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NEW YORK (AP) — The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.

Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a good place to store their money.

“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”

That could be bad news for consumers in need of a loan — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.

A week ago, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was 4.01%. On Friday, the yield shot as high as 4.58% before sliding back to around 4.50%. That’s a major swing for the bond market, which measures moves by the hundredths of a percentage point.

Among the possible knockoff effects is a big hit to ordinary Americans in the form of higher interest rates on mortgages and car financing and other loans.

“As yields move higher, you’ll see your borrowing rates move higher, too,” said Brian Rehling, head of fixed income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. "And every corporation uses these funding markets. If they get more expensive, they’re going to have to pass along those costs customers or cut costs by cutting jobs.”

To be sure, no one can say exactly what mix of factors is behind the developing bond bust or how long it will last, but it’s rattling Wall Street nonetheless.

Bonds are supposed to move in the opposite direction as stocks, rising when stocks are falling. In this way, they act like shock absorbers to 401(k)s and other portfolios in stock market meltdowns, compensating somewhat for the losses.

“This is Econ 101,” said Jack McIntyre, portfolio manager for Brandywine Global, adding about the bond sell-off now, “It’s left people scratching their heads.”

The latest trigger for bond yields to go up was Friday's worse-than-expected reading on sentiment among U.S. consumers, including expectations for much higher inflation ahead. But the unusual bond yield spike this week also reflects deeper worries as Trump’s tariffs threats and erratic policy moves have made America seem hostile and unstable — fears that are not likely to go away even after the tariff turmoil ends.

“When the issue is a broader loss of confidence in the United States, even a much fuller retreat on trade might not work” to bring yields down, wrote Sarah Bianchi and other analysts at investment bank Evercore ISI. “We’re not sure any of the tools remaining in Trump’s toolkit will be sufficient to fully staunch the bleeding.”

Trump acknowledged that the bond market played a role in his decision Wednesday to put a 90-day pause on many tariffs, saying investors “were getting a little queasy.”

If indeed it was the bond market, and not stocks, that made him change course, it wouldn't come as a surprise.

The bond market's reaction to her tax and budget policy was behind the ouster of United Kingdom’s Liz Truss in 2022, whose 49 days made her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. James Carville, adviser to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, also famously said he’d like to be reincarnated as the bond market because of how much power it wields.

The instinctual rush into U.S. debt is so ingrained in investors it even happens when you’d least expect.

People poured money into U.S. Treasury bonds during 2009 Financial Crisis, for instance, even though U.S. was the source of the problem, specifically its housing market.

But to Wall Street pros it made sense: U.S. Treasurys are liquid, stable in price and you can buy and sell them with ease even during a panic, so of course businesses and traders would rush into them to wait out the storm.

Yields on U.S bonds quickly fell during that crisis, which had a benefit beyond cushioning personal financial portfolios. It also lowered borrowing costs, which helped businesses and consumers recover.

This time that natural corrective isn’t kicking in.

Aside from sudden jitters about the U.S., several other things could be triggering the bond sell-off.

Some experts speculate that China, a vast holder of U.S. government bonds, is dumping them in retaliation. But that seems unlikely since that would hurt the country, too. Selling Treasurys, or essentially exchanging U.S. dollars for Chinese yuan, would make China's currency strengthen and its exports more expensive.

Another explanation is that a favored strategy of some hedge funds involving U.S. debt and lots of borrowing — called the basis trade — is going against them. That means their lenders are asking to get repaid and they need to raise cash.

“They are selling Treasurys and that is pushing up yields — that’s part of it,” said Mike Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. “But the other part is that U.S. has become a less reliable global partner.”

Wells Fargo's Rehling said he’s worried about a hit to confidence in the U.S., too, but that it's way too early to be sure and that the sell-off may stop soon, anyway.

“If Treasurys are no longer the place to park your cash, where do you go?,” he said. “Is there another bond out there that is more liquid? I don’t’ think so.”

