Donald Trump will attend a dinner with the largest holders of his own-brand crypto coin, sending its price through the roof. But the real profits have already been made just out of view.
The acting head of the General Services Administration says it has no DOGE team. It merely lists at least a half-dozen DOGE affiliates on payroll and has a section of its building for DOGE use only.
Donald Trump's staggering tariffs on Chinese imports have hit nearly every category of consumer goods, from electronics and automobiles to clothing and footwear. One of the most vulnerable industries is the ultracheap e-commerce sites like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that American shoppers have become accustomed to. It is already showing signs of a bloodbath.
Last week Shein and Temu warned shoppers that price increases were coming on April 25th. A spot-check of prices on Shein show modest increases across categories, though not every item is more expensive than it was a week ago. A pair of kid's fleece pants that were $8.29 on April 17th are now $10.19. A women's plus-size dress that was $22.39 is now $27.51. A pair of pants that were $13.99 have gone up to $17.09. Shein's inventory and prices change daily so it's impossible to pinpoint why an item has changed in price, but Shein shoppers have noticed their shopping carts and wish lists getting more expensive: shoppers on Reddit report some items doubling. According to data provided to The Verge by Bright Data, price increases on Shein until early March were for the most part modest compared to late 2024 prices, and many product …
It’s no secret that managers are not doing well. They’re toiling under heavier workloads, burned-out from spending their days putting out fires, and the very existence of their roles is under renewed scrutiny. But some groups of bosses are suffering more than others.
Manager engagement in general fell from 30% to 27%, according to a recent Gallup report based on data from more than 200,000 people from April through December of 2024. Young managers and female managers in particular reported the steepest declines—engagement levels for bosses under 35 years old fell by five percentage points, while that number for women declined by seven percentage points.
Bosses overall have had to deal with an array of business disruptions over the past few years, including an uptick in post-pandemic retirements and turnover, disrupted supply chains, and the AI revolution. “In an era where executives and employees seem farther apart than they have been in years, managers are handed an almost impossible task of making it all work in the real world,” the report states.
It’s not clear why there was such a steep drop in engagement levels for younger managers, but their rank-and-file brethren are also feeling unmoored. Younger employees in general reported higher disengagement levels than older generations, according to a Gallup report from last year. And when it comes to even trying to secure more senior roles, many young people are ambivalent. For instance, around 72% of Gen Z workers say they’d rather stay independent contributors than take on middle-management roles, according to a recent survey from recruiting firm Robert Walters.
The engagement drop among women managers is particularly troubling given the existing barriers this group faces when it comes to securing leadership roles. Women are getting promoted or hired into roles that would lead to management at a lower rate than their male counterparts, according to LinkedIn data from 2024. And those barriers can have major ripple effects—today, only around 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
Disengaged managers in general can also have major repercussions for companies—this group can be the “linchpin” when it comes to solving worker engagement issues. Around 70% of team engagement is attributable to managers, according to previous Gallup research. “If managers are disengaged, their teams are, too,” the report reads.
But there are some steps that organizations can take to improve the manager experience. Bosses who get training report only half the disengagement levels of those who do not, according to the most recent Gallup report. Teaching this group effective coaching techniques is also critical, and can boost their performance by up to 28%. And finally, making sure this investment continues is key: Ongoing development increased manager well-being by 32%.
“When we consider the additional influence of great managers on their teams, manager training and development may be one of the most effective ‘well-being initiatives’ employers can invest in,” the report reads.
The global trade ecosystem has been overturned. President Donald Trump imposed 104% tariffs on China on Wednesday, a week after levying a host of tariffs ranging from a minimum of 10% on imports generally to 20% on EU goods and 46% on ones from Vietnam—levels not seen for nearly a century. China quickly retaliated, announcing today it will raise tariffs on American goods to 84% starting tomorrow. The White House then announced that, aside from the 10% tariff, there would be a 90-day pause on some of the higher tariffs—but not for China.
However the drama continues to unfold, we’re facing what promises to be a prolonged period of trade instability that few organizations are prepared to weather.
Many executives are justifiably worried about the direct financial implications—the immediate cost increases on imported materials and components from direct suppliers. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There will be a cascading effect as tariffs impact second- and third-tier vendors as well. Businesses need to plan for not just increased costs for their business, but also lean inventories and the potential for failing due to costly errors, penalties, and reputational damage due to inaccurate reporting or regulatory non-compliance. The complexities introduced by tariffs demand a fundamental shift in how businesses approach supply chain management.
The permacrisis era
Tariffs are just the most recent example illustrating the uncertainty about economic policy and extreme volatility of business risks and the challenges they pose. I’ve written extensively about permacrisis—that perpetual state of navigating simultaneous and ongoing crises—and how our conventional risk management frameworks were simply not architected for today's complicated trade realities. These new tariffs introduce specialized regulatory complexities that few organizations possess the internal expertise to navigate successfully.
The efficiency-driven supply chain models that dominated pre-pandemic thinking have left businesses particularly vulnerable. The pursuit of "lean" operations—minimal inventory buffers and concentrated supplier relationships—has created structural fragilities that tariff disruptions will mercilessly expose. What once represented operational excellence now constitutes existential vulnerability.
Anticipate the damage
For weeks, executives have been gathering in board rooms scrambling to understand what the tariff “end game” will look like and what the tariffs mean for them. The tariffs may feel like a shock to the system for executives, but I would advise against being blinded by the initial flash of lightning from the tariff news. Executives need to anticipate what might come next—such as potential rollbacks, and more likely, retaliatory moves. Planning for various scenarios and quantifying the financial and operational impact of each will help them understand potential outcomes and develop response and contingency strategies.
Address your supply chain and compliance
Next, you want to be prepared to address the repercussions that may come down the pipeline from these new tariffs. This will involve conducting a fundamental reassessment of your supply chain strategy, beginning with comprehensive network mapping. This means looking beyond your immediate suppliers to understand the complete ecosystem supporting your business operations. Which of your suppliers' suppliers face direct tariff exposure? How will these costs transmit through your supply network? Where are the critical chokepoints? Real-time visibility and data-driven decisions are critical for survival.
