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Hundreds of foreign companies left Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including major U.S. firms like Coca-Cola, Nike, Starbucks, ExxonMobil and Ford Motor Co.

But after more than three years of war, President Donald Trump has held out the prospect of restoring U.S.-Russia trade if there’s ever a peace settlement. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has said foreign companies could come back under some circumstances.

“Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree,” Trump said in a statement after a phone call with Putin. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED.”

The president then shifted his tone toward Putin after heavy drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, saying Putin “has gone absolutely crazy” and threatening new sanctions. That and recent comments from Putin warning Western companies against reclaiming their former stakes seemed to reflect reality more accurately — that it’s not going to be a smooth process for businesses going back into Russia.

That’s because Russia’s business environment has massively changed since 2022. And not in ways that favor foreign companies.

And with Putin escalating attacks and holding on to territory demands Ukraine likely isn’t going to accept, a peace deal seems distant indeed.

Here are factors that could deter U.S. companies from ever going back:

Russian law classifies Ukraine’s allies as “unfriendly states” and imposes severe restrictions on businesses from more than 50 countries. Those include limits on withdrawing money and equipment as well as allowing the Russian government to take control of companies deemed important. Foreign owners’ votes on boards of directors can be legally disregarded.

Companies that left were required to sell their businesses for 50% or less of their assessed worth, or simply wrote them off while Kremlin-friendly business groups snapped up their assets on the cheap. Under a 2023 presidential decree the Russian government took control of Finnish energy company Fortum, German power company Unipro, France’s dairy company Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg.

Even if a peace deal removed the U.S. from the list of unfriendlies, and if the massive Western sanctions restricting business in Russia were dropped, the track record of losses would remain vivid. And there’s little sign any of that is going to happen.

While the Russian government has talked in general about companies coming back, “there’s no specific evidence of any one company saying that they are ready to come back,” said Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. consultancy. “It’s all at the political narrative level.”

Russia’s actions and legal changes have left “long-lasting damage” to its business environment, says Elina Ribakova, non-resident senior fellow at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels.

She said a return of U.S. businesses is “not very likely.”

In a meeting at the Kremlin on May 26 to mark Russian Entrepreneurs Day, Putin said that Russia needed to throttle large tech firms such as Zoom and Microsoft, which had restricted their services in Russia after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, so that domestic tech companies could thrive instead.

“We need to strangle them,” Putin said. “After all, they are trying to strangle us: we need to reciprocate. We didn’t kick anyone out; we didn’t interfere with anyone. We provided the most favorable conditions possible for their work here, in our market, and they are trying to strangle us.”

He reassured a representative from Vkusno-i Tochka (Tasty-period) — the Russian-owned company that took over McDonald’s restaurants in the country — that Moscow would aid them if the U.S. fast food giant tried to buy back its former stores. Asked for comment, McDonald’s referred to their 2022 statement that “ownership of the business in Russia is no longer tenable.”

On top of Russia’s difficult business environment, the economy is likely to stagnate due to lack of investment in sectors other than the military, economists say.

“Russia has one of the lowest projected long-term growth rates and one of the highest levels of country risk in the world,” says Heli Simola, senior economist at the Bank of Finland in a blog post. “Only Belarus offers an equally lousy combination of growth and risk.”

Most of the opportunity to make money is related to military production, and it’s unlikely U.S. companies would work with the Russian military-industrial complex, said Ribakova. “It’s not clear where exactly one could plug in and expect outsize returns that would compensate for this negative investment environment.”

Some companies, including Renault and Ford Motor Co., left with repurchase agreements letting them buy back their stakes years later if conditions change. But given Russia’s unsteady legal environment, that’s tough to count on.

The Russian purchasers may try to change the terms, look for more money, or ignore the agreements, said Weafer. “There’s a lot of uncertainty as to how those buyback auctions will be enforced.”

Multinational oil companies were among those who suffered losses leaving Russia, so it’s an open question whether they would want to try again even given Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves. US.. major ExxonMobil saw its stake in the Sakhalin oil project unilaterally terminated and wrote off $3.4 billion.

Russia’s major oil companies have less need of foreign partners than they did in the immediate post-Soviet era, though smaller oil field services might want to return given the size of Russia’s oil industry. But they would have to face new requirements on establishing local presence and investment, Weafer said.

