|
|  |  | Tuesday, July 1, 2025 | | | SPONSORED BY |  | |  | | Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images | | Good Morning, Quartz readers! |
| | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | | Liberation Day —
redux? President Donald Trump is toying with unilaterally establishing tariff rates on trading partners (yes, again), leading up to a July 9 deal-making deadline. |
| | Poutine it behind them. Canada is ditching the digital services tax that led to Trump halting trade talks; now, the two countries will work on solidifying a deal by July 21. |
| | Musk blows a fuse. The Tesla CEO ramped up his criticism of Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, calling it a “massive strategic error,” especially in terms of renewable energy. |
| | Low miles, high hopes. Tesla is expected to report soft second-quarter delivery numbers on Wednesday, but some investors are shrugging as they focus on the company’s AI future. |
| | Shocked by the competition. Ford’s CEO just said that China’s dominance in EVs is “the most humbling thing” and that the country’s cars are “far superior” to
those made elsewhere. |
| | Value investing. Warren Buffett is
giving away over $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock — his largest donation yet — to five charities of his choosing, including the Gates Foundation. |
| | A MESSAGE FROM RAMIT SETHI |  | | Ramit Sethi, a NYT bestselling author and Netflix host, helps millions live their richest lives. Get expert financial insights, strategies, and real-world advice delivered directly to your inbox. | | | CHIPS AHOY! | Wall Street is feeling bullish — but only if your ticker ends in “.AI.” Through the first half of 2025, markets have staged a powerful rally… just not for everyone. Wall Street has cleaved into two very different Americas: the future (i.e., chips, cloud, and LLMs) and, well, everything else. AI infrastructure stocks are flying. Meanwhile, retail, logistics, and anything that smells faintly of the physical world are drifting somewhere between “meh” and “help.”
The divergence may be the market’s new personality. One part frothy futurism, the other part forgotten fundamentals. On one side: exponential earnings and investor euphoria. On the other: flat-footed foot traffic, rising costs, and consumer confidence that has slowly been leaking air.
Nvidia, of course, is the poster chip for the market’s boom. With a market cap brushing up against $4 trillion and a quarterly revenue line longer than a CVS receipt, Nvidia has
largely become the AI wave. Even DRAM players such as Micron are getting a lift thanks to AI’s appetite for high-bandwidth memory. Broadcom just dropped a massive quarter, and Palantir is up over 80% year to date, apparently benefiting from the market’s renewed taste for dystopian-sounding optimism.
Meanwhile, back in Earth’s atmosphere, consumers are cutting back, inflation is still too sticky for comfort, and the story is mostly markdowns. Target slashed its outlook, Home Depot’s
traffic is stuck in neutral, and Americans are spending less and worrying more. Inflation is still sticky, tariffs are hiking durable goods prices, and 43% of U.S. consumers told McKinsey they’re cutting back. That’s not exactly a bullish environment for new patio sets or extra UPS deliveries.
So far, the market has made its preference clear: AI is the only growth narrative worth trading. The S&P’s biggest gains are coming from a tiny sliver of names, and if your business model
doesn’t include model training, Wall Street is happy to leave you in the dust. It’s not so much of a market rotation as a market revelation — where the machines are winning and Main Street isn’t even in the tournament. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on the retail
recession happening right under this rally. | | A SHOT TO THE SYSTEM | Vaccines have saved more lives than seatbelts, antibiotics, and maybe even common sense. But under Health and Human
Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. vaccine policy is getting an overhaul — and not the kind that comes with a booster. The latest move? Defunding Gavi, the global alliance responsible for vaccinating more than a billion children in low-income countries. And that’s just the tip of the hypodermic iceberg.
Last week, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with eight handpicked skeptics — some of whom have publicly peddled
conspiracy theories. One has described himself as “anti-vax” and pushed the debunked claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause AIDS. The committee promptly voted to ban thimerosal, a flu shot preservative that Kennedy has crusaded against for years, despite decades of scientific evidence showing that it’s safe.
The panel now plans to reconsider the entire childhood vaccine schedule — a move that could strip shots of CDC approval, making them ineligible for insurance coverage or federal
programs such as Vaccines for Children, which serves nearly half of all U.S. kids. That’s a big deal: no recommendation, no reimbursement, no incentive to make more vaccines. Already, childhood and flu vaccination rates are slipping. This move could send them into free fall.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has quit the process entirely. Industry lawyers say public trust is being nuked from the inside. And if the U.S. starts pulling out of global vaccine efforts just as it unravels
domestic ones, the consequences won’t be hypothetical — they’ll be contagious. For a policy apparatus once built on evidence, data, and infectious disease prevention, this chapter is writing itself like a cautionary tale. And unfortunately, immunity isn’t guaranteed. Quartz’s Catherine
Arnst has more on what happens when politics go viral. | | A MESSAGE FROM RAMIT SETHI | | | Ramit Sethi, a NYT bestselling author and Netflix host, helps millions live their richest lives. Get expert financial insights, strategies, and real-world advice delivered directly to your inbox. | | | MORE FROM QUARTZ | |
|
|