Equally crucial is developing specialized expertise in tariff classification and customs compliance. The complexity of international trade regulations creates significant exposure to compliance failures, misclassifications, and documentation errors—each carrying substantial financial penalties. This expertise gap must be addressed, whether through internal capability building or strategic external partnerships.
Organizations must also embrace scenario planning with renewed vigor. Modeling various tariff escalation scenarios and their operational impacts provides critical insights for strategic decision-making. What happens when key components face 25% cost increases? How will currency fluctuations compound these effects? Which alternative sourcing strategies might mitigate these impacts?
Build operational resilience
When you have done the assessments of your company’s downstream risks from the tariffs, and taken action to minimize the immediate effects, you should take action to build operational resilience to protect the business when other operational threats arise. There are a number of tactical measures that companies should adopt to increase resilience for the future, specifically:
Diversify suppliers, increase inventory buffers, and enact robust contingency plans
Conduct comprehensive contract reviews with suppliers and customers to understand tariff-related cost allocation mechanisms and renegotiation opportunities
Explore specialized trade programs including Foreign Trade Zones, duty drawback provisions, and bonded warehousing arrangements that may provide meaningful relief
Investigate product engineering modifications that reduce dependence on heavily tariffed products
The organizations that successfully navigate this environment will be those recognizing that tariffs aren't merely a finance department concern—they represent a fundamental enterprise risk requiring coordinated cross-functional responses. Legal, supply chain, finance, enterprise risk management, internal audit, and operations must collaborate with unprecedented alignment. Adopting a connected risk approach will break down siloes and enable more successful problem solving and risk mitigation.
Prepare for the future global trade landscape
We’re in the early stages of unprecedented uncertainty with regard to global trade, what I’m calling the “fog of tariff wars.” Forward-thinking leaders should prepare for a future where global commerce increasingly fragments along geopolitical fault lines.
The competitive advantage will belong to organizations that embed adaptability into their operational DNA. This means developing not just responses to today's tariffs but building systems capable of rapidly reconfiguring as conditions evolve. It requires viewing your supply chain not as a fixed asset but as a dynamic network that can flex and transform in response to shifting trade realities.
Businesses are not just navigating economic uncertainty, they’re facing a systemic overhaul of how goods move across borders. Companies that move with urgency to understand and mitigate the risks and adapt their organizations to the new reality will find strategic advantages where others perceive only disruption. The time to act isn’t tomorrow—it’s right now, before the full impact of the new tariffs reshapes the global trade landscape.
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 essay has been updated to include the Trump admin's 90-day pause.
Alphabet andGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai remembers his manta when making tough choices: making a decision is the most important thing you can do, but oftentimes they're inconsequential. Melinda French-Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah Winfrey have their own methods to deal with stress—from bathroom cool-downs to attacking problems head-on.
Tasked with navigating economic turmoil, making tough calls, and quelling company friction, CEOs have the weight of their companies on their shoulders—and when it all becomes too much, Google’s chief exec Sundar Pichai remembers two things.
“One is: making that decision is the most important thing you can do. You're breaking a tie and it unlocks the organization to move forward,” Pinchai said at Stanford’s Business School in 2022, adding that the former Intuit CEO Bill Campbell taught him that while studying at the elite college.
“The second is, with time you realize most of those decisions are inconsequential.”
“It might appear very tough at the time. It may feel like a lot rides on it, [but] you look later and you realize it wasn't that consequential. There are few consequential decisions, and judgment is a big part of leadership.”
Essentially, most of us aren’t surgeons saving lives at work—that font colour or PowerPoint presentation you’re worrying about probably won’t matter in 10 years' time.
Making decisions gets harder at the top—but it can be 'fun' too
Pichai has come a long way since roaming the halls of Stanford in the 1990s as an engineering student. Starting out at Google as a project manager in 2004, he spent the next decade working his way up through the company before taking the reins as CEO in 2015.
Now, helming the eighth largest business on the Fortune500—there’s a lot riding on every move he makes as CEO. The gravity of every choice feels greater.
“It took me a while to realize…the higher up you are in an organization, the easy decisions don't come to you,” Pichai said at the event.
But by leaning on his mantra—that not every choice is make-or-break—he’s able to distance himself mentally from the weight of every sign off and weather the stress that comes with steering a $2 trillion operation and.
“Thinking through both helps me think about it as it's just another normal day in the office, and so you keep going through it,” Pichai added.
While the prospect of running a tech giant as huge as Google is nail-biting to the average person, Pichai says he has overcome any fears over the enormity of his choices by reminding himself: “You're really helping the company, and so that makes it a bit more fun.”
Other ways leaders handle the stress of the job
Being put under immense stress comes with the territory of being a leader—and each has their own method of getting through it. Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates received some words of wisdom from her hedge fund mentor on how to keep her head above water.
“Like if I get tough on myself about philanthropy, I remember what Warren Buffett said to us originally, which is, ‘You’re working on the problems society left behind, and they left them behind for a reason,” French Gates recently said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “‘They are hard, right? So don’t be so tough on yourself.’”
Other leaders, like Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, take a more aggressive approach by confronting their anxiety head-on.
“Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over,” the former Amazon CEO said in an interview with Academy of Achievement. “I find as soon as I identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first e-mail message…The mere fact that we’re addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it.”
Meanwhile, iconic TV personality Oprah Winfrey finds zen in the chaos; she said she’s not someone to scream to let the anxiety out. When she’s overwhelmed, a restroom stall can become her oasis.
“Some days, I want to scream out loud when dealing with the complexities of getting good shows on the air. But one thing I know for sure: I’m not a screamer,” Winfrey wrote in her book, What I Know for Sure. “I usually go to a quiet place. A bathroom cubicle works wonders. I close my eyes, turn inward, and breathe.”
Melinda French-Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah Winfrey have their own methods to deal with stress—from bathroom cool-downs to attacking a problem head-on.
Billionaire founder Matthew Prince has three degrees to his name, but admits the path he took to get there could have been easier had he spent time in Big Tech expanding his networking instead.
For Gen Zers early in their career, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has some advice: don’t underestimate the power of networking.
While the 50-year-old executive is by all means one of the most accomplished in the cybersecurity world as the founder of a $40 billion firm, he just revealed that had he gained experience and made connections in Big Tech, his success may have come a little easier.
