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Experts are warning that tariffs on pharmaceuticals are likely to increase shortages of essential medications. The governments ongoing investigation into the national security implications of importing pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients is widely understood as a precursor to sector-specific tariffs, which a White House advisor has said are likely. On the other hand, the administration recently issued a new executive order laying the groundwork for tariff exemptions for some pharmaceutical products imported from countries that reach trade agreements with the United States. As a result, manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and patients are in limbo. Digital health companies that make access to prescription medication simpler are also at risk. But I already know firsthand what a drug shortage looks like. I am the CEO of Oar Health, a company that helps people struggling with alcohol misuse get access to prescription medication to drink less or quit. And naltrexone, the recommended frontline medication for treating alcohol use disorder, has been in shortage for more than a year. Heres what Ive learned: Patients suffer when essential medications are unavailable Throughout the naltrexone shortage, I have heard from patients who have found medication critical to their recoveries. But instead of celebrating and building upon their progress, they were worried about continuing their treatment. Retail and mail order pharmacies alike told patients that they could not refill their prescriptions nor provide a reliable estimate of when they would. Patients documented their experience and concern in social media posts. As someone who took naltrexone for more than five years, I can relate to their unease. When a medication is proving helpful in ones recovery, the last thing a patient should be forced to do is remove that tool from their toolkit. Beyond alcohol use disorder, direct-to-consumer telehealth companies like Ro, Hims, Nurx, and Cove have increased patient access to safe, effective medications across a broad range of health conditions. But access depends on availability. Tariffs on generic medications could harm patients who rely on everything from anti-depressants to birth control to migraine relievers to erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments. The generic drug supply chain is fragile Americans often assume that generic medications will always be cheaply available from multiple manufacturers and at every pharmacy. This assumption is incorrect. In the case of naltrexone, a shortage of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient meant that manufacturers had to slash production. Coupled with an increase in demand for the medications used to treat alcohol problems, shortages spread and prices went up. But input shortages are not the only vulnerability in the supply chain. Manufacturing complexity, quality concerns, and geographic concentration have contributed to an increase in the number and duration of generic drug shortages according to the research organization U.S. Pharmacopeia. 253 drugs are in shortage in 2025 according to the American Society of Health System Pharmacists after reaching an all-time peak of 323 in 2024. Because generic drug manufacturing, distribution and pharmacy dispensing all have very low profit margins, a cost increase including from tariffs at any point in the supply chain is likely to be disruptive. Facing even marginally higher costs, a manufacturer may decide that producing a generic drug is no longer economical. And, as our experience shows, the industry lacks the redundancy to make up the difference. Industry can adapt, but not overnight I am proud to say that we have kept medication in hand for every Oar Health member throughout the shortage. But it has not been easy. Many of our members worked with us during the most acute phases of the shortage, shifting from shipments of 90 tablets to 30 tablets at a time out of concern for others who needed access to the medication. We also drastically reduced marketing budgets and briefly stopped accepting new patients, meaning that people who could have benefited from treatment did not. Over time, we have seen API availability improve and manufacturers increase or restart production. But regulatory bottlenecks, manufacturing setup costs, and uncertainty about demand mean that bouncing back after a supply shock is a process measured in months and years, not days or weeks. More than 18 months after the FDA officially declared a naltrexone shortage and almost two years after patients and pharmacists first began reporting problems, naltrexone remains in shortage. This is unfortunately common. The average shortage lasts 18 months and can span as much as 15 years. Similarly, industry participants agree that reshoring manufacturing, a potential goal of tariffs, would be timely and costly. The bottom line I started Oar Health so that more of the 28 million Americans with alcohol use disorder could get access to safe, effective, FDA-approved medication proven to help them drink less or quit. Our more than 10,000 members and the millions of Americans who rely on essential generic medications are counting on policymakers to remember them.
