Actress, singer, and fashion icon Zendaya can add another line item to her résumé: shoe designer.
On co-created its new Cloudzone Moon model with Zendaya and her stylist, Law Roach. It’s an update to the Swiss athletic apparel brands existing Cloudzone silhouette, which it released this year, and part of Ons fall/winter 2025 collection. Its the latest design to spring from a multiyear partnership with Zendaya that On announced last year.
[Photo: On]
Stylish and minimalist, the Nike-esque Cloudzone model is On’s all-day shoe made with “CloudTec,” the companys trademarked name for its soft midsole design. The style also has forefoot padding and a breathable mesh upper. Think of it as athleisure for your foot.
This “footleisure”-forward sneaker has also had a few iterations since launch: Zendaya wore the shoes in her April campaign for the brand, and On collaborated with NYC-based lifestyle brand Kith for a pair in February. The new Moon iteration has a tan base with red laces and red on the sole; there are also gray and black colorways.
[Photo: On]
Like Zendaya’s spring/summer 2025 campaign for On, which featured its own trailer for a fake sci-fi movie, the creative behind the brand’s new season is highly produced. Photographer Emily Lipton shot stills of Zendaya wearing the shoes paired with the collection’s bodysuit, jacket, and shorts on a set that looks otherworldly. A companion film was directed by Bardia Zeinali, who’s directed ads for Calvin Klein and H&M, and music videos like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” and Tate McRae’s VMA-nominated “Sports Car” and “Just Keep Watching.”
[Photo: On]
On saw nearly 43% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter with revenue of more than $807 million, according to data from PitchBook. The company says apparel is one of the major reasons why. Net sales of apparel nearly doubled in the first three months of the year, cofounder Caspar Coppetti said on an earnings call in May, and there’s more to come. CEO Martin Hoffmann said On has a “highly performance-driven product pipeline” in the works for the rest of the year.
As apparel companies have leaned more and more into athleisure, they have also leaned into marketing their products as a lifestyle choice rather than an athletic one. That means signature sneakers arent just for basketball players anymore. Theyre for Zendaya, too.
Stocks are rising on Wall Street Thursday, even as President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs take effect on dozens of countries.The S&P 500 added 0.6% and is flirting with its record, which was set late last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 182 points, or 0.4%, after a half hour of trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% higher.Worries are still high that Trump’s tariffs are damaging the economy, particularly after last week’s worse-than-expected report on the job market. But hopes for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve and a torrent of stronger-than-expected profit reports from big U.S. companies are helping to overshadow the concerns, at least for now. Lower interest rates can give the economy and investment prices a boost, though the downside is that they can also push inflation higher.The Bank of England cut its main interest rate on Thursday in hopes of bolstering the sluggish U.K. economy.The U.S. tariffs that took effect Thursday morning were also already well known, as well as lower than what Trump had initially threatened. Some countries are still trying to negotiate down the tax rates on their exports, and continued uncertainty seems to be the only certainty on Wall Street. All the while, the U.S. stock market faces criticism that it’s climbed too far, too fast since hitting a bottom in April and left prices looking too expensive.The latest reports on the U.S. economy came in mixed, meanwhile, which left Treasury yields relatively stable in the bond market.One said that slightly more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. That could be an indication of rising layoffs, but the number remains within its recent range.“There is nothing to see here!” according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “These are not nearly recession readings.”A separate report said that productivity for U.S. workers improved by more during the spring than economists expected. That could help the U.S. economy grow without adding more pressure on inflation. And that’s particularly important when Trump’s tariffs look set to increase prices for all kinds of things that U.S. households and businesses buy.On Wall Street, Apple helped lead the market amid hopes that its massive size can help it navigate Trump’s economy. Its stock rose 3.1% after its CEO, Tim Cook, joined Trump at the White House on Wednesday to say it’s increasing its investment in U.S. manufacturing by an additional $100 billion over the next four years.Trump also announced a 100% tariff on imported computer chips, but he added “if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”“Large, cash-rich companies that can afford to build in America will be the ones to benefit the most,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “It’s survival of the biggest.”DoorDash climbed 3% after the food delivery app topped Wall Street’s profit expectations for the latest quarter. It attracted new customers and saw the total number of orders increase.Duolingo, the language-learning app, soared 31.8% after it crushed Wall Street’s expectations. The company said its subscription revenue grew 46% over the same period last year.They helped offset a drop for Eli Lilly, which fell 13.9% even though the drugmaker reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Analysts said some investors were disappointed with results that Lilly provided for a late-stage study of its potential pill version of the popular weight-loss drug Zepbound.Intel slipped 1.7% after Trump called for its CEO to resign, while accusing him of being “highly CONFLICTED,” though he gave no evidence.In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.Stocks climbed 0.2% in Shanghai and 0.7% in Hong Kong after China reported that its exports picked up in July, helped by a flurry of shipments as businesses took advantage of a pause in Trump’s tariff war with Beijing.Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.6%. Toyota Motor’s stock fell after it cut its full-year earnings forecasts largely because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but Sony rose after the entertainment and electronics company indicated it’s taking less damage from the tariffs than it had expected.In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.22%, where it was late Wednesday.
