The countrys automotive future doesnt look as electric as carmakers had once hoped. But it doesnt mean the EV industry is entirely dead.
On Monday, Ford Motor Co. announced that its taking major steps to pull back on its EV-focused business road map. The automaker is scrapping plans to produce a new electric truck, repurposing an EV battery plant to produce storage for the grid, and converting its fully electric F-150 Lightning into a hybrid.
Its also planning to expand its gas and hybrid options. The strategy shift away from fully electric vehicles will cost the automaker $19.5 billion.
Ford’s stock has been mostly flat since the news was announced, with shares trading down roughly 0.11% as of late Tuesday afternoon.
The move may seem like an indictment against electric vehicles at large. It may also seem counterintuitive given that EV sales in the U.S. hit record highs this year.
But experts say it illustrates the specific headwinds that EV makers have faced in the U.S. this year, and the challenges of scaling an emerging technology.
Tax credits and tariffs
Manufacturing vehicles in the U.S. has become increasingly expensive, due in part to higher labor costs, stricter environmental regulations, and supply-chain issues. And a more expensive manufacturing environment means more investment risk.
In 2025, it became even more challenging. “A lot of things designed to mitigate that risk have been unwound, says Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association (ZETA), a coalition advocating for EV advancement.
President Trump scrapped federal tax credits for EVs and enacted sweeping (and at times unpredictable) tariffs. He also rolled back fuel economy standards and generally added immense uncertainty to every investment decision in U.S. manufacturing.
The cost of doing business in the U.S. has gone up significantly, Gore says.
Ford’s announcement even speaks to this, noting that “regulatory changes” have affected its EV plans.
Profitability concerns
Ford’s situation in this landscape is unique in part because of the specific type of EV it offers. Fords flagship EV was its F-150 Lightning, a full-size pickup that came with a steep price.
Though the F-150 Lightning was announced in 2021 with a price of $40,000, once production began, that cost increased. The 2025 F-150 started at around $55,000, though other versions came in even higher; the F-150 Lightning Platinum, for example, starts at around $85,000.
Ford had been struggling with its EV profitability for a while; it was losing money on every EV it sold, even at the start of 2024.
And though EV demand has been strongGore says that for the past 15 years, EV demand has far exceeded industry estimatesprice is an important component of that demand.
In general, the U.S. auto market focuses on SUVs and trucks, which have higher average transaction prices than sedans. That impacts U.S. consumers, who have been facing increasing costs in multiple sectors, including groceries and electricity.
It also makes it more challenging for U.S. companies to compete internationally. In 1960, about 52% of global automotive sales were U.S.-made vehicles. Today, its around 11%, and falling.
Some of that is just because the rest of the world is growing its manufacturing, Gore notes. But some of it is the way that cars made here for this market have changed in a way that places them somewhat out of step with the rest of the world.
Ford isnt totally giving up on EVs, though. The automakers changing strategy is specifically about no longer producing select larger electric vehicles where the business case has eroded due to lower-than-expected demand, high costs, and regulatory changes, the company has said.
So while it has scrapped the F-150 Lightning, it still has plans to make smaller, affordable models, as well as expand its hybrid and extended-range EVs.
EVs need scaleand China is dominating
In order for EVs to be profitable, production needs to reach a certain scale. But these factorsvehicle type, as well as shifting trade and tax policieshinder automakers abilities to do so.
And EVs are still somewhat nascent, at least compared to internal combustion vehicles.
Manufacturing new power train vehicles is hard, Gore says, and particularly takes economies of scale that have been achieved over a century with internal combustion vehicles, but are just now starting to be achieved in the U.S. with electric vehicles, within the last seven years or so.
About 1 out of every 4 vehicles sold around the world in 2025 will be an EV. But right now the market is dominated by China, which accounts for about 70% of global EV production.
China has come to own the global EV industry in part because of its technological advancements, specifically around battery innovationand its ability to make ultra-affordable EVs.
Some Chinese EVs start as low as $10,000; Ford CEO Jim Farley himself test-drove (and loved) a Xiaomi SU7, which retails for around $30,000.
Chinas EV success reveals just how far behind the U.S. is when it comes to EV advancements. And though Chinas dominance isnt quite affecting the U.S. car marketformer President Biden imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs as a way to protect American auto manufacturingit is having global impacts.
The European Union is abandoning a ban on combustion vehicles after automaker pressure, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, giving more time for automakers to go electric. The move comes as European carmakers face increased competition from China, as well as steep tariffs from the U.S.
EV consumer sentiment is hitbut theres hope
Another factor playing into the complicated EV landscape, particularly in the U.S., is the changing consumer sentiment around the technology. EV sales did hit a record high in the U.S. this year, but that was likely influenced by consumers racing to qualify for th federal tax credits before they expired at the end of September.
