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    Dollar Tree says it’s winning over higher-income shoppers and may offset tariffs with price hikes

    Dollar Tree said it is winning over more high-income shoppers during a sustained period of high inflation.
    The company said it could use negotiations with suppliers, manufacturing changes and price increases to mitigate the effect of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
    Dollar Tree reported fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday and said it would sell its struggling Family Dollar chain.

    Erin Scott | Reuters

    Dollar Tree said Wednesday that it’s gaining market share with higher-income consumers and could raise prices on some products to offset President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
    The discount retailer’s CEO, Michael Creedon, said the company is seeing “value-seeking behavior across all income groups.” While Dollar Tree has always relied on lower-income shoppers and gets about 50% of its business from middle-income consumers, sustained inflation has led to “stronger demand from higher-income customers,” Creedon said on an analyst call.

    Dollar Tree’s success with higher-income shoppers follows similar gains from Walmart, which has made inroads with the cohort following the prolonged period of high prices.
    Trump’s tariffs on certain goods from China, Mexico and Canada — and the potential for broad duties on trading partners around the world — have only added to concerns about stretched household budgets. While Dollar Tree will use tactics like negotiating with suppliers and moving manufacturing to mitigate the effect of the duties, it could also hike the prices of some items, Creedon said.
    Dollar Tree has rolled out prices higher than its standard $1.25 products at about 2,900 so-called multi-price stores. Certain products can cost anywhere from $1.50 to $7 at those locations.
    The retailer weighed in on higher-income customers and the potential effect of tariffs as it announced its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. Dollar Tree also said it will sell its struggling Family Dollar chain for about $1 billion to a consortium of private equity investors.
    Dollar Tree said its net sales for continuing operations — its namesake brand — totaled $5 billion for the quarter, while same-stores sales climbed 2%. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.11 for the period.

    It is unclear how the figures compare with Wall Street estimates.
    For fiscal 2025, Dollar Tree expects net sales of $18.5 billion to $19.1 billion from continuing operations, with same-store sales growth of 3% to 5%. It anticipates it will post adjusted earnings of $5 to $5.50 per share for the year.
    Creedon said the expected hit from the first round of 10% tariffs Trump levied on China in February would have been $15 million to $20 million per month, but the company has mitigated about 90% of that effect.
    Additional 10% duties on China imposed this month, along with 25% levies on Mexico and Canada that have only partly taken effect, would hit Dollar Tree by another $20 million per month, Creedon said. The company is working to offset those duties, but did not include them in its financial guidance due to the confusion over which tariffs will take effect and when.

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    Stephen Curry teams up with Michelle Obama to launch sports drink

    Stephen Curry and Michelle Obama have partnered to launch a new sports drink called Plezi.
    Plezi is marketing the beverage as a healthier sports drink option.
    It will come in three flavors, and be available nationwide on Amazon and in select grocery stores.

    Plezi Nutrition, the public benefit company co-founded by Michelle Obama, has created a new sports drink with Stephen Curry.

    Four-time NBA champion Stephen Curry is teaming up with former first lady Michelle Obama to release a healthier sports drink option.
    Curry and Obama on Wednesday announced the launch of Plezi Hydration, through Obama’s public benefit company, Plezi Nutrition. The drink adds to Curry’s growing portfolio of off-court ventures as the 37-year-old nears the final years of his playing career.

    The sports drink market is a crowded space, but Curry said the beverage’s focus on health and wellness makes it different. The drink touts no added sugar or artificial sweeteners, less sodium than leading rivals and a full daily dose of vitamin C.
    “We’ve created something with smart ingredients and unbeatable flavor, so people can fuel their bodies the right way. No nonsense, no shortcuts — because the next generation deserves better,” Curry said in a statement.

    Plezi will be available in three flavors

    The sports drink category is largely dominated by three main players. PepsiCo’s Gatorade has 61% market share, followed by Coca-Cola’s Powerade at 14.5% and BodyArmor at 11.8%, according to data analytics company Euromonitor International.
    Curry joins the growing list of athletes and celebrities investing in the sports and energy drink market from the late Kobe Bryant (BodyArmor) to LeBron James (Mtn Dew Rise) to fighter and influencer Logan Paul (Prime).
    The overall demand for advanced hydration is very strong right now, according to Howard Telford, senior industry manager for soft drinks at Euromonitor.

