• An unvaccinated child in Texas died from measles, with statewide vaccination rates trending down.
• Texas faces a measles outbreak with 124 cases, mostly among unvaccinated children.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic, is the new US Health Secretary amid the outbreak.

A child in West Texas has died from measles, marking the first reported fatality from the disease in the US in nearly a decade, state health officials announced on Wednesday.

The "school-aged child" who was unvaccinated died at a children's hospital in Lubbock after being hospitalized last week and testing positive for measles, according to a press release from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The death comes as Texas battles a growing measles outbreak that has surged from a handful of cases to at least 124 infections since early February, mostly among children, state health officials said. At least 18 people have been hospitalized so far, most of whom are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Another nine cases have been confirmed in eastern New Mexico close to its border with Texas, bringing the total to more than 130 across the two states, per Texas DSHS.

Measles, a highly contagious airborne virus, has a fatality rate of one to three deaths per 1,000 reported cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lara Anton, senior press officer of the Texas Department of State Health Services, told Business Insider that it is very difficult to stop the spread of measles. Not only does an unvaccinated person have a 90 percent chance of being infected if exposed, an infected person can be contagious without knowing it for up to four days, Anton said.

"When people register their children for school in kindergarten through seventh grade, they provide updates to us and the school districts on the vaccination coverage in their district," Anton said. "Generally the coverage level statewide has dipped down in recent years."

Measles death is uncommon. The last reported measles death of an adult in the US occurred in 2015 when a Washington woman contracted it at a health clinic, CDC data shows. Anton said a child also died of measles in Texas in 2018.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic, was confirmed as US Health Secretary this month despite opposition from medical professionals and some members of Congress. He has, however, pledged to maintain existing vaccination programs.

"We are following the measles epidemic every day," Kennedy said during a meeting with President Donald Trump's cabinet at the White House. "Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year there were 16. So, it's not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year."

He also mentioned that two people had died in the outbreak, but the Texas DSHS was only able to confirm one death so far.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• Trump fired General Charles Q. Brown Jr. and nominated Lt. Gen. Dan Caine as Joint Chiefs chairman.
• Caine's background includes combat experience, entrepreneurship, and roles in national security.
• Experts say Caine may be missing important qualifications compared to past picks for chairman.

President Donald Trump has announced his intention to nominate venture capitalist and retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan "Razin" Caine as the new Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, after firing General Charles Q. Brown Jr. from the job Friday night.

While Trump praised Caine as a "national security expert" and "warfighter," he would be an unusual choice for the country's highest-ranking military leader.

The former fighter pilot is "a serial entrepreneur and investor," according to his military biography. He is now listed as a partner at Shield Capital, a venture capital firm.

Dan Caine and Shield Capital did not respond to requests for comment.

Donald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, told Business Insider that it was unusual for a president to appoint a retired general to head the joint chiefs, especially one with less experience.

"Experience plus trust are the keys," Kettl said. "A gap in either can create problems in shaping policy and in leading the armed services."

General Brown had previously served as Commander of Pacific Air Forces, US Air Forces Central Command, and as Chief of Staff of the Air Force, with more than 3,100 flight hours as a command pilot. The four-star general and former fighter pilot was also the first African American to lead a branch of the US Armed Forces.

Mark Cancian, a retired colonel and senior adviser with the CSIS Defense and Security Department, said Caine may be missing important qualifications: he was a three star general and did not serve at the highest levels before retiring, unlike Brown who was Chief of Staff of the Air Force before being promoted to Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, based on regulations, Caine could still hold this position legally if the president signs a waiver.

"It's not like Caine is a junior person, but that step to four star is a big one," said Cancian, "He will need to get up to speed and change his perspective from what it had been before, which was more Air Force focused, and that will be an extra challenge though not impossible."

Cancian said the only time he could think someone coming out of retirement to be appointed chairman of Joint Chiefs would be when John F. Kennedy appointed General Maxwell Taylor to the position in 1962. Maxwell, however, was already a four-star general, and his predecessor was not fired.

"The US military is ultimately under civilian control and the President is commander in chief of the military," said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, "So while it is not common to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the president has that authority."

Who is Dan Caine?

Caine graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1990 with a degree in economics and later earned a master’s in air warfare from the American Military University.

He would go on to log over 2,800 hours flying the F-16 fighter jet, including over 150 combat hours, and later served as an associate director for military affairs at the CIA.

Trump has long expressed admiration for Caine. In a 2019 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, he recalled meeting Caine in Iraq, when Caine told him that the Islamic State group could be destroyed in as little as a week instead of years.

"'We're only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,'" Trump said Caine told him. '"But if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over — from the base that you're right on, right now, sir. They won't know what the hell hit them.'"

"General 'Razin' Caine was — he's some general. He's a real general, not a television general," Trump added at an appearance in Miami last Wednesday, where he criticized the current military leadership.

Announcing his nomination on Truth Social, Trump described Caine as "an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a 'warfighter' with significant interagency and special operations experience." Trump also credited Caine for the "complete annihilation" of ISIS during his first term.

Shield Capital announced in January that Caine had joined its team as a "venture partner."

In a press release at the time, the tech-focused firm described Caine as a "distinguished leader" who would bring both military and entrepreneurial experience to the position.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Caine has held a number of private sector roles, including cofounding Texas-based private airline RISE Air.

• Elon Musk's DOGE had emails sent to federal workers requesting a list of what they did last week.
• The decision frustrated federal workers, many of whom risk losing their jobs.
• A career coach told BI that DOGE's approach is "fear-based management."

Elon Musk's management style has once again sparked intense debate, this time for asking federal employees to respond to an email with what they accomplished in the past week — or risk losing their jobs.

Musk, a special government employee who is the face of the DOGE White House office, is known for his disruptive leadership style at Tesla, SpaceX, and X.

He is now applying those same tactics to federal operations — with mixed reactions from business leaders and government officials.

"This method is not just ineffective, it's harmful," George Carrillo, a former Oregon government executive, told Business Insider.

Carrillo, the CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council, previously worked as a program executive at the Oregon Department of Human Services.