"The camaraderie and the rolodex and the interesting people that you will meet in that, is just such a huge accelerant to your career," Prince told Business Insider.
Instead of saying yes to a job offer from companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Netscape during one of the most interesting times in tech—the dot-com boom—he went straight to law school at the University of Chicago after graduating with his bachelor’s degree in English and computer science.
"Figuring out a way to get to some company that's somewhere between 2,000 and 20,000 employees, and is working on interesting projects — that's the thing that I wish I had," he said.
And while Prince does not regret going back to school at all, it’s a viewpoint that’s increasingly hard to find among graduates. Some 51% of Gen Z report their college degree was a “waste of money,” in part due to the skyrocketing cost of tuition as well as the ever-changing job landscape.
Fortune reached out to Prince for further comment.
Tech founders have mixed feelings on the value of higher education
Prince is, by all means, an embracer of higher education, having later gone on to teach law and obtain his MBA from Harvard Business School (where he met Cloudflaire co-founder Michelle Zatlyn).
While he may sound like a unique case among tech leaders, considering big names like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Sam Altman are famously known for dropping out, getting multiple degrees is not uncommon.
Fellow cybersecurity CEOs, like Broadcom’s Hock Tan and Palo Alto Networks’s Nikesh Arora, also both have at least three degrees, which likely helped them land the roles they have today.
On a Sequoia Capital podcast, Arora described his mantra as goal-driven.
“Ideas are not good enough,” Arora said. “You got to have a plan and a North Star. You have to have resourcing that you can sort of execute at the plan.”
And while every Fortune 500 leader may have differing perspectives on the value of degrees, the data doesn’t lie: they are broadly financially worth it, especially if the right major is picked.
A bachelor’s degree in business will pay for itself after just eight years, and current graduates can expect to earn lifetime earnings of over $8 million, according to the Education Data Initiative. For computer science degrees, the return on investment (ROI) is even greater—the degree pays for itself in five years and earnings of over $10 million.
Gen Z has regrets over their degree—and Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince agrees that he would have been successful sooner had he put off college and gone straight to work in Big Tech.
Good morning! Trump administration gutting biggest study on women's health, Adrienne Adams is hoping to be New York City's first female mayor, and two stylish Gen Z founders come for fashion resale.
- Resale race. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni yesterday plastered the internet with the launch of their new startup Phia. There were Phoebe and her dad Bill Gates in the New York Times, newsletter appearances, and fashion coverage. It was the kind of launch we can likely expect from two high-profile Gen Z founders who are building, candidly, in public.
Gates and Kianni met as roommates at Stanford and wanted to work together. They landed on the idea of a shopping assistant; Phia is a price-comparison tool inspired by Google Flights that tells online shoppers whether an item they're considering buying is a good deal. It sources information from across resellers—Depop, Poshmark, The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, eBay, and more—to share other listings and the median price of the item. The goal is to be a full-fledged shopping assistant—not only showing you cheaper secondhand listings, but answering the question, "should I buy this?" based on how it might hold its resale value and even what else you have in your closet.
"Our target consumer is a young woman who's hustling. She shops like a genius, but she doesn't want to waste her time doing it," Gates says.
Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates, Co-Founders of Phia
Phia's name is a portmanteau of Gates' and Kianni's own names. While building the now 8-person startup, the pair are also cohosting a podcast called The Burnouts on Alex Cooper's Unwell network. Their first guest was Phia investor Kris Jenner; they're planning to show the honest reality of building a startup as 22- and 23-year-olds—before an IPO or even sure success. "So many founder podcasts, it's basically a victory lap," Gates says. "For us, it's like—we're not experts." They have raised capital from a "blue-chip investor" but have not announced the details yet; Gates' family didn't fund the startup.
Gates has been an advocate for reproductive rights, alongside her mother Melinda French Gates, and thought she might go into women's health. "I did not expect to be a founder," she says. Kianni founded a climate activism organization called Climate Cardinals and planned to pursue environmental law.
But they're just as passionate about shopping secondhand as they are about those two interests. Kianni's all-time favorite secondhand find is a pair of Dior heels with a blue bottom she found in the wrong size on The RealReal, and then used Phia to find in the right size; Gates' is a $150 pair of Khaite jeans. "This could be our career, building together," Gates said she realized. "This could be what we do every single day."
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
In 2021, Target CEO Brian Cornell made a memorable comment about George Floyd, who was murdered by police in 2020 in an act that sparked outrage over long-standing injustice against Black Americans. “He could have been one of my Target team members,” Cornell said.
He pointed to Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, where Target is headquartered, as the catalyst behind several corporate pledges at the giant retailer. Target said it would spend $2 billion on Black businesses by the end of 2025. In 2020, the company also enacted policies designed to hire and promote more people from underrepresented groups, including people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ+.
But three months ago, Target dramatically scaled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. It announced the changes a few days after President Donald Trump took office and signed executive orders banning DEI in federal workplaces and at federal contractors while threatening to act on “illegal” DEI policies in the private sector. In a memo to employees about the pivot away from DEI , the company referenced the “evolving external landscape.”
Target’s Kiera Fernandez, chief community impact and equity officer, framed the shift in that memo as a new phase in the company’s progress toward creating an “inclusive work and guest environments that welcome all.” But the backlash was immediate, and the retailer became the most prominent example of a DEI about-face ricocheting through corporate America.
The fallout over Target’s decision to unravel their DEI efforts has culminated in a boycott against the store organized by Black activists and faith leaders who are asking their communities to vote with their dollars, and avoid shopping at Target altogether. The most prominent boycott was launched by Jamal Bryant, senior pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta. What he began as a spending “fast” for Lent shows no signs of slowing down, risks real economic damage to the company, and has already become a public relations nightmare that could permanently stain the cult-favorite brand.
Cornell initiated a meeting with the civil rights leader Al Sharpton, who in turn invited Bryant to a meeting last week at Sharpton’s New York office. The trio discussed “the pain of the Black community,” Bryant tells Fortune.
Target has acknowledged that Cornell requested the meeting with Sharpton. The company declined to comment on the meeting, but in a statement to Fortune, a spokesperson for the company said that Target has “an ongoing commitment to creating a welcoming environment for all team members, guests, and suppliers.”
