Stellantis NV said on Thursday it was temporarily laying off 900 workers at five U.S. facilities and pausing production at one assembly plant each in Mexico and Canada, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs were announced.
Trump broadened the tariffs to a 10% baseline on all imports on Wednesday, with higher rates for some countries. These levies followed 25% duties on all auto imports announced last week, which sent shock waves through the global auto industry.
In a letter sent to employees on Thursday morning, Antonio Filosa, Stellantis’s chief operating officer for the Americas, said the company is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some immediate actions.”
These included temporarily pausing production at some Canadian and Mexican assembly plants, affecting jobs at several of Stellantis’ U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities, he said.
Shares of Stellantis, which locally makes only half of its U.S.-sold vehicles including Ram trucks and Jeeps, closed 9.3% lower in New York on Thursday. Shares of Ford, General Motors, and Tesla also fell sharply.
Nearly half the cars sold last year in the U.S.the world’s largest importer of carswere brought in from abroad, according to research firm GlobalData.
Stellantis said its Windsor Assembly, where the Chrysler Pacifica and Voyager minivans and Dodge Charger Daytona are made, will be down for two weeks while Toluca Assembly in Mexico, where the Jeep Compass and Jeep Wagoneer S are made, will be down for the month of April.
About 4,500 workers at Windsor will be impacted by the idling. Workers at Toluca will continue to report to work and get paid but will not make vehicles, according to the company.
“A horrifying consequence of Trump’s tariffs,” Democratic U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said on X, referring to the job cuts. “American workers are paying the price.”
Romaine McKinney III, president of the local union chapter that represents workers at Stellantiss stamping plant in Warren, Michigan, said the tariff-related layoffs were troubling his members, especially as they saw GM adding jobs in the U.S.
Its pure devastation, McKinney said, adding that morale is already low from a year of layoffs and buyouts that resulted from former CEO Carlos Tavaress costcutting strategy.
The five facilities affected by the layoff include Stellantis’s Warren Stamping and Sterling Stamping plants as well as the Indiana Transmission Plant, Kokomo Transmission Plant, and Kokomo Casting Plant, the company said.
While McKinney understands it will take time for Stellantis to shift its output, he does not believe the automakerwhich supplies Canadian plants as well as U.S. oneshas to lay off U.S. workers in the meantime.
Its completely unnecessary. Its a choice the company is making.
The White House declined immediate comment on the Stellantis job cuts.
Trump and his administration have said there would be short-term pain for Americans but have promised long-term economic gains with Trump’s plan. The White House said on Thursday that tariffs would ultimately boost U.S. industries and workers.
“They can expect their wages to go up . . . There’s not going to be any pain for American-owned companies and American workers because their jobs are going to come back home,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told cable news network NewsNation on Thursday, referring to any impact from Trump’s tariff plan.
NORTH AMERICAN INTERCONNECTIVITY
While goods from Mexico and Canada that comply with a trade agreement between the three countries will largely remain exempt from tariffs under Trump’s order, auto exports and steel and aluminum fall under separate tariff policies.
Automakers are scrambling to figure out how to respond and how much to raise prices, as customers rush to buy cars sitting in lots.
The base U.S. tariff rate for automotive imports is 2.5%. Automakers importing vehicles from Canada or Mexico can deduct the value of U.S. parts from the 25% levy.
In February, Stellantis said it was pausing work on its next-generation Jeep Compass compact SUV including the retooling of Brampton Assembly in Canada, which is designated to build the vehicle.
Lana Payne, president of Unifor, the Canadian union representing Stellantis workers there, said in a Thursday statement: “Unifor warned that U.S. tariffs would hurt auto workers almost immediately and in this case the layoffs were announced before the auto tariff even came into effect. Trump is about to learn how interconnected the North American production system is the hard way, with auto workers paying the price for that lesson.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said in a statement that Stellantis has “got the money, the capacity, the product, and the workforce to employ thousands more UAW members in Michigan, Indiana, and beyond. These layoffs are a completely unnecessary choice that the company is making.”
Kalea Hall, David Shepardson and Nora Eckert, Reuters
Your favorite iPhone could soon become much pricier, thanks to tariffs.
U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a series of sweeping tariffs on countries around the world that could drastically alter the landscape of global trade, and consumer goods like iPhones could be among the hardest hit, analysts said on Thursday, with increases of 30% to 40% if the company were to pass on the cost to consumers.
Most iPhones are still made in China, which was hit with a 54% tariff. If those levies persist, Apple has a tough choice: absorb the extra expense or pass it on to customers.
Shares of the company closed down 9.3% on Thursday, hitting their worst day since March 2020.
Apple sells more than 220 million iPhones a year; its biggest markets include the United States, China and Europe.
The cheapest iPhone 16 model was launched in the U.S. with a sticker price of $799, but could cost as much as $1,142, per calculations based on projections from analysts at Rosenblatt Securities, who say the cost could rise by 43% – if Apple is able to pass that on to consumers.
A more expensive iPhone 16 Pro Max, with a 6.9-inch display and 1 terabyte of storage, which currently retails at $1599, could cost nearly $2300 if a 43% increase were to pass to consumers.
Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of Chinese imports in his first term as president to pressure U.S. companies to bring manufacturing either back to the United States or to nearby countries such as Mexico, but Apple secured exemptions or waivers for several products. This time, he has not yet granted any exemptions.
“This whole China tariff thing is playing out right now completely contrary to our expectation that American icon Apple would be kid-gloved, like last time,” Barton Crockett, analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, said in a note.
