For many Americans, retirement isn’t financially carefree and easy. In fact, according to Schroders’ 2025 US Retirement Survey, 19% of retirees are “struggling” or “living the nightmare” while just 5% said they were “living the dream”. Unfortunately for retirees, the time to start saving early and planning strategically is in the rearview mirror. However, for those with a decade or more left in the workforce, understanding the challenges faced by today’s retirees and how to best prepare for them can mean the difference between living the dream and living the nightmare.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at a few lessons that can be learned from those who have already entered retirement.

1) You’re probably not saving enough

According to our research, less than half of all retired Americans (40%) believe they saved enough for retirement, and 45% say their expenses are higher than anticipated.

At any age, saving for retirement can be challenging.

In your 20s and 30s, you’re likely faced with a host of competing financial priorities that include student loan debt, car payments, and saving for a house. It’s also tempting to succumb to procrastination, knowing that you may have 30 or 40 years ahead before you’ll be able to retire.

When you reach your 40s and 50s, competing financial obligations don’t disappear, they evolve. Instead of paying off your student loans, you find yourself paying college tuition bills for your children. In lieu of saving for a house, you’re making monthly mortgage payments or paying unexpected repair bills for a leaking roof or water heater.

Thanks to the power of compounding over time, the sooner you prioritize saving for retirement, the more likely you’ll have enough saved to manage your expenses after leaving the workforce. This is especially important to the millions of Americans who depend on 401k plans as their primary source of income during retirement.

2) Expect the unexpected

In 1980, the inflation rate in the United States peaked at 14.7%. In 2022, it reached 9%, and today it stands at a more manageable 2.3%.

Where the inflation rate will be when you’re ready to retire is both unknown and uncontrollable. Similarly, stocks may be in the middle of a historic bull market when you’re ready to leave the workforce or your portfolio might be negatively impacted by a bear market.

Given the unexpected nature of these events, it’s not surprising our research found that the top three concerns plaguing retired Americans in 2025 are inflation (92% of retirees are at least slightly concerned), rising healthcare costs (85%), and the potential for a major market downturn (80%).

While these concerns may be unnerving and unpredictable, they shouldn’t derail a secure retirement if you stay focused on the variables that are in your control. Your monthly savings rate, participation in a tax-advantaged retirement savings plan like a 401k, your diversification strategy, and the age at which you plan to retire are all key factors in your retirement planning that are within your control.

Creating good financial habits and making sound decisions about the factors within your control will help put you on the path toward a comfortable retirement despite short-term swings in the market or the inflation rate.

3) Winging it won’t get you there

For many decades, traditional company pension plans provided workers with a safety net that, when combined with Social Security benefits, helped to ensure a comfortable retirement. But times have changed as pensions have become a relic of the past for most private-sector employees.

The shift from traditional pensions (known as defined benefit plans) to defined contribution retirement plans has placed the responsibility for retirement saving and planning on the employee. Despite the challenges associated with figuring out when to retire, how and when to claim Social Security, or how to generate steady income after leaving the workforce, many people don’t work with a financial advisor and have no plan for managing their retirement expenses and assets.

According to our latest study, 64% of retired Americans aren’t working with a financial advisor and 44% don’t have a plan in place for estimating expenses, determining how much income is needed, and developing an investment strategy to meet their goals.

Given this lack of support and planning, it’s perhaps not surprising that most retirees (62%) say they have no idea how long their savings will last.

While not everyone needs to maintain an ongoing relationship with a financial advisor, there’s no question that anyone preparing for retirement could benefit from seeking guidance on how to improve their financial well-being and maximize their income stream once they stop working.

Retirement security doesn’t happen by chance—it requires planning and discipline. While it’s easy to postpone saving or assume that Social Security alone will suffice, our research paints a different picture. With rising expenses, unpredictable markets, and fewer guaranteed income sources like pensions, the burden of retirement planning now falls squarely on individuals. Fortunately, by taking control of the variables you can manage—your savings rate, investment strategy, and financial planning—your retirement dreams can be within reach.

It’s never too early — or too late — to start making financial decisions that will pay dividends in the years ahead.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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A little over five years ago, the Trump administration announced Operation Warp Speed to deliver a vaccine for COVID-19. It was one of the most stunning successes of Trump’s first term. Recognizing a crisis, the U.S. government facilitated a public-private partnership that likely saved millions of lives in record time. Now we must do it again. As a country, we have a strategic imperative to win in artificial intelligence and secure our supply chains for critical technologies, including communications, computing, and advanced military systems. Time is of the essence. Yet the Administration’s plans for AI and self-sufficiency are in serious jeopardy unless we have American-owned, leading-edge chip manufacturing plants on American soil.

US advanced semiconductor manufacturing has been withering for some time. The once-leading Intel appears to be dropping out of the race. Missed deadlines, poor execution, and a misguided strategy to retain manufacturing within Intel while also serving as a foundry for its fabless chip competitors resulted in a dearth of customers. Recommendations (including those from the four of us) to split off Intel’s foundry business and create a fully independent entity to supply its competitors, thereby giving itself a fighting chance, have never been adopted.

Intel appears to have only a few external customers for its current technology (called 18A), and the CEO recently said on July 24 that “Going forward, our investment in … [Intel’s most advanced process technology, 14A will] be based on confirmed customer commitments,” continuing a business model that has largely failed. Unsurprisingly, the CEO also announced the shuttering of its plans for German and Polish plants, further delaying its proposed Ohio plant, and a massive lay-off. More spending reductions will inevitably follow.

All of these announcements strongly imply a gradual exit from the chip manufacturing business, turning Intel into a fabless company over time. Given that Intel’s internal demand is no longer big enough to justify continued capital investment in leading-edge technology, this may be the right strategy for Intel.

Still, it is the wrong strategy for the United States. With Intel’s likely retreat from advanced chip manufacturing, America’s future and the future of its leadership in AI and all advanced electronics will be firmly in the hands of two firms: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) and Samsung, two firms headquartered on the other side of the planet. TSMC is by far the dominant player, controlling over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing output. The Taiwanese chip manufacturer produces nearly 100% of Nvidia’s GPUs, which are the engines that enable AI. It also manufactures most of the chips for iPhones and 5G communications.

While TSMC and Samsung have committed to building more plants in the U.S., these will not solve the problem. Neither company will bring its latest technology here. The newest generation of chips must first be developed in a plant geographically close to its R&D teams. In the case of TSMC, those teams are in Taiwan; for Samsung, South Korea. The only R&D team that has been developing advanced generation technologies on US soil, fabricated in the latest generation U.S.-owned plants, is Intel. But as Intel retreats, America’s future in AI and other advanced technologies is increasingly reliant on a single firm, located a stone’s throw from mainland China.

To be sure, TSMC’s technological prowess is impressive. Moreover, its promise to invest $100 billion in Arizona is laudable. However, the fact is that we are giving TSMC too much power over the allocation of capacity, pricing, and human capital to drive AI into the future. In the case of Taiwan, business risk is compounded by the obvious geopolitical risks attendant to its status. These dependencies are intolerable if the U.S. is to protect its own economic and national security interests.

Fortunately, the Trump Administration has dealt itself enough cards to rectify this obvious vulnerability. The Administration recognizes that the United States needs advanced chip-making capabilities within our own country. To this end, by executive order March 31, the President created the United States Investment Accelerator at the Department of Commerce. It is responsible, among other things, for administering the CHIPS Program Office. Billions remain unspent from this Congressional program. Perhaps billions more can be retrieved from Intel, given its apparent surrender in the race with TSMC. In addition to these billions, the Trump Administration on July 22 also wrested from Japan a commitment to invest more than $550 billion in the United States.

