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President Donald Trump has been getting his way on trade, strong-arming the European Union, Japan and other partners to accept once unthinkably high taxes on their exports to the United States.But his radical overhaul of American trade policy, in which he’s bypassed Congress to slam big tariffs on most of the world’s economies, has not gone unchallenged. He’s facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he’s overstepped his authority. The plaintiffs want his biggest, boldest tariffs thrown out.And they won Round One.In May, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized federal court in New York, ruled that Trump exceeded his powers when he declared a national emergency to plaster taxes tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world. In reaching its decision, the court combined two challenges one by five businesses and one by 12 U.S. states into a single case.Now it goes on to Round Two.On Thursday, the 11 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which typically specializes in patent law, are scheduled to hear oral arguments from the Trump administration and from the states and businesses that want his sweeping import taxes struck down.That court earlier allowed the federal government to continue collecting Trump’s tariffs as the case works its way through the judicial system.The issues are so weighty involving the president’s power to bypass Congress and impose taxes with huge economic consequences in the United States and abroad that the case is widely expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, regardless of what the appeals court decides.Trump is an unabashed fan of tariffs. He sees the import taxes as an all-purpose economic tool that can bring manufacturing back to the United States, protect American industries, raise revenue to pay for the massive tax cuts in his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” pressure countries into bending to his will, even end wars.The U.S. Constitution gives the power to impose taxes including tariffs to Congress. But lawmakers have gradually relinquished power over trade policy to the White House. And Trump has made the most of the power vacuum, raising the average U.S. tariff to more than 18%, highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.At issue in the pending court case is Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs without seeking congressional approval or conducting investigations first. Instead, he asserted the authority to declare a national emergency that justified his import taxes.In February, he cited the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across the U.S. border to slap tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. Then on April 2 “Liberation Day,” Trump called it he invoked IEEPA to announce “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50% on countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and a 10% “baseline” tariff on almost everybody else. The emergency he cited was America’s long-running trade deficit.Trump later suspended the reciprocal tariffs, but they remain a threat: They could be imposed again Friday on countries that do not pre-empt them by reaching trade agreements with the United States or that receive letters from Trump setting their tariff rates himself.The plaintiffs argue that the emergency power laws does not authorize the use of tariffs. They also note that the trade deficit hardly meets the definition of an “unusual and extraordinary” threat that would justify declaring an emergency under the law. The United States, after all, has run trade deficits in which it buys more from foreign countries than it sells them for 49 straight years and in good times and bad.The Trump administration argues that courts approved President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in a 1971 economic crisis. The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the 1917 Trading With Enemy Act, which preceded and supplied some of the legal language used in IEEPA.In May, the trade court rejected the argument, ruling that Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the President” under the emergency powers law.“The president doesn’t get to use open-ended grants of authority to do what he wants,” said Reilly Stephens, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian legal group that is representing businesses suing the Trump administration over the tariffs.In the case of the drug trafficking and immigration tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, the trade court ruled that the levies did not meet IEEPA’s requirement that they “deal with” the problem they were supposed to address.The court challenge does not cover other Trump tariffs, including levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos that the president imposed after Commerce Department investigations concluded that those imports were threats to U.S. national security.Nor does it include tariffs that Trump imposed on China in his first term and President Joe Biden kept after a government investigation concluded that the Chinese used unfair practices to give their own technology firms an edge over rivals from the United States and other Western countries. Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
Meta Platforms released blockbuster second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, July 30. While well dive into the 22% year-over-year (YOY) revenue jump, were somewhat stuck on CEO Mark Zuckerbergs increasing fixation with the almost immaterial idea of superintelligence. Zuckerberg uses the word a dozen times in his earnings statement. He mentions that superintelligence is now in sight, that it will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress, and that everyone should have a personal version that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them. But he never actually goes into how Metaparent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAppwill go about creating or implementing it. What exactly is superintelligence? IBM refers to artificial superintelligence as an AI system that has cutting-edge cognitive functions and highly developed thinking skills more advanced than any human. According to Zuckerberg, the time has come to enter a new era for humanity. As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be, Zuckerberg said. He added a note that intelligent personal devices like glasses (read: Metas glasses) will even take the place of laptops and phones, becoming our primary computing devices. MoffettNathanson, a leading Wall Street research firm, has full confidence in Metas growth potential. Analysts at the firm have just increased their projections for Meta’s revenue growth for 2025 and 2026. This is in large part due to Meta’s success with using AI to “drive better monetization and engagement,” MoffettNathanson wrote in a research note on Thursday, thereby driving up ad revenues. However, MoffettNathanson said it also has doubts about Meta’s ability to replace traditional phones with super-intelligent devices. In Metas worldview, the future AI form factor will be dominated by glasses and Meta AI will be the core AI-driven agent to lift our human experience, the analysts wrote. “Thus, the current gatekeepersnamely Apple and Alphabetwill be pushed to the side as consumers embrace a non-phone future. Do Meta’s rising costs matter? So, how does Zuckerberg plan to usher in such an era? It appears that he will follow the adage, you have to spend money to make money. Metas quarter-two revenue increased 22% YOY to $47.2 billion, but its costs and expenses also rose, increasing 12% YOY to $27.1 billion. The company also expects to spend between $114 billion to $118 billion in 2025, 20 to 24% more YOY. At the same time, Meta continues to enjoy enduring success in advertising sales, one of the five major AI opportunities that the company laid out during its quarter-one 2025 earnings report three months ago. This most recent quarter saw ad impressions increase by 11% across all of Metas apps YOY. The growth is a reminder that while Metas chief executive spends a lot of time extolling the hypothetical benefits of superintelligence, advertising on the companys massive social media platforms is still what pays the bills as it moves toward this aforementioned new era. For now, Metas investors certainly dont seem to mind the higher costs as long as theres increased revenue and profit. Shares of Meta rose about 12% after hours and into premarket trading on Thursday. The stock expected to hit a record high when the market opens this morning.
