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The Trump administrations dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is stiffing American businesses on hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills for work that has already been done, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. The administrations abrupt freeze on foreign aid also is forcing mass layoffs by U.S. suppliers and contractors for USAID, including 750 furloughs at one company, Washington-based Chemonics International, the lawsuit says. One cannot overstate the impact of that unlawful course of conduct: on businesses large and small forced to shut down their programs and let employees go; on hungry children across the globe who will go without; on populations around the world facing deadly disease; and on our constitutional order, the U.S. businesses and organizations said. An organization representing 170 small U.S. businesses, major suppliers, an American Jewish group aiding displaced people abroad, the American Bar Association and others joined the court challenge. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington against President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting USAID Deputy Administrator Peter Marocco, a Trump appointee who has been a central figure in hollowing out the agency, and Russell Vought, Trumps head of the Office of Management and Budget. It is at least the third lawsuit over the administration’s rapid unraveling of the U.S. aid and development agency and its programs worldwide. Trump and ally Elon Musk have targeted USAID in particular, saying its work is out of line with Trumps agenda. Marocco, Musk and Rubio have overseen an across-the-board freeze on foreign assistance and agency shutdown under a Jan. 20 executive order by Trump. A lawsuit brought by federal employees associations has temporarily blocked the administration from pulling thousands of USAID staffers off the job. The funding freeze and other measures have persisted, including the agency losing the lease on its Washington headquarters. The new administration terminated contracts without the required 30-day notice and without back payments for work that was already done, according to a U.S. official, a businessperson with a USAID contract and an email seen by The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the Trump administration. For Chemonics, one of the larger of the USAID partners, the funding freeze has meant $103 million in unpaid invoices and almost $500 million in USAID-ordered medication, food and other goods stalled in the supply chain or ports, the lawsuit says. For the health commodities alone, not delivering them on time could potentially lead to as many as 566,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and unmet reproductive health needs, including 215,000 pediatric deaths, the lawsuit says. The filing asserts that the administration has no authority to block programs and funding mandated by Congress without approval. Marocco defended the funding cutoff and push to put all but a fraction of USAID staff on leave in an affidavit filed late Monday in the lawsuit brought by the workers groups. Insubordination and noncompliance by USAID staffers made it necessary to stop funding and operations by the agency to allow the administration to carry out a program-by-program review to decide what U.S. aid programs could resume overseas, Marocco wrote. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
For a decade, Dr. Bronners has been a certified B Corporation, a designation issued by the nonprofit B Lab that confirms a company has met certain environmental, social, and governance standards. But now the organic soap company is dropping its B Corp certification without plans to renew. Dr. Bronner’s says B Lab’s standards are weak, and that some multinational corporations are now using its sealan encircled B, which became a symbol that businesses can be a force for goodas a form of greenwashing. Dr. Bronner’s mainly takes issue with B Lab’s increasing certifications of multinational corporations such as Unilever Australia, Nespresso, and Nestlé Health Scienceand the fact that these businesses are not required to provide third-party certifications on the humans rights or environmental impacts of their supply chains. Instead, a business can still get a B Corp certification by scoring high in other assessment areas, such as if it monitors waste or has a certain percentage of management from underrepresented populations. To Dr. Bronner’s, this means B Lab is failing to ensure that its certification “wont be used to mislead consumers, David and Michael Bronner, the company’s CEO and president, respectively, said in a joint statement. “Sharing the same logo and messaging regarding being of benefit to the world with large multinational CPG companies with a history of serious ecological and labor issues, and no comprehensive or credible eco-social certification of supply chains, is unacceptable to us. A B Lab spokesperson says the nonprofit remains “deeply committed” to its mission, and that “catalyzing business as a force for good is a journey rather than a destination.” It has been working with its member businesses, advocacy groups, and independent experts to strengthen its standards, and in early 2025 will publish new requirements. These updated standards, the spokesperson says, “address todays most urgent social and environmental challenges, providing clear, impactful requirements that companies must meet in order to deliver leadership and systemic change.” Dr. Bronner’s first became a certified B Corp in 2015, the same year it became a benefit corporationa separate, unrelated legal designation that allows companies to pursue social good instead of simply profit. In the years since, its become one of the top-scoring B Corps. The company currently has an overall score of 206.7 (reportedly, the highest score ever awarded by the nonprofit), and the B Corp website notes that the median score for ordinary businesses