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan’s net income rose 9% to $14.6 billion in the first quarter and the New York bank beat Wall Street’s profit and revenue targets, but its chief executive warned of global economic uncertainties ahead due to President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war and other geopolitical tensions.

CEO Jamie Dimon said a strong performance by the bank’s markets division helped lift it to another strong quarter, but he added trade tensions to his list of potential negatives facing the bank and broader economy.

JPMorgan’s earnings per share rose to $5.07 per share from $4.44 a year ago. The result beat Wall Street profit projections of $4.63 a share, according to the data firm FactSet. Total managed revenue hit $46 billion, up from the $41.9 billion a year ago. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $44 billion.

Trump’s herky-jerky tariff increases — currently bumped up by 10% for most U.S. trading partners and 145% for China — have sent financial markets into dizzying fluctuations for weeks and created an enormous amount of uncertainty about where the global economy is headed. That’s bad for banks, which thrive on stability and healthy consumers and businesses borrowing money.

JPMorgan’s trading desk thrived in the first three months of 2025, helped by the market's volatility, which began well before Trump rolled out his massive “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2.

The bank’s markets revenue rose 21% in the period, with equities revenue up 48% from a year ago.

Consumer and community banking revenue rose 4% from the same period last year, to $18.3 billion.

With regard to China, which further escalated its tariffs on imports from the U.S. to 125%, JPMorgan executives said it was too early to make any long-term projections or statements about the impact of the ongoing trade war on its business there.

“We really have to see how things play out," said Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum. ”In the near term, that business is performing fine and we are not seeing any effect."

JPMorgan set aside $3.3 billion to cover bad loans, up from $1.9 billion a year ago, while repurchasing $7 billion of common stock and boosting its dividend 12%.

JPMorgan shares rose 2% in morning trading, while broader Wall Street indexes shifted between small losses and gains and were, so far, absent of the wild swings they've seen in recent weeks.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley also beat Wall Street’s first-quarter projections. The New York bank also cited a strong performance from its equities trading division, helping boost its net income to $4.3 billion and revenue to a record $17.7 billion. Its shares were down 1.6%.

Wells Fargo also reported early Friday, with the San Francisco bank posting first-quarter net income of $4.89 billion, or $1.39 per share. That topped analysts’ forecast for earnings of $1.23 per share.

In a statement, CEO Charles Scharf said: ”We support the administration’s willingness to look at barriers to fair trade for the United States, though there are certainly risks associated with such significant actions,” adding that the bank is “prepared for a slower economic environment in 2025.”

Wells shares fell 4% in the morning.

U.S. egg prices increased again last month to reach a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen despite President Donald Trump’s predictions, a drop in wholesale prices and no egg farms having bird flu outbreaks.

The increase reported Thursday in the Consumer Price Index means consumers and businesses that rely on eggs might not get much immediate relief. Demand for eggs is typically elevated until after Easter, which falls on April 20.

Industry experts were expecting the index to reflect a drop in retail egg prices because wholesale egg prices fell significantly in March. University of Arkansas agricultural economist Jada Thompson said the wholesale prices did not start dropping until mid-March, so there may not have been enough time for the average price for the month to decline. And grocery stores may not have immediately passed on the lower prices.

Bird flu outbreaks were cited as the major cause of price spikes in January and February after more than 30 million egg-laying chickens were killed to prevent the spread of the disease. Only 2.1 million birds were slaughtered in March and none of them were on egg farms.

Egg prices hit $5.90 in February one month after setting a record at $4.95 per dozen, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The farms that had fall outbreaks have been working to resume egg production after sanitizing their barns and raising new flocks, but chickens must be about six months old before they start laying eggs. Thompson said those farms did not come back online as quickly as anticipated.

In the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture numbers, there were only about 285 million hens laying eggs nationwide as of March 1, Before the outbreak, the flock typically numbered more than 315 million.

