As Starbucks aims to bring back customers and assuage investors with its turnaround strategy, it is also winning over its store managers with promises to add more seating inside cafes and promote internally.

Since CEO Brian Niccol’s first week at the company, he’s been pledging to bring the company “back to Starbucks” to lift sluggish sales. That goal was in full view at the company’s Leadership Experience, a three-day event in Las Vegas for more than 14,000 store leaders this week.

Starbucks unveiled a new coffee called the 1971 Roast, a callback to the year that its first location opened at Pike Place in Seattle. The finalists at Starbucks’ first-ever Global Barista Championships referred to “back to Starbucks” as they prepared drinks for judges. Even the Wi-Fi password was “backtostarbucks!”

To investors, Niccol has already presented a multi-part strategy that involves retooling the company’s marketing strategy, improving staffing in cafes, fixing the chain’s mobile app issues and making its locations cozier. The company also laid off roughly 1,100 corporate workers earlier this year, saying it aimed to operate more efficiently and reduce redundancies.

Starbucks shares have climbed nearly 20% since April and are trading just shy of where they were after a nearly 25% spike the day Niccol was announced as CEO.

While Starbucks has taken major steps to win back customers and Wall Street, it’s also trying to regain faith among its employees. Staffers have had concerns about hours and workloads for years, sparking a broad union push across the U.S.

To excite the chain’s store managers, Starbucks executives’ pitch this week focused on giving them more control. Before launching new drinks, like a protein-packed cold foam, the company is first testing them in five stores to gain feedback from baristas.

When the chain increases its staffing this summer, managers will have more input on how many baristas they need. And next year, most North American stores will add an assistant manager to their rosters.

“You are the leaders of Starbucks. Your focus on the customer is critical. Your leadership is critical. And as you return to your coffeehouses, please remember: coffee, community, opportunity, all the good that follows,” Niccol said on Tuesday.

Niccol’s “back to Starbucks” strategy centers on the idea that the company’s culture has faltered. Its Leadership Experience, typically held every couple of years, was the first since 2019 — three CEOs ago.

“We are a business of connection and humanity,” Niccol said on Tuesday afternoon, addressing a crowd of more than 14,000 managers. “Great people make great things happen.”

As more customers order their lattes via the company’s app, its cafes have lost their identity as a “third place” for people to hang out and sip their drinks.

To return to Starbucks’ prior culture, the company is unwinding previous decisions — like removing seats from its cafes. In recent years, the chain has removed 30,000 seats from its locations. Those renovations have irritated both customers and employees; the manager of Niccol’s local Starbucks in Newport Beach, California, even asked him to remove her store from its renovation list because she wanted to keep the seating, according to Niccol.

“We’re going to put those seats back in,” Niccol said, bringing a big wave of applause from the audience.

He earned more applause from the audience when discussing the chain’s plans to promote internally as it eventually adds 10,000 more locations in the U.S.

Although historically roughly 60% of Starbucks store managers have been internal promotions, the company wants to raise that to 90% for its retail leadership roles. Thousands of new cafes means 1,000 more district managers, 100 regional directors and 14 regional vice presidents for the company — and more upward career mobility for its store leaders.

Staffing more broadly has been a concern for Starbucks and its employees, fueling a wave of union elections across hundreds its stores. Past management teams have cut down on the labor allotted to stores, helping profit margins at the cost of burning out baristas and slowing service.

Under Niccol, Starbucks is changing the trend. The company is accelerating plans to roll out its new Green Apron labor model by the end of the summer, because tests have shown that it improves service times and boosts traffic. As part of the model, managers will have more input on how much labor their store needs.

And Chief Partner Officer Sara Kelly received a standing ovation from the crowd for her announcement that most North American locations will receive a full-time, dedicated assistant store manager next year.

“For much of the time, your store is operating without you there, and you share that even when you’re not in the store, you’re not able to fully disconnect, and it can feel like the weight of everything is on your shoulders. … It affects everything, the partner experience, the customer experience, the performance of your store,” Kelly said, addressing the store managers in the audience.

Underscoring the challenges Niccol faces in recapturing the company’s brand, the two speakers who scored the most applause from store managers are no longer actively involved in the company.

Former chairwoman Mellody Hobson scored standing ovations during both her entry and exit onto the arena’s stage. Hobson, wiping tears from her eyes, thanked the Starbucks employees whom she said always made her feel welcome in their stores.

She stepped down from her position earlier this year, ending a roughly two-decade tenure that culminated with her becoming the first African American woman to become the independent chair of a Fortune 500 company. Hobson also serves as co-CEO of Ariel Investments.

Hobson ceded her position as chair of the board to Niccol when he joined the company in September. Niccol credited her with poaching him from Chipotle as Starbucks sought to find a leader who could turn around its flailing business.

