Latest news with #AmericanBusiness
Bloomberg
10-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
AAFA's Lamar Says Tariffs Are Regressive Taxes
American Apparel & Footwear Association President & CEO Stephen Lamar says tariffs are regressive taxes that burden hardworking American business and consumers. He speaks with Haslinda Amin on "Insight with Haslinda Amin." (Source: Bloomberg)
Arab News
24-06-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Corporates have changed their tune on ‘stakeholder capitalism'
In 2019, the Business Roundtable, an association of the most powerful CEOs in the US, won widespread praise by announcing its commitment to 'stakeholder capitalism,' which delivers value not only to shareholders, but also to other affected actors, such as employees and communities. Now, however, the Business Roundtable has changed its tune: its April report, 'The Need for Bold Proxy Process Reforms,' reads almost like a manifesto against stakeholder capitalism. The reason for this volte-face is obvious. The Roundtable's 2019 'commitment' was a clear attempt to get on the right side of popular sentiment: Engagement with social and environmental issues was up, and so were demands that powerful institutions get on board. But the political mood has changed. At a time when Americans are preoccupied with intensifying pressures on their own pocketbooks, the new second administration is actively rejecting environmental and social issues. For many CEOs, this looks like a golden opportunity. So, the Business Roundtable is calling on the US Congress to 'enact legislation precluding the inclusion of shareholder proposals relating to environmental, social and political issues in a company's proxy statement.' With this, CEOs want to scrap one of the few formal mechanisms through which a diverse range of stakeholders can influence corporate behavior on issues such as climate risk, inequality, worker safety, and political transparency. There is plenty of precedent for this. While the Business Roundtable's CEOs like to pay lip service to voluntary corporate-responsibility initiatives, they have strenuously objected to public policies that would require them to follow through. The fact is that delivering real value to workers and the environment would cost money, which would reduce shareholder dividends and executive pay — the real priorities of the Business Roundtable's members. In fact, the compensation of CEOs who signed the stakeholder-capitalism 'commitment' has continued to reflect their success in delivering shareholder value. The only way to rein in corporate power is to confront it head-on. Christopher Marquis As many critics warned from the start, the Business Roundtable never meant what it said in 2019. Whatever its claims about environmental or social responsibility, it has always been motivated by three interconnected objectives: avoiding accountability, maximizing short-term profits, and enriching executives. To be sure, even from a commercial perspective, this approach is fundamentally flawed. A growing body of research shows that failure to account for social and environmental imperatives poses clear, material risks to firm operations and performance — not at some point in the distant future, but now. But there is no reason to expect the Business Roundtable's CEOs, or corporations more broadly, to change voluntarily. On the contrary, their April statement lays bare the transactional, opportunistic, and utterly dishonest nature of their moral posturing, which in reality, serves just one purpose: to get consumers and regulators off their backs. This should serve as a wake-up call to lawmakers, who have long cozied up to billionaires and large corporations, placing their hopes, against all evidence, in self-regulation. The only way to rein in corporate power is to confront it head-on. That means mandating corporate commitments to structural change, imposing tougher punishments for corporate abuses, cracking down on dark money, strengthening antitrust enforcement, and expanding regulatory oversight, including of corporate influence over climate, labor, and economic policy. • Christopher Marquis is Professor of Management at the University of Cambridge and the author of "The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs" (PublicAffairs, 2024). ©Project Syndicate.
Fast Company
10-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Stakeholder capitalism is entering new era. So is ‘Fast Company'
Fast Company has been covering a sea change in American business over the last 15 years or so. Companies big and small have embraced the idea that they ought to be accountable not just to shareholders but to all stakeholders—including workers, customers, communities, suppliers, and the planet. Some refer to it as 'stakeholder capitalism.' Others like 'conscious capitalism.' And for those of you who prefer 'woke capitalism,' hey, thanks for joining us. But then, within the last year or two, it all fell apart. Even before Trump retook the presidency, CEOs had begun shuttering DEI programs and climate initiatives, and clamming up about the 'greater good' they were pursuing. What happened? How did a megatrend that transformed boardrooms and C-suites unravel so rapidly? That's the big question we asked James Surowiecki to dissect in this issue's cover story, 'How 'Business for Good' Went Bad.'