A recent study by CDK Global found that EV interest among gas car drivers dropped 20%. When asked if they will buy an EV in the future, 31% of gas drivers said yes in 2024, compared with 11% in 2025.
Interest even dropped among hybrid drivers, 54% of whom said in 2024 they would switch to an EV in the future, compared with 35% in 2025.
Gore wasnt involved in that survey, but he points out that the conversation around EVs has become increasingly politicized. The rhetoric is, by its nature, extremely negative, and it’s loud, he says.
That can affect EV adoption, particularly for a technology that needs to vie for mainstream appeal. Early adopters drove EVs initial surging growth, but then the industry has had to figure out how to attract everyone else who isnt as invested in being a front-runner.
But Gore isnt concerned about the long-term appeal of EVs. “That’s something that has been absolutely consistent, that regardless of what anyones heard, the experience of driving an EV is overwhelmingly positive, and the same with owning one, he says.
Though EV sales dipped 1% in North America this year compared with 2024, theyre still up 24% globally.
Despite the challenges the EV industry faces in the U.S. and abroad, experts like Gore are positive that theres still plenty of market to reachand that continued advancement, particularly in battery technology, means electric vehicles make sense for the future.
The U.S. EV industry has seen ups and downs before. And though it might be the right current move, economically, for automakers to pull back on EV plans, they risk falling behind if and when the market swings back.
“For people who don’t [scratch their EV plans], I think the reward will be a much bigger market than a lot of companies,” Gore says.
Automakers Hyundai and Kia must offer free repairs to millions of models under a settlement announced Tuesday by Minnesota’s attorney general, who led an effort by dozens of states that argued the vehicles weren’t equipped with proper anti-theft technology, leaving them vulnerable to theft.
Under the nationwide settlement, the companies will offer a free repair to all eligible vehicles at a cost that could top $500 million, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said. Hyundai and Kia must also outfit all future vehicles sold in the U.S. with a key piece of technology called an engine immobilizer and pay up to $4.5 million of restitution to people whose vehicles were damaged by thieves.
The settlement was reached by 35 states, including California, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The vehicles eligible for fixes date as far back as 2011 and as recently as 2022. About 9 million eligible vehicles were sold nationwide.
Thefts of Hyundai and Kia vehicles soared in part because beginning in 2021, videos posted to TikTok and other social media demonstrated how someone could steal a car with just a screwdriver and a USB cable. Minneapolis reported an 836% increase in Hyundai and Kia thefts from 2021 to 2022. Ellison announced an investigation into the automakers in early 2023.
Ellison said the two companies installed engine immobilizers on cars sold in Mexico and Canada, but not widely in the U.S., leading to car thefts, crimes and crashes that injured and even killed people, including teenagers.
This crisis that we’re talking about today started in a boardroom, traveled through the Internet and ended up in tragic results when somebody stole those cars, Ellison said at a news conference.
He was joined by Twin Cities officials, a woman whose mother was killed when a stolen Kia crashed into her parents vehicle and a man whose car was stolen nine times as recently as Monday night, and including seven times after a previous software fix.
Under the settlement, Hyundai and Kia will install a zinc sleeve to stop would-be thieves from cracking open a vehicle’s ignition cylinder and starting the car.
Eligible customers will have one year from the date of the companies’ notice to get the repair at an authorized dealership. The repairs are expected to be available from early 2026 through early 2027.
In a statement, Kia said the agreement is the latest step it has taken to help its customers and prevent thefts.
Kia is eager to continue working with law enforcement officers and officials at federal, state, and local levels to combat criminal car theft, and the role social media has played in encouraging it, and we remain fully committed to upholding vehicle security, the company said.
The Associated Press emailed Hyundai for comment.
Jack Dura, Associated Press
The U.S. stock market is drifting lower on Tuesday following mixed data on the economys strength, which did little to clear uncertainty about where interest rates may be heading.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4% in afternoon trading and remains a bit below its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 271 points, or 0.6%, as of 1:53 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was mostly unchanged.
Treasury yields eased a bit, following a larger initial drop, after one report said the U.S. unemployment rate was at its worst level last month since 2021, but employers also added more jobs than economists expected. A separate report, meanwhile, said an underlying measure of strength for revenue at U.S. retailers grew more in October than economists expected.
The mixed data initially sent Treasury yields lower in the bond market. The knee-jerk reaction seemed to be that the reports could encourage the Federal Reserve to see the slowing job market as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than high inflation, and cut interest rates further in 2026. But yields quickly recovered and then drifted up and down.
What the Fed does with interest rates is a top driver for Wall Street because lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, even if they also may worsen inflation. A report coming on Thursday will show how bad inflation was last month, and economists expect it to show prices for U.S. consumers continue to rise faster than anyone would like.
