In early February, John Schwarz, a self-described “mindfulness and meditation facilitator,” proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month. Schwarz urged people to forgo spending at Amazon, Walmart, and all other major retailers and fast-food companies for a day. He called on them to spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs. “The system has been designed to exploit us,” said Schwarz, who goes by “TheOneCalledJai” on social media, in a video to his roughly 250,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. “On February 28, we are going to remind them who really holds the power. For one day, we turn it off.” Schwarz, 57, has no background in social or political organizing. Until early this year, he almost exclusively posted videos of himself offering inspirational messages and motivational tips sitting in his home, backyard and shopping mall parking lots. He had low expectations for his boycott message gaining traction. “I thought maybe a handful of my followers would do it,” he told CNN in a phone interview this week. Instead, Schwarz’s call rapidly spread online. His video has been shared more than 700,000 times on Instagram and viewed 8.5 million times. Celebrities such as Stephen King, Bette Midler and Mark Ruffalo have encouraged people to participate. Reporters wrote and aired TV pieces about the boycott, propelling it further. The “economic blackout” effort is relatively uncoordinated and nebulous. Experts on consumer boycotts and corporate strategy are dubious that it will make a dent in the bottom lines of the massive companies it targets, let alone the vast US economy. Effective boycotts are typically well organized, make clear and specific demands and are focused on one company or issue. But this boycott has gained strength online because it has captured visceral public anger with the American economy, corporations and politics. “There’s the sense that a lot of people want to do something. Doing something in the American context has often meant using pocketbook politics,” said Lawrence Glickman, a historian at Cornell University and author of “Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America.” “This a way of engaging in a form of collective action outside of the electoral arena that makes people feel some connection and sense of potential power.”

SINGAPORE, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Investors unnerved by the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump’s impending tariffs drove a wave of selling on Friday in risk-sensitive currencies such as the Aussie, sent bitcoin tumbling and gave safe-haven support to the dollar. On Thursday Trump said his proposed tariffs of 25% on Mexican and Canadian goods would take effect on March 4 along with an extra 10% duty on Chinese imports, defying expectations of those who hoped for a further delay in the levies. The risk-off moves gathered steam during the trading session, with cryptocurrencies among the biggest losers for the day as bitcoin slid more than 5% to bottom at $79,125.53, its weakest level since November 11. Ether similarly tumbled more than 5% to an over 13-month low of $2,099.37. The two tokens were on track for their steepest monthly falls since June 2022, following a towering rally late last year on optimism that the Trump administration would be a boon for the asset class. “Bitcoin’s fall below $80,000 shows that positive sentiments from a crypto-friendly administration and high-profile endorsements have run their course,” said Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association. “It’s clear bitcoin is a risk asset, not the inflation hedge or digital gold it’s often touted to be.” In the broader market, the Aussie slid 0.4% to its lowest in more than three weeks at $0.62105, extending a decline of 1% from the previous session. It was on track for a weekly loss of nearly 2%. The New Zealand dollar similarly fell more than 0.5% to $0.5599 and was set to shed 1.9% for the week. The euro struggled at a two-week low of $1.0380 and was also headed for a weekly fall of 0.6%, which would put its monthly gain at just 0.35%. “Markets were shaken out of tariff complacency,” said Sim Moh Siong, currency strategist at Bank of Singapore. “We continue to see scope for some U.S. dollar strength if tariff risks materialise by April even as our conviction that the U.S. dollar can strengthen meaningfully is now reduced given cracks in the U.S. exceptionalism story.” The Canadian dollar slipped to a more than three-week low of C$1.4452, as it heads for a weekly decline of 1.5%. The greenback’s moves against the Chinese yuan were more muted as it was little changed at 7.2846, after rising to a two-week top of 7.2914 earlier in the session. “Ahead of China’s most important political event next week, investors are likely staying clear of the yuan as (the People’s Bank of China) would likely intervene to ensure the yuan’s stability,” said Alex Loo, FX and macro strategist at TD Securities. Against a basket of currencies, the greenback struck a two-week top of 107.42 , extending its 0.8% jump on Thursday. Still, the index was on track for a monthly loss of more than 1%, its worst since August, as the dollar faces downward pressure amid worries over the health of the world’s largest economy. A raft of weaker-than-expected economic data has led traders to ramp up bets for more Federal Reserve rate cuts this year, in turn sending U.S. Treasury yields lower and proving a drag on the dollar. “For now, it’s the growth story that is dominating, pushing yields lower, while at the same time, we’re starting to see a little bit of an increase in volatility in markets in general and that risk aversion as well,” said Rodrigo Catril, senior currency strategist at National Australia Bank. Elsewhere, sterling fell 0.17% to $1.2580, but was set to end the month with a gain of more than 1.6% for its best performance in five months. The pound has partly been supported by expectations for relatively fewer rate cuts from the Bank of England than some other central banks, namely the European Central Bank. The yen fell 0.1% to 149.91 per dollar . Still, the Japanese currency was set to rise 3.5% for the month, its best since last July, on heightened bets of more rate hikes this year by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). Core consumer prices in Tokyo slowed in February, but kept well above the BOJ’s 2% target, data showed on Friday.