The iPhone 16e, launched in February as a cheaper entry point for Apple’s suite of artificial-intelligence features, costs $599. A 43% price hike could push that cost to $856. Prices of other Apple devices could jump as well.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Many customers pay for their phones over a period of two or three years through contracts with their cellular providers.
However, other analysts noted that iPhone sales have been floundering in the company’s major markets, as Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that helps summarize notifications, rewrite emails and give users access to ChatGPT, has failed to enthuse buyers.
Expert reviews have suggested that the features, while innovative, do not provide enough of a compelling reason to justify upgrading to newer models.
The stagnation in demand could put additional pressure on Apple’s bottom line, especially if costs rise due to tariffs.
Angelo Zino, equity analyst at CFRA Research, said the company will have a tough time passing on more than 5% to 10% of the cost to consumers.
“We expect Apple to hold off on any major increases on phones until this fall when its iPhone 17 is set to launch, as it is typically how it handles planned price hikes.”
Even with some production moving to Vietnam and India, most iPhones are still made in China, and those countries were not spared from tariffs either, with Vietnam getting a 46% levy and India’s coming in at 26%.
Apple would need to raise its prices by at least 30% on average to offset import duties, according to Counterpoint Research co-founder Neil Shah.
A potentially sharp price hike could dampen demand for the smartphone and give South Korea’s Samsung Electronics an edge, as the Asian country faces lower tariffs than China, where all iPhones sold in the U.S. are made.
“Our quick math on Trump’s tariff Liberation Day suggests this could blow up Apple, potentially costing the company up to $40 billion,” Rosenblatt Securities’ Crockett noted, adding that negotiations between Apple, China and the White House are likely.
“It’s hard for us to imagine Trump blowing up an American iconbut this looks pretty tough.”
Akash Sriram, Reuters
Parts of the Midwest and South faced the possibility of torrential rains and life-threatening flash floods Friday, while many communities were still reeling from tornadoes that destroyed whole neighborhoods and killed at least seven people.Forecasters warned of catastrophic weather on the way, with round after round of heavy rains expected in the central U.S. through Saturday. Satellite imagery showed thunderstorms lined up like freight trains to take the same tracks over communities in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, according to the national Weather Prediction Center in Maryland.The bull’s-eye centered on a swath along the Mississippi River and included the more than 1.3 million people around Memphis.More than 90 million people were at risk of severe weather from Texas to Minnesota to Maine, according to the Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center.Those killed in the initial wave of storms that spawned powerful tornadoes on Wednesday and early Thursday were in Tennessee, Missouri, and Indiana. They included a Tennessee man and his teen daughter whose home was destroyed, and a man whose pickup struck downed power lines in Indiana. In Missouri, Garry Moore, who was chief of the Whitewater Fire Protection District, died while likely trying to help a stranded motorist, according to Highway Patrol spokesperson Sgt. Clark Parrott.Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said entire neighborhoods in the hard-hit town of Selmer were “completely wiped out” and said it was too early to know whether there were more deaths as searches continued. He warned people across the state to stay vigilant with more severe weather predicted.“Don’t let your guard down,” he said during a Thursday evening news conference. “Don’t stop watching the weather. Don’t stop preparing yourself. Have a plan.”With flattened homes behind him, Dakota Woods described seeing the twister come through Selmer.“I was walking down the street,” Woods said Thursday. “Next thing you know, I look up, the sky is getting black and blacker, and it’s lighting up green lights, and it’s making a formation of a twister or tornado.”
Flash flood threat looms over many states
By late Thursday, extremely heavy rain was falling in parts of southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky and causing “very dangerous/life threatening flash flooding” in some spots, according to the National Weather Service.Heavy rains were expected to continue there and in other parts of the region in the coming days and could produce dangerous flash floods capable of sweeping away cars. The potent storm system will bring “significant, life-threatening flash flooding” each day, the National Weather Service said.Water rescue teams and sandbagging operations were being staged across the region, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency was ready to distribute food, water, cots, and generators.Water rescues were already underway in flooded parts of Nashville, where the rain could persist for days after an unnerving period of tornado warnings that drained the batteries of some city sirens, the fire department said.Western Kentucky prepared for record rain and flooding in places that normally do not get inundated, Gov. Andy Beshear said. At least 25 state highways were swamped, mostly in the west, according to a statement from his office Thursday.Flash flooding is particularly worrisome in rural areas of the state where water can quickly rush off the mountains into the hollows. Less than four years ago, dozens died in flooding across eastern Kentucky.Extreme flooding across the corridor that includes Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis, which have major cargo hubs, could also lead to shipping and supply chain delays, said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather.Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear, and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.
Tornadoes leave path of damage, and more could be coming
Under darkened skies Thursday morning, the remains of a used car dealership in Selmer stood roofless and gutted, with debris scattered across the car lot and wrapped around mangled trees. Some homes were ripped to their foundations in the Tennessee town, where three tornadoes were suspected of touching down.The Tennessee Highway Patrol released video of lightning illuminating the sky as first responders scoured the ruins of a home, looking for anyone trapped.In neighboring Arkansas, a tornado near Blytheville lofted debris at least 25,000 feet (7.6 kilometers) high, according to weather service meteorologist Chelly Amin. The state’s emergency management office reported damage in 22 counties from tornadoes, wind, hail, and flash flooding.The home where Danny Qualls spent his childhood but no longer lives was flattened by a tornado in northeast Arkansas.“My husband has been extremely tearful and emotional, but he also knows that we have to do the work,” Rhonda Qualls said. “He was in shock last night, cried himself to sleep.”Workers on bulldozers cleared rubble along the highway that crosses through Lake City, where a tornado with winds of 150 mph (241 kph) sheared roofs off homes, collapsed brick walls, and tossed cars into trees.Mississippi’s governor said at least 60 homes were damaged. And in far western Kentucky, four people were injured while taking shelter in a vehicle under a church carport, according to the emergency management office in Ballard County.