Since the current bird flu outbreak began, more than 168 million birds have been slaughtered, most of them egg-laying chickens. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds.

Trump tried to take credit for the lower wholesale egg prices the USDA reported in recent weeks.

“The egg prices they were going through the sky. And you did a fantastic job,” Trump said to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins before he announced the details of his tariffs at the White House last week. ”Now we have lots of eggs and they are much cheaper now.”

But experts say the president’s plan to fight bird flu by focusing on strengthening egg farmers’ defenses against the virus is likely to be more of a long-term help.

The Agriculture Department tried to find egg imports to add to the supply and nearly 4 million dozens of eggs were brought into the country in February. But egg traders saw an opportunity with the high prices and 7.6 million dozens were exported. Numbers for March were not yet available.

“I think there are lots of people who are looking to see the egg prices coming down because they wanted to call it a win. And I think it’s a loss for everybody. I think we all want to see egg prices come down,” Thompson said.

Rollins on Thursday suggested the rise in egg prices is temporary. She pointed to the overall consumer price index showing a slight dip in prices for goods and services across the U.S. economy in March and suggested egg prices will soon follow.

“We’re also moving into the Super Bowl of eggs, which is Easter,” Rollins said. “So from the beginning, I’ve said this is sort of the high price for retail for eggs, but we feel very confident that will continue to come back down.”

Earlier this week, Trump said the annual White House egg roll would use real eggs again this year despite the high prices. Egg farmers typically donate more than 30,000 eggs for the event.

U.S. egg prices did began falling in mid-March, according to Datasembly, a market research company that tracks prices at thousands of stores. Datasembly said eggs averaged $5.98 per dozen the week beginning March 16 and dropped to $5.51 the week beginning March 30.

But prices vary widely around the country, depending on the location of recent bird flu outbreaks and some state laws requiring eggs to be cage-free. At a Walmart in Richmond, California, a dozen eggs were $6.34 on Thursday. In Omaha, Nebraska, Walmart was selling eggs for $4.97 per dozen. California requires eggs sold to be cage-free; Nebraska doesn't.

The latest numbers could increase scrutiny of Cal-Maine Foods, which provides 20% of the nation’s eggs, and other large egg producers.

Earlier this week, Cal-Maine acknowledged it is being investigated by the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is looking into egg price increases. Cal-Maine said it is cooperating with the investigation.

In its most recent quarter, which ended March 1, Cal-Maine said its net income more than tripled to $508.5 million compared to the same period a year ago.

The price of real eggs has some consumers turning to fake ones for Easter crafts this year.

Craft retailer Michaels said sales of its plastic egg craft kits — which were listed for $2.49 on the company's website Thursday — are up 20% over last year. Michaels said sales usually peak closer to Easter, but it started seeing a noticeable uptick in early March this year.

“With a little over a week still to go until Easter, our craft egg kits are nearly sold out,” the company said.

___

Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

KAWASAKI, Japan (AP) — Seafood lovers know the fatty marbling is what makes tuna sashimi and sushi so tasty, so for the industry, it’s the fish’s level of fattiness that’s used to judge its quality and pricing.

Usually, several people assess how fatty a tuna is by cutting the tail with a giant saw-like knife, an operation that takes about 60 seconds per fish.

But now a machine called Sonofai uses ultrasound waves to do the job in 12 seconds, operated by a person without prior knowledge of how to carve fish.

Fujitsu, the Japanese company behind the technology, invited reporters this week for a demonstration of Sonofai, a word blended from “sono” referring to “sound,” “f” for Fujitsu, and “ai,” or artificial intelligence. The name refers to its components but also stands for “son of AI.”

A conveyor belt transports a whole frozen tuna fish, about a meter (3 feet) in size, into a machine that beams ultrasound waves. Sensors pick up the waves to draw a zigzagging diagram on a screen to indicate the fish’s fattiness.

