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Swiss watchmaker Swatch has begun selling a special edition watch with the numbers three and nine reversed on its face in a play on the 39% tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on U.S. imports from Switzerland last month. The tariffs among the highest set by Trump worldwide were met with shock and dismay in Switzerland, a leading producer of high-end watches and other luxury goods. Costing 139 Swiss francs ($175), the watch named “WHAT IFTARIFFS?” went on sale on Wednesday and is only available in Switzerland, a company spokesperson said on Friday. The spokesperson said the watch was made with a knowing “wink” and sent a wake-up call to the Swiss government, which so far has not managed to secure a reduction of the tariffs. It aims to be a short-lived product, Swatch said. “Because as soon as the U.S. changes its tariffs for Switzerland, we will immediately stop selling this watch,” the spokesperson said, declining to say how many watches had so far been sold but calling the model “a huge success.” The Swatch website said delivery of the beige and blue watch could be delayed by one to two weeks due to what it called “very high demand”. It is also available at nearly a dozen Swatch stores, including those at the airports of Zurich and Geneva. The government of Switzerland has been seeking to negotiate lower tariffs with the Trump administration ever since the levies were announced. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick struck a fairly upbeat tone on the talks on Thursday, telling CNBC that his government would “probably get a deal done with Switzerland.” ($1 = 0.7964 Swiss francs) Dave Graham, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s push to revitalize American manufacturing by luring foreign investment into the U.S. has run smack into one of his other priorities: cracking down on illegal immigration.Hardly a week after immigration authorities raided a sprawling Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, detained more than 300 South Korean workers and showed video of some of them shackled in chains, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned that the country’s other companies may be reluctant to take up Trump’s invitation to pour money into the United States.The detained South Koreans were released Thursday and most were flown home.If the U.S. can’t promptly issue visas to the technicians and other skilled workers needed to launch plants, then “establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies,” Lee said Thursday. “They will wonder whether they should even do it.”The raid and subsequent diplomatic crisis show how the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals are running up against its efforts to bring in money from abroad to drive the U.S. economy and create more jobs. Moves like workplace immigration enforcement and visa restrictions could risk alienating allies that are pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. to avoid high tariffs. South Korea is already a big investor in the US Trump’s economic agenda is built around using hefty tariffs on imports, including a 15% levy on South Korean products, as a cudgel to force manufacturing to return to the U.S. He’s repeatedly said foreign companies can escape his tariffs if they produce in America. South Korea, already a top investor, pledged to invest $350 billion in the U.S. when the two sides announced a trade deal in July.It made more investments in new construction, such as factories, on previously undeveloped land than any other country in 2022. Last year, it ranked 12th in the world with $93 billion in total American investment including acquisitions of existing companies, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.But the dramatic roundup of South Koreans and others working to set up the battery plant threatens to put a chill on the investment push. Indeed, Trump seems to be trying to undo the damage.While demanding that foreign investors “LEGALLY bring your very smart people,” Trump also promised to “make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so.”“President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement Thursday.For now, the South Koreans are furious and immigration experts are puzzled. It’s been common practice for decades for foreign companies such as the Japanese and German carmakers that have built factories in the American Midwest and South to send technical specialists from their home countries to help open plants in the United States. Most of them train U.S. workers, then go home.“Japanese managers, senior engineers, other technical experts had to come to the United States to set this stuff up,” said Lee Branstetter, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University who’s studied Japanese auto plants in the U.S.American companies do the same thing, sending U.S. workers overseas temporarily to get operations started. Some experts call it a baffling, ‘performative’ raid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched the roundup last week at a manufacturing site that state officials have touted as Georgia’s largest economic development project.“It’s really baffling to me why this raid would have occurred,” said Ben Armstrong, executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Industrial Performance Center. “The existence of these workers shouldn’t have been a surprise.”U.S. immigration officials could have audited the workers’ documents without the drama, retired immigration lawyer Dan Kowalski said, adding that “raiding and arresting and putting them in chains and shackles is 100% performative.”It had to do with “wanting to look tough arresting as many foreigners as possible for the photo-op,” said Kowalski, who is now a writer and editor.U.S. work visa categories make it a challenge to bring in foreign workers quickly and easily, said Kevin Miner, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta.Some run on a highly competitive lottery system, are for seasonal workers and have a cap, or are restricted to managers and executives. Other short-term visas have strict limits on employment.After meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said they agreed to set up a joint working group for discussions on creating a new visa category to make it easier for South Korean companies to send their staff to work in the United States.Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau also plans to visit Seoul this weekend. Calls for fixes to the US visa system Hyundai’s “desire to get this thing up and running as quickly as possible ran head-on into the often time-consuming processes that the U.S. government requires in order to issue business visas,” said Branstetter of Carnegie Mellon.U.S. authorities say those detained were “unlawfully working” at the plant. Charles Kuck, a lawyer representing several of the South Koreans who were detained, said the “vast majority” of the workers from South Korea were doing work authorized under a visa program.Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, said work visas like nearly all other aspects of the U.S. immigration system need reform.