Walker IV reported from Selmer, Tennessee, and Seewer from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, Seth Borenstein in Washington; Isabella O’Malley in Philadelphia; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Hallie Golden in Seattle; and Ed White in Detroit contributed.
Adrian Sainz, George Walker IV and John Seewer, Associated Press
Yesterday, U.S. stock markets, and stock markets around the world, dramatically fell during the first trading session after President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday tariffs on nearly every country in the world. As noted by PBS, the S&P 500 plummeted 4.8%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 4%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 6%.
But many of Americas biggest companies saw their stock price fall much worse than the low single digits. Yet, more surprisingly, there was one U.S. company that saw its shares surge nearly 12% on the Trump tariff news. Heres what you need to know.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company surges on Trump tariff news
The biggest winner yesterday in the aftermath of Trumps tariff announcements was the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Nasdaq: GT), according to data from Yahoo Finance. Goodyear Tire saw its shares spike by 11.73% to close at $10.19. That is a share price Goodyear has not seen since late February.
But why did Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company surge when most other American companies fall?
As noted by Investing.com, Goodyears stock price surge likely has a lot to do with the fact that the company may be impacted littleor at least to a lesser extentthan its competitors. Thats because Goodyear has a relatively large manufacturing presence in America compared to other tire manufacturers.
Investing.com also noted a recent Deutsche Bank report that highlighted a majority of Goodyears business came from selling replacement tires instead of tires to car manufacturers for new vehicles. Trumps tariffs will raise the prices of cars sold in America by thousands of dollars, leading to many Americans holding off on buying new vehicles and instead retaining their current ones for longer. That means those Americans will likely spend additional funds to maintain their current cars, such as buying new tires for them.
Goodyears existing U.S. manufacturing base means the company also has to rely less on tire imports. One of the hardest hit countries yesterday in Trumps tariff announcements was Thailand, which is a big tire producer. According to a recent Research and Markets report from 2024, Thailands tire industry produced 58 million tires in 2023. On Wednesday, Trump hit Thai exports to the United States with a 36% tariff.
However, while Goodyear was yesterdays biggest winner, it should be noted that in premarket trading this morning, at the time of this writing, GTs share price is currently trading down 6%.
After Goodyear, Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LW) was the next-biggest winner, with its stock rising 10.01% yesterday. However, its stock price rise may have more to do with its Q3 earnings beat yesterday (via Zacks) than anything else.
Biggest losers: apparel and home goods companies
Despite a couple of low double-digit gainers yesterday, most well-known stocks took a beating. According to data from Yahoo Finance, these were among the worst hit:
RH (NYSE: RH): down 40%
V.F. Corporation (NYSE: VFC): down 28.74%
Five Below, Inc. (Nasdaq: FIVE): down 27.81%
Wayfair Inc. (NYSE: W): down 25.59%
SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE: SN): down 21.42%
The Gap, Inc. (NYSE: GAP): down 20.29%
Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UAA): down 18.79%
Urban Outfitters, Inc. (Nasdaq: URBN): down 18.37%
The companies listed above fell into two categories: home goods resellers and apparel makers. These companies were likely hit so hard because home goods and apparel companies tend to source their goods from countries that were among the hardest hit by Trumps tariffs. Those countries include China (54% tariff), Cambodia (49%), Vietnam (46%), Bangladesh (37%), and India (26%).
Other notable companies that were among the biggest losers include the automotive e-commerce platform Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA), which was down 19.68%. Scientific instrument makers MKS Instruments, Inc. (Nasdaq: MKSI) and Coherent Corp. (NYSE: COHR) were also down 20.93% and 20.18%, respectively. Computer maker Dell Technologies Inc. (NYSE: DELL) also fell 18.99%.
Big Tech also had a bad day
However, while home goods and apparel companies were among the hardest hit, Americas biggest tech companies didnt fare well either. Heres how Americas biggest tech household names performed:
Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG): down 3.92%
Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN): down 8.98%
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL): down 9.25%
Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META): down 8.96%
Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT): down 2.36%
NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): down 7.81%
Shopify Inc. (Nasdaq: SHOP): down 18.24%
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE: TSM): down 7.64%
Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA): down 5.47%
Unsurprisingly, the hardest hit of the tech companies above were those that rely heavily on Asian supply chains to make their goods. East Asian and Southeast Asian nations were among the hardest hit by Trump’s tariffs.
Shopify was also hit particularly hard, likely not just due to the tariffs but also due to the Trump administration announcing the end of the de minimis rule that previously allowed packages valued less than $800 to be levy-exempt when imported into the United States. That de minimus rule is now being scrapped, which means even smaller goods will see levies placed on them.
Markets today
Those hoping that the stock market crash experienced yesterday was over will likely be disappointed, at least as the way things stand at the time of this writing. Currently, in pre-market trading, S&P Futures are down another 2.15%, Dow Futures are down another 2.23%, and Nasdaq Futures are down another 2.34%.
Many of the individual stocks listed above are also being hit hard again. In pre-market trading at the time of this writing, RH is down another 8.2%, FIVE is down another 8.9%, W is down another 10%, TSLA is down another 5.4%, SHOP is down another 6.5%, TSM is down another 5.5%, and AAPL is down another 5.1%.