Fatty meat absorbs fewer sound waves than lean meat and AI sorts real data from misleading “noise,” or irregularities.

Hisashi Ishida, president of Sonofai, the startup behind the technology, who also heads Ishida Tec Co., which makes food-manufacturing equipment, says it’s safer, more sanitary and efficient.

“Fatty fish tastes good, feels better on your tongue and is called ‘toro,’ ” he said. “Overseas needs are growing because sushi culture is now appreciated around the world.”

Beef has a grading system for fat and expected flavor, but being able to gauge the quality of tuna is new, according to Hideto Okada, who oversees AI at Fujitsu.

Sonofai uses the same technology as medical ultrasound scans where high-frequency inaudible sound waves are absorbed or bounced back to create video-like images of things that aren’t visible, like a fetus inside a mother’s womb. Unlike the CT scan or X-ray, it doesn’t use radiation, which can harm tissue.

Chris Edwards, a medical doctor and professor at Queensland University of Technology, who trains sonographers, or health-care professionals who specialize in ultrasound, has studied how ultrasound can be used to see the fattiness of a human liver, linked to diabetes and other health problems.

“They can look at one fish and compare it to another and say ‘Oh, that one’s definitely got more fat than that one,’” he told The Associated Press in an interview.

But Sonofai won't be at your neighborhood sushi chef.

Fish-processing outfits and fishing organizations are the likely buyers. The machine is set to go on sale in June for about 30 million yen ($207,000) each, at first in Japan but expanding to the U.S. and other places later. They'll also work on future upgrades to test for freshness, firmness and other characteristics of tuna and other fish varieties.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@yurikageyama

NEW YORK (AP) — As stocks tanked on tariff fears, Marjorie Taylor Greene showed her faith in the president not just with words but dollar bills.

The Republican congresswoman, an avid supporter of the Trump administration's trade policies, not only bought stocks last week as others dumped them in a panic — she scooped up some of the biggest losers.

Lululemon, Dell Computer, Amazon, the parent of Restoration Hardware and a few others hit hard by Trump's tariff threats were down 40% on average late last week when she pounced.

Data from a required three-page financial holdings document doesn't disclose exactly how much she paid for the stocks, only ranges and dates.

But however much she spent, some of her bets are working out so far, at least as of Wednesday's close.

RH, formerly called Restoration Hardware, is Greene’s clear winner. It jumped more than a third since since Friday's close when she bought it after a stunning collapse in price that shook even the head of the furniture retailer.

“Oh, sh…!,” said RH CEO Gary Friedman in a conference call last week as the stock plunged.

Dell has jumped 9% since Greene bought the stock last week after it had lost more than half its value.

Lawmakers from both major parties have proposed bills banning members from stock trading because of the apparent conflict of interest in owning shares of companies they can heavily influence with positions they can take in office.

But none of the clunkily named bills -- The Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust in Congress Act, for instance -- has been passed. A new bill, The End Congressional Stock Trading Act, was proposed last month.

Asked whether she made the stock purchases herself and about possible conflicts of interest, Greene said in a statement: “I have signed a fiduciary agreement to allow my financial advisor to control my investments. All of my investments are reported with full transparency.”

The MAGA supporter has been outspoken in her support of Trump’s tariffs.

“Tariffs are a powerful proven source of leverage to protect our national interests,” she posted on X earlier this year, adding “We will win this trade war.”

Investors are not completely convinced.

After surging on Wednesday when Trump called a partial halt to the import taxes, stocks were heading down again Thursday.

Has President Donald Trump bitten off more than he can chew? Wilbur Ross, the secretary of Commerce during Trump’s first term, certainly thinks so, as he explained in an exclusive interview with us on Wednesday, shortly before Trump announced a 90-day pause on his plan to impose punitive sanctions on America’s trading partners. (This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

What do you make of this current situation?