According to the Kyiv School of Economics, 2,329 foreign companies are still doing business in Russia, many from China or other countries that aren’t allied with Ukraine, while 1,344 are in the process of leaving and 494 have exited completely. The Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute lists some two dozen U.S. companies still doing business in Russia, while some 100 more have cut back by halting new investments.

U.S. sanctions are considered the toughest, because they carry the threat of being cut off from the U.S. banking and financial system. But the EU is still slapping new rounds of sanctions on Russia. Even if U.S. sanctions are dropped, EU sanctions would continue to present compliance headaches for any company that also wants to do business in Europe.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The explosive growth of the data centers needed to power America’s fast-rising demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing platforms has spurred states to dangle incentives in hopes of landing an economic bonanza, but it’s also eliciting pushback from lawmakers and communities.

Activity in state legislatures — and competition for data centers — has been brisk in recent months, amid an intensifying buildout of the energy-hungry data centers and a search for new sites that was ignited by the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Many states are offering financial incentives worth tens of millions of dollars. In some cases, those incentives are winning approval, but only after a fight or efforts to require data centers to pay for their own electricity or meet energy efficiency standards.

Some state lawmakers have contested the incentives in places where a heavy influx of massive data centers has caused friction with neighboring communities. In large part, the fights revolve around the things that tech companies and data center developers seem to most want: large tracts of land, tax breaks and huge volumes of electricity and water.

And their needs are exploding in size: from dozens of megawatts to hundreds of megawatts and from dozens of acres up to hundreds of acres for large-scale data centers sometimes called a hyperscaler.

While critics say data centers employ relatively few people and pack little long-term job-creation punch, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction jobs to build, spend enormous sums on goods and local vendors and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.

In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are writing legislation to fast-track permitting for data centers. The state is viewed as an up-and-coming data center destination, but there is also a sense that Pennsylvania is missing out on billions of dollars in investment that’s landing in other states.

“Pennsylvania has companies that are interested, we have a labor force that is capable and we have a lot of water and natural gas,” said state Rep. Eric Nelson. “That’s the winning combination. We just have a bureaucratic process that won’t open its doors.”

Kansas approved a new sales tax exemption on goods to build and equip data centers, while Kentucky and Arkansas expanded pre-existing exemptions so that more projects will qualify.

Michigan approved one that carries some protections, including requirements to use municipal utility water and clean energy, meet energy-efficiency measures and ensure that it pays for its own electricity.

Such tax exemptions are now so widespread — about three dozen states have some version of it — that it is viewed as a must-have for a state to compete.

“It’s often a nonstarter if you don’t have them, for at least the hyperscalers,” said Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL. “It’s just such a massive impact on the overall spend of the data center.”

In West Virginia, lawmakers approved a bill to create “microgrid” districts free from local zoning and electric rate regulations where data centers can procure power from standalone power plants.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, called the bill his “landmark policy proposal” for 2025 to put West Virginia “in a class of its own to attract new data centers and information technology companies.”

Utah and Oklahoma passed laws to make it easier for data center developers to procure their own power supply without going through the grid while Mississippi rolled out tens of millions of dollars in incentives last year to land a pair of Amazon data centers.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster signed legislation earlier this month that eased regulations to speed up power plant construction to meet demand from data centers, including a massive Facebook facility.

The final bill was fought by some lawmakers who say they worried about data centers using disproportionate amounts of water, taking up large tracts of land and forcing regular ratepayers to finance the cost of new power plants.

“I do not like that we’re making customers pay for two power plants when they only need one,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey told colleagues during floor debate.

Still, state Sen. Russell Ott suggested that data centers should be viewed like any other electricity customer because they reflect a society that is “addicted” to electricity and are “filling that need and that desire of what we all want. And we’re all guilty of it. We’re all responsible for it.”

In data center hotspots, some lawmakers are pushing back.

Lawmakers in Oregon are advancing legislation to order utility regulators to ensure data centers pay the cost of power plants and power lines necessary to serve them.

Georgia lawmakers are debating a similar bill.

In Virginia, the most heavily developed data center zone in the U.S., Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have forced more disclosures from data center developers about their site’s noise pollution and water use.