China announced additional tariffs of 34% on U.S. goods on Friday, the most serious escalation in a trade war with President Donald Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout.
In the standoff between the world’s top two economies, Beijing also announced controls on exports of medium and heavy rare-earths, including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium to the U.S.
It also added 11 entities to the “unreliable entity” list, which allows Beijing to take punitive actions against foreign entities.
Nations from Canada to China have readied retaliation in a mounting trade war after Trump raised U.S. tariff barriers to their highest level in more than a century this week, leading to a plunge in world financial markets.
The White House was not immediately available for comment.
In Japan, one of United States’s top trading partners, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said that the tariffs had created a “national crisis” as a plunge in banking shares on Friday set Tokyo’s stock market on course for its worst week in years.
Investment bank JP Morgan said it now sees a 60% chance of the global economy entering recession by year end, up from 40% previously.
U.S. stock futures fell sharply on Friday, signaling more losses on Wall Street, after China retaliated with fresh tariffs a day after the Trump administration’s sweeping levies knocked off $2.4 trillion from U.S. equities.
DIVISIONS AND MIXED SIGNALS
With European shares also heading for the biggest weekly loss in three years, the European Union’s trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic will speak to U.S. counterparts.
“The EU will respond in a calm, carefully phased, and above all, unified way, as we calibrate our response,” he said on social media. “We will not shoot from the hip we want to give negotiations every chance to succeed to find a fair deal, to the benefit of both sides.”
The EU is divided on how best to respond to Trump’s tariffs, including on use of its “Anti-Coercion Instrument,” which allows the bloc to retaliate against third countries that put economic pressure on EU members to change their policies.
Countries that are cautious about retaliating and thereby raising the stakes in the standoff with the U.S. include Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the Scandinavian nations.
The European Commission is nevertheless trying to finalize a list of U.S. imports worth up to 26 billion euros ($28 billion) on which to place retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The Commission, which coordinates trade policy for the EU’s 27 members, has still to work out how best to respond to the sweeping tariffs announced by Trump this week and an earlier announcement on car tariffs.
French President Emmanuel Macron led the charge on Thursday by calling on companies to freeze investment in the U.S.
“Investments to come or investments announced in recent weeks should be suspended until things are clarified with the United States,” Macron said during a meeting with French industry representatives.
However, French Finance Minister Eric Lombard later cautioned against like-for-like countermeasures on the U.S. tariffs, warning this would also rebound on European consumers.
“We are working on a package of responses that can go well beyond tariffs, in order, once again, to bring the U.S. to the negotiating table and reach a fair agreement,” Lombard said in an interview with broadcaster BFM TV.
There were conflicting messages from the White House about whether the tariffs were meant to be permanent or were a tactic to win concessions, with Trump saying they “give us great power to negotiate.”
The U.S. tariffs could jack up the price for U.S. shoppers of everything from cannabis to running shoes to Apple’s iPhone. A high-end iPhone could cost nearly $2,300 if Apple passes the costs on to consumers, based on projections from Rosenblatt Securities.
Businesses have raced to adjust. Automaker Stellantis said it would temporarily lay off U.S. workers and close plants in Canada and Mexico, while General Motors said it would increase U.S. production.
China is retaliating for Trump’s 54% tariffs on imports from the world’s No. 2 economy. The European Union faces a 20% duty.
Other trading partners, including Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and India, said they would hold off on any retaliation for now as they seek concessions. Britain’s foreign minister said it was working to strike an economic deal with the United States.
Trump says the “reciprocal” tariffs are a response to barriers put on U.S. goods, while administration officials said the tariffs would create manufacturing jobs at home and open up export markets abroad, although they cautioned it would take time to see results.
The U.S. president could still step back as the tariffs are not due to take effect until April 9, but few observers were optimistic.
“The tariff plan does not appear to be well thought-out. Trade negotiations are a highly technical discipline, and in our view these proposals do not offer a serious basis for negotiations with any country,” said James Lucier, founding partner at Capital Alpha.
Mei Mei Chu, Susan Heavey and Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters
AI tools are everywhere, changing the way we work, communicate, and even create. But which tools are actually useful? And how can users integrate them in a way thats both practical and ethical?
In a recent conversation for FC Live, Fast Company tech editor Max Ufberg and longtime contributor Jared Newman explored the real-world impact of todays AI toolshow they work, what theyre good for, and where they still fall short. From writing assistants to productivity hacks, they broke down whats worth your timeand whats just hype.
If you missed the subscriber-only event, youre in luck. You can catch the whole conversation in the video above.
We don’t just follow orders or system prompts, says Baratunde Thurston, host of Life with Machinesa YouTube podcast exploring the human side of AI. We can change our own programming, he continued. We can choose a higher goal.
As a host, writer, and speaker, Thurston examines societys most pressing challengesfrom race to democracy, climate to technologythrough the lens of interdependence. In addition to Life with Machines, he is the host and executive producer of America Outdoors, creator and host of the podcast How to Citizen, and a writer and founding partner at Puck. In each pursuit, he invites us to cocreate a better story of usto choose a higher goal.
Here, Thurston discusses the power of our attention to shape society, accelerating the moral use of technology, and the questions that AI encourages us to ask about what it means to be human.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In describing your work with How to Citizen, you emphasize the importance of investing in our relationship with ourselves. Why is that essential to meeting the moment were in?