“We remain focused on supporting organizations and creating opportunities for people in the 2,000 communities where we live and operate,” the company also stated.
Bryant says that the meeting was a good start, but certainly did not clear up enough issues to inspire him to call off the boycott.
“It did not come up to all that we're expecting or needing,” says Bryant. “We’re still boycotting.”
Betrayal and boycotts
On Jan. 24, Target announcedit was ending its three-year program to promote diversity in hiring and promotions, closing a program designed to increase spending and media exposure to Black brands, and would stop participating in external reporting of its diversity metrics, among other changes. The repercussions were immediate.
Some social media users declared that they would stop shopping at Target, and invited others to do the same. Since then, more than 135,000 people have signed a Move On petition demanding that Target reverse course. On February 1, Minneapolis civil rights lawyer and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong started a national boycott timed to coincide with the start of Black History Month. Even the daughters of one of Target’s cofounders decried the company’s decision, saying it stands in sharp contrast with the company’s original principles.
Following organic social media uprisings, several majority-Black churches also launched boycotts. Bryant’s church in Atlanta initially called for a Target “fast” during Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter weekend. (This year, Lent began on Wednesday, March 5, and ended on Thursday, April 17, the day before Good Friday, and the same day that Bryant, Sharpton, and Cornell met.) The action involved four demands: Invest some of its profits from Black dollars into Black banks, open locations on the campuses of 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, complete its 2020 pledge to spend $2 billion on Black small businesses, and reinstate its original DEI hiring and promoting goals.
As Lent ended, Bryant called for the “fast” to continue, saying it’s a full boycott now, and compared it to protests during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
“People are resolved to stay the course. The reality is that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was 381 days, and we've just been in this for 10 weeks, and I think that every day we're gaining traction and momentum,” he says, adding that the movement has now attracted 200,000 followers.
Inside the meeting
At the April 17 gathering at Sharpton’s National Action Network office in New York, Bryant met with Cornell for the first time since launching his initial “Target Fast” more than a month prior. Sharpton had not been engaged with Target, he tells Fortune, but he agreed to the meeting only if Bryant could attend. “You boycott people to get them to the table,” says Sharpton. “So I said, if I could help him get to the table, then fine.”
Bryant says he raised his previous four asks at the meeting, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes. Cornell was accompanied by one of his board members, Bryant says, and Sharpton was joined by Franklyn Richardson, the chair of the National Action Network board, and Carra Wallace, a senior advisor at the organization. At the meeting, Bryant says, Cornell pledged to honor its original 2020 commitment to invest $2 billion in Black businesses by July 31. Bryant calls that a positive sign, but not enough.
“He's very warm, very affable, very personable, very engaged, but very out of touch, if they're not moving expeditiously to get it resolved,” says the pastor. “Every day that he's dragging is every day that is costing the company dollars.”
When Bryant and Sharpton pressed Cornell about why Target rolled back its DEI goals, they received “pregnant pauses,” says Bryant. Target’s representatives walked the group through the progress the company made with diversity goals since 2020, Bryant adds, but he emphasizes that was in the “pre-Trump-Musk era.”
Sharpton says he tried to explain to Cornell that “they cannot appease Trump at the expense of their consumers.”
“That's what I said to the CEO—that I don't know why you all are currying favor with Trump when Trump will be gone in [a few] years,” Sharpton tells Fortune. “Your consumers are who you need to deal with.”
Sharpton also said that CEOs can’t expect to maintain a diverse customer base while dropping diversity in its business practices. “Either you want diversity or you don't,” he recalls explaining. “So if you don't want diversity in terms of how you do business, then we will make sure you don't have diversity in terms of who your consumers are.”
Cornell also had an ask of the community leaders, according to Bryant: more time to respond to their demands.
Bryant argues that he realizes Cornell doesn’t work in a silo, and has the board to answer to. But he cites “sterling examples” of others in the business world, including Marriott’s CEO, and Disney shareholders, who have moved quickly to defend DEI. “Just as it is easy for those Fortune 500 companies, so should it be for Target.”
Falling traffic, pointed comments
The meetings between Target and Bryant will continue, Bryant explains. But he and his organizing team are still deliberating over future plans should Target fail to meet the church’s demands. (Safety for the boycott’s supporters is his first priority. “I want to be very cautious and mindful before mobilizing demonstrations in any form,” he says.)
But he adds Cornell should feel a sense of urgency about making peace with Black shoppers and reinstating its DEI policies. “He should be sending us FTD flowers every day to get it resolved,” he says.
Data from Placer.ai shared with Fortune show that weekly foot traffic to Target stores was consistently lower on a year-over-year basis in the 11 weeks following the company’s DEI announcement. Foot traffic for the month of March is down 6.5% compared to last year.
By contrast, Costco, which recently outlined its firm commitment and rationale for supporting DEI, has seen consistent year-over-year increases throughout the same period and a March foot traffic increase of 7.5% compared to last year, according to Placer.ai estimates.
To be sure, Placer.ai also notes that several factors could contribute to the shift, including weather patterns and uncertainty in the economy, especially in the wake of Trump’s announced tariffs.
But some signs of the boycott’s impact are hard to miss. On Instagram, Target can’t post a promotional video without attracting comments about its DEI flip-flop and demands for public apologies. Responding to a recent run-of-the-mill clothing ad, for example, an Instagram user wrote: “My shopping dollars will not go toward uniformity, inequality, or exclusion.”
Meanwhile, Bryant and others, including the NAACP, have created directories that guide users to shop directly from the Black small businesses whose products they’d normally buy at Target and other major retailers, and church groups have organized markets selling goods from Black-owned businesses in major cities including Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and Atlanta.
That isn’t to say that the boycott of what has been a beloved and convenient shop has been easy for many, including members of Bryant’s family. He says his wife and daughters shopped at Target before the boycott. “So I'm feeling the pressure on every side of my house,” he says.
Between the rampant use of AI, numerous decrees from the federal government, and tariff-fueled geopolitical tension, it feels as if the general pace of change in corporate America is skyrocketing. That means HR leaders are feeling pressure from the board, CEOs, or rank-and-file-workers, to make rapid organizational shifts to keep up.