Well, it’s not precisely what I would have recommended, but I think that’s less important than the question of why we are where we are. How do we get out of this? I think the way to have markets regain stability and people get out of their fright would be to pick a particular country out of the 50 or 60 or 70 that are involved here and quickly make a deal with them that makes sense.

How do we get there?

You obviously can’t negotiate simultaneously with that many nations. We don’t have the bandwidth to do it. Even if you assume that they had a preset plan where they want to come out with each country—which I doubt—it’s very hard to negotiate simultaneously with that many. It would be best if he picked a test case and brought it to a reasonable conclusion quickly.

Was trade so unfair that these tariffs were necessary?

I think it was necessary to make some changes, yes. And I think it was necessary to do them on a broad basis. I think a more moderate baseline, like the 10% baseline, that’s a good idea. 10% is pretty much absorbable, so it would start the process. But what I would have preferred to see would be in addition to the 10%, he’d just pick for the moment one or two of what he feels are the most egregious ones and hit them with a big number and try to bring that to a conclusion and then go on to the next one. Putting high tariffs on a very large number of countries all at once is counterproductive if your real aim is lowering tariffs, because of the bandwidth problem.

Who ultimately benefits from this current situation?

Well, leaving out the island with penguins and seals, what’s really important is Japan, Vietnam, all those. And I can understand to some degree his strategy of isolating China. That probably is not such a bad strategy, but he hasn’t really just isolated China. He’s also isolated Vietnam and quite a few others. If this were to hold, there would be a massive transfer of wealth from Asia to Latin America because the Latin American countries are much lower in the tariff scale than Asia, and yet their wage rates in many cases are pretty comparable effectively when you allow for currency and all that. So I don’t know if that was an intended consequence, but certainly Latin America would be a relative winner if these rates, or anything like them, are sustained.

Had you been in your position this term, what would you have told Trump?

Well, I like the idea of a modest global tariff because 10% is absorbable without big inflationary problems here, and it doesn’t really change the relative mix country by country. Where I would have been more cautionary would be going to some of the extremes. You put a 40% or 50% tariff on everything, and you’re really telling that country, “I don’t want to do business with you.” So I think it’s the wrong message.

And they don’t come back, do they?

He will get some concessions. The question is, will a reasonable middle ground be struck where he gets enough concessions that things stabilize quickly? The other countries, without question, will make some concessions. They have to. There isn’t one of them that can afford to go forward without the U.S. If the spirit really is compromise, that would be fine and would achieve his objective.

Because to me, he has a couple of objectives. He likes the idea of more revenues coming in, and he likes lowering trade deficit. Well, those are, in a sense, antithetical, in that the higher the tariffs you have on, the less you’re going to succeed with collecting revenue, because those countries will just stop shipping to you. So he’s got to get a balance. And assuming that he recognizes that, and is heading that way, I think it could work out fine.

As Trump carried through with his threat to impose tariffs on America’s trading partners last week, the markets began a weeklong descent, with the Dow down 10.85% from April 2 through April 8.

Then things got weird: Trump said he’d postpone most of the tariffs for 90 days, but said he’d slap tariffs of 145% on China, and keep a minimum 10% tariff on all imports and 25% on cars and car parts. (At least that was his stance at press time on April 10.) The Dow rose 7.87% on Wednesday before diving again on Thursday, down 4.25% by noon. Not even an optimistic inflation report on Thursday could help the market. The Consumer Price Index climbed 2.4% in March from a year earlier, and below February’s 2.8% hike. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy items, dropped to 2.8% in March. But it’s the tariffs that count now. “We don’t see tariffs as a one-time price shock. We see them as having significant second-round effects,” said James Egelhof, chief U.S. economist at BNP Paribas, told The New York Times.

Just the threat of tariffs is beginning to upend the global economy, and China is already looking for new places to sell its goods, meaning U.S. prices are likely to rise. China has refused to back down, raising tariffs on U.S. goods there to 84%, and relishing the idea of dethroning the U.S. as the world’s commercial and financial capital.