A report released on Tuesday after U.S. stocks began trading suggested price pressures are rising sharply, with average selling prices for businesses climbing at one of the fastest rates since the middle of 2022. The preliminary data from S&P Global also said growth for overall business activity slowed to its weakest level since June.
Higher prices are again being widely blamed on tariffs, with an initial impact on manufacturing now increasingly spilling over to services to broaden the affordability problem, according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.16% from 4.18% late Monday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 3.48% from 3.51%.
Helping to keep the overall market in check were continued swings for stocks that have been caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Oracle rose 2.4%, and Broadcom rose 0.1%. They both had dropped to sharp losses last week, even though both reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
But CoreWeave, which rents out access to top-of-the-line AI chips, fell 4.9%.
Questions remain about whether all the spending underway on AI technology will produce the kind of profits and productivity that will make it worth the expense.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Pfizer fell 5.2% after giving a forecast for profit in 2026 that was below what some analysts expected. Its forecast for revenue next year, of between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion, was close to analysts expectations.
Kraft Heinz fell 0.1% after saying Steve Cahillane, who was most recently CEO of Kellanova, will join as CEO on Jan. 1. After Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will lead the one that will hold onto the Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.
Japans Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% ahead of an expected hike to interest rates by the Bank of Japan later this week.
Other markets in Asia also had some of the world’s sharper swings. South Koreas Kospi dropped 2.2%, while indexes fell 1.5% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai.
By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
When the government shutdown came to an end last month, the much-delayed jobs report for September was finally released, revealing that the unemployment rate had inched up to 4.4%the highest it had been in four years. Amid a tough job market and economic uncertainty, its little surprise that unemployment is on the rise again. In the latest jobs dispatch that was published today, unemployment had ticked up to 4.6% for the month of November.
But its a specific segment of the workforce that is most acutely feeling the effects of this spike in unemployment: For Black workers, the rate has stretched to 8.3%, up from 6%, in just the last six months. The rate among white workers, by comparison, has remained relatively steady, hovering just over 3%.
Why Black unemployment is rising
There are many reasons for this particular increase in unemployment. But experts say the dizzying pace of the Trump administrations attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion has notably contributed to the rising unemployment rate among Black workersand, more specifically, Black women, though the new jobs report for November indicates that unemployment among Black men has also increased.
The DEI pullback orchestrated by the Trump administration is not solely to blame for this dip in employment, though it plays a significant role. Since assuming office, Trump has taken aim at DEI programs across the public and private sectors. Starting in January, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders that shut down DEI offices across the federal government. He also reversed a key executive action that had promoted racial equity by curtailing discriminatory employment practices among contractors that work with the federal government. In addition, Trump has sought to dissolve DEI efforts across corporate America by directing federal agencies to investigate private companiesa move that has led many employers to reevaluate their DEI policies or eliminate certain programs altogether.
The job losses catalyzed by Trumps directive to cut DEI roles across the federal government have affected Black workers, who also tend to hold diversity jobs in higher numbers. Even beyond that, the federal job losseswhich are on track to reach 300,000 by the end of the yearhave hit Black workers especially hard, because they are overrepresented in that part of the workforce. Data from September 2024 indicates that almost half of federal workers are women and about 41% are people of color.
An analysis by the National Womens Law Center (NWLC) earlier this year found that women and people of color were overrepresented at many of the federal agencies that saw significant reductions in their workforce. The Trump administrations cuts have also targeted probationary workersthose in their first year of service or people who have recently been promotedwho are more likely to be women.
It really boils down to sort of a perfect storm of factors, says Valerie Wilson, the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute. We have the federal layoffs and job losses. We have the retraction of DEI policies . . . and organizations, including the federal government, that have essentially eliminated DEI departments or roles that were likely held by a large number of Black women. Wilson also notes that job losses across industries have disproportionately impacted womenfrom manufacturing to professional and business services.
How the DEI backlash has impacted Black workers
While its difficult to quantify the full scope of how anti-DEI measures have impacted Black employment, Wilson says theres no doubt that theres a correlationand that the fallout goes beyond the elimination of DEI jobs held by Black workers. The Trump administrations approach to DEI has also reshaped the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has made unlawful DEI-related discrimination a focus of its enforcement under new chair Andrea Lucas.
Wilson argues the administrations actions have a chilling effect, both on corporate DEI efforts and when it comes to how workers can seek recourse if they do face discrimination in the workplace. The fear that they might be targeted or face litigation has already driven employers to make significant changes to their DEI programs in recent years, dating back to the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action in 2023. Tech companies like Meta and Google have dropped representation goals that were intended to diversify their ranksonce a common practice in the industrywhile major employers like Walmart and McDonalds have stopped prioritizing diverse suppliers and pulled out of the Human Rights Commissions Corporate Equality Index, an influential benchmarking survey that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ workers.