“A quick conversation [with Hobson] turned into something really special for me,” Niccol said.

And Hobson’s longtime friend Howard Schultz also earned standing ovations from store managers.

Schultz, the three-time CEO who grew Starbucks from a small chain into a coffee powerhouse, made a surprise appearance at the Leadership Experience on Wednesday morning. It marked the first time that he’s appeared with Niccol publicly since the board tossed out his handpicked successor, Laxman Narasimhan, and selected the then-Chipotle CEO to take the reins.

Starbucks has long been plagued by questions about its succession, given Schultz’s former willingness to return to the helm of the company. But since Niccol’s appointment, industry analysts have thought that he might finally be the CEO who manages to escape Schultz’s lingering influence over the coffee giant.

The ghost of Schultz lingered earlier in the event. Niccol shared a story about being inspired hearing Schultz speak at Yum Brands, Niccol’s then-employer, back in 2008. The 71-year-old chairman emeritus also appeared in video form on Tuesday afternoon to thank Hobson for her service to the company.

During his conversation with Niccol on Wednesday, Schultz co-signed his plan to get “back to Starbucks,” saying that he did a cartwheel in his living room the first time that he heard about it.

He also asked managers to bring that energy back to their own Starbucks locations.

“Be true to the coffee, be true to your partners,” Schultz told the audience. “And I know we’re going to come out of here … like a tidal wave and surprise and delight the world and prove all those cynics wrong again, just as we did in 1987.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that concerns over national security risks posed by Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel can be resolved if the companies fulfill certain conditions that his administration has laid out, paving the way for the deal’s approval.

Shares of U.S. Steel rose 3.5% on the news in after-the-bell trading as investors bet the deal was close to done. Trump, in an executive order, said conditions for resolving the national security concerns would be laid out in an agreement, without providing details. “I additionally find that the threatened impairment to the national security of the United States arising as a result of the Proposed Transaction can be adequately mitigated if the conditions set forth in section 3 of this order are met,” Trump said in the order, which was released by the White House.

The companies thanked Trump in a news release, saying the agreement includes $11 billion in new investments to be made by 2028 and governance commitments including a golden share to be issued to the U.S. government. They did not detail how much control the golden share would give the U.S. Shares of U.S. Steel had dipped earlier on Friday after a Nippon Steel executive told the Japanese Nikkei newspaper that its planned takeover of U.S. Steel required “a degree of management freedom” to go ahead after Trump earlier had said the U.S. would be in control with a golden share.

The bid, first announced by Nippon Steel in December 2023, has faced opposition from the start. Both Democratic former President Joe Biden and Trump, a Republican, asserted last year that U.S. Steel should remain U.S.-owned, as they sought to woo voters ahead of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, where the company is headquartered.

Biden in January, shortly before leaving office, blocked the deal on national security grounds, prompting lawsuits by the companies, which argued the national security review they received was biased. The Biden White House disputed the charge.

The steel companies saw a new opportunity in the Trump administration, which began on January 20 and opened a fresh 45-day national security review into the proposed merger in April.

But Trump’s public comments, ranging from welcoming a simple “investment” in U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm to floating a minority stake for Nippon Steel, spurred confusion.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on May 30, Trump lauded an agreement between the companies and said Nippon Steel would make a “great partner” for U.S. Steel. But he later told reporters the deal still lacked his final approval, leaving unresolved whether he would allow Nippon Steel to take ownership.

Nippon Steel and the Trump administration asked a U.S. appeals court on June 5 for an eight-day extension of a pause in litigation to give them more time to reach a deal for the Japanese firm. The pause expires Friday, but could be extended.

June 18 is the expiration date of the current acquisition contract between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel, but the firms could agree to postpone that date

LAS VEGAS. — Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said Wednesday that he “did a cartwheel” in his living room when current chief executive Brian Niccol first coined his “back to Starbucks” strategy.

The enthusiasm from the 71-year-old Starbucks chairman emeritus is a key stamp of approval for Niccol as he tries to lift the company’s slumping sales and restore the chain’s culture.

Schultz, who grew Starbucks from a small chain into a global coffee giant, made a surprise appearance at the company’s Leadership Experience in Las Vegas and cosigned Niccol’s plans. The three-day event has gathered more than 14,000 North American store leaders to hear from Starbucks management as the company embarks on a turnaround.

Niccol took the reins in September, joining the company after the board ousted Laxman Narasimhan, Schultz’s handpicked successor.

Schultz had returned in 2022 for his third stint as chief executive, but it was only an interim role. He previously told CNBC that he has no plans to come back again. Schultz no longer holds a formal role within the company, although CNBC has previously reported that he’s forever entitled to attend board meetings unless barred by the company’s directors.