Tariffs will bring on an “economic nuclear winter,” warned Trump acolyte and Herbalife shortseller Bill Ackman. “By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital,” Ackman wrote in one of those long posts on X.

Meanwhile, someone’s been making book on the volatility, and not just people trading volatility indexes. That 90-day suspension, which followed repeated White House denials that a suspension was imminent, has raised suspicions.

Senators Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego want to know why Trump posted a note on his Truth Social platform after his tariff announcement tanked the markets, but shortly before he decided that he’d take a 90-day break. “This sequence of events raises grave legal and ethics concerns. The President, his family, and his advisors are uniquely positioned to be privy to and take advantage of non-public information to inform their investment decisions,” the senators said in a letter to Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Thursday, asking for an investigation into potential conflicts of interest.

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 9:37 a.m., the AP reported. Around 1 p.m. ET, Trump announced a 90-day pause on nearly all his tariffs. The S&P 500 gained back about $4 trillion, or 70%, of the value it had lost over the previous four trading days.

“The people who bought when they saw that post made a lot of money,” said Trump critic and former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter. Was Trump already contemplating the tariff pause when he made that post? Asked about when he arrived at his decision, Trump gave a muddled answer, AP reported. “I would say this morning,” he said. “Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it.” He then added, “Fairly early this morning.”

Then there’s the question of Monday’s micro-rally and mega-dip, and whether that’s related to Thursday’s climb. On Monday, both CNBC and Reuters reported a claim on social media that Trump’s economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, had said the tariffs would be stayed for 90 days. That news, and the original X post itself, sent a cratering S&P 500 index back up about 6% before the original post came down and Hassett denied the report.

Bill Ackman had this to say:

This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.

• Bond, safe bond: The U.S. dollar and the yields an investor could expect from safe but boring U.S. Treasury bonds are a good part of what has kept the United States — and the dollar—the world’s financial safe haven. But this week, the bond market bobbed in the wake of Trump’s tariff pronouncements, and yields showed that faith is ebbing in U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. dollar. Basically, the higher the interest rate that a seller has to offer to induce someone to buy a bond, the greater the indication that the prospective buyer thinks the bond will have less purchasing power when it finally matures. When the tariffs went into effect, including levies of more than 100 percent on China, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rose to as high as 4.5 percent, up from around 3.9 percent a few days ago. The yield on a 30-year bond briefly traded above 5 percent. “The global safe-haven status is in question,” Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told the New York Times. “Disorderly moves have happened this week because there is no safe place to hide.”
• Amazon, but for human beings: Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons said he envisions squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross America delivering packages. “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Lyons said at the 2025 Border Security Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
• Canalman’s plan in trouble: Donald Trump’s plan to have U.S. asset manager BlackRock buy control of two Chinese-operated ports at either end of the Panama Canal appears to have hit a closed lock. Panama’s government auditor said the Hong Kong–based company, CK Hutchison, owes the government $300 million. And may have illegally won a 25-year extension to operate the port. An April 2 deadline for closing the BlackRock deal passed with no announcements.
• Viewing in interesting times: Trump’s supercharged economic pendulum has been great for TV business channels. Fox Business’s daytime viewership was up 25% last week over the week before, and CNBC saw its viewership zoom up 75% on Monday compared with its post-election weekday average.
• Catch me if you can: The IRS’s audit rate of individual taxpayers has dropped by about two-thirds since 2010 and now sits at about 0.36% of all personal tax returns, according to a New York Times analysis of agency data. That number may shrink if Trump lays off more IRS auditors. Al Capone must be envious.

