Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

More than 90 years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt surveyed the wreckage of the Great Depression. He pointed to one of its causes: sky-high tariffs had put America on the “road to ruin” by inviting retaliation and suffocating investment. It was a painful lesson, and it took decades of sustained global effort, led by America, to bring tariffs down and let commerce flourish. From our vantage in 2025 the perils of protectionism should still be abundantly clear. Tragically, if Donald Trump gets his way, America risks repeating the errors of the past.

There is uncertainty about how far Mr Trump will actually go in his second term. Investors and diplomats alike were relieved that he refrained from slapping universal tariffs on all imports on his first day back in office. But make no mistake: the man who declared tariff to be the most beautiful word in the dictionary is determined to ratchet up protection. He sees tariffs as a simple tool to achieve multiple objectives: shrink America’s trade deficit, rebuild its manufacturing might and generate a gusher of revenue for the government. On every count he is wrong.

Mr Trump’s dalliance with tariffs in his first term already shows that they did nothing to narrow America’s trade deficit. One reason is that the dollar tends to strengthen when tariffs are applied.  A monomaniacal focus on the trade balance has no bearing on the economy’s real strengths. Just look at Germany and China today, both running giant trade surpluses and both mired in lacklustre growth.

The record from recent tariffs also proves that they do not magically create jobs in American factories. Manufacturing as a share of American employment has fallen since Mr Trump’s first tariffs went into effect.   However, data from Mr Trump’s first term demonstrates that the real cost of tariffs is borne, to a large extent, by American consumers through higher import prices. 

The most optimistic assumption about Mr Trump’s professed love for tariffs is that he mainly wants to deploy them for negotiating leverage. It is true that America, as the world’s biggest market, has plenty of weight to throw around. But tariffs are just as likely to tie America in knots. Once implemented, they are hard to retract, and their potency diminishes through repeated use.

Mr Trump and many of his supporters have taken to lionising the late 19th century as the golden age for America’s economy, a period when tariffs were high and growth was strong. That is a distorted reading of what really happened. Scholars have found that tariffs sheltered less-productive companies and raised living costs, and that it was other factors, including a growing population, the deepening rule of law and the success of non-traded goods that fueled America’s growth.

Following a year of political elections in numerous countries, including the US presidential election in November, surveyed executives have turned their attention toward changes in trade policy and relationships and other potential policy changes. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on economic conditions, potential trade policy changes rival geopolitical instability—the most-cited disruption to the global economy throughout 2024—as elements that respondents expect will affect the global economy in 2025.  Transitions of political leadership remain on respondents’ minds, while respondents increasingly anticipate higher unemployment in their countries and are more inclined than in previous quarters to expect interest rates to increase.

Overall, respondents’ views on the current state of the global economy and their countries’ economies are more cautious than they were in early 2024 but are consistent with last quarter. Respondents continue to be more likely to expect improvement in the months ahead than worsening conditions.

For the past three years, survey respondents’ concerns about geopolitical instability and conflicts have overshadowed all other potential disruptions to the global economy. The survey asks about the biggest risks to global and domestic growth, and these concerns have also been the most-cited risk to respondents’ home economies since last December. While respondents to the latest survey continue to see geopolitics as a primary disruptive force, they are now nearly as likely to expect changes in trade policy and relationships to affect global growth over the next six months. The share of respondents citing changes in trade policy or relationships as a top risk to the global economy has more than doubled since the previous survey.  The share of respondents pointing to the potential disruptive effects of trade policy changes more than doubled among respondents in Asia–Pacific, Europe, North America, and other developing markets since September.

Private sector respondents now see changes in the trade environment as one of the greatest potential disruptions to their companies’ performance over the next year.  Changes to trade policies are one of the top five most-cited topics for the first time since September 2019. Policy and regulatory changes are also more top of mind now than they were in the previous quarter. 

Respondents’ current sentiments about the state of the global economy remain in line with those they expressed in the previous quarter, although the findings suggest growing uncertainty about interest rates and unemployment rates. Respondents continue to be equally likely to report improving or worsening conditions in the global economy.  Looking ahead to the next six months, respondents continue to be more likely to expect improving than worsening conditions.

