June, Kinexys announced that it was piloting what it called JPMD, a stablecoin-like asset known as a tokenized deposit. The token will represent a dollar of deposits into JPMorgan Chase.
On Thursday, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Paul Atkins delivered an address signaling a new era for the top regulator. After the SEC spent years combating the blockchain industry through enforcement actions, the newly appointed Atkins announced an initiative dubbed “Project Crypto” that will turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the world.”
Atkins’ speech comes just a day after the White House released a 166-page report outlining its own approach to regulating the crypto industry, and just over three months into his tenure leading the top financial regulator. Atkins has repeatedly signaled he plans to take a markedly different approach to crypto regulation than his predecessor, Gary Gensler, who was widely reviled by the industry.
In his Thursday address, Atkins laid out a series of priorities for SEC staff, including drafting “clear and simple rules of the road” for different crypto behavior, including custody and trading, as well as allowing intermediaries like exchanges to become “super-apps” that offer a broad range of services.
“When our regulatory posture is calibrated to meet innovation with thoughtfulness rather than fear, America’s leadership position has only grown stronger,” Atkins said.
The new SEC
Atkin’s speech on Thursday reflected the most explicit overview to date of the agency’s new approach. It comes as crypto dominates the headlines, with Bitcoin reaching record highs and Fortune 500 companies exploring blockchain projects.
In his address, Atkins detailed the top initiatives for his staff: bringing crypto activity back to the U.S. after many companies fled under Gensler, modernizing the SEC’s custody requirements for companies that want to hold digital assets, and allowing firms to experiment with new types of on-chain technology, such as “tokenizing” equities, or creating blockchain versions of assets like stocks and money market funds.
“Under my leadership, the Commission will encourage our nation’s builders rather than constrain them with red tape and one-size-fits-all rules,” Atkins said.
The challenge for the new chair will be establishing its own rules as Congress continues to debate broad legislation that would regulate the market structure of digital assets, which governs how cryptocurrencies can be issued and managed. While the House passed its own version of a bill, the Senate has yet to signal its own approach.
A sharp break from the Gensler era
Under Gensler, the SEC cracked down on top crypto companies such as Coinbase and Gemini, arguing that they were operating outside of long-established securities laws and presenting threats to consumers—a reaction, in part, to the high-profile collapses of projects such as Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX in 2022.
Aggrieved by Gensler’s campaign, the crypto industry fought back by raising hundreds of millions of dollars to back pro-blockchain candidates in the 2024 election, including Donald Trump, who embraced the sector on the campaign trail and was swept into office promising to staff his administration with digital asset-friendly officials. Those included Atkins, a former SEC commissioner who served as an advisor to crypto projects after leaving the agency in 2008.
Even before Atkins was sworn in as agency head in April, the SEC began to roll back Gensler’s actions, with the reversal led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has adopted the moniker “crypto mom” for her open stance toward the industry. That included dropping a series of lawsuits against companies such as Coinbase and launching an agency-wide effort to engage in new rulemaking.
Gensler sympathizers in D.C. are likely to raise alarm bells that a lax approach to crypto will usher in a new era of fraud and collapses like FTX. “As happened when [Atkins] was an SEC Commissioner from 2002-2008, Wall Street’s megafirms and politically favored companies will be protected while investors will be left to protect themselves,” said Dennis Kelleher, the CEO of the consumer advocacy organization Better Markets, when Atkins was sworn in.
IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn, the former Director of the National Economic Council under President Trump, sounded a cautious note on the state of the U.S. economy in his July 30 interview with CNBC’s Money Movers, warning that despite upbeat surface indicators, troubling signs are brewing beneath the headline numbers.
Cohn’s assessment came in the aftermath of a surprisingly robust GDP report showing 3% growth, which he acknowledged looked positive on its face. He said if you take a “big, wide aperture snapshot of the economy, the headline looks really good,” before arguing that a deeper analysis, even a “half-step back,” reveals important red flags. Notably, he highlighted a 15% drop in investment and concerning labor market statistics, including a significant decline in voluntary quits—a traditional signal of worker confidence in the job market. Cohn cited the latest JOLTS report, which showed 280,000 jobs lost and 150,000 fewer voluntary quits, suggesting Americans are growing more cautious about leaving their jobs for better opportunities. “People quit their job when they believe the next job is better and higher-paying,” he said, calling that a “bold statement on individuals’ view on the economy.”
Who eats the tariffs and who drinks the coffee?
“A snapshot of the economy right now is, ‘we’re fine, we’re good,’” Cohn said, referencing both the strong labor market and inflation measures that have moderated closer to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. In fact, he argued the Fed is fulfilling its dual mandate of full employment and price stability, as the jobs market looks close to full employment, in his view. However, he warned about softer data such as consumer sentiment and in specific segments of the economy. Cohn noted that several soft retail earnings, such as Starbucks, show that “consumers are not out there willfully spending money.”
One of the interview’s major themes was the effect of tariffs and trade uncertainty. Cohn, who famously resigned from the Trump White House in 2018, seemingly after internal disagreements over tariffs, argued that tariffs should be applied carefully and strategically. He has clarified in 2024 and onwards that he supports tariffs on products the U.S. also produces, such as electric vehicles, but warned that indiscriminate tariffs risk inflaming inflation, especially on goods the U.S. does not manufacture domestically. Cohn has been saying for months that tariffs are “highly regressive” and essentially function as a tax on all Americans, with a greater impact on poorer people.