But as longtime CHRO of Citizens Financial Group Susan LaMonica points out, HR leaders need to remind themselves that massive workplace change—whether it’s a culture revamp, an upskilling effort, or incorporating new tech—takes time to pan out. And sometimes, it will be years before companies, especially large ones, reap the benefits of these policies.
“Driving organizational change is all about consistency and repetition. And I think oftentimes what happens with some HR teams is they focus on the flavor of the month, whether that be career development, or incorporating new technology,” says LaMonica, who’s led the human resources practices at the bank for more than a decade. “It takes years to shift leadership behaviors that affect culture in any kind of meaningful way.”
CHROs are often inundated with requests across the management team, she says, leading them to treat new initiatives like new “diet fads.” That means discarding them when they either don’t work as expected, or getting bored and wanting to move onto the next big thing. But she emphasizes that it pays for HR to focus on what’s most important for the long-term growth of the company.
That’s something she experienced first hand, especially after helping the organization transition into becoming a public company in 2014. At the time, the demands on her team were significant, and she says it felt as if there were “100 different agendas coming in all at once.”
Instead of trying to individually address a deluge of demands, she gave her team three enterprise-level agendas to lean into: leadership, career development, and innovation.
Overall, LaMonica says it took close three to five years to substantially move the needle at the company towards a more healthy, productive culture, and around eight years for Citizens to make it into the top quartile of companies on McKinsey’s organizational health index, the goal she was after at the time.
“If you try to overhaul an entire culture or talent strategy overnight, you may get flash in the pan results,” she says. “But to get what you really want, true change, it takes consistency, alignment, and also narrowing your focus.”
Apple Inc. is seeking to import most of the iPhones it sells in the US from India by the end of next year, accelerating a shift beyond China to mitigate risks related to tariffs and geopolitical tensions.
The goal means Apple would roughly double its annual iPhone output in India to more than 80 million units, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing internal plans. Apple assembled just over 40 million iPhones in India in the fiscal year through March 2025. It sells more than 60 million iPhones a year in the US.
The plans are the latest sign of Apple and its suppliers accelerating a pivot away from China, a process that began when harsh Covid lockdowns hurt production at its largest plant. Tariffs introduced by US President Donald Trump as well as Beijing-Washington tensions are prompting Apple to amplify that effort.
Apple representatives in India didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Financial Times reported earlier Apple’s goal was to source all its US-sold iPhones from India by the end of 2026. Bloomberg News previously reported Apple’s plan to increasingly prioritize iPhones from the India supply chain for its US customers.
The Cupertino, California-based company assembled $22 billion worth of iPhones in India in the 12 months ended March, increasing production by nearly 60% over the previous year, Bloomberg reported this month. Apple now makes 20%, or one in five, of iPhones in the South Asian country, while China remains its biggest production base by far.
The bulk of India-made iPhones are assembled at Foxconn Technology Group’s factory in southern India. Tata Group’s electronics manufacturing arm, which bought Wistron Corp.’s local business and runs Pegatron Corp.’s operations in India, is also a key supplier. Tata and Foxconn are also building new plants and adding production capacity in southern India, Bloomberg News has reported previously.
Of the total India production, Apple exported 1.5 trillion rupees ($17.5 billion) in iPhones from the region in the fiscal year through March 2025, the nation’s technology minister said on April 8.
Shipments of iPhones from India to the US accelerated after Trump announced his plans for the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs in February. Apple’s average India production and exports surged all through the fiscal year to March.
The Trump administration earlier this month exempted electronics goods including smartphones and computers from its reciprocal tariffs. That’s good news for companies such as Apple, though the reprieve doesn’t appear to extend to Trump’s separate 20% duty on China, applied to pressure Beijing to crack down on fentanyl.
This also means iPhones made in India won’t attract any duties as of now. Barring the exceptions made April 11, Trump’s cumulative levies on China remain at 145%, and will likely force companies such as Apple to intensify their supply chain shift.
Apple now assembles its entire iPhone range in India, including the more expensive titanium Pro models. Its manufacturing success in the world’s most populous nation is also helped by state subsidies tied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambition to turn the country into a manufacturing hub.
It’s no secret that AI-generated hyper-realistic impersonations known as deepfakes have become more sophisticated.
Last year, it was a wake-up call when a finance worker was duped by a fraudulent AI-digitally manipulated video featuring a deepfake of the firm’s CFO ordering money transfers that cost the Hong Kong-based company millions. But now fraudsters are imitating prominent finance professionals on Instagram.
In a new report, Fortune’s Jim Edwards details how a video ad campaign on Instagram used a convincing deepfake of Goldman Sachs executives Abby Joseph Cohen and David Kostin. The goal was to tempt amateurs who want to get rich quickly into a stock-buying WhatsApp group.
“Abby Joseph Cohen is a legend in the world of investing,” Edwards writes. “She was chief investment strategist at Goldman Sachs until 2008, when she moved to the bank’s Global Markets Institute, before retiring from Goldman in 2021. Currently, she is a professor at Columbia Business School.”
So it was most likely a surprise for retail investors to see Joseph Cohen in a video on their Instagram feed with a compelling offer: “We have found three severely undervalued technology stocks. Join my group now to get it immediately. Anyone who owns these three stocks in the next five years can retire comfortably.”
The video is fake, Edwards confirmed with Goldman Sachs, and it was seemingly generated by AI. “There should always be caution exercised around any unverified communication purporting to come from a Goldman Sachs employee,” the bank said. And Meta, owner of Instagram, took down the video.
The deepfake was so convincing even people who have met Joseph Cohen in person likely would think it was real, at least at first glance. But she isn’t the only financial expert who's a target.
“There is a whole raft of fake AI video chief investment officers making the rounds on social media right now,” Edwards warns. You can read the complete report here.
In an era of deepfakes, cybersecurity is indeed top of mind for CFOs who are collaborating with chief information security officers to mitigate risk. A recent prediction from Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services said generative AI could amplify deepfakes and enable fraud losses to reach $40 billion by 2027 in the U.S.
From the workplace to social media, deepfakes are becoming more pervasive. But companies can use AI to beat fraudsters at their own game.