Overall, respondents’ assessments of their countries’ economies also are consistent with the previous quarter’s but have tempered since early 2024. About four in ten say their economies have improved, as was true in September. But one-third report declining conditions, up from 22 percent who said so in March 2024.

With respect to interest rates, only respondents in Europe and North America are more likely to predict rate decreases than increases.  Respondents are much more likely now than they were in the first quarter of 2024 to predict increasing unemployment rates in their countries.

The AI community is abuzz over DeepSeek R1, a new open-source reasoning model. The model was developed by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which claims that R1 matches or even surpasses OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1 on multiple key benchmarks but operates at a fraction of the cost. 

“This could be a truly equalizing breakthrough that is great for researchers and developers with limited resources, especially those from the Global South,” says Hancheng Cao, an assistant professor in information systems at Emory University.

DeepSeek’s success is even more remarkable given the constraints facing Chinese AI companies in the form of increasing US export controls on cutting-edge chips. But early evidence shows that these measures are not working as intended. Rather than weakening China’s AI capabilities, the sanctions appear to be driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate in ways that prioritize efficiency, resource-pooling, and collaboration.

To create R1, DeepSeek had to rework its training process to reduce the strain on its GPUs, a variety released by Nvidia for the Chinese market that have their performance capped at half the speed of its top products, according to Zihan Wang, a former DeepSeek employee and current PhD student in computer science at Northwestern University. 

DeepSeek R1 has been praised by researchers for its ability to tackle complex reasoning tasks, particularly in mathematics and coding. The model employs a “chain of thought” approach similar to that used by ChatGPT o1, which lets it solve problems by processing queries step by step.

DeepSeek has also released six smaller versions of R1 that are small enough to  run locally on laptops. It claims that one of them even outperforms OpenAI’s o1-mini on certain benchmarks.“DeepSeek has largely replicated o1-mini and has open sourced it,” tweeted Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

In an interview with the Chinese media outlet 36Kr in July 2024 Liang said that an additional challenge Chinese companies face on top of chip sanctions, is that their AI engineering techniques tend to be less efficient. 

But DeepSeek found ways to reduce memory usage and speed up calculation without significantly sacrificing accuracy.  As well as prioritizing efficiency, Chinese companies are increasingly embracing open-source principles. 

According to a white paper released last year by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a state-affiliated research institute, the number of AI large language models worldwide has reached 1,328, with 36% originating in China. This positions China as the second-largest contributor to AI, behind the United States.

Few characters are more enigmatic or misunderstood than Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of SoftBank, the Japanese media technology conglomerate. In Japan and in western media, he is cast as a dreamer, financial engineer, and speculator — an object of suspicion who has risked financial ruin more than once in a five-decade career.

His life story is a Forrest Gump-like journey through all the key moments in recent business history: from the launch of the personal computer to the birth of the internet, the dotcom boom and bust, the rise of China, the global financial crisis, and the advent of artificial intelligence. As the British writer Simon Nixon observed in a review of Gambling Man, my biography of Son, “He seems to have known everyone and owned everything, or at least tried to buy it.”

According to the author he was interested in researching and writing about Son to better understand how his formative years shaped his career and what leaders in both the East and West can learn from both his successes and missteps as a corporate manager and investor. Here are eight key lessons:

