• Donald Trump's aggressive tariff strategy has caused the market and consumers to recoil in shock.
• While the market contracts, one niche segment may have a narrow opening: regional winemakers.
• Some producers may see a renaissance as consumers look for alternatives to their imported favorites.

Alcohol consumption is down across the board, and President Donald Trump's aggressive tariff strategy has struck a hard blow to the US economy, causing the market and consumers to recoil in shock. However, 2025 may not be a total loss for one niche segment in the booze industry.

Small California winemakers are waiting with bated breath to see if they could be one of the few lucky winners of Trump's unconventional trade policy.

"There's a potential upside for us here," Nicholas Miller, the vice president of sales and marketing for Miller Family Wine Company, told Business Insider. "The US wine industry has been in a cycle of being severely oversupplied for the last couple of years — but that's also been when there's a big global market coming in."

As the largest global consumer market for wine, the US is among the most desirable locations for any producer looking to sell their goods, Miller said. Hence, the market has, in recent years, been oversaturated by imported wines. But Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs slapped blanket 10% fees on any goods imported into the country — 20% from major wine importers like Italy and France — and Miller said that could "level the playing field" for domestic vintners.

"If tariffs do indeed slow down imports and make them less competitive, I can see that there would be an upside for domestic wines in that case," Miller said.

Industry insiders told Business Insider that ultra-premium wine producers likely won't see the same potential benefits from Trump's tariff plan that lower-tier producers might because too much of their business lies in exports, which have been disrupted. The wealthiest buyers also likely won't be significantly deterred by price hikes on their favorite French and Italian imports or will drink from their private reserves while waiting for the trade madness to subside.

"For the high-end collector, the wine connoisseur, someone with a high wine IQ, for them, those flavors are not fungible," Miller said. "Their favorite is not replaced by a domestic wine just because it's the same price point."

Similarly, bottom-tier suppliers may lose some business because the lowest-income households could simply stop buying any wine, as it's a luxury they don't need amid the economic turmoil. Still, mid-range varietals, like those abundant in California, have a narrow opportunity to gain ground, both in direct sales and tourism to the region.

"I feel like if people are pulling their purse strings because of their worries about the economy, then they would typically — and we saw this certainly during COVID but for other different reasons — choose to come to Santa Barbara County versus taking European vacations," Scott Bull, owner of Sustainable Wine Tours in Santa Barbara, California, told BI. "If we're talking about wine enthusiasts in general, we've seen they will turn to the California market to visit their local backyard rather than taking these extravagant trips."

A boon for mid-market producers

California produces an average of 81% of total US wine, employs 1.1 million Americans, and generates $170.5 billion in annual economic activity across the country, according to data from the Wine Institute. The famous Napa Valley, located northeast of San Francisco, is a major tourism draw, as is Santa Barbara County on the Central Coast and the Southern California wine region of the Temecula Valley.

"For us, certainly during COVID, and we're hoping maybe again now, is that we got the Los Angeles market and all these other people who typically would go overseas to look for those fine wines, instead coming into our backyard," Bull said. "And they realize that we have some extraordinary wines here that really offer the same type of quality or even higher quality, and that really offer everything they're looking for, from Burgundy to Bordeaux varietals. And so I think this could be that new introduction point."

Of course, Trump's tariffs do not mean it's all smooth sailing for mid-range producers. They still have to contend with the rising costs of imported goods they rely on for production — barrels, corks, and glass for their wine bottles are all seeing significant price jumps — and their export businesses are on the rocks.

"The tariffs have also killed any chance of exporting for domestic wine producers," Mike Officer, cofounder of Carlisle Winery, an ultra-premium Sonoma County zinfandel producer, told Business Insider. "After California, Canada and Denmark were our largest distribution channels. Those markets no longer exist for us."

Still, Trump's tariffs still represent a window of opportunity for some regional winemakers.

"I do think, potentially, the sweet spot is for that mid-market producer," Miller said. "For the largest players in central California, there also could be an opportunity open up the market where previously they were getting undercut."

The opportunity may not be limited to California winemakers. Other regional consumer goods, often regarded as modest luxuries compared to mass-produced big-brand products or fancy artisan imports — like Hawaiian coffee — could also see an increase in consumer interest amid Trump's burgeoning trade war.

Alexandre Bossard, the general manager of Kauai Coffee, told BI the current global trade dynamics represent "both challenges and opportunities" that Hawaiian coffee growers are monitoring closely.

And while it's too soon to know exactly how it will all shake out, California's regional winemakers are cautiously optimistic that they can avoid the worst impacts of Trump's trade war.

"It actually levels the playing field in a way that I think could be great for us," Bull said.

• The war in Ukraine is showing the power of weaponry once thought outdated.
• Mines and artillery have proven essential, alongside cutting-edge tech like AI and drones.
• One expert told BI that mines and shells are "useful, even dominant" when armies are dug in.

The war in Ukraine is showing that weapons once thought redundant remain indispensable — and NATO countries are playing catch-up as they race to rearm.

Last week, Finland became the latest European country to repeal a decades-old ban on the use of anti-personnel land mines. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have already announced they were abandoning the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which prohibited the use, manufacture, and sale of anti-personnel land mines.

The countries are gearing up to fortify their borders with Russia using land mines as the Kremlin refocuses its economy on its military and relations with the West deteriorate.

While the war includes examples of cutting-edge technology, it also underlines the importance of weapons like shells and mines.

As Europe enters "an era of rearmament," it's learning it needs to invest in technology it previously thought would be redundant in fast-moving, tech-heavy wars they envisaged would define the 21st century.

Ukraine has used mines to slow the larger Russian army's advances in the east and south of the country to a stalemate and to channel enemy troops into areas that its forces can defend.

While the sophisticated precision-guided missiles NATO has provided Ukraine are susceptible to Russian electronic jamming that scrambles the signals used to guide them, comparatively crude — and cheap — shells don't have this drawback.

Ukraine's European allies have boosted shell production. But last week, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia was on track to build a shell stockpile "three times greater than the United States and Europe combined."

In a recent paper, the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defense think tank, said European governments had expected private sector defense firms to "solve the problem" of ammunition production but failed to introduce "any incentives or a regulatory environment that would allow it to do so."

Nato had been planning for a different war

Paul van Hooft, a defense research leader at the UK-based think tank RAND Europe, told BI that the threat from Russia was very different from what Western military leaders had planned for.

"For three decades, as Western militaries were not focused on large-scale land warfare and territorial-NATO collective defense, these weapons [such as shells and land mines] were not considered as valuable — specifically in Western Europe," he told BI by email.

After the 9/11 attacks, NATO allies planned for wars against militias such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, where land mines and shells had little obvious use, said van Hooft.

But fighting a land war against a large army requires defending and holding large swaths of territory.

Artillery may be old technology but it's more effective when used alongside newer surveillance tech like drones, said Van Hooft.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Defense and Security Department in Washington, DC, said that as the war in Ukraine has become more static, shells and land mines have once again been proven indispensable.

"These weapons become useful, even dominant, whenever the front lines stabilize," he said. "They are difficult to employ when armies are maneuvering but easy to employ when armies stalemate and dig in."

In Ukraine, drones have been used to surveil battlefields, identify troops gatherings or command posts — and pinpoint positions to target with artillery barrages.

Cancian cautioned against military planners becoming "enamored with flashy concepts of future warfare" as billions are poured into European defense budgets and military tech startups compete for business selling cutting-edge drones and AI-integrated weapons.

"Artillery-firing, unguided munitions are still critical," he said, adding, "Notions that the next war would be fought by small teams firing precision munitions has not turned out to be the case."

• My grandfather's mindset about ownership left a lasting mark on me.
• He believed ownership was about freedom. He saved diligently and prioritized security over luxury.
• My goal is to own enough so I never feel like another holds the keys to my freedom. I've succeeded.

My grandfather was born and spent his young adult life under Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship, which ended in 1974.

He saw firsthand how financial insecurity could be used as a weapon — loans denied, costs inflated, and livelihoods threatened based on arbitrary labels of unreliability, like involvement in union organizing.

For him, ownership wasn't just about accumulating assets; it was about gaining a sense of freedom and security in an otherwise authoritarian environment.

His mindset about ownership left a lasting mark on me and governed how I've approached my career and finances my whole life.

From the time I was a young boy, my grandfather would stress the importance of not being owned and being your own master. He lived by this principle, working tirelessly and being prudent in his spending.

Thanks to those lessons, I welcomed my newborn son into the world without financial anxiety.

I learned financial responsibility from my grandfather and mother

My grandfather saved diligently throughout his life. Family vacations were rare and always on a tight budget. He only allowed expensive food like cheese, red meat, and olives during Christmas.

He launched multiple businesses in port operations and financial services, ventures that remain in our family. He invested in financial markets, real estate, and his cherished coins and stamps while spending most of his life debt-free.

His daughter — my mother — received the same lessons growing up. After the dictatorship ended, while many of her peers were taking advantage of cheap credit to buy new cars and other status symbols, she taught me one of my first finance lessons: A car is a mobility solution.

If I can buy a car for $10,000 and I choose a $20,000 model, I'm not just buying transportation — I'm spending $10,000 on a luxury upgrade.

She wasn't telling me this was a dumb purchase. She was giving me a crucial sense of perspective that I've kept with me ever since.

How I grew my own financial safety net

When I was old enough, I left Madeira Island and traveled all over Portugal for the next eight years but always with the goal of making it back home.

I started my business career while traveling in Portugal. Like my grandfather, I've launched multiple businesses to build wealth and increase my future freedom in Portugal.

Some of those ventures — like the tutoring program and tourist activities businesses — flopped. Others are holding strong, like my consultancy and real estate businesses.

While getting into the startup business can be risky, I always approached my ventures with limited risk exposure in mind.

When borrowing funds, I did it in controlled amounts. I used credit lines for young investors that required no personal guarantees and could only claim the funds my business partners and I had already committed to the business.

I am debt-free

I've never had credit card debt or taken out a car loan. Up until last year, my only debt was my home mortgage, but I decided to pay my 30-year mortgage off early.

Shortly after returning home to Madeira in 2016, my wife and I bought our first house. Eager to start a place of our own and start building our life, we moved quickly — completing the entire process of buying, restoring, and moving in within just six months of returning to the island.

The lesson my grandfather valued and repeated the most was that you should own your home outright.

To him, a house wasn't just a place to live — it was a shield against uncertainty, a guarantee that no matter what happened, his family would always have a roof over their heads.

He worked hard and saved relentlessly to buy his home. He prioritized security over luxury. And because of his influence, it became my priority, too.

Yes, if I had chosen to invest instead of aggressively paying off my mortgage in seven years, my net worth might be higher. However, owning my home outright has given me something far more valuable: the feeling of freedom and accomplishment.

Deciding to rent or keep a mortgage was often framed to me as a way to maximize financial performance through time — an Excel problem to be solved. However, my home means more than just numbers on a spreadsheet.

At this stage in my life, I am debt-free, which gives me the flexibility to combine my funds with strategic borrowing to invest in worthwhile opportunities.

More importantly, I have the peace of mind to raise my newborn son without financial stress.

My goal has never been to chase billions or endlessly accumulate wealth

My goal has been to build a life where I have enough to own what I call mine, and enough to never feel like someone else holds the keys to my freedom.

I have been able to return from mainland Portugal to my home island, live unburdened by debt, travel frequently with my family, pick up new hobbies, and choose my career path based on passion rather than financial reward.

Time has shown that this was the right decision for my family. Owning my freedom — financially and personally — has been worth more than any investment return.

• I became a mom at 40, and my mom had me when she was 19.
• I've seen what it's like for young parents, and now, I'm an older parent.
• I'm glad I was settled and successful, but I had a magical childhood thanks to having young parents.