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• Dimon in the rough: Is JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon changing his tune? In his annual letter to shareholders, Dimon warned, “The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.” Strong words from the most powerful financier in America. But just a couple of months ago, Dimon was reading from a different hymnal. Asked whether Trump’s then-planned tariffs would ignite a deadly trade war that could ravage the U.S. economy, Dimon replied: “If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it,” Dimon told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “National security trumps a little bit more inflation.”
• Star Wars: The Amazon Strikes Back: Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is set to begin launching its Kuiper satellite-based internet service, named for a distant belt of icy asteroids at the edge of our solar system and intended to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink network. A first commercial launch on a Lockheed-Boeing rocket from NASA’s Cape Canaveral was scrapped this week by bad weather, but Amazon says it will start service later this year with 578 satellites, and will eventually offer global coverage to rival that of Starlink, with 3,200 satellites over the next few years. Starlink has 7,000 satellites and aims to have 12,000 by the end of 2026.
• The Minecraft goldmine: Maybe 7-year-olds know something we don’t. The Warner Bros. Discovery film A Minecraft Movie was apparently the hit Hollywood needed this year, with a $157 million opening weekend box office in the U.S. and Canada. That’s the biggest since Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine last summer. The movie is based on the Microsoft video game that has my second-grade son captivated; he loved it. I’ll refrain from passing judgment. But the WBD studio has been under pressure to produce a hit since last year’s inconceivably awful box office flop of a musical, “Joker: Folie a Deux,” with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
• It’s epic: Universal’s Epic Universe in Orlando, the first major new theme park to open in Central Florida in 26 years, may help the studio take a bigger chunk of Orlando’s $92.5 billion annual tourism economy from DisneyWorld. The New York Times calls the $7 billion, 100-acre park an interactive “reflection of consumer obsession with instant gratification and personalization.”

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• Name-calling: Musk called Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, “a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks,” for his tariff plans, which threaten to upend Musk’s own businesses. The day before, Navarro called Musk a “car assembler,” not a “car maker,” because Teslas use parts from around the world. Musk called Navarro “Peter Retardo.” Navarro came to Trump’s attention with a book he wrote about how tariffs would restore America’s greatness. He often cited an economics expert named Ron Vara, which is an anagram of his own name.
• Wanna buy a used Tesla? All those people selling their Teslas because they dislike Elon Musk (or because Trump’s cuts mean the government is no longer seeding the development of charging stations) are good business for car dealers who fear Trump’s tariffs will push new cars—foreign and domestic—out of range of most buyers. The New York Times reports that a $4,000 federal tax credit for electric cars under $25,000 means you can buy a used Model 3 for well under $20,000.

• The first to go: This time it’s the consultants. As the U.S. government tells consulting firms to slash the cost of their contracts, Deloitte, one of the largest consultants to the federal government, says it’s sacking its own employees. No word on how many people will be cut from the firm’s 173,000-strong workforce, but the move comes after revenue stalled, growing less than 1% in 2024, after a hike of 17.8% in 2023, and 25.5% in 2022.
• Sharp move: Harry’s Razors, the men’s shaving startup whose close-cutting triple-blade razors, with blades made in Germany, is becoming its own consumer products conglomerate. After a planned $1.37 billion sale to the parent of Schick and Wilkinson was torpedoed by antitrust regulators, the company is rebranding itself as Mammoth Brands and expanding into deodorants, soap and acquisitions. It’s still got a long way to go. While it’s the second-best-selling razor brand in the U.S. behind Gillette, Harry’s only had revenue of $835 last year. Gillette parent Procter & Gamble had revenue of $84 billion.
• Proof that bunnies don’t lay eggs: Just in time for Easter, the price of a dozen eggs reached a new high of $6.23 in March. That came despite a drop in wholesale costs and no new bird flu outbreaks at egg farms. A dozen eggs sold for $4.95 in January and $5.90 in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. President Trump, who campaigned on lowering the price of groceries including eggs, had promised costs would drop for consumers. The USDA predicts the price of eggs will rise by more than 40% in 2025.
• Big law sues back: Two of the major law firms that Trump attacked have filed suit to block his executive orders, which call the firms a national security risk and could bar their attorneys from representing companies with government contracts—or even bar them from entering federal courthouses. Jenner & Block and WilmerHale say Trump’s orders violate their First Amendment rights.
• Going, going… The global art market shrank by 12% in 2024 to an estimated $57.5 billion, even as the number of art objects sold rose by 3% to 40.5 million. That’s bad news for the world’s auction houses, which make their money from selling high-end masterworks for tens of millions of dollars. Auction sales of single works for more than $10 million fell by 39%. Still, the big-name venues made up for some of that with with private sales by auction houses rising 14% over 2023, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report.
• It looks gorgeous on you: Italian luxury fashion house Prada has agreed to buy struggling design shop Versace for $1.38 billion, a far cry from the $2.1 billion that conglomerate Capri, which also owns Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors, paid for Versace in 2018. Luxury fashion is a risky business, as consumer tastes can swiftly change. And then there are the regulators. Capri failed to sell itself to Coach owner Tapestry for $8.5 billion in 2023, after the Federal Trade Commission said that would stifle competition in the market of affordable luxury handbags. Stick that in your Birkin.