Lauren Khouri, the senior director of workplace equality at the NWLC, points out that there are plenty of other programs that have been harmed by federal cuts and, in turn, impact workers of coloreven if they are not explicitly denoted as DEI initiatives.
Its not just the cuts that we’ve seen in the federal workforce, she says. If you look at the repercussions of cuts in grant programs across the federal government, we’ve seen an attack on domestic violence and sexual assault service provider organizations across the country, both at the state and local level. We’ve seen an attack on Department of Labor grant programs that specifically went to lifting up women in the trades. Without that funding, those organizationswhose mission and job is to lift up women, people of color, and marginalized communitieshave had to make really hard choices to keep the lights on.
The erosion of DEI programs will also play a major role in how Black workers bounce back from this surge in unemployment.
I think we have yet to see the full impact, Wilson says. Its going to come into play on the other end of job losses, when we’re looking at how quickly people recoverand not just how quickly they recover, but what kinds of positions they recover into. The purpose of a lot of those programs wasn’t just to hire a more diverse set of workers for any kind of roleit was also [creating] opportunities for people to gain access to higher-level positions.
What it will take to recover jobs
When Black employment is lagging, it is often a sign of a broader economic downturn, according to Khouriso its not just Black workers who might be faced with job insecurity, if thats any indicator. Since Black workers are concentrated in lower-wage jos that are more vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy, they are often impacted first when a recession is on the horizon. (This was evident during the pandemic, when unemployment spiked to over 16% and Black workers experienced job losses at a record high.)
The ongoing backlash to corporate DEI programs is, however, far more likely to impact Black workers seeking out jobs in industries that have historically shut out those workers. In the tech industry, DEI initiatives had slowly helped bring more underrepresented groupsnamely Black and Latino workersinto technical and leadership roles (even if that progress had been halting). The finance industry had made marginal progress on promoting Black employees into senior roles, and Black representation on boards had improved amid calls for greater diversity. A Bloomberg analysis found that in 2021, after many companies made significant investments in DEI efforts, the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobsand a whopping 94% of those jobs were filled by people of color.
Amid an ongoing federal hiring freeze and slowing employment, Black workers may also face an uphill battle even when it comes to finding steady employment in the federal workforcewhich, until now, had been a more reliable path to the middle class for Black Americans.
The reason why we have a more diverse federal workforce is because at one point, the federal government was actually willing to sort of be a leader in establishing more equitable employment practices that were ultimately adopted in states and cities and, to some extent, the private sector, Wilson says.
So when we start cutting federal jobs, we’re actually cutting jobs from a sector that hadat least since the 1960sbeen more of a leader in establishing equity. That may not be messaged or presented as explicitly anti-DEI, but it has that effect.
The federal government was once a model for how equitable hiring practices could actually transform the workplace and cultivate true diversity. Now, not only has Trump culled the federal workforcebut he has also chipped away at the very DEI policies that could have offset those losses and empowered Black workers to find work in the private sector.
If youve ever been to a museum or on a school field trip, you may have had a tour guide walk you through a historical exhibit of 19th-century households or of ancient Mesopotamian agricultural tools.
Now, a current TikTok trend suggests that one day in the future, those exhibits will be the modern workstationstanding desks, Zoom meeting headsets, and all. The viral series titled “Historical tour of a corporate workers desk,” by marketing professional and content creator Heike Young, imagines what that will look like.
Now in those times, it would have been really common for a corporate worker to sit at a desk, much like this one, and be on calls all day, she says in the skit, now with over 116,000 views. Behind Young, a standing desk is set up with two screens, one for work and the other for online shopping, she says. The desk is scattered with an assortment of beverages, or brown liquids, plastic food containers, and packets.
Believe it or not, this worker wouldve actually been considered very lucky to have a job like this, she continues. People would submit hundreds of applications and submit themselves to many humiliation rituals just to get a job like this one.
In another video, Young highlights a few common tabs workers would have had open on their screens.
Yes, Amazon. Thats the same name as the extinct rainforest, thats right, she replies to a question. We got some history buffs in here.
She also educates on the linguistic practices of the period, more commonly known as business jargon or work voice.
There was one sound that always got the laborers moving. It was a mild form of psychological torture, she explains in yet another skit. Our museum’s immersive effects team will play it now. And there were two common variations. One was more typical among workers who used Windows technology. And the next one is often for people who used Apple Mac.
The comments are filled with corporate workers who feel horrifyingly seen by the series.
With every video I watch, the more Im horrified by the reality of the life I currently live, one commenter posted.
Others, though, had the opposite reaction. This made me feel really hopeful in a very strange way, another wrote, finding comfort in the fact that, for better or worse, the current economic reality cannot continue forever.
