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President Donald Trump took to social media Thursday morning to support Elon Musk’s car company, a startling development given their bitter public feud. I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, Trump wrote on Truth Social. The post wasn’t enough to help Tesla’s stock, which fell sharply after the company reported another quarter of lackluster financial results and Musk warned of some potentially rough quarters into next year. At midday, the stock was down around 9%. Late Wednesday, Tesla said revenue fell 12% and profit dropped 16% in the April-June quarter. Many prospective buyers have been turned off by Musks foray into right-wing politics, and the competition has ramped up in key markets such as Europe and China. Investors have been unnerved by Musk’s social media spat with the president because Trump has threatened to retaliate by ending government contracts and breaks for Musk’s various businesses, including Tesla. But Trump struck a starkly different tone Thursday morning. Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elons companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government. This is not so!” Trump wrote. The better they do, the better the USA does, and thats good for all of us. After Trump’s massive budget bill passed earlier this month, Tesla faces the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit and stands to make much less money from selling regulatory credits to other automakers. Trumps tariffs on countries including China and Mexico will also cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars, the company said on its earnings call. Musk has blasted the budget bill on his own social media platform X for adding to U.S. debt at a time when it is already too large. The Tesla CEO has called the budget pushed by the president a disgusting abomination and has threatened to form a new political party. On Wednesday’s call, Musk said the electric vehicle maker will face a few rough quarters as it moves into a future focused less on selling cars and more on offering people rides in self-driving cars. He also talked up the company’s business making humanoid robotics. But he acknowledged those businesses are a ways off from contributing to Teslas bottom line. Tesla began a rollout in June of its paid robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and hopes to introduce the driverless cabs in several other cities soon. Musk told analysts that the service will be available to probably half of the population of the U.S. by the end of the year thats at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals. Were in this weird transition period where well lose a lot of incentives in the U.S., Musk said, adding that Tesla probably could have a few rough quarters ahead. He added, though, Once you get to autonomy at scale in the second half of next year, certainly by the end of next year, I would be surprised if Teslas economics are not very compelling.”
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E-Commerce
After closing for five months due to smoke damage from the Palisades Fire, the Eames House (Case Study House #8) in Los Angeles has reopened to visitorsnow with a more determined mission to serve as a place of community. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] Nearly 7,000 buildings were destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and though the Eames House was spared, cleanup efforts have been intensive. A crew took about a week to wipe away flame retardant that had been dropped to slow the fire from advancing from the outside of the home. They also dug up the property’s plantings beds so the soil could be replaced due to concerns about toxic materials. Eames Demetrios, Lucia Dewey Atwood, and Adrienne Luce outside the studio. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] “We were very fortunate,” says Lucia Atwood, the granddaughter of architects Charles and Ray Eames who built the Pacific Palisades home in 1949. The home is a model of resilience, but its stewards were also proactive. Atwood tells Fast Company interventions began in 2011 to better fire- and drought-proof the home, which is a National Historic Landmark and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Those efforts that took on greater urgency after the Getty Fire in 2019. Charles and Ray balancing on the steel framing of the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California, 1949. [Photo: 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] “At that point it became very clear that there were going to be an increasing number of of extremely damaging fires,” says Atwood, the former executive director of the Eames Foundation. The foundation has worked to harden the landscape, a process that included clearing brush and removing some of the more than 250 trees that were on the property. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] Reopening events this month with local leaders, neighbors, and fire survivors have turned the Eames House into an Eames home for the community, as is the case for patrons of the Palisades Library, which was destroyed in the fires. After offering the library the use of the property, including the home’s studio, which is open to the public for the first time, for events like book clubs and sales, the head of the library got emotional, says Adrienne Luce, who was announced the Eames Foundation’s first non-family member executive director in April. “This place is for you,” Luce recalls telling the library’s head, and she says she started to choke up. “Being so close to the devastation actually is a wonderful opportunity to serve and support the local community and long-term community rebuilding efforts.” Reopening means “really engaging and serving the local community,” Luce says.