With CHIPS money, Japan’s partnership, and government investment —either direct or through Trump’s recent executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund —the federal government has the opportunity to launch “Operation Warp Speed II” and put America back on the leading edge of chip manufacturing. Speed is essential: As Intel downsizes and lays off thousands of people, we are losing and will continue to lose the best people. Soon, we will be without a viable foundation on which to build a new, world-class American foundry, for which Intel’s assets are critical.

Here’s a plan:

First, similar to the first Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration should build a public-private partnership, where future customers (e.g., Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, Apple and others), Japanese investors such as Softbank, and private equity, backed by government financing and/or investment, would buy Intel’s fabrication assets before the lack of investment and the rust of time makes them worthless and leave the United States dangerously dependent on a single manufacturing firm.

Second, the Trump administration has been very effective in persuading leading U.S. companies to invest in America’s future. They should be encouraged to partner and invest in a new American Foundry and to buy from it. Nvidia, Broadcom, Google, and others may have turned down Intel’s offering, but they cannot as easily turn down the opportunity to help create an independent, leading-edge domestic competitor to TSMC. American companies want (and need) alternative sources of supply, and this plan can provide them.

Building a new American Foundry for advanced semiconductors is the best strategy to keep the United States and American firms at the leading edge of AI and advanced electronics, and to ensure that critical supply chains are not disrupted by geopolitics, pandemics, or natural disasters. There is no time to waste.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• S&P 500 futures are ticking upward this morning but Starbucks’ stock is underperforming the market due in part to an incoming 50% U.S. tariff on Brazilian coffee. Analysts estimate a 3.5% annual cost increase for the company, reducing earnings. While U.S. coffee prices rise, the impact on Brazil is small, and global coffee prices are falling, benefiting other markets.

S&P 500 futures are up 0.23% this morning, after the index closed down 0.49% yesterday. The blue-chip ranking has gained 7% year to date and remains near its all-time high, but there is one major name that isn’t benefiting from the risk-on attitude on Wall Street right now: Starbucks.

SBUX is down 1.15% YTD, and is down 8% over the last five trading sessions. It is not difficult to figure out why. President Trump is sitting on the stock. Or rather, his 50% tariff on Brazil—the world’s largest producer of coffee—isn’t investors’ preferred cup of tea.

In its Q2 earnings call, the company reported a 2% decline in same-store sales, even as per-customer sales rose 1%. That suggests coffee price increases are already percolating through the company.

Starbucks’ costs could rise 3.5% annually, according to TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles. That would wipe 2 cents a share off Starbucks’ earnings, Charles said.

The U.S., of course, grows close to zero coffee. Thus the tariff on Brazil will result solely in price increases for American coffee drinkers.

Counterintuitively, it won’t hurt Brazil that much. Goldman Sachs projects that the Brazilian economy will still grow by 2.3% this year.

The rest of the world is likely to benefit. There are plenty of markets for coffee. If U.S. demand goes down, the extra supply for foreign customers is likely to depress price growth.

That’s already happening. Global arabica coffee futures have declined by 30% this year and currently sit at around $2.96 per tonne. In sum, coffee in America is getting more expensive, but for everyone else it’s getting cheaper.

Chart from Trading Economics

That dynamic—that the tariffs are going to hurt global economies less than first thought and may contain advantages for some foreign markets—goes some way to explaining why markets are largely up across Asia and Europe this morning.

Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:

• S&P 500 futures were up 0.2% this morning, premarket, after the index closed down 0.49% yesterday. 
• STOXX Europe 600 was flat in early trading. 
• The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.18% in early trading.
• Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.6%. 
• China’s CSI 300 was up 0.24%. 
• The South Korea KOSPI was flat. 
• India’s Nifty 50 was down 0.23%. 
• Bitcoin sank to $113.9K.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• President Trump is narrowing his shortlist to replace Jerome Powell as Fed chair. Kevin Warsh, Kevin Hassett, and Christopher Waller are emerging as top contenders—all are seen as more amenable to interest rate cuts. Trump confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declined the role, saying, “I want to work with you,” while market-watchers weigh how each candidate could impact Fed independence and dollar strength.

In 12 months’ time a different hand will be guiding the Federal Reserve. Chairman Jerome Powell is due to stand down in May of next year. Different—not new—because some of the candidates President Trump may be eyeing for nomination are already well-known figures in regional and central banking.

The shortlist is getting narrower as the timeline for a nomination announcement draws closer. Last month the president said he would confirm his decision “very soon,” potentially in a bid to shift attention toward the incoming Fed chairman and away from Powell.

This week Trump has also dropped another crumb for spectators: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent won’t be moving over to the Fed.

Bessent’s name had been circulating for the role courtesy of his background and close relationship to the president. But yesterday Trump told CNBC: “I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is. I asked him just last night, ‘Is this something you want?’ [Bessent said], ’Nope, I want to stay where I am. He actually said, ‘I want to work with you.’ It’s such an honor. I said, ‘That’s very nice. I appreciate that.’”

Bessent has been clear that he wanted to remain at the Treasury but would go where the president asked him to, saying earlier this year that he had the “best job” in Washington and “would like to stay in my seat through 2029.”

With Bessent removing himself from contention, Trump confirmed he now has four names in mind as potential successors to lead the Federal Open Market Committee. The Oval Office has also made at least one of the criteria clear: The next Fed chairman must be more willing to cut rates.

Option 1: Kevin Warsh

A former member of the Board of Governors at the Fed, Warsh has been seen as a frontrunner for Fed chairman since President Trump took office. Warsh served on the board between 2006 to 2011, acting as administrative governor managing and overseeing the group’s operations, personnel, and financial performance.

Trump has already talked warmly of Warsh, telling reporters on Air Force One last month that Warsh is “very highly thought of.”

Warsh, currently a visiting fellow in economics at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, is bullish on the American economy and has supported calls that Trump 2.0 could usher in a golden era for the nation.

The White House might also like some of the criticism Warsh has leveled at the Fed’s current thinking. Warsh told CNBC a few weeks ago that if he were the president a chief concern would be a Federal Reserve which doesn’t recognize the upsides in economic data.

“What I’d be worried about is a central bank that doesn’t see any of that. A central bank that is stuck with models from 1978, governance from a prior period, and [doesn’t] recognize we could be at the front end of a productivity boom,” Warsh said. “If I were the president, I’d be worried that [the Fed] might not see it and they might think economic growth is somehow going to be inflationary.”

For many years, Warsh has also called for a “regime change” at the Fed, and argued: “it’s not just about a person, it’s about an approach to economics … I’m troubled when I see them moving the goalposts. It is very puzzling to me, how you could think that we should do an emergency rate just last September and now all of a sudden you stand there like a hawk. That’s not good for the institution, I don’t think it’s good for the economy to be changing the goalposts like that.”

Potentially a mark against Warsh’s name is that he has some characteristics of a hawk—those who would keep the base rate higher in order to keep inflation low. In a conversation with the Hoover Institute earlier this month, for example, he outlined price stability is at the core of restoring Fed credibility.

To this end, wrote ING in a note to clients this morning, “Warsh stands out as the most USD-friendly candidate at this stage … We could see the dollar gain support on his nomination.”

Option 2: Kevin Hassett

Warsh isn’t even the only Kevin in contention, Trump revealed. Yesterday he said: “Both Kevins are very good, and there are other people that are very good, too.”

Leading in the polls at present is Kevin Hassett, currently serving as Director of the National Economic Council. Per prediction market Kalshi, Hassett is being priced with a 41% chance of winning the nomination, while Warsh sits at 29%.

Hassett has been an integral figure in Trump 2.0 thus far, supporting on everything from trade deals under the new tariff regime to speaking with House members about key legislation like the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill Act’.

This very fact may prove to be the reason Trump may steer away from nominating Hassett: It may raise questions about the independence of the Fed.

Despite wanting a friendly face at the head of the FOMC, the White House will be mindful of the fact that the autonomy of the central bank is a fundamental strength of the economy. Trump already learned the hard way how markets react to perceived threats against this independence, after he was forced to walk back a threat to fire Powell and the markets revolted.

