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Last week, President Donald Trump sat for an interview with Time magazine to reflect on the first 100 days of his second term in the White House. Trump, as he tends to do when discussing himself, let the superlatives fly. I feel that weve had a very successful presidency in 100 days, he said. Weve had people writing it was the best first month, and best second month, and really the best third month. Although the fourth month has not yet concluded, I am confident I can guess how hell characterize it when the time comes. Normal people do not concur with his self-assessment, to put it gently. Trumps approval rating at the 100-day mark is the lowest of any newly elected president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took office before the widespread availability of color television. More than half of voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction, which is generally not the sort of first impression that politicians aspire to make. Support for his trade war is hovering in the mid-30s, and that was before merchants began passing along the costs of tariffs to their baffled customers, who were suddenly getting hit with import fees that often cost more than the items in their carts. (Just in time for the shelves in big-box stores to start emptying out!) Even Trumps anti-immigrant agenda, traditionally a source of strength with his Republican base, is underwater these days: 53% of voters, including 61% of independents, disapprove of his handling of the issue, and almost half believe his deportations of undocumented people have gone too far. His penchant in recent weeks for illegally deporting U.S. citizens, too, including a toddler receiving cancer treatment, is unlikely to reverse this trend anytime soon. For any other president, numbers like these would be disastrous, and would prompt frantic hand-wringing about the continued viability of their policy agenda, to say nothing of their fitness to serve for 45 more months. But to date, the defining feature of Trumps second term has been his utter disinterest in what the polls, popular opinion, his advisers, fellow Republicans, and even the courts say about him. He seems to perceive his performance only through the distorted lens of a right-wing media ecosystem that amplifies voices that flatter him and filters out those that do not. The result is the most unabashedly venal presidency in recent memorythe beginning of a four-year victory lap during which Trump intends to enjoy the perks of the office to the fullest extent, whatever the consequences for everybody else. No one would mistake Trump as embodying the spirit of humble, selfless public service during his first term. But he has been even more cavalier about using the presidency to enrich himself this time around, and his hands-off approach to cryptocurrency in particular (on the campaign trail, he promised to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet) has been great for business. World Liberty Financial, a Trump family-controlled crypto venture, has done a brisk trade since the inauguration, pulling in more than half a billion dollars in sales in recent months. He has dangled the promise of dinner at the White House to juice interest in the $2.7 billion market for his eponymous memecoin, most of which is controlled by members of his inner circle. And he remains the single largest shareholder in the Trump Media & Technology Group, the share price of which jumped earlier this month after the company announced plans to expand intoyou guessed itcrypto-adjacent financial services products in the near future. Not all of Trumps income streams are quite so sophisticated; you can still buy an ostensibly hand-signed Trump Bible for $1,000, a price that does not include shipping. But his powers as president to manipulate markets and simultaneously dictate the governments regulatory agenda (or lack thereof) makes this source of his wealth especially valuable. Bloomberg estimates the combined paper gains of Trumps crypto projects at close to $1 billion, which is a pretty nice return on an asset class that he was deriding as a scam as recently as 2021. In previous decades, a president splitting his time between making money, playing golf, and persecuting his political adversaries would read about his unpopularity in the newspaper every day, and hear about it on the news every night. Back in 2017, when Trump routinely announced U.S. government policy while tweeting from the toilet, he was at least aware of which aspects of his agenda qualified as controversial with the public, because he could see real-time feedback from Democratic lawmakers and irate Krassenstein brothers alike. In 2025, however, there are no remaining institutions capable of checking Trumps apathy toward the plights of the people around him. The increasingly insular nature of conservative mediaTrump posts primarily on Truth Social, a platform built around his political movement, and occasionally on X, a cesspool of conspiracy theories curated by his wealthiest supportermakes it rare for him to even encounter meaningful criticism, let alone digest and respond to it. Meanwhile, his administration is reshaping the White House press corps, elevating sympathetic reporters whose idea of a difficult question is asking Trump whether Democratic politicians are merely wrong, or also treasonous. In his mind, legacy media outlets exist mostly to sue for billions of dollars anytime they have the temerity to report stories he doesnt like. The upshot of all this is that Trump effectively spends 