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Trump grants 90 day tariff reprieve

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan took a dramatic turn on Tuesday as the White House announced a temporary reprieve, reducing the universal tariff rate to 10% for 90 days on most U.S. trading partners while escalating duties on China to an astonishing 125%. This move, intended as a negotiating tactic to reshape global trade, has instead unleashed chaos in financial markets and drawn sharp rebukes from both allies and adversaries.This announcement marks a shift from the administration’s earlier hardline stance. Just last week, Trump vowed to impose reciprocal tariffs — some as high as 50% — on dozens of countries, citing what he termed a “national emergency” due to trade deficits and currency manipulation. However, with over 75 nations reaching out to U.S. officials to negotiate, the president seems to have reconsidered, offering a three-month “pause” to promote dialogue.“We’ve had calls from all over the world—everyone wants to talk,” Trump said. “This is a chance for countries to come to the table, or they’ll face the full weight of American strength.”Trump’s tariff strategy relies on the assumption that foreign nations will surrender, resulting in the return of manufacturing to U.S. shores. However, experts argue that reshoring is not straightforward. Chris Snyder from Morgan Stanley predicts only modest gains — perhaps a 2% increase in output — without significant workforce retraining and infrastructure investment. Meanwhile, the potential for China to sell off U.S. treasuries remains a wild card.For now, the 90-day pause provides a temporary respite. However, as markets fluctuate and global tensions rise, the president’s tariff strategy remains a precarious endeavor — one that could either redefine America’s economic future or plunge it into turmoil.

Money Moves: David Snider's bet on brains over buzz

In a city like New York, where wealth is both a currency and a cult, David Snider moves with the quiet confidence of someone who has seen the machine from the inside and decided to tinker with its gears. At forty-something, with a résumé that reads like a tech-finance bildungsroman — Bain Capital, Compass, and now Harness Wealth — he’s the kind of person you’d expect to find sipping an oat-milk latte in a Flatiron co-working space, surrounded by the low buzz of venture capital pitches. But Snider isn’t here to disrupt for disruption’s sake. In a recent interview with CEO.com, we learned he’s here to tackle a problem that is both mundane and maddening, yet almost radical: helping people determine what to do with their money once they’ve earned it.Snider’s origin story isn’t the classic Silicon Valley garage-to-riches tale. He grew up in Massachusetts and attended Duke, then Harvard Business School — standard elite credentials, sure, but he didn’t leap straight into the startup fray. Instead, he spent years at Bain Capital, the private equity giant, where he helped orchestrate deals worth billions, including the IPO of Sensata Technologies, a sensor manufacturer that’s about as exciting as a spreadsheet but made a lot of people very rich. It was there, he says, that he learned the art of “optionality” — a term he uses often, meaning the ability to keep doors open and pivot when the moment demands it. “Private equity teaches you how to see the chessboard,” he tells me. “But it’s also a little like playing with someone else’s pieces.”By 2012, he was ready to move on. He joined Compass, a real estate tech startup, as its first business hire at a time when it was just a seed-funded glimmer in the eyes of founders Robert Reffkin and Ori Allon. Snider became its COO and CFO, guiding the company from a scrappy outfit to a $1.8 billion valuation before its 2021 IPO. It was a wild ride — eight rounds of fundraising, late-night strategy sessions, and the kind of growth that transforms a team into a tribe. “Compass was about taking a traditional industry and dragging it into