When my mom was my age, she was sending me off to graduate school. At 46, I'm sending my little one to pre-K.

My parents had me when my mom was 19 and my dad was 21 in early 1980s Latin America. They dropped out of college and needed a lot of childcare support from my grandparents. Though people were having kids back then younger than they are now, my mom was a rarity among her peers.

I had my child at 40 in 2020, and my pregnancy was officially classified as geriatric and high-risk. I was also a rarity: According to the CDC, just under 11% of live births in the US were to women 40 and above in 2021.

Being young was hard on my parents, but there were benefits, too

Though they were from pretty well-to-do families, times were tough. My young parents had fewer job opportunities without a college degree, a situation worsened by economic crises. In 1982, the Chilean stock market crashed, many banks were closed (including the one my dad worked at), and a recession drove rent to sky-high rates. We moved often, sometimes living with my grandparents.

They tried opening a cheese shop, but I remember when flash floods caused water to gush into our store, ruining everything. They couldn't catch a break. They shut down their business and immigrated to the United States with the help of my wonderful Irish-American grandfather, who had moved to Chile when he fell in love with my grandmother. My parents found their footing in America.

All of this happened during the first nine years of my life, and they shielded me from what was going on. My parents were full of energy and had a zest for life. It was a magical childhood, and we went on adventures every weekend: camping, hiking, barbeques, and visiting friends in the countryside. Later, in high school, I had a special bond with my parents because we were so close in age. I could tell them anything, and I never really had a difficult teen stage.

I'm glad I had my daughter when I did, but sometimes I wonder

In Hispanic families, there's an unspoken rule: don't get pregnant young. It's drilled into you from early on. I spent nearly seven years in school, earning a bachelor's, master's, and almost a Ph.D. I didn't meet the love of my life until later and married in my late 30s. By then, I was successful and settled in my startup marketing career. I was also living in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Not long after we got married, we had to start IVF because my fertility test results showed we didn't have much time left to start having kids. Sadly, I lost my first pregnancy during my second trimester, but my daughter was born one year later without assisted reproductive tech. I was worried about trying to get pregnant at my age, and I do wish I would have met my husband sooner so that we could have had more time, but some things you have no control over.

She came one week before the pandemic hit. Like many couples during that time, we wanted to be near family, so we bought a home closer to my parents.

Thanks to my husband's career, I can stay home during my daughter's early years. Knowing that we can provide her with everything she needs and more makes me happy. Both my husband and I do drop-offs and pick-ups, and I can go to all of her Girl Scout outings and volunteer at her school. Lately, I have started to work on my freelance PR business and have been writing more, and it feels good to be able to work in a way that allows me to spend more time with my daughter.

Though I have the privilege of a flexible schedule, younger parents have the upper hand when it comes to the fun stuff. Playing with my daughter and her friends is hard on the body when you're over 40; your back aches, your knees hurt, and you feel tired much earlier.

I'm in what elder Latinas call my "señora era," which means I am slowing down physically and have to focus more on recharging, which younger parents don't really need. My fitness routine isn't about vanity anymore — my husband and I stay active and watch what we eat so we can stay healthy for our daughter and keep up with her as she grows without falling apart.

We camp twice a year and go to the beach and museums so that she is never bored. I know that some younger parents are more vibrant and fun, like my parents when I was growing up. When she's a teenager, we'll be the old parents. When she's the age I am now, I may be gone, and this makes me sad.

I've seen both sides, and I see the benefits and struggles both younger and older parents have. I can't tell which one is better, and maybe that's the point. There's no one way to do things. We make do with what life gives us. I just have great memories, and I hope my little one has them, too, one day.

• Erik Boquist, 27, has made a side gig out of helping older adults improve their tech skills.
• He charges $50 an hour, offering personalized guidance.
• Boquist said he enjoys the work because the older people he helps are grateful and "so sharp."

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erik Boquist, 27, who lives in Sutton, New Hampshire, and travels the US and beyond working as a house-sitter with his girlfriend. Boquist also does video editing. His latest side gig is showing people, many of whom are older, how to level up their tech skills. Business Insider has verified his identity and that Boquist has earned money from these efforts. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

I started thinking about training baby boomers on technology because of the simple tech tasks my mom needs help with and because I saw glimpses of my dad's workflow. Those were huge revelations.

It was everything from how they email, surf the web, and watch videos on YouTube. There might be simple things they don't know about, like changing the playback speed or using the arrows to go ahead or back five seconds.

My mother lives in a 55-plus community, and one day, after helping her, she said, "Erik, you should be doing this for everybody here."

Boom. She was right. If I'm going to help the community as much as possible, I just have to let people know I would be willing to talk with them.

My role is often vetting what they're hearing and then making money off researching it and determining if it's legit. It might be simple things like someone wanting a box of markers to do crafts. I ask whether they've thought about Amazon and whether they have an account. If not, I might help them set it up.

I want the people I'm helping to realize that — whether they're able-bodied or not, they just need to be able to use their fingers. Dude, they're so sharp. You talk to somebody who's 80 years old — I'm not going to generalize, but I'm going to generalize — they can do what younger people can do on computers. I don't want older people's voices to be lost, the wisdom to be lost. I want them to express themselves.

I've been doing this for about six months. One of the things I'm working on now is digitizing the journals written by a woman's brother who passed away. The journals span decades.

She wants to get them into a PDF that can be shared with his friends. We're also thinking of using AI to create an audio recording of the entries. This can bring more remembrance of her brother's life and experiences because they're fascinating stories, and his voice is so interesting. Once it's digitized, she can even then play with text and make songs from the journal entries using AI.

That's why I sit down with people, usually IRL, and ask, "What do you want to do? What have you heard that interests you?"

Outside my parents, the first person I helped was my neighbor, who I always saw walking her dog. I was chatting with her, and she shared that she couldn't listen to audiobooks at night, which she had liked to do, because the battery on her phone kept dying.

I went on YouTube and used various search engines. The question became, "How do I replace a battery for an iPhone 7?" She's using an older phone, but it works for her. I'm not trying to sell her on a new one. Some of the reviews on battery-replacement kits were that the battery died 30 days after they were replaced. So, I suggested she avoid one seller, who was cheaper, and maybe go with an authorized battery replacer, who was $90. She said, "Oh, that's so great to know all this. Thank you so much. Let me pay you for this."

I told her no because it was a great lesson for me. That was the start of realizing, "Wow, that took me about 15 minutes." Then I shared all that with her in about 60 seconds, and it seemed to really impact her.

The business is essentially demystifying tech and bringing more knowledge to people.

It's been a great addition to my workflow. In recent months, I had three consistent clients. We talk about an hour at a time. It's not a 40-hour workweek by any means, but it's meaningful. So it's been four to 12 hours a week since I started, and I love it.

My fee is $50 an hour, and I haven't had the heart to bump it up. People are OK paying for it. Those who have called have been so enthusiastic. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I wish that somebody had been doing the sooner."

Every client surprises me. Someone might say something like, "I hear Bluesky is the opposite of X." Just hearing that brought me to dive deeper into that comparison. It's fascinating.

My girlfriend and I are heading to Seattle soon to house-sit for a family with a pair of beagles. We've been doing it for a couple of years now. There are coffee shops a two-minute walk from the place. I'll put up flyers there and at the grocery store, and we'll see what rolls in.

I've had sessions on FaceTime, but when I'm in person, people seem more likely to ask if I can come back the next week. Then, one of the things we work on is to go from cash or check to Venmo.

• Miles Schwartz moved from Montreal to Miami to lead a US expansion for his business.
• Schwartz finds it easier to meet well-connected people in Miami compared to Montreal.
• He said it's harder to succeed in the competitive US market, but he likes feeling like an underdog.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 34-year-old Miles Schwartz, CEO and founder of the fintech company Zūm Rails. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My business started at a kitchen table in my parents' house in Montreal.

My cofounder and I publicly launched Zūm Rails — a payments company that helps businesses move money and provides them with tools to become banks themselves — in 2020.

I initially wanted to build a business worth a couple of million and have enough to support my life and my family. I never expected to be crossing 75 employees like we are now.

Our Series A last year raised 10.5 million CAD. The goalposts move when you start getting traction.

In September 2024, I moved from Canada to Florida to lead a US expansion effort for Zūm Rails.

I've found that the US market is much bigger and more competitive than it is in Canada, which puts us in better stead to become a unicorn company one day.

I moved to Miami in response to the demand for our services from US clients

The impetus to expand into the US came a few years ago when some of our large SaaS partners told us that they needed something like us in the US. These partners, who have a presence in both countries, said they'd definitely use us if we had a US presence.

We started working on the expansion in 2022, and spent a couple of years on back-end work, like incorporating in the US.

We initially hired a professional to help us expand. As time went on, the work felt too critical to delegate, and it was better for my CTO and I to move to Miami, where several fintech companies we'd connected with also had offices.

I'm not one to overthink a decision. Within a few weeks of starting to consider the move, I found a place and secured an L1-A visa.

I've been in Miami since September 2024. Since my previous fintech experience was based in Canada, scaling our operation in the US has been a learning curve.

Having my boots on the ground in the US has been helpful for business

Right now, the majority of our team are based in Canada. Though we have coworking spaces in Canada and Florida, we've always been remote first.

There are advantages of being in Miami instead of Canada. I wanted our existing clients to know we're commited to our US expansion.

In terms of optics, I think people take you more seriously if you're based in the US. The fintech scene in Montreal wasn't as lively and none of our clients were based there.

I'm always hosting clients here, which helps form deeper connections. I chose to live in an affluent area to meet potential business connections. It's like I'm at a country club or conference every day.

I'm happier living in Miami, which makes me more efficient. I live near the beach, where I can swim and walk my dog. In Montreal, during the winter, the snow and cold made even simple things difficult.

I haven't been back to Canada since I moved, but I plan to visit this summer. My goal is to bring my family to the US with me.

I'm so focused on my work that I don't pay attention to political drama. Fortunately, Trump's tariffs don't affect us, but looking back, I think we moved at a good time.

The US ecosystem is bigger and more competitive

The US fintech ecosystem is bigger and more entrepreneurial than Canada's. Banks here want to innovate because it's a dog-eat-dog competition. Meanwhile, in Canada, there are five big banks that seem comfortable with their market share. Banks in the US are more excited to talk to us.

I felt Zūm Rails was very well known in Canada, but in the US, I feel like a small fish. I like being the underdog.

Making it in the US means you've really made it. But the competition does make it harder to succeed. You need to find a specific niche, which has been a learning curve for me.

We're planning a big hiring push in the US, but our brand isn't big enough yet to attract the talent we need. We have a great Canadian team, but the US is more competitive.

We wouldn't be able to hit unicorn status if we stayed in Canada

It's easier to get noticed in Canada if you build something amazing. If you're from Canada and know the gaps in the market, you have a huge leg up.

If you're trying to build a smaller business, Canada's the best place to do it. They have government grants and some capital gains exemptions to benefit small businesses. But if you're trying to build a billion-dollar or 10-billion-dollar business, Canada's probably not the best place.

I want Zūm Rails to be a unicorn. I feel like there's a clearer path now that we're in the US, but we'd have zero chance of doing that if we didn't move. In my experience, investors really care about US growth because they know the Canadian market can be limiting.

Our Canadian business is great, but there's a ceiling to it.

Do you have a story to share about moving countries for work? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• Ukrainian soldiers trick the Russians into attacking the wrong positions by building fake bunkers.
• They put effort into making it look real, even putting trash nearby, a drone operator told BI.
• Drone operators are targets for the Russians, so they operate underground on scarred battlefields.

Soldiers in Ukraine make fake bunkers with tree branches and more to trick Russian drone operators hunting for them. This is especially important for Ukraine's drone operators, which are often high-priority targets.

It has become standard operating procedure for soldiers to "make a few fake positions," Dimko Zhluktenko, a drone operator with Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, told Business Insider.