AP Business Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
Stan Choe, AP Business Writer
Youve seen the PBS logo in the news a lot lately. The current logothree facial silhouettes in white and bluehas remained largely unchanged since Tom Geismar, the cofounder of the canonical corporate design firm Chermayeff & Geismar, designed it in 1984. And its message has remained steadfast, too: PBS’s programming is a civic service for everyone, as an extension of the right to a public education in the United States.
The logo has a name: the Everyman, first coined by the iconic corporate designer Herb Lubalin, who designed the original PBS mark in 1971 to unify the look of its 200 local stations. The obvious illusion comes out of the name, Lubalin said. Public means people.
The PBS logo, 2019present. [Image: PBS]
Republicans have long accused the broadcaster of liberal bias and have for decades attempted to curtail its funding, although this position runs counter to public opinion66% of Americans agree that they support federal funding for public radio, and 7 in 10 think its a valuable service, according to a recent Harris national poll.
Finally, last month Republicans succeeded. Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in previously approved federal funding for public broadcasting as part of a $9 billion rescissions package suggested by President Trump, largely along party lines. This eliminates all federal funding for NPR and PBS, which had been approved through 2027 with bipartisan support by congress.
The Senate Appropriations Committee then declined to restore some of the funding for the next budget year, which supporters of PBS previously considered to be a possible path forward for the broadcaster. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will now shut down, it announced last week.
A 1971 version of the mark. [Image: PBS]
More than 70% of CPB’s annual federal appropriation goes directly to more than 1,500 local public media stations, according to a web page of its financials. This loss in funding could force local stations, especially in rural areas, to shut down, according to the CPB. Local member stations are independent and locally owned and operated, according to NPR. As a public-private partnership, local PBS stations get about 15% of their revenue from federal funding.
Following this news, I got in touch with Geismar to see what he made of this turn of events. In this as-told-to, Geismar reflects on his 1984 design, and what it means in the context of PBSs recent loss in funding and the new challenges it faces today. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting did not reply to a request for comment by time of publication.
There is an ironic tie-in between the government decision to cut off all funding to public television and public radio, and what prompted the redesign of the PBS logo back in the early 1980s.
That was also a difficult time, financially, for the Public Broadcasting Service, and especially the stations in more remote regions of the country. Much of the public equated PBS with the major television networks CBS, NBC and ABC, and presumed that, like those major institutions, PBS was the parent of and significant funder for all the local public television stations throughout the country. But, in fact, the reality is somewhat the opposite. Although PBS local affiliates received a portion of funding from the federal government, it is the individual stations that have the responsibility to do public fund raising, and PBS, in a sense, works for them.
A sketch of the redesigned PBS “Everyman” [Image: courtesy Tom Geismar]
Because of this confusion, the PBS leadership felt that their existing logo (a famous design by by Herb Lubalin) needed to be more than just the classic 3-initials mark, something more evocative of a public-benefit system serving all people. Thus the everyone mark was born.
[Image: PBS]
To preserve some continuity, we took the P from the prior PBS mark, which had been rendered as a human face n profile, flipped it around to be clearly just a human profile, and gave it a facelift and a gentle lobotomy. We then repeated the profile in both positive and negative form, to suggest a multitude, a public, and combined this mark with the initials PBS in a bold type style to form the new, more appropriate PBS visual identity. Though in subsequent decades the profiles have been subtly modified, this everyone concept has been the core of the PBS visual identity ever since.
[Image: courtesy Tom Geismar]
And now, once again, with federal government funding stopped, it is the stations in the less populous regions who will suffer the most.
The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it has been waging, along with state governments, since the 1970s.
The latest move came on July 29, 2025, when the Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to rescind its landmark 2009 decision, known as the endangerment finding, that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. If that stands up in court and is not overruled by Congress, it would undo a key part of the long-standing effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasnt changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening peoples health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPAs ruling.
Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies.
That is why I believe the EPAs move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. [Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images]
Putting carmakers in a bind
The most recent EPA rule about vehicle emissions was finalized in 2024. It set emissions limits that can realistically only be met by a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.