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E-Commerce
More than a month after the Trump administration forced a nearly complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut to stop constructioncosting the developers more than $2 million per daythe project just resumed work. On August 22, the government issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project, which is designed to power 350,000 homes. It cited unspecified national security concerns despite years of review by federal agencies including the Department of Defense. Hundreds of workers were left idle. On September 22, a federal judge granted the developers a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue. Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said that the Trump administration’s arguments were “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” and noted that if construction didn’t begin immediately, the project was at risk of failing completely. But the project, which is 80% done, still faces some risks. And the governments attack makes it less likely for other offshore wind projects to be builteven after Trump is out of office. The Trump administration could still challenge the project The government has 60 days to file an appeal. That may not happen: Its possible that the administration could give up. The courts opinion is right on in terms of the utter illegality of what the government was attempting to do here, says Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation. So it may be that they just decide to take the loss. But they might appeal, and if they do, the developer has to weigh that risk against the urgency of getting this project completed. One industry legal expert told Fast Company that even within the administration, some Interior Department staff want to focus on other thingslike building more oil and gas projects or a $625 million plan to “rescue coal”rather than trying to kill the offshore wind industry, especially at a time when the president argues that theres an energy emergency. Still, Trump may want to appeal. The administration has what weve described as a retaliatory posture towards offshore wind, says Timothy Fox, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. To the extent that it doesnt like losing, they may try to look for any avenue or any lever they can pull to try to stop this project.” It’s different from the Empire Wind project in New York (which the administration also tried to stop but then let proceed after New York’s governor reportedly made a backroom deal with Trump to allow an unpopular gas pipeline to also move forward in the state). There, Trump can point to getting something in return. In the case of Revolution Wind, the administration clearly lost, and may want to keep fighting. What are the odds of an appeal? An appeal is unlikely to succeed. The government would have to argue that there was a clear reason to stop the project, something that the first judge found that it had failed to do. But “who’s on the bench hearing the appeal is incredibly important,” says Mark James, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The case shouldn’t win on the merits, experts say, but judges sympathetic to Trump might find creative ways to interpret the law. (That could also be true if the case reaches the Supreme Court, though its more likely that the Court would decline to hear the case; it chose not to hear a case about the neighboring Vineyard Wind project.) Agencies took a long time to carefully review the project, like other wind projects, before the permits were issued in the first place. “Part of the reason offshore wind projects have, to date, overcome judicial challenges was because the Biden administration knew that these projects would be challenged in court,” Fox says. “They didnt want to move fast in the short term just to lose on the back end. So they took their time issuing permits that could withstand judicial review.” Sinding Daly adds, What I would say is that in normal times, it’s probably pretty low risk to go forward [with construction] because of the speciousness of the lawsuit. But we’re not in normal times, clearly. And so it’s very hard to make predictions.” In theory, the government could also try to find a new reason to stop work on the project, though that would go back to the first judge and almost certainly be shot down. The administration can also carefully monitor construction to look for any potential compliance issues that would allow it to temporarily stop or slow the project again. Construction is racing forward As the threat from the government continues, workers are racing forward on the wind farm. In total, the project will include 65 massive wind turbines that will power homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Forty-five turbines are in place now. Installing the remaining 20 will take around three months. Crews also have to finish installing cables and connecting the power. Testing everything will take more time. It’s not clear how much can be finished before winter weather pauses the work. There could be other challenges, including whether specialized vessels that the developers need to lease for construction will still be available as long as the company needs them. Revolution Wind declined to comment on how much the delay over the past month has changed the overall timeline for the project. It may still be possible that it could finish next year, as planned, barring further legal delays. Once complete, since all of the federal permits were already issued, the project should be safe to begin sending power to shore. A chilling effect on offshore wind The government is still trying to revoke its approval of multiple other offshore wind projects, including SouthCoast Wind, a giant development near Massachusetts, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. Other projects are facing lawsuits that the federal government is declining to fight. The industry is also facing rising costs. It’s extremely unlikely that any new projects will start during the Trump administration. But it’s also becoming less viable for projects to move forward afterward. States like Massachusetts have told utilities they need to invest in offshore wind. But that won’t work without federal support as well. “I think this administration is purposely trying to scare away the industry even after they leave office,” says Fox. “A future administration may support the industryeven to the extent that the Biden administration didbut developers and financiers may be wary of investing in a capital-intensive sector with a long lead time that faces such demonstrable election risk. To put it more simply, can yo plan a project and get it online all within a four-year period of an administration that says they like offshore wind, before the next Trump 3.0?” It could set a precedent beyond just the offshore wind industry. A future climate-focused president could decide to revoke existing permits for gas projects, for example. “A future administration could say, ‘Okay, let’s use this growing executive power to stop projects that we don’t like. Even if a court ultimately strikes down that action, like you’ve seen with Revolution Wind, it just injects so much uncertainty and risk, Fox says, adding, “We’re hearing from some of our clients that this is among the most difficult times to invest in the energy sector, which is ironic, given the growing power demand. The political uncertainty is growing.”