the future,” he says. “We didn’t always get it right, but we learned how to scale chaos.”Yet, even as Compass soared, Snider felt restless. He had witnessed the other side of wealth creation — employees with stock options they didn’t understand, founders overwhelmed by tax complexities, and millionaires who had achieved greatness but were clueless about sustaining it. “I kept meeting people who had won the game but didn’t know the rules of the next one,” he says. That’s when Harness Wealth began to take shape, first as a vague idea during his time as an executive-in-residence at Bain Capital Ventures and then evolving into a genuine platform that connects high earners with advisers and equips them with technology to manage their financial lives. It’s not a robo-adviser, he insists — it’s a “supercharger” for human expertise. “The goal isn’t to replace advisers,” he says. “It’s to make them better.”Since its launch in 2018, Harness has raised $36 million, including a $15 million Series A in 2021 led by Jackson Square Ventures. Its clients — tech entrepreneurs, startup employees with equity windfalls, and the quietly affluent — aren’t the Forbes 400 set but the “mass affluent,” a term Snider uses without irony. These are people with enough money to require assistance but not so much that they have a family office on speed dial. The platform offers a sleek dashboard to track assets, tax scenarios, and estate plans, then connects users to a curated network of advisers — tax experts, financial planners, and estate attorneys — vetted with the rigor of a private equity due diligence team. “We’re not here to sell you a mutual fund,” Snider says. “We’re here to answer the question: What’s the best next step?”It’s a pitch that seems almost too sensible for the hype-driven tech world, where billion-dollar valuations often depend on sexier promises — AI that predicts the future, blockchain that remakes civilization. But Snider believes the real disruption lies in the unglamorous aspects: execution, clarity, trust. “The wealth management industry is a mess,” he says bluntly. “It’s fragmented, opaque, and half the time it’s more about selling products than solving problems.” He cites a statistic from the interview: Traditional advisers spend only eleven minutes a year discussing clients' actual goals. “Eleven minutes,” he repeats, shaking his head. “That’s not advice. That’s a sales call.”Snider is not above a bit of self-awareness about his own journey. He wrote a book in 2010, “Money Makers: Inside the New World of Finance and Business,” a breezy exploration of Wall Street’s power players that now feels like a time capsule of pre-crypto bravado. “I was younger, trying to make sense of it all,” he says with a half-smile. “Now I’m just trying to build something useful.” That utility-first ethos permeates Harness, which he leads with a team of thirty-five, many of whom are veterans of Compass or Bain. He takes pride in the culture — less bro-y than the startup stereotype, more “thoughtful hustle,” as he describes it. “We’ve got people who’ve experienced big wins and big messes,” he states. “That’s the kind of team you need when you’re handling people’s money.”Outside the office, Snider’s life is a study in balance, or at least an attempt at it. He’s married to Sarah, a former nonprofit executive, and they have two kids under ten. They live in the West Village, where he has been spotted jogging along the Hudson or grabbing coffee at a place that charges $6 for a pour-over. “Family keeps you grounded,” he says, although he admits the juggling isn’t easy. “You’re always optimizing — time, energy, attention. It’s not that different from running a company.”“Wealth isn’t going anywhere,” Snider says. “People will keep making it, and they’ll keep needing help managing it. The question is whether we can make the process less painful, more human.” It’s a modest ambition, maybe, but in a city obsessed with the next big thing, there’s something refreshing about a man who’s betting on the next smart one.

