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Coca-Cola said Tuesday it will add a cane-sugar version of its trademark cola to its U.S. lineup this fall, confirming a recent announcement by President Donald Trump. Trump said in a social media post last week that Coca-Cola had agreed to use real cane sugar in its flagship product in the U.S., which has been sweetened with high fructose corn syrup since the 1980s. Coke didn’t immediately confirm the change, but promised new offerings soon. On Tuesday, Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO James Quincey said Coke will expand its product range to reflect consumer interest in differentiated experiences. We appreciate the presidents enthusiasm for our Coca-Cola brand, Quincey said in a conference call with investors Tuesday. We are definitely looking to use the whole tool kit of available sweetening options.” Quincey noted that Coke uses cane sugar in some other U.S. drinks, like its Simply brand lemonade and Honest Tea. Coke has also sold Mexican Coke, which is made with cane sugar, in the U.S. since 2005. Were always looking for opportunities to innovate and see whether theres an intersection of new ideas and where consumer preferences are evolving, Quincey said. Its a good sign that the industry, including ourselves, are trying lots of different things. Rivals PepsiCo and Dr Pepper have been selling versions of their trademark colas sweetened with cane sugar in the U.S. since 2009. Asked if Coke would also consider introducing a prebiotic version of its trademark cola as PepsiCo did this week Quincey said the company is currently selling a Coke with added fiber in Japan and is studying consumer response to it. Quincey said consumer demand for its products improved in the second quarter in many markets, including China, Europe, Africa and North America. I would I would say overall that the global economy and the global consumer remains resilient, Quincey said. But early monsoons and conflict hurt demand in India, and Quincey said demand in Thailand and Indonesia was also weaker than expected. Quincey also said lower-income consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere have also pulled back on spending. Global case volumes of Coca-Cola fell 1%. Juice, dairy and plant-based beverages fell 4%, Coke said. Sports drink case volumes were down 3%, as higher demand in North America was offset by declines in Latin America. One bright spot was Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, which saw case volumes grow 14%. Traditional Coca-Cola still far outsells the zero-sugar variety, but consumer demand for zero-sugar versions is growing much more quickly. In North America, case volumes fell 1%, but that was an improvement from the first quarter, when they were down 3%. Quincey said Hispanic sales in the U.S. returned to normal levels by the end of June. They had plummeted starting in February, when a social media video began circulating that claimed Coke was reporting its own workers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Quincey said the claim was false. The company has been trying to win back Hispanic consumers with targeted deals and ads touting the companys local economic impact. It was still a headwind in the second quarter but the issue is now largely resolved, Quincey said Tuesday. Coca-Cola reported better-than-expected earnings in the second quarter as higher prices offset the weaker volumes. Coke said pricing rose 6% globally. Revenue for the Atlanta company rose 1% to $12.5 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, quarterly revenue was $12.6 billion. That was in line with Wall Streets forecast, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Net income jumped 58% to $3.8 billion. Coke’s adjusted net income was 87 cents, which was higher than the 83 cents Wall Street forecast. Coke said it now expects full-year adjusted earnings to grow 8%. At the start of the year, Coke had expected earnings to grow 8% to 10%, but in April it lowered that range to 7% to 9%. Coke earned $2.88 per share in 2024. Shares of Coca-Cola Co. were down 1% in early trading Tuesday. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
Wall Street is hanging near its records on Tuesday following some mixed profit reports, as General Motors and other big U.S. companies give updates on how much President Donald Trumps tariffs are hurting or helping them. The S&P 500 was shaving 0.1% off its all-time high set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 44 points, or 0.1%, as of 12:10 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.4% after setting its own record. General Motors dropped 5.8% despite reporting a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected. The automaker said its still expecting a $4 billion to $5 billion hit to its results over 2025 because of tariffs and that it hopes to mitigate 30% of that. GM also said it will feel more pain because of tariffs in the current quarter than it did during the spring. That helped to offset big gains for some homebuilders after they reported stronger profits for the spring than Wall Street had forecast. D.R. Horton rallied 14.5%, and PulteGroup rose 9.2%. That was even as both companies said homebuyers are continuing to deal with challenging conditions, including higher mortgage rates and an uncertain economy. So far, the U.S. economy seems to be powering through all the uncertainty created by Trumps on-and-off tariffs. Many of Trumps stiff proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, and the next big deadline is Aug. 1. Talks are underway on possible trade deals with other countries that could lower the proposed tariffs before they kick in. Companies are already feeling effects. Genuine Parts, the Atlanta-based company that sells auto and industrial replacement parts around the world, trimmed its profit forecast for