“Our visa system does not envision this kind of scenario,” Gelatt said, of bringing in skilled foreign workers needed for the initial setup of factories. The U.S. has a few country-specific visa categories that make it easier to bring in certain foreign workers, like those from Mexico, Australia or Singapore.“The goal,” said MIT’s Armstrong, “should be to make foreign direct investment as streamlined as possible.” Didi Tang and Paul Wiseman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Luxury perfume brands have always poured resources into elaborate packaging with bottles shaped like sky-high stilettos, sculpted torsos, or capped with oversize daisies. Yet for all the creativity devoted to packaging, the mechanics have barely evolved. Nearly every alcohol-based perfume still relies on the same one-finger actuator to dispense the fragrance. While this design mechanism has become synonymous with eau de parfum, it also makes the product inaccessible for anyone with limited hand strength or dexterity.Thats why the debut fragrance from Rare Beauty feels so disruptive. The brand spent more than two years developing the scent and also a custom bottle, collaborating with occupational therapists and hand specialists to make it easier to hold and spray. The design features a rounded silhouette and a cap with a low-resistance twist-lock closure, replacing the industry-standard pull-off lid. Its broad, flat surface eliminates the need for precise, one-finger pressure and instead allows for multiple ways to press the atomizer using several fingers, the palm of a hand, or even the chin. The result is a bottle that looks elegant on a vanity yet functions in ways most perfume packaging has never even considered.[Photo: courtesy Rare Beauty]Avoiding accessibility washingThat focus on purpose-built accessibility was born from earlier lessons. When Rare Beauty launched its makeup line in 2020, customers began sharing online feedback that its packaging was easier to grip and open than most. One standout product was the Soft Pinch Liquid Blush cap design, which minimizes resistance for easy opening. The success of that cap led the brand to carry over the same design into other hero products like the new Positive Light Luminizing Lip Gloss (launched in July) and Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oil.Accessibility wasnt something we intentionally set out to design for at first, says Joyce Kim, Rare Beautys chief product officer. But our founder, Selena Gomez, who lives with lupus, consistently gravitated toward prototypes that were easier for her to use. Combined with what we were hearing from our community, that pushed us to start building accessibility into our DNA. [Photo: courtesy Rare Beauty]As a disabled person who loves beauty products, Ive unfortunately grown used to seeing inclusive launches that feel more like optics than long-term investments in accessibility. Rare stands out from that pattern with its ongoing commitment to designing inclusive packaging for current and future products. We would never claim to be the experts, Kim says. But if youre going to make accessibility part of your brand ethos, you have to lean into it. It cant just be a compliance checkbox or a passing trend. Consumers are incredibly attuned to whether a brands values are authentic.Despite the dedication to accessible innovation, R&D hasnt been an easy or intuitive process for the team. Unlike other areas of beauty that have clear industry standards, like long-wear claims in lipstick or waterproof mascara, no comparable framework exists for accessibility. When Rare Beauty set out to validate the usability of its packaging, the team quickly realized it was working without a map. Since there wasnt a formal framework, we partnered with occupational therapists at Casa Colina, a research and rehabilitation center in Southern California, to create one, Kim says. That collaboration led to Rare Beautys Made Accessible Initiative, which studies the features that make products easier to open, close, hold, and apply for people with limited dexterity. The brand plans to use those findings to guide its own future packaging, and to share them with the broader beauty industry in hopes that others will follow. Were hoping to start the conversation, to show how meaningful accessibility can be in this space, and to encourage other brands to make it part of their own initiatives, Kim says.[Photo: courtesy Rare Beauty]A big business opportunity The lack of standards is especially striking given the scale of the market. Fragrance is one of the fastest-growing beauty categories, and was estimated to rise from $56.6 billion in 2024 to nearly $75 billion by 2030. Fragrance as a category has been around for so long, and yet there’s just been no innovation in terms of accessiblepackaging, Kim explains. This gap in the market gave us the opportunity to really do our homework, and through research and collaboration with designers, hand therapists, and the disability community, we’ve brought a much-needed yet relatively simple solution to this space.[Image: courtesy Rare Beauty]Ive mostly been limited to using roll-on perfume bottles since traditional eau de parfum atomizers are nearly impossible for me to press with my reduced hand strength. Thats why Rares understated bottle feels so revolutionary. For once, I could mist on fragrance easily, in a fine, even spray. And honestly, its a good thing the scent itself is great because in the thrill of finally getting that satisfying spritz-on-skin moment, I may have overdone it. Full-on smell-maxxing, as the kids would say.Rares flagship fragrance is a creamy vanilla-forward gourmand with notes of pistachio, caramel, and ginger, followed by sandalwood and musk in the drydown. It retails at $75 for a 50-milliliter bottle, but the brand also introduced a deluxe mini version of its full-size bottle, along with a series of layering balms that let consumers customize the fragrance more affordably.Accessibility is about price as much as functionality, Kim explains. We didnt want to bring innovation to our consumers and then make it unaffordable. So we introduced our layering balms to give you more variety from the base scent, and we built the cost of the custom bottle into the back end instead of passing it on to our customers.For a mainstream brand with a celebrity founder, Rare has the scale to absorb the expense of customization. Indie brands, meanwhile, often face prohibitive costs in developing new, more usable packaging. But by proving that inclusive design can sit at the heart of a mainstream launch, Rare is showing whats possible. The hope is that its fragrance will spark broader industry change, encouraging luxury houses and niche labels alike to prioritize accessibility as a design value, not an afterthought. Beauty in itself is an emotional experience, Kim says. With fragrance, the way you interact with the bottle is part of that experience. When designers consider accessibility and create products that work for a wide range of people, thats when consumers feel truly seen and represented.
Category:
E-Commerce
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