AI's Hollywood takeover

In a Los Angeles office, where the hum of traffic and the rustle of palm trees blend into a restless soundtrack, Bill O’Dowd oversees Dolphin Entertainment, a company he launched in 1996 when the internet was in its infancy and artificial intelligence lingered in the pages of speculative fiction. With a Harvard Law degree and a master’s in modern European history, Dowd stands apart from the typical entertainment mogul. As a strategist and architect, he has spent nearly three decades assembling a mosaic of media ventures — television production, feature films, and a “super group” of marketing agencies — while tracking the industry’s shifting tides. Today, those tides surge with a pressing question: What does artificial intelligence mean for a business built on human creativity, charisma, and unpredictability?O’Dowd’s insights shine in a recent CEO.com interview at a moment when AI has matured from a gimmick into a transformative force — rewriting scripts, conjuring visuals, and guiding marketers with algorithmic precision. With a calm authority that transforms corporate speak into something almost lyrical, he embraces the change. “Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we approach storytelling and audience engagement,” he states, a declaration that carries the weight of a mission. It’s not a hollow buzzword but a cornerstone of his strategy, rooted in nearly three decades of navigating Hollywood’s ebbs and flows.The entertainment industry has always been a restless reinventor, lurching from silent reels to sound stages, from radio waves to streaming platforms with the uneven gait of a wounded titan. AI, however, marks a distinct rupture. It’s not merely a new channel but a collaborator — a relentless partner that doesn’t strike, doesn’t rest, and doesn’t demand a vanity credit. O’Dowd frames this as an opportunity, not a peril. Dolphin Entertainment, with its galaxy of subsidiaries — 42West, The Door, Shore Fire Media, and the freshly minted Special Projects — has spent eight years forging what he refers to as a “Super Group of marketing companies” designed to amplify narratives across film, television, music, and influencers. Now, that engine turns toward AI, ready to channel its power into the company’s next act.“Phase one was really about putting the Super Group together,” O’Dowd explains in the transcript. “Phase two started in 2024, and that’s about going to market with entertainment assets that we have ownership stakes in.” The plan echoes Hollywood’s golden age — when studios owned the stars, the screens, and the stories — while betting on AI as a modern multiplier. It’s a tool to dissect audience data with surgical accuracy, churn out promotional content at breakneck speed, and nudge writers past blank-page paralysis.Imagine a Dolphin-produced series debuting in 2025, where AI scours X posts and TikTok pulses to decode viewer cravings — gritty dystopias, sweet rom-coms, or a hybrid born of data-driven whim. The script emerges from a collaboration between human writers and a language model steeped in award-winning archives, refined to craft lines that resonate powerfully. The marketing, led by 42West and Be Social, employs AI to customize ads for Gen Z scrollers, millennial bingers, and boomers glued to cable — each version enhanced in real time by engagement metrics. The result: a hit that feels both engineered and electric, a fusion of instinct and intelligence.O’Dowd doesn’t shy away from the friction. Hollywood, a delicate web of egos and gut instinct, teeters under AI’s looming presence. Actors fear digital doppelgängers; writers bristle at becoming prompt shepherds; studios prepare for audiences rejecting the synthetic. The labor strikes of recent years, still echoing in April 2025, highlighted the unease — a clamor for limits on AI’s influence. O’Dowd sidesteps despair, asserting that “AI won’t replace the creative spark.” He presents it as a tool, much like the camera or the editing room, with the human spirit still at the helm.Doubt might linger — pragmatism or polished optimism? Dolphin’s ledger boasts Emmy-nominated hits like Zoey 101, a NASDAQ ticker, and PR firms ranked among the nation’s finest, signaling O’Dowd’s knack for weathering storms. Yet AI looms larger than past challenges, redefining not just production but the essence of creation. When algorithms can draft a script in hours or deepfakes can summon a bygone icon, where lies the divide between maker and machine? Between truth and trickery?Ownership underpins O’Dowd’s response. Dolphin no longer merely markets stories; it claims stakes in them — films, products, and even ventures that extend beyond the traditional bounds of entertainment. “We’re always looking for entertainment assets where our form of marketing makes a difference,” he states, hinting at a future where Dolphin might own parts of a sci-fi saga, a trending beverage, or a smart device. AI, with its ability to identify patterns and enhance outreach, drives this advancement. Envision a Dolphin-backed film about AI-controlled cities, promoted by Shore Fire Media with algorithm-generated playlists, amplified by Be Social influencers whose posts are shaped by data, and linked to a co-owned tech line — a closed loop of creativity and profit.A specter haunts this radiant vision. AI’s efficiency could sand down an industry that revels in the erratic—the flukes that spark classics, the flops that find cults, the humanity no code can replicate. Dolphin’s Super Group might produce precision-tooled successes, but will they linger in the cultural marrow? Will audiences, swamped by choice, crave the rough edges AI might erase? And what if algorithms, bloated on yesterday, merely rehash it?O’Dowd stands firm, a veteran of bold bets — taking Dolphin public, snapping up eight companies in eight years, and facing Wall Street’s microcap skeptics. “We’re a stable growing company that happens to have the upside of a biotech,” he asserts, blending caution with bravado. It’s a nod to entertainment’s eternal wager, with AI as the latest dice roll.From his perch in Los Angeles, where the skyline melds ambition with sprawl, the streets below buzz with stories — some human, some machine, and most a blend of both. O’Dowd’s blueprint doesn’t choose a victor but choreographs their duet. In the era of AI, the entertainment industry may not reflect its youthful days of 1996 or the cusp of 2024. However, if Bill O’Dowd’s gambit succeeds, it will still command the stage.