China’s refusal to accept Boeing planes has become one of the most visible flashpoints of the U.S.-China trade war. Beijing has even sent planes assembled in China back to the U.S. as it retaliates against steep tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg admitted that China has refused to accept two planes that were ready for delivery, thanks to the tariffs. He added that the planemaker was planning to meet 50 Chinese orders this year, but is now “actively assessing” other options.
That shouldn't be too difficult, says Steven Townend, CEO of BOC Aviation, one of the world’s top jet leasing companies. Airlines turn to companies like BOC Aviation when they want to expand their fleet without necessarily making the expensive decision to buy a new plane.
“Boeing continues to see strong demand for their aircraft,” Townend says. “It’s relatively easy for them to find alternate customers for those planes right now.”
The aviation industry is still facing a shortage of planes due to manufacturing struggles at both Boeing and Airbus, caused by factors including the COVID pandemic, safety scandals, and supply hiccups at major suppliers.
Airplanes are made up of 10,000 different parts, and “a delay with any one of those can delay the whole plane,” Townend says and added that an airline will probably will not get a plane before 2030 if it was to order one from Airbus or Boeing today.
That makes a suddenly available Boeing jet a hot commodity. Airlines in Malaysia and India are reportedly eyeing jets that are now suddenly on the market, thanks to China’s refusal to take them.
At the end of March, BOC Aviation announced that it was ordering 50 new Boeing 737-8 aircraft. The company currently has a total order book of 346 aircraft, that includes both Airbus and Boeing planes, which Townend points out is the second-largest among plane lessors.
BOC Aviation has a portfolio of 829 aircraft and engines owned, managed, and on order. The company counts carriers like American Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and Qatar Airways as amongst its clients.
Tariffs are still a problem
Still, Townend warns that continued U.S. tariff uncertainty could hurt an industry that started the year with a positive outlook.
In December, the International Air Transport Association projected that 5.2 billion people would travel by air in 2025. That would be the first time more than 5 billion people would take to the skies. The group also projected that airlines would earn $36.6 billion in profit this year.
Things don’t look quite so rosy now. In recent weeks, major U.S. airlines have either pulled or softened their guidance, citing uncertainty.
On Thursday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan warned that the U.S. airline industry is already in a recession. Fellow aviation CEO Robert Isom, of American Airlines, recently warned analysts that “uncertainty is what we’re living with now.”
At the moment, Townened says a tariff-induced hit to travel is still largely constrained to the U.S., with no evidence of a similar drag on European or Asian airlines.
Yet continued uncertainty will inevitably be a global drag on the industry. “Everybody is watching the situation on tariffs,” he says. "If this uncertainty runs for a material length of time, then inevitably it will affect global trade, and one of the things that drives airline traffic is global trade.”
U.S. futures were up this morning in early trading after the S&P 500 rose 2% on Thursday. That’s nice, but the broader global markets have spoken loud and clear ever since President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on trade tariffs: Most Asian markets have performed way better than Western ones. Some, like Japan’s TOPIX, are even in positive territory.
Japan’s TOPIX has been in positive territory for the past six months, up 0.37% for the period. It’s an example of a global trend in the equity markets: The Asian indexes are performing much better than the major U.S. markets. India’s Nifty 50 is within one percentage point of going positive over the same time period.
The U.S.’s S&P 500, however, remains down 6% over that period, dragged underwater by the declining value of the dollar and the Trump administration’s war on free trade.
Another example: Over the past 30 days, the Nifty 50 was up 1.7%; the S&P was down 5% in the same period.
In the past 24 hours, however, there have been fresh signs of life in the U.S. The S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaqwere all up at least 1% at the close of the markets on Thursday as investors continue to hope that the Trump administration will soften its trade agenda.
Strong earnings, particularly from Google, American Airlines, Southwest, and Hasbro, also helped drive gains. The good vibes continued in Asia and Europe this morning, and U.S. futures were in the green, too.
Here’s a snapshot of today’s action:
The S&P 500 rose 2%, notching a third straight day of gains. (Reality check: It’s still down 6.75% YTD.)
The Nasdaq Composite was up 2.74%.
Palantir was up nearly 7%.
U.S. futures contracts for the S&P were up 0.49% this morning, pre–opening bell.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was up 1.9% this morning.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3%.
China’s main indexes were flat/mixed.
The Stoxx Europe 600 was up 0.35% in early trading.
U.K.’s FTSE 100 was marginally positive this morning, up 0.15% in early trading.
How damaging has the flight of capital out of U.S. markets been?
Goldman Sachs put some number on that in a note to clients on the “flight of foreign investors out of U.S. assets,” sent yesterday by analyst Daniel Chavez and his team: “This dynamic poses a substantial risk to equity valuations because foreign investors entered 2025 with a record 18% ownership share of U.S. equities. We estimate foreign investors have sold roughly $60 billion of U.S. stocks since the start of March. High-frequency fund flow data suggest European investors have driven the selling, while other regions have generally continued to buy U.S. stocks.”
There is no mystery as to why investors have been moving their money East: It’s Trump. In a typically arch note to clients this morning, UBS Global Wealth Management chief economist Paul Donovan wrote: “China said it was not negotiating with the U.S. over trade. U.S. President Trump avowed that the U.S. was talking with someone (who they are talking to is a secret, apparently). Things like this might possibly be contributing to the economically damaging levels of uncertainty.”
In today’s CEO Daily: Peter Vanham talks to LSE’s Paul De Grauwe about the declining reputation of the dollar.
The big story: More signs of compromise in the trade war.
The markets: Mostly up!
Analyst notes from Apollo on the dollar, Wedbush on AI capex, Macquarie on China, and Goldman Sachs on GDP.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. The threat of prohibitive “reciprocal” tariffs may have temporarily receded this week, but in one way, a 10 percent barrier for foreign companies exporting to the U.S. remains in place: the U.S. dollar dropped in value by about a tenth against a basket of currencies in the last few weeks, including against the euro, pound, Swiss franc, and yen.
President Trump has long believed that a strong dollar hurts U.S. manufacturers—making their goods less affordable in foreign markets—and has therefore wanted to devalue it. Despite the dollar being free-floating, it is one area where Trump’s wishes have been self-fulfilling, to a degree. His on-and-off again tariffs on imports, efforts by the administration to drive down government borrowing costs, and pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates, have dented markets’ trust in the greenback and plunged its value compared to other currencies.