In Texas, which endured a deadly winter blackout in 2021, lawmakers are wrestling with how to protect the state’s electric grid from fast-growing data center demand.

Lawmakers still want to attract data centers, but a bill that would speed up direct hookups between data centers and power plants has provisions that are drawing protests from business groups.

Those provisions would give utility regulators new authority to approve those agreements and order big electric users such as data centers to switch to backup generators in a power emergency.

Walt Baum, the CEO of Powering Texans, which represents competitive power plant owners, warned lawmakers that those provisions might be making data center developers hesitant to do business in Texas.

“You’ve seen a lot of new announcements in other states and over the last several months and not as much here in Texas,” Baum told House members during a May 7 committee hearing. ”I think everybody right now is in a waiting pattern and I worry that we could be losing to other states while that waiting pattern is happening.”

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Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The fate and fortunes of one of the world’s most powerful tech companies now sit in the hands of a U.S. judge wrestling with whether to impose far-reaching changes upon Google in the wake of its dominant search engine being declared an illegal monopoly.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta heard closing arguments Friday from Justice Department lawyers who argued that a radical shake-up is needed to promote a free and fair market. Their proposed remedies include a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser.

Google’s legal team argued that only minor concessions are needed and urged Mehta not to unduly punish the company with a harsh ruling that could squelch future innovations. Google also argued that upheaval triggered by advances in artificial intelligence already is reshaping the search landscape, as conversational search options are rolling out from AI startups that are hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier.

It was an argument that Mehta appeared to give serious consideration as he marveled at the speed at which the AI industry was growing. He also indicated he was still undecided on how much AI’s potential to shake up the search market should be incorporated in his forthcoming ruling. “This is what I’ve been struggling with,” Mehta said.

Mehta spoke frequently at Friday’s hearing, often asking probing and pointed questions to lawyers for both sides, while hinting that he was seeking a middle ground between the two camps’ proposed remedies.

“We’re not looking to kneecap Google,” the judge said, adding that the goal was to “kickstart” competitors’ ability to challenge the search giant’s dominance.

Mehta will spend much of the summer mulling a decision that he plans to issue before Labor Day. Google has already vowed to appeal the ruling that branded its search engine as a monopoly, a step it can’t take until the judge orders a remedy.

Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein asked Mehta to put a 60-day delay on implementing any proposed changes, which Justice prosecutor David Dahlquist immediately objected to.

“We believe the market’s waited long enough,” Dahlquist said.

While both sides of this showdown agree that AI is an inflection point for the industry’s future, they have disparate views on how the shift will affect Google.

The Justice Department contends that AI technology by itself won’t rein in Google’s power, arguing additional legal restraints must be slapped on a search engine that’s the main reason its parent company, Alphabet Inc., is valued at $2 trillion.

Google has already been deploying AI to transform its search engine i nto an answer engine, an effort that has so far helped maintain its perch as the internet’s main gateway despite inroads being made by alternatives from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.

The Justice Department contends a divestiture of the Chrome browser that Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago would be among the most effective countermeasures against Google continuing to amass massive volumes of browser traffic and personal data that could be leveraged to retain its dominance in the AI era. Executives from both OpenAi and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders for the Chrome browser if Mehta orders its sale.

The debate over Google’s fate also has pulled in opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal scholars and startups.

Apple, which collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone and its other devices, filed briefs arguing against the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements. Apple told the judge that prohibiting the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own research, and that the ban might even make Google even more powerful because the company would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would end up choosing its search engine anyway. The Cupertino, California, company also told the judge a ban wouldn’t compel it to build its own search engine to compete against Google.

In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would inject unwarranted government interference in a company’s business. Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers warned that another proposal that would require Google to share its data with rival search engines “does not account for the expectations users have developed over time regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.

Mehta said Friday that compared to some of the Justice Department’s other proposals, there was “less speculation” about what might happen in the broader market if Google were forced to divest of Chrome. Schmidtlein said that was untrue, and such a ruling would be a wild overreach.

“I think that would be inequitable in the extreme,” he said.

Dahlquist mocked some of the arguments against divesting Chrome.

“Google thinks it’s the only one who can invest things,” he said.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s doubling of tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum could hit Americans in an unexpected place: grocery aisles.