"Overloading employees with unrealistic demands creates instability and causes talented workers to leave, which risks disrupting the continuity and expertise the government depends on to function," he said. "I've seen firsthand how these kinds of actions can harm team dynamics and reduce public confidence."

On Saturday, federal employees received an email asking them to respond with a five-bullet-point summary of their work in the last week and to copy their manager.

"Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," Musk said in a post on X before the emails went out.

The emails appeared to be in response to President Donald Trump, who earlier said on TruthSocial that Musk should be "more aggressive."

The email resembled one Musk sent when he took over Twitter — now rebranded as X — in 2022. Following the acquisition, Musk instructed engineers to print out their latest software code for review as a way to evaluate their skills.

Some business leaders said DOGE's approach could yield results, despite the negative reaction.

Neal K. Shah, CareYaya Health Technologies CEO, told BI that the approach shows a "commitment to rapid organizational improvement" and has "unique advantages over traditional downsizing."

Shah said DOGE's method "slices through typical government delays caused by bureaucracy" and "directly empowers employees to control the documentation of their worth."

He also said it gives leadership real-time productivity data, which could lead to long-term benefits like better documentation of work-related tasks, efficiency, and boosting public trust through "demonstrated effectiveness."

Other management experts, however, said the email demonstrated a lack of empathy and could hurt morale, ultimately reducing efficiency. Federal employees told BI that DOGE's email left them frustrated and fearful of losing their jobs. One told BI the action felt like "harassment."

Lisa Rigoli, a human resources strategist and leadership coach who founded Elements of Change, a group focused on HR consultation and leadership coaching, said the email lacked emotional intelligence and prioritized "efficiency over human-centered leadership."

"This is a clear example of how leaders are becoming increasingly disconnected from the emotional impact of their decisions," Rigoli said. "Business schools and leadership programs do a great job preparing executives intellectually, but very few equip them for the emotional demands of leadership."

Tamanna Ramesh, founder of professional training service Spark Careers, said such tactics could damage staff morale.

"Requiring employees to justify their jobs through a weekly report — under the threat of termination — is fear-based management. It doesn't drive innovation or efficiency. It fuels resentment, disengagement, and quiet quitting," Ramesh told BI. "Accountability matters, but when employees feel like they're on trial rather than trusted contributors, performance suffers."

Ramesh said performance tracking is common, but the "level of public scrutiny and punitive framing is rare."

"This approach ignores psychological safety, a key driver of high-performing teams," Ramesh said.

Rigoli told BI that DOGE's email is part of a "growing trend where leaders handle layoffs with cold efficiency rather than intentional leadership.

"We ask employees to be loyal, transparent, and committed, yet when organizations make cuts, they often default to impersonal mass communication," Rigoli said.

"Efficiency isn't about arbitrary cuts or applying pressure for the sake of it," Carrillo told BI. "Successful organizations build trust, foster collaboration, and create thoughtful strategies to meet their goals while maintaining staff morale."

He suggested making "informed' and "data-driven decisions."

"Before considering layoffs, DOGE must conduct a comprehensive workforce analysis to pinpoint priorities and address staffing gaps," Carrillo said.

• Some businesses say moving supply chains out of China more costly than absorbing Trump's tariffs.
• Companies are negotiating with manufacturers to keep costs down and reduce consumer pain.
• A supply chain expert said uncertainty in policies may pose bigger challenges in business planning.

The Trump administration's tariffs on goods imported from China have left businesses wondering if they should move their supply chains elsewhere.

But some say the cost of finding new suppliers and relocating production isn't feasible.

"It can be way more expensive to move your supply chain than to eat the tariff," said Michael Wieder, cofounder and CMO of Lalo, a baby product brand with most of its supply chain in China, told Business Insider. "We don't want to react on things that are going to end up being a waste of money and a waste of time."

Wieder said products for children tend to be more regulated for safety reasons, so he would not be able to quickly replace established factories and engineers that meet the requirements.

"We're going to work with our suppliers to negotiate our costs down where we can to make sure it doesn't impact our business. But the tariffs are inflationary, there's no doubt about it," he said.

Trump issued an executive order on February 1 that any products from the PRC, as outlined in the Federal Register notice, will legally face an extra 10% duty on top of the regular rate. He cited China's failure "to stem the ultimate source of many illicit drugs distributed in the United States" as a reason for the tariff hike.

While the majority of drugs seized at the border come from Mexico, the US International Trade Commission estimated in a 2019 briefing that 97 percent of fentanyl in the US is manufactured using precursor chemicals from China.

While former President Joe Biden maintained most of the tariffs on Chinese imports that Trump implemented during his first administration and increased tariffs up to 100% on targeted products like electric vehicles and solar panels, he also maintained exemptions for categories of healthcare items like wheelchairs and baby products. These exemptions are, however, not mentioned in Trump's latest executive order on China.

"We're doing everything in our power to urge the administration to keep those exemptions," said Wieder, "It's not right to drive costs up on the things that parents need to buy for their children and for their babies. But we have our blinders on, we don't control what's going on in Washington."

Other businesses say they can't move their supply chain out of China without discontinuing key products, and even then, the move couldn't happen anytime soon.

Jimmy Zollo, founder of adaptive wear brand Joe&Bella, said many of their highly specialized products, like magnetized and dual-track zippers that could be extended to the ankle, simply could not be sourced outside China. This could impact their main customer base: people living with cognitive changes and limited mobility.

"Changing a manufacturer isn't just like packing up a suitcase and moving on over," said Zollo, "It'll probably take several months of back and forth if they can even find the right fabric, zipper, and dye — compound that with the fact that there are countless American businesses who are doing what we're doing, which is trying to find see what other potential partners exist out there in the market."

Aside from ordering more of their more popular products at the end of 2024, Zollo is now negotiating costs with manufacturers to reduce the impacts of the tariff because his customers likely don't have the level of disposable income that would allow them to pay higher prices.

"At this point, there's risk in staying, there's risk in going, there's risk in not doing anything," he added.

Who will pay the price

Consumers likely won't be receiving the full impact of the tariffs because every stakeholder along the supply chain absorbs a portion of the shock, from the supplier, manufacturer, transporter, to the final retailer, said Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics.