To understand what’s happening now, and how it will affect U.S. and global multinationals, I spoke to LSE professor Paul De Grauwe, whose early 1990s work on “chaotic” exchange rates remains a fundamental text for economists today. Here are his takeaways for leaders:
This is nothing new. The dollar dropped in value, but it did not do so in a “phenomenal” way, De Grauwe noted. “It doesn’t worry me.” In fact, the dollar today is trading at about its 10-year average against the euro. And even the drop of about 10% in the past two months isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Back in 2017, the dollar dropped twice as much in a year.
CEOs were able to adjust then, and they can do so again now, the economist said. For foreign companies, it means “you’ll either have to raise prices, or lower profits,” he said, dryly. “It is always this way with currencies.” And for U.S. companies, the opposite is true. But in either case, the adjustment will be absorbable, and nothing new under the sun.
Don’t expect a Mar-a-Lago accord.De Grauwe isn’t buying the rumors about a possible “Mar-a-Lago” accord, where—in accordance with Trump’s wishes—global policymakers would help drive down the value of the dollar structurally. “It is fiction,” he says. Back in the 1980s, the so-called Plaza Accord did achieve that goal, halving the value of the dollar against the Deutsche Mark in the space of a year.
But two things will prevent any such plan today. First, the global economy is a lot more diversified, with China and other emerging markets having entered the scene, making effective interventions harder to coordinate. And second, the dollar isn’t as overvalued today as it was then, when a belief in the “wonder of Reagonomics” had doubled the dollar’s value in the years leading up to the 1985 Accord.
Watch the Treasury. The one place that could stir things up, De Grauwe said, is the Treasury. “The safe-haven reputation of the dollar is important,” he said. “The dollar has had this reputation for a long time. But that is now undermined.”
More specifically, if the administration ever became serious about forcing a swap between 10-year Treasuries and newly created 100-year ones (the so-called “forever bond”, which today remain a concept only), it could mean the end of the safe haven status of the U.S. dollar, and cause a dramatic fall in its value.For now, he said, that didn’t seem likely to happen. But with this administration, predicting the future is, to put it lightly, hard to do. More news below.—Peter Vanham
WPP Plc said revenue declined in the first quarter after sales in its European business units dropped, while Chief Executive Officer Mark Read said the company hasn’t seen client reaction from tariffs yet.
Revenue, excluding pass-through costs for services from other vendors, fell 2.7% to £2.48 billion ($3.3 billion), the British advertising agency said in a statement on Friday. That compares to the £2.54 billion average analyst forecast compiled by Bloomberg.
WPP said it would maintain its guidance for the year and that it hasn’t seen any client reaction so far after US President Donald Trump levied global tariffs that upended markets. The company had already warned that sales this year would remain flat, at best, and Read said in February that he was worried about customers pulling back because of the uncertain political environment.
The tariffs — many of which are still uncertain but threaten to upend supply chains and disrupt sales into the US — are clouding outlooks for companies across industries this quarter. French rival Publicis Groupe SA said last week it would stick to its revenue forecast for 2025, betting recent client wins would help it weather the economic uncertainty.
WPP shares rose 1.3% to close at 559.80 pence in London trading on Thursday. The company’s stock has declined 32% this year.
WPP, once the largest ad agency globally, has been working on ways to reignite growth and streamline its operations. The British ad firm had previously restructured its stable of brands to save costs and announced a plan to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on new technologies including building out artificial intelligence capabilities.
Publicis became the biggest ad company by revenue for the first time in 2024 after years of growth from acquisitions and the expansion of its digital business. The French company will soon be overtaken when Omnicom Group completes its acquisition of Interpublic Group.
While much of the world is focused on a volatile international trade war, two of China’s largest internet companies are inflicting greater damage on each other at home.
JD.com Inc. has launched a costly battle to steal market share away from food-delivery leader Meituan, while the latter has been encroaching on the former’s e-commerce stronghold. The companies’ Hong Kong-listed stocks have dropped about 30% each from March highs, shedding around $70 billion in combined market value.
Investors are bracing for a prolonged struggle that will hurt earnings for the pair. Analysts have cut price targets for both stocks, and defensive positioning has ramped up in the options market.
“Both sides are worse off in the near term, and it’s unclear how long this battle will last,” said Daisy Li, a fund manager at EFG Asset Management HK Ltd. The intense level of competition in the Chinese food-delivery market will damage profitability, she added.
Even as Donald Trump’s tariffs have taken steam out of the recent China tech rally, the impact of this domestic rivalry stands out. Meituan and JD.com rank among the worst eight performers on the Hang Seng Tech Index this year after both were in the top half in 2024.
The switch came as JD.com deployed a cash-burning strategy to promote its JD Takeaway food platform, which was officially launched in February. The Beijing-based company has announced over $1.4 billion in discounts for consumers, waved commission fees for some merchants and aims to hire 100,000 full-time delivery riders.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimates JD.com has taken about 5% share of China’s food delivery market, which was previously divided at about 75% for Meituan and 25% for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Ele.me. The brokerage estimates that at the current scale, JD Takeaway could generate up to 18 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in annualized losses, wiping out 36% of its parent’s operating profit for 2025.
“We don’t think this is a sustainable strategy because of the financial impact on group P&L,” analyst Alex Yao wrote in a note Tuesday. “It is cost prohibitive for a new entrant to gain significant market share in China’s food delivery market through a deeply subsidized growth strategy.”
Meituan has successfully fended off food-delivery competition in the past, but JD.com is seen as a formidable challenger given its existing delivery network. At the same time, Meituan made inroads this year into JD.com’s core quick-commerce field, computer and electronics products.
While both firms are heavily reliant on Chinese consumption, Meituan has been spending aggressively on expansion into overseas food delivery through its Keeta app.
“JD doesn’t have many growth opportunities left in China, and has very little overseas exposure,” said Felix Wang, head of global technology & software at Hedgeye Risk Management. In this context, its costly JD Takeaway foray is more of a defensive move and “not entirely about food delivery.”