24 hours a day in an information bubble f his own creation, surrounded by people who only tell him how great he is and what a great job hes doing. He views skeptics of all types, from immigrants asserting their constitutional rights to corporate executives begging him not to sink the economy, as voices he can safely ignore, if not enemies whom he has an electoral mandate to humiliate and defeat. Those first-term hour-by-hour sparring matches with opponents are far less common now, in part because Trump has the luxury of not knowing or caring what the haters are saying about him anymore. Perhaps the most unsettling lesson of Trumps first 100 days is that to the extent that he is willing to second-guess himself on anything, it is only when his financial interests are at stake. His decision in April to delay the planned implementation of most reciprocal tariffs is perhaps the most significant concession hes made on his campaign promise to tariff the hell out of insufficiently cooperative trading partners. But he did so not because the reciprocal tariffs would constitute a self-inflicted financial disaster that could cost working families an average of $2,100 per year, according to the Yale Budget Lab, but because news of the tariffs triggered a sell-off in the bond market, which he described as getting a little yippy. In a remarkable coincidence, the value of Trumps investments in bonds could be close to half a billion dollars, according to The New York Times. The potential implosion of ones own portfolio has a funny way of putting things in perspective. In his Time interview, Trump downplayed his concerns about volatility in the bond market, his earlier admissions to the contrary notwithstanding, and said that he didnt pause the tariffs for that reason. He then pivoted back to calling Joe Biden the most incompetent president in history, which is the same basic comms strategy my 4-year-old uses when I ask if her little brother is crying because she took his stuffed giraffe, and she responds by hiding it behind her back and asking me to read her a book. It is of course good that Trump, at least for the time being, backed off a proposal that prompted JPMorgan to raise its projected odds of a global recession from 40% to 60%. But even though Trumps financial interests in this case happened to align with those of everyone looking nervously at their retirement accounts, what is best for normal people will rarely be best for an elderly television personality obsessed with holding down a spot on the fringes of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Every decision Trump makes during his remaining time in office will be about doing what is best for himself and his friends, because his only interest in public service is and has always been about how much he can profit from it.
Category:
E-Commerce
[Photo: Cubitts] Tom Broughton, the founder of the British eyewear brand Cubitts that has recently landed in the U.S., wants to make you a set of glasses that you’ll be able to wear your entire life. “They could outlive you,” he says. That’s a radical notion these days. Over the past three decades, as fast fashion has become the norm, the price of eyewear has come down alongside the price of clothes and shoes. Brands like Zenni and Warby Parker market their glasses as a fashion statement that is so affordable, you can change them up whenever you want. You could wear a different pair every day of the week. Broughton finds this approach to eyewear problematic for many reasons. For one thing, 250 metric tons of eyewear ends up in landfills every year, by some estimates. This is an environmental catastrophe since most eyewear today is made of acetate, a kind of plastic that will not biodegrade and contribute to the microplastics crisis. But more broadly, as a lover of glasses (or spectacles, as he calls them) he believes glasses have a way of expressing your identity and shaping how you appear to the world, so there is something beautiful about having a pair that lasts your life. With Cubitts, Broughton is trying to bring this philosophy to life. The company has a more laborious handmade process than its competitors, to create a more durable pair of glasses, and each frame comes with a lifetime of servicing and repair. Now the company is doubling down on this approach by allowing customers to create custom lenses that are personalized to the shape of their face, ensuring that they are perfectly suited to a lifetime of wear. Customers can now get a fitting for custom lenses in store, and the company is also developing an app that will collect customer measurements digitally so they can create custom frames online. The app will be released in the next few months. [Photo: Cubitts] A Spectacles Historian In his early teens, Broughton became obsessed with eyewear. More specifically, he fell in love with the rock star Morrissey’s glasses. In the 1980s, Morrissey, the lead singer of the iconic band The Smiths, wore large black frames that Broughton found irresistible. So Broughton got himself a pair of similar frames and wore them proudly to school, even when chunky frames weren’t yet popular. “I remember turning up to school in them when I was 14,” he says. “I felt like I was the coolest person ever, rightly or wrongly. Maybe people were laughing at me behind my back.” In his late teens and early twenties, Broughton became fascinated with the history of spectacles. He began collecting old pairs he found at antique shops, and learning as much as he could about them. This history made him long for the days when a pair of glasses was a valuable