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E-Commerce
Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Helienes plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built. These are among the major clean energy investments now in question after Republicans agreed earlier this month to quickly end U.S. subsidies for solar and wind power as part of their budget megabill, and as the White House directed agencies to tighten the rules on who can claim the incentives that remain. This marks a policy U-turn since President Donald Trumps return to office that project developers, manufacturers and analysts say will slash installations of renewable energy over the coming decade, kill investment and jobs in the clean energy manufacturing sector supporting them, and worsen a looming U.S. power supply crunch as energy-hungry AI infrastructure expands. Solar and wind installations could be 17% and 20% lower than previously forecast over the next decade because of the moves, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie, which warned that a dearth of new supplies could slow the expansion of data centers needed to support AI technology. Energy researcher Rhodium, meanwhile, said the law puts at risk $263 billion of wind, solar, and storage facilities and $110 billion of announced manufacturing investment supporting them. It will also increase industrial energy costs by up to $11 billion in 2035, it said. “One of the administrations stated goals was to bring costs down, and as we demonstrated, this bill doesn’t do that,” said Ben King, a director in Rhodium’s energy and climate practice. He added the policy “is not a recipe for continued dominance of the U.S. AI industry.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has defended its moves to end support for clean energy by arguing the rapid adoption of solar and wind power has created instability in the grid and raised consumer prices assertions that are contested by the industry and which do not bear out in renewables-heavy power grids, like Texas’ ERCOT. Power industry representatives, however, have said all new generation projects need to be encouraged to meet rising U.S. demand, including both those driven by renewables and fossil fuels. Consulting firm ICF projects that U.S. electricity demand will grow by 25% by 2030, driven by increased AI and cloud computing a major challenge for the power industry after decades of stagnation. The REPEAT Project, a collaboration between Princeton University and Evolved Energy Research, projects a 2% annual increase in electricity demand. With a restricted pipeline of renewables, tighter electricity supplies stemming from the policy shift could increase household electricity costs by $280 a year in 2035, according to the REPEAT Project. The key provision in the new law is the accelerated phase-out of 30% tax credits for wind and solar projects: it requires projects to begin construction within a year or enter service by the end of 2027 to qualify for the credits. Previously the credits were available through 2032. Now some project developers are scrambling to get projects done while the U.S. incentives are still accessible. But even that strategy has become risky, developers said. Days after signing the law, Trump directed the Treasury Department to review the definition of beginning of construction. A revision to those rules could overturn a long-standing practice giving developers four years to claim tax credits after spending just 5% of project costs. Treasury was given 45 days to draft new rules. “With so many moving parts, financing of projects, financing of manufacturing is difficult, if not impossible,” said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene. “You are looking to see what is the next baseball bat that’s going to hit you on the head.” About face Heliene’s planned cell factory, which could cost as much as $350 million, depending on the capacity, and employ more than 600 workers, is also in limbo, Pochtaruk said in an interview earlier this month. The company needs more clarity on both what the new law will mean for U.S. demand, and how Trump’s trade policy will impact the solar industry. “We have a building that is anxiously waiting for us to make a decision,” Pochtaruk said. Similarly, Mick McDaniel, general manager of Bila Solar, said “a troubling level of uncertainty” has put on hold its $20 million expansion at an Indianapolis factory it opened this year that would create an additional 75 jobs. “NorSun is still digesting the new legislation and recent executive order to determine the impact to the overall domestic solar manufacturing landscape,” said Todd Templeton, director of the company’s U.S. division that is reviewing plans for its $620 million solar wafer facility in Tulsa. Five solar manufacturing companies – T1 Energy, Imperial Star Solar, SEG Solar, Solx and ES Foundry – said they are also concerned about the new law’s impact on future demand, but that they have not changed their investment plans. The policy changes have also injected fresh doubt about the fate of the nation’s pipeline of offshore wind projects, which depend heavily on tax credits to bring down costs. According to Wood Mackenzie, projects that have yet to start construction or make final investment decisions are unlikely to proceed. Two such projects, which are fully permitted, include a 300-megawatt project by developer US Wind off the coast of Maryland and Iberdrolas 791 MW New England Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. Neither company responded to requests for comment. “They are effectively ready to begin construction and are now trapped in a timeline that will make it that much harder to be able to take advantage of the remaining days of the tax credits,” said Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward. Nichola Groom, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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