The sun also rises in Appalachia

In the hollows of West Virginia, where the ridges rise sharply and the coal seams have long since thinned, a quiet revolution is flickering to life. It’s not the kind that rumbles with machinery or blackens the sky but one that hums softly on rooftops, catching the sun’s rays and transforming them into something practical — something like hope. Dan Conant, a lanky, earnest man with a preacher’s zeal and an engineer’s precision, leads this shift. As the founder and CEO of Solar Holler, a solar installation company based in Shepherdstown, he is determined to bring clean energy to rural America — not as a Silicon Valley afterthought but as a lifeline for places like Appalachia, where the old ways of powering life are fading into memory.Conant doesn’t talk about solar in abstract terms, filled with gigawatts and global salvation. For him, it’s personal, grounded in the dirt and clapboard of the communities he serves. “The ability to deliver for rural places — particularly places like central Appalachia, places that have been left behind — is absolutely huge,” he says in an interview with CEO.com. “This is an opportunity to build wealth, to build sustainable jobs, and to lower costs for folks who desperately need it.” In a region where the coal industry once promised prosperity but has left behind shuttered mines and shrinking towns, Conant views solar not merely as a power source but as a promise fulfilled — a means to give people a stake in their own future.Solar Holler isn’t your typical solar company, pursuing utility-scale contracts or suburban rooftops filled with cash. Conant’s team focuses on the small and scrappy: a church here, a firehouse there, a double-wide trailer on a hillside. They’ve installed panels on the roofs of volunteer fire departments in Mingo County and powered the United Mine Workers’ training center in Beckley. It’s a patchwork strategy, born from necessity in a landscape where large grids don’t always reach and budgets often fall short. “We’ve learned how to do solar in a way that works for rural America,” Conant explains, “not just the flat, sunny plains of Arizona, but the hollers and hills of West Virginia.”What sets Solar Holler apart is its refusal to treat rural folks as charity cases or afterthoughts. Conant’s team leans heavily into creative financing — federal tax credits, low-income solar grants, and partnerships with unions — to make solar accessible for people who’ve never had spare change to invest in a green dream. Take their work with the United Mine Workers: Solar Holler installed solar arrays to reduce energy costs for retired miners, a nod to the past that also serves as a bridge to the future. “We’re not here to maximize profit,” Conant says. “We’re here to maximize impact.” That might mean shaving margins to get a system on a low-income home or rigging up a “Solar Test Kitchen” for a nonprofit, where the only return is the glow of a community pulling itself forward.Since its founding in 2013, Solar Holler has transformed from a scrappy startup into a company that has installed over 1,500 systems across West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, employing dozens of locals — electricians, roofers, and recent high school graduates who might have otherwise left the area. Conant refers to it as “stopping the brain drain,” and he proudly expresses his satisfaction with it. “We’re training people, providing them with skills, and keeping them here,” he states. “That’s how you rebuild a place.”There’s poetry to this idea of harnessing the sun in a land once defined by what lies beneath it. Appalachia has powered America before — its coal lighting cities and forging steel — but the cost was steep, paid in lungs and landscapes. Now, Conant argues, it’s time for a new chapter, one that doesn’t pit progress against identity. “This isn’t about tree-hugging,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s about keeping the lights on, in a way that makes sense for us.” Solar Holler’s crews aren’t outsiders preaching a coastal gospel; they’re neighbors, speaking the language of pragmatism and paychecks.Policy has acted as a tailwind. The Inflation Reduction Act, with its substantial solar tax credits, has accelerated Solar Holler’s mission, allowing them to stretch dollars further and reach deeper into the hollows. “It’s been game-changing,” Conant admits. “Without it, we couldn’t do half of what we’re doing.” But he’s quick to point out that the real magic happens in the execution: navigating the steep slopes, the tight budgets, and the skepticism of folks who’ve heard big promises before. Solar Holler’s success isn’t just in the panels they bolt down — it’s in the trust they build, one handshake at a time.On a crisp morning in Logan County, you can see it unfold. A Solar Holler crew is on a roof, drilling mounts into shingles while a homeowner watches from the porch, coffee in hand. The system won’t just reduce her electric bill; it will give her something to brag about at the diner. Down the road, a church shines under its own array, a beacon of what’s possible when a company invests in the people it serves. “This is what it looks like to do it right,” Conant says, and you believe him — not because he’s selling a vision, but because he’s living it, one sunlit roof at a time.