The announcement Friday of a staggering 50% levy on those imports stoked fear that big-ticket purchases from cars to washing machines to houses could see major price increases. But those metals are so ubiquitous in packaging, they’re likely to pack a punch across consumer products from soup to nuts.

“Rising grocery prices would be part of the ripple effects,” says Usha Haley, an expert on trade and professor at Wichita State University, who added that the tariffs could raise costs across industries and further strain ties with allies “without aiding a long-term U.S. manufacturing revival.”

Trump’s return to the White House has come with an unrivaled barrage of tariffs, with levies threatened, added and, often, taken away, in such a whiplash-inducing frenzy it’s hard to keep up. He insisted the latest tariff hike was necessary to “even further secure the steel industry in the U.S.”

That promise, though, could be at odds with his pledge to reduce food costs.

Rising grocery prices, Trump has said, were among the biggest reasons voters swung his way. A look around a supermarket makes clear how many products could be impacted by new taxes on steel and aluminum, from beer and soda to dog food to can after can of beans, fruit, tomato paste and more.

“It plays into the hands of China and other foreign canned food producers, which are more than happy to undercut American farmers and food producers,” insists Can Manufacturers Institute president Robert Budway. “Doubling the steel tariff will further increase the cost of canned goods at the grocery store.”

Budway says production by domestic tin mill steel producers, whose products are used in cans, have dramatically decreased in recent years, making manufacturers reliant on imported materials. When those prices go up, he says, “the cost is levied upon millions of American families.”

Food companies were already warily assessing the administration’s tariffs before the latest hike, which Trump said would go into effect on Wednesday. The Campbell Co., whose soup cans are a staple for millions of Americans, has said it was working to mitigate the impact of tariffs but may be forced to raise prices. ConAgra Brands, which puts everything from cans of Reddi-Whip to cooking sprays like Pam on supermarket shelves, likewise has pointed to the impact steel and aluminum tariffs have.

“We can’t get all of our materials from the US because there’s no supply,” ConAgra CFO David Marberger said at a recent Goldman Sachs conference on global staples.

Beyond the obvious products — canned foods like tuna, chicken broth and cranberry sauce — economists warn of a spillover effect that tariffs can have on a gamut of items. If the cost to build a store or buy a truck to haul food rise, the prices of products may follow.

Most Americans will never buy a tractor, but Babak Hafezi, who runs a global consulting firm and teaches international business at American University, says a price spike in such a big-ticket item vital to food production will spill down to all sorts of other items.

“If a John Deere tractor costs 25% more, consumers pay the price for that,” Hafezi says. “This trickles down the economy and impacts every aspect of the economy. Some of the trickling is immediate and others are slower to manifest themselves. But yes, prices will increase and choices will decrease.”

Trump appeared before a crowd of cheering steelworkers to unveil the new tariffs at a rally outside Pittsburgh. In a statement, David McCall, president of the United Steelworkers International union, called tariffs “a valuable tool in balancing the scales” but “wider reforms of our global trading system” are needed.

It may be harder to gauge the weight of tariffs on, say, a can of chickpeas versus that of a new car, but consumers are likely to see myriad indirect costs from the levies, says Andreas Waldkirch, an economics professor at Colby College who teaches a class on international trade.

“Anybody who’s directly connected to the steel industry, they’re going to benefit. It’s just coming at a very high cost,” Waldkirch says. “You may get a few more steel jobs. But all these indirect costs mean you then destroy jobs elsewhere. If you were to add that all in, you come up with a pretty large negative loss.”

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Matt Sedensky can be reached at [email protected] and https://x.com/sedensky

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Many U.S. corporations this year stopped supporting Pride events that celebrate LGBTQ+ culture and rights, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in budget shortfalls ahead of the summer festivities and raising questions about corporate America’s commitment to the cause.

The moves come as President Donald Trump has shown antipathy for trans protections and has attempted to roll back some LGBTQ+ friendly federal policies. Experts also note that a growing slice of the public has grown tired of companies taking a stance on social and political issues.

San Francisco Pride, the nonprofit that produces one of the country’s largest and best-known LGBTQ+ celebrations, is facing a $200,000 budget gap after corporate donors dropped out. In Kansas City, Missouri, KC Pride lost about $200,000 — roughly half its annual budget.

