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Target and Best Buy, two of the country’s largest retail chains, warned their prices will increase after President Donald Trumps 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada went into effect on Tuesday, sending the stock market plunging more than 650 points and shooting shock waves through the financial system. Adding fuel to the fire, Trump also said he would double tariffs on all Chinese imports from 10% to 20%. The move prompted Canada and China, two key trading partners, to swiftly retaliate with their own tariffs, igniting what many are calling a global trade war. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would now put a 25% levy on U.S. goods, while Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico plans to announce similar measures this weekend. Canada, Mexico, and China together are responsible for more than 40% of all imports by value to American consumers. The Trump administration went ahead with the tariffs, despite experts warning the measures would raise already-skyrocketing prices. And American consumers aren’t happy: 74% believe tariffs will lead to higher prices, and 44% think tariffs will impact their finances negatively, reports a recent LendingTree study that analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data. Which companies and industries are likely to raise prices? Target CEO Brian Cornell said the tariffs could force the company to raise prices this week because the chain imports much of its fruit and vegetables from Mexico during the winter, per CNN. Well try to protect pricing, but the consumer will likely see price increases over the next couple of days, Cornell said. The U.S. imports $46 billion of agricultural products from Mexico, according to USDA data, with fresh fruit, beer, and avocados topping the list. Meanwhile, casual-dining chain Chipotle, which sources about half of its avocados from Mexico, told NBC News it intends to absorb the costs of the tariffs. Electronics makers are also getting caught in the crosshairs. On Tuesday’s earnings call, Best Buy’s CEO Corie Barry said prices were highly likely to increase due to the tariffs on China and Mexico, as vendors “will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers.” Barry said this is because “the consumer electronics supply chain is highly global, technical, and complex, and its two top sources for those products are China (55%) and Mexico (20%). The news sent shares plungingdown more than 15% (NYSE: BBY) after the morning bell on Tuesday, despite strong fourth-quarter earnings that topped expectations. Another place where Americans could see price increases is the U.S. automotive industry, which relies heavily on parts from abroad. One industry analyst, Daniel Roeska, said he expects to see “severe disruptions” in profits and supply chains. In fact, the tariffs could add as much as $12,000 to the price of a new car, according to a report from the Anderson Economic Group as reported by NBC News. The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents GM, Ford, and Stellantis, said that their vehicles and parts should be exempt from the tariffs based on negotiations during Trump’s first term. Despite that, shares of Ford (NYSE:F) and General Motors (NYSE:GM), which were already down on tariff fears, dropped more than 2% and 3%, respectively, on Tuesday. AutoZone CEO Philip Daniele also said in September that the auto-parts company would “pass those tariff costs back to the consumer.” So did Columbia Sportswear CEO Timothy Boyle, who told the Washington Post last fall that the company will “just raise the prices. . . . Its going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans. States most vulnerable to Trumps tariffs Keeping those products affordable could be harder in some states, including Montana, New Mexico, and Vermont. The LendingTree study found that those three states, in particular, get at least two-thirds of their imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, and are the U.S. states most likely to be affected by the tariff wars.
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E-Commerce
The internet posts and side projects of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) worker Jordan Wick could give some clues for how Musks efficiency group might attempt to use AI to downsize and retool the government. During the last half of February, Wick, who has a DOGE email account associated with the Executive Office of the President and now is embedded in the General Services Administration (GSA), posted to his GitHub page the code for several tools that appeared to be related to DOGEs work. The page was discovered by political reporter Roger Sollenberger at the end of last month. Wick posted the code for a tool that automatically downloads DMs from Twitter accounts. The code specifies Twitter accounts, which existed only until the social platform rebranded to X in October 2023, suggesting the possibility that the tool could be used to search through the digital past of government employees looking for disagreeable opinions or references. Another tool appeared to be designed for collecting sensitive data from government agency org charts. The tool contained fields for capturing the employees office, a 1-5 satisfaction rating, union status, and whether or not their position is statutorily mandated. Both the Twitter DM and org chart tools could be used to capture and structure data for use in an AI model. One source within the GSA believes the sensitive data collected by the tools could be used in a potential AI federal employee evaluation/firing-bot. Wick has now set his GitHub account to private. (DOGE didnt immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on Wicks GitHub posts.) Wicks tools appear to be designed for evaluating and firing more federal employees, but his professional background suggests a deep interest in modernizing government IT systems using AI. After graduating from MIT in 2020 and working at the self-driving car company Waymo, Wick cofounded (with ex-Palantir employee Anthony Jancso) Accelerate SF, which put on hackathons looking for ways to use large language models to improve local government services in San Francisco. In 2024, Accelerate SF renamed itself AccelerateX and began courting federal agency contracts with its own modern OS for government. A recruiting post on X said the company hopes to use AI to reduce expenditures, automate tedious work, and help interpret government policy language. AccelerateX claimed last May that it already had contracts with two of the largest transportation agencies in America, but a search for the companys name in the federal procurement database came up empty. Those contracts could be with local or state governments. (AccelerateX did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) One key challenge of using AI tools to streamline the government is that they must be deftly integrated into existing mission-critical systemssome of them old and brittle like the COBOL-coded mainframe systems used to process Social Security payments. Any interruption to those legacy systems could deprive millions of people of benefits they depend on to live. And there are many such systems active in the government.