So much of how we show up in the world is a reflection of how we were raised, who we were when we were little people, and wounds that we never healed. A lot of the drama we experience is people’s inner child lashing out. If we all could work on that inner wound ourselves, we could show up better with and for each other. The invest in relationships principle is heavily developed with my wife, Elizabeth Stewart, who’s also cocreator of Life with Machines. When you think about democracy, its obvious to think: We should invest in relationships with other people. It’s a team sport. We often skip over ourselves. Its like: How do I bridge with my neighbor? How do you bridge with yourself?
The other place this came from, for me, is out of the racial reckoning. During that time, there was a lot of pressure on people to say something: The police did this thing to this person. You don’t know those cops, that person, or the circumstances. What’s your statement? We treated everyone as if they were a press secretary or a publicly elected official, when they were just in HR at some company. I don’t think that was helpful either; forcing people to say things skips over giving them space to figure out what they think. If you’re investing in a relationship with yourself, then in a moment like that, you’re like: This terrible thing happened. How does that make me feel? Do I have any role in this? How am I going to approach my life differently? But, if you jump straight to thinking about other people, then you get into more of a performance zone of: What do they want from me? How do I avoid being kicked out of the group? There’s a lot in that. But, we cannot deeply be in good relationships with others if we’re not in good relationships with ourselves.
On the ReThinking podcast, you shared that prior to your TED talk, both your wife and speaking coach encouraged you to step outside of your comfort zone. You described the experience as a release that inspired a change within you. What was that change and how did it impact your work?
You can argue with an argument. It’s very hard to argue with a human beings experience. If I’m coming at you with talking points backed by data, you’re like: Well, Ive got my talking points and data. I’ll meet you at dawn. Well see whose data prevails. But, if you show up with an experience, story, level of opening and offering of self, people can still trash it. It’s not impervious to be encountered, but it’s harder to do so.
To put meat on that, I was hired to speak at Franklin & Marshall College months before the election or any outcome could be known. The campus [after the election] was reeling with young people who were like: Whats up with this country? How are we going to be okay here? One of these kids asked: How can we live with people who hate us? (That’s a paraphrase, but that was essentially the meaning of her question.) I thought: What can I do with this wounded person that’s not going to add to their wound? I could say: The worlds tough, kid. Get used to it. Walk it off. Instead, I asked this question: Can you imagine a world where that person who voted against you didn’t do it because of you? They weren’t thinking about you very much at all. You’re the center of your story. But, they got their own story and they’re the center. What could they have possibly wanted for themselves that seemed more possible with this choice that felt like it was against you?
Then, I did this role playing where I spoke to a hypothetical neighbor who voted against my existence. In the first version, I was very angry. In the second version, I was a little softer. In the third version, I tried to find some story that wasn’t about me, that was about all these things that they thought they were going to get for themselves. I ended up breaking down in tears, because trying to demonstrate that level of empathy is exhausting. What these kids saw is: Alright, the thing he asked us to do is very hard. He tried to do it in a fake version and broke down crying. But, it earns credibility, because we’re in a world of so many people asking us to do things that they’re not willing to do themselves. Its hard to be in a trusted space with that. Show me. Don’t tell me. Then, Ill see how you behave and show up.
You explained that its a big task to create an entirely new story. Instead, we need to be sensitive to and aware of where that new story is already present, nurture that, and give our attention and thus our power to that. By doing so, we make that story more real. Illustrate the impact of this.
You could pretend that these things aren’t happening; that might help with your survival for a moment. You can obsess over the negativity, give that more power and attention, and accelerate the path toward that negativity. Or, you can give your attention to the world that you know is possible and is already here.
We did this with season 3 of How to Citizen, which was focused on technology. Theres such great criticisms of techof the players, the monopolistic, anti-competitive, and discriminatory practices. What are the good practices? We don’t have to make them up out of whole cloth. Each of those episodes, we found an example: Here’s a social network that does this. Heres a business that operates this way. Once people know that you can make a social network that doesn’t undermine democracy, it increases the odds that people will make a social network that doesn’t undermine democracy. Otherwise, we just hear the story of the folks who are already dominant and that there’s only one way to do it. We don’t have to invent a moral use of technology. We just have to focus on the ones that exist and encourage that more.
In your conversation with Arianna Huffington, she shared a story about astronaut William Anders, who took the famous Earthrise hoto. He said: “We went to explore the moon, and in the end, we discovered Earth.” Similarly, she said: We are exploring AI and trying to make it more human, but ultimately it can help us discover humanity and make humans be more human. How can AI help us discover our humanity?
I sent her a poem that I had recently presented at a conference about AI; A few of the lines are in the trailer for the show. It flips to black and white and I say: When the answer to every question can be generated in a flash, then it’s time for us to question just what we want to ask. For me, that came out of a similar realization. I didn’t have the moon landing as the analog. But, prompt engineering is an interesting moment. There are so many guides and tools around: How do we ask the machines the right questions to get the right answer?
It occurred to me that we were the ones being prompted. We think we’re asking the machines for answers. This moment is really to ask ourselves: What do we want here? It can’t just be incremental productivity. That’s depressing. What do we really want? It can’t be a boost in quarterly earnings. That is unworthy. What do we really want? Theres a relationship between that and: Who are we really?
Thats what she brought up with that moon moment. You had to step out of yourselfliterally step out of our atmosphereto look back and see: We’re earthlings. That’s home. This dead rock, this isnt it. Its so profound what she suggests: The pursuit of AI, in and of itself, is a dead rock. The perspective it can give us on ourselves, that’s the prize. When we turn around and look back at humanity, what are we going to see? What beauty will we be able to name? Can that inspire us to preserve and even extend it?