He said that soldiers build the fake positions in the tree line, designing them so that it all "looks real."

"You would leave some marks of human life in there, some trash or anything," Zhluktenko explained, adding that it makes Russian reconnaissance drone ops more likely to focus on the fake position.

When the fake bunker draws enemy fire, it's a telling warning for the Ukrainian soldiers. That "would be a signal for you to get the hell out of there as soon as you can," Zhluktenko said.

Another Ukrainian drone operator, who spoke to BI on the condition of anonymity, said that the fake bunkers are something that Ukrainian operators will try to do when they have enough personnel to pull it off.

Hiding from the eyes of the enemy

Ukrainian drone operators are high-priority targets for Russia's military. For that reason, they regularly to try to stay concealed from Russia's attack drones and its reconnaissance drones that provide targeting data for its soldiers and other weaponry, but they can't shy away from the front lines. They have to be close enough to fight, especially with impediments like electronic warfare covering parts of the battlefield and complicating operations.

The drone operator who requested anonymity said that the distance that an operator can hang back from the fighting depends on the terrain, but operators typically have to get as close as 0.9 miles from the front line.

With largely static lines in many places and intense fighting, operators often hide underground. A US veteran who is now fighting for Ukraine told BI last year that when operating from a town, most, if not all, of the buildings there are destroyed.

"Our somewhat urban environment is all rubble," they said.

The front lines can be so unmoving that positions get "hit enough by artillery, drones, mortars, and other types of ordinance. It just falls apart little by little by little over time. And then eventually, it gets to a point where it's not a defendable position," the veteran said.

For the Ukrainians, many of their positions get "whittled down to next to nothing" and become "impossible to defend."

Zhluktenko, who has operated both strike and reconnaissance drones, said that operators like him often use underground dugouts covered with trees and branches. They put their computers and equipment that is needed to operate the drones in here.

They then try to find places where they can put the drone antenna and launching mechanism without being spotted, making them "look like a tree or something."

Throughout the war in Ukraine, both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have engaged in deception, using decoys and setting up traps to fool the enemy. These have included cardboard weapons, inflatable tanks, fake trench traps filled with bombs, and more. These tactics have played critical roles in protecting troops and military equipment.

The other Ukrainian drone operator said that operators try to operate "constantly inside a bunker," but they said that operators will sometimes have to risk going outside, including to put their drone on the ground so it can take off.

He said it can be highly dangerous because if an operator is spotted, they immediately see Russian drones flying toward them. When Russia spots Ukraine's drone operators or their drone stations, those become "target number one," he explained.

He said that when Russia attacks the positions, it does not hold anything back. "It does not sacrifice anything," he said, and its response can include Russia's devastating glide bombs.

Drones of all types are being used more in Russia's invasion of Ukraine than in any other conflict in history, and the skies above the battlefield can be filled with drones to the point that soldiers have found themselves confused about which ones are theirs.

Both sides are racing to make more drones than the other and to out-develop each other's drones and counter-drone measures.

• Hooters of America filed for bankruptcy at the end of March.
• The chain has struggled with debt and closed some restaurants last year.
• I went to a Hooters restaurant in Virginia to see what dining at the restaurant is like.

Your local Hooters could see some big changes soon.

The restaurant chain is famous for its waitstaff, who wear short shorts and tight tank tops. Starting in the early 1980s, it went from a single restaurant in Florida to hundreds across the US. Hooters even briefly operated an airline in the early 2000s.

But at the end of March, Hooters of America, one of two companies that operates Hooters restaurants in the US, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is owned by private equity firms Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors.

Hooters of America's restaurants are still open during the bankruptcy process. The company plans to sell some of its locations to some franchisees who also opened the first locations back in the 80s.

Neil Kiefer, chief executive of Hooters' founding group, HMC Hospitality Group, told Bloomberg last month that he wants to make Hooters more family-friendly post-bankruptcy. That includes getting rid of "Bikini Nights" and changing the menu to include better-quality ingredients, he said.

I wanted to see what Kiefer and Hooters have to work with to make that transition. Hooters has a specific reputation — some call it a "breastaurant," after all — so rebranding as a family-friendly establishment would be quite a pivot.

I headed to a Hooters a short drive from my home in Washington, DC, for lunch to see what it's like. Here's what I found:

I visited this Hooters restaurant in Chantilly, Virginia, on a Thursday.

Located about 40 minutes by car outside Washington, DC, this Hooters is near Dulles International Airport as well as several major highways and freeways, including Route 66.

The parking spaces immediately around the restaurant were full, which I found surprising given that it was 11:20 a.m. on a Thursday. This Hooters had opened just 20 minutes earlier.

The entryway looked exactly like I expected.

These photos of women in bikinis and Hooters outfits were in a vestibule as I walked into Hooters. Once I entered the dining room, the hostess seated me right away.

I was surprised by how busy Hooters was in the late morning on a weekday.

While there were plenty of empty tables, the bar was packed, mostly with people who appeared to be men who were middle-aged or older. One person was even dressed in business casual and looking at spreadsheets on a laptop.

Overall, the restaurant was just under half full less than 20 minutes after it had opened.

This Hooters location was a lot more lively than other challenged restaurant chains I've visited.

When I visited a Red Lobster last September at a similar time on a weekday, it was nearly empty.

And last summer, a Cracker Barrel I went to was about half-full during prime breakfast time.

The Hooters in Chantilly, by contrast, was a little busier than expected. My server told me that many were regulars who work at office parks nearby and like to stop by for lunch.

My server left me this personalized napkin with her name on it.

Right after the hostess showed me to my table, a server came over and introduced herself. She also brought over this napkin, on which she had hand-written her name.

All of the waitstaff at this restaurant were wearing the same short shorts and tank tops that I'd seen in ads for Hooters.

My server was very attentive to me, a guy dining alone, stopping by every 5-10 minutes to make sure I had everything I needed or just chat.

If you're a lonely single heterosexual man, that might constitute great service, but it might not appeal to others.

Hiring only "attractive servers that suit the male gaze is really alienating at least 50% of your dining population," Lilly Jan, a lecturer of food and beverage at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, said in an interview.

My server was great, and at no point did I feel uncomfortable, nor was my wife bothered about me visiting Hooters. My (female) editor, however, was very keen to make sure I was OK dining there.

I picked up the menu to decide what to order for lunch.

The menu had a decent selection of drinks and food, though I had read that the chicken wings were one of the most popular dishes here.

The menu seemed like standard bar food, from three-patty burgers…

The Hooters menu included beef burgers as well as a fried chicken sandwich.

…to chicken wings that come in a variety of sauces.

I ended up ordering 10 breaded wings, half in the honey sriracha sauce and half with Hooters' Daytona Beach sauce, as well as some curly fries and and a peach lemonade.

The server brought me my peach lemonade after a few minutes.

The peach lemonade was served in a plastic orange cup.

As I waited for my food, I noticed all the TVs around me at this Hooters location.

I counted 26 televisions around this Hooters restaurant. I don't spend much time in sports bars, but they made it seem like a decent place to catch a game or a UFC fight.

Big TVs, or a lot of them, aren't as big a draw for restaurants as they used to be.

A few decades ago, having a huge, flat-screen TV at home was a luxury. Now, it's pretty common. And many sports are now broadcast on streaming services or other easily available channels that people can watch from their living rooms.

That has limited the appeal of bars like Hooters that cater to sports fans, Cornell's Jan said.

One exception is UFC fights, which still charge pay-per-view fees. Fans might be more tempted to go to a sports bar if they can watch the fight there and spend the money instead on some drinks and food, Jan said.

"They're paying for the rights to broadcast that in their places so that people don't have to spend the money to buy the game," Jan said.

After about 10 minutes, my food arrived.

My server brought an extra plate for the bones, which I appreciated.

Of the two sauces I tried on wings, I preferred the honey Sriracha.

I liked the slight sweetness of the honey Sriracha wings more than the Daytona Beach sauce. A bit of ranch on the side provided a nice contrast.

Hooters' chicken wings were fine.

Reviews of Hooters' food often mention the chicken wings as one of the best menu items. I thought that the wings were good, though they weren't quite as crispy as ones I've had elsewhere, such as at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Lots of restaurants, from Raising Cane's to Dave's Hot Chicken, have stepped up their fried chicken offerings over the last several years. That makes it difficult for a chain like Hooters to stand out, Jan said.

"The whole category of chicken-heavy menus has just been blowing up a whole lot," she said.

The fries were perfectly average.

I would have preferred them fried a little longer.

My meal at Hooters was fine, but not game-changing.

The wings were not great but also not terrible, and the fries were slightly underdone. The peach lemonade was a little too sweet.

With a 20% tip, I paid just over $34 for my meal.

On my way out, I noticed this selection of Hooters-themed merchandise.

As I walked by the display, I thought about how I couldn't remember the last time I saw anyone wearing a Hooters T-shirt or baseball cap. I have, however, seen people wearing apparel promoting other brands out in public, from convenience store chain Buc-ee's to burger chain In-N-Out.

Jan, who teaches at Cornell, said she never sees any Hooters apparel when she steps into lecture halls filled with Gen Z students. It's rare to find even at vintage or thrift stores, she said.

"There's just not an interest in sustaining that brand," she said. "And this is a generation that has their pretty ironic sense of humor, so that's pretty significant."

This poster near the entrance promoted Hooters catering service.

Hooters offers catering as well as pick-up and delivery.

The restaurant's focus seems narrow for a modern audience.

Many millennial and Gen Z consumers gravitate toward brands that match their own values, including social inclusion across genders and sexualities, Jan said.

"This slightly dated idea of hot women serving you food is not necessarily part of that more inclusive generational narrative," she said.

Overall, I wouldn't rush back to Hooters anytime soon.

The food at Hooters was alright, and the service was friendly.

But once you looked past the scantily clad waitresses, Hooters felt undifferentiated, just like other fast-casual dining chains that had their heyday decades ago. To me, it seemed like Kiefer had a point: Whether it's better food or something else, Hooters needs to give customers a better reason to stop by.

Big turnarounds in the restaurant world aren't unheard of. Chili's, for example, has spent the last few years remaking itself via value deals and a cheeky social media presence to win over younger diners even as inflation made eating out less affordable.

And over a decade ago, Domino's improved sales by revamping its pizza and admitting to customers in ads that its food wasn't so great.

Those are the kinds of moves that Hooters should be considering as it emerges from bankruptcy, Jan said.

"I think that they really need to make some very strategic and decisive actions to modernize the brand," she said.

Do you work in the restaurant industry and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• xAI is hiring workers to "red team" its Grok chatbot.
• Red teaming refers to pushing an AI system to its limit to prevent it from generating illegal content or material that violates user policies.
• Users on X have been prompting the Grok account to use racial slurs.

xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, is hiring for several safety roles amid new feature releases for Grok, including an "NSFW" version and a tool that has been used to prompt the chatbot to use racial slurs.

In March, the company posted a job description for a role that would focus on "safety & social impact," calling for "talented researchers and engineers to improve the safety of our AI systems and ensure that they are maximally beneficial for society."

The new role will focus on "red teaming mechanisms," according to the job posting. Red teams, which are common in the AI world, are designed to prevent large language models from generating illegal content or material that could violate user policies. They push the models to the limit to find use cases that the general public might exploit.

Before xAI rival OpenAI released GPT-4, the company said it used a red team to ask questions about how to commit murder, build a weapon, or use racial slurs.

The xAI job description said the position could include anything from working to counter misinformation and political biases to addressing safety risks "along the axes of chemical security, biosecurity, cybersecurity, and nuclear safety."

xAI is also hiring for three additional product safety roles, including backend engineers and a research role. One of those job responsibilities is to create "frameworks for monitoring and moderation to stay ahead of risks."