the full year in order to incorporate all U.S. tariffs currently in effect, along with its updated expectations for business conditions in the second half of the year. Its stock rose 5.5% after it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. RTX fell 2.3% after cutting its forecast for profit in 2025 but also raising its forecast for revenue. It made the changes to incorporate what CEO Chris Calio called our current assessment of the impact of tariffs, along with other changes anticipated from Washington’s recent approval of big tax changes. Coca-Cola fell 1% even though it delivered a stronger profit than forecast. Its revenue for the quarter only edged past analysts expectations, and it said that higher prices that it charged helped offset sales of fewer cases during the spring. Opendoor Technologies, a company that’s caught interest among investors looking for the next meme stock that can rally regardless of how its profits are doing, rose another 3.1% to $3.31. It’s more than quadrupled from 78 cents just two Fridays ago. In the bond market, Treasury yields sank as traders continue to expect the Federal Reserve to wait until September at the earliest to resume cutting interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been insisting he wants to see more data about how Trumps tariffs are affecting inflation and the economy before the Fed makes its next move. Thats despite often angry criticism from Trump, who has been lobbying for more cuts to rates to happen sooner. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.33% from 4.38% late Monday. In overseas markets, Japans benchmark surged and then fell back as it reopened from a holiday Monday following the ruling coalitions loss of its upper house majority in Sundays election. The Nikkei 225 shed 0.1%. Analysts said the market initially climbed on relief that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to stay in office despite a loss for his ruling coalition in an upper-house election Sunday. But the results have only added to political uncertainty and left his government without the heft needed to push through legislation. A breakthrough in trade talks with the U.S. might win Ishiba a reprieve, but so far theres been scant sign of progress in negotiating away the threat of higher tariffs on Japans exports to the U.S. beginning Aug. 1. Indexes were mixed elsewhere in Asia and Europe. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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Dawn Price signs rent checks worth about $160,000 every month for 79 people that her nonprofit helps house in Laguna Beach, California. Usually, she logs into an online portal to withdraw enough from an account funded by a grant from the federal housing agency. But in February, she couldn’t. Access had been temporarily cut off for many housing organizations as part of the Trump administrations cuts and funding freezes. That was just a sea change for us for those dollars to be so immediately at risk, said Price, the executive director of Friendship Shelter, which started in 1987 as a community organization. Access was eventually restored but the episode took a toll. Government moves slowly usually, and I think what was so disorienting early on was government was moving really fast, she said. In the early days of his second term, President Donald Trump froze, cut or threatened to cut a huge range of social services programs from public safety to early childhood education to food assistance and services for refugee resettlement. Staffing cuts to federal agencies have also contributed to delays and uncertainty around future grant funds. Altogether, his policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal government has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities. This vast and interconnected set of programs funded by taxpayers has been significantly dismantled in just months, nonprofit leaders, researchers and funders say. And even deeper, permanent cuts are still possible. That uncertainty is also taking a toll on their staff and communities, the leaders said. In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, Instead of government largesse thats often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration is focused on unleashing Americas economic resurgence to fuel Americans individual generosity. He pointed to a new deduction for charitable giving included in the recently passed tax and spending law that he said encourages Americans innate altruism. But experts say private donations will not be enough to meet the needs. In 2021, $267 billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of government, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute published in February. While the data includes tax-exempt organizations like local food pantries as well as universities and nonprofit hospitals, it underestimates the total funding that nonprofits receive from the government. It includes grants, but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare. It also excludes the smallest nonprofits, which file a different, abbreviated tax form. However, the figure does give a sense of the scale of the historic and, until now, solid relationship between the public sector and nonprofits over the last 50 years. Now, this system is at risk and leaders like Price say the cost of undoing it will be catastrophic. Government funding to nonprofits reaches far and wide The Urban Institutes analysis shows more than half of nonprofits in every state received government grants in 2021. In the vast majority of the country, the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without government funding. Only in two Congressional districts one including parts of Orange County, California, and another in the suburbs west of Atlanta would a typical nonprofit not be in the red if they lost all of their public grant funding, the analysis found. But in Orange County, famous for its stunning beaches, mansions and extraordinary wealth, funders, nonprofits and researchers said that finding surprised them. In part, that’s because of major economic inequalities in the county and its high cost of living. Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers, said nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency. They are seeing their budgets getting slashed by 50% or 40%, she said. Or theyre having to look to restructure programs that they are running or how theyre serving or the number of people that theyre serving. Last year, the local Samueli Foundation commissioned a study of nonprofit needs in part because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from $18.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $125 million in 2025. They found local nonprofits reported problems maintaining staff, a deep lack of investment in their operations and a dearth of flexible reserve funds. The foundation responded by opening applications for both unrestricted grants and to support investments in buildings or land. Against this $10 million in potential awards, they received 1,242 applications for more than $250 million, said Lindsey Spindle, the foundations president. It tells a really stark picture of how unbelievably deep and broad the need is, Spindle said. There is not a single part of the nonprofit sector that has not responded to these funds. Every topic you can think of: poverty, animal welfare, arts and culture, civil rights, domestic abuse… Theyre telling us loud and clear that they are struggling to stay alive. Charitable organizations have held a special role in the U.S. One of the founding stories of the United States is the importance of the voluntary sector, of neighbors helping neighbors and of individuals solving social problems. While other liberal democracies built strong welfare states, the U.S. has preferred to look to the charitable sector to provide a substantial part of social services. Since the 1960s, the federal government has largely funded those social services by giving money to nonprofits, universities, hospitals and companies. Several new policies converged at that time to create this system, including the expansion of the federal income tax during World War II and the codification of tax-exempt charitable organizations in 1954. Then, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations started to fund nonprofits directly with federal money as part of urban renewal and Great Society programs. It was a key approach of midcentury liberalism of addressing issues of poverty, sort of making a reference to civil rights and racial inequality, but not growing the size of government, said Claire Dunning, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Conservatives also tended to support working through local, private, nonprofit organiations, though for different reasons than liberals, she said. With various expansions and cuts during different presidencies, the federal government has continued to fund nonprofits at significant levels, essentially hiding the government in plain sight, Dunning said. The size and importance of the nonprofit apparatus became suddenly visible in January when the Trump administration sought to freeze federal grants and loans. Dunning said the speed, hostility and scale of the proposed cuts broke with the long legacy of bipartisan support for nonprofits. People had no idea that the public health information or services they are receiving, their Meals on Wheels program, their afterschool tutoring program, the local park cleanup were actually enabled by public government dollars, she said. A coalition of nonprofits challenged the freeze in court in a case that is ongoing, but in the six months since, the administration has cut, paused or discontinued a vast array of programs and grants. The impacts of some of those policy changes have been felt immediately, but many will not hit the ground until current grant funding runs out, which could be in months or years depending on the programs. Private donations can’t replace scale of government support Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach has an annual budget of about $15 million, $11.5 million of which comes from government sources. Price said the government funding is braided in complex ways to house and support 330 people. They’ve already lost a rental reimbursement grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the Samueli Foundation stepped in to backfill those lost funds for three years. That kind of support is extremely unusual, she said. We dont know of any large-scale private philanthropy response to keeping people housed because its a forever commitment, Price said. That person is in housing and is going to need the subsidy for the rest of their lives. These are seriously disabled people with multiple issues that theyre facing that they need help with. She also believes that even in a wealthy place like Orange County, private donors are not prepared to give five, six or eight times as much as they do currently. Donors already subsidize their government grants, which she said pay for 69% of the actual program costs. We are providing this service to our government at a loss, at a business loss, and then making up that loss with these Medicaid dollars and also the private fundraising, she said. She said her organization has discussed having to put people out of housing back on to the streets if the government funding is cut further. That would be, I think, a signal to me that something is deeply, deeply wrong with how were looking at these issues, said Price, adding, If I was placing a bet, I would bet that we have enough good still in government to prevent that. ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
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