Over the past decade and a half, automakers have been building up their capability to produce electric vehicles to meet these fleet requirements, and a combination of regulations such as Californias zero-emission-vehicle requirements have worked together to ensure customers can get their hands on EVs. The zero-emission-vehicle rules require automakers to produce EVs for the California market, which in turn make it easier for the companies to meet their efficiency and emissions targets from the federal government. These collectively pressure automakers to provide a steady supply of electric vehicles to consumers.
The new EPA move would undo the 2024 EPA vehicle-emissions rule and other federal regulations that also limit emissions from vehicles, such as the heavy-duty vehicle emissions rule.
The possibility of a regulatory reversal puts automakers into a state of uncertainty. Legal challenges to the EPAs shift are all but guaranteed, and the court process could take years.
For companies making decade-long investment decisions, regulatory stability matters more than short-term politics. Disrupting that stability undermines business planning, erodes investor confidence and sends conflicting signals to consumers and suppliers alike.
Car manufacturers in the U.S. have invested large sums of money to produce electric vehicles. [Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images]
A slower roll
The Trump administration has taken other steps to make electric vehicles less attractive to carmakers and consumers.
The White House has already suspended key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that provided tax credits for purchasing EVs and halted a US$5 billion investment in a nationwide network of charging stations. And Congress has retracted the federal waiver that allowed California to set its own, stricter emissions limits. In combination, these policies make it hard to buy and drive electric vehicles: Fewer, or no, financial incentives for consumers make the purchases more expensive, and fewer charging stations make travel planning more challenging.
Overturning the EPAs 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal basis for regulating climate pollution from vehicles altogether.
But U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles has been growing, and automakers have already made massive investments to produce electric vehicles and their associated components in the U.S. such as Hyundais EV factory in Georgia and Volkswagens Battery Engineering Lab in Tennessee.
Global markets, especially in Europe and China, are also moving decisively toward electrifying large proportions of the vehicles on the road. This move is helped in no small part due to aggressive regulation by their respective governments. The results speak for themselves: Sales of EVs in both the European Union and China have been growing rapidly.
But the pace of change matters. A slower rollout of clean vehicles means more cumulative emissions, more climate damage and more harm to public health.
The EPAs proposal seeks to slow the shift to electric vehicles, removing incentives and raising costs even though the market has shown that cleaner vehicles are viable, the public has shown interest, and the science has never been clearer. But even such a major policy change cant stop the momentum of those trends.
Alan Jenn is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, at the University of California, Davis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
President Trump and the tech industry are continuing their dance of give and take. This time, its Apple doing the appeasing. On Wednesday, August 6, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple would invest $100 billion toward U.S. manufacturing.
The money comes alongside another $500 billion that the iPhone maker pledged in February, all of which is meant to be spent in the next four years.
At the time, Apple claimed that it would fund a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas, slated to open in 2026. It also devoted some of the funds to hiring 20,000 new U.S.-based employees, primarily in fields such as AI, machine learning, R&D, silicon engineering, and software development.
‘We took that challenge very seriously’
On Wednesday, Cook alluded to Trumps push for more than that original investment.
President Trump shared some kind words about that work, but he also asked us to think about what more we could commit to doing, Cook stated. Mr. President, we took that challenge very seriously.
The Oval Office photo-op included an ostentatious moment in which Cook presented Trump with a glass plaque featuring Apples logo, sitting atop a 24-karat-gold base. The gift is, of course, made in America.
Apples investors appear pleased with the additional pledge. Shares of the companys stock rose more than 5% throughout Wednesday, closing at $213.25.
Shares continued to spike during after-hours and into premarket trading on Thursday, reaching over $220.
However, the tech companys stock still hasnt fully recovered from the significant tumble it took following Trumps tariff announcements.
It hit a low of $169.21 on April 8, less than a week after Trumps Liberation Day and a trade war with China, where about 80% of iPhones are made, the New York Times estimates. That represented a drop of around 35% from its record-high price of about $260 in December.
The car looked like nothing else on the road. Its sharp lines, flat planes, and pointy edges made it a head-turning sight, but also a head-scratching business decision. Would anyone actually buy such a weird geometric car?
If this sounds like the kind of question one might ask when seeing a Tesla Cybertruck for the first time, it’s actually just a rhyme of history. That head-turner/head-scratcher was the 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo, an outrageously pointy concept car that radically diverged from the teardrop designs of the day. It was arguably the start of a bold, if short-lived, new chapter in the history of car design: the wedge.
The Bertone-designed Alfa Romeo Carabo debuted at the 1968 Paris Motor Show. [Photo: LAT Images/Getty Images]
The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles explores this wildly experimental era in car design with The Wedge Revolution: Cars on the Cutting Edge, a new exhibition now on display. The exhibition features dozens of cars designed between the late 1960s and mid-80s that used a blocky wedge shape as their defining form factor. They were oddball designs at the time, and most didn’t make it past the concept stage, but they heralded a rebellious era in car design that may just be underway once more.
