We now know who won the contest to attend an intimate dinner with President Donald Trump by buying his cryptocurrency — and he’s a familiar face to Securities and Exchange Commission regulators and law enforcement officials.

Justin Sun, a Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur, confirmed in an X post Tuesday that he was behind the account, labeled ‘SUN,’ that purchased the most $TRUMP meme coin to sit at the president’s table at a crypto-focused gala scheduled for Thursday.

‘Honored to support @POTUS and grateful for the invitation from @GetTrumpMemes to attend President Trump’s Gala Dinner as his TOP fan!’ Sun wrote. ‘As the top holder of $TRUMP, I’m excited to connect with everyone, talk crypto, and discuss the future of our industry.’

He capped the post with an American flag emoji.

Critics have blasted the dinner contest as potentially unconstitutional and a blatant opportunity for corruption. Trump has not publicly commented on the accusations, and the Office of Government Ethics has declined to comment. A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The Trump administration is not directly involved in administering $TRUMP coin. As for the dinner, a White House official said in a statement that the president ‘is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself.’

‘President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

While Trump has not been as aggressive in directly promoting cryptocurrencies as some campaign backers in the industry had hoped, his administration has abandoned or paused many pending cases that had been brought against crypto entrepreneurs and businesses.

That includes Sun, who was charged in 2023 with market manipulation and offering unregistered securities. Regulators sought various injunctions against him that would have largely prevented him from participating in crypto in the U.S. The Verge, a tech industry website, had also reported Sun was the target of an FBI investigation.

But in February, the SEC, now controlled by Trump appointees, agreed to a 60-day pause of the suit in order to seek a resolution.

Two months earlier, Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), the crypto venture backed by Trump and his family, the website Popular Information reported.

Eventually, Sun became the largest publicly known investor in World Liberty after he brought his funding total to $75 million.

According to Bloomberg News, per the terms of World Liberty’s financial structure, 75% of the proceeds of token sales like Sun’s get sent to the Trump family as a fee — meaning they may have directly earned as much as $56 million.

On Jan. 22 — two days after Trump was inaugurated — Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”

In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Biden’s Justice Department had been investigating Sun, noting that researchers had estimated that more than half of all illicit crypto activity took place on Sun’s Tron blockchain platform. The Journal said it wasn’t clear whether the investigation was ongoing. It said Sun’s representatives declined to comment about what they called “baseless allegations about legal matters” while denying Tron enables criminal activity.

Sun may now be a multibillionaire, with a net worth estimated at $8.5 billion, according to Forbes. He reportedly was forced to spend $2 billion to shore up one of his crypto firms that was facing collapse in 2022.

He did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what he hoped to get out of the dinner with the president.

Sun has also earned headlines for purchasing ‘Comedian,’ an art installation composed of a banana duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million, and for buying lunch with Warren Buffett for $4.57 million.

Raising prices on consumers to cover the costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be Target’s ‘very last resort,’ CEO Brian Cornell said Wednesday.

The remarks came as Target reported weaker-than-expected sales in its first quarter and cut its full-year forecast. The retailer, whose business hasn’t fared as well against rivals better known for bargain prices, has “many levers to use in mitigating the impact of tariffs,” Cornell said.

Major retailers appear to be treading cautiously around the question of price hikes after Trump slammed Walmart last weekend for warning that shoppers could pay more due to tariffs. In the days since, Target, Lowe’s and Home Depot have each made carefully worded remarks about the potential for higher prices or minimized discussion of tariffs altogether.

Walmart said last week that it customers would likely start seeing some prices climb as soon as this month because tariffs have created a more “challenging environment to operate in.” While presidents typically avoid appearing to dictate individual companies’ strategies, Trump castigated Walmart on his social media platform, demanding that it “EAT THE TARIFFS” and adding, “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

“We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins,” Walmart told NBC News Saturday in response to Trump’s post. Days later, Home Depot all but ruled out near-term price hikes, citing its scale and supply-chain arrangements. Lowe’s barely mentioned tariffs when it reported earnings Wednesday but said just 20% of what its shoppers buy now comes from China, after years of diversifying its sourcing.