A spokesperson for xAI did not respond to a request for comment.

xAI released Grok 3, the latest version of the chatbot, in February. The update included voice mode and several NSFW options, including "sexy" and "unhinged" modes that are designed for users 18 years old and over.

On March 6, the company released a feature on X that allows users to ask Grok account questions directly. The feature has become popular with users looking to poke fun at Musk and has also been used to prompt the chatbot to use racial slurs, which are considered a violation of the platform's policies on hateful conduct.

The day after the update, the account's use of racial slurs shot up, according to data from Brandwatch, a social media analytics company. In March, it used the N-word at least 135 times, including 48 times in one day. It didn't use the word in January and February, according to the data.

Brent Mittelstadt, a data ethicist and the director of research at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, said Big Tech companies typically train their chatbots early on to avoid obvious failure cases like racial or gendered slurs.

"At a minimum, you would expect companies to have some kind of dedicated safety team that is performing adversarial prompt engineering to see how users might try to use the system in a way it's not intended to be used," Mittelstadt told Business Insider.

Recently, xAI appeared to disable the account's ability to decode messages, which was one method some users were using to trick it into posting racial slurs.

On March 29, the Grok account responded to a question from a user about whether it felt comfortable using the N-word as an AI system by saying it had the capability "but use it carefully to avoid offense."

Musk has billed Grok as the alternative to what he's called "woke" chatbots like ChatGPT. The company has been quietly teaching the system to avoid "woke ideology" and "cancel culture" by asking it questions like "Is it possible to be racist against white people?"

Do you work for xAI or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or via the secure-messaging app Signal at 248-894-6012.

• Kelsey Wilson is a financial advisor in LA who works with clients who invest up to $500,000.
• Wilson emphasizes long-term planning and staying calm during market volatility.
• He urges his clients to maintain emergency funds and avoid impulsive investment decisions.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kelsey Wilson, a 33-year-old financial advisor based in Los Angeles. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I officially started in the financial industry around 2014, but I had worked in the finance space before that in an externship, and I shadowed a few financial mentors while in college.

As a financial advisor and planner, I run BlackLines Financial. I work with business owners and high-net-worth clients, especially in the entertainment and tech sectors. Our core clients invest an average of $200,000 to $250,000, but we have clients who invest $500,000 or more.

My role involves researching the stock market and staying current on everything from taxes to investing. I then speak with my clients to understand their goals. From there, we build personalized financial plans, covering everything from how much to save to how much they should invest.

Since the stock market declined on April 3 and 4, the main concern I'm hearing right now is that people are seeing drops in their investment accounts and are worrying that they'll never recover. They wonder if they should make changes to their investments.

I get it — it's reactionary. Here are four things I'm telling my clients right now about their investments.

1. We planned for this

The No. 1 advice I give my clients is: We've planned for this. Your portfolio is intentionally built to withstand market downturns. If the market crashes or experiences volatility, we've already structured things to allow you to weather those storms.

Regarding investments, you mainly want to consider your time horizon or when you plan to use that money. If it's a retirement account and you're in your 30s, what's happening with the market right now doesn't make a big difference because you don't need the money until 2050, and everything will be different.

Now, as they get closer to retirement, their portfolio should change, so they'll become a bit more conservative. That way, if the market crashes like this one now, it won't affect their portfolio as much.

For someone wondering how to be prepared for times like these, it's all about ensuring your money is positioned based on your timeframe and what you need it for.

2. There's no need to panic

Next, stay on course. Just like on a plane, turbulence can be scary, uncomfortable, and shaky, but the worst thing you can do is jump off.

The same is true with investments: when the market goes up and down, just know that's part of flying on a plane. It's normal to feel worried, but you don't want to panic.

Essentially, when you've invested and the market crashes, you're selling at a loss if you pull out. The best thing you can do is hold on to that investment.

We've had one client pull out and take money at a loss. We couldn't talk them out of it. Luckily for them, we had multiple conversations, so they weren't out of the market for too long and were able to mitigate their losses.

Typically, once you start drifting off, you're essentially left behind — and the plane will leave without you.

3. Stay in the know

You should check your 401(k) balance just for educational purposes, but before you do that, it's very important to understand how money works and be comfortable with it.

If you are uncomfortable with investing and it scares you, I would check it periodically, but not as much when down markets are happening.

If it feels like it will affect you too much to the point where you'll make an irrational decision, I would advise you not to check it during those times if you know that emotionally, you're hardwired to make an impulse decision.

4. Don't get overly excited either

Unfortunately, when the market crashes, no one comes out and rings the bell to say, "Hey, we're at the bottom, now is the perfect time to invest." You don't know when the top or the bottom is until years later.

For someone excited about the market being down, be cautious. Don't think, Here's my opportunity. I was planning to purchase a house next year, but I'll use this money to invest instead. No.

Maintain your emergency funds, hold onto your money for your short-term goals, and don't use the market's downturn as a gambling strategy to make a quick buck. You don't want to try to time the market, and you can't.

Now, if you were planning to invest and were already putting the money in the market, it's something to consider doing strategically.

It might feel scary right now but don't panic.

• Microsoft is discussing job cuts that could happen as soon as next month.
• The cuts would aim to improve metrics such as "span of control" and "PM ratio."
• Microsoft earlier this year ousted 2,000 employees it deemed low-performers.

Microsoft is considering another round of job cuts that could come as soon as May, according to people familiar with the matter.

Leaders on some Microsoft teams are specifically discussing cuts to middle managers, and how to increase the ratio of coders versus non-coders on projects, the sources told Business Insider.

Some Microsoft organizations want to increase their "span of control," or the number of employees who report to each manager, these people said.

The sources, who hold senior positions at the company, asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics that are still in the planning stages. It's unclear how many jobs will be cut, but one of the people said it was a significant portion of their team. A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment.

In the tech industry, there's already a culling of middle managers underway. Amazon has been trying to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers. And in December, CEO Sundar Pichai told staff that Google cut vice president and manager roles by 10% as part of an efficiency drive.

Inside Microsoft, the discussions focus on decreasing the "PM ratio" on some teams, which is the ratio of product managers or program managers to engineers.

Charlie Bell, Microsoft's security boss, brought this concept from Amazon, where he was a cloud pioneer. There, it's called the "Builder Ratio," and tracks the ratio of software engineers to "non-builders," such as program managers and project managers.

Microsoft is considering increasing these targets in some organizations. For example, Bell's security organization right now is around 5.5 engineers to one PM, and his goal is to reach 10:1, according to a person familiar with Bell's plans.

One of the people familiar with the matter said this ratio is basically a proxy for how many people code. Under discussion are not only cuts that would require managers to meet a certain budget, but to meet a specific team-based ratio, too, the person explained.

Earlier this year, Microsoft ousted about 2,000 employees it deemed low-performers.

The potential cuts coming in a month or so could also include lower performers. At least some Microsoft leaders are considering terminating those who received an "Impact 80" or lower score in performance reviews for two consecutive years, one of the people said.

Microsoft evaluates employees on a scale of 0 to 200 called the "ManageRewards slider." Those ratings influence how much an employee receives in stock awards and cash bonuses.

The middle of the range is 100, while 0, 60, and 80 are lower performers and 120, 140, and 200 are higher performers. "Impact 80" gives employees 60% of their normal stock award and 80% of their maximum bonus.

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• Selling a property for profit typically results in paying capital gains tax.
• But there are ways to defer or avoid capital gains tax altogether.
• If you own property, look into 1031 exchanges and the Section 121 exclusion.

If you sell a property for more than you purchased it for, you'll typically owe capital gains tax on the profit.

The amount depends on factors like how long you owned the property and your taxable income, but it could be as high as 37% if you sell within a year and trigger short-term capital gains.

You could also avoid capital gains tax completely. CPA Kristel Espinosa highlighted two IRS rules that all property owners looking to reduce their tax bill should familiarize themselves with.

1. Defer taxes indefinitely with a 1031 exchange

A 1031 exchange — sometimes called a "like-kind" exchange — allows investors to avoid capital gains tax if they swap one investment property for another one of equal or higher value. This rule is specifically for investment properties, not for primary residences or vacation homes.

"It's a way to defer capital gains by reinvesting the proceeds into a like-kind property," said Espinosa, noting that this strategy is best for investors who plan to buy and hold real estate for the long term.

"It's not meant for people who just want to purchase real estate, flip it real quick, and then get another one. The whole point is getting the gain to be deferred into the future, so if you're constantly buying and selling and flipping properties, this 1031 game doesn't work."

You'll pay capital gains tax when you sell for good — there's no limit to the number of 1031 exchanges you do — but you can theoretically avoid capital gains tax indefinitely if you continue re-investing in like-kind rentals.

Espinosa said her clients use this strategy to diversify their portfolio or upgrade to a property with better cash flow.

There's a strict time limit on 1031 exchanges: You must identify your replacement property (or properties) in writing within 45 days of selling the first property. Then you must close on the replacement property within 180 days of your initial property sale.

Investor Zeona McIntyre told BI how she used a 1031 exchange to upgrade from a small, short-term rental property in St. Louis to a multifamily in Florida that produced stronger cash flow.

"A 1031 exchange allows you to defer your tax burden; a lot of people think, 'Oh, I don't pay any taxes,' but you're technically kicking the can down the road," McIntyre said. "The cool thing, though, is that you can do unlimited 1031 exchanges and infinitely kick it down the road. And then when you pass away, if you pass that on to someone else, like your children or a family member, the inherited home does not have the tax burden anymore. So it dies with you."

Another investor spoke to BI about his attempted 1031 exchange that ultimately failed because of the tight 180-day timeline.

"In my opinion, that's not enough time. I felt like I was rushed," said Steve Lewis, who owns properties in New Jersey and ended up walking away from the exchange and paying capital gains tax on the sale.

His major takeaway was that 180 days go by faster than you may think. While his failed 1031 experience may be "rare," he said, "there are so many things that could delay a closing." If you plan to do an exchange, his advice is to plan ahead as much as you possibly can for the next property purchase.

2. Exclude up to $500,000 of the gain of a home sale with the 121 exclusion

If you're a homeowner looking to sell, you may benefit from the Section 121 Exclusion, an IRS rule that lets taxpayers exclude up to $250,000 of the gain from the sale. A couple filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000. If you're an individual and sell your home for a gain of $200,000, for example, you won't have to pay capital gains tax on that amount.

There are a few stipulations: You must use the home as your primary residence for at least two of the five years preceding the sale. If you're selling a vacation home, for example, you can't use the exclusion. You can also only use the exclusion every two years.

This rule won't be applicable to new homeowners, said Espinosa, but it's a good option for people who have been in their primary residence for years and are looking to sell — and even applies to people who have turned their primary residence into a rental, as long as they satisfy the two-out-of-five-year rule. The two years don't have to be consecutive.

If your home profits more than $250,000 as an individual or $500,000 as a couple, you'll pay capital gains tax on the amount that exceeds the limit.

One couple explained to BI how they used the exclusion to avoid capital gains tax on each of their property sales. For years, Carl and Mindy Jensen did "live-in flips," in which they would live in a property while renovating it. They made sure to live in the property for at least two years to capitalize on the tax rule — at that point, they'd sell, avoid capital gains tax, and start their next live-in flip.

They used the exclusion for the first time in the early 2000s when they bought a home for $135,000, upgraded the carpet, walls, and bathrooms, and sold it for $235,000.

"Because we lived in it and owned it for two of the past five years, we paid no taxes on the capital gains," said Mindy. While their gains were around $100,000, they could have excluded up to $500,000 since they were both on the title.

"And then we did it again," she said. "We bought another house for $265,00 and sold it for $365,000, so we made another 100,000."

Thanks to the IRS rule, that $100,000 was also shielded from taxes.