However, the speed at which policies are being rolled out and retracted may pose a bigger challenge, Sheffi said.

"The main problem is nobody knows what to do because one day we have 25 percent on Mexico and Canada, and then the next day it's paused for a month," said Sheffi, "Things are being put on and off seemingly haphazardly, so it's hard to plan. What business hates more than anything is uncertainty."

Sheffi added the cost of moving a supply chain could be "prohibitive," and the business strategy now is to wait and see.

A source familiar with the situation at US Customs and Border Protection said they do not know whether previously tariff-exempt imports from China remain free of duties. Due to the large number of queries they have received, they are still working through details. The Office of the US Trade Representative did not respond to requests for comment.

• Delta is giving $30,000 to every passenger who was on the flight that crash-landed on Monday.
• Delta could still be on the hook for more damages if passengers sue.
• All 80 people on board survived the incident.

Delta Air Lines has said it will be giving $30,000 to every passenger who was on board the flight that flipped upside down when it landed in Toronto on Monday.

Morgan Durrant, a spokesperson for Delta, told Business Insider on Wednesday that the "gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights."

It's unclear when and how passengers will be able to claim the money from Delta.

Legal experts told BI that while Delta's payout is an act of goodwill, the airline could be on the hook for further damages if passengers choose to sue for more compensation.

Jae Woon Lee, an aviation law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, pointed out to BI that Delta has an advance payment clause. Under that clause, Delta offers an advance payment of at least $21,000 if a passenger dies. It does not specify a minimum payment in the case of injury.

"The $30,000 advance payment offer by Delta is a good start in the right direction, as long as passengers do not have to give up any of their rights for full and fair compensation in the future," said Robert Hedrick, an aviation accident attorney from the Seattle-based Aviation Law Group. Hedrick is taking passenger cases from the Delta flight.

Erin R. Applebaum, an aviation accident attorney in New York, said such payments are "fairly typical in major aviation accidents."

Applebaum and Hedrick said passengers should consult with an aviation attorney before accepting the money to ensure it comes with no strings attached.

Both attorneys said Delta's payout isn't taxable under US law, though Hedrick said there might be some exceptions depending on the circumstance.

Delta Flight 4819 — which was operated by Delta's subsidiary, Endeavor Air — crash-landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday. The flight from Minneapolis was carrying 76 passengers and four crew members.

All 80 people on board survived. The wreckage of the plane was removed from the airport on Wednesday evening.

"Our most pressing priority remains taking care of all customers and Endeavor crew members who were involved," Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Montreal Convention

Alan Tan, an aviation law professor at the National University of Singapore, told BI the payment was "appropriate as an advance gesture, particularly for passengers who have minimal or no injuries."

He added that passengers could still sue Delta for more compensation if they could prove loss or damage.

Tan said the rights of Delta's passengers were protected under the Montreal Convention, an international agreement that holds airlines liable for any physical injuries or deaths that occur on international flights. Both the US and Canada have signed the agreement.

Under the Montreal Convention, the $30,000 isn't a recognition of Delta's liability, Tan said.

How Singapore Airlines handled its turbulence incident in May

In May, a Singapore Airlines flight traveling from London to Singapore was hit with severe turbulence while flying over Myanmar. Dozens of passengers were injured in the incident, and one passenger died of a suspected heart attack.

Singapore Airlines gave every passenger a refund and offered $10,000 to passengers with minor injuries.

Singapore Airlines said it would meet with those who sustained serious injuries and "discuss a compensation offer to meet each of their specific circumstances." The airline said it would also offer them an advance payment of $25,000 to "address their immediate needs."

"This will be part of the final compensation that these passengers will receive," Singapore Airlines wrote in a statement in June.

February 20, 11:30 p.m. — This story has been updated with comments from Jae Woon Lee, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

• Yoel Roth is leading Match Group's initiative to curb inappropriate messages on dating apps.
• The company uses AI to flag abusive messages, promoting respectful dating interactions.
• Match's CEO said safety and security are good for business.

Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, is trying to reduce inappropriate messages sent on Match Group's dating platforms, like Tinder and Hinge.

The company is working on what Spencer Rascoff, its new CEO, called "an ecosystem cleanup." On an earnings call earlier this month, Rascoff said safety and security are good for business.

Roth joined Match a year ago as its vice president of trust and safety, responsible for overseeing content moderation across its dating apps. He formerly led the team that set rules for what was allowed on Twitter but quit shortly after Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.

Last month, Meta ignited a firestorm when it announced it would end professional fact-checking in the US. But Roth, who dealt with online harassment himself after speaking out against Musk's Twitter, said Match is "doubling down on safety."

"For men especially, a big part of our safety approach is focused on driving behavioral change so that we can make dating experiences safer and more respectful," Roth told the Financial Times.

Using AI tools, Match can flag messages that could be perceived as abusive or overtly sexual. Match asks users who type what Roth called "off-color" messages if they would like to reconsider — and a fifth do, the FT reported.

The company found "a real need and opportunity to help people understand the norms and behaviors that go along with respectful and consensual dating," Roth said.

Due to dating app fatigue, women are also creating their own alternatives. A journalist with no previous event experience created the Bored Of Dating Apps events, where single people can meet in real life and form deeper connections, which took off in the UK and the US.

Between May 2023 and the end of 2024, more than half a million users left Tinder, a report from the UK-based online behavior research group Ofcom said.

Bumble and Hinge also reported losing 368,000 and 131,000 users, respectively, in the same period. Bumble's stock has slumped 37% in the past year, and Match is down 7.7%.

Match Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Isaac Gemal created WikiTok, an infinite scrolling Wikipedia, when a viral tweet triggered demand for its creation.
• He says he resisted adding algorithms to WikiTok to help people explore the internet more freely.
• He wants to collaborate with Wikipedia to help modernize the nonprofit site.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Isaac Gemal, a civil and software engineer based in New York who is the creator of WikiTok. His identity was verified by Business Insider. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I saw an engineering challenge and I got to work.

