"We thank Great Leader, from whom all good things flow, including sunshine"

In partnership with

I understand if you unsubscribe after today’s newsletter.

Due to the ongoing tariff situation, companies have been forced to reevaluate their guidance on how the rest of the year is going to go. When those companies do issue their updated reports, it’s not good. Just today General Motors shared its updated guidance and it’s expecting some $5bn less revenue for this year than it expected back in January.

In CEO Mary Barra’s letter to shareholders, the very first paragraph finishes by the CEO saying, “We are also grateful to President Trump for his support of the U.S. automotive industry.”

If this isn’t some North Korean level of messaging, I don’t know what is.

I get why she made that statement. GM isn’t the only one putting out messaging to curry favor with Dear Leader.

Ford CEO Jim Farley, on Tuesday, said, “Imagine if the companies who import all the vehicles in the U.S. treated American manufacturing like Ford.” The CNBC article with this quote points out — correctly — that Ford imports vehicles from Mexico, Canada, and China.

Both of these companies employ thousands of American workers and manufacture a lot of things here. American manufacturing is strong, and just last year we had an economy that was the envy of the world. But it’s also worth pointing out that they are all dependent on a global supply chain. Per NHTSA’s website, for example, the Ford F-150 is only 45% parts made in Canada or the United States.

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

This is the easiest way for a busy person wanting to learn AI in as little time as possible:

1. Sign up for The Rundown AI newsletter

2. They send you 5-minute email updates on the latest AI news and how to use it

3. You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI

Sign up to start learning.

Whether or not these executives are “grinning and bearing it,” it’s messaging designed to make Trump and his policies look good. It’s designed to make it look like he’s winning, and that we are all winning.

The last boats with pre-tariff goods are about to arrive at the port, meaning we’re just a few weeks away from empty shelves. The economy retracted for the first time in years, and if we have another quarter of that (Narrator: We will), we’ll be officially in a Recession.

Temu is causing chaos on Reddit because it started adding tariff pricing to the goods it sells. Amazon was going to add a line item for tariffs when prices went up, but Trump called Bezos, and Amazon backed down.

Things are going to get much worse, and it’s all self-inflicted. And since every single Fortune 100 company would rather deal with the consequences of that instead of standing up to Trump, we’re going to enter a phase of things getting really weird.

The U.S. has seized the least amount of fentanyl in years, but the Attorney General of the United States said that President Trump has saved 258 million lives.

If every 100 days, before Trump became president, 258 million Americans died from fentanyl, we’d cease as a country by the end of May. The current population of the United States is just 340 million.

We’re expected to believe everything the White House tells us. They get offended if we push back on anything. It’s truly “How many lights do you see?”

I guess I’m not sure what my point is here. I hate that we’re at the point where this is required. I believe these powerful and rich companies have the power to push back against the President and his economy-crippling policies, but it’d require some of them to work together. That’s difficult to do.

The thing is, even if you’re an automaker and Trump’s policies force one of your competitors out of business, or cause them to withdraw from the United States, you don’t end up winning. Competition breeds innovation, advancement, and profit. Complacency does not.

I’m just tired of all of this winning.

(Editor’s note: Credit to Patrick George for the inspiration for today’s headline. I’m a big fan of what InsideEVs has been doing lately.)