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E-Commerce
More than 100 years ago, Frigidaire invented the first self-contained electric refrigerator. Now, the American brand is introducing a hotter innovation. Frigidaire’s new oven lets you bake pizza at home, in an oven that can reach never before achieved temperatures for a home oven. Typically, residential ovens in the U.S. are capped at 600°F, though most top out at between 500°F and 550°F. Frigidaire’s Stone-Baked Pizza Oven, which retails between $2,299 and $2,500 (depending on the fuel type), comes with a specially designed stone tray that slots into the upper cavity, where temperatures can soar to 750°F, enough to get that crispy crust we all crave when ordering takeout pizza. [Photo: Frigidaire] An ode to pizza By some estimates, Americans consume three billion pizzas a year; 350 pizza slices are sold every second. Naturally, our obsession with ‘za translates into big money. In 2024, the market size of the U.S. pizza restaurant industry was just over $50 billion, while the frozen pizza market was worth $9.6 billion. “Everyone loves pizza,” says Natalie Walsh, senior brand manager at Electrolux (Frigidaire’s parent company). On any given day, 11% of the American population is eating pizza, and the majority of them are consuming it at restaurants or from grocery stores. So when Frigidaire first entertained the idea of a stone-baked pizza oven, they kept going back to the “what if.” “What if we could give consumers the ability to do that at home and make it a better and more fun experience?” says Walsh. Frigidaire’s innovation pipeline stretches across 35 years, so that conversation first arose sometime in 2021, when the team spotted the rise of specialty pizza ovens. These came in all shapes and formsdome pizza ovens, countertop electric ovensbut all of them required an additional appliance or access to outdoor space. Frigidaire wanted to find a way to integrate the capabilities of a stone baked oven inside a typical oven, so they took a page from their own book. Two years earlier, in 2019, Frigidaire had become the first brand to integrate an air-fry feature into an oven, mimicking the effects of a traditional air fryer, minus the appliance. Jacob Stork, who leads the North American food preparation product line for Electrolux, says that the feature has since percolated across the industry, and today, almost every new oven comes with an integrated air-fry. Could Frigidaire do the same with stone-baked pizza ovens? [Photo: Frigidaire] Getting to 750°F The Stone-Baked Pizza Oven relies on a specially designed, stainless steel tray that doubles as a heat shield and traps the heat in the upper portion of the cavity. The heat shield comes with a recessed slot in the middle, where the stone tray fits, while an edge on the tray prevents your pizza from falling through the back of the oven. Stone is so good at absorbing and evenly distributing heat evenly that some home cooks already use stone trays you simply slide inside a regular oven. “The stone does a lot of the cooking,” says Stork, but high temperature is an equally important factor to achieving that “leopard char” you would see on a restaurant-quality pizza. From the very beginning, the team at Frigidaire knew they wanted to achieve higher temperatures. “When you cook a pizza at the high heat of 750°F, the dough reacts so quickly to that hot stone that it immediately pops up, and that’s what gives you that really light and airy crust,” says Walsh. “It absolutely does make a difference.” Residential ovens in the U.S. are typically capped at 600°F for good reasonsafety regulators don’t want home cooks accidentally turning their kitchens into fire hazards. The rules, enforced by groups like Underwriters Laboratories (UL), exist because most home kitchens aren’t built like restaurant kitchens. They have less ventilation, tighter spaces, and a lot more flammable stuff nearby (think dish towels, wooden cabinets, that stack of takeout menus on your kitchen counter). The team worked closely with regulatory experts at UL and other agencies to get approval for a 750°F oven, which required extensive testing to demonstrate that the oven could maintain safe exterior temperatures, proper ventilation, and reliable safety shutoffs even at such elevated heat temperature. In order to bake your pizza at 750°F, Frigidaire recommends you preheat the oven for 30 minutes. The team has designed a clever user interface to guide you through the process: the screen tells you where to put the heat shield and when the oven is hot enough for you to insert your pizza. It gives you a 30-second warning before your pizza is ready, and if you want it more caramelized, you can easily add 15 seconds. At such high heat, it usually takes about two minutes for a pizza to cook, and about three minutes for the oven to reheat in between pizzas. [Photo: Frigidaire] Changing perceptions A restaurant-quality pizza at home may sound hard to believe, so for the team, tasting is believing. “From a marketing perspective, what I’ve had to focus on is how do you bring this to life for consumers that can’t taste it,” says Walsh. In August, the team will start driving around a mobile kitchen decked out with a stone baked pizza oven at sporting events and pizza festivals around the country. “The more slices we can get into the hands of people, the better,” says Walsh. There’s another challenge, which is that people still largely associate Frigidaire with fridges. (Refrigeration makes up for a larger portion of the company’s revenue, as well.) Like the Kleenex, or the Hoover, the brand name has become a shorthand for the object itself. “People still call [fridges] frigidaires,” says Walsh, which is not ideal for a brand that’s hoping to revolutionize the oven industry. Walsh recognizes the awareness problem. She knows that the company’s legacy is synonymous with reliability, durability, “and it evokes a really good emotion with our consumer.” But she believes there is room for innovation, too. “We definitely want to entertain folks,” she says. “We want to educate them, and we also want to have them walking away with a positive experience of the brand, and maybe change their perception a little bit.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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