A guy tweeted the idea of an infinite scrolling Wikipedia on one webpage. Then I realized that the initial tweet was going viral, and there was a demand for this kind of thing. People would actually love to see this, and I could build it.

It was 12:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I decided to stay up until 2 a.m. to do this. I code primarily with Claude and different AI tools. I wanted it to be like TikTok — it should be responsive on mobile and desktop, and it should work scrolling with your thumb or cursor. A couple of hours later, WikiTok was born.

All the code is public and on my GitHub. It's only a few hundred lines of code, so there's no backend, and it's not very sophisticated. It was more about getting it out as fast as possible and timing it right with all the other tweets asking for it.

My estimate is that around half a million people have interacted with the site so far. I ran out of analytics credits with Vercel so it has been some days since I checked, but it last peaked at 200k in total.

I pushed back against requests for an algorithm

I didn't create WikiTok initially to fight the algorithm. I only pushed back when people started asking for one.

I have seen how powerful these algorithms are, how they shape our lives, how they tell us what to watch, what to eat, what to read, and it's nice to have a little corner on the internet where we don't have to worry about that.

Trends tend to go in cycles. About 15 years ago, StumbleUpon was really popular. It was a website. You clicked on it, and it gave you a random website on the internet. That used to be super trendy. I think people are starting to get a little tired of curated algorithms, and they want something where they can explore the internet a bit more freely, a bit more randomly, and find cool websites they never would've found.

When you make a project and make the code public on GitHub, anyone can review it and comment. People can start creating issues or proposing changes to the code, and I had some people say, "You got to start adding recommendations." I started getting emails and Twitter messages about that, and there's just this influx of people who have this grand vision of some sort of monetized Wikipedia app.

I chatted with Wikipedia, and that's not their thing. They're not like Google or Facebook, and that's just not how they operate. Making a monetized app would feel very wrong, and it would probably be a violation of Wikipedia's creative common license.

I would like to collaborate with Wikipedia

Right now, WikiTok is a progressive web app, which means you can download it as a mini stand-alone, like a hybrid between an app and a website. But regarding the future, I've chatted with Wikipedia, and they were delightful. I would love to collaborate with them officially and do more to help them modernize Wikipedia.

The thing about Wikipedia is that they're really lean. They don't have the budget that Google, Facebook, or Amazon have, so they don't get as much opportunity to build and launch things aggressively. Wikipedia already has a random button so I can just use their code and I can give that a cooler format. I would be thrilled to be able to help shape it, especially with AI taking over information. It would be nice to have the information without AI somewhere, and that somewhere appears to be Wikipedia.

There are clones of WikiTok that are popping up, which is a little bit unfortunate because I can't effectively distance myself from them. While some of them are OK, some of them don't seem as great. I have a donation link on the about section of WikiTok if anyone would like to support me, but that is all.

Wikimedia did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Google and Apple have updated the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for US users.
• President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating the change to "honor American greatness."
• Users will see their local name when it varies between countries; everyone else sees both names.

Apple Maps has followed Google Maps in updating the Gulf of Mexico's name for US-based users following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month.

As of Monday night, when users in the US search for "Gulf of Mexico" in Google Maps, they are presented with a result for "Gulf of America." As of Tuesday evening, the same change occurred in Apple Maps.

For people outside the US, the results populate as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)."

The president signed an executive order on his first day in office to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to change the name of the highest mountain peak in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley. As of press time, the name "Denali" had not yet been changed on Google Maps or Apple Maps.

The change in Google Maps was expected. Google said last month that it had "a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

The company said it would update Maps in the US after the Geographic Names Information System made the changes. The GNIS, a database of more than 2 million physical and cultural features throughout the US and its territories, standardizes geographic names for federal use.

Trump's executive order gave the secretary of the interior 30 days to implement the name changes and update the GNIS to reflect them.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama changed the name of the mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali in honor of local Native groups' names for the Alaskan mountain.

Trump's order said that the surrounding national park area would keep the name Denali National Park and Preserve and that the secretary of the interior "shall work with Alaska Native entities and state and local organizations to adopt names for landmarks to honor the history and culture of the Alaskan people."

The renaming at the federal level has been a complex undertaking for government agencies and offices.

Historically, the Board on Geographic Names and the US Geological Survey would act immediately to update the GNIS. The Department of State would update the Geographic Names Server, which defines names of geographic features outside the US. But it's up to each agency and office to update their own websites accordingly.

Outside the US, other countries may not recognize the name changes.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last month that "for us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico."

Google previously said that when official names vary between countries, Maps users will see the official name used in their country, while the rest of the world will see both names. The company said this was consistent with long-standing policy.

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Canada and Mexico have secured a 30-day reprieve on tariffs from US President Donald Trump.
• In exchange for a tariff pause, Canada and Mexico agreed to boost border security and curb illegal activities.
• A 10% tariff on Chinese goods was not delayed, prompting China to slap retaliatory tariffs on the US.

US President Donald Trump has just shown the world how the Art of the Deal works.

In a matter of days, Trump threatened three key partners — China, Canada, and Mexico — with tariffs over illegal immigration and fentanyl. The threats paid off for the short term: He got a temporary deal with Canada and Mexico.

"President Trump has started his second term with his tariff guns blazing, and so far it has worked extremely well in achieving his policy goals," Rajiv Biswas, the CEO of Asia-Pacific Economics, a Singapore-based research firm, told Business Insider.

On Saturday, Trump, using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, imposed a 25% tariff on most goods from Canada and Mexico.

The tariffs were initially set to take effect on Tuesday. But after an early morning stock market downturn on Monday, talks with Canada and Mexico resulted in a 30-day tariff delay.

In exchange for the pause, Mexico agreed to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border to curb illegal activities. Canada agreed to a set of initiatives targeting drug trafficking, money laundering, and border security.

"Mexico and Canada have immediately capitulated to the threat of US tariffs and agreed to enforce tougher border security measures, which is what President Trump had clearly requested them to do weeks ago, even prior to his inauguration," Biswas said.

The US is trading off, too

While Trump's deals with Canada and Mexico may have been swift, the tradeoff is ill will toward the US in both countries and uncertainty in the international trade order.