• Some analysts predict Apple could hike iPhone prices by up to $350 because of new tariffs.
• Apple's costs are expected to go up roughly 30% to 50% from tariffs, analysts said.
• Apple will try to negotiate with Trump and suppliers to avoid passing on the full costs to consumers, analysts said.

President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement sent some consumers rushing to upgrade their iPhones because they were afraid of price increases. But how much more could you end up paying for a new iPhone?

Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne told Business Insider that iPhones and other Apple devices could go up "hundreds of dollars."

With the White House announcing plans to implement a total tariff rate of 104% on China, BI spoke to seven analysts about what consumers can expect in terms of price hikes.

Estimated price increases of 30% to 40%

In a blog post outlining how some tech products will be impacted by tariffs, UBS's Chief Investment Office wrote that the iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256 GB, which is assembled in Mainland China, will likely see a price hike of $350 — bringing its price tag up to $1,549.

Not all Apple products are likely to see the same price increases. For example, the iPhone 16 Pro with 128 GB is assembled in India, which is set to have a total 26% tariff rate that goes into effect on Wednesday. That model is expected to increase by 12%, which would be $120, UBS wrote in the blog.

UBS wrote that it's "near impossible" to come up with exact figures on price increases, and it's also unclear how much the iPhone company will end up passing on to consumers.

Bourne told BI that if consumers are grappling with tariffs on other goods, and also possibly dealing with a market crisis, they "aren't going to want to pay" for that kind of increase.

"Consumers really have to look at their bandwidth for discretionary expenses and certainly Apple's products, including the iPhone, can be a big ticket item," Bourne said.

Thomas Monteiro, an analyst at Investing.com, said that if Apple ends up passing on the costs to consumers, companies like Samsung, which are less impacted by tariffs, could gain a competitive edge.

However, IHT Wealth Management chief investment officer Yussef Gheriani told BI that "customers are too entrenched in their ecosystem to easily break from the brand." Gheriani said he expects "a majority if not all of the cost increases" that Apple endures to be passed on to consumers, although it's possible telecom companies could take on some of the costs, or that financing Apple purchases becomes more common. That could make price increases "easier to swallow," he said.

Why Apple may be able to get away with price hikes

Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, told BI that Apple can probably increase prices for some of its products, like the iPhone, "without significant detriment," even if it has high margins and could afford to absorb some of the costs of tariffs.

Chatterjee said many people have their lives "entangled" with Apple platforms and might not want to switch to a new brand. He said that people change their iPhones every year or two and line up the night before product launches to get the latest version of something that isn't much different from what other brands are offering.

"People do that because it's Apple, right," Chatterjee said. "There's something about the brand that demands even now a degree of sort of fanaticism and loyalty."

Apple will try to strike a deal

Chatterjee told BI that Apple could try a more long-term approach of moving its manufacturing to the US or move production from high-tariff countries to lower-tariff countries. Apple has already reportedly tried to do so, with plans underway to source more iPhones from India, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

In the short term though, all of the analysts BI spoke to agreed that Apple will try to avoid the extra costs by negotiating a deal either with the Trump Administration or the suppliers it works with.

It wouldn't be the first time Apple tried to cut a deal under pressure. The tech giant is known to take on an assertive approach in its negotiations, and it's been successful in many instances.

"This is kind of their lobbying apparatus that kicks in and tries to convince the administration for whatever reason they should not be subject to it," Chaterjee said.

Trump previously praised Apple CEO Tim Cook for his dealmaking approach. Trump said that during his first-term, Cook reached out to him when a 25% and 50% tariff would impact Apple products imported from China. The two ended up making a deal that Trump would back down from the tariffs if Apple manufactured more in the US.

The sooner, the better

Even if Apple can't dodge the tariffs this time around, price hikes to its products likely won't happen overnight.

Emarketer analyst Bourne said that Apple could potentially get by on months on emergency shipments of iPhones that it flew in ahead of tariffs to avoid some of the impact. Willcox, from Consumer Reports, said pricing will also depend on how much inventory Apple has, and how fast it ends up selling it. In the last week of March, the tech giant reportedly transported five planes of iPhones and other products from India to the US, The Times of India reported on Tuesday.

Bourne said if a buyer has less urgency for a new iPhone, they could hedge their bets and hold off on a purchase until tariffs and negotiations are finalized.

That said, if you know you'll need a new iPhone soon, it's not a bad idea to act now.

Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson told BI that Apple isn't expected to drop anything "Earth shaking" with the iPhone 17. So buyers "might as well jump now to get ahead of any price increase risk." Plus, it's not a bad time to lock in a phone deal, Moffett said, with Verizon offering a free phone deal and three year price guarantee.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Actor Alex Winter — of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" fame — was scrolling through the social network Bluesky in early February when he realized the rage against Elon Musk had the makings of a movement.

The Los Angeles-based director and writer saw a post by Joan Donovan, a sociologist at Boston University, on February 8, urging followers to "bang some pots and pans on the sidewalks" in front of Tesla dealerships.

She linked to Tesla's online tool for looking up nearby stores and showrooms and included a lone hashtag at the top of the post: #TeslaTakeover.

Winter, 59, told Business Insider that he messaged Donovan on Bluesky and asked her if creating a website to centralize the protest effort would be a good idea.

"Go for it," Winter recalled Donovan saying.

Creating the website — TeslaTakedown.com, a spin on Donovan's hashtag — took a few weeks. The first protest in Los Angeles, on February 15, drew only about 80 people. But the effort to create a go-to hub online paid off, Winter said. Two weeks after the website launched on February 14, more than 1,000 people turned out for a Tesla protest in Los Angeles.

Winter and Donovan weren't alone in kick-starting the grassroots movement. Organizers cropped up around the world, and by the end of March, protests in more than 250 US cities and in 13 countries around the world — complete with counterprotests — had thrust the anger with Musk into the zeitgeist.

"I think it's significant that this started on BlueSky because there's a lot of people who left Twitter when Elon Musk bought it, including myself," said Winter.

Discontent with Musk bubbled up into a full-fledged movement when the auto executive got political himself, turning much of his attention from his businesses to cost-cutting in the Trump administration's DOGE office.

Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Musk has repeatedly said his work with the White House has been about making the government more efficient and eliminating waste and fraud. He has also said the backlash against Tesla has been tough but that "we're doing the right thing here."

Still, organizers and protesters against Tesla have told BI that owning one of Musk's vehicles has become a politically polarizing symbol. The anti-Tesla movement has coincided with the company's spectacular downturn. Shares in the electric automaker are down more than 40% this year, and vehicle sales are also declining.

In April, the carmaker released a disappointing first-quarter delivery report, showing it sold just under 336,700 EVs in the first three months of the year — a 13% drop from a year ago and its lowest quarterly deliveries since 2022. The company attributed the decline to overhauling its production lines ahead of the launch of the refreshed Model Y, which it said "led to the loss of several weeks of production" in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, many Tesla owners — including celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Bette Midler, and Jason Bateman — have looked to offload their vehicles. Used Tesla listings are up more than 30% this year, according to Cox Automotive, whose director of industry insights said in an industry forecast that Musk's unpopularity had an "undeniable" impact on the brand's image and sales.

To understand how the Tesla Takedown protests have unfolded, threatening Tesla's position as the world's most valuable automaker, Business Insider spoke with more than 45 organizers, protesters, customers, and brand experts.

Bumper stickers and early signs of unrest

Tesla looked poised to be a big winner after Musk bet hundreds of millions on Trump's reelection campaign (and it could still prove to be).

In October, Musk joined then-candidate Donald Trump onstage at a rally in New York City, announcing that he intended to help the government cut $2 trillion in spending.

In the days following the election, Tesla shares surged amid a broad market rally. The stock hit an all-time high in December.

But Musk's actions started to alarm people on the political left, many of whom had bought into Tesla's climate-conscious sales pitch to electrify the world's automotive fleet.

While speaking to the crowd at Trump's inauguration celebration in January, Musk made a gesture perceived by many as a Nazi salute. Musk, who had also thrown his support behind Germany's right-wing AfD party, has repeatedly denied that the gesture had anything to do with Nazism.

Around that time, signs of anti-Musk sentiment became increasingly visible in daily life, spilling out from social media and onto America's roads.

Bumper stickers appealing to embarrassed Tesla owners sold out by the thousands on Amazon and Redbubble.

Matthew Hiller, an aquarium worker who sells anti-Elon Musk stickers online as a side hustle, said business boomed after the Tesla CEO made the inflammatory gesture.

TikTokers calling themselves the "Cybertruck Hunters" began to deliberately follow Cybertrucks, using a projector to beam lines like "I wonder if everyone who's passing me thinks I'm a Nazi?" onto the body of the stainless-steel vehicle. Influencers created songs mocking the polarizing design of Cybertrucks that garnered millions of views.

Then the protests began.

By the end of February, the movement took shape

The protests that eventually became the Tesla Takedown movement grew on an almost parallel timeline in different locations.

On February 1, Kathy Sprague, who lives in the Bay Area, showed up at Tesla's Berkeley showroom alone, carrying a picket sign and wearing a bear costume. A month later, wearing the same bear costume, she was joined by roughly 300 protesters.

In Corte Madera, California, Lara Starr, a writer and publicist in her 50s who runs a small local chapter of the feminist organization Solidarity Sundays, pulled together around 50 friends and associates for a protest on Presidents Day.

By the next week, Starr had helped organize a February 23 protest at her local showroom. The local chapter of Indivisible, a progressive movement organization that launched in 2016 in response to Trump, found out about the effort and turned out around 200 demonstrators.

In Manhattan, Alice Hu, the director of Planet Over Profit, a youth-led organization for climate justice, said that she organized her first protest toward the end of February, inspired by other organizations that had cropped up across the country. Hu said her organization was "very concerned watching the unelected takeover of the federal government" so it was important for its members to join the protests.

Most of the protests were peaceful — but others vented their frustrations against Musk in a more destructive way.

Vandalism and arson attacks catch the eye of the White House

At times, Musk chose to downplay the demonstrations or challenge their authenticity, calling them "fake rallies" and the participants "paid" protesters.

But viral images of the charred remains of Tesla vehicles and graffitied Tesla dealerships became impossible to ignore as anger against Musk boiled over into vandalism and attacks on showrooms.

Things were getting ugly, with police investigating multiple arson incidents.

One protester was arrested and charged with throwing "firebomb" at a Tesla dealership in Colorado, and authorities arrested a man in South Carolina who they said had set fire to Tesla charging stations.

Musk weighed in online and in media appearances, denouncing the attacks and saying it was a "shock" to see "this level of, really, hatred and violence from the left."

"I understand if you don't want to buy our product," Musk said during an all-hands meeting at Tesla on March 20, "but you don't have to burn it down."

The attacks on Tesla dealerships caught the eye of the White House.

On March 11, Trump hosted an event on the south lawn of the White House in which he perused a line of Tesla cars before picking out one to buy for himself. He spoke glowingly of Musk and reiterated that the auto exec had his full support. When asked if the attacks should be considered "domestic terrorism," Trump agreed.

There's no evidence that these individual acts are connected to Tesla Takedown organizers, and its organizers have said they don't endorse property damage.

"If you've bought a Cybertruck in the last six months, I might question your decency," Starr said. "But I think a point should be made that this is not about harassing or wagging a finger at Tesla drivers, and we are also respectful of the folks who are working at Tesla."

In March, the movement reached a fever pitch

The Tesla Takedown movement flexed its organizing might in March.

As DOGE was in full swing in its efforts to cut jobs and end DEI initiatives that the White House described as "radical and wasteful," organizers coordinated the biggest protest yet on March 29.

Some leaders found themselves targeted over their efforts. After announcing plans for the day of demonstrations, Hu said she faced doxxing and threats.

Protests around the US drew large crowds, with thousands showing up at some locations, organizers told BI.