Heritage of Pride, the umbrella organization behind NYC Pride and other LGBTQ+ events in New York City, is fundraising to narrow a $750,000 budget gap after companies withdrew.

Meanwhile, Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch ended its sponsorship of PrideFest in St. Louis, Missouri, its home base, after 30 years, leaving organizers with a $150,000 budget shortfall.

In response, many Pride organizations have canceled some dance parties, reduced the number of stages, hired less pricey headliners and no longer give volunteers free food or T-shirts.

But the core celebrations will go on. In San Francisco, this year’s Pride theme is “Queer Joy is Resistance.” In New York, it’s “Rise Up: Pride in Protest,” and, in Boston, it’s “Here to Stay!”

“If you come to Pride this year, that’s a revolutionary act,” said Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride. “You are sending a message to those in Washington that, here in San Francisco, we still have the same values that we’ve always had — you can love who you love here. We’re not going to retreat from that.”

Following media coverage of their retreat, some companies changed course but asked that their names not be affiliated with the events, the event organizers said.

San Francisco Pride earlier this year lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Diageo, the beverage giant that makes Guinness beer and Smirnoff vodka.

“With everything we’re facing from the Trump administration, to lose five of your partners within a couple of weeks, it felt like we were being abandoned,” Ford said.

After the withdrawals drew attention, some corporations said they would donate but only anonymously, Ford said, declining to identify those companies. As of this week, neither Comcast, Anheuser-Busch nor Diageo appeared on the organization’s website as sponsors of the June 29 festivities. It was unclear if they donated.

Anheuser-Busch and Diageo didn’t reply to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment. A spokesperson for Comcast also declined to comment but said some of its companies are sponsoring Silicon Valley Pride and Oakland Pride.

NYC Pride spokesperson Chris Piedmont said about 20% of its corporate sponsors either dropped their support or scaled back, including New York-based PepsiCo and Nissan.

Kyle Bazemore, Nissan North America’s director of corporate communications, said the decision comes as the automaker reviews all of its marketing expenses to lower costs. PepsiCo did not return an email seeking comment.

Piedmont said NYC Pride has also received anonymous corporate funding and that he appreciates the unpublicized support.

“Writing a check to a nonprofit and supporting a nonprofit with no strings attached is stepping up to the plate,” Piedmont said.

The shift reflects how corporations are adjusting to a changing cultural landscape that began during the pandemic and accelerated with Trump’s second term, experts said.

“Companies are resourceful, they are clever at identifying trends and studying their environment and their customers’ needs, but those needs change and corporations adjust,” said Amir Grinstein, a marketing professor at Northeastern University.

Corporations’ presence in rainbow-filled Pride parades, concerts and dance parties became more ubiquitous after the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, as companies splashed their names on parade floats, rainbow flags and bright plastic bracelets.

So-called brand activism reached its peak between 2016 to 2022, a period of social upheaval around the pandemic, police brutality and transgender rights, Grinstein said.

But research has since found a growing number of American consumers don’t want companies taking positions on such topics, said Barbara Kahn, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“There have always been people who said, ‘I don’t want my toothpaste to have an opinion, I just want to use my toothpaste,’ but the tide has shifted, and research shows there are more people that feel that way now,” Kahn said.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states have been passing legislation to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and LGBTQ+ rights, especially the ability of transgender young people to participate in sports or receive gender-affirming care.

Trump signed executive orders on his first day in office that rolled back protections for transgender people and terminated federal DEI programs.

Some companies followed suit by eliminating their DEI goals, prompting Pride organizations to sever ties.

San Francisco’s organizers cut ties with Meta after the parent company of Facebook and Instagram terminated its DEI goals and content moderation policies.

Twin Cities Pride ended its relationship with Target over the Minneapolis-based retailer’s curtailing of its DEI initiatives following a backlash from conservatives and the White House. The company’s retreat from DEI policies led to a counter-boycott by civil rights advocates.

Target announced in May that sales fell more than expected in the first quarter due to customer boycotts, tariffs and other economic factors. The company now offers only some Pride products at a few stores and online.