During Niccol’s first week on the job, he outlined plans for the comeback in an open letter, making the commitment to get “back to Starbucks.” More details on how the chain planned to return to its roots followed in the ensuing months, from bringing back seating inside cafes to writing personalized messages on cups. Under Niccol’s leadership, the company’s marketing has shifted to focus on its coffee, rather than discounts and promotions.

When Starbucks announced Narasimhan’s firing and Niccol’s hiring, Schultz issued a statement of support, saying that the then-Chipotle CEO was the leader that the company needs. However, the Leadership Experience marks the first time that Niccol and Schultz have appeared publicly together.

During Narasimhan’s short tenure as CEO, Schultz did not mince words when the company’s performance fell short of his expectations. After a dismal quarterly earnings report, he weighed in publicly on LinkedIn, saying the company needs to improve its mobile order and pay experience and overhaul how it creates new drinks to focus on premium items that set it apart.

But Schultz said Starbucks’ problems went further than just operational issues and lackluster beverages and food.

“The culture was not understood. The culture wasn’t valued. The culture wasn’t being upheld,” he said on Wednesday.

Nintendo sold more than 3.5 million units of its flagship Switch 2 gaming system in the four days following its launch, with online stores of major U.S. retailers putting up “out of stock” signs.

The record-breaking start for the company’s first new console in eight years, puts Nintendo on the path to realizing its aim of selling 15 million units of the Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.

However, analysts continue to believe that those expectations are modest, and forecast the strong initial demand to sustain.

“The market expected a record from Nintendo, and as it turns out, Nintendo delivered,” Serkan Toto, CEO and founder of gaming industry consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“All signals prior to launch pointed to significant demand, and I believe we will see further records broken over the next weeks or months,” he added.

Toto has maintains that the Switch 2 will sell over 20 million units in its first 12 months. David Gibson, senior research analyst at MST Financial told CNBC that he expects 20 million sales for the year ending March 2026.

The Switch 2, which was released on June 5, has been met with much fanfare, with people lining up for hours ahead of midnight releases at Nintendo stores.

“Fans around the world are showing their enthusiasm for Nintendo Switch 2 as an upgraded way to play at home and on the go,” Nintendo of America President and Chief Operating Officer Doug Bowser said in a statement, adding the company was thankful for the response.

Tokyo-listed shares of Nintendo, which have gained nearly 30% so far this year, were down 3.5% on Wednesday, LSEG data showed. The company has seen its shares rise nearly fivefold since the original Switch debuted in early March 2017.

It remains to be seen if the Switch 2 can recapture the magic of its predecessor, which had set the bar with 15 million unit sales in its first year. It went on to sell more than 152 million units to become the second-highest selling Nintendo device ever, behind the Nintendo DS.

The record initial sales of the Switch are in line with the strong demand analysts had predicted. However, the rush has put into question Nintendo’s ability to meet demand.

Retailers including Walmart, GameStop, Target and Best Buy were out of stock of the consoles, their online stores showed Wednesday.

In April, Nintendo’s Bowser told CNBC that the company had been working with “retail partners to ensure there’s ample supply for not only the launch weekend, but well beyond.”

However, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa stated the same month that 2.2 million people in Japan had entered the lottery to purchase the Switch 2 on launch day, exceeding expectations and what the company had initially planned to deliver to stores.

Kantan Games’ Toto said shortages in Japan were expected to persist, but would be less impactful elsewhere.

“Except for Japan where demand for Switch 2 is extraordinarily high, it looks like fans who really want the console and invest time in trying to secure one actually can get one,” he said. “It might take a while, but as far as can be monitored, supply seems to be more robust than around the launch of the original Switch in 2017.”

President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” on most countries around the world also present headwinds for the Switch 2.

In April, the company announced that it would delay preorders of the Switch 2 in the U.S. while it considers the impact of tariffs.

The Switch 2 retails for $449 in the U.S., which makes it Nintendo’s priciest console to date.

Nintendo’s Bowser said in April the company was going to “monitor where tariffs are going” before making any further decisions on price hikes.

MST Financial’s Gibson said that a resolution to Trump’s tariffs and lower duty rates could see the Switch 2 prices drop in the U.S.

The Switch 2 builds on the success of the original Switch, featuring a larger screen and improved performance. The system also introduces the new GameChat2 feature, which allows players to voice or video chat with friends online and share game screens.

Nintendo sold more than 3.5 million units of its flagship Switch 2 gaming system in the four days following its launch, with online stores of major U.S. retailers putting up “out of stock” signs.

The record-breaking start for the company’s first new console in eight years, puts Nintendo on the path to realizing its aim of selling 15 million units of the Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.

However, analysts continue to believe that those expectations are modest, and forecast the strong initial demand to sustain.