1. Turn adversity into advantage.  Masayoshi Son was born in 1957 on the edge of a shanty town on the island of Kyushu, the second son in a Korean-Japanese family (zainichi) that lived under a Japanese alias in an attempt to avoid discrimination. His father was a bootlegger, pig breeder, loan shark, and owner of pachinko gambling parlors.  From his earliest years, Son faced prejudice, but, watching his father, he learned how to hustle. Then, instead of joining the gambling underworld, he left Japan at age 16 to study in California. It was a liberating experience. On his return home, Son set up a software distribution business called SoftBank, the foundation of a future global empire.  When he was 24, married with one young daughter and expecting a second child, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B and given three to five years to live. Thanks to pioneering treatment, however, he survived. Overcoming all these early obstacles gave him an extraordinary self-belief and allowed him to survive the brushes with corporate death he would later face.
2. Persist.  Son’s career is a study in perpetual reinvention. He started as a software distributor but, after losing 97% of his paper wealth in the dot-com crash, he pivoted to broadband and the mobile internet in Japan. Then he acquired Sprint in the United States and, six years later, despite prolonged resistance from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, pulled off a merger with T-Mobile, creating a “third force” in the country’s telecoms industry.  Son has made a practice of never taking “no” for an answer.
3. Bridge east and west.  Son did not invent, control, or own a breakthrough technology. He was not supported by U.S. venture capital, private equity, or the capital markets. Unlike China’s tycoons, he has never been a card-carrying member of the communist party. Instead, as someone fluent in both Japanese and English, he has acted for many years as a bridge between the United States and Asia, and a gateway to the mass markets of Japan and China.
4. Seek mentors and mentees.  In Japan, Son is known as “the old man killer.” His charm and confidence endeared him at a young age to a succession of veteran businessmen and engineers.  Later, Son became a tech mentor himself to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
5. Go big or go home.  Son is a master of outrageous gestures. He talks in seven- to ten-figure numbers, sometimes scribbling down zeroes on a “napkin contract” covering a deal or a potential hire.  Son is the master of leverage. SoftBank has regularly featured among the world’s top ten most indebted companies. His preferred approach is to borrow money so he can pay cash at prices most would consider to be over the odds but which he would consider a bargain in the longer term.
6. Don’t let love outweigh logic.  While we can learn much from Son’s triumphs (Yahoo!, Alibaba, ARM), we can also draw lessons from his biggest mistakes (WeWork, Wag, and WebVan).  When he focuses, as in the early days of the Sprint takeover, he can be a formidable operator, but more usually he is a creature of enthusiasms and sometimes guilty of credulity. He is particularly prone to “founder syndrome,” falling so in love with a charismatic entrepreneur like WeWork’s Adam Neumann that he fails to adequately stress test their strategy and leadership. 
7. Beware mercenaries.  Son has long relied on fixers to help him navigate outside Japan. As SoftBank grew bigger, he pulled off a succession of high-profile hires, many executives drawn from the Indian diaspora who were ambitious, highly educated, and money-driven. Many were trained mathematicians who applied their engineering skills to finance rather than academia. Over time, their presence, alongside other Indians, particularly those drawn from the Deutsche Bank network, began to change SoftBank’s culture, not always for the better. The business became more cut-throat, infighting broke out at the top between Rajeev Misra, head of the Vision Fund, and Marcelo Claure, a Bolivian-American COO and Sprint boss.  Masa played helpless — hardly an advert for managerial leadership.
8. Focus on the future.  Son was focused of the future, specifically artificial intelligence, a long-standing passion. In 2024, he made two investments amounting to a $2 billion stake in Sam Altman’s Open AI. He is now selling down other positions in his portfolio so he can shift the money to “deep AI” targets. This week, he joined President Trump at the White House, along with Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, to announce up to $500 billion in investment in AI infrastructure, such as data centers. He is back at the top table of investors, staging his fifth and most serious business comeback.

It’s the kind of high praise most brands would kill for, and in On’s (the Swiss sneaker brand) case it’s been a decade-and-a-half in the making. In the late 2010s, Nike Inc. helped spur the current running shoe revival with the introduction of its carbon-plated racing shoes. But then it and Adidas AG soon stumbled after leaning too heavily into fashion rather than performance. Nike only compounded its problems by pulling many of its sneakers out of retailers—especially stores that cater to serious runners—hoping to juice profits by selling directly to the masses.

Which left an opening for an upstart brand like On just as running culture was peaking and nonrunners were hungry to discover the next hip shoe that wouldn’t destroy their feet. In the past three years, the US running shoe market has ballooned by 20%, to $7.4 billion as of October, according to market researcher Circana LLC, with only 43% of buyers using those shoes for exercise. The running shoe market is expected to keep growing faster than the rest of footwear, both in terms of people buying the products and the average selling prices of the sneakers.

On, which is based in Zurich and run by five partners with an earnest management philosophy rooted in “Swiss democracy,” brought in about $2.5 billion in sales in 2024. That 30% year-over-year growth is impressive, but it’s still a long way from Adidas’ nearly $25 billion or Nike’s almost $50 billion in annual revenue. Despite the brand seeming to appear everywhere from sidewalks to supermarkets to trading floors, On still has only about a 2% share of the global athletic footwear market.  Currently, Wall Street analysts expect On to bring in $10 billion in annual sales by 2033, a milestone that neither Lululemon Athletica Inc. nor Puma SE—despite its 77 years of experience—has ever reached.