Still, Rick Gomez, Target’s chief commercial officer, told reporters in May that it’s important to celebrate Heritage Months, which highlight different groups from Latinos to Asian Americans to the LGBTQ+ community.

“They drive sales growth for us,” he said.

First-time donations from individuals, foundations and local businesses have increased following corporate America’s retreat.

In Minneapolis, a crowdfunding campaign by Twin Cities Pride to fill a $50,000 funding gap raised more than $89,000.

In San Francisco, two local foundations donated $55,000 combined.

“This isn’t the first year that there’s been an inflammatory climate around Pride,” said James Moran, a spokesperson for KC Pride, in Kansas City, Missouri. “We know that our community is looking for spaces that are meant for us, where we can celebrate but also process what’s going on and build our own support networks.”

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Associated Press retail reporter Anne D’Innocenzio in New York City contributed.

When uncertainty hits the markets, some people see an opportunity to start trading. Take the latest Wall Street phenomenon, the so-called “TACO trade,” for example.

Coined by Financial Times reporter Robert Armstrong, the term is short for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” and it’s a trade to buy stocks that fall when Trump announces punitive tariffs of one kind or another, and then sell them when, a few days later, Trump inevitably backs off on his tariff threat. Volatility, meet trading opportunity.

But. To make a speculative trade successfully, you still have to be able to time the market, something many professional investors tell you is very difficult indeed because to do it successfully you need to be able to predict the future. Trump’s chickening-out might be almost predictable at this point, but he was ever a mercurial fellow. Can you be sure it’ll happen next time? And with a ruling Wednesday that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, the only certainty in the economy right now is continued uncertainty.

Still, whatever you believe is going to happen in these uncertain times, speculative traders do need to buy and sell stocks somewhere to, er…taco-chance on the markets’ volatility. They might feel that this trade is, er…nacho average opportunity. You know?

There are a variety of platforms to trade on, but here’s one company that proves the old adage that in a gold rush, the people who really get rich are those selling the shovels: CME.

CME is the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, formerly known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It has nearly cornered the derivatives and commodities markets, gobbling up a host of exchanges over the past decade or so. When volatility rises, so does the number of trades that take place, and CME makes its money on the trade volumes. That’s right: CME gets paid for every trade made on its exchange, no matter who wins or loses.

It makes for a lucrative business. For 2024, CME had revenue of $6.1 billion and a net profit of $3.5 billion, up from $5.6 billion in revenue and $3.2 billion in profit in 2023. In April, CME hit an all-time high monthly average daily volume (ADV) record of 35.9 million contracts, an increase of 36% year-over-year. All of that has analysts looking at CME to keep growing. Earlier this month, Argus Research analyst Stephen Biggar raised his price target on CME to $308 from $285, with a “buy” rating. He noted the company has kept a tight lid on costs, even as volumes rise.

(Full disclosure: I do hold some shares of CME in a diversified equity portfolio managed by an outside advisor.)