Questions of transparency and independence have been rife over the past week after President Trump dismissed the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) following surprise and significant revisions to labor data reporting. Asked about how he would address such criticisms, Hassett said: “I’m an economist, I’m not a politician. But when politicians look at numbers that make them wonder, then that suggests there needs to be more transparency.”

In a note overnight, Goldman Sachs suggested that further hints about the next chairman could come in the form of a replacement for Fed Governor Adriana Kugler, who resigned last week. Chief U.S. economist, Jan Hatzius, wrote: “If confirmed very quickly, the new governor might be able to participate in the September 16-17 FOMC meeting. This would likely add further support for rate cuts following last week’s two dissents in favor of cuts from Governor Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Bowman.

“The choice is particularly important because the new governor could well take over leadership of the FOMC from Chair Powell.” 

Option 3: Christopher Waller

Governor Waller was a nomination of President Trump’s in 2020, in a term ending in 2030, already marking him as an individual who has earned the notice and respect of the current White House.

But in more recent months, Waller has raised eyebrows as potentially auditioning for the role of Fed chairman. Notably, he was one of two members who dissented against the recent FOMC decision not to cut the base rate from its current level of 4.25 to 4.5%.

As UBS’s Paul Donovan wrote late last week: “Investors are bound to suspect that the rationale amounted to little more than an excited jumping up and down and shouting ‘pick me, pick me’ in the general direction of the White House.”

Waller has lobbied for a rate cut for some time, and hinted that he would like to see a quicker turnaround on when that action may take place. Yet even this has led economists to question whether the governor is a true advocate of a reduction, or is seeking to publicly appeal to the president for the role.

As Jeremy Siegel, emeritus professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote for WisdomTree, where he is a senior economist, last month: “Chris Waller argued … for a potential July rate cut. Is he auditioning to be Powell’s replacement? I agree with Waller, we’re too far above the neutral rate with tariffs coming.”

Option 4: Relative outliers

Elsewhere President Trump could look to FOMC member Michelle Bowman as a potential candidate, for she too dissented against the Fed’s decision to hold rates.

Bowman, vice chair of supervision at the Fed, justified her stance with: “Inflation has moved considerably closer to our target, after excluding temporary effects from tariffs, and the labor market remains near full employment. With economic growth slowing this year and signs of a less dynamic labor market, I saw it as appropriate to begin gradually moving our moderately restrictive policy stance toward a neutral setting.”

“In my view, this action would have proactively hedged against a further weakening in the economy and the risk of damage to the labor market.”

And more widely, economist Judy Shelton’s name has also been floated. Shelton was, after all, a Trump nomination to the Fed during his first term but did not receive congressional backing to make it to the board.

At the time many expressed concern about how closely Shelton’s economic analysis was aligned to the president’s—including calls for a larger-than expected cut to rates—and questioned how highly she valued central bank independence.

Since then, Shelton has lobbied for the inflation target (currently set to 2%) to be lowered to zero in order to “make life much less complicated for all of us who have to use the dollar and constantly express things in terms of inflation adjusted.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Yesterday was a really big deal for drone delivery junkies. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled a rule the drone industry has been waiting on for over a decade.

It’s called “BVLOS,” or beyond visual line of sight. Right now, you’re not allowed to fly a drone without a human watching the drone for the duration of its flight (there are case-by-case exemptions and waivers you can get, but these can be expensive and take a long time to obtain). In other words, it’s pretty tricky for companies like Amazon or UPS to regularly make deliveries in any kind of cost-effective way.

The new rule is set to change all that—and start paving the way for companies like a16z-backed Zipline, Alphabet’s Wing, and of course Amazon’s Prime Air to finally start scaling their operations. And it means that all of us may be one step closer to getting our goodies and groceries shipped to us from the sky.

I called up James Grimsley, executive director of advanced technology initiatives for the Choctaw Nation, to talk about the milestone yesterday. Grimsley, who oversees the Choctaw tribe’s drone efforts and the piece of land where companies come to test and fly, was one of the people involved in drafting the report the FAA ultimately used to write the rule, and has been following this closely over the last 20 years of his career.

“This is a transformational rule,” he tells me. “This is a pretty big step.”’

Without boring you with too many of the policy particulars, it’s worth noting that this rule proposal is a market shift in how the FAA has approached regulation for the last 100 years. This rule, Grimsley says, is designed to be adaptable, and be able to shift with the pace of technology—a recognition that when regulation and approvals take too long, the technology at issue risks becoming obsolete by the time it can be implemented. Instead of handing down a prescriptive checklist for companies to follow, the FAA will grant approvals based on “industry consensus standards,” the FAA’s fact sheet says.

“Now we’re going to have a little bit clearer path for the investment community—at least that’s my perspective on it,” Grimsley says.

Though not everyone is going to be thrilled by the FAA paving the way for more drones to start zipping through our skies. The presence of drones has caused alarm in communities—and the buzzing noise has sometimes become a nuisance.

We’re already starting to see how these new BVLOS rules will play out. In Dallas, Alphabet subsidiary Wing and the startup Flytrex have been working closely with the FAA for a collaboration—running an automated delivery system in the same areas and showcasing how multiple companies can share data to operate in the same airspace at once without the need for humans to get involved. 

The new rule is expected to go into effect sometime in early 2026, but companies are already gearing up for it.

“This creates the foundation for truly scalable drone operations in the U.S.,” says Alex Norman, head of global flight operations & services at the drone company Matternet.

Podcast drop… Fortune just dropped the second episode of the Term Sheet Podcast! This week, Allie interviews Taylor Otwell, founder and CEO of Laravel, the company that helps power the CMS Fortune builds the Fortune 500 and our other lists in. Together they discuss Laravel’s rise as an Arkansas-based tech company and Taylor’s early decisions as a founder, and the passionate Laravel community. Also in this episode: Figma’s successful IPO, OpenAI’s latest funding round, and the deal of the week: Joby Aviation.

Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: [email protected]

Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

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As DoorDash reports its latest financial results on Thursday, it’s clear that the 12-year-old company has dominated the restaurant delivery wars in the U.S. over Uber Eats and Grubhub, owning somewhere around two-thirds of the market thanks in part to its prescient move into the suburbs that was supercharged by Covid-19 lockdowns.

That market lead alone has encouraged investors to bid up its stock price to more than $250 a share and a market cap north of $108 billion as of Tuesday.  All in, DoorDash shares have more than doubled over the past year. 

And considering that DoorDash finished 2024 with its first-ever annual profit, the San Francisco-based company led by founder Tony Xu appears well positioned to continue thriving in the U.S. food delivery business.

But if you look at DoorDash’s investment and M&A activity this year, you’ll see the signs of a company that has quietly laid the foundation for a much grander ambition beyond restaurant delivery in the U.S. And if it’s successful–still a big if–DoorDash will someday be known as much more central to the technological fabric of restaurants and other local retailers around the globe than it is today.

In May, the company announced a double whammy of two proposed acquisitions: one, a nearly $4 billion deal for Deliveroo, which would give DoorDash a Top 3 meal delivery business in the UK, and a combined presence in more than 40 countries – with the intent of turning DoorDash’s core restaurant delivery operation into a truly global one (DoorDash previously acquired Finland-based Wolt in 2022 for around $8 billion in an all-stock deal.)

The other acquisition was a $1.2 billion deal for the hospitality software company SevenRooms, which makes software products aimed at helping restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality businesses manage bookings, reservations, and their customer relationships. The decision to buy SevenRooms was led by Parisa Sadrzadeh, a former rising star at Amazon whose mandate when hired at DoorDash last year was to expand the company’s suite of software tools, called DoorDash Commerce Platform, that help brick-and-mortar restaurants and retailers grow and manage their businesses inside their physical locations in addition to any delivery operations.