Nvidia (NVDA) reported its fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, beating analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom lines and issuing solid Q1 guidance. Nvidia’s stock was up as much as 2% on the news; near 6:00 p.m. ET, the stock was up closer to 0.7%. Nvidia’s earnings come as the company girds itself for potential 25% tariffs on chips imported into the US and the threat of increased export controls on its shipments to China. The AI giant is also contending with the fallout from claims that Chinese startup DeepSeek developed its AI models using less powerful Nvidia chips than its US rivals, putting into question whether Big Tech companies are over-investing in AI. For the quarter, Nvidia reported earnings per share (EPS) of $0.89 on revenue of $39.3 billion. Wall Street was expecting EPS of $0.84 on revenue of $38.2 billion. The company said it expects Q1 revenue of $43 billion plus or minus 2%, better than the $42.3 billion expected. Data center revenue clocked in at $35.6 billion versus expectations of $34 billion in the quarter. “We’ve successfully ramped up the massive-scale production of Blackwell AI supercomputers, achieving billions of dollars in sales in its first quarter,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. “AI is advancing at light speed as agentic AI and physical AI set the stage for the next wave of AI to revolutionize the largest industries.” According to Nvidia CFO Colette Kress, cloud service providers made up 50% of Nvidia’s data center revenue in the quarter. The company reported similar results in Q3. The company’s Blackwell line of chips contributed billions in sales for the quarter, Kress said. “We delivered $11.0 billion of Blackwell architecture revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the fastest product ramp in our company’s history.” Nvidia’s gaming revenue, however, fell 11% year over year in Q4 due to supply constraints around its latest gaming chips. Nvidia is the reigning champion of AI chips, and it’s not losing that crown anytime soon. Its chips are the envy of Silicon Valley and beyond, and its competitors are still far from overtaking its performance advantage. Big Tech companies Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) are spending billions of dollars building out their AI data centers, and a chunk of that is going straight to Nvidia. But shares of those same companies are also struggling in the early months of 2025. Google parent Alphabet is off more than 8% year to date, Amazon is down 2.5%, Microsoft has fallen 5.3%, and Apple (AAPL) has dropped more than 4%. Meta is the sole outlier in the group, with shares up over 14%. Huang also alluded to fears that DeepSeek’s AI models, which were developed using lower-powered Nvidia chips while still matching the performance of top US-made AI models, would hurt Nvidia’s sales. “Demand for Blackwell is amazing as reasoning AI adds another scaling law — increasing compute for training makes models smarter and increasing compute for long thinking makes the answer smarter,” he said. Nvidia is staring down President Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs on chips imported into the US, which could force it to either raise prices or eat some of the cost of the tariffs, cutting into margins. Nvidia works with TSMC to build its processors, which produces many of those chips in Taiwan. Trump has also threatened to put further export restrictions on Nvidia chips destined for China, which would cut into the company’s revenue from the region. Wall Street has also raised concerns about the impact of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta using their own custom AI chips versus those developed by Nvidia. If those companies’ chips can match Nvidia’s in performance, the thinking goes, they’ll be less dependent on Nvidia’s offerings. But Morgan Stanley Research analyst Joseph Moore cautioned overreacting to the potential of these ASICS, or application-specific integrated circuits. “Spending time with 20-25 Nvidia alternatives over the years, most of which failed to get traction, we saw initial enthusiasm based on price and potential performance, which [brought] an initial deployment,” Moore wrote. “Then there is almost always a pull back to Nvidia, which has the most mature ecosystem, and the alternatives are put on hold, sometimes never to return.” Google’s and Amazon’s chips have proven to be the exception to that rule so far, but Moore says Nvidia is still gaining share in the AI space.