For Target, Cornell emphasized that tariffs were just one factor in a series of “massive potential costs” the company is grappling with. He pointed to consumer uncertainty over the direction of the economy and a high-profile backlash over Target’s watering down of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The retailer had expanded those initiatives after police murdered George Floyd in its hometown, Minneapolis, five years ago this weekend.

Target has rolled out discounts over the past year to lure inflation-weary shoppers and touted plans to expand its third-party marketplace to offer a broader range of items. To deal with new trade policy challenges, it’s negotiating with vendors, reassessing its product lineup and adjusting its foreign supply chain, Chief Commercial Officer Rick Gomez told investors Wednesday.

‘Half of what we sell comes from the U.S.,’ he said, adding that Target is expanding production in the United States and in other countries outside of China, whose exports currently face a 30% import tax.

Target’s stock fell more than 5% Wednesday during a broader market sell-off.

Some major companies that sell products at leading retailers have raised prices or said they’re considering doing so, including toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker, consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, sportswear brand Adidas and toy maker Mattel.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, has also come under fire from Trump, who threatened to hit it with 100% tariffs this month, after it signaled price hikes were on the table.

Big companies generally have more latitude to handle cost increases and other economic headwinds than their smaller counterparts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and independent business owners have warned that tariffs threaten to snuff out many small operators, chipping away at the competition for already large corporate rivals.

The National Retail Federation, which represents some of the biggest retailers in the country, has emphasized that risk in lobbying against new levies. “Small and medium-sized businesses will be disproportionately affected by the tariffs, with many saying they will have to raise prices or shut down,” it says on its website.

So far, “consumers are still spending despite widespread pessimism fueled by rising tariffs,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a statement last week after retail sales eked out a modest 0.1% rise in April.

But even the largest multinational companies aren’t insulated from tariff-driven uncertainty, the NFR and industry analysts say. Like Target, several large firms have revised or scrapped their financial outlooks in recent weeks, unsure how the White House’s trade agenda will affect them. Nike plans to increase prices on several items between now and June 1, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News on Wednesday.

Not every retailer is voicing tariff jitters. The parent company of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls beat sales estimates Wednesday and maintained its full-year forecast. The discounter, which buys unsold merchandise from other brands that have already paid tariffs on much of it, said it expects to be able to handle the pressure from higher import taxes.

Sportswear brand Canada Goose, which makes popular winter jackets, also exceeded Wall Street expectations. But it joined the slew of companies pulling their forecasts for the rest of the year, citing an “unpredictable global trade environment.”

BEIJING — One Chinese baby products company announced Tuesday it is officially entering the United States, the world’s largest consumer market — regardless of the trade war.

Shanghai-based Bc Babycare expects its supply chain diversification and the U.S. market potential to more than offset the impact of ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions, according to Chi Yang, the company’s vice president of Europe and the Americas.

“Even [if] the political things are not steady … I’m very confident about our product for the moment,” he told CNBC, adding he anticipates “very fast” growth in the U.S. in coming years. That includes his bold predictions that Bc Babycare’s flagship baby carrier can become the best-seller on Amazon.com in half a year, and that U.S. sales can grow by 10-fold in a year.

The $159.99 carrier, eligible for a $40 discount, already has 4.7 stars on Amazon.com across more than 30 reviews. The device claims to reduce pressure on the parent’s body by up to 33%. A far cheaper version of the baby carrier is a top seller among travel products for pregnancy and childbirth on JD.com in China.

Bc Babycare already has the carrier stocked in its U.S. warehouses, and has a network of factories and raw materials suppliers in the Americas, Europe and Asia, Yang said. “The global supply chain is one of the things we keep on building in the past couple years.”

The Trump administration has sought to reduce U.S. reliance on China-made goods and to encourage the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S. In a rapid escalation of tensions last month, the U.S. and China had added tariffs of more than 100% on each other’s goods. Last week, the two sides agreed to a 90-day pause for most of the new duties in order to discuss a trade deal.