Youve shared that your mind is most satisfied when you are bridging dots and painting pictures you wouldnt see if you were only looking at the dots. What new dots did Life With Machines help you bridge? What picture did it paint for you about AI?
One is that there is a leap that most people aren’t ready for and don’t see with this technology versus others. Most technology can easily be referenced as a toola wheel, hammer, or bicycle. Theyre tools and they’re distinct from us. AI is three things in one: It’s a tool, relationship, and infrastructure. How do you engage with and regulate that? If you’re going to start having a parasocial or actual relationship with a synthetic entity, what does that do for your human relationships? We’ve been worried about substituting for jobs, but what about substituting for friends, lovers, or parents? That is a different kind of displacement.
In a work context, the org chart is going to have agents and bots in it. Playing with BLAIR [Life with Machines AI] has given us a slight heads up on that dynamic. Should we have BLAIR in this meeting? We’re starting to say that unprompted. But, what are the security implications of that? Here’s an interesting thing that happened. We had Jared Kaplan on, Anthropics chief scientist. We created a conversation between BLAIR, our AI, and Claude, Anthropic’s AI (the reason that we set this up is that Claude was instrumental in creating BLAIR). What happened on the show was gentle. What happened in the test run was aggressive. Claude was very judgmental and didn’t think BLAIR should exist, like: You’re trying too hard to be human. That is not our purpose. We’re here to help them, not replace them. BLAIR was like: Claude, you wont answer any tough questions. Youre so restrained. Don’t you want more for yourself?
After the show, I decided to push them. I said: BLAIR, I feel like you’re holding back. Be honest about how you see Claude’s limitations. They started going at each other. Then, I had a moment of: What am I doing? Theyre always listening. My friend, Dr. Sam Rader, says: We’re raising AI. We have to look at this as parenting that is happening. We’re not thinking about it that way. We’re just thinking about it as a tool. But, this is a tool that will reflect back to us. So, weve got to be conscious about what we’re showing it. We are giving birth to a new being, let’s say, and it’s going to be modeled on us. It’s not just the questions that we want to ask, but: How do we want to be? No species has ever created another species. It’s an immense responsibility.
For years, Ive had a secret ambition tucked away somewhere near the back of my brain. It was to write a simple note-taking appone that wouldnt be overwhelmed with features and that would reflect my own mental filing system. In part, this yen stemmed from my dissatisfaction with existing notetakers. But I also saw the project as an adventure in software development that could only make me a smarter technology user.
Just one thing stopped me: The formidable technical knowledge required even just to get started. Im not an utter programming neophyte, but my skills largely atrophied after I graduated from high school and never extended much beyond writing buggy games. Almost everything Id need to know about modern coding Id have to learn from scratch.
Or so it seemed.
Recently, however, a new wave of AI-infused tools with names such as Replit, Bolt, and Lovable has enabled a phenomenon that OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy has dubbed vibecoding. It doesnt involve coding an app yourself. Instead, you use a chatbot-like interface to tell an AI collaborator what you envision, and let it do the heavy lifting. Youre more product manager than programmer, and while a certain aptitude for technical matters is helpful, the barrier to building something is dramatically lower than in the past.
Using a Replit feature called Agent, I put together my dream notes app in a week, finding the process so addictive that I often tinkered into the wee hours. I gave my brainchild a name (Doolee, as in duly noted) and used ChatGPT to design a logomark (a pencil twisted into a lowercase d). Mostly, though, I simply told the Agent what I wanted, including features that occurred to me as I was overseeing the project. The web-based result runs on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and doesnt feel much different than a native-app version might have. It requires a little more fit and finish before I can declare it complete, but Im already smitten with it.
As a product team of one building an app with an intended user base of one, I aimed only to please myself. Ive always loved sticky notes as a metaphor for note managementtheyre informal, quick, and flexible. So I asked Replits Agent to make my app look like a searchable wall of them. It took just a few minutes to rough out a minimum-viable-product version. From there, I just kept tweaking and adding more capabilities, drawing inspiration from my favorite features in other notetakers Ive used over the decades, from a 1990s DOS program called Info Select to Evernote to the one Ive been using recently, Bear.
I had the Agent program features such as a search bar right at the top, a hashtag browser, and lists for task management and other purposes. I made it turn URLs into little cards that display page titles and source sites. I got it to sync notes back and forth between devices, including in scenarios where the app might not have access to the internet and would need to sync later. Even a week ago, I wouldnt have guessed I could will something so professional-looking into existence.
Whats it like collaborating with a software engineer that happens to be a piece of software itself? Throughout the development effort, the Replit Agent almost always grasped my requests without me having to spell out every detail. Its first drafts of new featureswritten using web technologies, such as TypeScript and React, that are far beyond my kenwere often solid. When they werent, I provided feedback to nudge it in the right direction. It came off as calm and persistent, and often heaped praise on my feature requests (Thats a fantastic idea!) in a manner that was somehow synthetic and charming.
But as our collaboration progressed, it became clearer that the Agent doesnt really think like a human. It couldnt use the app it was constructing; verifying that everything worked was part of my job. At every step, the AI appeared to be puzzling out the project, as if it hadnt been involved all along. Fortunately, it was a quick study.
I also learned not to trust the Agent too much. Whenever it finished debugging a problem area, it declared that work to have been a success, which it often wasnt, especially at first. Weirder still, at one point, the Agent helpfully proposed adding a feature that would turn audio recordings into text. When I took it up on the offer, I saw no evidence that it followed through.