1977 UrbaCar [Photo: courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum]
Case in point: the Cybertruck. “That’s why Franz was involved in the show,” says Jonathan Eisen, a curator at the Petersen museum. The Franz he’s talking about is Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, creator of the Cybertruck, who was called in to cocurate the exhibition. “He’s very enthusiastic about the classic wedge cars.”
Like his own design, the wedge cars of the mid-20th century seemed to have come out of nowhere. Eisen says the dominant design approach at the time was either the teardrop-shaped coupes made in France or the bulbous, chrome-laden sedans from American carmakers. But as the main designers behind these cars retired, a new generation came in ready to try something completely different.
“They went the opposite way, Eisen says. They did away with all the ornamentation. And instead of smooth, flowing lines they decided that they were going to use sharp edges and flat planes and base the look of the car on the wedge.
1976 Honda Civic Lady concept car [Photo: courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum]
Carmakers including Chevrolet, Honda, BMW, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, and Bertoni all dabbled in wedge-shaped car design. One concept car featured in the exhibition, the 1976 Honda Civic Lady, was an angular version of the Civic, one of the most popular compact cars of the era. With a wedge nose and a station wagon tail, it showed off a combination of design and sensibility. Though never intended for production, its DNA lived on for decades.
“If you then look at Hondas from the 1980s and even into the 1990s, you could absolutely see that they go back to this one car,” Eisen says.
1979 Aston Martin Bulldog concept car [Photo: courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum]
Other cars in the show are far less sensible, like the batwinged 1979 Aston Martin Bulldog concept car and the 1977 UrbaCar, a dune buggy meets bumper car. On the extreme end, the 1971 Lamborghini Countach concept car came to define the sharp and wedgy shape of Lamborghinis for decades.
1975 Lamborghini Countach LP400 [Photo: courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum]
These car companies “weren’t afraid to put something out there that maybe isn’t traditionally beautiful, but it’s still unlike anything else on the road and will absolutely draw your attention to it,” Eisen says. “A car doesn’t necessarily have to be pretty to be successful. Te way that SUVs are so popular is proof of that. “
The Cybertruck, on the other hand? Eisen calls it the only true wedge car on the road today, and possibly the start of a more adventurous era in car design, even if its success is questionable. “That car obviously has a very controversial design, and you could even say that it’s been thoroughly rejected by the mass public,” he says. “Maybe people aren’t ready for it yet. But eventually, I think we will see more creativity.”
In recent decades, car design has been very safe, and guided by aerodynamics, efficiency, and, above all, marketing, according to Eisen. The heyday of the wedge was less constrained and, arguably, more interesting. “I think it’s worth celebrating the fact that it’s okay to take chances,” Eisen says.
The Wedge Revolution is on display through September 2026.
Last week, Punchbowl News published an internal memo the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) sent to its members, warning that Apple’s upcoming iOS 26 operating system for the iPhone could cost the organization $25 million in donations. The NRSC is the Republicans primary Senatorial fundraising arm. The memo further said the changes could cost the greater GOP half a billion dollars in lost political donations.The change? A new aggressive message filtering feature, according to the NRSC memo, that Apple is introducing in iOS 26s Messages app, which handles both iMessages and regular SMS text messages. This feature will filter texts from unknown senderslike the kind the NRSC sends out to phones across the country to raise political donationsinto a siloed inbox where the iPhone user wont see or be notified of the message.The thing is, this aggressive message filtering feature is nothing new in iOS, and the changes Apple is making to it in iOS 26 actually benefit both the iPhone user and, potentially, the sender of the message themself. Still, given the confusion surrounding it, I decided to go to the sourceAppleto see how the feature in iOS 26 actually works.The ‘new’ iOS 26 ‘unknown senders’ filter has existed since iOS 13The supposedly new unknown senders filter in iOS 26, which has the NRSC so concerned, actually exists on all iPhones running iOS 18 today. Apple confirmed to me that the feature has existed in a similar form on all iPhones going back to iOS 13, which first shipped in 2019.In iOS 18 and earlier, that feature is called Filter Unknown Senders and is off by default, meaning you have to opt into it, which is why so few people realize it currently exists. You can check it out on your iPhone running iOS 18 right now by going to the Settings app, then tapping Apps, and then Messages. Youll find the toggle, which is off by default, under the Message Filtering header.If you toggle Filter Unknown Senders on in iOS 13 through iOS 18, your iPhone will move any message that it thinks