possession that people cherished throughout their life. [Photo: Cubitts] For much of human history, there was no way to correct poor eyesight, so many people went through life with blurry vision, unable to fully take in the world around them. Then, over the course of the last two millennia, inventors discovered that they could use crystal, polished quarts, or glass globes to magnify text. In the 1200s, Europeans developed the first eyeglasses made of quartz, framed in wood that you could hold up to your face to see things more clearly. Throughout the Renaissance, scientists continued developing spectacles to correct vision, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that they developed a pair with arms that would rest over the ears, making them more stable and hands-free. But until very recently, corrective glasses were very expensive. Even a century ago, when they were widespread, most people only had a single pair they would wear over the course of a lifetime. “Their spectacles were a precious, life-changing tool,” Broughton says. “But their spectacles also became associated with them and how they presented themselves to the world.” This is no longer the case. Eyewear is now very inexpensive to produce. Companies realized they could make spectacles out of plastic, which is a very cheap material. And since the 1980s, most of the world’s eyewear has been mass-produced in China, where labor is inexpensive. Now you can now get a pair for as little as $30. And while Broughton thinks it is wonderful that corrective eyewear has been democratized, so that everybody who needs it can now get it, it’s possible that the industry has swung too far, transforming glasses into something that is disposable. “We’ve stopped seeing spectacles as the incredible invention that they are,” he says. [Photo: Cubitts] Spectacles That Last a Lifetime Broughton hadn’t planned on becoming an entrepreneur. He studied behavioral economics and applied statistics, and eventually worked at Spotify. But in his spare time, he continued to pursue his passion for spectacles. He learned how to craft frames out of acetate and metal by hand, and began creating spectacles for his friends. “I would cycle around London with little measuring tools, knock on people’s doors and take their measurements,” he says. In 2012, while he was still at his day job, he launched Cubitts, creating custom lenses. The business quickly took off. Even though there are many competing eyewear brands on the market, people seemed to like Broughton’s approach that treated spectacles as something special. His customers took a long time to choose the perfect frames that they felt reflected who they were and how they wanted to appear to the world. Cubitts launched online and opened its first store in King’s Cross in London. The company also came to the United States, opening two stores in New York last year. The brand is known for its chunky, statement-making glasses, in the vein of the pair Morrissey wore, and they aren’t very expensive. The average Cubitts pair costs $200. Through its branding, the company emphasizes that even though the glasses are stylish, they’re not meant to be trendy. Throughout the store and the website, Cubitts makes it clear that the eyewear is meant to last a lifetime. The company makes each pair by hand using a lengthier process than its competitors, including using parts that are easier to replace if they break. For instance, it uses a premium hinge that connects the frame to the arm (that goes behind the ear) that makes it easier to fix. Cubitts has a policy of offering a lifetime of repairs, rehabs, and reglazing of their frames. When a prescription changes, they put in new lenses for free (many retailers offer this service, for a fee). [Photo: Cubitts] But Broughton believes that creating eyewear that lasts a lifetime isn’t just about durability. It’s also about helping customers find a pair that they love and that fits them perfectly. Cubitts offers each pair of glasses in small, medium, and large sizes to fit faces of different sizes. But the company is now investing in technology to create custom frames that are perfectly suited to the customers’ face. The company has developed a system that allows customers to come into the store to take measurements of their face, identifying everything from the size of their nose to the shape of their face to the distance to how far back their ears are. (The company is also working on an app that will allow people to take these measurements at home, so they can create custom frames virtually. This is likely to roll out in the next year or so.) Then, when the customer pick a style of lenses they like, Cubitts will custom-make them to suit their facial proportion. He’s found that this has been particularly appealing to Black and asian customers who sometimes struggle to find eyewear that fits the dimensions of their face, since most eyewear is designed around caucasian features. But all customers, regardless of ethnicity, like being able to find a pair that can be designed to look perfectly suited to their faces, so they are aesthetically pleasing and also don’t pinch the nose or the ears. Ultimately, Broughton hopes that this technology makes customers love their spectacles even more, and want to hold on to them for longer. And even though Broughton himself has access to an endless supply of different frames, and is sometimes tasked with testing out different models, he generally sticks to a round frame he has become attached to. “I’ve become rather attached to my spectacles,” he says. “They’re part of me now.”