The company’s challenge is to maintain its momentum as it grows, while not losing its street cred among athletes. The sports world is littered with brands—think Reebok and Under Armour—that failed to make this transition. Now On, whose stated ambition is to become the “most premium global sportswear brand,” is trying to pull every lever: entering more countries, building up its own sales channels, expanding beyond running, selling $450 puffer jackets and $150 T-shirts and enlisting celebrity brand ambassadors such as Zendaya and FKA twigs. And, of course, figuring out how to bring to market the next multibillion-dollar sneaker technology to dazzle the public’s feet the way it’s managed to do with its CloudTec cushioning.

In July 2024, an executive at luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari received several messages that appeared to have been sent by CEO Benedetto Vigna on the messaging and calling platform WhatsApp. The messages, which originated from an unfamiliar number, mentioned an impending significant acquisition, urged the executive to sign a nondisclosure agreement immediately, and claimed that Italy’s market regulator and the Italian stock exchange had already been informed about the transaction.

Despite the convincing nature of the messages, which also included a profile picture of Vigna standing in front of the Ferrari logo, the executive grew suspicious. Although the voice mimicked Vigna’s Southern Italian accent, the executive noticed slight inconsistencies in tone during a follow-up call in which he was again urged to assist with the confidential and urgent financial transaction.

Sensing that something was amiss, the executive asked the caller a question that only Vigna would know the answer to — the title of a book Vigna had recommended days earlier. Unable to answer the question, the scammer abruptly ended the call. The executive’s simple test prevented what could have been a major financial loss and reputational damage for Ferrari.

The attempt to exploit Ferrari is an example of a deepfake — a highly realistic video, image, text, or voice that has been fully or partially generated using artificial intelligence algorithms, machine learning techniques, and generative adversarial networks, or GANs.

Financial losses attributed to AI are expected to rise: Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services predicts that fraud enabled by generative AI could reach $40 billion in losses in the United States by 2027, up from $12.3 billion in 2023. Given how realistic many deepfakes appear and the ease with which scammers can produce them, organizations must increase employee awareness and take proactive measures to protect against this emerging threat.

As the threat of deepfake scams grows, executives should prioritize the following actions to protect their organizations:  emphasize vigilance, Enact strong verification protocols, Promote digital literacy and AI awareness, Incorporate cognitive bias awareness, Enhance communications security, Implement a multilayered security approach, and Continually improve fraud detection systems.

This is your year to let go and leave behind what’s no longer serving you. Consider it a radical cleanup or reset of whatever is taking up energetic space in your mind, and as a result, in your life.

Let’s be real: there can be a lot to let go of. The need for validation. Criticism. Control. Expectations. Rejection. Regret(s). Anger. Negativity. Toxic relationships. Resentment. Comparison. Timelines (Perceived or real). Limited beliefs.

Letting go is a profound act of transformation. It’s a signal of surrender, which shows that you trust the process and what’s yet to unfold. Letting go also creates space for what’s meant to come in.

If anyone can offer concrete tips and words of inspiration on letting go, it’s bestselling author Brianna Wiest.

“We often think of letting go as something we need to do when things go wrong, like letting go of a failed relationship, an unmet expectation, or a dream that didn’t pan out. But in reality, letting go is a constant process and a skill. As we learn and move through life, we’re continually releasing what no longer serves us. And when we master doing it with the little things, we’ll be ready when the big things come our way.”

The author of books like 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, The Pivot Year, and Ceremony, Wiest applies a philosophical yet modern lens to explore universal themes such as the power of daily rituals, overcoming imposter syndrome, and embracing the idea that “our new life is going to cost us our old one.”

I started writing about ‘letting go’ because I was the queen of not being able to let go of anything,” Wiest humbly shares with the author over Zoom. Today it’s among the top questions she receives from fans, readers and her online community.

That’s the thing about growth: Once we become self-aware and do the work, we can learn the lessons, step into our power, and overcome our own mountains.