is from an unknown sender to a dedicated Unknown Senders inbox in the Messages app. Texts filtered into this inbox wont show up in your main Known messages thread.So, how does your iPhone currently decide what an unknown sender is? Apple told me it uses two criteria only: if the text is from someone who is not saved in your Contacts app and is also from a sender that you have not replied to before, the message will be siloed into the Unknown Senders inbox.In iOS 26, this feature is getting an updatebut it will give iPhone users increased notification of, and easier access to, their filtered messages. At the same time, it will increase the chances of the unknown sender getting their message read.How iOS 26s ‘unknown senders’ text message filter actually worksIn iOS 26, the unknown senders text message filter is getting an update, but its unlikely to cost the NRSC or any other political fundraising groups any donations.Apple told me that in iOS 26, the Filter Unknown Senders toggle is being renamed to Screen Unknown Senders. The company also confirmed that the two criteria your iPhone uses to determine if a text is from an unknown sender (the sender is not in your contacts and you havent replied to the sender before) are not changing.What is changing is the visibility of the Unknown Senders inbox and the messages it contains. Apple confirmed to me that the idea behind the changes is to make sure that an iPhone user can more easily access filtered messages from unknown senders and also more easily see when they have received a text that has been filtered into the Unknown Senders inbox.iOS 26 is actually making it easier for iPhone users to see when they have a text from an unknown sender. [Animation: Apple]In iOS 26, users can quickly access the Unknown Senders inbox by tapping a new filters button, always visible in the top-right corner of the iOS 26 Messages app. Tapping this button brings up a menu that lets them quickly access their Unknown Senders inbox.Apple is taking it a step further to make it easier for users to access the Unknown Senders inbox while still retaining its core feature of keeping your primary inbox tidy. Now in iOS 26, when you get a new text from an unknown sender that is filtered into the Unknown Senders inbox, the filter button at the top of the Messages app will display a blue badge with the total number of new texts you’ve received from unknown senders.This means that in iOS 26, Apple is making it even easier for a user to tell they have new texts from an unknown sender, which means senders of those texts have a better chance of the iPhone user seeing them than they did in iOS 18.Apple knows texts from all unknown senders arent always unwantedApple recognizes that not all texts from unknown senders are malicious, and these changes in iOS 26 are the companys efforts to make it easier for users to notice and access them while still ensuring a barrage of unknown texts doesnt overwhelm the users primary messages inbox.Its also important to note that Apple confirmed to me that the revamped Screen Unknown Senders feature in iOS 26 remains off by default. Users still need to opt-in to it (if they havent already in iOS 18). In other words, just because someone installs iOS 26 on their iPhone, texts from the NRSC or other political fundraising groups won’t be automatically filtered out.What this means is that Apples iOS 26 changes this fall wont suddenly cost political fundraising organizations millions in donations, just as iOS 18s filtering features dont today. The only thing Apple is guilty of is not spending enough time during its WWDC keynote on the iOS 26 Screen Unknown Senders feature modification to explain what is actually changingand what is staying the same.
President Donald Trump began levying higher import taxes on dozens of countries Thursday, just as the economic fallout of his monthslong tariff threats has begun to create visible damage for the U.S. economy.Just after midnight, goods from more than 60 countries and the European Union became subject to tariff rates of 10% or higher. Products from the EU, Japan and South Korea are taxed at 15%, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh are taxed at 20%. Trump also expects the EU, Japan and South Korea to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S.“I think the growth is going to be unprecedented,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon. He added that the U.S. was “taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs,” but he couldn’t provide a specific figure for revenues because “we don’t even know what the final number is” regarding tariff rates.Despite the uncertainty, the Trump White House is confident that the onset of his broad tariffs will provide clarity about the path of the world’s largest economy. Now that companies understand the direction the U.S. is headed, the Republican administration believes they can ramp up new investments and jump-start hiring in ways that can rebalance the U.S. economy as a manufacturing power.But so far, there are signs of self-inflicted wounds to America as companies and consumers alike brace for the impact of new taxes. What the data has shown is a U.S. economy that changed in April with Trump’s initial rollout of tariffs, an event that led to market drama, a negotiating period and Trump’s ultimate decision to start his universal tariffs on Thursday.