Much of corporate landscape right now is pretty bleak, and its easy to get frustrated with it all, Young told Fast Company. But we are living in one moment. Theres so much history before and after us.
With the series, she thought to zoom out and examine the corporate experience from an entirely different point of view, much the same as we might now look back on laborers in the past and their working conditions.
When viewing it from the future as a detached museum docent, what is striking? Young continues. What little, mundane details seem quaint, absurd, or even grotesque?
As for what anthropologists will be uncovering about the corporate worker experience centuries from now, Young says: A bunch of Amazon returns that may never go back. Chips, gotta have chips. A fork with an empty plastic container. Three different beveragessome for their caffeine and some for the illusion of hydration. And a picture of the people youre doing this for.
AI has now arrived at the Treasury Department.
Sam Corcos, a former startup leader and Department of Government Efficiency affiliate now serving as chief information officer at the Treasury Department, appears to have approved spending at least $1.5 million on up to 3,000 licenses for ChatGPT, the OpenAI platform, federal spending records show. The agency has obligations to spend $1.5 million on the services, and has already outlaid more than $500,000 for the technology, those records show.
Fast Company obtained a user agreement showing that Treasury is allowing employees to use ChatGPT for authorized mission purposes. Such purposes include using the technology, in certain circumstances, with whats known as controlled unclassified information, a government designation thats given to information that isnt classified, but still requires some safeguarding. The expanded use of the tool comes amid growing pressure on federal agencies to adopt artificial intelligence systems, which advocates say can increase efficiency and cut down on excess bureaucracy.
In this case, the rules laid out in the user agreement include strong limits on how AI systems might be usedparticularly, for example, with regards to personally identifiable information, market-sensitive economic information, and federal tax data. The rules also forbid Treasury staffers from trying to tamper with or evade an AI chatbots security measures without express authorization. Employees arent supposed to use the output of an AI system without a human reviewing that work, or obfuscate the role AI played in making a particular product, according to the user agreement. A violation of these rules could lead to someone being fired, the agreement states.
One former Treasury official said department staff are probably using the tech on heavy lifting for tasks that would normally take a long time. Tony Arcadi, the official that Sam Corcos replaced, tells Fast Company that there were myriad use cases that could benefit from the technology, including automating administrative work. Done correctly and with robust controls, LLMs could be a force multiplier for intelligence, operations, finance, enforcement, and public engagement,” he says. The agency had previously invested in a smaller cache of ChatGPT licenses.The Treasury Department and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. Still, in September, the agency released a compliance plan focused on promoting the use of AI, as well as a strategy spelling out its approach to the technology.
Amid the move to speed up the use of AI throughout the government, including the militarys new GenAI.mil tool, theres still the serious risk of government officials putting too much faith in the far from faultless technology.For example, it seems like a recent report from the Department of Health and Human services may have been created using artificial intelligenceand included fake citations. Federal clerks have used ChatGPT and Perplexity and have ended up including misquotes and other errors in documents.
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While national active inventory for sale is still rising year over year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent monthssomething weve been closely documenting for several months for our ResiClub members.
The side-by-side maps below help you to see that decelerated rate of inventory growth.
Left map: Year-over-year change in metro level active inventory between November 2023 and November 2024
Right map: Year-over-year change in metro level active inventory between November 2024 and November 2025
Click to expand
Between November 2023 and November 2024, U.S. active housing inventory for sale rose by 26.1%.
Between November 2024 and November 2025, U.S. active housing inventory for sale rose by 12.6%.
Some of that percentage deceleration is a denominator effect (i.e., as U.S. active inventory rises, it takes an even larger increase to generate the same year-over-year percentage gain). That said, the deceleration is not only due to a denominator effect.
In November 2024, there were 196,885 more U.S. homes for sale than in November 2023.
In November 2025, there were 120,003 more U.S. homes for sale than in November 2024.
The chart belowyear-over-year unit shift in inventoryhelps us to see the trend without the denominator effect.
Why has U.S. active inventory growth slowed?
Some of it is due to the number of days on the market not rising as quickly or stabilizing in some markets. Part of the slowdown reflects an increase in delistings in softer markets, as some sellers have thrown in the towel and pulled their listings.
And, to a lesser degree, a handful of markets have seen a mild pickup in absorption as existing-home sales have edged up slightly from their multiyear troughs.
What does decelerating inventory growth mean?
Back in September, I published an article titled “The speed of housing market softening has slowedbut softness remains.”
I think that framing still holds for what weve seen in recent months. On a nationally aggregated basis, as inventory growth decelerated in the second half of 2025, so did the pace of market softening.
Since then, the U.S. housing market has largely stabilized, with national home price appreciation hovering close to 1% year over year and below U.S. income growth.