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E-Commerce
We know that having friends at work is good for your performance and happiness. But could ChatGPT replace your happy hour bestie? According to a new study from KPMG that surveyed more than 1,000 professionals, almost all (99%) would be open to the idea of an AI chatbot assuming the role of close friend or trusted companion at work. That same study teases out a separate, also compelling thread: 45% of workers reported feelings of loneliness at work. Thats a huge jump, up nearly double from last year. On top of that, the survey found that friendship seems to be a big priority for most workerseven over money. More than half (57%) of those surveyed said they would take a salary 10% below market rate if it meant being able to have close friends at work, as opposed to accepting a salary 10% above market rate and having no close friends at work. (Whether theyd be willing to take a pay cut for a chatbot is another matter.) Still, it begs the question: Would people settle for Gemini as a close friend at work? The survey results suggest its possible. Plus, compared to “traditional” (read: human) colleagues, AI is always happy to assist, is hyperefficient, and doesnt complain when delegated tasks or when offered criticism. (Theres also the fact that one in three U.S. employees say they would rather scrub a toilet than ask a human colleague for help.) From therapists to relationship counselors to romantic partners, AI-powered digital companions are rapidly emerging as alternatives to any number of human relationships. Now AI may well be ready to assume its newest role of work spouse. This reflects a deeper truth: People are craving connection, Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG, told Fast Company. When something shows up consistently, listens without judgment, and responds in a supportive way, it starts to feel familiareven comforting. We already know that having a work bestie or office ally isnt just good for happiness, its good for productivity and performance. Employees in the KPMG survey said that having workplace friendships increases their motivation to go above and beyond their job description. But right now, we have zero idea whether any of these benefits transfer to a human-chatbot work friendship. What we do know is that the worker value on friendship is growing; 87% of employees consider work friendships “very important. And the youngest workers value workplace friendships more than their older counterparts: 90% of Gen Zers surveyed said those friendships are very important, compared to 77% of boomers. The trend is playing out alongside an increase in public familiarity and comfort with AI tools. In the past couple of years, the share of U.S. employees who say they have used AI in their role a few times a year or more has nearly doubled, from 21% to 40%, according to a Gallup survey in June. While this is predominantly for work-related tasks, chatting with AI can also reduce stress, anxiety, and loneliness for some users, according to a 2023 study published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research. Of course, correlation doesnt mean causation when it comes to chatbots being used more as stand-ins for human friends at work. But even if employees dont want AI to step into the role of friend, almost all surveyed in the KPMG report said they would like to use AI to aid their friendships in some capacity; 98% said they would like AI systems to connect them with coworkers based on shared interests. Its still early days in terms of widespread chatbot adoption, so who knows what will happen. For now, dont count on a bot to fully replace your gossip buddy by the watercooler. AI can mimic aspects of friendship; it cant replace the depth, nuance, and emotional resonance of human relationships, Torchia says. Thats where employers have a real opportunityto engineer environments where authentic connection can thrive.