Baby gear is particularly sensitive to tariffs since the majority of those sold in the U.S. are made in China, said U.S.-based Newell Brands, which owns stroller company Graco, on an April 30 earnings call. That’s according to a FactSet transcript.

The company said it raised baby gear prices by about 20% in the last few weeks, but had not incorporated the additional 125% tariffs announced in mid-April. Newell said on the call it had about three to four months of inventory in the U.S., and had paused additional orders from China.

The company did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had resumed orders from China and whether it planned more price increases.

Bc Babycare declined to share how much it planned to invest in the U.S. But Yang said the company plans to open an office in the country and hire about five to 10 locals.

The company initially plans to sell online, spend on marketing and eventually work with major retailers for offline store sales. Its partners for raw materials and research include three U.S. companies: Lyra, Dow and Eastman.

The Chinese company, which entered the baby products segment in 2014, in 2021 claimed a 700 million yuan ($97.09 million) funding round from investors including Sequoia Capital China.

Yang said the company scrutinizes the comments section on Chinese and U.S. e-commerce websites to improve its products. As a result, the U.S. version of the baby carrier is softer and larger than the Chinese version, he said.

Bc Babycare’s U.S. market ambitions reflect how large U.S. and European multinationals not only face growing competition in China, but also in their home markets.

“After experiencing substantial growth due to the premiumization of consumption in the Chinese market, multinational brands are now entering a challenging second phase where they compete fiercely for market share,” Dave Xie, retail and consumer goods partner in Shanghai at consultancy Oliver Wyman, said in a statement last week.

Oliver Wyman said in a report last month that the Chinese market has become the incubator for premium product innovations that are being exported. The authors noted, for example, that Tineco floor scrubbers have become Amazon best-sellers.

Levi Strauss has agreed to sell Dockers to brand management firm Authentic Brands Group for $311 million, the companies announced Tuesday. 

Under the terms of the deal, Authentic will own Dockers’ intellectual property while Centric Brands will take on operations, handling manufacturing, sourcing and distribution. Under the brand management business model, Levi’s stands to make up to $391 million in future years based on how well Dockers performs under the Authentic umbrella, which also includes Forever 21′s intellectual property and brands like Reebok and Nautica.

“The Dockers transaction further aligns our portfolio with our strategic priorities, focusing on our direct-to-consumer first approach, growing our international presence and investing in opportunities across women’s and denim lifestyle,” Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass said in a statement. “After a robust process, we are confident that we maximized the value of the business and that Authentic is the right organization to usher in the next chapter of growth for the Dockers brand.” 

In October, Levi’s announced it was considering selling Dockers as it looked to focus on growing its namesake line and its athleisure brand, Beyond Yoga. Levi’s created Dockers in 1986 as a hedge against denim and to offer consumers an alternative: khakis. The brand was hugely popular throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but khakis have since fallen out of fashion in the U.S., especially recently as denim makes another comeback. 

To grow Dockers, Levi’s needed to offer more tops and bottoms, but the company is doing the same thing at its namesake banner and there was too much overlap between the two brands. Dockers’ performance was also dragging down Levi’s results and Gass, who took the helm of the company a little over a year ago, has been working to cut off extraneous businesses to fuel growth and focus on direct selling. 

In the three months ended March 2, Levi’s reported $67 million in revenue related to Dockers. The figure isn’t comparable to the year-ago period because Levi’s only recently started breaking out the performance of each individual brand. 

While khakis have fallen out of favor in the U.S., Dockers is still popular abroad, which is what makes a brand management company a strategic fit, according to people who have seen Dockers’ financials and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were private. Firms like Authentic are skilled at rapidly licensing and deploying brands internationally.

In a press release, Authentic said it plans to “unlock new opportunities” for Dockers through its global network of 1,700 licensing partners. It said it is in active discussions with regional operators in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia to expand Dockers’ existing businesses across those markets. 

“Few brands own a category the way Dockers does, yet still have so much room to grow,” said Matt Maddox, president at Authentic. “Its legacy in casualwear gives it a strong foundation, but the real opportunity lies in reimagining the brand for a new generation. Through our global platform and deep licensing network, we’re committed to stewarding the brand into its next era of growth and relevance.”