“While DoorDash solved a massive problem for merchants during the pandemic…introducing a delivery capability to many who had never considered doing it before,” Sadrzadeh told Fortune in May, “[another] challenge ended up being how do you grow my actual volume in my physical store because those are my most profitable consumers.” 

Weeks after announcing the pair of May acquisitions, DoorDash continued the buying spree  by announcing a $175 million acquisition of the advertising technology startup Symbiosys, which is designed to help brands and retailers who advertise on the DoorDash app also reach DoorDash customers on other platforms around the web. DoorDash said that its ad business crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue in 2024. Online advertising businesses have increasingly become key profit engines for online retailers and marketplaces. While DoorDash doesn’t break out financial results for its ad business, analysts have estimated that it carries a much larger profit margin than its core delivery business.

In the background, DoorDash has continued to aggressively go after other types of consumer spending too, signing delivery partnerships with retailers big and small across grocery, pharmacy, pet, sporting goods, and alcohol categories too. 

Taken together, DoorDash is laying out an ambitious vision – it’ll take time to judge if it’s too ambitious and distracting or as prescient as its suburban delivery move – to become a much more comprehensive technology player to restaurants and other brick-and-mortar retailers across the globe. At the same time, even with a market cap of $100 billion-plus, the company still has potential for considerable growth within its core business of restaurant delivery in markets around the world.  

“If you took our oldest area of exploration, U.S. restaurants…we’re still single-digit percentages of the U.S. restaurant industry sales,” CEO Xu said on an earnings call earlier this year. “If you look at globally, that number would be even smaller.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Good morning. Accurate, timely data is essential for strong decision-making and business growth. When data quality suffers, organizations risk losing their strategic edge, and recent changes to U.S. statistical agencies have raised red flags among top economists.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may have completed much of its cost-cutting agenda, but its ripple effects are still being felt. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, flags deeper risks stemming from DOGE’s workforce reductions: slashing jobs at federal statistical agencies is already eroding the quality of government data—a sign of more far-reaching consequences for public services.

“Government workers have important jobs that are critical to providing important services to taxpayers,” Zandi told me. “If jobs are cut and those services aren’t provided or aren’t provided in a timely and competent way, there can be significant negative fallout.”

Regarding the quality of data, the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics'(BLS) report last week resulted in intense scrutiny. President Trump on Aug. 1 ordered the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS.

According to the BLS, July’s employment report showed only 73,000 new jobs, while job gains from May and June were sharply revised downward by a combined 258,000. This brought the three-month average monthly payroll growth down to just 35,000, compared to 123,000 a year earlier.

However, Zandi points to DOGE’s cuts as a key driver of these revisions: Workforce reductions mean payroll data from agencies often arrives late, leading to large, after-the-fact corrections. 

“This didn’t matter much when government employment was stable, but now that government jobs are declining, the cuts are being picked up in the revisions,” Zandi said. 

The impact extends to the statistical agencies themselves; understaffed teams struggle to process employment data promptly, which in turn causes even bigger subsequent revisions, he said. Investing in reliable data and the people who collect it is a foundation for smart decisions and economic resilience, according to Zandi.

In times of uncertainty, the value of good data cannot be overstated: It is an indispensable compass for leaders.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to WM CEO Jim Fish.
• The big story: Trump wants tariffs on buyers of Russian oil.
• The markets: Broadly up this morning.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. 

Good morning. Summer in the city is a great time to talk trash. The sanitation strikes that cut deep this time of year and the smells emanating from open-air trash cans remind us that the U.S. is one of the world’s largest producers of waste, with Americans generating about 951 kilograms (2,100 pounds) of municipal solid waste per person each year.

The company that handles about a third of that trash is WM, the $24 billion-a-year giant otherwise known as Waste Management. It’s the dominant player operating transfer stations, landfill sites, recycling plants and landfill gas projects. In this week’s episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, CEO Jim Fish talks about aligning the brand around sustainability. “It’s profitable for us,” he says, noting that decomposing trash produces the natural gas that powers WM’s garbage trucks, among other things. 

He also talks about the transformative role of technology in creating safer trucks, and ergo, fewer people are needed in roles that can have 50% turnover rates. “I was back there one time when it was below zero on the back of a truck, climbing over snowdrifts. Your hands are cold; it’s a hard job,” he says. “The most dangerous place around those trucks is when you’re outside them.”

While Fish says his philosophy is to put employees first—“If they feel good, they will make the customer feel good. And if the customer is happy, then ultimately your shareholders are happy”—he feels a particular responsibility to the environment. “I get plenty of calls from customers saying, ‘Hey, what happened to my recycling pickup last week?’ The environment doesn’t call me.”

On that front, he points to progress. Coming to New York as a kid, he says, “I looked at the East River and thought, ‘my gosh look how horrible that is.’” (WM doesn’t handle garbage collection here.) Now? “New York has done a lot. It’s not Tokyo but it’s done a nice job of improving … Are we there? No, but are we better than we were?” You can listen to our full conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of WM

• Forget an MBA or climbing the corporate ladder. The Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of tomorrow could be Gen Z dropouts. That’s because new research shows they’re most likely to be working on their own side hustles outside of their 9-to-5 jobs.  

It’s no secret that Gen Z grads are feeling the burn after spending a small fortune on their degree, only to realize the qualification is pretty “useless” and won’t even increase their chances of getting employed anymore. They’re about to feel even more vengeful.

That’s because new research highlights they could one day wind up reporting into a Gen Z dropout. 

A staggering 58% of the generation have a side hustle outside of their everyday job—with young men around 8% more likely to be moonlighting as their own boss after work and on weekends. But the most likely person to be running their own business after hours? Gen Zers without a degree. 

In fact, the research from Resume Genius reveals that the likelihood of having a side hustle decreases as Gen Z workers’ level of formal education increases. 7 in 10 Gen Z workers with some college experience (suggesting that they dropped out before completing their course) are currently running their own gig on the side. In comparison, this drops to just around 55% for those with a bachelor’s degree or master’s.

It comes as the youngest generation of workers increasingly opts to ditch the corporate ladder and favour of running their own business. The second-fastest-growing job title among Gen Z right now is “founder,” according to LinkedIn. Another study echoes that half of the 18 to 35-year-olds who’ve started a side gig or plan to start one say their primary motivation is to be their own boss.

And while not every Gen Zer with a side hustle become the next tech titan on the Fortune 500, they’re still one step closer than those without one. 

Billion-dollar side hustles from Apple to Airbnb

Some of the world’s biggest companies started as scrappy side hustles built in basements, garages, or during lunch breaks.

Take Apple: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met in 1971 while working at the tech giant HP. Within a year they had their first side-hustle, selling “blue boxes” that enabled people to make long-distance phone calls at no cost. They then worked on the computer Apple 1, often meeting up to brainstorm in the garage of Jobs’ Los Altos childhood home while still working other full-time tech jobs.

Jack Dorsey was working as a web designer at a podcast company called Odeo when he started designing Twitter.

Instagram was just a side project, spun off from a more complicated app called “Burbn” that ex-Google employee Kevin Systrom came up with while working at start-up travel recommendation website Nextstop. 

Under Armour, Etsy, and Airbnb were all once side gigs, too. But you don’t just look at the world’s most famous billionaires for examples of side hustles turned into full time gigs. 

Chase Gallagher was 12 years old when he started mowing his neighbors’ lawns in Pennsylvania for $35 a pop in the summer of 2013. By 16, Gallagher had already turned over $50,000 from his lawn mowing side hustle. Today, it’s evolved into a landscaping business that employs 10 people and does “everything from stormwater management and drainage work to pavers and lighting,” the now 23-year-old told Fortune. Last year, CMG Landscaping generated more than $1.5 million in revenue.