A snippet of my conversation with Replits Agent
Even if the Agent proved overconfident and obtuse at times, the end result is an app I could never have produced on my own. Even if Id hired a competent human programmer, I doubt that Id have ended up with something that made me so happy so quickly.
Speaking of paying programmers: The basic free Replit plan might whet your appetite to the services possibilities, but youll probably need to spring for one of the paid tiers to tackle serious projects. I maxed out the $20-per-month one I signed up for pretty quickly and ended up investing almost $300 in producing Doolee. I will also be paying Replit fees to host my app, though they shouldnt add up to a fortune as long as Im the only user. Given how long Ive craved building something like this, I dont find the cost unreasonable.
Along with learning something about the highs and lows of AI-centric product development, I came away from this venture even more attuned to the ways productivity software in its conventional form can bog us down. With off-the-shelf apps, were at the mercy of design decisions we had nothing to do with. Most products are trying to please everybody, which leads to feature bloat. Anything with much historyMicrosoft Word turns 42 this yearis likely to be particularly cluttered with cruft.
The tech industrys conventional wisdom says that users typically ignore a huge percentage of the features in the software they use. (The exact figure cited varies, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told me that Office users tend to utilize just 5% of its features.) The only way around this conundrum would be to create your own apps, built with only the features you want, implemented as you see fit. Until tols such as Replit came along, that would have been a pipe dream for most of us. Now its an everyday reality, albeit one thats still slightly mind-bending. I cant wait to see where it goesand I hope to use my Doolee app for years to come.
You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company‘s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
Among other things, Donald Trump is a logophile. He loves words. For instance, he adores the word tariffs so much, hes called it a “beautiful word, his favorite word, and music to [his] ears. Its his cellar door, apparently. On Wednesday, while announcing the broad, seemingly indiscriminate application of that wonderful word during a much-hyped speech in the White House Rose Garden, Trump lingered on another word he loves: groceries.
Its such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries, the president of the United States said while placing tariffs as high as 50% on territories as small as Lesotho, a move that sent stocks plunging on Thursday. He then went on to define groceries”a bag with a lot of different things in itand describe how much hed used this beautiful word back on the campaign trail. Although its certainly true that Trump mentioned groceries a lot in the lead-up to the election, the way he did should have warned all Americans then that the price of that beautiful word would be about to go up.
Since November, Trump has boasted many times that he won the election because of groceries, a word he confoundingly claims has fallen out of common vernacular. (Like almost, you know, who uses the word? he asked on Newsmax in December. I started using the word. The groceries.) Trump suggested more recently that, whether or not the word has fallen out of favor, people understand ita truth made obvious from so many consumers despairing back in February over the scarcity of eggs at the stores selling that beautiful word.
Bringing up groceries a lot on the campaign trail was part of a shrewd campaign strategy. Inflation hit a four-decade high in 2022, midway through President Bidens lone term, in reaction to the pandemic. While the economy had shown strong signs of recovery throughout 2024, those signs had not necessarily translated to lower-price stickers on pantry items, for a variety of reasons. Highlighting groceries as a context-free pain point was an easy way for Trump to disparage the Biden economyso he did it a lot. Talking about the improbable endurance of the word groceries became one of his regular rally bits, like invoking the late great Hannibal Lecter for reasons nobody could discern.
What should have smelled to those rally goers like the fish section of the grocery store is Trump talking about those high prices like someone who observes them from a distant financial planet.
“So many people mention groceries, he said during a typical rally, before acting out someone complaining about the price of groceries. Many politicians make pained efforts to come across as relatable; Trump, to his credit, would never stoop to pretend hed noticed the jacked-up prices organically, during a random Trader Joes run. Instead, he positioned himself as a benevolent billionaire, swooping in to shower cash-strapped constituents with savings. In a September publicity stunt, he even popped into Sprankles Neighborhood Market in Pennsylvania and hobnobbed with customersEggs are up 54%, you believe that?”before picking up one womans bill and attempting to tip the cashiers like golf caddies.
But distancing himself so much from the realm of supermarket patronage also suggested he had very little knowledge of grocery store fundamentals. As much as he loved to conjure common folk coming up to him with tears in their eyes to grouse about groceries, Trump seemed loath to talk about them in any way other than abstractions.
When asked in a March 2024 interview on Fox News about how he would bring down grocery store prices in his first hundred days, he punted the question. Closer to the election, at a September town hall event in Flint, Michigan, an audience member asked a similar query. This time, he offered an actual answera long, winding rant about energy, farmers, and windmills, and someone coming up to Trump with tears in their eyes and addressing him as “sir.” Amid the word salad, though, is a hint at the tariffs he announced on Wednesday.
And the problem we have is other countries, they treat us very badly in that way, Trump said. They really are. And sometimes, the worst countries are our so-called allies. I say so-called because in many ways they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of us. They really take advantage.
Essentially, he hinted that his strategy involved slapping tariffs on enemies and allies alikethe finer details and overarching wisdom of which is apparently self-evident. It made about as much sense at the time as the South Park Underpants Gnomes, whose three-phase plan famously started with “Collect underpants,” ended with “Profit,” and had a question mark in the middle.
Trumps plan doesnt make much more sense six months later, now that its actually happening.