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E-Commerce
Remember CDs? Theres a new company betting that, if you dont already, youre about to. Jewel is a Norwegian company specializing in manufacturing high-end display cases for CDs. The brand recently soft-launched online in Europe and is planning to expand to the U.S. in the coming months. It offers products that range from an $130 freestanding case that fits four CDs to a $300, 16-slot case designed to be mounted directly onto the wall. Launching a CD-based brand more than 20 years after CDs hit their peak feels like a counterintuitive prospect. After all, how many people even own a CD player these days? But Marius Brandl, Jewels founder, says the brands thesis is simple: Vinyl records have had their renaissance. CDs are next. [Photo: Jewel] Are CDs on the rise? Retro tech and physical media have experienced an undeniable comeback, in part driven by young consumers looking to cut back on social media. Gadgets like iPods (yes, those are considered retro), Game Boys, film cameras, and even pagers have seen a resurgence. And, as Brandl notes, that applies to the music industry, too. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl posted its 18th straight year of growth in 2024, generating $1.4 billion in retail revenue, its highest share of physical format revenue since 1984. Meanwhile, CDs may have fallen out of fashion in the mid-2000s, but theyre not a dead medium. In 2024, the RIAA reports, 33 million CDs were sold in the U.S., up 1.5% from 2023. [Photo: Jewel] For some fanbases, theyre becoming a more popular collectors item: Taylor Swift, for example, has a longstanding partnership with Target and tends to sell several versions of her albums in the format, including the upcoming Life of a Showgirl album, which will include three exclusive CDs. Charli XCX also gave the CD an injection of instant cool last summer, when her brat CDs sold out almost instantly. What’s interesting is the generation born before and after the year 2000, especially in Europe, have really, really been collecting [CDs], Brandl says. My feeling is that CDs will have a comeback. [Photo: Jewel] The making of a CD brand in 2025 Brandls idea for Jewela brand name inspired by the plastic jewel case that most CDs come inactually started back in the 90s, when he was in college. Brandl remembers attending a party where he saw a table strewn in CDs, and wondering to himself whether there might be a better way to organize and display them. [Photo: Jewel] At the time, Brandls concept of a grid-based display case received lots of positive feedback from his professors, who saw the CD as a promising new medium. He only made it to early development stages, though, before realizing that he couldnt find a way to both display the CDs and open their cases without damaging them, and the idea fizzled out. [Video: Jewel] When Brandls close friend convinced him to revive the idea in 2023, Brandl spent more than half a year developing the right blend of rubber to hold each jewel case inside his display prototype. The rubber, which lines two sides of each square-shaped slot,needed enough grip to keep the cases from sliding, but not so much that the cases would break when opened. The rubber was the biggest challenge, and also how to be able to make it not to be too expensive to produce, Brandl says. He adds that the acrylic, aluminum, and hardware that serve as the backbone of the displays are all premium materials sourced from European manufacturers, which has bumped up the brands price points. Instead of making it as cheap as possible with cheap materials, we thought, The ones who will buy this are probably the ones who like music so much that they have a nice Hi-Fi system, and they want new design solutions. Given that Jewel just launched, Brandl says its difficult to measure sales numbers at this stage. From inside his street-level office in Oslo, though, he talks with interested customers every day who stop by to take a closer look at the product. The people are from eight, nine yearsold to 82 years old,” Brandl says. I think the ones between 17 and 25 show the most interest. And I tell them, Your parents and grandparents and great grandparents listen to LPs. But the CDthat’s your generations physical connection to music.