Likewise, Ed Fuller told Fortune how he turned his side hustle for Amex into a $27 million-a-year marketing agency that works with MrBeast. And House of CB—the cult fashion brand with over 6 million social media followers and a Kardashian fanbase—started out as a teenage side hustle on eBay.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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As the United States ramps up tariffs on major trading partners globally, President Donald Trump is also disrupting strategies that could be used—by Chinese companies or others—to circumvent them.

Goods deemed to be “transshipped,” or sent through a third country with lower export levies, will face an additional 40% duty under an incoming wave of Trump tariffs Thursday.

The latest tranche of “reciprocal” tariff hikes, taking aim at what Washington deems unfair trade practices, impacts dozens of economies from Taiwan to India.

The transshipment rule does not name countries, but is expected to impact China significantly given its position as a manufacturing powerhouse.

Washington likely wants to develop supply chains that are less reliant on China, analysts say, as tensions simmer between the world’s two biggest economies and the U.S. sounds the alarm on Beijing’s excess industrial capacity.

But “it’s a little more about the short-term effect of strengthening the tariff regime than it is about a decoupling strategy,” said Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council.

“The point is to make countries worried about it and then have them err on the side of not doing it, because they know that Trump could then jack up the tariff rates higher again,” he added, referring to tariff evasion.

The possibility of a sharply higher duty is a “perpetual stick in the negotiations” with countries, said Richard Stern, a tax and budget expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

He told AFP that expanding penalties across the globe takes the focus away from Beijing alone.

Alternative supplies

Experts have noted that Vietnam was the biggest winner from supply chain diversions from China since the first Trump tariffs around 2018, when Washington and Beijing engaged in a trade war.

And Brookings Institution senior fellow Robin Brooks pointed to signs this year of significant transshipments of Chinese goods.

He noted in a June report that Chinese exports to certain Southeast Asian countries started surging “anomalously” in early 2025 as Trump threatened widespread levies.

While it is unclear if all these products end up in the United States, Brooks cast doubt on the likelihood that domestic demand in countries like Thailand and Vietnam rocketed right when Trump imposed duties.

“One purpose of the transshipment provisions is to force the development of supply chains that exclude Chinese inputs,” said William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The other purpose is to push back on Chinese overcapacity and force them to eat their own surpluses,” he added.

But Washington’s success in the latter goal depends on its ability to get other countries on board.

“The transshipment penalties are designed to encourage that,” Reinsch said.

Lipsky added: “The strategy that worked in the first Trump term, to try to offshore some Chinese manufacturing to other countries like Vietnam and Mexico, is going to be a much more difficult strategy to execute now.”

China response?

Lipsky noted that Beijing could see the transshipment clause as one targeting China on trade, “because it is.”

“The question is, how China takes that in the broader context of what had been a thawing relationship between the U.S. and China over the past two months,” he added.

While both countries temporarily lowered triple-digit tariffs on each other’s exports, that truce expires August 12.

The countries are in talks to potentially extend the de-escalation, although the final decision lies with Trump.

It will be tough to draw a line defining product origins, analysts say.

Customs fraud has been illegal for some time, but it remains unclear how Washington will view materials from China or elsewhere that have been significantly transformed.

The burden lies with customs authorities to identify transshipment and assess the increased duties.

“That will be difficult, particularly in countries that have close relations with China and no particular incentive to help U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” Reinsch added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Donald Trump said Japan would accept imports of Ford’s huge F-150 pickup trucks, in the latest sign that the two countries are at odds in their understanding of a trade agreement the U.S. President announced last month.

His comments came as Tokyo’s top negotiator headed to Washington to press the Trump administration to follow through on a pledge to reduce tariffs on cars and car parts to 15% from the current crippling 27.5%.

“They’re taking our cars,” Trump said of Japan in a phone interview broadcast by CNBC on Tuesday. “They’re taking the very beautiful Ford F-150, which does very well. And I’m sure we’ll do very well there and other things that do very well here, will also do well there.”

Confusion hangs over various details of a trade deal struck between the U.S. and Japan, sparking concern in Japan over its enforcement, particularly regarding cars. The Trump administration’s rhetoric over trade deals has often shown discrepancies with its partners, casting doubt over their viability.

“This is an extremely urgent matter, so the government will do its utmost to ensure its implementation,” Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said of the deal in a parliamentary session held Tuesday. 

U.S. auto tariffs on Japan are now set at 27.5%—a combination of a previous 2.5% rate and a new 25% applied by Trump. Although a cut to 15% would lessen the blow, that rate would still impact a sector that has long been a mainstay of Japan’s economy.

“It’s worth noting that the U.S.-UK agreement took 54 days to be implemented,” Japan’s negotiator Ryosei Akazawa told reporters when asked about the lowering of auto tariffs after arriving in Washington on Wednesday morning Japan time. 

Another question is whether the across-the-board 15% tariff is stacked on top of existing rates or whether all current levies will be standardized to 15%, in another potential divergence of the U.S. and Japan’s understandings of the trade deal. 

Although Akazawa has claimed that levies will be cut off at 15% rather than added on top of current rates, an executive order released last week indicated that the 15% cut off applied only to the European Union and would not be implemented for Japan. 

“There are many details involved with this tariff rate, so we are seeking to discuss these points in detail,” Akazawa added.

While Trump has long lamented the fact that U.S. cars are unpopular in Japan, most experts agree that is due to the lack of vehicles suitable for the market, rather than any barriers to trade. 

The Ford F-150 that Trump mentioned in the interview is more than two meters wide even without mirrors, likely limiting its usefulness on Japan’s roads, many of which are less than four meters wide for two car lanes, according to a government report released in 2012. 

In the same interview with CNBC, Trump called the $550 billion investment package agreed with Japan in the trade deal a “signing bonus” much like that of a baseball player. 

“I got a signing bonus from Japan of $550 billion. That’s our money. It’s our money to invest as we like,” he said. 

The Japanese side has said only 1% to 2% of the overall amount will be actual investment, with the rest being loans and loan guarantees. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has said that the investments will be made at the behest of private companies, and benefit both Japan and the U.S. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The U.S. economy is experiencing a noticeable slowdown in mid-2025, with sluggish domestic demand growth, muted job gains, and new tariff actions poised to impact both inflation and overall economic momentum, according to a recent analysis from UBS Global Research.

The US Economics Weekly note from the Swiss bank noted real GDP grew at an annualized rate of just 1.2% in the first half of 2025, a significant step down from the more robust pace observed in 2023 and early 2024. Quarter-over-quarter growth figures point to a sequential weakening, the team led by economist Jonathan Pingle added, particularly in domestic demand, which has dropped from above 3% last year to around 1% in recent quarters.

Labor demand is responding in kind. Monthly nonfarm payroll growth has slowed sharply, with July seeing an increase of only 73,000 jobs—well below expectations and accompanied by sizeable downward revisions for previous months. The three-month average for job gains is now just 35,000 per month, a rate described as “stall speed” by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman and Governor Chris Waller. (Both Bowman and Waller are prominent names floated to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell, a figure the Trump White House has extensively criticized.) The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.25%, the highest level since 2021, and the broadest measure of labor underutilization, known as U-6, is also trending higher—more than a percentage point above pre-pandemic levels.

Crucially, Pingle’s team found shrinking labor force participation rather than a sudden immigration or population shock is behind the weaker labor force growth. “The drop in the labor force participation rate has masked how much slackening is actually taking place,” the report contends, noting that multiple demographic groups, including Black Americans and teenagers, are showing higher unemployment and falling participation.

Population growth as recorded by the household survey is holding steady near previous years’ levels—contradicting assertions that tighter immigration is meaningfully constricting the labor market. UBS notes this contradicts statements from Jerome Powell: “Despite Chair Powell’s pronouncement at the post FOMC press conference that the immigration slowdown was slowing population growth and thus labor force growth, that is not what is happening in the actual data. The Household Survey and Establishment Survey look more like the labor market is slackening, and the household survey itself estimates that population growth is not slowing.”