Of course, there remains significant regional variation: Many pockets of the Midwest and Northeast continue to see mild year-over-year home value gains, while many areas in the Southwest and Southeast are experiencing mild year-over-year declines.
What to watch in early 2026?
As the nationally aggregated housing market transitions from its seasonally slower period into its seasonally busier spring window, a key question will be how inventory behaves.
In particular, it will be important to watch whether the recent uptick in delistings in softer markets comes back online. For example, do homes that were pulled from the market in weaker areassuch as Southwest Floridaquickly reappear once seasonality shifts?
Earlier this month, the State Department announced that it was instructing U.S. embassy staff around the world to reject work visa applications from individuals involved in what it described as censorship of Americans speech online. In a cable that was first leaked to Reuters, consular officers were instructed to review LinkedIn profiles of visa applicants mentioning work history involving misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance, and online safety. This work includes journalists and fact-checkers, academics, people working in media literacy, and a broad range of tech workers in a field known as Trust and Safety.
This isnt the first such visa restriction stemming from what the Trump administration views as censorship. Nor is it the first Republican assault on academics and tech workers who monitor online disinformation. Instead, this represents the latest escalation in a five-year campaign by the GOP and its allies to discredit misinformation research, which theyve long contended silences conservative views.
In April 2022, the Biden administration appointed Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation researcher, to lead the Department of Homeland Securitys Disinformation Governance Board, tasked with aiding government efforts to understand and mitigate false information related to border security, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. Almost immediately, the board came under attack from Republicans like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and far-right pundit Tucker Carlson, who likened the body to a Ministry of Truth.
Jankowicz herself endured all manner of abuse, including death threats and threats of sexual violence; she resigned her post in May of 2022 and the entire project was shuttered by the end of that summer. In the years since, she cofounded the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit aimed at protecting Americans from disinformation, and serves as its CEO.
The Republican attempt to kneecap disinformation researchers, she says, is part of a broader attack not only on trust and safety or content moderation, but on anybody and any organization that attempts to safeguard our shared reality or the truth.
‘Woke speech police’
There was a time when combating misinformation and foreign interference in elections was a bipartisan effort. In 2018, Facebook was summoned to congress to answer for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a British consultancy was accused of targeting Russian election disinformation to Facebook users. We’re here because of what you, Mr. Zuckerberg, have described as a breach of trust, “Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) said to Zuckerberg.
Meta and other tech companies soon ramped up their fact-checking operations. Meta began partnering with news outlets like Snopes, the Associated Press, and others, to fact-check viral information online. It also tightened its data-sharing policies, expanded its policy teams, and implemented a global trusted partner program to work with nonprofits to monitor harmful content online. It was an imperfect system, but certainly better than what platforms had done prior to 2016.
But those enforcement policies wound up angering Republicans, who felt disproportionately targeted by them. Tech companies were not in fact censoring their freedom of speech. Even if they had been, it wouldnt be a violation of the First Amendment, which only protects citizens from government censorship.
The problem was Republicans tendency to disseminate material that contains misleading content. One study found that conservatives were eight times more likely to spread misinformation than those who lean liberal.
After 2020, conservative ire at tech companies for censoring their posts reached a fever pitch, fueled by the platforms attempt to regulate anti-vaccine content during the COVID-19 pandemic and their deprioritizing of reports about allegedly compromising information about President Biden on his son Hunter Bidens laptop.
By 2023, when Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, became chair of the House Judiciary Committee, his party began subpoenaing Big Tech and research organizations that study online hate speech and misinformation. In tandem, lawsuits from Republican activists against those very research organizations eventually made it politically and financially cumbersome for many of these organizations to continue functioning. The Stanford Internet Observatory, a prominent disinformation watchdog, effectively shuttered its doors due to Republican attacks last year.
Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden Administrations directives that suppress freedom of speech online, Jordan wrote to Zuckerberg in his 2022 subpoena. Because of Big Techs wide reach, it can serve as a powerful and effective partisan arm of the woke speech police.
Capitulation
As it became clear Donald Trump could defeat Kamala Harris in last years election, Zuckerberg capitulated — first with reticence, then with enthusiasm.
In August of last year, he sent a letter to Jordan apologizing for letting the platform go too far in censoring posts related to the COVID-19 vaccinewhich Republicans have sowed skepticism over its perceived safety. Zuckerberg also admitted that Meta demoted posts about the Hunter Biden scandal. Then, this January, shortly before Trumps inauguration, Zuckerberg, wearing a black t-shirt and gold pendant chain, hosted an infamous Facebook Live in which he announced that his company would no longer invest in fact-checking. Echoing Gaetz and Carlson, the CEO attacked legacy media for focusing too much on the threat of misinformation to democracy. Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, he said.