    In the ready-to-drink sports drink category, volume declined to 2024, but sales rose due to higher prices, Telford said.
    The category faces pressure from the rise of powder mix concentrates and oral rehydration brands such as Pedialyte and Electrolit that are challenging the dominance of traditional sports drinks.
    Plezi said Curry was not only as an investor in the product, but he also helped on everything from the actual beverage to the packaging. His wife Ayesha, who has a culinary background, also helped with the creation and taste of the drink.
    Plezi, which means “fun” in Creole, will be available in three flavors: lemon lime, tropical punch and orange mango twist. Curry’s favorite flavor is the orange mango twist.
    The drinks will be sold in California at Walmart, Albertsons and Safeway, and available nationwide on Amazon. The 16.9-ounce bottles will cost $2.29 each and contain 70 calories in a full bottle.
    “We’re excited to provide a delicious, healthier option for everyone who’s trying to get active and stay hydrated,” Obama, co-founder and strategic partner at Plezi Nutrition, said in a statement.
    Obama launched Plezi Nutrition in 2023, with the purpose to “help raise a healthier generation of kids,” following her “Let’s Move!” campaign during her time in the White House.
    Curry has also been an advocate for health and nutrition through non-profit Eat, Learn, Play, which he and Ayesha created in 2019. Plezi said it has collaborated with ELP on various events by providing beverages. More

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    Trump says tariffs coming in April will ‘probably be more lenient than reciprocal’

    “I’ll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough for people,” Trump said in an interview.
    “I know there are some exceptions, and it’s an ongoing discussion, but not too many, not too many exceptions,” the president added.

    US President Donald Trump meets with US Ambassadors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025.
    Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

    President Donald Trump said that tariffs will likely be more “lenient than reciprocal,” as the April 2 tariff deadline looms for a number of levies to go into effect.
    “I’ll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough for people,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Newsmax.

    “I know there are some exceptions, and it’s an ongoing discussion, but not too many, not too many exceptions,” the president added.
    The comments come as investors worry that a more severe approach signaled by the Trump administration would dampen consumer and corporate sentiment enough to slow down the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Conference Board said its measure for consumer expectations on business, income and labor dropped to a 12-year low.
    Stocks have struggled recently, with the S&P 500 dropping 3% in the past month. The benchmark also dipped into correction territory amid the tariff pressures, briefly trading more than 10% below a record set in February.
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    China’s artificial intelligence boom might help mitigate some tariff pain

    For Chinese companies wary of U.S. tariffs, the big difference between President Donald Trump’s first and second terms is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
    Nearly every day in the last two weeks, a major Chinese company has announced a new AI product — or how they’re making money with the tech.
    The combined impact of the tech is lifting expectations for Chinese corporate earnings, said Ding Wenjie, investment strategist for global capital investment at China Asset Management.

    Computer chip with Chinese flag, 3d conceptual illustration.
    Steven Mcdowell/science Photo Library | Science Photo Library | Getty Images

    BEIJING — For Chinese companies wary of U.S. tariffs, the big difference between President Donald Trump’s first and second terms is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
    Chinese companies are hard at work. Nearly every day in the last two weeks, a Chinese firm has announced a new AI product — or how they’re making money with the tech.

    To name a few:
    Short-video company Kuaishou said Tuesday its AI tool for generating videos, Kling, has raked in more than 100 million yuan ($13.78 million) since its launch last summer.
    Tencent last week updated its AI model for generating 3D visuals — which can be used in games or for 3D printing — and released the full version of its Hunyuan T1 reasoning model. A few weeks earlier, Tencent had integrated T1 with its Yuanbao chatbot app that also lets users tap DeepSeek’s R1.
    Daily active Yuanbao users surged by 20 times in just a month, Tencent said last week. The company also shared how some farmers have used the AI app to analyze soil conditions for planting.

    Baidu on Monday launched tools for people to build websites and simple games with conversational prompts instead of having to write code. Kunlun Tech, parent of browser Opera, on Wednesday upgraded its Mureka app for using AI to generate music.

    As a manufacturing hub, China has “great advantages in terms of ‘physical’ AI” since the country has lots of machines that can collect valuable data for training industry-specific models, Maxwell Zhou, CEO of autonomous-driving software company DeepRoute.ai, told CNBC on Friday in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
    DeepRoute.ai, launched in 2019, announced last week it was building a system for autonomous-delivery vehicles to send parcels with simple voice commands such as “pick up coffee from this store and send it to the apartment.”
    Zhou said he hopes the system to be operational in China by early next year.
    While it’s unclear which AI companies will ultimately succeed, analysts expect Chinese businesses stand a better chance at excelling with the help of AI applications. AI tools could cut costs for companies and offset some of the impact of an economic slowdown.
    The combined impact of the tech is lifting expectations for Chinese corporate earnings growth in the year ahead, said Ding Wenjie, investment strategist for global capital investment at China Asset Management.
    Earnings will signal whether the economy is really turning around, especially under the pressure of tariffs and other trade restrictions.
    Goldman Sachs in early February estimated a 20% increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods could shave off 5% in Chinese corporate earnings, in Hong Kong dollar terms.
    The greater question for the U.S. and China, however, stretches beyond tariffs.
    After a visit to China this week for a conference, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman concluded that it was not tariffs or Taiwan that the U.S. and Chinese presidents needed to discuss immediately — but rather AI that’s as smart as humans and pervades the world.
    The author of “The World is Flat” likened a possible U.S.-China collaboration on AI to the Soviet-U.S. nuclear arms control deal. More

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    GameStop to invest corporate cash in bitcoin, following in footsteps of MicroStrategy

    A general view of the GameStop logo on one of its stores in the city center of Cologne, Germany.
    Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images

    Video game retailer GameStop announced Tuesday its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash, echoing a move made famous by MicroStrategy.
    The meme stock jumped more than 6% in extended trading Tuesday following the news. The announcement confirmed CNBC’s reporting in February of GameStop’s intention to add bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to its balance sheet.