Risk of economic erosion
Economic reports show that hiring began to stall, inflationary pressures crept upward and home values in key markets started to decline after April, said John Silvia, CEO of Dynamic Economic Strategy.“A less productive economy requires fewer workers,” Silvia said in an analysis note. “But there is more, the higher tariff prices lower workers’ real wages. The economy has become less productive, and firms cannot pay the same real wages as before. Actions have consequences.”Even then, the ultimate transformations of the tariffs are unknown and could play out over months, if not years. Many economists say the risk is that the American economy is steadily eroded rather than collapsing instantly.“We all want it to be made for television where it’s this explosion it’s not like that,” said Brad Jensen, a professor at Georgetown University. “It’s going to be fine sand in the gears and slow things down.”Trump has promoted the tariffs as a way to reduce the persistent trade deficit. But importers sought to avoid the taxes by importing more goods before the taxes went into effect. As a result, the $582.7 billion trade imbalance for the first half of the year was 38% higher than in 2024. Total construction spending has dropped 2.9% over the past year.The economic pain isn’t confined to the U.S. Germany, which sends 10% of its exports to the U.S. market, saw industrial production sag 1.9% in June as Trump’s earlier rounds of tariff hikes took hold. “The new tariffs will clearly weigh on economic growth,” said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro for ING bank.
Dismay in India and Switzerland
The lead-up to Thursday fit the slapdash nature of Trump’s tariffs, which have been variously rolled out, walked back, delayed, increased, imposed by letter and frantically renegotiated. The process has been so muddled that officials for key trade partners were unclear at the start of the week whether the tariffs would begin Thursday or Friday. The language of the July 31 order to delay the start of tariffs from Aug. 1 only said the higher tax rates would start in seven days.Trump on Wednesday announced additional 25% tariffs to be imposed on India for its buying of Russian oil, bringing its total import taxes to 50%.A top body of Indian exporters said Thursday the latest U.S. tariffs will impact nearly 55% of the country’s outbound shipments to America and force exporters to lose their long-standing clients.“Absorbing this sudden cost escalation is simply not viable. Margins are already thin,” S.C. Ralhan, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations, said in a statement.The Swiss executive branch, the Federal Council, was expected to hold an extraordinary meeting Thursday after President Karin Keller-Sutter and other top Swiss officials returned from a hastily arranged trip to Washington in a failed bid to avert steep 39% U.S. tariffs on Swiss goods.Import taxes are still coming on pharmaceutical drugs, and Trump announced 100% tariffs on computer chips. That could leave the U.S. economy in a place of suspended animation as it awaits the impact.
Stock market remains solid
The president’s use of a 1977 law to declare an economic emergency to impose the tariffs is also under challenge. The impending ruling from last week’s hearing before a U.S. appeals court could cause Trump to find other legal justifications if judges say he exceeded his authority.Even people who worked with Trump during his first term are skeptical that things will go smoothly for the economy, such as Paul Ryan, the former Republican House speaker, who has emerged as a Trump critic.“There’s no sort of rationale for this other than the president wanting to raise tariffs based upon his whims, his opinions,” Ryan told CNBC on Wednesday. “I think choppy waters are ahead because I think they’re going to have some legal challenges.”Still, the stock market has been solid during the recent tariff drama, with the S&P 500 index climbing more than 25% from its April low. The market’s rebound and the income tax cuts in Trump’s tax and spending measures signed into law on July 4 have given the White House confidence that economic growth is bound to accelerate in the coming months.Global financial markets took Thursday’s tariff adjustments in stride, with Asian and European shares and U.S. futures mostly higher.Brzeski warned: “While financial markets seem to have grown numb to tariff announcements, let’s not forget that their adverse effects on economies will gradually unfold over time.”As of now, Trump still foresees an economic boom while the rest of the world and American voters wait nervously.“There’s one person who can afford to be cavalier about the uncertainty that he’s creating, and that’s Donald Trump,” said Rachel West, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation who worked in the Biden White House on labor policy. “The rest of Americans are already paying the price for that uncertainty.”
Follow the AP’s coverage of President Donald Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
A commercial spaceflight company that specializes in small- to medium-lift launch vehicles is hoping to have a giant-sized first day of trading today.
Firefly Aerospace is expected to debut on the Nasdaq today as the companys initial public offering gains liftoff. Heres what you need to know about Firefly Aerospaces IPO and how the feud between the CEO of its competitor, SpaceX, and the president of the United States could give it an advantage.
What is Firefly Aerospace?
Firefly Aerospace Inc. is a space and defense technology company. Located in Cedar Park, Texas, it specializes in space launch and landing capabilities. In other words, the company helps get satellites and other vehicles into space.
Founded in 2017, Firefly specializes in small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, as well as lunar landers and orbital vehicles. The company offers a number of spacecraft, including the Blue Ghost lander.
According to Fireflys Form S-1 Registration Statement, which it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Blue Ghost is the only commercial vehicle to have had a fully successful landing on the moon, which it achieved in March 2025.
Firefly has a number of competitors in the space industry, including Elon Musks dominant SpaceX. Currently, Firefly says it has more than 800 employees (SpaceX has around 13,000, according to PitchBook) and boasts that its agility allows it to get a satellite into orbit with as little as 24 hours’ notice.
