Preparing for a war nobody wants

Welcome to the weekend!

Back in January, a certain CEO said that if tariffs were implemented well, it would be good for US national security and people should “get over it.” This week, before President Donald Trump paused some tariff plans, the same CEO warned, “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better.” Do you know what company he leads?

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Future-Proofing

When Trump debuted his tariff chart last week, one telling comment flew under the radar: The US “can no longer produce enough antibiotics to treat our sick,” he said. “If anything ever happened from a war standpoint, we wouldn’t be able to do it.” Restoring US manufacturing to ensure self-reliance in the event of war is a goal Trump shares with China’s president Xi Jinping, writes Daniel Ten Kate. But Trump’s method is only likely to weaken national security: The punishing duties undermine US credibility, and push allies and foes alike into China’s arms.

Reviving US manufacturing is also described as a way to create new jobs, but whether they’re jobs for human employees is a different question. Artificial intelligence is already upending fields such as medicine, where it has the potential to save time and money, and reduce mistakes. But it turns out AI may also be better at bedside manner, writes Kate Pickert. This revelation, supported by a growing body of research, is reshaping how doctors interact with people they care for.

While automation is progressing quickly in some places, it’s going slower-than-hoped-for in others: Rosie from The Jetsons has yet to materialize, and most cars continue to need human drivers. Still, getting a driver’s license isn’t the rite of passage it used to be, Joel Stein writes: Barely 40% of US teenagers have one. To help his son get behind the wheel, Stein took him to the racetrack of a BMW Performance Center, where he gained the confidence that comes from having nothing around to hit.

Dispatches

New York City
As bird flu forces US stores to ration chicken eggs, salt-cured fish eggs are increasingly inescapable. These days you’ll find caviar atop $28 chicken nuggets at Coqodac in Flatiron, and $39 cocktail wieners at The Modern in midtown. But while customer perception of caviar as a pricey luxury persists, the wholesale cost is falling fast. “There’s a caviar craze,” says Edward Panchernikov, director of operations at Caviar Russe. “Each time someone asks me why, I tell them the same thing: an influx of mass-produced Chinese caviar at super-low prices.”

Dak Lak province, Vietnam
When Nguyen Anh Tuan went shopping for a car this year, he only needed to pay a small deposit and tell the salesman that he farms three hectares of coffee trees to walk away with the keys. Thanks to the highest coffee prices in decades, farmers like Tuan are experiencing an improvement of fortunes after last year’s drought-hit harvest. “Farmers now treat their beans like cash,” says local coffee dealer Nguyen Thu Hong. “They store the coffee in their backyard and only sell small amounts whenever they need money, just like withdrawing cash from an ATM.”

Spending Slump

Weekend Plans

What we’re tweeting: What is X now? The X/xAI merger suggests that the social platform’s value to Elon Musk has little to do with its balance sheet.

What we’re feeling: whiplash. Trump’s tariff switch-up unleashed market chaos and left exporters with canceled orders and upended livelihoods.

What we’re wondering: Should I change my portfolio? We asked three smart thinkers on personal finance whether it’s time to rework any plans.

What we’re reading: You Must Take Part In Revolution, a graphic novel that imagines a world in which China and a proto-fascist US are at war.

What we can’t stop talking about: the wealth effect, when fluctuations in paper values are enough to make consumers change their spending habits.

One Last Thing

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