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E-Commerce
As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment. On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources. Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone, without the need for titles, résumés, applications, or screeninga fully automated, frictionless match between resource and need, run at zero cost in a fraction of the time it would take Becky from HR to book meeting room 14B next Tuesday, but with near-infinite scope and efficiency. Its yet another cold, logical extension of artificial intelligences purported ability to reduce human intuition down to a series of predictable algorithmic factors. LinkedIn Dethroned? Now, lets be fair. OpenAIs proposition assumes (probably rightly) that virtually all future roles will require some degree of AI knowledge or fluency. Moreover, the press release breathlessly proposes an OpenAI Academy, one that will train the machine-picked workers of the future on how to best serve their artificial overlords. But will this really be enough to dethrone LinkedIn? An incumbent platform of over 1 billion people who now spend the bulk of their time not in job search or hiring, but in perpetual AI comment-discussions about the nature of authenticity while posting Canva-selfies of their weekend getaway to Puglia? Perhaps we should first recognize that human resources is one of the oldest and most safeguarded functions within the corporate world, holding out defiantly as personal assistance, finance, and even marketing have been variously usurped by automation. Its a curiously old-fashioned industry in many respects, relying on judgments about physical appearance and behavioral norms such as eye contact and punctualitycharacteristics that in any other sector would be subordinated to ones ability to deliver value or output. But recently, HR has gone through something of a transformation, and its safe to say that LinkedIn has been at the heart of that. In fact, the worlds largest business platform been an unwitting catalyst for an onslaught of AI-driven fraudboth from candidates (either building fake AI profiles or even replacing themselves in Zoom interviews with omniscient AI avatars), or from dubious recruiters (leveraging advanced AI tools to build fictitious companies in order to solicit payment or personal details). The market is now flooded with AI cover letters, AI résumés and AI-curated portfolios, while on the other side of the table, the screening process is often (and increasingly) handed off to AI scanning software, in order to save valuable time filtering out unsuitable candidates before proceeding to a final interviewone that may ultimately be conducted and processed by an AI avatar. Surely then its simply a short step to full automation, one that removes these very ghosts in the hiring machine? Perhaps. But Id suggest that any scholar of organizational psychology would hold a very different view. The intangibles We can look, for example, at evidence highlighting the predictive power of nonverbal cues such as vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language in forecasting later job performance. A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece, on the other hand, cautioned that automated interviews may be prone to missing these types of intangible characteristicspotentially valuable employee attributes (say, curiosity or resilience) that might only be registered via live human interaction. Yet suffice to say, these same factors are also deeply subjective. Economists have long shown that reliance on intuition and first impressions can also be a major source of bias in recruitment, perpetuating disparities around race, gender, and class. AI proxies Whatever the case, the stark reality is that we now find ourselves in an era where a growing majority of both candidates and recruiters are using AI as proxies. And in this world, the very notion of authentic observationwhether helpful or notis starting to erode. ButI hear you cry as onesurely HR isnt just about hiring? Its about people management, professional development, organizational health, and so many other things? Yesexcept that of all these functions, hiring has historically required the highest amount of dedicated resource, training, and physical presence, far outstripping what can now be done by AI in areas such as coaching, psychometric testing, and even therapy. If we delegate the very function of organizational building itself, what remains must necessarily become diminished, at least in part. To circle back then to OpenAI, perhaps iterative machine learning will finally win out. Perhaps time might tell us that the match between employee and role is near-flawless in an AI, dehumanized world. And yet, it may also be this very unpredictability of human nature that will represent the biggest loss to a future workforce. And as to the suggestion that OpenAIs hiring platform will take down LinkedIn itself? If it can somehow balance hiring efficiency with the high level of fluffy, eye-pleasing pseudo-business interactions that now so predominate on LinkedIn itself, perhaps. But to do that, youd need to first understand a little of the idiosyncrasies of human nature, in order to build (and foster) an appropriately sticky forumif only for the reason that business is a gateway into so many other areas of recreational and emotional life. And doing that, Im afraid to say, still requires a deeply human sensibility.
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E-Commerce
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