"The trade rules are valuable because they create a predictability and certainty for countries and for companies that do business in North America and in the world," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Fore­­­ign Relations. "And to mess with those rules for no good reason is truly irresponsible."

"He has no evidence to show he is able to use tariffs to achieve significant concessions, economic or otherwise," he added.

Some experts said the agreements could have been achieved without threatening tariffs.

"Using the issues around fentanyl and illegal immigration to justify a trade war is somewhat bizarre," said Romel Mostafa, an assistant professor in economics and public policy at the Ivey Business School in Ontario. "It seems like we put the cart before the horse here, which is we basically went into this tariff imposition and counter-tariffs and then came to the discussion table."

Alden said the agreements are "not in the slightest" a significant concession because the Mexican government has long had an interest in cracking down fentanyl smuggling and better controlling its border. As for Canada, he pointed to data from the US Customs and Border Protection showing that the northern neighbor accounts for 0.2% of US border fentanyl seizures.

"The bigger question is whether potentially we could come back again a month later and there could be other demands coming in," Mostafa said of Trump's actions.

China retaliates

While Canada and Mexico have secured brief reprieves from Trump's tariffs, China hasn't. Blanket tariffs of 10% on Chinese goods took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

China hit back swiftly, announcing tariffs on a range of US goods, including coal, liquefied natural gas, crude oil, and agricultural machinery.

"The US's unilateral imposition of tariffs seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organization," China's Finance Ministry said in its tariffs announcement. "It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also undermines the normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the US."

China has said fentanyl is the US' own problem and that Beijing would challenge the tariffs at the World Trade Organization.

"The US needs to view and solve its own fentanyl issue in an objective and rational way instead of threatening other countries with arbitrary tariff hikes," a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.

Trump is taking the same brinkmanship approach to China, said Alex Capri, an international trade specialist and a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore's business school.

"Trump will take the same approach to China and I think Beijing will, in fact, welcome this transactional way of doing business," Capri said.

• Industry and business leaders are reacting to President Donald Trump's latest tariffs.
• The Trump administration said Saturday it had imposed new levies on Canada, Mexico, and China.
• All three countries vowed to retaliate, threatening a trade war.

Billionaires, industry leaders, and executives are reacting to President Donald Trump's tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China.

The Trump administration said Saturday it had imposed a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China.

The announcement sparked swift responses from all three countries. Canada and Mexico promised retaliatory tariffs, and China vowed "corresponding countermeasures."

Trump says the tariffs are necessary to pressure Mexico, Canada, and China to do more to stem the flow of illegal fentanyl into the United States. Addiction and overdoses related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, have gripped the United States for years, hollowing out towns and city neighborhoods all over the country. The drug is often produced in China and smuggled over US borders.

"Trump is taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country," the White House said in a statement on Saturday.

Business leaders, however, are urging Trump to reconsider, fearing a global trade war that could wreak havoc on American industries.

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur

In a post on Bluesky, Cuban warned that the new levies would cost people money and hurt businesses.

"I'm going to put my rich guy hat on and say I hope that Mexico and Canada issue equal, retaliatory tariffs and stick to them for an extended period," Cuban wrote.

"I apologize to all the people it will cost money and the businesses it will hurt. But it's the only way for tariffs to be seen for what they are."

Tobi Lütke, Shopify CEO

In a post on X, Lütke, the CEO of the Canadian firm Shopify, said he was disappointed with the US tariffs and Canada's government's response.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that Canada would impose 25% tariffs on C$155 billion (around $106 billion) of US goods following the Trump administration's decision.

But Lütke said hitting back would "not lead to anything good."

"Canada thrives when it works with America together. Win by helping America win," he wrote. "These tariffs are going to be devastating to so many people's lives and small businesses."

Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Mexican billionaire

Pliego, the chairman of the retail and banking conglomerate Grupo Elektra, slammed the tariffs in a series of posts on X but said Mexico should not retaliate.

"As things stand, there is nothing to do but endure this misfortune imposed on us," he wrote. "Perhaps, with the passage of time, more prepared and sensible minds will prevail in the USA and things will change, but that is not in our hands."

"What we definitely SHOULD NOT DO is play the 'Boy Hero' and throw ourselves into the void, by putting MORE taxes on Mexican citizens, who are already screwed by Trump's actions," he added.

Aluminum Association

The Aluminum Association has urged Trump to exempt Canada from the tariffs, saying it was vital to help protect jobs and local manufacturers.

In a statement on Saturday, Charles Johnson, the president and CEO of the association, which represents aluminum production and jobs in the United States, welcomed Trump's efforts to "support American manufacturing" but said the industry's strength relied on imports from the north.

"Thanks to robust domestic demand and coming investment, the US aluminum industry needs a steady and predictable supply of primary, secondary and scrap aluminum," Johnson said. "Today, much of that metal comes from North American trading partners, especially Canada."

United Steelworkers

The USW, representing 850,000 workers in metals, mining, and other industries, has also called for Trump to reconsider tariffs on Canada.

In a statement, USW International President David McCall said the union had "long called for systemic reform of our broken trade system, but lashing out at key allies like Canada is not the way forward."

"Canada has proven itself time and again to be one of our strongest partners when it comes to national security, and our economies are deeply integrated," the statement continued.

National Association of Manufacturers

NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said manufacturers were already facing increasing cost pressures and that the latest tariffs on Canada and Mexico threatened "to upend the very supply chains that have made US manufacturing more competitive globally."

"The ripple effects will be severe, particularly for small and medium-sized manufacturers," Timmons added. "Ultimately, manufacturers will bear the brunt of these tariffs, undermining our ability to sell our products at a competitive price and putting American jobs at risk."

National Association of Home Builders

The NAHB said the tariffs on Canada and Mexico could increase construction costs and ultimately lead to higher home prices.

"More than 70% of the imports of two essential materials that home builders rely on—softwood lumber and gypsum (used for drywall)—come from Canada and Mexico, respectively," NAHB Chairman Carl Harris said in a statement.

"NAHB urges the administration to reconsider this action on tariffs."