The average workweek remains subdued, sitting at 34.25 hours in July—below 2019 levels and far from the “stretching” typical when labor markets are tight due to worker shortages. Industry-specific data show that job losses are not concentrated in sectors with large immigrant workforces, further supporting the view that slack comes from weakened demand, not a supply constraint.

Tariffs set to climb, threatening further drag

Tariff policy, after a series of negotiations and executive actions, is on track to become even more restrictive. The new suite of reciprocal tariffs, including a 35% rate on Canadian imports (excluding USMCA-compliant goods) and across-the-board hikes affecting nearly 70 countries, is expected to raise the U.S. weighted average tariff rate (WATR) from about 16% to approximately 19% starting in early August. UBS estimates this will subtract 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points from growth over the next year.

Sectoral carve-outs persist, but with the EU now facing a 15% tariff on most exports to the U.S.—lower than originally proposed, but still a significant rise—UBS expects direct pressure on prices for automobiles, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and more. Presidential proposals to slap a 200% tariff on pharmaceuticals remain under discussion, but would have massive implications if implemented.

Rate cuts on the horizon

With evidence mounting that both growth and labor markets are softening and that tariffs may further boost core inflation from 2.8% currently to as high as 3.4% by year-end, pressure is building for the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy. While Chair Jerome Powell kept a possible September rate cut on the table, he offered little forward guidance, stating that the totality of incoming data will dictate the next move. UBS maintained its expectation that the Federal Open Market Committee will cut rates by 25 basis points in September and by as much as 100 basis points before the end of 2025.

Ultimately, the bank found that the U.S. economy has entered a clear slowdown as 2025 unfolds, with fading domestic momentum, cooling job growth, and the shadow of higher tariffs likely to dampen the outlook further. UBS researchers argue that the data show a demand-driven deceleration, not a supply squeeze, and that the Fed will likely act soon to cushion the landing.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images

Ty Haney, the woman who brought you exercise dresses, has returned to her athleisure company, Outdoor Voices, as a partner and co-owner ahead of today’s launch of the first collection of her new tenure.

“We’re back, baby,” Haney said in a reel posted to OV’s Instagram last week. The original outdoor voice said she started working with OV again late last year, soon after a private equity firm bought the struggling brand and asked Haney to come home.

It’s a full-circle moment on an overall bumpy ride for OV:

• The DTC brand peaked in 2018, five years after its founding, with legions of millennial fans and a $110 million valuation.
• Its valuation dropped to $40 million in early 2020. The board of directors then pushed Haney out as CEO amid highly publicized quarreling.
• OV reported its first profitable month soon after for June 2020, but the overhaul didn’t last—OV shuttered all of its stores last year before accepting an acquisition offer to avoid bankruptcy.

Now…Haney recently told Texas Monthly that she wants to court Gen Z with more “fashion-forward and sexy” activewear. Her return comes at a time when everybody—including high fashion—is doing athleisure, and direct competitors like Vuori and Alo are gaining ground.—ML

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images—Craig Barritt

Elon Musk’s DOGE may have completed much of its work in the federal bureaucracy, but the trickle-down effect from Musk’s chain saw contributed to the downward employment revisions that drew President Trump’s ire and led to the now-infamous firing of the labor statistics commissioner.

DOGE’s cuts to government jobs are contributing to downward employment revisions because the government typically reports its payrolls to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) late, and increasingly later reports often lead to bigger revisions, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune. He noted that the government does not report in time for the initial employment estimate provided by the BLS.

“This didn’t matter much when government employment was stable, but now that government jobs are declining, the cuts are being picked up in the revisions,” Zandi said. He added that DOGE’s impact also extends to the statistical agencies themselves, including the BLS, where staff reductions slow the processing of employment records and lead to larger subsequent revisions.

According to the BLS, July’s employment report (released Aug. 1) showed a modest addition of 73,000 jobs. More strikingly, job gains from May and June were sharply revised downward by a combined 258,000. With employment rising by only 19,000 in May and 14,000 in June, the three-month average payroll growth dropped to just 35,000—down from 123,000 a year earlier.

Amid intensifying scrutiny over deteriorating employment figures, President Trump on Aug. 1 ordered the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS.

Regarding the economy, Pantheon Macroeconomics found that DOGE cuts knocked approximately 0.3 percentage points from U.S. GDP growth in Q2, primarily due to an 11.2% drop in federal nondefense spending—a direct result of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) reductions. Analysts believe government spending will remain roughly flat in Q3, as small gains in state, local, and defense spending are offset by a further 5%-to-10% drop in the federal nondefense component.

Zandi believes sustained DOGE cuts increase the odds of a recession. “The DOGE cuts likely act more like a corrosive on the economy than a cliff event, resulting in recession,” he said. Meanwhile, policies like higher tariffs or restrictive immigration rules would likely have a much more sudden and damaging impact on the economy, potentially causing a recession directly, Zandi said.

Beyond the numbers, Zandi flagged deeper risks stemming from DOGE’s workforce reductions. He warned that slashing jobs at statistical agencies is already degrading the quality of federal data—a symptom of wider unintended consequences for government services.

“Government workers have important jobs that are critical to providing important services to taxpayers,” Zandi said. “If jobs are cut and those services aren’t provided or aren’t provided in a timely and competent way, there can be significant negative fallout.”

He cited examples ranging from weather reporting vital to disaster response to food-safety inspections that safeguard the national food supply.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Embattled BP returned to profitability and beat earnings expectations for the first time since announcing its “fundamental reset” early this year, moving away from renewables and back toward fossil fuels, offering encouragement about its long-term viability.

It’s the second quarter since BP (No. 33 on the Fortune Global 500) initiated its reset and the first time the Big Oil giant has promising results to tout. With a nearly 30% beat on its second-quarter net profits of $1.63 billion announced Aug. 5, BP’s net income spiked from a year-on-year loss of $129 million, which compares to BP’s full-year net profit for 2024 of just $381 million.

Kathleen Brooks, research director for the XTB brokerage house, called the results a “significant milestone for the company as it returns to profit.”

“BP is much less interested in telling the public about the number of coffees it sells each year and is now focused on how much oil it can extract,” Brooks said in a note, poking fun at former CEO Bernard Looney.

Looney, who resigned in 2023 amid issues of undisclosed personal relations with employees, would routinely tout that BP service stations sell more than 150 million cups of coffee a year. “We may be much better known on the high street for selling fuel, but we also sell a lot of coffee,” he said in 2020.

Current CEO Murray Auchincloss made no such references to bean-sourced beverages.

“We remain relentless in our aim to deliver improvements right across BP,” Auchincloss said on the earnings call. “BP can and will do better for its investors.”

With new chairman Albert Manifold stepping into the role Oct. 1, Auchincloss said he is “initiating a further cost review” of its business portfolio with the incoming chair.

BP, also under pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, reiterated its goal to divest $20 billion in assets by 2027 and sharply cut overall costs and debt, while actually ramping up spending on oil and gas exploration and production.

Most notably, a strategic review and potential sale of its $8 billion Castrol lubricants business is ongoing, and Manifold will be able to weigh in.

BP’s stock rose nearly 2.5% in early trading Tuesday. And talk has dissipated for now of Shell potentially buying rival BP.

Best foot forward

RBC Capital analyst Biraj Borkhataria said in a note that BP is back on its “front foot” but is still in the “early stages of its turnaround journey” as it focuses on improving debt reduction and free cash flow. He expects to see more asset sales and stronger capex shifts toward oil and gas production.

BP said it has achieved $1.7 billion in structural cost reductions, in line to meet or exceed the goal of $4 billion to $5 billion by the end of 2027. BP hiked its quarterly dividend 4% to 8.32 cents and will repurchase $750 million in shares in the third quarter.