is 50.9. The minimum score to become a certified B Corp is 80 points over five areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. B Corp’s logo has graced thousands of brands, including notably progressive ones including Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s. Dr. Bronners says its B Corp fee is paid through September 2025, but that the company won’t renew after that point. It’s also begun removing the B Corp logo from branding and marketing materials. For the past few years, Dr. Bronners has been pushing B Lab to improve its standardsespecially after larger companies joined the B Corp community. In 2022, the Nestlé-owned coffee company Nespresso announced that it received B Corp certification, setting off a wave of backlash from other B Corps. Just two months after that announcement, 30 certified B Corpsincluding Dr. Bronnerssigned an open letter to B Lab, protesting the certification, pointing to the history of child labor and wage theft on farms that grew Nespressos beans. B Labs standards have been questioned before, especially as the number of certification submissions has surged. And B Lab has taken action against some companies for behaviors that go against its ethos. In 2022, Scottish brewery BrewDog announced it was no longer a certified B Corpthough it said its status wasnt revoked, just that it withdrew after B Lab requested additional measures that the Scottish company couldn’t fulfill. (BrewDog received scrutiny after its certification from former employees who said the companys culture compromised their health and safety.) In 2024, B Lab stripped Havas, a French public relations company, of its certification because of the agencys relationship with Shell. But its mostly B Labs certification of multinational companies that has received the most criticism, especially from its own B Corp community. Its these large companies that are using their B Corp certification as a marketing ploy, Dr. Bronners says in its statement. Dr. Bronners has been pushing B Lab to require companies, especially those multinational corporations, to certify all major supply chains. The raw agricultural materials a company useswhether meat, milk, eggs, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and any othersare often produced in terrible ways in terms of social and environmental impact, the Bronners said. Requiring third party eco-social certification for major multinational supply chains would, they added, protect against the B Corp certification being misused by companies to hide these unsustainable and unjust corporate practices. They acknowledged that some certified B Corps do already practice this, including Patagonia, another prominent example of a purpose-driven business. But, they said, they are unfortunately a minority and this is not required by B Lab, most glaringly in the case of large multinational companies and their enormous supply chains.
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E-Commerce
A viral TikTok video showing an empty book signing for an elderly author tugged at millions of heartsuntil it was exposed as a marketing stunt. The book in question, Just Cuz, was reportedly written by Barbara Miller as a tribute to her late husband, Marv. She wrote it as a way to deal with her grief, the video’s voiceover explained. Posted last month, the video shows an empty bookstore with “Aunt Barb” setting up her books on a table to sign for customers who were nowhere in sight, followed by a dejected but hopeful “Aunt Barb”and it quickly racked up more than 33 million views, sparking an outpouring of support. Hundreds of commenters pledged to buy the book and attend her next signing. @justcuzthebook Nobody came to my aunts book signing, but she still had a smile JUST CUZ #justcuz #books #childrensbooks #fyp #justcuzthebook #kids original sound – Just Cuz But TikTok creator Sam Cahn was the first to burst Aunt Barbs bubble. The bad news is that this was fake, he said in his own video. The good news is the book is selling. @samcahntent aunt barbs just cuz book signing was a marketing move (it worked) #auntbarb #justcuz original sound – IG/YT: samcahntent Cahn became suspicious when he noticed how new Millers social media presence was and that there was no announcement of a book signing across any of her pages. After calling the bookstore, he found out that someone had paid $150 to rent the space on a Monday, when the store was closed, and staged the entire scene. This isnt an attack on Barb, he clarified. I think shes sweet. I love the success. He did, however, think it was worth calling out the 100% staged video from justcuzthebook. “I just want you to know that this didn’t happen: Nobody didn’t show up to a book signing.” The emotional manipulation tactic is, unfortunately, tried and true. “‘My parent did this thing but nobody came to see’ is always a marketing gimmick . . . but it gets me every time, one user commented underneath Cahn’s video. Omg I cried my eyes out on the original post, another wrote. On social media, the sob story has become a go-to strategy for struggling artists chasing virality. Pity appears to be a powerful currency, one that can turn engagement into attention and attention into sales. Its now not uncommon to see people sharing stories of professional failure (like Aunt Barb), seemingly in the hopes of gaining support, promotion, and even purchases from total strangers online. And often, it works. This kind of emotional marketing taps into our most basic instincts: If we feel bad enough for someone, were more likely to hit buy (regardless of whether the work in question is even good). Its a crass but effective tool, one that plays on our emotions for clicks. That turn into bucks. So, okay, maybe sometimes it pays to engage in a bit of emotional manipulation . . . just cuz. But let’s keep it to a minimum and maybe not use it with matters of great consequence, k?
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E-Commerce
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