National Retail Federation

David French, the executive vice president of government relations for the National Retail Federation, said in a statement the trade association backs Trump's push to solidify trade ties and ensure that the US has favorable trade conditions.

However, French called the tariffs on the three countries a "serious step."

"We strongly encourage all parties to continue negotiating to find solutions that will strengthen trade relationships and avoid shifting the costs of shared policy failures onto the backs of American families, workers and small businesses," he said in a statement.

"The retail industry is committed to working with President Trump and his administration to achieve his campaign promises, including strengthening the US economy, extending his successful Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and ensuring that American families are protected from higher costs," he added.

Distilled Spirits Council of the US, the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, and Spirits Canada

In a joint statement, the Distilled Spirits Council of the US, the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, and Spirits Canada, said the implementation of tariffs threatens the growth of trade in spirits across the three countries, a major issue given setbacks related to COVID-19 and inflation.

"Our associations are committed to working collaboratively with all stakeholders to explore solutions that prevent potential tariffs on distilled spirits," the groups said in their statement. "We are deeply concerned that US tariffs on imported spirits from Canada and Mexico will significantly harm all three countries and lead to a cycle of retaliatory tariffs that negatively impacts our shared industry."

"Maintaining fair and reciprocal duty-free access for all distilled spirits is crucial for supporting jobs and shared growth across North America," they added.

American Automotive Policy Council

Matt Blunt, former governor of Missouri and president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Ford Motor, General Motors, and Stellantis, told BI that he doesn't believe that vehicles and parts that meet the USMCA's requirements — agreed upon by the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2020 — should be subject to increased tariffs.

"Our American automakers, who invested billions in the US to meet these requirements, should not have their competitiveness undermined by tariffs that will raise the cost of building vehicles in the United States and stymie investment in the American workforce," Blunt said.

Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, representing more than 200,000 businesses, called Trump's tariffs "self-defeating" and "profoundly disturbing" in a statement.

"Our supply chains are so deeply integrated that you can't unwind them overnight," wrote Laing, "Which is why if President Trump truly wanted to bring down costs for Americans, he would be looking at strengthening our trade ties, not tearing them apart."

Laing recounted how the US relies on Canadian imports, such as crude oil and critical minerals, and said that Canada's "job number one" right now is to build resilience and provide security to Canadian families and businesses that are "rightly scared" by the tariffs.

"If we can't trade south, let's diversify our trading partners and dismantle unnecessary internal trade barriers to keep goods and services flowing north, east, and west," she added, "A strong, united, and competitive Canadian economy will thrive no matter what gets thrown our way."

American Petroleum Institute

Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, with some 600 members that produce and distribute the majority of the nation's energy, called energy markets "highly integrated" and Canadian crude oil "critical" for American consumers in a statement.

"The US is the largest market for Canadian crude oil exports and Mexico is the No. 1 destination for US refined product exports," said Sommers, "We will continue to work with the Trump administration on full exclusions that protect energy affordability for consumers, expand the nation's energy advantage and support American jobs."

United Auto Workers Union

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers Union, said in a statement on Saturday that his union "supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy."

According to the UAW website, the union has over 400,000 active members and more than 580,000 retired members in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

"If Trump is serious about bringing back good blue collar jobs destroyed by NAFTA, the USMCA, and the WTO, he should go a step further and immediately seek to renegotiate our broken trade deals," Fain added.

• Business leaders are reacting to DeepSeek's rise, which sent US tech stocks tumbling.
• Intel's former CEO said DeepSeek would expand the AI market instead of diminishing it.
• Meta promised a new "leading state of the art" AI model and pledged more investment.

Tech leaders and their companies have reacted with admiration and insights after AI company DeepSeek launched its flagship large language model, R1.

Just days after DeepSeek launched, the app dethroned ChatGPT with the most downloads on Apple's Top Free Apps chart, rivaling systems by OpenAI, Google, and Meta despite being developed at what the startup said was a fraction of the cost.

The rise of the Chinese AI startup founded by quant hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng was followed by a sharp sell-off of major AI and chip companies in the US tech markets on Monday.

Nvidia, a leader in AI hardware, saw its stock plunge by over 17% — erasing hundreds of billions from its market cap — amid concern about DeepSeek's ability to achieve competitive results with less advanced and significantly cheaper hardware.

Here's how Silicon Valley leaders have responded to DeepSeek so far.

Satya Nadella

Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, posted on LinkedIn on Monday that "Jevons paradox is at play again," referencing the concept that greater efficiency in production often fuels higher demand. "As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, its adoption will soar, transforming it into an indispensable commodity," he added.

Earlier last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Nadella also said that other tech companies "should take the developments out of China very, very seriously."

Marc Andreessen

Andreessen, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, praised DeepSeek's R1 model and called it "one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs" and "a profound gift to the world" in an X post on Friday. On Sunday, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist — who has been advising President Trump on tech policy — went on to call Deepseek R1 "AI's Sputnik moment."

Pat Gelsinger

Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel, challenged the market's reaction to DeepSeek's advancements, particularly the sell-off of AI chip stocks. He said the market is "getting it wrong" and suggested that the company's "dramatically cheaper" AI models could expand the market for AI applications rather than diminish it.

Gelsinger also credited DeepSeek's Chinese engineers, who "had limited resources, and they had to find creative solutions."

Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist for Meta's Fundamental AI Research division, challenged the perception that China is surpassing the US in AI in a LinkedIn post, arguing that the correct reading is that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

He said that DeepSeek "came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work." He also said the hype around DeepSeek's drastically cheaper models is a bit overblown.

In a Threads post, LeCun said there is a "major misunderstanding about AI infrastructure investments," noting that the billions of dollars in investment are largely going toward inference, not training AI.

Inference is the process in which AI models apply their training knowledge to new data. It's how popular generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT respond to user requests. So the more user requests a model receives, the higher the cost to process inference.

LeCun said that as tools become more sophisticated, the cost of processing costs will rise, too.

"Once you put video understanding, reasoning, large-scale memory, and other capabilities in AI systems, inference costs are going to increase," LeCun said. "So, the market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified."