Late last week, almost without anyone noticing, the carcass of one of the great news sites of the internet age was thrown to the wolves. Quartz, launched in 2012, was sold to its fifth owner in less than a decade, and the skeleton staff of about a dozen reporters and editors were fired (they reportedly got severance and three months’ healthcare). According to media reports, the new owners, a Canadian software company called Redbrick, bought Quartz for its mailing lists—it claimed over 1 million opt-in subscribers for newsletters covering everything from space and management to a weekly column I wrote until January, taking a deep dive into timely questions of business and economics.

It began with a few escapees from the Wall Street Journal, led by a brilliant journalist named Kevin Delaney, who came up with an idea for a business news website that would break the boring traditions of business news, embodied then by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News —and even CNBC—whose snoozable content drew a wealthy but aging readership.

Without Quartz, it’s fair to say, there’d be no Cheddar. Quartz was first on the scene to cover financial news in a young and savvy way, making the business and the economy interesting to new audiences. It aimed high, and for a while it succeeded. But it seems, as one colleague put it, that it’s the destiny of websites these days to aim high, start off with a bang, and do great work, only to end up being sold for dog food. Or—as Stephen Carter, CEO of Informa, the conference-hosting company that bought one of my previous employers, Industry Dive, put it—as a “great source of first-party data.” In other words, people to whom you can sell stuff. That’s certainly what happened with Quartz. In 2022, Jim Spanfeller, an opportunistic venture capitalist, acquired Quartz and a raft of other flailing online news sites, including Gawker and The Onion, that he swiftly sold off or folded, one by one.

Maybe it had to be this way. As former Quartz publisher Zach Seward wrote this week, Quartz never made money. “We grew, between 2012 and 2018, to nearly 250 employees and $35 million in annual revenue. The dismal economics of digital media meant losing more than $40 million over that stretch just to grow unsustainably large.”

By 2018, Quartz was a mammoth, with editions in Europe, India and Africa, but its key revenue source—beautifully produced and perfectly integrated branded content, sometimes indistinguishable from the news content—began to dry up. Many of the better reporters and editors drifted away, and its news content became less exciting and less appealing. The problem was money. Quartz became so unsustainable, in fact, that owner David Bradley, who also owned the Atlantic, sold it to another news site I’d been working for, a Japanese financial information outfit called Uzabase, which tried breaking into the U.S. with a news curation app called Newspicks. Its young, T-shirted CEO, Yusuke Umeda, paid $86 million for Quartz. But that failed, too, and Seward bought it back from Uzabase for a dollar in 2020. Two years later, at the end of the pandemic and with a staff of 80, Seward sold Quartz to Spanfeller, and now three years after that, Quartz has become that a zombie.

Farewell then, Quartz. We knew you when.