Forbes
30-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Book Review: Whorton Champions A Different Kind Of Capitalism
Book cover Harvard Business Publishing In 2015, Inc. magazine made a choice that now reads like a parable. A profile of Dave Whorton and his Tugboat Institute—an organization celebrating quietly exceptional private businesses—was bumped from the cover. The new star? Elizabeth Holmes. Today, Holmes is in prison for fraud. Whorton and the companies he champions are still here, still growing, still mostly unknown to the American public. This book review explores that contrast—and the quietly radical message at the heart of Whorton's Another Way. That tension—between what's flashy and what endures—sits at the heart of Another Way: Building Companies That Last... and Last... and Last, co-authored by Whorton and journalist Bo Burlingham. The book sets out to illuminate 'evergreen companies': businesses that shun the venture capital treadmill, grow deliberately, and prioritize values like people, purpose, and long-term resilience. It's a message that deserves a wide audience, particularly at a moment when the excesses of Silicon Valley have begun to fray the American imagination. But like many business books, Another Way struggles under the weight of its own ambitions. It wants to be a manifesto, a guidebook, and a personal journey all at once. At times, it succeeds. At others, particularly early on, it misfires—overshadowing its most compelling ideas with a tone and structure that feel at odds with the humility it praises. The book unfolds in three parts. The first, 'Get Big Fast,' reads like a memoir. We follow Whorton's rise through the power corridors of Bain, Stanford Business School, Kleiner Perkins, and TPG. He recounts how his faith in the 'go big or go home' gospel eroded through stress, burnout, and disillusionment. But even as he critiques the culture of venture capital, Whorton can't quite resist its narrative flair. 'To this day, I don't know exactly how I came to be invited into the inner sanctum of Silicon Valley venture capital,' he writes, casting himself as a reluctant insider. The tone—equal parts awestruck and self-justifying—can wear thin, especially when interspersed with name-drops and personal triumphs that lack deeper introspection. Whorton invokes Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as a guiding framework, but in doing so places himself at the center of a story ostensibly meant to elevate others. The result is a narrative imbalance: we're told this is a book about a better kind of company, but for many pages, the companies themselves remain off-stage. When they do arrive—in the book's second section, 'The Learning Journey'—the tone shifts and the insights sharpen. Here we meet entrepreneurs like Sridhar Vembu, founder of software company Zoho, who hires teen programmers from Indian villages and trains them in-house. 'There wasn't a VC in the world who would've tolerated the risk,' Whorton notes, 'but he was building software cost-effectively while uplifting entire communities.' It's a perfect emblem of what makes evergreen companies different—not just in strategy, but in philosophy. Another case study features SAS, the AI and analytics software juggernaut that owns its own sprawling real estate and insists on keeping a campus filled with rose bushes. 'In an industry where the average annual employee turnover rate is 22 percent, SAS's turnover is 3.3 percent,' Whorton writes. That statistic alone is a rebuke to the 'lean and mean' ethos so common in tech. And then there's Jack Stack of SRC Holdings, who stunned Whorton by building a growing company entirely through internal financing. 'In my entire experience at Stanford Business School, Kleiner Perkins, and TPG,' Whorton admits, 'nobody had ever mentioned anything like what Stack was telling me. I was dumbfounded.' These stories—and there are many more—deliver what the book's premise promises: a revelation that capitalism, done differently, can still work. The third and final section, 'The Evergreen Advantage,' is the most practical. It outlines the Tugboat framework: the '7 Ps' (Purpose, Perseverance, People First, and so on) and '9 Rules of Innovation' that guide these businesses. This portion reads like a playbook, less polished but more grounded. We learn, for instance, how Radio Flyer continues to innovate without relying on product-pickers, and how H&V—a company that traces its roots in 1728 and has served both Ben Franklin and Elon Musk—has avoided outside capital for more than a century. These examples are less flashy than IPO stories, but no less instructive. Still, the book's structure may test readers' patience—particularly those looking for these stories up front. Beginning with Whorton's personal journey provides context, but risks obscuring the book's deeper purpose. Fortunately, those who persist will find a more focused and compelling narrative as the chapters progress. That brings us back to Inc. magazine anecdote in the book's preface—one of its best, and sadly, one of the few with narrative weight. In a single moment, it encapsulates our collective bias toward spectacle, and the cost of ignoring quiet durability. Holmes fizzled. Whorton's companies endured. That's not just a footnote; it's the real story. In the end, Another Way is not quite the definitive blueprint for evergreen business it wants to be. But as this book review has shown, it offers a meaningful introduction to a world of companies and values that too often go unnoticed. And in that, it succeeds. These businesses may not dominate headlines—but they might just hold the answers to building a more sane and sustainable economy.