“Sometimes it’s about letting go of the expectation that you have to be a superhero when you can just be a human being, doing your best,” Wiest continues. “And I think everyone is generally always doing better than they think they are.”  Here are her 10 tips on mastering the skill—for whenever you are ready:  Replace Wanting with Surrender, Trust the Law of Gestation, Know When to Pivot, Release Perfectionism, Release the Need for Validation, Identify What Still Needs to Be Learned, Keep Moving Forward, Allow the Process of Healing, Use Rituals for Release, and Reconnect with Gratitude.

According to the author a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, when he first started in business, he bought into all the myths of dealmaking. He thought you had to be an extrovert, tell jokes, wear a suit and tie and have the gift of gab. He would go into deals with his polished pitch, funny stories, and even a few gifts—and leave empty-handed. Meanwhile, he watched as people who were less polished, glib or funny walk away with the deal. What were they doing that he wasn’t doing?

It wasn’t until he became a talent agent and media lawyer that he fully understood their magic method. As an attorney, litigation manager, and general counsel, he sat in on a lot of depositions. He noticed how all the expert witnesses established their credibility at the beginning or when they gave an opinion. They would talk about their education, experience, and expertise. As in how they were trained, how long they worked in their job and what they specialized in.  Then it hit him. That’s what he need to do in his business deals: Establish credibility using the three Es: education, experience, and expertise. This is what Robert Cialdini, the bestselling author of Influence (Harper Business, 2006), calls credentialing. 

Here is how you can establish your three Es–education, experience, and expertis–to set yourself up to win a deal. When people trust you, you’re halfway to closing. When it comes to highlighting your credentials, be sure you show it, say it, and publish it.

1. Education.  Your education is your training in your field, whether it’s a university degree or a course certificate. If you ever went to a doctor’s or lawyer’s office, you’ll notice they display their diplomas on the wall. It’s not just because they are proud of their school; it’s also because they want to convince their patients that they are trained doctors. You can do the same in your office if you meet clients face-to-face or post them strategically in the background of your video conference calls.  Bring your training into the conversation when talking with a client.
2. Experience.  Your experience includes what you have done and how long you have done it. Who do you trust more? A business that just got started or has been around for twenty years? That’s why businesses post the year they were founded. You see things like “Established in 1970” or “Trusted by Santa Barbara for over 25 Years.”  During conversation, you can casually introduce your experience. “In my 20 years of sales, I believe that …” Another way is to publish it on your website. There you can list the clients you have worked with and say how long you have been working in your field.
3. Expertise.  Expertise includes your specialization and your thought leadership. People tend to trust specialists more than generalists. For example, your company is not just a technology company; it’s a generative AI company. Or you’re not just another social media marketer; you’re a social media marketer with a bestselling book on social media marketing.

Turning innovation into patents? It can be an uphill battle. The process isn’t just about one idea — it’s about managing a pipeline of ideas coming from your engineering team, R&D department or even external collaborators.

The hurdles are real. Some ideas might not meet the threshold for novelty. Others could face tough patent examiners, leading to costly rejections. This leaves you facing critical decisions: “Should we push forward or shift resources elsewhere?” Entrepreneurs face tough decisions all the time, so measuring the risks is crucial.

According to the author he has seen companies pour tens of thousands into applications that go nowhere — resources that could have protected stronger ideas or fueled other growth and development. But it doesn’t have to be this way. By leveraging insights like knowing your application’s likelihood of favorable treatment, you can make smarter decisions and avoid wasted effort.

Over 25 years, the author has worked with startups and established enterprises alike to navigate these challenges. He has seen what works and what doesn’t. Here is he shared his five effective strategies to improve your odds of success: focus on ideas with a higher probability of enterprise value, predict where your application will land before it is filed, tailor your tactics based on examiner analytics, track your patent portfolio with real-time insights, and build families of patents around key innovation.

Patent prosecution isn’t just about getting by; it’s about winning. It’s about transforming your best ideas into competitive advantages that drive growth and protect your market.  Winning takes more than effort; it requires strategy, precision and the right tools. Tools provide insights — predicting where your application might land, understanding examiner behavior and tracking your portfolio in real-time.  But tools alone aren’t enough. Success demands:

Smart strategy: Prioritizing ideas and knowing when to pivot.

Team alignment: Uniting decision-makers, inventors and legal teams.

Expert execution: Drafting airtight claims and responding effectively.

With the right tools and winning mindset, you’ll make informed decisions and secure high-impact patents.