Theres also a significant financial motivation behind divesting from trust and safety initiatives. They don’t want to spend all that money on what is a very expensive investment, Jankowicz says. By Metas own estimates the company has spent $20 billion on trust and safety operations since 2016.
Its one thing for tech companies to fire their fact-checkers and content moderators — for the most part, theyre within their legal right to do so, as long as they figure out an alternative way to remove child abuse material. Its a very different thing for the government to obstruct tech companies from hiring content moderators, which arguably is a violation of the companys first amendment rights.
Theoora Skeadas, a former associate on Twitters Public Policy team, worries that the new rules will be used to harass trust and safety workers in the same way researchers like Jankowicz have been harassed. The work we do as trust and safety workers involves ensuring safe experiences for children and women online, and fighting fraud, terrorism, and hate, she says. I observe the irony, too, that this measure entails heavy-handed censorship. Skeadas says that trust & safety workers are scrubbing their LinkedIn of the keywords the government might find objectionable.
A Faustian bargain
While Big Tech CEOs were quick to speak out against the Trump administrations blanket $100,000 fees for H-1B workerswhich would have disproportionately impacted foreign software engineers working for major tech firms (and now appears to have been dramatically narrowed in scope)not a single CEO has spoken out against these new rules.
That might be because the newfound allyship with Trump seems to be paying off for the platforms. The Trump administration has spent much of this year attacking foreign tech regulators, including in the E.U., which recently passed the Digital Services Actrequiring social media companies to more aggressively police disinformation and other illegal contentand the Digital Markets Act, which was designed to curb Big Techs anti-competitive practices.
Since the administration has been in office, there has been an increasing amount of pressure and, I would say, attacks on regulators, civil servants, and researchers abroad as well, Jankowicz says.
The administration has even sanctioned foreign officials for attempting to regulate Big Tech companies. This summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced very similar restrictions to the H1B memo for foreign government workers who the administration viewed as targeting Americans First amendment rights. The administration sanctioned Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, and, later, his wife, under this new policy in what appears to be a politically motivated retribution for ordering Twitter be blocked in Brazil and later extended the sanctions to his wife.
For the tech companies, theres a clear upside to this Faustian bargain: Go along with the administrations narrative on censorshipeven if that means sacrificing the safety of your own workers and risking the further fracturing of American societyand the entire might of the U.S. government will reward you.
The amount of electricity data centers use in the U.S. in the coming years is expected to be significant. But regular reports of proposals for new ones and cancellations of planned ones mean that its difficult to know exactly how many data centers will actually be built and how much electricity might be required to run them.
As a researcher of energy policy who has studied the cost challenges associated with new utility infrastructure, I know that uncertainty comes with a cost. In the electricity sector, it is the challenge of state utility regulators to decide who pays what shares of the costs associated with generating and serving these types of operations, sometimes broadly called large load centers.
States are exploring different approaches, each with strengths, weaknesses, and potential drawbacks.
A new type of customer?
For years, large electricity customers such as textile mills and refineries have used enough electricity to power a small city.
Moreover, their construction timelines were more aligned with the development time of new electricity infrastructure. If a company wanted to build a new textile mill and the utility needed to build a new gas-fired power plant to serve it, the construction on both could start around the same time. Both could be ready in two and a half to three years, and the textile mill could start paying for the costs necessary to serve it.
Modern data centers use a similar amount of electricity but can be built in nine to 12 months. To meet that projected demand, construction of a new gas-fired power plant, or a solar farm with battery storage, must begin a yearmaybe twobefore the data center breaks ground.
During the time spent building the electrical supply, computing technology advances, including both the capabilities and the efficiency of the kinds of calculations artificial intelligence systems require. Both factors affect how much electricity a data center will use once it is built.
Technological, logistical, and planning changes mean there is a lot of uncertainty about how much electricity a data center will ultimately use. So its very hard for a utility company to know how much generating capacity to start building.
Keeping older coal plants running may be an expensive way to generate power. Ulysse Bellier/AFP via Getty Images
Handling the risks of development
This uncertainty costs money: A power plant could be built in advance, only to find out that some or all of its capacity isnt needed. Or no power plant is built, and a data center pops up, competing for a limited supply of electricity.
Either way, someone needs to payfor the excess capacity or for the increased price of what power is available. There are three possible groups that might pay: the utilities that provide electricity, the data center customers, and the rest of the customers on the system.
However, utility companies have largely ensured their risk is minimal. Under most state utility-regulation processes, state officials review spending proposals from utility companies to determine what expenses can be passed on to customers. That includes operating expenses such as salaries and fuel costs, as well as capital investments, such as new power plants and other equipment.