Sell-side analysts have turned more cautious as the skirmish drags on. Though both stocks are overwhelmingly buy rated, the average price target for Meituan is down 8% from a March high, and JD.com’s has dipped about 4%.
The costs of hedging against declines in both stocks remain far above their one-year averages. For JD.com, the ratio of outstanding bearish-to-bullish options has surged to its highest level since August, ranking among the most negatively skewed Hong Kong stocks.
Food delivery riders of JD Takeaway (left), the food delivery service under China's e-commerce giant JD.com, and Meituan (right) wait for the green light on the road on April 23, 2025 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province of China.
South Korea—the poster child for East Asia’s drop in marriages and childbirth—seems like a strange target market for Match Group, operator of dating platforms like Tinder Hinge.
“Korea has an acute challenge” when it comes to long-term relationships, with a “pretty shocking” 40% decline in marriages over a 10-year-period, notes Malgosia Green, Asia CEO for Match.
Match Group recently launched a made-for-Korea version of its Pairs app, which targets those seeking more serious relationships or marriage, in contrast to more casual apps like Tinder and Hinge. (Match also offers Tinder in South Korea.)
Green thinks that Pairs could be a good fit for South Korea, given the app’s success in neighboring Japan, another country with a declining population.
Extrapolating from government data, she suggests that one in 10 marriages in Japan happens due to Pairs. “Twenty-five percent of marriages in Japan happen through dating apps. We can deduce our share of that because Pairs is the leader in Japan,” she explains.
Match has tailored Pairs to East Asian markets. The app asks users tough questions like “How often do you want to meet your mother-in-law” or “Do you want kids”: awkward in any date setting, but perhaps particularly in East Asia, where people tend to be more circumspect.
Pairs doesn’t publicly surface those answers, but the app does try to match people who align on these “real mind match” questions.
“This is our go-to-market feature for the Korean market,” Green says.
Asia's demographic change
Despite a mild uptick in births and marriages last year, South Korea's demographic situation remains the most extreme among East Asian societies followed by Japan, and others like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.
South Korea reported 222,400 marriages in 2024, down from 322,807 in 2013. Fertility rates fell over the same period, falling to 0.75 children born per woman in 2024, down from 1.19 children in 2013.
Where's Match going next in Asia?
Match reported $3.5 billion in revenue for 2024, a 3% increase. Yet Asia revenue declined by 6% over the same period to reach $284 million. Global paying users also declined 5% year on year to reach 14.9 million users.
The company recently brought in Zillow cofounder Spencer Rascoff to be its CEO in February as it tries to attract more users.
Still, Green thinks the Asia-Pacific region presents new opportunities for Match: 2024's revenue dip in the region aside, paying users in Asia increased 9% year on year to reach 1 million users.
Japan and South Korea not only try to give monetary incentives to encourage people to have children, but actively try to get people to meet through events like government-organized speed-dating. Green says that Match is already partnering with prefecture governments in Japan.
While Match is now focused on South Korea, Green is looking to India as the company's next target in Asia.
Despite a long history of arranged marriages, Green says that today’s Indian parents are hoping to give their children more agency. Marriages for love are more accepted today compared to five years ago, Green says, citing survey data.
“We see an opportunity there for a high-intent marriage-oriented app,” Green says. “There’s no one playing that space at scale.”
Nissan warned it will post a net loss of as much as ¥750 billion ($5.3 billion) for the fiscal year that ended in March — a record annual deficit — as restructuring charges weigh on the struggling Japanese carmaker.
With an aging lineup, Nissan has been discounting its cars in order to avoid building up inventory, eroding profits. Analysts on average were projecting a loss of ¥112 billion, which itself was worse than Nissan’s prior outlook for a deficit of ¥80 billion.
The even weaker-than-expected results will put increasing pressure on Nissan to find another lifeline after efforts to combine with Honda formally ended earlier this year. That led to the ouster of Chief Executive Officer Makoto Uchida, who’s said it will be “difficult to survive” without a partnership of some sort.
While Nissan slightly raised its sales forecast late Thursday, the company warned that its net loss could be ¥700 billion to ¥750 billion. “This is primarily due to changes in the competitive environment and deterioration in sales performance,” the automaker said.
The company’s shares rose as much as 3.1% on Friday as some analysts noted that there has at least been an improvement in the automaker’s cash position. The stock is still down 29% since January.
Nissan is “finally admitting the inevitable, so that’s a good thing,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tatsuo Yoshida said. “The market was already expecting a bigger loss.” Yoshida added that while the Japanese automaker is tallying up its losses to make a fresh start, that “doesn’t necessarily mean the future is bright.”
Citigroup analysts said the impairments equated to around 10% of Nissan’s tangible and intangible assets.
“Nissan had been aiming at a cost structure that could generate profits even at production of 3.5 million units but it plans to further improve the breakeven point,” Citigroup’s Arifumi Yoshida wrote in a note. At the end of March, Nissan’s net cash stood at ¥1.49 trillion, up from ¥1.24 trillion as of the end of December and “we view the improvement as somewhat positive.”
The carmaker’s sales are faltering in the U.S. and China while it faces $5.6 billion in debt obligations next year. Nissan’s credit-default swaps widened sharply on Friday morning. Considering the turnaround challenges and bond redemption costs, “a full recovery in fiscal year 2025 appears unlikely,” Hiroki Uchida, credit analyst at Daiwa Securities Group, said.
Nissan also doesn’t have a strong lineup of hybrid vehicles to offer customers in key markets and has been embroiled in management turmoil and infighting since former Chairman Carlos Ghosn was arrested and ousted in 2018.
Uchida, 58, stepped down last month to take responsibility for Nissan’s deteriorating fortunes and was replaced by Ivan Espinosa, who previously had held the title of chief planning officer for a year.
Espinosa, 46, faces the unenviable task of reversing Nissan’s fortunes, refreshing its outdated lineup and finding new business partners. He’ll also have to navigate the upheaval caused by Donald Trump’s sweeping 25% tariffs on car and parts imported into the US.
Operating income is now expected to be ¥85 billion, down from an earlier forecast of ¥120 billion, Nissan said. Net sales are likely to come in at ¥12.6 trillion instead of ¥12.5 trillion, according to the company.
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