Firefly operates at a loss
Despite Fireflys impressive offerings, the company currently operates at a loss. This isnt unusual for a young company in the technology space, which often has high operational and research and development costs.
In its S-1, Firefly stated that it had a net loss of $231.1 million for the year that ended December 31, 2024. That net loss was greater than the $135.5 million net loss the company experienced in the year that ended December 31, 2023.
Most recently, the company said it had a net loss of $60.1 million for the three months that ended March 31, 2025. That was a net loss increase from the net loss of $52.8 million that Firefly experienced for the same period a year earlier.
However, while the company is still operating at a loss, its total revenue has surged lately, although the revenue sum is relatively small.
Firefly says it brought in total revenue of $55.9 million for the three-month period ending March 31, 2025. That was an increase of 572% from the same period a year earlier. It says revenue was helped by a 297% increase in its launch revenue for the quarter versus the quarter a year earlier, as well as a 623% in its spacecraft solutions revenue for the same timeframe.
Still, Firefly says that it expects to continue to incur net losses for the next several years.
When is Firefly Aerospaces IPO?
Firefly priced its shares on Wednesday and expects to list its stock today (Thursday, August 7, 2025).
What is Firefly Aerospaces stock ticker?
Firefly Aerospaces stock will trade under the ticker FLY.
What exchange will Firefly Aerospace shares trade on?
Firefly Aerospace shares trade on the Nasdaq Global Market.
What is the IPO share price of FLY?
Firefly Aerospaces IPO price is $45 per share.
This is a significant increase over its original target IPO price range of $35 to $39 a share. The target was then revised upwards to a range between $41 and $43 each. Finally, shares landed at $45 each.
The increasing IPO price suggests that there is a healthy appetite for FLY shares.
How many FLY shares are available in its IPO?
According to a company press release, Firefly Aerospaces public offering consisted of 19,296,000 shares.
How much did Firefly Aerospace raise in its IPO?
With 19.2 million shares sold at $45 apiece, that means that Firefly raised approximately $868 million from its IPO.
How much is Firefly Aerospace worth?
Firefly Aerospace is now valued at approximately $6.3 billion, according to CNBC.
Is the Trump-Musk feud beneficial for Firefly?
Elon Musks privately held SpaceX is the dominant player in the commercial space industry with significant government contracts. However, Musk and President Trump had a historic and very public falling out earlier this year, leading many to assume that the schism could hurt SpaceXs business interests.
Still, the U.S. government itself is heavily reliant on SpaceX to get its satellites into orbit. But as smaller space companies continue to grow and expand their capabilities, the U.S. government increasingly has more options to choose from. And given the Trump-Musk feud, it’s fair to wonder if other space companies will benefit from the rift.
Whether or not there is a direct benefit to other companies from the feud is a game of speculation. However, Firefly Aerospace has recently gained from increasing government contracts. At the end of July, the company announced that it was awarded a $177 million contract from NASA to deliver five payloads from the countrys space agency to the moons south pole in 2029.
Last week, President Donald Trumps super PAC revealed that it has an unsettling amount of cash on hand for a president who is, his occasional musings to the contrary notwithstanding, constitutionally ineligible to run for a third term in office. According to a midyear report filed with the Federal Election Commission, MAGA Inc. is sitting on nearly $200 million, a sum that includes a shade over $175 million collected just in the past six months.
Unless collections fall off a cliff in the second half of the year, Trump should enter 2026 with well over a quarter-billion dollars to spend on the midterm electionsa war chest that would make him not only the Republican Partys unquestioned standard-bearer but also perhaps its deepest-pocketed financier for the foreseeable future.
Many of the donors to MAGA Inc. would likely donate to any Republican president: real estate developers, oil and gas companies, firearms manufacturers, Wall Street banks, allegedly crooked mortgage brokers, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and so on. Others made what proved to be prudent investments in their relationships with Trump, who has long viewed the presidency as a tool for rewarding loyal friends and punishing perceived enemies. A Florida personal injury attorney nominated by Trump as the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, for example, gave $500,000; an investor who now serves on the Presidents Intelligence Advisory Board gave $250,000.
Longtime Trump donors Jeffrey Sprecher, whose company owns the New York Stock Exchange, and his wife, former Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, gave a cool $2.5 million apiece in June. In a wild coincidence, Trump announced that he would appoint Loeffler to lead the Small Business Administration six months earlier.
But the most notable collection of namesand some of the biggest numbersare associated with the cryptocurrency industry, which has, in another wild coincidence, netted Trump and his family hundreds of millions of dollars since he took office in January.