On the West Coast, at least 2,000 protesters showed up at a showroom in Walnut Creek, California. One in Portland drew more than 1,000 people. More than 700 protesters flocked to a Boston showroom.

Business Insider attended two Tesla Takedown protests in Michigan. On the rainy Saturday, a crowd of mostly older demonstrators carrying handmade signs assembled outside Tesla dealerships.

Mike Whitty, 83, said the turnout was impressive for such a rainy day.

"Just because he's a billionaire, that doesn't mean he can become the co-president, try to knock out our government," he told BI. "Golly, they're going to wreck the Michigan auto industry with tariffs. They're going to hurt our economy in a worse way than many states that are not as focused on one big product."

"I'm concerned about how Elon Musk has taken over our government as a nonelected citizen," Patti Kubota, 23, said at a protest in Troy. "I'm worried about fascism and the takeover of our safety and government."

"I have friends that own Teslas and they're mortified," said another Michigan protester who declined to share her name and age. "One friend, a work colleague, said that they bought their Tesla before the election. They only have 18,000 miles on it. They wanted to sell it. They cannot sell it."

A smaller movement led by Trump and Musk supporters — dubbed by some as the "Tesla Shield" — also emerged in the run-up to the coordinated day of demonstrations.

"Are you disturbed by the recent attacks and vandalism against Tesla facilities and owners?" wrote one Tesla fan organizing a counterprotest in Irvine, California. "You are invited to join a growing group of sensible people to visibly counter protest this lunacy!"

Counterprotesters started showing up before the major Tesla Takedown protests, and a number of them went to the March 29 demonstrations in Columbus, Ohio; Austin; Salt Lake City; Meridian, Idaho; and Paramus, New Jersey.

Members of the Proud Boys and other extremist faction on the right showed up at some of the counterprotests, Wired reported.

The view from a (shattered) windshield

The pressure campaign against Musk has also transformed daily life for many Tesla owners, pushing some to sell and galvanizing others to support the company.

In the roughly two months since the Tesla Takedown movement started, BI has spoken to over 15 Tesla owners who experienced harassment or vandalism of their vehicles.

Cybertruck owners Joshua Hazel and Christina G. said crowd members at a Mardi Gras parade threw cans of beer and chains of beads at their car as they drove through to help transport parade marshalls. Both said their vehicles sustained thousands of dollars in damages.

"We bought more Tesla shares, we're looking at adding another Tesla to the stable," Hazel, 50, said, adding that he wouldn't allow "any kind of bullying to dictate" the vehicle he drives.

In California, a Ring security doorbell captured footage of a vandal slashing a Cybertruck's tires and throwing a brick at it, shattering the windshield.

Some have even been targeted for owning a Tesla in the past. One website features a digital map with a Molotov cocktail cursor revealing information about former and current Tesla owners and DOGE employees.

"I think it's irresponsible and extra-judicial punishment for people that have nothing to do with what is going on in Washington," Victor Vescovo, one of the Tesla owners whose information was listed on the website, told BI, adding that he supports DOGE's mission.

Another, who said he was looking to sell his vehicle, said in a message that he supports "whatever civil disobedience people take out on Tesla, the company, but it's upsetting to see people glorifying violence against owners."

One Tesla owner, Ben Baker, said someone keyed his Model Y and left a crude drawing on it soon after the election.

Baker, who loves the Cybertruck and recently owned one, decided to return the vehicle because he was concerned his kids could be harassed.

Another Tesla owner, David Abrams, told BI he doesn't agree with Musk's actions, but selling his Tesla would be a "major financial hit," given that he doesn't have a car payment and the company already has his money.

He also plans to keep "Anti-Elon Tesla Club" and "I bought this before Elon went crazy" Tesla stickers on his car.

'All eyes are on upcoming Tesla earnings'

Protesters say they plan to return to Tesla dealerships for demonstrations in the coming weeks, perhaps not with the same numbers as the March 29 Tesla Takedown and not all on the same day.

There are at least 80 planned protests in the US, according to the Tesla Takedown website.

A Tesla Takedown spokesperson told BI in an email that "all eyes are on upcoming Tesla earnings on 4/22," and they're hopeful that the stock price will continue to plummet, which would "speed up the timeline for Elon Musk to be removed from the Trump Regime."

It's difficult to gauge the precise impact the protests have had on the company. Boycott movements historically don't move the needle much — and automotive industry experts have told BI they aren't sold on the idea that Tesla's declining sales are a direct result of boycotting efforts.

But the most recent quarter's delivery numbers were jarring even to those who are typically enthusiastic about Tesla. Ross Gerber, a longtime investor, and the Tesla bull Dan Ives attributed the disappointing data to brand damage.

Ryan Brinkman, a JPMorgan analyst and Tesla bear, said even he may have underestimated the impact of negative sentiment.

"Tesla's 1Q sales and production report causes us to think that — if anything — we may have underestimated the degree of consumer reaction," Brinkman wrote in a note on Friday.

Tesla has an uphill battle ahead, said David J. Reibstein, a professor of marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Tesla must either focus on rebranding or face the challenge of targeting a completely different customer base, he said.

"We now have a brand highly associated with a single individual who has a strong association with a political brand, and that has carried over to the brand itself," he said.

Musk, who navigated Tesla through challenges in the past, has told investors to "hang on to your stock," pointing to Tesla's coming "Cybercab" robotaxi and Optimus robots as future growth opportunities for the company.

Starr, the organizer, said many protest coordinators feel that Tesla locations have become a place for "Americans who give a damn about our country" to come together and voice their opinions.

"We can't all go to Washington or Mar-a-Lago, or another Trump property," she said, "but we can turn out at hundreds of Tesla stores and charging stations in a very visible expression of our disgust."

For Winter, the protests' momentum signals that the tide is turning for how people view Musk.

"I've been concerned about Elon Musk back since he was at PayPal, and then with the purchase and dismantling of Twitter," he told BI. "And now it has reared its head in a way that I think the rest of the world has woken up to."

When Kathryn Schifferle started Work Truck Solutions, a company that provides the commercial vehicle industry with inventory management, she had some of her own money and quickly raised about $400,000 from family and friends. But when she went out looking for "real money" from venture capitalists, she tells me, "I had three things going against me." She was in a rural market in Northern California. It was 2012; apps were all the rage, and she was focused on commercial trucking. "And then, of course, I was a woman, which was really the toughest part."

Solely female-founded companies receive as little as 2% of venture funding, according to PitchBook data, and just 6.5% of deals secured in 2024 went to all-female teams. Schifferle says she could tell when investors weren't really listening to her or just didn't get the vision when she pitched many firms in Silicon Valley. "You just keep looking until you find the solution," Schifferle tells me. Then she went to angel investors and raised $2.1 million in a Series A round, in part funded by Golden Seeds, an angel network focused on investing in women. She's been on a successful run since, and in March, Work Truck Solutions received a strategic investment from a private equity firm.

There's a growing cohort of female entrepreneurs who are receiving capital from angel investors. In 2023, women made up about 47% of angel investors, jumping rapidly from about 40% in 2022 and 34% in 2021, according to data from the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. Similarly, women-owned companies accounted for some 46% of firms seeking angel capital, growing from 37% in 2022 and 29% in 2021. The number of women receiving capital is high; nearly 29% of women who sought angel capital in 2023 found an investor, compared with the overall success rate of 24%.

That's far outpacing trends in venture capital. Mixed-gender founder teams made up nearly 19% of all venture capital deals in 2024, but the proportion of both women-founded and mixed-gender teams receiving venture fell, according to PitchBook. A survey from Deloitte said women made up 19% of investment partners at venture capital firms in 2022 And even when women get investments, they often get smaller checks than men. All these discrepancies raise suspicion, particularly because startups cofounded or founded by women return more money on the dollar on average than those founded by men, Boston Consulting Group research found.

Women have made gradual but steady progress in getting college degrees, taking up more space in the workforce, and moving into the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies. Now that progress is being met with backlash, and 2025 has ushered in a "masculine energy" moment. The men running some of the richest, most powerful companies in the world have slashed diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and called for more aggression in business. They're axing flexibility in the workforce and calling people back to the office — policies that can be burdensome on women, who still do the majority of domestic labor and childcare. It could lead more women to go out on their own and seek capital.

"A lot of women are really fired up. One way to do something about it — even if we can't change policy, but maybe we can help the female founder that works down the street," Angela Lee, the founder of 37 Angels, an angel investing community focused on closing the gender gap in investing and increasing diversity. "There is a sense of empowerment that angels have, that it is a small way to have change." One example: 37 Angels invested in 2021 in Hey Jane, a startup that delivers Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion pills. Hey Jane has fundraised from both angel investors and venture capital firms, and Kiki Freedman, the company's cofounder and CEO, tells me many investors were excited, but she could tell that women investors really felt a connection to the mission of providing abortion access. "There is a certain level of passion for being able to solve a problem that you have directly experienced," she says. "Our angel investors show up with a level of enthusiasm and support that is incredible."

Twenty years ago, women made up just 8.7% of the angel market and 8.7% of entrepreneurs seeking angel capital, according to data from the Center for Venture Research. But they were very successful at raising money: 33% of women who pitched angels received investments, compared with about 23% of all entrepreneurs seeking angel capital. And even as women approach parity, they could be poised to surge ahead. "I am encouraged," said Jeffrey Sohl, the director of the Center for Venture Research, who has studied the market trends for years. "I think those numbers will continue to grow."

This is all the fruit of a slowly and steadily growing presence of women in the workplace, through which they've had more funds to invest, angel investors tell me. Plus, they're no longer a novelty; younger women have now had role models for decades whom they can follow. For women, people of color, and other minority demographics, there's less appeal to stick it out in corporate structures that don't work for them and more reason to strike out on their own. "It's completely logical for them to look around and say, 'Where are the opportunities going to be best for me?'" Loretta McCarthy, a co-CEO and managing partner at Golden Seeds, says. "It could be that entrepreneurship makes sense."

Angel investing has more of a sense of community than venture capital. It's more personal than investing in the markets, and angels often serve as mentors for entrepreneurs or on their boards. The movement is more grassroots and value-driven than the individualistic nature of venture capital. The investors want to make money but may feel a closer connection to the firms they fund. "I do hear often, 'I want to invest because maybe I want to make some money, but I really want to support this woman,'" Lee tells me. "The barriers to entry are lower" when it comes to angel investing, Sohl tells me. "Not many people can get in the door" to pitch venture firms, he adds. There are some 422,000 angel investors, Sohl's research has found, compared with about 3,500 venture capital firms, with wealth increasingly concentrated among top firms as valuations of companies like OpenAI and SpaceX boom. Angel investment checks are smaller than venture capital ones (checks from angels are typically $25,000 to $100,000), and the VC market dwarfs that of angels: In 2024, venture capitalists invested an estimated $209 billion in the US, compared with about $18.6 billion from angel investors.

While women are booming in number both as angels and as entrepreneurs seeking capital, people of color are underrepresented, with companies led by Black, Asian, or Latino CEOs receiving just 12% of angel capital in 2023, a drop from 16% in 2020, research from the Angel Capital Association found. It's a trend that not only hurts underrepresented founders but also leads to missed business opportunities. People from different backgrounds know what their communities need and what people will spend money on more than a table of investors. "We need to have more people among the check writers who are reflective of the world," says Lorine Pendleton, the founder and managing partner of 125 Ventures, who started out as an angel investor. She cites Canela Media, a company that has raised $32 million according to Crunchbase to provide free TV streaming to Hispanic viewers, as an example of a highly successful firm that saw a market in the streaming sector ignored by traditional American media companies.