Regulators typically examine whether proposed expenses are useful for providing service to customers and reasonable for the utility to expect to incur. Utilities have been very careful to provide their regulators with evidence about the costs and effects of proposed data centers to justify passing the costs of proposed investments in new power plants along to whomever the customers happen to be.
Regulators, then, are left to equitably allocate the costs to the prospective data center customers and the rest of the ratepayers, including homes and businesses. In different states, this is playing out differently.
Kentuckys approach to usefulness
Kentucky is attempting to address the demand uncertainty by conditionally approving two new natural gas-fired generators in the state. However, the utility companiesLouisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilitiesmust demonstrate that those plants will actually be needed and used. But its not clear how they could do that, especially considering the time frames involved.
For instance, suppose the utility has a letter of agreement or even a contract with a new data center or other large customer. That might be sufficient proof for the regulator to approve charging customers for the costs of building a new power plant.
But its not clear what would happen if the data center ends up not being built, or needing much less power than expected. If the utility cant get the money from the data center companybecause they bill customers based on actual usagethat leaves regular consumers on the ook.
A data center in Columbus, Ohio, is just one of many being built or proposed around the country. Eli Hiller/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Ohios demand ratchet and credit guarantee
In Ohio, the major power company AEP has a specific rate plan for data centers and other large electricity customers. One element, called a demand ratchet, is designed to mitigate month-to-month uncertainty in electricity consumption by data centers. The data centers monthly bill is based on the current months demand or 85% of the highest monthly demand from the previous 11 monthswhichever is higher.
The benefit is that it protects against a data center using huge amounts of electricity one month and very little the next, which would otherwise yield a much lower bill. The ratchet helps ensure that the data center is paying a significant share of the cost of providing enough electricity, even if it doesnt use as much as was expected.
This ratchet effectively locks in the data centers payments for 12 months, but regulators might expect a longer commitment from the center. For instance, Floridas utilities regulator has approved an agreement that would require a data center company to pay for 70% of the agreed-upon demand in their entire electricity contract, even if the company didnt use the power.
Another aspect of Ohios approach addresses the risk of changing business plans or technology. AEP requires a credit guarantee, like a deposit, letter of credit or parent company guarantee of payment, equal to 50% of the customers expected minimum bill under the contract. While this theoretically reduces the risk borne by other customers, it also raises concerns.
For example, a utility may not end up signing contracts directly with a large, well-known, wealthy technology company but with a subsidiary corporation with a more generic nameimagine something like Westside Data Center LLCcreated solely to build and operate one data center. If the data centers plans or technology changes, that subsidiary could declare bankruptcy, leaving the other customers with the remaining costs.
Harnessing strength in flexibility
A key advantage of these new types of customers is that they are extremely nimble in the way they use electricity.
If data centers can make money based on their flexibility, as they have in Texas, then a portion of those profits can be returned to the other customers that shared the investment risk. A similar mechanism is being implemented in Missouri: If the utility makes extra money from large customers, then 65% of that revenue increase is returned to the other customers.
Change is coming to the U.S. electricity system, but nobody is sure how much. The methods by which states are trying to allocate the cost of that uncertainty vary, but the critical element is understanding their respective strengths and weaknesses to craft a system that is fair for everyone.
Theodore J. Kury is a director of energy studies at the University of Florida.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
China will impose tariffs of up to 19.8% on pork imports from the European Union, a drastic drop from preliminary tariffs of up to 62.4%, its Commerce Ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry’s announcement followed an investigation the Chinese side launched into imports of pork from the trading bloc after the EU imposed provisional tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.
Beijing also levied anti-dumping duties on European brandy, most notably cognac produced in France, though major brandy producers received exemptions. Imports of dairy products from the EU likewise were subject to anti-dumping probes.
The EU runs a massive trade deficit with China: over 300 billion euros ($348 billion) last year. However, the trading bloc is a major exporter of pork and key supplier of byproducts such as ears, snouts, feet, and other items considered to be delicacies in China.
In September, China ordered preliminary anti-dumping duties, in the form of security deposits, of 15.6% to 32.7% for pork imports from EU companies that collaborated with the anti-dumping investigation, and up to 62.4% for all others.
Chinas Commerce Ministry concluded that the EU was dumping pork and pig by-products in China, selling them at prices below production costs or domestic market prices, and harming Chinas pork industry. The final tariff rates of 4.9%-19.8% are due to take effect beginning Wednesday and last for five years.
Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark will be the most affected.
The Commerce Ministry said the new tariff will apply to all kind of pork products, fresh, chilled, frozen, dried, pickled, smoked or salted.
It said it had reached its conclusions in an objective, fair and impartial manner.
EU exports of pork products to China peaked at 7.4 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in 2020 when Beijing turned to imports to meet domestic demand after its pig farms were devastated by a swine disease. But it has reduced imports as it has rebuilt its herds.
Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writer