Mark Zuckerberg

Though Zuckerberg did not directly respond to DeepSeek's rise, the Meta CEO posted on Facebook on Friday promising that a new version of Facebook's open-source AI model family Llama would become "the leading state of the art model" upon release.

Llama is an AI model designed for natural language processing tasks like text generation, translation, and summarization, which is promoted as open-source like DeepSeek.

Pledging more than 1.3 million GPUs of computing power by the end of the year, he wrote that Meta is "planning to invest $60-65B in capex this year while also growing our AI teams significantly" and that the company has additional capital to continue investing over the next few years.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia

In a statement, a spokesperson for Nvidia told Business Insider that DeepSeek is an "excellent AI advancement and a perfect example of Test Time Scaling," illustrating how to leverage "widely available models and compute that is fully export control compliant." The spokesperson added that to make inference work, it "requires significant numbers of NVIDIA GPUs and high-performance networking."

Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, has not directly responded to DeepSeek thus far.

Sam Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X on Monday that DeepSeek's R1 model is "impressive," especially because of its price point.

The Chinese AI lab recently rolled out new models that researchers say are just as good as OpenAI's 01 model.

Altman embraced the new competition and said OpenAI will continue to deliver better models. The CEO said "more compute is more important now than ever to succeed" and said he is looking forward to bringing "AGI and beyond" to the world.

"We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! We will pull up some releases," the OpenAI boss added.

• President Donald Trump addressed the rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app, on Monday night.
• He said the ability to train AI cheaply, which DeepSeek said it has done, is a good thing.
• Experts told BI that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for AI.

President Donald Trump said the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's ability to train AI more cheaply is a "positive" development and should be a "wake-up call" for tech industries.

Trump's comments followed DeepSeek's ascension to the top of Apple's free downloads chart, which sent shockwaves through the US tech market on Monday morning.

"So you won't be spending as much, and you'll get the same result hopefully," Trump said Monday evening in a House Republican members conference meeting. "The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win."

China has been heavily investing in its tech sector, with state-backed initiatives to boost domestic chip production and AI capabilities, aiming to reduce reliance on US technology.

Meanwhile, the US has expanded the existing export controls on advanced semiconductor technology to China, adding dozens more types of chips and 140 entities to the restriction list.

Last Tuesday, Trump announced the launch of the Stargate Project, a joint artificial intelligence venture with OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX. The initiative plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States by 2029, with the first data center already under construction in Texas.

Last week, Trump called the project a "monumental undertaking" in a press conference with Larry Ellison and Sam Altman, and touted that it will create 100,000 jobs.

Experts told Business Insider that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for the future of AI.

Chris Tang, a UCLA professor and global supply chain scholar, called this moment a "trigger" that may motivate OpenAI or Gemini to open up their source code to allow more people to participate in AI development.

"It's still very much early in the game," said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, "but it certainly serves as a good reminder for American policymakers that technology restriction may not work."

Gadjo Sevilla, a senior tech analyst for AI and tech briefings with BI's sister site EMARKETER, wrote that there is potential for "a race to the bottom for AI pricing and adoption in the coming months," which "runs counter to US Big Tech initiatives where we have Microsoft ($80 billion) and Meta (65 billion) looking to spend on hardware, data centers, and sustainable energy for AI."

"China is not going to slow down. They will do as much as they can with what they can," said Brian Colello, an equity strategist for Morningstar. "It's just such a fast-changing space. Nobody has a clear, sustainable lead, so there will be more breakthroughs and they could come from anywhere. It could come from the US, it could come from China."

• President Donald Trump visited California on Friday to discuss the Los Angeles fires.
• During a roundtable with California officials, Trump promised to help fund relief efforts.
• The meeting came after weeks of Trump threatening to withhold federal funds for recovery.

President Donald Trump traveled to California on Friday afternoon to meet with local leaders, pledging to provide federal disaster relief for people affected by the deadly wildfires ravaging the region.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom greeted Trump cordially on the runway at the Los Angeles International Airport despite tense exchanges between the pair in recent weeks. The governor and president embraced briefly before addressing reporters for short remarks.

"We're going to need your support. We're going to need your help," Newsom said as he stood next to Trump. "You were there for us during COVID, I don't forget that, and I have all the expectations that we'll be able to work together to get this speedy recovery."

"We are going to get it fixed, and we're going to get it permanently fixed," Trump responded, "We're looking to get something completed and the way you get it completed is to work together. They are going to need a lot of federal help."

During a subsequent roundtable with California officials, Trump promised to help fund relief efforts but did not specify how much federal aid would be provided to the state. He also said he would issue an executive order to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California and Central Valley for "beneficial use," echoing a statement in an earlier memo directed to the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior.

Trump's visit to the state came after the recently inaugurated president repeatedly criticized California's water policies and threatened to withhold federal aid to help Los Angeles recover from the Palisades and Eaton fires, which killed 28 people. AccuWeather estimates the economic damage from the wildfires totals more than $250 billion, making it one of the costliest wildfire disasters in modern US history.

Newsom and Trump have had tense relations since the president's first term. They clashed over California's declaration as a "sanctuary state" for immigrants in 2017 and the state's right to set its own vehicle emission standards. Trump canceled nearly $1 billion in federal grants for California's high-speed rail in 2019. Newsom also characterized Trump as a threat to American democracy throughout much of last year's presidential campaign, while Trump frequently refers to the governor as "Newscum."

Ahead of the meeting, the Los Angeles Times reported that Newsom had been excluded from a list of participants released by the White House who would attend the briefing.

Over the past week, Trump also repeatedly accused Newsom of having water "pouring into the Pacific Ocean" and of creating "an inferno," including during a press conference on Tuesday where he announced massive funding for an AI initiative.

"I don't think we should give California anything until they let the water flow down," Trump said in an interview with Fox's Sean Hannity on Wednesday, referring to a perceived lack of water being diverted from Northern California to the more drought-prone south.

Newsom's spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, told Business Insider the Governor is "committed to advocating for the needs of Californians in partnership with the federal administration."