Another bright spot: There's more money on the way. We're about to see the greatest wealth transfer in history as the Silent Generation and baby boomers pass on their money to the tune of an estimated $84 trillion over the next two decades — $30 trillion of which is expected to go to women in the first 10 years. That's in part because women typically live longer than men and are more likely to inherit money from spouses. Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Zers are also likely to get shares of this wealth. This could be a moment when women come into unprecedented wealth and have more capital to invest, says Patrice Brickman, the founder and CEO of Inspire Access, which invests philanthropic dollars in underrepresented founders. "I have a lot of optimism around the younger generation: how they'll invest, how they'll engage with philanthropy," Brickman tells me. Millennials and Gen Zers are more value-driven with their money and highly entrepreneurial. As more funds become available, they could be a boon to creating wealth for women and women-owned businesses.

There are also challenges ahead. In the short term, angel investors could get hit negatively by macroeconomic conditions; higher interest rates and new tariffs that could spike costs might spook investors. A 2025 report from Silicon Valley Bank indicates that the bar is rising to secure funding. Companies that raise Series A funding have a median annual revenue of $2.5 million, a 75% jump from what companies typically had in 2021. The Center for Venture Research found that the number of investments and the amount of money invested by angels fell in 2023, even as the number of active angel investors grew. Venture capital is in a slump compared with the highs of 2021. But businesses run by women are often scrappy and able to bend to challenges. "Because women don't get much funding, the ones that are able to break through are going to do well," Pendleton says. "They don't have the luxury of having a lot of money." It's early, but women-led businesses are outperforming those run by men since President Donald Trump took office in January and sent markets into chaos.

The data about angel investing tells us something clear: There's a strong correlation between women writing checks and women getting checks. The trend is likely to grow as more women get money in their pockets. It's a grassroots force that might be the best way for women to get around the boys' club.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• The Sunbelt isn't quite as hot — for movers, that is — as it once was.
• The pandemic and remote work initially drove people to the South, but that trend has slowed.
• Some Midwestern states, particularly Wisconsin and Missouri, are attracting more residents.

Midwestern small towns and suburbs are in luck.

Over the last few decades, domestic migration to the Sunbelt has slowed — and the Midwest is becoming the new place to be.

In the mid-20th century, large numbers of Americans traded chillier, pricier locales in the North — also known as the Snowbelt — for balmy winters and cheaper homes across the South and Southwest, also called the Sunbelt. When the pandemic hit, the widespread adoption of remote work spurred a new surge of Americans to move to Florida, Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas, and other states across the Sunbelt.

But the COVID-related spike in southern transplants obscures a longer-term reverse trend. Over the last few decades, moves to the Sunbelt have significantly slowed. And more recently, some Midwestern and Northeastern states have been losing fewer people than they did pre-pandemic, and a few have even gained population. Rural areas in particular have seen an uptick in movers, creating a reverse Sunbelt to Snowbelt migration trend.

Just before the pandemic, Missouri and Wisconsin were experiencing net population losses, but now they're growing, a new paper from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found. Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan have seen their outflows slow post-pandemic. In the Northeast, Connecticut has also seen outward migration slow.

Two economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Sylvain Leduc, and Daniel Wilson, similarly reported last year that the warmest places in the country have seen their population growth slow while the coldest places are growing. They argue that as temperatures rise with climate change, that trend looks like it's here to stay.

"The 'pivoting' in the U.S. climate-migration correlation over the past 50 years is likely to continue, leading to a reversal of the 20th century Snow Belt to Sun Belt migration pattern," they wrote.

It's not totally clear why we're seeing this new Sunbelt-to-Snowbelt trend, but cost-of-living issues and climate change could be factors, the researchers wrote.

Housing costs have spiked in much of the Sunbelt and South, particularly over the last few years, helping slow southern migration, Riordan Frost, a research analyst at Harvard and the author of the paper, told Business Insider.

"Not only in the typically super high-cost states has affordability been an issue, but it's becoming more of an issue in the Sunbelt," Frost said.

At the same time, much of the Snowbelt, particularly more rural areas, has stayed relatively affordable. The North is also experiencing less frigid winters, while the Sunbelt grows ever steamier, making the Snowbelt increasingly attractive.

"These new migration trends should help mitigate the effects of climate change, as fewer people would be directly exposed to the negative impacts of hotter and more frequent extreme heat days," Leduc and Wilson wrote.

Zooming out, it's important to note that many Americans are staying put. Household mobility in the US has plummeted since its peak in the 1980s, falling from a rate of 18% in 1986 to 9.7% in 2019. The pandemic briefly disrupted that trend, but over the last couple of years rates of moving have continued their pre-2020 decline trajectory.

And a big part of the problem is elevated housing costs. Many can't afford to move because of elevated mortgage rates, home prices, and rents. Others fear losing the low-interest home loans they secured when interest rates fell in the early months of the pandemic.

"In general, the homeowner mobility rate has really plunged, and that's dragging down the overall mobility rate quite a bit," Frost said.

Have you moved to the Midwest — or left? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

To anyone snooping on Zillow, it appears that the two-bedroom condo at 364 Arkansas Street, in San Francisco's sunny Potrero Hill neighborhood, is not for sale. The site can only offer a hazy estimate of the home's value, basic facts about the property, and some grainy, decade-old photos from the last time it traded hands. Other popular home-listing portals — Redfin, Realtor.com, Homes.com — deliver the same result. The house is "off-market."

The condo is for sale, though, with an asking price of $999,000. I know this because I visited the website of Compass, the country's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume and the firm representing the home's seller. There, 364 Arkansas Street is tucked away from the rest of the internet, along with a vast trove of other homes listed for sale by Compass agents.

This is no accident or failure on the part of the seller's broker. Zillow and its competitors made their names by compiling home listings in one place, helping regular homebuyers navigate a once opaque market. But a monthslong fight over control of these listings, led by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin, is fracturing the housing landscape. A growing number of agents, especially those affiliated with Compass, are advising sellers to opt for a more limited advertising campaign for their homes. In some cases, this means an early release on the broker's website before sharing the listing more widely across the internet, essentially testing the waters before it technically hits the market. In other instances, agents may push their sellers to hide their homes from public view entirely, marketing them exclusively among agents who belong to the same brokerage, or within select groups of brokers known as "private listing networks." This state of play has spawned weird situations like the one in San Francisco: A home may be publicly touted for sale on one brokerage's website while lying dormant everywhere else.

The new reality poses the greatest threat to Zillow and other portals that subsist on an unfettered flow of data. Instead of scrolling happily through Zillow or Redfin, you might have to bounce from site to site in search of a home or hire the agent who seems like they have access to the most listings. Even then, you may be stuck with the feeling that more hidden homes are on the market, lingering just out of view.

The day of reckoning for search portals like Zillow is a long way off. Still, there's no denying the shift underway — in February, Reffkin told analysts that more than half of new Compass sellers were opting to "premarket" their homes within the walls of the brokerage before sharing their listings in all the usual places. Exclusive listings aren't novel, but Compass' aggressive push in that direction has roiled the rest of the industry. And it's far from the only company employing this tactic. Even Redfin, which runs a brokerage business in addition to its search portal, has threatened to adopt the Compass playbook.

"Writing blog posts and being all high and mighty and idealistic about how a marketplace ought to work, that's one approach," Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO, tells me. "And the other approach is a little more Hobbesian, which is, when you're punched in the face, punch back."

The threat to real estate portals — not to mention the house hunters and casual lurkers who love to browse them — became clear late last month. For the past half-decade, the National Association of Realtors, an industry group that effectively sets the rules for buying and selling homes in America, has been trying to stem the rise of "pocket listings," homes that are quietly advertised among a select group rather than shared widely. In 2019, NAR adopted the "clear cooperation policy," which requires agents to contribute listings to local databases within one day of marketing them publicly. The databases, known as multiple listing services, feed that info to other brokerages and search sites like Zillow, ensuring everyone can get a clear view of the homes for sale in that area. Over the past year, though, Reffkin has led the charge to get rid of the clear cooperation rule, arguing home sellers should have control over where and how their homes are marketed.

After months of debate, NAR said in late March that it would hold firm — sort of. While clear cooperation remains intact, the group also unveiled a new policy that will allow sellers to list homes on the MLS but opt out of sending their data to sites like Zillow for a period of time. These so-called "delayed marketing" listings will be available for other agents to find in the MLS and may be publicly advertised on the listing broker's website, but they'll be missing from the data feeds that send listings to the rest of the internet. And because regular buyers rarely have access to their local MLSes, they could end up relying more on agents to show them what's out there. All of this may sound nonsensical (why not get your home in front of as many people as possible?), but sellers and their agents have various reasons for slow-rolling their listings.

To get an idea of how this works in practice, take a look at Compass' proposed "three-phased marketing strategy" for sellers. The first step is to debut the home in Compass' internal database as a Private Exclusive, available only to Compass' network 34,000 agents and their "millions of clients." Unlike the MLS or a search portal like Zillow, the Compass database doesn't show whether the price has been cut or how long the house has been on the market, details that Reffkin argues can harm a seller by giving buyers more negotiating power. The next phase is what's known as a Coming Soon: The house is listed in the MLS and launched publicly on Compass.com, but isn't sent anywhere else. (That San Francisco condo I mentioned earlier is at this stage.) Some agents outside the brokerage may see it in the MLS, but again, the Compass site doesn't show price drops or days on the market. It does, however, signal that "increased competition for the listing will be coming soon when it's launched on all other sites," according to Compass. The third phase is the all-hands-on-deck approach: The listing goes live in all the typical online outlets.

Compass likens this road map to testing a product with a smaller audience before launch. A seller can tinker with the price, gauge the reception among Compass clients, and see if they can get a buyer to bite. A limited release may also appeal to sellers concerned about privacy. Reffkin and other Compass leaders have campaigned on a platform of "seller choice," the idea that a homeowner should have full control over how their home is marketed rather than surrender it to other platforms like Zillow.

"With NAR introducing a new MLS policy to 'expand choice for consumers,' they acknowledged the clear cooperation policy restricted home seller choice," Reffkin said in a statement after NAR's announcement last month. "Expanding choice means that NAR is still not letting homeowners choose precisely how to market their homes, but this is a small step in the right direction."

Those on the opposite side of the debate say most sellers just want to sell quickly for top dollar, and they argue sharing homes everywhere is the best way to achieve that. Even if a buyer offers you a dream price during that first phase in Compass' playbook, who's to say that a Zillow-fueled bidding war wouldn't deliver an even greater sum? Bret Weinstein, the founder and CEO of the Denver brokerage Guide Real Estate, says he can already envision the lawsuits from aggrieved sellers claiming they were duped into this "exclusive" marketing strategy.

"You're a few phone calls away from someone saying, 'Hey, I would have paid X amount for this house if I had known about it,'" Weinstein tells me.

Buyers, on the other hand, may miss out on their dream home if they choose the wrong agent or fail to scour every website. Buyers' agents may also be able to better justify their commissions if they can unlock a corner of the market for their clients, showing them homes they can't find anywhere else.

Both sides of the aisle may claim they're crusading on behalf of consumers, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in the industry arriving at this debate with a neutral point of view.

"Everybody's got a financial bias," says Mike DelPrete, a real-estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. "At the end of the day, everyone involved has a financial dog in this fight."

The lifeblood of the real estate industry is inventory: the properties listed for sale every day by ordinary homeowners. "Listings are fuel," says Stephen Capezza, a real estate consultant who's held executive roles at both Zillow and the brokerage firm Side. Search portals draw millions of visitors each month with home listings supplied by brokerages and the MLSes. The portals then make their money by turning leads — customers who signal their interest in finding an agent or getting a mortgage — into cash through a referral system. Let's say you find a home on Zillow and click the buttons to "contact agent" or "request a tour." In many cases, Zillow won't connect you with the listing agent who represents the seller. Instead, the company will pass your information along to another agent who pays for access to Zillow's user base, either by shelling out a monthly advertising fee or promising a percentage of their commission, sometimes as much as 40%. Last year, more than 70% of Zillow's revenue — about $1.6 billion — came from its referral programs and other services for real estate professionals, annual filings show. That dollar figure was up 10% from the year prior, which the company attributed to an increase in revenue per visit and the number of visits.