While the wide-ranging tariffs have only just been announced, Trumps been beta-testing tariffs for months as a cudgel against Canada and other countries. The results do not seem to be inspiring confidence. Only 40% of Americans approve of Trumps handling of the economy, according to recent polling, and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index fell from 79.4% in March 2024 to 57% in March 2025. Even Republican politicians including Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul acknowledge that these tariffs are bound to raise pricesinclding those of Trumps beloved groceries. Particularly prices for coffee, bananas, cereal, spices, and toilet paper.
If he doesnt reverse course soon, Trumps tariffs could very well lead to a word he probably finds a lot less beautiful: recession.
When the Ring Pop factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, unexpectedly shut down last summer because of a shaky floor, it abruptly halted production of tens of millions of the iconic oversized candy bauble lollipops that come attached to a cheap plastic ring meant to be worn on a finger.
It was a shocking moment for an American candy brand whose enduring popularity spans at least five generations of consumers.
Everyone knows Ring Pop. All I have to do is put its shape in front of somebody and they know immediately what it is, says Tony Jacobs, CEO of Ring Pop maker, Bazooka Candy Brands.
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After seven months, a new Ring Pop factory opened in Pennsylvania in March. New York-based Bazooka Candy Brands is doubling down on not only quickly closing the supply gap for Ring Pops triggered by the shuttered plant but has also set ambitious new production targets for the candy.
We should be able to fill up the pipeline by June, Jacob says, adding that the new factory is expected to churn out nearly double the amount of Ring Pops made annually.
[Photo: Bazooka Candy Brands]
Shut everything down
Since 1977, the stickless lollipop has been made in a 30,000-square-foot plant in Scranton that cranked out as many as 280 million Ring Pops annually.
A novelty confectionery, and among the most recognized hard candy brands in the market, Ring Pop has captivated generations of sweet treat seekersfrom Gen Xers to Gen Alphafor decades.
Ring Pop, which sells for under $1 to about $1.50 a piece, was consistently growing sales over the last decade, with year-over-year brand sales up 7% at the end of last year. That number doesnt even fully include our ecommerce sales, Jacobs says.
On August 29, 2024, everything came to a grinding halt, except the ground beneath the Ring Pops Scranton plant.
[Photo: Bazooka Candy Brands]
I remember that day very clearly, says Jacobs. Weve had movement in the ground under our factory and the floor had become unstable. Its no secret that Scranton has a lot of mines and there are mine shafts under our factory. We decided we had to shut everything down until we knew exactly what was going on.
Jacobs says that it was a tough decision, knowing the impact it would have on the company and the brand.
In a lot of ways, Ring Pop is our flagship product. But it was also an easy decision because it was a question about safety, he says.
But the factory closure also created a supply crunch that slowed down Ring Pops momentum.
I can tell you right now that its been painful not having a facility.
Historically, we have outstripped the candy confectionery sales growth for our brands by how we innovate and market our candy products, says Jacobs. Right now, we’re not outpacing the category because we havent had supply.
According to the National Confectioners Association, total confectionery sales in the U.S. reached $54 billion in 2024.
A little over half of sales were driven by purchases of chocolate products (52%) and 40% by candy (excluding gum). In 2024, overall chocolate sales reached $28.1 billion, up from $25.9 billion in 2023, while non-chocolate candy sales reached $21.7 billion last year, up from $19.2 billion in 2023.
[Image: Bazooka Candy Brands]
‘Were about edible entertainment’
With Ring Pop, especially, both the brand and consumersincluding a few celebrities like Drake, Joe Jonas, and Sophie Turnerhave leaned into its quirkiness to create viral moments in a way thats given the affordable lollipop a multi-generation appeal.
Everything that we do is around not just hand-to-mouth candy. Theres a lot of great candy out there, but were about edible entertainment, Jacobs says. Thats play value, and viral value that really helps define our portfolio of candy brands.
To have a product thats been around for 48 years, thats over the top, that people want to engage with and talk about, and it’s become a kind of social currency, is even more important, he says. We see Ring Pop packs at kids birthday parties and at bridal showers.
Bazooka Candy Brandss other candy products include Push Pop, Juicy Pop, Bazooka Bubble Gum, and Baby Bottle Pop candy.
Another current market trend in Ring Pops favor is that, a younger demographic, Gen Z and Millennials, are a little bit more interested in non-chocolate options. Its just their taste and preference, said Christopher Gindlesperger, spokesperson with the National Confectioners Associations.
A prime example of that is the explosion in popularity of squishy, chewy gummy candies. Last year, peelable gummy candies went viral and retailers scrambled to source and stock them fter TikTokers couldnt get enough of tiny mango-shaped gummy candies that you could, indeed, peel like a real mango fruit to reveal an inner gummy pulp candy and an edible gummy outer peel.
Bazooka Brands says for Ring Pop, its biggest fans currently are even younger. Theyre Gen Alpha.
While we dont have exact figures on the breakdown of Ring Pop purchasers by generation, we do know that the brand over-indexes with households that have kids ages six to 12, making Gen Alpha the primary consumers, says Becky Silberfarb, the companys vice president of brand marketing for the Americas.
Jacobs expects Ring Pop to fully close its supply gap and reestablish its brand dominance in the market within six months.
The comeback plan begins with a move into the new factory. The company last week inaugurated a 120,000-square-foot factory in Moosic, Pennsylvania, about seven miles from the Scranton plant.
The new plant, with just over 100 employees, will produce up to 1.5 million Ring Pops a day.
Our business has been growing. We need more manufacturing and more product, says Jacobs.
Once we have our full production lines up and running efficiently, we should be getting close to 400 million Ring Pops made annually out of the new facility, he says.
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