    The video game retailer said a portion of its cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in bitcoin and U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins. As of Feb. 1, GameStop held nearly $4.8 billion in cash. The firm also said it has not set a ceiling on the amount of bitcoin it may purchase.
    GameStop will be following in the footsteps of software company MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, which bought billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in recent years to become the largest corporate holder of the flagship cryptocurrency. That decision prompted a rapid, albeit volatile, rise for Strategy’s stock.
    GameStop’s foray into cryptocurrencies marks the latest effort by CEO Ryan Cohen to revive the struggling brick-and-mortar business. Under Cohen’s leadership, GameStop has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations to ensure the business is profitable.
    The company said the move could expose it to volatility associated with cryptocurrency prices.
    “Bitcoin, for example, is a highly volatile asset and has experienced significant price fluctuations over time. Our Bitcoin strategy has not been tested and may prove unsuccessful,” GameStop said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

    Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has ridden a roller coaster since President Donald Trump won reelection. After shooting up and piercing the $100,000 milestone, bitcoin has declined about 18% from its record high to a recent price of approximately $88,000.
    In tandem with the cryptocurrency announcement, investors also cheered a rise in GameStop’s fourth-quarter results. The firm reported net income of $131.3 million, more than double the $63.1 million earned in the same quarter last year.

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    Trump’s endless trade threats come at a growing cost

    AMERICA’S ECONOMY is looking peaky. Inflation expectations are creeping up. On March 25th consumer confidence fell to its lowest in 12 years. But Donald Trump, the country’s president, says relief is at hand. “Liberation day” for the economy will arrive on April 2nd, he proclaims, when he intends to slap hefty new tariffs on imports from all over the world. More

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    Trump’s tariff pain: the growing evidence

    AMERICA’S ECONOMY is looking peaky. Inflation expectations are creeping up. On March 25th consumer confidence fell to its lowest in 12 years. But Donald Trump, the country’s president, says relief is at hand. “Liberation day” for the economy will arrive on April 2nd, he proclaims, when he intends to slap hefty new tariffs on imports from all over the world. More

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    Chinese bubble tea chain Chagee files for U.S. initial public offering

    Chinese bubble tea chain Chagee filed to go public in the U.S. on the Nasdaq.
    The company is planning to open its first U.S. store this spring in Los Angeles.
    The fast-growing chain generated net income of $344.5 million from its more than 6,400 locations last year.

    Pedestrians walk past a Chagee store in Shanghai, China, on March 14, 2025.
    CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

    Chinese bubble tea chain Chagee filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to trade on the Nasdaq using the ticker “CHA.”
    The IPO filing comes as the company prepares to open its first U.S. store in the Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles this spring.

    Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to more than 6,400 teahouses across China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Roughly 97% of its locations are in China.
    Chagee said it generated net income of $344.5 million from revenue of $1.7 billion in 2024.
    Founder and CEO Junjie Zhang created the chain to modernize tea drinking after being inspired by the success of international coffee companies, according to a regulatory filing. China is Starbucks’ second-largest market.
    Looking ahead, Chagee wants to “serve tea lovers in 100 countries, generate 300,000 employment opportunities worldwide, and deliver 15 billion cups of freshly brewed tea annually,” according to the company’s website.
    If Chagee goes public on the Nasdaq, it will join the dwindling number of Chinese companies seeking a U.S. listing. From January 2023 to January 2024, the number of Chinese companies listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges fell 5%, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

    As relations between the U.S. and Beijing have grown frostier, political scrutiny has dashed some Chinese companies’ hopes of a U.S. IPO. Shein is now planning a London IPO for later this year after lawmakers pushed back on its plans to go public on a U.S. exchange.
    U.S. investors might also be wary to invest in another Chinese beverage chain after the example set by Luckin Coffee.
    Luckin was founded in 2017 and grew quickly. By 2019, it had outnumbered the number of Starbucks locations in China and gone public on the Nasdaq.
    But in 2020, Luckin disclosed that it had inflated its sales, resulting in its delisting from the Nasdaq. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. Luckin emerged from bankruptcy by 2022, minus the executives that were responsible for the fraud.
    Since then, it has overtaken Starbucks as China’s largest coffee retailer by sales.

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