Entrepreneur
19-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
How AI Can Help You Cut Through Tariff Chaos — in Just 3 Simple Steps
Unpredictable tariffs are threatening your business survival. The good news? AI can help you quickly tackle supply chain disruptions before they spiral out of control. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Since President Trump first announced new tariffs on U.S. trading partners in April, with frequent revisions ever since, American businesses of all sizes have been caught in a whirlwind of uncertainty. For entrepreneurs relying on foreign suppliers, sudden spikes in raw material costs can force a frantic reevaluation of longterm strategies and pricing models. These constantly shifting tariffs have upended months, even years, of planning across operations, production, supply chains, and competitive positioning, leaving many entrepreneurs stuck in near paralysis. Most imported products face a baseline duty of at least 10%, but that number is subject to change with little warning. Trump announced much larger reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries in April before instituting a 90-day pause. Trump also raised tariffs on China to 145% before lowering them back to 30% for most Chinese goods for at least 90 days starting in May. To handle the tariff whiplash and survive in today's volatile political and economic climate, you need to navigate constant uncertainty and adjust to frequent disruptions. If you're not able to pivot quickly as changes arise, you may have to pass rising costs onto consumers, putting your business at risk of losing them entirely. Related: Walmart Is Raising Prices, According to the Company's CEO. Here's When. To stay ahead of these constant changes, business owners need to regularly explore a range of "what-if" scenarios. For example, if tariffs rise on a key supplier, how quickly should I adjust prices? Or, what are my options for switching to a supplier in a country with lower tariffs? With so many moving parts, AI can make this easier. Tools like ChatGPT make it simple to start using AI for financial modeling and supply chain analysis —helping you stay agile while navigating unpredictable tariffs. How small businesses can use AI for smarter scenario planning and future-proof decisions Earlier in my career, I helped large oil companies and financial institutions optimize their supply chains for better efficiency and lower costs. Traditionally, creating these models required complicated Excel spreadsheets and some proficiency in mathematics. Not only has AI made the modeling process more accessible, even for non-technical business owners, but it has also provided business owners with an essential tool for scenario planning that is adaptable in real time. Tariffs are fundamentally unpredictable, especially today, so AI can't predict what tariffs will be tomorrow, next week or next month. It can, however, help your business prepare for the unknown and make smarter decisions faster by running dozens of those "what-if" scenarios in seconds. That's why it's best to understand and use AI as an optimization model instead of a one-time solution. Here's how the optimization model works and how you can use it to build a pricing and procurement strategy that will help your business stay on top of 2025 tariffs: Step 1: Provide your AI tool with data Start by entering the key details into your AI tool—some of which your Large Language Model (LLM) may already know. An LLM is a type of AI that understands and creates human-like text by learning from vast amounts of writing. Include information like: Current and projected tariff rates Domestic and international costs of goods Inventory holding periods Revenue per unit This data is likely already available in your balance sheet, which you can quickly upload to your AI tool like ChatGPT or source through simple research. The AI's goal is to optimize for a combination of these variables that yields the highest profitability at the lowest cost at any given point. Related: What Is a Tariff? Here's an Overview of the Basics. Step 2: Use AI to model supply chain alternatives AI can scan trade databases and tariff announcements in real time, constantly updating teams in need. As tariffs fluctuate and updates are tracked, your optimization model will shift and evolve. For example, if tariffs rise and the cost of overseas products increases, you may look to purchase goods domestically and ask your AI system to recommend sourcing alternatives. AI can even compare the benefits, drawbacks and long-term implications of sourcing from various countries. While AI can't provide specific pricing or shipping estimates, it drastically reduces the time it takes to evaluate new options. Once you find the rest of the information you need, by researching online or calling the suggested companies directly, feed it into your model to update your strategy in real-time. Step 3: Use AI to explore multiple scenarios and identify the best path forward Beyond just helping with sourcing decisions, AI can also recommend how much you can raise your prices to stay profitable without driving customers away. For example, your business might absorb a 5% to 10% tariff increase through modest price hikes, but a 15% increase could start to push customers away. AI can simulate different pricing strategies to help you find the perfect balance for your unique situation. Ask your AI tool questions such as: How much would I lose if tariffs remain between 10% and 15% over the next 60 days? When does buying from international suppliers become economically unviable? How much would I need to raise prices if tariffs increase to 20%? What's the best price increase to keep my revenue steady while covering costs? AI can help pinpoint various thresholds and calculate your options. These actionable insights can be life-saving for businesses lacking the time, energy and resources for trial and error. Think of AI as a personal financial analyst that works around the clock and costs a fraction of a human hire. Regardless of your business, integrating AI into your operational toolkit and interacting with it daily can help you prepare for an unpredictable market. While the future of tariffs remains uncertain, their impact is very real today. Instead of freezing up from uncertainty or making hasty decisions, AI empowers business owners to stay proactive and ready for whatever comes next.
