Good morning. If you think we’ve escaped the worst of the trade war, think again.
According to projections by the National Retail Federation and virtually every service that tracks port activity, import cargo volumes will abruptly tumble off a cliff come May. Volumes will drop by 20% next month—shattering a 19-month run of growth—and continue the pattern through at least the summer. The pain is only beginning.
Just move manufacturing to the U.S., right? Wrong. As Fortune Tech reader Steve Dunn told NPR last week: “We don’t have the automation. We don’t have the skilled labor. So our industry is going to have layoffs. Our company has had a hiring freeze. We’re not innovating.”
Dunn is the founder and CEO of the company that makes Munchkin baby products, by the way. Just imagine how the high-tech set feels. Today’s news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Tesla desperately needs a successful robotaxi launch
This was supposed to be “the biggest year in Tesla history,” CEO Elon Musk said at the end of January.
Three months later, everything is spiraling.
The Trump administration’s 145% tariffs on Chinese imports will affect a quarter of the vehicles Tesla makes in the U.S. Chinese rival BYD is lapping up market share in Asia with a more affordable vehicle. The U.S. highway safety regulator recalled nearly all Tesla Cybertrucks. Quarterly vehicle sales dropped below Tesla’s own projections. (The company reports its latest earnings on Tuesday.)
For some Tesla bulls, there’s only one issue that really matters right now: autonomous driving. If Tesla can win the race to develop self-driving car technology for the mass market, none of the company’s other troubles should matter so much.
But all of Tesla’s testing on public roadways has involved so-called Level 2 systems, where the system controls the driving and braking but attentive humans are behind the steering wheel.
By contrast, Waymo, Tesla’s main competitor, is already doing 200,000 paid rides every week at Level 4—with no human drivers in the vehicles—across various cities around the U.S.
If there’s one secret weapon in Tesla’s arsenal that could help it catch up, it’s data.
Not only does Tesla almost certainly have more driving data gathered from its cars worldwide than any other automaker, notes Wayve CEO Alex Kendall, but it also has more diverse data than its self-driving competitors.
All it has to do is launch its paid robotaxi service in Austin on time.
Or as Wedbush analyst Dan Ives puts it: “If June becomes August, and August becomes October, that would be a very, very bad thing.” —Jessica Mathews and Jeremy Kahn
Meta turns the tables on the age-verification push
Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly “flooding Washington with ads” in a bid to convince legislators to require rival app stores to verify users’ ages and require parental consent for kids to download social media apps.
Why would the Meta CEO do such a thing? According to a new Politico report, to shift focus from his company—which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—to Apple and Google.
Last year a bill, passed in the Senate but shelved in the House, would have required Meta’s services to make changes to protect kids from undesired interactions within them.
The legislation followed years of hearings (and dozens of lawsuits) about the harms of social media on children and the awareness of those effects by the corporate executives who led the services.
In a twist, Meta is “turning enemies into allies” by “piggybacking” on one of the ideas from concerned parent groups to verify age at the app store level, washing Meta’s hands of product changes.
Apple and Google are pushing back. The former argues that it must occur at the merchant level, likening it to checking IDs for an alcohol purchase at a mall; the latter advocates for use of a narrow indicator of whether a user is a minor or not.
However it plays out, the lobbying is a sign of Zuckerberg’s recent overtures in the U.S. capital.
“Zuckerberg’s reframing of the kids-safety debate is part of a broader reputational rewrite,” Politico notes, “and an effort to win over Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump…to shield his company from government interference.” —AN
China’s robot marathon runners left much to be desired
In lighter news, some of China’s finest humanoid robots raced against human marathon runners this weekend…and things got weird.
“One fell at the starting line. Another’s head fell off and rolled on the ground. And one collapsed and broke into pieces,” Bloomberg reports. Rough!
Just four of 21 robot runners completed the race—which took place in Beijing’s E-Town tech hub—in the allotted four hours.
The best ‘bot, Tiangong Ultra, completed the 13 miles (21km) in two hours and 40 minutes, well behind the average human runner, let alone an elite one. The other three androids couldn’t manage it in less than three hours.
The competition was framed as a robotic showcase for Chinese technology. Tiangong Ultra, for example, was built by X-Humanoid, a research institute funded by the Chinese government, Xiaomi, and UBTech Robotics.
But it was mostly a comedy. One robot resembling a Gundam mech “lost control and crashed onto the barricade,” notes Bloomberg; another “collapsed shortly after the start, scattering body armor on the track.” Ah, well. —AN
More tech
—YouTube in the age of AI: “Trying to keep the spigot flowing while managing copyright issues.”
—Hackers spoof Google. Illegitimate emails from no-reply@google.com.
—Minecraft movie books $720 million. Three weekends after its release, the Warner Bros. film is Hollywood’s highest-grossing film of the year.
—Paychex acquires Paycor. A $4.1 billion deal for the HR payroll management company.
—The Foxconn effect. Property prices are up 35% near its massive new iPhone factory outside of Bengaluru, India.
—Coinbase pump-and-dump accusations. Drama over subsidiary Base’s “content coin” launch.
—Huawei Ascend 920: The Chinese company’s AI-chip answer to Nvidia’s H20.
—Paul Graham on Palantir: “The company building the infrastructure of the police state.”
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