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday announced a “significant shift” to the publisher’s opinion page that led David Shipley, the paper’s editorial page editor, to leave the paper. The changes upended precedent and rattled a media company that has already been shaken by years of turmoil and leadership turnover. As part of the overhaul, the Post will publish daily opinion stories on two editorial “pillars”: personal liberties and free markets, Bezos teased in an X post on Wednesday morning after announcing the change in a company-wide email. The Post’s opinion section will cover other subjects, too, Bezos wrote, but “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” Bezos wrote. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.” In announcing the shift, the billionaire media mogul championed the changes as based in American principles anchored in “freedom.” This freedom, Bezos emphasized, “is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.” As a basis for the change, Bezos noted that legacy opinion sections have become outdated and have been replaced by the internet. “There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” Bezos said via X. “Today, the internet does that job.”

David Shipley leaves the Post

Bezos also shared that David Shipley, the Post’s editorial page editor, would part ways with the company. Shipley had been offered a role in leading Bezos’ planned changes but decided to step away instead. “I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter,” Bezos wrote on X. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision.” Bezos said the Post will search for a new opinion editor to “own” the paper’s new editorial direction. In an email to the Post’s editorial team obtained by CNN, Shipley noted his decision to leave the publisher was reached “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession I love.” “I will always be thankful for the opportunity I was given to work alongside a team of opinion journalists whose commitment to strong, innovative, reported commentary inspired me every day — and was affirmed by two Pulitzer Prizes and two Loeb Awards in two short years,” Shipley wrote in the email. Shipley’s departure comes after spending four months navigating increasing criticism of the Post from subscribers and its own journalists. During that time, he defended the Post’s decision to not run a cartoon from Ann Telnaes that featured Jeff Bezos – and led to her resignation. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Shipley said in January. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”

Post staffers lash out

Bezos’ announcement was immediately met with hostility by some Post staffers who publicly took issue with the move. Jeff Stein, the publisher’s chief economics reporter, called the overhaul a “massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos” that makes it clear “dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.” “I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know,” Stein said on X. Amanda Katz, who stepped down from her role on the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, called the change “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.” And columnist Philip Bump, who pens the Post’s weekly “How to Read This Chart” newsletter, pithily said “what the actual f**k” on Bluesky. Meanwhile, conservatives are celebrating Bezos’ changes. Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder, hailed the change as “the culture (…)changing rapidly for the better.” And Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is a direct rival of Bezos’ Blue Origins, succinctly applauded on X, saying “Bravo, @JeffBezos!” Following the transformation’s internal announcement, Will Lewis, the paper’s publisher and chief executive, noted in an internal email obtained by CNN that the “recalibrate(ion)” was “not about siding with any political party,” but, rather, about “being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper.” “Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans,” Lewis wrote to Post staffers. As Shipley exits the Post on Friday, Lewis said he would put together an interim arrangement, adding that the editorial page editor’s replacement would be announced in “due course” — and be “someone who is wholehearted in their support for free markets and personal liberties.” In the early afternoon, Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, chimed in to respond to the “questions” he had received from concerned staffers. In an email obtained by CNN, Murray toed Bezos’ line, reminding staffers that opinion sections are “traditionally the provenance of the owner at news organizations.” “The independent and unbiased work of The Post’s newsroom remains unchanged, and we will continue to pursue engaging, impactful journalism without fear or favor,” Murray wrote. Though Murray and Lewis have supported Bezos’ transformation with staffers, New York magazine reports that Lewis’ tune is quite different behind the scenes, having warned Bezos that the changes would likely negatively impact the publication. Already, Lewis’ private predictions appear to be manifesting. Since the announcement, two former top Post editors have come out against the move. As reported by the Daily Beast, Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, said he was “sad and disgusted” by Bezos’ demands, emphasizing that the Amazon and Blue Origin founder “has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.” Meanwhile, Cameron Barr, a former senior managing editor for the Post, said in a LinkedIn post that he would end his “professional association” with the newspaper, saying Bezos’ changes represent “an unacceptable erosion of its commitment to publishing a healthy diversity of opinion and argument.” And David Maraniss, a longtime Post editor and Pulitzer Prize winner, said on Bluesky that he would “never write for (the Post) again as long as (Bezos is) the owner.”