Foris Dax, which does business as Crypto.com, gave MAGA Inc. $10 million. Tools for Humanity, better known as World Network or Worldcoin (and cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman), chipped in $5 million, as did Blockchain.com. Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whose eponymous Silicon Valley firm has invested heavily in crypto projects (including Tools for Humanity), combined to donate $6 million. The Winklevoss twins and their crypto exchange, Gemini Trust Company, donated a total of nearly $4 million. (Tyler donated about $15,000 more in his name than his brother, Cameron, which is how you can tell them apart.)
All told, crypto and crypto-adjacent interests have contributed at least $40 million to MAGA Inc. so far this year. This figure does not include $5 million from Elon Musk, whose companies hold crypto assets worth billions of dollars. Despite his extremely funny public falling-out with Trump, Musk evidently still knows whats best for business: On June 27, he ponied up $5 million to the man who more or less just gave him the boot.
The steady flow of cash to Trumps political machine is a peek at the struggle for control of the movement Trump creatednot necessarily now, when he is both president of the United States and the leader of the Republican Party, but over the next 24 months or so, as his term winds down and he prepares to return to Mar-a-Lago for good. Everyone involved here understands that it is not only the current White House that is for sale, but also the future of a party that has really not had an identity apart from Trump, a 79-year-old man who is decompensating before our eyes, for a decade now.
Many of the people who are giving to MAGA Inc. are roughly analogous to investors racing to get in on the ground floor of a promising startup: For anyone who can foot the bill, the chance to own even a sliver of one of this countrys two major political parties is too valuable to pass up. And because the first six months of Trumps second administration have been so good for the crypto industry, its wealthier-than-ever luminaries have been among the most aggressive early buyers of (even more) political influence.
They envision the country as a nascent Silicon Valley plutocracy, and themselves as its leadersequal parts fabulously wealthy oligarchs, industry-friendly regulators, and currency revolutionaries on the verge of making fiat money obsolete. Wealthy people have always been able to buy power in Washington, D.C., but rarely have they been this comfortable being this obvious about it.
Part of the challenge with gauging the value of these investments is that there is basically no precedent for them. Super PACs have only been around since 2010, after the Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending by megacorporations and the billionaires who run them.
As a result, President Barack Obama is the only other term-limited president who has ever raised money under the same circumstances, and at the time his supporters plainly did not perceive the same value in continuing to write checks: Again, over the past six months, MAGA Inc. has raked in around $175 million. As The New York Times notes, during the same period in 2013, the primary super PAC affiliated with Obama raised a grand total of $356,000.
Generally, candidates from the same party as a sitting president face a tougher road to victory in the midterm elections that followa dynamic that is especially salient when a president whose approval rating was already dropping is also trying to fend off persistent questions about the nature of his friendship with the nations most famous child sex abuser.
But the fact that Trump will be the GOPs de facto kingmaker in 2026 will make it very challenging for Republican candidates to break with himon the campaign trail, to the extent that any Republican candidates would have interest in doing so in the first place. If you want to win a primary, you cannot afford to pass up Trumps moneyor, worse yet, to do something to make him angry, such that he starts giving to your more enthusiastically MAGA opponent instead.
What I am saying here is that the Republican candidates trying to win in purple districts next falland, in all likelihood, the serious contenders vying for the GOP presidential nomination in 2028are not going to be traditional conservatives trying to appeal to swing voters with promises of limited government and lower taxes. They are going to be Trump acolytes steeped in X clips and manosphere content who promise to do his and his donors bidding.
Trumps dominance of the modern GOP has also come at the expense of what remains of the Republican establishment, whose leaders on Capitol Hill are now dealing with the consequences of having long ago ceded control of the party to a made-for-TV businessman who has never cared about its long-term success outside the context of his own political and financial fortunes. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the House, had around $33 million in cash on hand as of June 30, and the GOP-affiliated Senate analogue came in just behind it, at $29.7 million.
If youre doing the math at home, this means that the combined spending power of the Republican lawmakers trying to preserve their majorities in the House and Senate is about one-third the spending power of the partys outgoing president. The only group with anywhere close to as much money as MAGA Inc., The Times reports, is Fairshake, a super PAC backed byyou guessed itthe crypto industry. In other words, Republican candidates can take crypto industry cash funneled through MAGA Inc., or directly from its super PAC. But they are taking that money either way, and dealing with whatever strings come attached to it.
For several years now, there has been an open question about what will happen to the Republican Party once Trump, for one reason or another, is no longer in control of it: whether it will revert to the establishment conservatives Trump has rendered all but irrelevant, or whether it will continue as a cult of personality propped up by a coalition of bigots, billionaires, and billionaires who are also bigots.
MAGA Inc.s massive fundraising haul yields a grim answer: As venal as Trump is, the next generation of party leaders will be even more transparently for sale to the highest bidder. Those who can afford it are already spending accordingly.