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Los Angeles obtains water from various sources, mostly imported from outside the county. Aside from 660,000 acre-feet of local groundwater every year, a large amount of water comes from the city's 112-year-old aqueduct that runs from the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevadas. The city also imports water from the Metropolitan Water District, which relays water from the Colorado River.

"Presidents and their administrations do have the power to stop or delay disaster funds, although they rarely do," wrote Karrigan Börk, professor at the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis, in a blog post, citing when the first Trump administration delayed $20 billion in disaster aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Börk also warned that interference from the president would fundamentally change authority over water rights from the state to the federal government, which would risk opposition from many western states, and that water flowing into the ocean is needed to keep salinity down so that water can remain fresh for human use.

It remains unclear how much federal funding California will receive for Los Angeles. Trump said at an earlier stop in North Carolina on Friday that he might issue an executive order to "fundamentally reform and overhaul FEMA" or "recommend that FEMA go away."

• President Donald Trump said he would be open to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok.
• Trump previously floated a joint venture, saying that the US should own half of the app.
• Trump has signed an executive order that gives TikTok another 75 days to figure out a new game plan.

A day after his inauguration, President Donald Trump said he'd be on board with Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison buying TikTok.

In a Tuesday press briefing announcing a $500 billion artificial intelligence joint venture with Oracle, Trump said he was open to the idea of Ellison or Musk buying TikTok.

When asked by a reporter if he would be open to Musk buying the app, Trump said, "I would be, if he wanted to buy it, yes."

"I'd like Larry to buy it, too," he added.

While Musk has not directly expressed interest in buying TikTok, he said on X on Sunday that he has "been against a TikTok ban for a long time" because it "goes against freedom of speech."

A handful of big-name investors have shown interest in buying the app. "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary has said that he, in collaboration with former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, would be interested in purchasing the app.

YouTuber MrBeast also said in an X post on January 13, "Okay fine, I'll buy Tik Tok so it doesn't get banned." MrBeast has joined a group of investors led by tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley, who have expressed interest in buying the app, the group's spokesperson told Bloomberg.

In 2024, ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, said it would rather shut down TikTok in the US than sell it.

For now, TikTok's fate in the US hangs in the balance after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the divest-or-ban law. This law requires ByteDance to divest from the platform in the US, or stop operating in the country.

TikTok went dark for its 170 million US users on Saturday. Hours later, its operations were restored.

Shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to pause the ban, which gives TikTok another 75 days to figure out a game plan.

Trump also suggested on Monday that the US should own half of TikTok.

"So I think, like a joint venture, I think we would have a joint venture with the people from TikTok. We'll see what happens," Trump added, without specifying who he wanted to have as TikTok's US partner.

Trump's order to delay the TikTok ban has prompted some opposition from within the GOP.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — and Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska wrote in a joint statement on Sunday that there is "no legal basis" for TikTok to get an extension.

In the statement, the senators lauded Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for complying with the ban.

"President Trump said he signed the executive order to 'make a deal to protect our national security,'" Ian Swanson, Ricketts' press secretary, told BI.

"Senator Ricketts agrees that protecting our national security is paramount and that can only be done by ridding TikTok of all ties with Communist China," Swanson added.

Representatives for Musk, Oracle, and Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Trump signed an executive order requiring federal government employees to return to the office.
• Union leaders opposed the mandate and said it was based on misconceptions about federal workers.
• They also said telework was crucial for recruiting talent and emergency preparedness.

Leaders of unions representing federal government employees say President Donald Trump's return-to-office mandate won't make the government more efficient — and could have some unintended consequences.

Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, or NFFE, and Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, said the RTO mandate would make the government less effective.

"They're trying to score political points by insinuating that people on telework aren't coming to work when nothing could be further from the truth," Erwin told Business Insider in an interview.

If not for telework and other family-friendly work methods, the federal government "would not be able to recruit and retain the talent that it needs," Erwin said. The NFFE is the oldest union in the US and represents more than 110,000 federal workers.

"When you can't make anywhere near what you could be making in the private sector, some family, flexible work policies become a very, very important thing," he said, adding that some current federal workers may also choose to leave.

Kelley, who leads AFGE, the largest federal employee union representing 800,000 members, also said telework was important to attracting and retaining top talent within the federal government.

"Providing eligible employees with the opportunity to work hybrid schedules is a key tool for recruiting and retaining workers in both the public and private sectors," Kelley said in a statement.

Erwin told BI the mandate suggested a lack of understanding about how the federal government works and that "there's this myth that federal workers aren't coming to work."

An August report from the Office of Management and Budget found that about 10% of civilian workers across two dozen agencies worked remotely without expectations that they would regularly work in the office.

Erwin said comments from the Trump administration, including Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have misrepresented the federal workforce.

"I don't think he knows the first thing about the federal workforce, who they are, where they are, and the valuable services that they provide," he said of Musk, adding, "They're making everybody sound like some innovation-blocking bureaucrat."

Erwin said most federal employees are not based in Washington, DC, and are nationwide. Less than a fifth of the federal workforce in the Office of Personnel Management database lives in DC or the nearby states of Maryland and Virginia, a recent Pew analysis found.

Kelley also said lawmakers and Trump's transition team "spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs."

"The truth is that less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations," he added.

Both Erwin and Kelley said telework was also essential to ensuring the federal government's continued smooth operation in a state of emergency.

Erwin said that after September 11, the ability to telework was considered essential for the federal government, adding, "It is only very recently that telework has been frowned upon in the federal government." He said the COVID-19 pandemic showed how the ability to telework enabled the government to continue operating relatively smoothly.

Kelley said remote work has been "a critical tool for federal agencies to maintain continuity of operations in emergencies, increase disaster preparedness, and improve efficiency."

He also said hybrid work has been so successful that many agencies have consolidated or sold off office space that's expensive to maintain, "meaning there may no longer be enough office space to accommodate an influx of on-site workers."

Some federal employees who are union members have collective bargaining agreements that explicitly allow for remote or hybrid work. Erwin said an executive order would not override those agreements, at least for as long as they are active.

Erwin said the return-to-office mandate showed the "problem with governing by completely political, manufactured talking points."

"They're going to force people back into the office, and it's not going to make people more productive for the American taxpayer," he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.