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E-Commerce
For many new mothers, one of the most mysterious and elusive parts of breastfeeding is the latch. While some babies’ mouths manage to automatically make an airtight seal around their mother’s nipple, others can have difficulties, or physical impediments, that make achieving good suction and proper nursing almost impossible. One solution care providers have offered is the nipple shield, a cuplike perforated silicone device that fits on top of a mother’s nipple and areola and improves the way babies make their latch. It’s typically a short-term method for addressing issues ranging from tongue-ties to flat nipples to engorgement. The problem with nipple shieldsand even for those nursing mothers and babies with a textbook latchis that it can be hard for moms to know when milk is actually flowing. [Photo: Munchkin] Baby brand Munchkin is trying to eliminate some of that mystery with the Flow Nipple Shield +, a new baby nutrition device that works like a conventional nipple shield but which also has an innovative extended channel for the milk to flow through, offering mothers a visual confirmation that babies are successfully latched and effectively nursing. Steven B. Dunn, founder and CEO of WHY Brands, Munchkin’s parent company, says the device addresses some of the literal pain points of breastfeeding while aiming at a bigger target. We describe our product as a nipple shield because it helps explain to mom what it is. We’re not selling a product to reduce pain, though it does reduce pain just like another nipple shield. We’re creating and designing a new category, Dunn says. This is a breastfeeding insight tool. [Photo: Munchkin] The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breastfeeding newborns for the first six months of life, and supports continued breastfeeding for the first two years of life. But according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, only about 60% of babies in the U.S. are still breastfeeding at six months, and only about a quarter of babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months. Part of the shortage is that many mothers think they aren’t able to breastfeed effectively. A 2013 study from Pediatrics found that a perception of insufficient milk supply was the leading reason mothers stopped breastfeeding, despite only 5% of mothers actually having those symptoms. That perception led to 60% of mothers stopping breastfeeding earlier than they wanted to. In the face of these numbers, Munchkin saw an opportunity to give mothers more information about what was actually happening during the breastfeeding process. The innovation of the Flow Nipple Shield + is a unique milk channel that brings milk on a looping path from the nipple to the baby’s mouth, jutting out from the latch zone so that a mother (or other observer) can easily see milk moving through. This channel, the width, and dimensions of it, went through a lot of test and learn, test, and learn, says Dunn. It was probably the most difficult product to manufacture in Munchkin’s 30-year history. The nipple shield’s design has been in development for almost a decade. Munchkin’s design and product teams worked with lactation consultants and engineers to fine-tune the form of the device, and to ensure the milk channel was long enough to provide visual confirmation without making it too hard for babies to get the milk all the way through. They also worked to reduce its overall size. We purposely made the product as thin as possible with food grade silicone to maximize the skin-to-skin contact between mom and baby, Dunn says. [Photo: Munchkin] During product development, Munchkin launched a 12-month clinical trial of the device, to gauge its effectiveness in encouraging more breastfeeding. Among the 301 participants in the trial, more than 93% were still breastfeeding at the six-month mark. Our research shows that if moms get confident, especially in the first month of breastfeeding, they’re much more likely to continue, Dunn says. Available in four sizes, the Flow Nipple Shield + retails for $40 and includes a special syringe for cleaning the surface and the milk channel. The device will be available in the U.S., Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. It’s probably the largest global campaign we’ll ever do, says Diana Barnes, chief brand officer at WHY. But the nature of the product has also posed a problem for its marketing. The best way to explain the product, Barnes says, is to show it being used during breastfeeding, which requires at least partial exposure of a breast. Some vendors have chosen not to show our assets, says Barnes I was actually quite disappointed. That hasn’t stopped the company from pursuing ad placements around the world, including in Times Square. Our goal is to normalize what is the most natural thing to women since the beginning of time, Barnes says. The Flow Nipple Shield + is an attempt to make that natural process less mysterious and frustrating. We do not want to be preachy. We don’t want to push. If mom’s goal is a day, if mom’s goal is a month, or six months, or a year, we want to do whatever we can do to provide insights, Dunn says. This just shows your milk is flowing, your milk is not flowing. It’s a green light or red light. And we think that information is so key for mom making her choices, whatever it’s going to be.
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E-Commerce
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