Like so many of us bored of the in-flight entertainment, President Trump announced a major decision at cruising altitude. On the way to the Super Bowl on Sunday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One of his plans to institute a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports, and yesterday he put those plans into action.

That’s so metal: The US imports roughly 80% of its aluminum and 17% of its steel from countries like Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and Germany.

• These imports were worth ~$50 billion last year.
• Canada is likely to be hit the hardest by the tariff as the US’ largest supplier of both steel and aluminum.

The tariffs are likely to boost US metals companies, but could also raise costs for the construction and auto industries.

Tariff tracker

The US kicked off last week by temporarily pausing the imposition of a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. Just a few days later, a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports went into effect, triggering retaliatory (but less intense) tariffs on some US imports this week.

And now…Trump is looking to pick up where he left off towards the end of his last term. In 2018, Trump instituted a 25% tariff on steel and 10% levy on aluminum. At the time, he cited national security as a big reason, but also said he wanted to strengthen domestic production. The results were complicated:

• Steel imports to the US did decline, falling 35% from 2014 to 2024. But domestic steelmakers, still not producing enough to satiate US demand, complain that imports continue to harm them.
• Almost immediately the EU fired back with levies against iconic American brands like Harley-Davidson and Levi’s.
• After some negotiations, the US agreed to carve out some exemptions for the bloc (among other countries).

The EU has said it won’t hesitate to launch its own tariffs again this time around if necessary.

But wait, there’s more…Trump also vowed to introduce reciprocal tariffs this week on “every country” to match duties they impose on US imports.—MM

Elon Musk wants to buy OpenAI. A group of investors led by the Tesla CEO made an unsolicited offer to purchase the nonprofit that controls the ChatGPT-maker for $97.4 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. In case you’ve missed the corporate drama: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman as a nonprofit in 2015, but the former left the organization in 2019. Now, Altman wants OpenAI to go for-profit, Musk has his own AI company, and Musk has sued OpenAI claiming it hasn’t been true to its nonprofit vision (a claim OpenAI has denied). Altman, who’s working to raise money for OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation, appeared unimpressed by Musk’s bid, tweeting “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

McDonald’s international sales grow as US customers spend less. The golden arches may be as American as (handheld, rectangular) apple pie, but last quarter the US was like a brown spot on a potato for the fast food chain: US same-store sales were down 1.4% as diners spent less per visit and the chain faced fallout from an E.coli outbreak. But McDonald’s said global sales were up, buoyed by growth in the Middle East, Japan and China, and the company’s stock rose yesterday as investors were lovin’ that news.

Trump scales back enforcement of law against bribing foreign officials. It’s probably still not a good idea to go around bribing people, but President Trump signed an executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, saying it puts American companies at a disadvantage. The law, dating back to 1977, makes it illegal for US companies to bribe foreign government officials to score or keep business. The order directs the Justice Department to come up with revised enforcement guidelines, with the White House saying that the current rules bar US companies from behavior that’s common among international competitors.—AR

Menlo Park is gonna need to stock up on cardboard boxes. Meta began a round of layoffs yesterday affecting roughly 4,000 people, or 5% of its workforce, as the company follows the well-trodden path of tech companies diverting their resources toward AI.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned the layoffs were coming last month in an internal memo, where he said he would “raise the bar” and “move out low-performers faster,” warning that 2025 would be an intense year. The company is now looking to ramp up its hiring of machine-learning engineers, per Business Insider.

Tech layoffs for spring? Groundbreaking

Meta joins a laundry list of tech companies that have recently laid off workers in the name of AI investment.

• Last week, Workday cut 1,750 jobs or ~8.5% of its staff to prioritize AI.
• Salesforce is reportedly laying off more than 1,000 people at the same time that it’s increasing hiring of salespeople for its AI products.

Meanwhile, Google is offering buyouts to employees that work on its platforms and devices teams as the company is expected to announce cuts that prioritize AI.

Zoom out: The AI pivot is a gamble of gargantuan proportions. Combined capital expenditures on artificial intelligence among Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are set to pass $320 billion this year, even as investors fear cheaper models could steal their thunder.—CC

You might be seeing a lot less of President Lincoln’s right cheekbone after President Trump’s move to nix the penny.

On Sunday, the president issued an executive order directing the treasury to stop minting 1-cent coins, a practice he called “wasteful.”

• Trump noted that each penny costs over 2 cents to produce.
• The US mint said it lost $85.3 million making billions of pennies at 3.7 cents a pop during the last fiscal year.

The idea of sunsetting the coin rendered all but worthless by centuries of inflation was recently floated by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. But it echoes years of anti-penny advocacy from federal officials, Congressional lawmakers, President Obama, and journalist Caity Weaver, who published a 7,000-word penny abolitionist manifesto.

Who’s mourning the penny?

A post-penny world would be a blow to the private equity-owned Tennessee metal manufacturer Artazn, which made $1 billion in revenue since 2008 supplying zinc blanks that the US Mint stamps into pennies, per Weaver. It could also hurt coin-cashing machine operators like Coinstar.

A penny shortage might ensue…pushing businesses to round prices to the nearest nickel and accelerating the shift to digital payments benefitting companies like Visa and Mastercard, according to TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg.—SK

In case you needed proof that real estate remains a cutthroat business, look no further than the recent sale of a house that was destroyed in the recent devastating wildfires that tore through Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Listed for $999,000, the property got more than 60 offers, and is now in escrow for what the agent who listed it describes as “a good chunk more” than $1 million, per Bloomberg.

The interest in the lot—one of the first sold in the fire-ravaged neighborhood—demonstrates an appetite for properties in the area. But that unfortunately doesn’t translate to a happy ending for the widow whose home it was. Per Bloomberg, before the fires, the house that no longer stands there was valued at $2.7 million. Its sale for less than what it was once worth represents the difficult choice homeowners in the area, and in other areas impacted by the fires, now face: Spend money to rebuild, or sell at a significant loss.—AR