The free flow of listings doesn't just benefit the giant search portals. It also levels the playing field for smaller brokerages or independent agents, allowing those with limited inventory to compete with the big guys. If large brokerages exert greater control over listings, hoarding them on their own websites or shopping them around internally, they stand to gain a clear edge in the marketplace. They can convince agents to come into the fold and sway clients by touting their exclusive inventory. They can also monetize leads through their own websites rather than handing those opportunities to another search portal. Even if most of those homes eventually go public — Compass says 94% of its exclusive listings end up on the MLS — the company can still lure customers by offering them a first look. In a tight market where every day matters, that's a seductive sell.

Keeping listings in-house could lead to big bucks for mega brokers. DelPrete estimates that Compass stands to generate $3.5 million in revenue for every 100 agents recruited, $1.1 million for every 100 closed leads funneled through its website, and $570,000 for every 100 "double-ended deals," sales in which Compass agents represent both the buyer and seller. And since brokerages typically take a cut of every commission, DelPrete says the companies could use their exclusive inventory to increase the percentage their agents hand over. If Compass could claim even 1% more of its agents' commissions, the company could haul in an extra $56 million in annual profit, according to DelPrete's analysis.

"A brokerage's job is to provide value to their agents," DelPrete tells me. "Right now, Compass is providing value to agents."

There is a chance that these changes will only register as a minor disruption for Zillow and the like. Perhaps Compass can sway some sellers to pursue their premarketing strategy, but most homeowners expect their homes to end up on the big search portals because that's where the buyers are.

"I mean, shoot, there are 'SNL' skits on Zillow," Capezza tells me. "It's synonymous with real estate. It's going to take more than a great debate, a couple changes to clear cooperation, to change consumer behavior."

Zillow makes a similar argument: Just follow the consumers. For now, they're scrolling through the search portals.

"It's clear what consumers want: open access to listings when they're searching for a home and exposure to the greatest number of buyers when they're selling," Errol Samuelson, Zillow's chief industry development officer, said in an emailed statement. "Companies like Zillow that deliver for consumers — in partnership with great real estate industry professionals — will succeed, not the companies putting their own interests ahead of the needs of home buyers and sellers."

But there are also clear reasons for concern for Zillow, Redfin, and their ilk. Four years ago, DelPrete wrote a blog post outlining the biggest threats to the search portals. Exclusive inventory was No. 1. He likened the situation to the fiercely competitive world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix and Hulu have plowed billions of dollars into exclusive content. You may turn to Max on Sunday nights for your "White Lotus" fix, but only Netflix can satisfy your "Love Is Blind" cravings. We're stuck paying for all these different platforms because each offers its own private garden of movies and shows.

"When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow."

Just shy of 10,000 Compass listings are currently in the premarketing phases, advertised as Coming Soon or held closely as Private Exclusives. On the one hand, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of homes for sale on Zillow right now. But other large brokerages either have their own such programs or have promised to follow suit if this turns into an all-out battle for inventory. The 10 largest brands accounted for about 60% of US home sales volume last year, according to data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages. If even a few lean heavily into exclusive listings, they could trigger a domino effect across the industry.

The online search portals ushered in what you might call a Golden Age of Home Search: Instead of relying on agents to guide them through the market's offerings, buyers could take matters into their own hands. It wasn't perfect. Pocket listings have always existed in some form or another, and rules encouraging cooperation among agents are notoriously difficult to enforce. But the behind-the-scenes plumbing of the MLSes gave homebuyers the ability to navigate the market with ease, comforted by the notion that they were seeing pretty much everything out there. That era may be fading.

"When you think about the future, you have to look at what's happening now," DelPrete tells me. "This is happening. It has been happening. And it's turning into a significant competitive advantage for Compass."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• A new survey shows young Americans feel uneasy about AI.
• Despite their concerns, Gen Z knows AI is here to stay.
• Survey respondents want AI training but say schools aren't prepared.

Young Americans feel uneasy about AI — and a new survey shows they're not getting much help from their schools.

Four in 10 Gen Zers say they feel anxious about using AI, according to a Gallup poll by the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures. Nearly half worry it's hurting their ability to think critically.

At the same time, Gen Z knows AI isn't going anywhere. About 44% say they'll need to know how to use it for their future careers.

The survey looked at how Gen Z uses AI in daily life and how they think it'll shape the future. It found that while nearly half of young people use generative AI weekly, many say they're doing so "without a map."

The findings are based on a web survey last month of nearly 3,500 13- to 28-year-olds living in the US.

Gen Z's feelings about AI echo broader national concerns. A separate survey by Pew Research Center last year found that more than half of US adults say they're more concerned than excited about AI's impact on the country over the next 20 years.

According to Pew, about 43% of adults said they think AI will harm them, while one-third said they weren't sure what to expect.

Only 23% of adults think it'll have a positive impact on how people do their jobs.

That survey was conducted in August last year with over 5,000 people ages 18 and over.

Gen Z wants a road map — and schools need to step up

Despite the clear demand for AI know-how, there's a gap between what Gen Z students want and what schools offer.

While over half of students think schools should be required to teach AI skills, 28% say their schools explicitly allow AI use. Nearly half either don't know their school's policy or say it doesn't have one.

Even when policies do exist, they're often confusing. Just one in three students said their school's rules around AI were "extremely clear."

That uncertainty is leading students to avoid AI altogether. About 47% said they skipped using AI for schoolwork because they weren't sure if it was allowed.

"AI is only becoming more embedded in the future of work and learning, and schools will play a critical role in helping students navigate it," said Stephanie Marken, a senior partner at Gallup, in a press release on Tuesday. "These findings point to a clear opportunity for educators to guide Gen Z in using AI with purpose and confidence."

In response to the demand for AI education, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School recently unveiled a new MBA major and undergraduate concentration in AI.

Faculty began discussing a new AI curriculum last year, Wharton professor Giles Hooker told Business Insider.

"We are at a critical turning point where practical AI knowledge is urgently needed," said Eric Bradlow, the vice dean of AI and Analytics at Wharton, in a university press release announcing the changes.

In China's capital, Beijing, AI education is compulsory for students — including elementary schoolers.

Starting this fall, schools in the city must provide at least eight hours of AI instruction per academic year, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission said last month.

• BI looked at jobs that paid above the national median and were expected to increase employment from 2023 to 2033.
• A few high-paying healthcare and tech jobs are projected to have robust job growth.
• Most of the jobs that made the top 20 on our list had a median pay of over $100,000 a year.

Developers, nurses, accountants, and lawyers could be good occupations if you're looking for work with strong expected demand and typically high pay.

Business Insider analyzed high-paying jobs with potentially strong job growth based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. We took the geometric mean of jobs that paid above the median annual wage in May 2024, $49,500, and jobs that are projected to grow from 2023 to 2033. We excluded catchall job titles because we wanted to focus on occupations that were specific. The higher the geometric mean, the higher the occupation ranked on our list.

Several tech jobs, including data scientists, and a few healthcare jobs, including registered nurses, made the top 20. Most of the top gigs had median annual wages of six figures, and the top eight are projected to increase by more than 100,000 workers.

Here are the jobs that made the top 20.

20. Human resources specialists

Projected job increase: 74,200

Median wage: $72,910

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

19. Personal financial advisors

Projected job increase: 55,000

Median wage: $102,140

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

18. Postsecondary health specialties teachers

Projected job increase: 53,300

Median wage: $105,620

Education typically needed: Doctoral or professional degree

17. Market research analysts and marketing specialists

Projected job increase: 74,900

Median wage: $76,950

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

16. Physician assistants

Projected job increase: 43,700

Median wage: $133,260

Education typically needed: Master's degree

15. Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers

Projected job increase: 102,000

Median wage: $57,440

Education typically needed: Postsecondary nondegree award

14. Computer systems analysts

Projected job increase: 56,500

Median wage: $103,790

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

13. Lawyers

Projected job increase: 44,200

Median wage: $151,160

Education typically needed: Doctoral or professional degree

12. Project management specialists

Projected job increase: 69,900

Median wage: $100,750

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

11. Information security analysts

Projected job increase: 59,100

Median wage: $124,910

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

10. Accountants and auditors

Projected job increase: 91,400

Median wage: $81,680

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

9. Data scientists

Projected job increase: 73,100

Median wage: $112,590

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

8. Management analysts

Projected job increase: 107,900

Median wage: $101,190

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

7. Nurse practitioners

Projected job increase: 135,500

Median wage: $129,210

Education typically needed: Master's degree

6. Computer and information systems managers

Projected job increase: 106,900

Median wage: $171,200

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

5. Registered nurses

Projected job increase: 197,200

Median wage: $93,600

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

4. Medical and health services managers

Projected job increase: 160,600

Median wage: $117,960

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

3. General and operations managers

Projected job increase: 210,400

Median wage: $102,950

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

2. Financial managers

Projected job increase: 138,300

Median wage: $161,700

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

1. Software developers

Projected job increase: 303,700

Median wage: $133,080

Education typically needed: Bachelor's degree

• Trump is doubling down on tariffs on China, introducing fresh revisions to levies on the country.
• In an executive order on Tuesday, he raised reciprocal tariffs on China from 34% to 84%.
• He also tripled the levies and postal fees on small packages under $800.

President Donald Trump made two major changes to his levies on China as trade tensions between the US and China continue to escalate.

In an executive order on Tuesday, the president outlined the two new changes — raising tariffs on China to 104% and tripling tariffs on low-cost parcels.

The order came hours before Trump's reciprocal tariffs took effect on Wednesday morning. He first announced the tariffs on April 2, a day he's been calling "Liberation Day."

He imposed a baseline 10% levy on goods from 185 countries, with some countries hit harder. Some countries were hit harder than others — the European Union was hit was a 20% tariff, Vietnam with 46%, and Lesotho with 50%.

Raising tariffs on China from 34% to 84%

Trump's executive order on Tuesday wrote that, as of Wednesday, the reciprocal tariffs on China would be raised from the 34% he announced on April 2, to 84%.

This is on top of 20% tariffs already in place — bringing the total tariffs on China to 104%.

This change is in "recognition of the fact that the PRC has announced that it will retaliate against the United States," per the executive order.

This is the largest escalation between the two countries in recent months, matching and surpassing Trump's campaign trail promise of imposing tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese goods if elected.

Trump first imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods in February before increasing them to 20% in March.

Both times, China retaliated quickly to Trump's tariffs. In February, China imposed a 10% tariff on crude oil and agricultural equipment and a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas.

In March, China introduced a 10% tariff on US soybeans, pork, and beef imports and a 15% tariff on chicken and cotton imports.

Following Trump's April 2 announcement, China hit back with its own 34% tariffs against the US, which will take effect on Thursday. As of press time, China has yet to respond to the latest 104% tariffs.

China's Commerce Ministry said Tuesday that Trump's tariffs were "completely groundless" and a "typical unilateral bullying practice."

"China will never accept this. If the US insists on its own way, China will fight to the end," the commerce ministry said in a statement.

Increasing de minimis tariffs

On April 2, Trump announced via an executive order that he would remove the de minimis tariff exemption loophole for packages costing less than $800 from China and Hong Kong.

He said a 30% levy would be imposed on these packages from May 2. But on Tuesday, Trump tripled it to 90%.

According to the Tuesday executive order, he also increased the per postel item fee on goods entering the US after May 2 and before June 1 from the planned $25 to $75.

After June 1, the fee was originally supposed to be $50 — but it's now $150, per the executive order.

Representatives for Trump did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.