Cohn told Money Movers on July 30 that initially, U.S. companies may absorb some tariff-related costs, but said this was unsustainable in the long term due to shareholder and debt obligations. Ultimately, he argued, “companies are going to pass these costs along” to the consumer, squeezing household budgets and creating “one-time price shocks” that erode purchasing power if wages do not rise accordingly. Host Sara Eisen pushed back, arguing corporate balance sheets are healthy, companies are incorporating AI to boost efficiency, and companies may not want to anger the Trump administration, which has famously instructed companies to “eat the tariffs.”
Cohn’s consistent warnings about tariffs through the years have not come to fruition so far, but he’s far from alone in seeing a massive hit coming—at some point—from tariffs. The entire economics establishment has warned about the delayed impact of tariffs for months; as of July, though, the Trump administration has collected $100 billion in tariff revenue with seemingly little impact on inflation. Fortune‘s Irina Ivanova reported on how economists explain that, ranging from “it’s too soon” to “consumers won’t stand for it.” At the same time, Trump is increasingly winning trade deals on favorable terms to the United States, such as the EU’s agreement to a 15% tariff, with carve-outs on pharmaceuticals and metals, while U.S. imports to the EU will be duty-free.
Cohn’s question remains: Who will ultimately eat the tariffs, and who will buy the coffee? The American consumer is waiting for the economic dust to settle.
IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the company’s second-quarter earnings call that people who don’t wear smart glasses in the future may be at a “pretty significant cognitive disadvantage” compared to those who do. Zuckerberg’s comments come as Meta has established a “superintelligence” lab fueled with highly paid researchers to progress on AI. The company’s second-quarter earnings reported Wednesday surpassed analyst expectations.
Billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always been an early adopter of new tech, but now he says those who don’t adopt smart glasses, which sit at the bleeding edge of wearable technology, may be at risk of falling behind.
Zuckerberg said in the company’s second-quarter earnings call that future humans will want to wear smart glasses, like his company’s $299 Meta Ray-Bans, out of necessity.
“I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you’re kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you’re working with, or competing against,” he said during the call.
Just like regular eye glasses that help correct bad vision, smart glasses will be the main way people access and use AI, as well as “superintelligence,” to which Zuckerberg’s company has dedicated a highly paid team of researchers led by AI wunderkind Alexandr Wang.
Zuckerberg said he is encouraged by the sales growth for the smart glasses and added that people are using Meta’s smart glasses more often because they are actually “stylish eyewear.” Revenue from the Meta Ray-Bans more than tripled year-over-year, according to Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica’s most recent earnings report.
The Meta AI that runs the glasses is continually improving, Zuckerberg added, and the future could hold more notable hardware upgrades as well, including a visual display.
“That’s also going to unlock a lot of value where you can just interact with an AI system throughout the day in this multimodal way. It can see the content around you, it can generate a UI for you, show you information and be helpful,” he said.
This type of full immersion in tech, with the help of smart glasses, could also help Meta realize Zuckerberg’s former favorite buzzword: the metaverse.
“The other thing that’s awesome about glasses is, they are going to be the ideal way to blend the physical and digital worlds together. So the whole metaverse vision, I think, is going to end up being extremely important, too, and AI is going to accelerate that, too,” Zuckerberg said.
After debuting its Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses in 2021, the company has since expanded the collection to include the Oakley brand for a line of “performance AI glasses” for athletes. The company plans to release full-fledged AR glasses by 2027, The Verge reported.
Meta on Wednesday beat analyst expectations and its performance in the same quarter last year with revenue of $47.5 billion for the second quarter. The company also reported a 36% year-over-year jump in profit at $18.3 billion for the quarter.
Microsoft has listed the jobs least likely to be impacted by artificial intelligence. Healthcare and blue collar jobs are the safest, while those in the communication field are most at risk.
While people in the communications field have good reason to be worried, Microsoft has unveiled a study showing which careers are most and least likely to be affected by generative AI. What it avoided saying directly, though, was whether those careers would vanish in the coming years.
To determine the risk factor, Microsoft analyzed a “dataset of 200k anonymized and privacy-scrubbed conversations between users and Microsoft Bing Copilot” to assess an AI applicability score. The jobs that appear to be most at risk, were those that involve “providing information and assistance, writing, teaching, and advising.”
That said, Microsoft cautioned that a high (or low) AI adaptability was not a sure sign that a job would or wouldn’t become obsolete.
“It is tempting to conclude that occupations that have high overlap with activities AI performs will be automated and thus experience job or wage loss, and that occupations with activities AI assists with will be augmented and raise wages,” the company wrote in the report. “This would be a mistake, as our data do not include the downstream business impacts of new technology, which are very hard to predict and often counterintuitive.”
The study’s not the first to send up a flare about creative positions. What it did that really stood out was look at the jobs where AI seems to have the lowest applicability – and healthcare and blue-collar jobs seem positioned to best withstanding an AI assault.
Here’s a ranked look at the 20 careers that posted the lowest AI applicability score:
Dredge operators
Bridge and lock tenders
Water treatment plant and system operators
Foundry mold and coremakers
Rail-track laying and maintenance equipment operators
Pile driver operators
Floor sanders and finishers
Orderlies
Motorboat operators
Logging equipment operators
Paving, surfacing, and tamping equipment operators
Maids and housekeeping cleaners
Roustabouts (oil and gas)
Roofers
Gas compressor and gas pumping station operators
Helpers–roofers
Tire builders
Surgical assistants
Massage therapists
Ophthalmic medical technicians
Other jobs that are in the safety zone include industrial truck and tractor operators, highway maintenance workers, dishwashers, automotive glass installers, embalmers and phlebotomists.
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