In the world of crude oil, BP said it had made its biggest discovery of this century, off the shores of Brazil in the Bumerangue block, although the announcement was short on details.

BP called the find its 10^th discovery of the year, including other oil and gas exploration successes in Brazil, Trinidad, Egypt, Libya, Namibia, Angola, and the U.S. Gulf.

In the past, BP embraced the energy transition, pledging to invest more in renewables while shrinking its oil and gas portfolio and eventually achieving “net zero.” But those goals came ahead of the pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending oil and gas prices higher and boosting the emphasis on global energy security. BP continued to lag behind its peers and is now playing catch-up.

For instance, BP is now selling its U.S. onshore wind portfolio and divesting 50% stakes in its global solar and offshore wind businesses.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Switzerland’s president and other top officials were traveling to Washington on Tuesday in a hastily arranged trip aimed at striking a deal with the Trump administration over steep U.S. tariffs that have cast a pall over Swiss industries like chocolates, machinery and watchmaking.

President Karin Keller-Sutter was leading the delegation after last week’s announcement that exports of Swiss goods to the U.S. will face a whopping 39% percent tariff starting Thursday — a move that took many Swiss business leaders by surprise.

That rate is over 2 1/2 times higher than the one on European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S.

It’s also more than the 31% that Switzerland had been set to face when U.S. President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on products from dozens of countries in early April.

The Swiss government said the trip was “to facilitate meetings with the U.S. authorities at short notice and hold talks with a view to improving the tariff situation for Switzerland.”

Keller-Sutter, who also serves as Switzerland’s finance minister, has faced criticism in Swiss media over a last-ditch call with Trump before a U.S. deadline on tariffs expired Aug. 1. She was leading a team that included Economy Minister Guy Parmelin.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Trump alluded to the call, saying “the woman was nice, but she didn’t want to listen” and that he had told her: “We have a $41 billion deficit with you, Madame … and you want to pay 1% tariffs.”

“I said, ‘you’re not going to pay 1%,'” he added.

It was not immediately clear where that $41 billion figure came from. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States ran a $38.3 billion trade imbalance on goods last year with Switzerland.

Swiss officials have argued that American goods face virtually zero tariffs in Switzerland, and the Swiss government says the wealthy Alpine country is the sixth-biggest foreign investor in the United States and the leading investor in research and development.

“It’s hard to negotiate when you’re dealing with someone as unpredictable as Donald Trump,” said Ivan Slatkine, head of the Federation of Romandie Enterprises, which groups companies in French-speaking Switzerland. He expressed concern that Swiss goods could become less competitive to rival products from the neighboring EU.

“We had a (Swiss) government that gave the impression the deal was done, it only awaited a signature from the president,” he said by phone. “We have the impression that we were punished, but we don’t know why.”

Switzerland’s powerful pharmaceutical industry — which promised tens of billions of investments in the United States in recent months amid the tariff worries — is exempt from the 39% rate. But Slatkine said the steep tariff level could be aimed to send Switzerland’s Big Pharma — epitomized by Roche and Novartis — a message that it too could come under pressure.

The trip comes a day after Switzerland’s executive branch, the Federal Council, held an extraordinary meeting and said it was “keen to pursue talks with the United States on the tariff situation,” the government statement Tuesday said.

After consulting with Swiss businesses, the council said it had developed “new approaches for its discussions” with U.S. officials and was looking ahead to continued negotiations.

“Switzerland enters this new phase ready to present a more attractive offer, taking U.S. concerns into account and seeking to ease the current tariff situation,” a council statement said Monday.

Under the U.S. announcements Friday, Swiss companies will now have one of the steepest export duties — only Laos, Myanmar and Syria had higher figures, at 40-41%.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File

Welcome to Eye on AI! AI reporter Sharon Goldman here, filling in for Jeremy Kahn, who is on holiday. In this edition…General Services Administration approves OpenAI, Google, Anthropic for federal AI vendor list…Consequences of AI spending boom on U.S. economy…Clay AI raises $100 million at $3.1 billion valuation.

Only in the Bay Area does spending a Saturday geeking out about AI agents—alongside 2,000 students, researchers, and tech insiders crammed into UC Berkeley—feel like a totally normal weekend plan. As I picked up my badge at the day-long Agentic AI Summit and watched the line snake through the student union lobby, it felt less like an academic conference and more like Silicon Valley’s version of a buzzy New York brunch spot.

This was certainly due to the speaker lineup, which was stacked with top AI researchers and scientists, including Jakob Pachocki, chief scientist at OpenAI; Ed Chi, VP of research at Google DeepMind; Bill Dally, chief scientist at Nvidia; Ion Stoica, cofounder at Databricks & Anyscale, as well as a UC Berkeley professor; and Dawn Song, a pioneering UC Berkeley professor focused on AI security. 

The popularity might have been due to the buzzy topic—AI agents, generally defined as an AI-powered system that can complete tasks, mostly autonomously, using other software tools. Think not only suggested a vacation itinerary, but also booking the flight and making the hotel reservation.

As my colleague Jeremy Kahn said in a recent article, “This kind of automation is a perennial C-suite fever dream. Over the past decade, companies embraced ‘robotic process automation,’ or RPA. This was software that could automate repetitive tasks, such as cutting and pasting between database programs. But traditional RPA systems are inflexible and unable to deal with exceptions, and can usually handle only one narrow task.” Agentic AI is meant to be both more flexible and powerful, adapting to business needs.

In a January 2025 blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.”

But despite the hype, the overall message at the Agentic AI Summit was cautious and grounded: Agents may be the buzziest trend in AI right now, but the tech still has a long way to go, they said. AI agents, unfortunately, aren’t always reliable. They may not remember what came before.

Google DeepMind’s Chi, for example, stressed the gap between what agents can do in curated demos versus what’s still needed in real-world production environments. Pachocki highlighted concerns around the safety, security, and trustworthiness of agentic systems, particularly when they’re integrated into sensitive applications or operate autonomously. 

“I still don’t think agents have really lived up to their promise,” said Sherwin Wu, head of engineering at OpenAI API. “Certain more generic cases have worked, but my day-to-day work doesn’t really feel that different with agents.”

While today’s agents may not currently live up to the massive hype (consider Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s recent claim that a shift to digital labor means he will be the “last CEO of Salesforce who only managed humans”), the speakers at the Agentic AI Summit still had plenty of optimism to share. Databricks’ Stoica expressed enthusiasm about infrastructure improvements that are making it easier to build agentic systems. Nvidia’s Dally suggested that continued hardware advances will enable more powerful and efficient agent behavior. Several pointed out “narrow wins” in specific domains, like coding.

Today’s AI agents may still have growing pains, but given the crowded UC Berkeley ballroom, the industry maintains its eye on the prize: AI agents that can reliably operate in the real world. The payoff, they believe, will be well worth the wait.

With that, here’s more AI news.

Sharon Goldman
[email protected]
@sharongoldman

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Kamala Harris did something unprecedented last year: She had just 107 days to whip up a winning presidential campaign, the most compressed timeline ever for a major-party bid. But while she fell short in November, ceding victory to President Donald Trump, many believed she would run for governor of California; in early polling, she was beating every other candidate by double digits. But in an interview with Stephen Colbert, the former vice president explained why she’s sitting this one out.

“Recently, I made the decision that for now I don’t want to go back in the system. I think it’s broken,” she said, eliciting gasps from the Late Show’s live audience.

“Listen, I am a devout public servant,” Harris said. “I have spent my entire career in service of the people, and I thought a lot about running for governor. I love my state, I love California. I’ve served as elected district attorney, attorney general, and senator. But to be very candid with you, when I was young in my career, I had to defend my decision to become a prosecutor with my family. And one of the points that I made is, ‘Why is it when we think we want to improve a system, or change it, that we’re always on the outside on bended knee, or trying to break down the door? Shouldn’t we also be inside the system?’”