Category:
E-Commerce
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump made multiple promises to lower energy prices and electricity bills for Americans, but 100 days into his second term, energy prices are upand expected to keep increasing. Experts say Trumps energy policieslike inhibiting renewables, canceling federal energy assistance programs, and enacting widespread tariffsare to blame. Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months, Trump said in August. Energy is going to bring us back. That means were going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, he said in September. (Though at times he did hedge: If it doesnt work out, he also said in August, youll say, oh well, I voted for him and he still got it down a lot.) At the 100-day mark, though, average gas and electricity prices are up, some Americans have already seen their energy bills increase, and theres potential for much more harm, says Charles Harper, senior policy lead for the power sector at Evergreen Action. Average prices are upand Trump policies will raise them more Trump recently claimed that gas prices dipped below $2 a gallon in some states, but thats not true. The national average price of gas is currently $3.17 a gallon, 5 cents higher than a month agoand tariffs are set to spike gas prices soon. U.S. refineries make gasoline from crude oil, which is produced here but also importedpredominantly from Canada and Mexico. The U.S. imports about 4 million barrels of Canadian oil per day. (We also import what’s called “finished motor gasoline” from other countries, primarily Canada.) Average electricity prices are also up, to $0.181 per kilowatt per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thats a slight uptick from both January and February, and the highest price on record. Though Trump ran on a platform of energy dominance and unlocking American energy, Harper notes, he hypocritically has tried to kill some forms of energy that are the lowest cost. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity to build, and also the fastest to deploy. Yet Trump has taken aim at these energy sources, suspending funding for clean energy projects and issuing orders to stop projects already underway, including for an offshore wind farm that would power more than 500,000 New York homes. In a list of energy resources he says we need to increase, Trump specifically excluded wind, solar, and battery power. Trump cut low-income energy assistance In the first 100 days of Trumps second term, low-income Americans, in particular, have been hit with extra energy charges because of his actions. When Trump paused funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as part of his Unleashing American Energy executive order, that affected the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps more than 6 million low-income households across the country cover their energy bills. Without those funds, about 2,000 low-income households in Alabama saw an immediate $100 added to their utility bills, in just one example. By April, states were missing out on about $400 million in LIHEAP funding that had yet to be distributed by the federal government. Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired LIHEAPs staff as they try to kill the program entirely. Thats expected to raise energy bills for millions of Americans, meaning low-income households will be less able to pay those bills, or less likely to adequately heat and cool their homes. Previous cuts to LIHEAP have seen these effects play out. In 2023, Congress cut $2 billion from LIHEAPs budget, and utility debt increased by 8.4% over the next year; 22% of households also kept their homes at unsafe temperatures in 2024, compared to 19.8% the year prior. Tariffs will keep increasing gas and electricity costs Trumps tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada arent only affecting consumer goods; theyll also raise energy prices. Just how much depends on where you live, but Midwest states are expected to be hit the hardest. Trump enacted a 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports and 25% on Mexican energy imports, which could raise gas prices by as much as 50 cents per gallon for people in the Midwest, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Canada and Mexico supply more than 71% of crude oil to U.S. refineries across the country (nearly 60% of all U.S. crude oil imports come from Canada alone). Canada has also threatened retaliatory tariffs, including a 25% surcharge on electricity sold to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York. Tariffs on steel and aluminum could also make new grid infrastructure and energy projects more expensive. Trumps push for fossil fuels may backfire Much of Trumps campaign promises and early term actions aim to increase fossil fuel production. But that wont necessarily help energy prices or U.S. households energy billsor even fossil fuel companies themselves. Trump has said he wants to bring back retired coal plants, but those plants closed because they were no longer economically viable. Putting them back online would be an expensive undertaking that would also increase electricity prices once theyre up and running. Trump has also looked to increase exports of liquified natural gas (LNG), and has approved licenses for new LNG projects. But increasing LNG exports actually increases domestic energy prices. Because that natural gas is being sold abroad, it makes it subject to global price fluctuations, and means exports aren’t addressing local demand. (When Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, European countries bought more LNG from the U.S., sending prices skyrocketing for Louisiana residents.) Thanks to rampant tax breaks, LNG projects can also cost local communities millions of dollars. Trumps actions have further increased uncertainty for fossil fuel companies. He has aimed to boost fossil fuel production by fast-tracking the approval process for new projects, and has said he wants oil prices to drop to $50 a barrelbut that price is considered too low to be profitable. Oil and gas companies arent clamoring to drill both because they dont want to overproduce and flood the market, and because fears of a recession are causing uncertainty about the future. This Drill, baby, drill agenda his administration has been pushing is not bearing out in practice, Harper says. Many oil and gas companies benefit from a lower supply of energy and corresponding higher prices because they have higher profit margins on every barrel of oil that they sell, and they are really resistant to increasing production. Oil and natural gas, including LNG exports, are both global markets that are subject to the whims of other countries and global demands, Harper adds. That means its impossible to isolate America from global price volatility. Clean energy could be a different story, because it’s generated domesticallybut as previously noted, Trump is hampering clean energy projects rather than pursuing them. All of these actions will only continue to raise energy prices for Americans, Harper saysand, he notes, theyre also all self-inflicted wounds done by the new administration.
Category:
E-Commerce
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