• Southwest’s baggage: Bags fly free? Southwest $LUV says “Fuggedaboutit.” Now Southwest passengers will have to pay $35 for a first checked bag and $45 for a second one. That’s on par with what competitors charge, as the airline’s CFO said Southwest needs to become more like its competitors. That comes as its gross profit for the first quarter rose 22.27% over a year earlier to $1.26 billion. But the airline is concerned that its new fees may prompt more passengers to lug carry-ons, which can slow boarding and threaten Southwest’s legendary on-time performance, which is over 80%.
• Boeing cuts a deal: Remember those back-to-back Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2017 and 2018? When Boeing’s $BA automated flight systems malfunctioned (or pilots failed to understand them, depending on who you ask) and a pair of planes crashed, killing 346 people? Well, Boeing had agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the FAA, and to pay further compensation to the families of victims. That’s now been reversed, and Boeing won’t have to plead guilty to a crime. It’s still in the hole for a further $1.4 billion in fines, safety improvements, and payments to the victims’ families.
• Walt Disney and the Ukulele-playing Hawaiian Turtle: Nope, it’s not the latest Disney $DIS animated feature, it’s the abrupt end to a lawsuit from a Hawaiian artist who said Disney copied his blue-eyed tortoise, Honu, and used the image to promote its Hawaiian resort. Artist Johnson Enos created a turtle in 2006, and claimed he pitched the blue-eyed testudine to Disney in 2008, but U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer dismissed the case, noting that Disney created ‘Olu Mel before Enos began depicting Honu with a ukulele, and that the characters were not similar enough to show copyright infringement otherwise.
• Nvidia’s no longer feeling Nvincible: Jensen Huang, the leather-jacket-wearing founder of chipmaker Nvidia $NVDA , says rules meant to maintain America’s lead in the AI race by curbing China’s access to his company’s advanced AI chips have had the opposite effect. Now Chinese tech firms like Huawei have filled the gap with their own chips. The export controls gave Chinese companies “the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang said at a Taipei conference this week. “All in all, the export control was a failure.”
• Car talk: Can Stellantis $STLA shine? The U.S./French/Italian carmaker which owns Chrysler, Peugeot and Fiat (as well as Dodge, Ram, Maserati, Jeep, Lancia, Alpha Romeo and Opel) has a new boss with a tough task: turn around a company whose U.S. market share has slipped to 8% from 12.5% in 2021, when FIAT/Peugeot bought Chrysler, and came up with the name. Antonio Filosa, 51, was most recently COO for the Americas. Supply chain woes, tariffs, high inventories and the headwinds slowing EVs are big problems, but a turnaround could come with a hefty rise in share prices: On an enterprise value to earnings before interest and tax, Stellantis has a multiple of 3.46, versus GM $GM at 2.71, Ford $F at 39.37 and Tesla $TSLA LA at 177.15. General Motors is also throwing in the towel on its $300 million plan to build EV’s in upstate New York, and instead will plow $888 million into making the latest V-8 engine in the same factory. Meanwhile, Stellantis is winding down its joint project with Amazon $AMZN to create in-car software that would automatically adapt key settings to each driver, and even let the driver turn on the lights in their home as they hit their driveway.
• Ground Control to Mickey D: McDonald’s $MCD is closing the remaining five outlets of its experimental eatery, CosMc’s, a vaguely space-themed restaurant that served mostly syrupy caffeinated drinks and punches and a pair of reworked Egg McMuffins. Apparently, no one was buying, and the original king of burgers says it may add the space drinks to the menu at its existing locations.
• Silver screen success: Hollywood is making better movies, and Americans are flocking to the theaters to see them. Last weekend, the top six new releases collected a record $326 million over the Memorial Day weekend. Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” ($183 million) and Paramount’s “Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning” ($77 million), alongside holdovers Disney and Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*,” ($11.8 million), $WBD, “Sinners” ($11 million) and “Final Destination Bloodlines”($23.9 million ). Audiences (and theater owners) are juiced by the steady stream of new films, after years of studios focusing on series for their streaming services. Movie theater shares soared: AMC $AMC was up more than 23%, Marcus Theatres’ parent $MCS rose 10%, and Cinemark $CNK was up 4%.

• Rocket go BOOM! A third SpaceX Starship, the largest rocket ever launched, and the key to Musk’s dream of landing on the moon and colonizing Mars, went down in flames on Tuesday, reaching space, but spinning out of control and breaking up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. “Big improvement over last flight!” Musk tweeted, promising at least a launch a month to fix the problems.
• No DOGE-dodging: Elon Musk may have announced that his scheduled time at DOGE is over, but a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit by 14 states can go ahead against Musk for illegally acting as a duly appointed federal employee and accessing government data systems, terminating federal employees, and canceling contracts at federal agencies. Musk said he quit DOGE several weeks ago to go back to running his companies, but on his way out the door, he took a swipe at Trump’s “Big Beautiful” budget bill: “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he told CBS News. Trump’s budget, which cuts both spending and taxes, mainly for higher-income individuals and for companies, will increase the national debt by $3.8 trillion by 2034, the Congressional Budget Office notes.
• Starlink goes South (Africa): South Africa’s government says it has begun approval for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite, but it appears Musk, who was born in the country, won’t have to sell 30% of the equity in Starlink’s local subsidiary to a Black-owned company, one way the country has sought to reverse decades of economic segregation that favored the white minority.
• Setback: Tesla sales plummeted in Europe for a fourth straight month in April, with new-car registrations for Teslas down 53% over the previous year to 5,475 vehicles across the EU, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. That comes as overall EV sales were up 26% in the first four months of the year over 2024. Cheaper Chinese rivals and Musk’s unpopularity are driving the decline.