Bezos and the Post’s new direction

The divisive overhaul comes months after Bezos blocked the opinion page’s endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris at the eleventh hour, ending decades of precedent. Shipley was among the chorus of voices that sought to convince Bezos not to bar the endorsement, telling staffers in October that “I failed” to do just that. Since Bezos’ action to block the op-ed, a chain reaction has hounded the Post, with 250,000 Post readers canceling their subscriptions and several opinion staffers resigning in protest. The Post has also hemorrhaged reporters, who have signed with rival publications rather than remain at the ailing outlet. The massive changeup comes months after Bezos admitted in his defense of the op-ed block that his Amazon and Blue Origin business interests have served as a “complexifier for the Post.” In the run-up to November’s election, Silicon Valley media moguls were seen cozying up to then-candidate Donald Trump, hedging their bets in the event of a conservative presidential victory. Critics said Bezos was trying to change the Post’s editorial strategy to gain favorability with Trump, who has grown close to Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is a direct rival of Bezos’ own business. Bezos pushed back on those accusations in a rare October op-ed. “When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post,” Bezos wrote. “You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests.” “Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other,” he wrote in October. Bezos’ “appearance of conflict” is issued from his numerous holdings, which include his Amazon and spacefaring company, Blue Origin. Bezos’ Amazon is also still facing a lawsuit from the FTC and 17 states, who accuse the company of abusing its economic dominance and harming fair competition. Bezos attended President Trump’s January inauguration. Although Bezos was not the only tech billionaire present, his attendance as the Post’s owner did little to dispel the appearance of conflict. Most recently, the Post opted to not publish an anti-Musk wrap ad for its print edition; while the Post did greenlight an internal anti-Musk ad, it has not yet clarified the grounds on which the wrap was denied and did not comment when asked whether Bezos was involved with the decision. Post staffers also have for some time also been discontented with Bezos over his appointment of Lewis as publisher and chief executive. After taking the top job in early 2024, reports quickly emerged of Lewis’ involvement in several controversies, including accusations that he used fraudulent and unethical methods to acquire reporting for articles while working at the Sunday Times. Lewis also came under fire for allegedly attempting to kill a story about his alleged involvement in the phone hacking scandal coverup. Lewis has denied the accusations. Dissatisfaction with Lewis reached a peak in June, when two Pulitzer Prize-winning Post journalists called for a leadership change amid the reports that questioned Lewis’ journalistic integrity, undermining the Post’s reputation and reporting alike. Though, as Murray notes, the opinion section is the “provenance” of the Post’s owner — meaning Bezos — the billionaire’s last change resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of subscribers, worsening the Post’s financial woes. As the overhaul exacerbates longstanding issues at the storied publication and current and former Post staffers publicly decry the changes, the Post appears to find itself in an emergency.