While Harris made it clear to Colbert she is “always going to be part of the fight, that is not going to change,” the 60-year-old politician said she would rather spend time traveling the country and listening to people without it being “transactional, where I’m asking for their vote.”

“There are so many good people who are public servants who do such good work,” Harris continued. “Teachers and firefighters and police officers and nurses and scientists. It’s not about them, but I believe that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now, they‘re not as strong as they need to be. And I just don’t want to go back in the system.”

Harris agreed with Colbert, that a former vice president and one-time presidential candidate calling the system “broken” is “harrowing,” but acknowledged that “the power is with the people.”

“You can never let anybody take your power from you,” Harris said. “And that’s what I’d like to remind folks of.”

You can watch Colbert’s full extended interview with Harris below.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), last Friday after a dismal jobs report is drawing criticism not just from his usual opponents, but also from his allies. 

Stephen Moore, President Donald Trump’s former economic advisor, told Fortune that firing McEntarfer when he did was akin to “firing the referee because you don’t like the way the game turned out.”

“I’m not here to defend Trump,” Moore, who was also Trump’s one-time nominee to serve as a Federal Reserve Governor, added. “But I do think he should have fired her a long time ago, because the numbers that have been coming out now for the last several years have just not been an accurate gauge as to what’s really going on in the economy.” 

Trump became incensed with McEnStarfer after the new report significantly revised U.S. jobs figures from May and June, slashing some 258,000 jobs combined for those months. The revision constitutes the largest downward revision to the jobs numbers in almost 60 years. 

The president wrote in a Truth Social post Friday that McEntarfer, a Biden administration appointee, “manipulated” and “faked” the jobs report numbers for political gain. He said he would replace her with someone “more competent.” 

Transitioning away from survey data 

Moore, while disagreeing that the numbers were manipulated, concurred with Trump that the BLS needs a new “Mr. Fix It” to head the Bureau. He said that in his 40 years of working in economic research, he had never seen the jobs numbers become so unreliable. 

Recent economic data is plagued by the same issue as political polling data: Nobody wants to pick up the phone anymore, Moore said. The monthly jobs report relies heavily on surveys of businesses and households, which worked when everyone used landline phones, but is less reliable in the digital age.

“The procedures the BLS is using are 75 years old,” Moore added. “They need to be completely revamped.”
The pandemic appears to have accelerated the trend of people ignoring pollers’ calls. Before 2020, response rates to the Current Employment Statistics surveys—which the BLS uses to compile the monthly jobs report—hovered around 60%. It has since declined to 45%. 

Days before Trump fired McEnfarter, a bipartisan group of economists—including Nobel Laureate Paul Romer—wrote a letter to Congress asking for funding to modernize the data-collection process. 

Agencies need the space and money to “restore” survey response rates, while also experimenting with new means of data collection, the economists argued.

“Transitioning to a system in which less survey data is blended with more administrative and private sector data, while preserving data integrity and privacy standards, is the generationally important task facing statistical agencies today,” the economists wrote. 

However, researchers at the San Francisco Federal Reserve, who studied survey responsiveness earlier this year, found that while declining response rates present concerns for the reliability of data, it didn’t necessarily lead to larger-than-average revisions to reports like the monthly jobs report. 

Claire Mersol, an economist at BLS, told the Wall Street Journal that much of the revisions done to the previous numbers were part of “routine recalculation of seasonal factors.”

“Typically, the monthly revisions have offsetting movements within industries—one goes up, one goes down,” Mersol said. “In June, most revisions were negative.”

In other words, the sharply negative revisions could’ve just been chance. 

Even if the data has become more unreliable, some Republican allies of the president said that firing the head of the BLS would do little to fix the problem. Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, told NBC News that he questioned how the move would improve BLS’ accuracy. 

“I’m going to look into it, but first impression is that you can’t really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting,” he said.

GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska said that she doesn’t trust the numbers, but the move makes it worse. 

“And when you fire people, then it makes people trust them even less,” she said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Despite what its name suggests, OpenAI hadn’t released an “open” model—one that includes access to the weights, or the numerical parameters often described as the model’s brains—since GPT-2 in 2020. That changed on Tuesday: The company launched a long-awaited open-weight model, in two sizes, that OpenAI says pushes the frontier of reasoning in open-source AI.

“We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the release. “As part of this, we are quite hopeful that this release will enable new kinds of research and the creation of new kinds of products.” He emphasized that he is “excited for the world to be building on an open AI stack created in the United States, based on democratic values, available for free to all and for wide benefit.”

Altman had teased the upcoming models back in March, two months after admitting, in the wake of the success of China’s open models from DeepSeek, that the company had been “on the wrong side of history” when it came to opening up its models to developers and builders. But while the weights are now public, experts note that OpenAI’s new models are hardly “open.” By no means is it giving away its crown jewels: The proprietary architecture, routing mechanisms, training data, and methods that power its most advanced models—including the long-awaited GPT-5, widely expected to be released sometime this month—remain tightly under wraps.

OpenAI is targeting AI builders and developers

The two new model names—gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b—may be indecipherable to non-engineers, but that’s because OpenAI is setting its sights on AI builders and developers seeking to rapidly build on real-world use cases on their own systems. The company noted that the larger of the two models can run on a single Nvidia 80GB chip, while the smaller one fits on consumer hardware like a Mac laptop. 

Greg Brockman, cofounder and president of OpenAI, acknowledged on a press pre-briefing call that “it’s been a long time” since the company had released an open model. He added that it is “something that we view as complementary to the other products that we release” and along with OpenAI’s proprietary models, “combine to really accelerate our mission of ensuring that API benefits all of humanity.”

OpenAI said the new models perform well on reasoning benchmarks, which have emerged as the key measurements for AI performance, with models from OpenAI, Anthropic, [hotlink]Google,[/hotlink] and DeepSeek fiercely competing over their abilities to tackle multistep logic, code generation, and complex problem-solving. Ever since the open source DeepSeek R1 shook the industry in January with its reasoning capabilities at a much lower cost, many other Chinese models have followed suit—including Alibaba’s Qwen and Moonshot AI’s Kimi models. While OpenAI said at a press pre-briefing that the new open-weight models are a proactive effort to provide what users want, it is also clearly a strategic response to ramping up open-source competition.  

Notably, OpenAI declined to benchmark its new open-weight models against Chinese open-source systems like DeepSeek or Qwen—despite the fact that those models have recently outperformed U.S. rivals on key reasoning benchmarks. In the press briefing, the company said it is confident in its benchmarks against its own models and that it would leave it to others in the AI community to test further and “make up their own minds.”

Avoiding the leak of intellectual property

OpenAI’s new open-weight models are built using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, in which the system activates only the “experts,” or subnetworks, it needs for a specific input, rather than using the entire model for every query. Dylan Patel, founder of research firm SemiAnalysis, pointed out in a post on X before the release that OpenAI trained the models only using publicly known components of the architecture—meaning the building blocks it used are already familiar to the open-source community. He emphasized that this was a deliberate choice—that by avoiding any proprietary training techniques or architecture innovations, OpenAI could release a genuinely useful model without actually leaking any intellectual property that powers its proprietary frontier models like GPT-4o.

For example, in a model card accompanying the release, OpenAI confirmed that the models use a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture with 12 active experts out of 64, but it does not describe the routing mechanism, which is a crucial and proprietary part of the architecture.

“You want to minimize risk to your business, but you [also] want to be maximally useful to the public,” Aleksa Gordic, a former Google DeepMind researcher, told Fortune, adding that companies like Meta and Mistral, which have also focused on open-weight models, have similarly not included proprietary information.

“They minimize the IP leak and remove any risk to their core business, while at the same time sharing a useful artifact that will enable the startup ecosystem and developers,” he said. “It’s by definition the best they can do given those two opposing objectives.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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