The canal we gave away — Why the U.S. should reclaim Panama’s lifeline

The Panama Canal — eighty kilometers of locks and lakes carved through jungle and stone — stands as a monument to American audacity, a relic of an era when the U.S. didn’t just dream big but etched its ambitions into the earth. Since 1999, Panama has been in control, a handover solidified by the Torrijos-Carter Treaties — a noble gesture that now carries an air of strategic folly. Donald Trump’s call to “take it back” stirs a potent mix of nostalgia and cold-eyed realism. He’s right to want it. The United States must control the Panama Canal — not out of imperial swagger, but because it’s a vital artery of our economic and military might, a choke point too critical to entrust to shaky hands.Imagine a freighter stalled off Colón, its hold packed with Shenzhen-made gadgets, its captain seething as Panama’s rains — or drought — snarl traffic for days. Last year, a parched Gatun Lake reduced canal capacity by a third, forcing ships to reroute around Cape Horn or face extortionate premiums to skip the line. To the average American, it’s just a blip — your coffee maker costs a nickel more, your iPhone arrives a week late. However, zoom out: billions in trade grind to a halt, ports from Long Beach to Newark choke, and factories sweat their razor-thin schedules. That’s the canal’s silent clout. Leaving it to Panama — or, worse, under China’s influence — is a reckless gamble. Control isn’t bravado; it’s a shield.The data supports this. Forty percent of U.S. container traffic passes through those locks — a lifeline for Asian goods flooding the East Coast, LNG heading west, and soybeans and steel powering the heartland. It reduces 8,000 nautical miles from the Cape Horn slog, turning weeks into days and millions into pennies. In 1914, when the first ship sailed through Gatun Locks, it crowned America as a maritime titan — $375 million and 5,600 lives were spent to create a shortcut that reshaped the globe. By 1999, relinquishing it signaled a softer America, trading leverage for a diplomatic pat on the back. Today, with China’s reach extending south, that leverage seems less like a luxury and more like a lifeline.Trump’s pitch hinges on two main issues: fees and foreign influences. He criticizes Panama’s “exorbitant” tolls — $4 million for a gas carrier, a real figure but typical for the industry. The Panama Canal Authority defends its rates as fair, tied to drought and demand, yet Trump’s frustration taps into a deeper concern: America shouldn’t be nickel-and-dimed for what it built. Then, there’s China. “They’re operating it,” he claims — technically mistaken since Panama does — yet the threat is not imaginary. Chinese giants like CK Hutchison Holdings operate ports at both ends, with cranes looming over the locks; their infrastructure investments serve dual roles as geopolitical maneuvers. When Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, confronted Panama City in February 2025, demanding a reduction of Chinese influence, he wasn’t bluffing. The canal is too vital to be treated as a bargaining chip.Since 1999, Panama has handled 14,000 transits annually — a $5.2 billion upgrade — but the seams are splitting. Droughts are draining Gatun Lake, stalling traffic; fees are spiking, rankling shippers; and China’s shadow looms, unsettling Washington. The Panama Canal Authority insists it’s neutral, sovereign, and untouchable. However, neutrality is a fairy tale when superpowers collide. If China’s ports — or its navy — tighten their grip, the U.S. could wake up to a throttled backyard. Control isn’t about robbing Panama; it’s about ensuring the canal remains an American asset, not a rival’s lever.When Trump vowed at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024 to “take back what’s ours,” he struck a chord of unease that has hummed since 1999 when the flag fell over Balboa Heights. The canal isn’t just a ditch — it’s a pivotal point of U.S. dominance, a bottleneck that tips the scales in a world of trade wars and warships. His fee fixation may lack precision, but it resonates with a raw truth: America pays dearly for what it once ruled outright. Why pay tolls when you could hold the deed?

The battle for trust in science

The demand for transparency in research — once a quiet murmur among ethicists and a handful of persistent journalists — has grown into a resounding chorus, fueled by a public increasingly distrustful of the institutions shaping their lives. At its core lies a timeless question: Who gets to know what, and when? The answer remains as intricate as the genome central to many of these debates.A March 21, 2025, article from the Genetic Literacy Project highlights the case of a University of Saskatchewan scholar whose research on technological shifts in the global food system was eclipsed in 2013 by freedom-of-information requests. Triggered by allegations of Monsanto’s corporate influence, the requests left a lasting mark despite the university clearing him — colleagues withdrew, students wavered, and the stigma of “tainted research” lingered. The piece frames this not as an isolated incident but as part of a broader pattern, spanning Canada to Brazil, where academics studying genetically modified organisms (GMOs) face similar scrutiny.This tension is not new, but it has gained urgency. Over the past decade, science — particularly biotechnology — has become a battleground for trust. Corporations like Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018) and academic institutions tout collaborations that yield breakthroughs in agriculture and medicine. Yet a wary public, feeling like unwitting subjects in an unconsented experiment, demands clarity. Transparency has become a litmus test for legitimacy.The numbers underscore this shift. A Pew Research Center survey found that only 26 percent of Americans have strong confidence in scientists to prioritize the public’s interest, down from 39 percent in 2016. This decline reflects real events: the glyphosate controversy, where 2019 litigation uncovered Monsanto documents — reported by The Guardian — suggesting the company downplayed the herbicide’s risks; or the 2018 uproar over He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who gene-edited human embryos, reigniting calls for oversight. Each episode chips away at scientific credibility, raising a persistent doubt: If the process lacks clarity, why trust the results?The Genetic Literacy Project proposes a structural fix — new partnership standards, proactive funding disclosures, and institutional backing for researchers facing public records demands. It points to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity, which offers a collaboration framework detailing goals, contributions, and data standards — a potential blueprint for universities and corporations alike. Yet this solution carries a paradox: transparency, while noble in principle, grows messy in practice, inviting misinterpretation, skepticism, and even hostility.Where does this leave us? Transparency isn’t a panacea—it’s a tightrope. Too little risks further eroding trust, and too much could paralyze researchers under relentless scrutiny. The Genetic Literacy Project argues that leaving it to individuals breeds inconsistency. Instead, institutions must lead — setting auditable standards, documenting decisions, and bracing for backlash. Only then can science navigate this era of doubt with both integrity and resilience.