• Tariff tricks: As the tariff turmoil continues, evasion is on the rise. As the New York Times reports, many U.S. importers are getting offers from Chinese firms offering to massage product descriptions (or…outright lie) to bring goods into the U.S. under preferential tariffs, or even “transship” them through a lower-tariff country. Apparel manufacturer Leslie Jordan told the Times that the tariffs are making businesses like here far less profitable, and that they put “many honest companies at a competitive disadvantage.”
• Golden Shares: For all its insistence on the free market, the Trump administration is taking a leaf from Europe’s book of government-heavy business management, with the approval of the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel. Among the deal’s terms, ostensibly to ensure the U.S. can still make the steel it needs at home in case of a war or embargo, the CEO must be American, and the board must have a majority of U.S. directors. The government also gets a “Golden Share” to vote against board appointments or deals that could be perceived as being against the U.S. national interest. China, France, and Brazil all have these arrangements with strategically important firms. Could this be a test case for the control of TikTok?
• Cashing in. Again: Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, and its parent company Trump Media & Technology Group, says it plans to raise $2.5 billion from institutional investors and a convertible bond sale to buy Bitcoin. It’s not clear how the company would make money, unless Bitcoin continues to rise in value, which it could if the U.S. Treasury follows through on Trump‘s plan for the government to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Last month, Trump Media said it would launch a set of exchange-traded crypto funds, and this week’s move looks like the company is no longer betting on the Truth Social platform for its future. Last quarter, Trump Media lost $32 million on $820,000 in revenue from advertising and other sources. Shares in Trump Media are down 37% this year. But the crypto strategy has not always been a winner: On Wednesday, GameStop $GME said it had bought half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin, only to see its shares drop a whopping 10.9% on the news.
• That battle with Big Law isn’t going so well. This week, law firm Wilmer Hale had a court dismiss Trump’s efforts to cancel all government contracts with the firm and block its attorneys from federal buildings. The order would have massively undercut the firm’s Washington business, which involves negotiating with government regulators on behalf of its clients and being the government’s lawyer in other cases. Wilmer Hale got special attention for having employed former F.B.I. chief Robert Mueller. It’s the third Trump order against law firms that federal judges have overturned. But at least nine major law firms have agreed to donate hundreds of millions of dollars of free legal services to the Trump Adminsitration and its preferred causes. One of those firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, saw backlash this week when four of its top lawyers left to form their own firm.

• Only Private Fans: OnlyFans, America’s favorite online peepshow, is in talks to sell to a private equity group led by Los Angeles-based Forest Road Company, at a valuation of about $8 billion. The channel, famed for letting almost anyone star in their own porn show—and make money at it—saw revenue jump from $375 million in 2020 to $6.6 billion in 2023, thanks largely to the pandemic. The closely held pornsite appears to be owned by Leonid Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American who bought the site in 2018. Big banks and investors won’t go near OnlyFans, Reuters reported, over concerns that due diligence might find child sexual abuse material, trafficking victims and nonconsensual porn.
• No more hook-ups? That’s the plan for Tinder, under new CEO Spencer Rascoff, who says in a memo seen by the Wall Street Journal: “Users don’t want more matches, they want better ones.” Rascoff, who is also CEO of Tinder parent Match $MTCH told the Journal users should see Tinder as “a bar where people come together to meet new people.” Cheers to that!
• Salesforce’s $8 billion leap into AI. The customer relationship software giant $CRM will buy Informatica $INFA, a data management and analytics company that caters to Fortune 500 companies. Salesforce is hoping Informatica will help improve its ability to link its data and services to AI agents for its customers.
• Die, DEI, die! Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, approved Verizon’s $VZ’s $10 billion buyout of Frontier Communications $FYBR , after Verizon pledged to roll back its DEI initiatives, and also promised to invest in more fiber optic lines and pay more to cell tower maintenance firms. T-Mobile $TMUS already promised to roll back DEI efforts as it seeks FCC approval for a $4.4 billion deal to buy some assets from U.S. Cellular $USM.

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