Forbes Daily: Jerome Powell’s Legacy As Federal Reserve Chair
As the Trump administration prepares to issue tariff refunds, companies like General Motors are already talking about the boost to their balance sheets.
The automaker said Tuesday it is anticipating a $500 million tariff rebate, raising its full-year earnings guidance to between $13.5 billion and $15.5 billion. It’s part of the $166 billion the Trump administration will provide in refunds to some 300,000 U.S. importers—and the amount will be paid back with interest. Retailers like Walmart, Target and Nike are expected to receive at least $1 billion each.
Of course, economists say consumers aren’t likely to benefit, and President Donald Trump’s tariffs are likely to raise prices by another 0.1% in 2026.
This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here.
FIRST UP
- Spotify shares fell 12% as the company disclosed a second-quarter forecast that fell below expectations, adding to the streaming service’s market woes this year.
- OpenAI missed internal revenue and user growth projections after losing some of its market share to Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reported, while CFO Sarah Friar expressed caution about the company’s plans to go public this year.
- The European Union said Meta failed to block children under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram, which could lead to fines of up to 6% of the company’s annual global revenue.
JEROME POWELL’S LEGACY AT THE FED
Getty Images
Today will likely conclude Jerome Powell’s last Federal Reserve meeting as its chair. He leaves behind a legacy of navigating inflation and defending the independence of the central bank under pressure from the president of the United States.
Powell was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, taking office in 2018 before being reappointed by former President Joe Biden. As inflation ran rampant in the wake of Covid-19, peaking at its highest rate in more than four decades, critics argued the Federal Reserve was slow to act. Still, after the central bank’s aggressive rate hikes, price increases have moderated and the U.S. economy has so far averted a recession, while growth has slowed.
But Powell will more likely be remembered, arguably, for standing up to Trump as he has pushed for lower interest rates and attempted to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and his administration opened a criminal investigation into Powell.
Despite that turmoil, Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University and senior fellow at Brookings, tells Forbes Daily that Powell is leaving the Fed in a better position than it would’ve been, thanks to his steadfast defense of the Fed’s independence. Last week, the Justice Department dropped its probe into Powell and the Federal Reserve, likely clearing the way for his replacement, Kevin Warsh, to be confirmed by the Senate. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., had held up his pivotal vote for Warsh’s nomination over the investigation.
“I think what Powell helps demonstrate is that this is not just the job of the Fed chair, that the Fed needs defenders in order to protect its autonomy,” Binder says. “Powell just wasn’t the recipient of this outreach by these defenders. He cultivated it.”
TECH + INNOVATION
New York-based startup Actively AI is coming for Salesforce’s dominance among sales teams by betting it can automate much of their work, earning it a $250 million valuation. The company creates a custom AI agent to manage each customer account. “If you had unlimited money, you’d hire a million sales reps and put one on each company,” says 26-year-old cofounder and CEO Mihir Garimella. “Now with agents, you can.”
Silicon Valley fintech Aven, which grafts a home equity line of credit onto a credit card, is launching a card backed by bitcoin. The new card lets consumers pledge bitcoin as collateral to access a credit line of as much as $1 million over a term of up to 10 years.
SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT
Getty Images
The NCAA is reportedly set to expand March Madness starting next season, the tournament’s most significant expansion in decades. It will reportedly apply to both the men’s and women’s tournaments, increasing the number of March Madness teams from 68 to 76.
Los Angeles-based venture capital firm InStudio Ventures is launching a $50 million sports and performance fund, which includes its stakes in the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers. But founder and managing partner Danny Cortenraede plans to invest the majority of the fund’s assets in earlier-stage startups bringing AI into sports, including a firm that uses AI to create 3D visualizations from MRI data.
WORLD
The United Arab Emirates will leave OPEC on May 1, which could impact the group’s ability to control the supply of oil and prices around the world. The UAE is the third-largest OPEC oil producer, but in its announcement it cited “near-term volatility” in the market and a desire to ramp up investment in domestic energy production.
DAILY COVER STORY
How Eric Trump Got Rich From Bitcoin While Losing Investors A Fortune
Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images
Eric Trump jumped on an earnings call in February ready to do what Trumps do best—sell. His company, American Bitcoin, had debuted just a year earlier and was already trading on the Nasdaq. “We are fast becoming the leader in the bitcoin world, and I truly think we have the greatest brand of all,” Eric said.
But the venture may be selling a story more than a business. As he tells it, American Bitcoin can print money by mining bitcoin for roughly half of what it is worth. But a closer look at the numbers calls into question whether the company can mine bitcoin profitably at all, let alone with such massive margins.
When American Bitcoin hit the public markets on Sept. 3, investors valued Eric Trump’s company—with an estimated $270 million of bitcoin on its balance sheet—at $13.2 billion. Over the last eight months, American Bitcoin has taken advantage of that astronomical valuation, dumping shares to buy more bitcoin. The much-diluted stock is now down 92% from its peak.
Given that Eric Trump seems to have invested little to get involved with the venture in the first place, he’s still doing fine, having boosted his personal fortune from an estimated $190 million to $280 million through a stroke of financial alchemy. Other insiders have done well, too. The everyday investors who bought into the sales pitch, by contrast, are down an estimated $500 million.
Representatives of Eric Trump, the Trump Organization and American Bitcoin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
WHY IT MATTERS “There’s real money at stake here,” says Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander. “Investors who bought into Eric Trump’s sales pitch have lost a fortune. The story reveals much about American Bitcoin—but also plenty about how the president’s family conducts business.”
MORE How The Trumps Blew $1 Billion On Bitcoin
FACTS + COMMENTS
Billionaire Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said he plans to meet with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a proposed pied-à-terre tax on second homes in a video that featured Griffin’s Manhattan townhouse:
$6 billion: The size of Citadel’s planned expansion in New York City, which their chief operating officer suggested could be in jeopardy after the tax’s announcement
Approximately $500 million: How much Hochul’s office said the tax would raise in annual revenue
35th: Where Griffin ranks among the world’s wealthiest
STRATEGY + SUCCESS
Using AI for your professional writing may be convenient, but over time, it can damage your credibility. It’s not just certain words that chatbots overuse—it’s also the absence of sentence length variation and emotional punctuation, like exclamation and question marks. It’s important to make structural changes to AI-generated text, and you can always paste writing into an AI writing detector if you want to avoid that perception.
VIDEO
QUIZ
The State Department is launching new passports that prominently feature an image of President Donald Trump. Where is the image located?
A. The back cover
B. The front cover
C. The inside cover
D. The stamp pages
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.