“The market expected a record from Nintendo, and as it turns out, Nintendo delivered,” Serkan Toto, CEO and founder of gaming industry consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“All signals prior to launch pointed to significant demand, and I believe we will see further records broken over the next weeks or months,” he added.

Toto has maintains that the Switch 2 will sell over 20 million units in its first 12 months. David Gibson, senior research analyst at MST Financial told CNBC that he expects 20 million sales for the year ending March 2026.

The Switch 2, which was released on June 5, has been met with much fanfare, with people lining up for hours ahead of midnight releases at Nintendo stores.

“Fans around the world are showing their enthusiasm for Nintendo Switch 2 as an upgraded way to play at home and on the go,” Nintendo of America President and Chief Operating Officer Doug Bowser said in a statement, adding the company was thankful for the response.

Tokyo-listed shares of Nintendo, which have gained nearly 30% so far this year, were down 3.5% on Wednesday, LSEG data showed. The company has seen its shares rise nearly fivefold since the original Switch debuted in early March 2017.

It remains to be seen if the Switch 2 can recapture the magic of its predecessor, which had set the bar with 15 million unit sales in its first year. It went on to sell more than 152 million units to become the second-highest selling Nintendo device ever, behind the Nintendo DS.

The record initial sales of the Switch are in line with the strong demand analysts had predicted. However, the rush has put into question Nintendo’s ability to meet demand.

Retailers including Walmart, GameStop, Target and Best Buy were out of stock of the consoles, their online stores showed Wednesday.

In April, Nintendo’s Bowser told CNBC that the company had been working with “retail partners to ensure there’s ample supply for not only the launch weekend, but well beyond.”

However, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa stated the same month that 2.2 million people in Japan had entered the lottery to purchase the Switch 2 on launch day, exceeding expectations and what the company had initially planned to deliver to stores.

Kantan Games’ Toto said shortages in Japan were expected to persist, but would be less impactful elsewhere.

“Except for Japan where demand for Switch 2 is extraordinarily high, it looks like fans who really want the console and invest time in trying to secure one actually can get one,” he said. “It might take a while, but as far as can be monitored, supply seems to be more robust than around the launch of the original Switch in 2017.”

President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” on most countries around the world also present headwinds for the Switch 2.

In April, the company announced that it would delay preorders of the Switch 2 in the U.S. while it considers the impact of tariffs.

The Switch 2 retails for $449 in the U.S., which makes it Nintendo’s priciest console to date.

Nintendo’s Bowser said in April the company was going to “monitor where tariffs are going” before making any further decisions on price hikes.

MST Financial’s Gibson said that a resolution to Trump’s tariffs and lower duty rates could see the Switch 2 prices drop in the U.S.

The Switch 2 builds on the success of the original Switch, featuring a larger screen and improved performance. The system also introduces the new GameChat2 feature, which allows players to voice or video chat with friends online and share game screens.

Walmart’s majority-owned fintech startup OnePay said Monday it was launching a pair of credit cards with a bank partner for customers of the world’s biggest retailer.

OnePay is partnering with Synchrony, a major behind-the-scenes player in retail cards, which will issue the cards and handle underwriting decisions starting in the fall, the companies said.

OnePay, which was created by Walmart in 2021 with venture firm Ribbit Capital, will handle the customer experience for the card program through its mobile app.

Walmart had leaned on Capital One as the exclusive provider of its credit cards since 2018, but sued the bank in 2023 so that it could exit the relationship years ahead of schedule. At the time, Capital One accused Walmart of seeking to end its partnership so that it could move transactions to OnePay.

The Walmart card program had 10 million customers and roughly $8.5 billion in loans outstanding last year, when the partnership with Capital One ended, according to Fitch Ratings.

For Walmart and its fintech firm, the arrangement shows that, in seeking to quickly scale up in financial services, OnePay is opting to partner with established players rather than going it alone.

In March, OnePay announced that it was tapping Swedish fintech firm Klarna to handle buy now, pay later loans at the retailer, even after testing its own installment loan program.

In its quest to become a one-stop shop for Americans underserved by traditional banks, OnePay has methodically built out its offerings, which now include debit cards, high-yield savings accounts and a digital wallet with peer-to-peer payments.

OnePay is rolling out two options: a general purpose credit card that can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted and a store card that will only allow Walmart purchases.

Customers whose credit profiles don’t allow them to qualify for the general purpose card will be offered the store card, according to a person with knowledge of the program.

OnePay hasn’t yet disclosed the rewards expected for making purchases with the cards. The Synchrony partnership was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

“Our goal with this credit card program is to deliver an experience for consumers that’s transparent, rewarding, and easy to use,” OnePay CEO Omer Ismail said in the Monday release.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Synchrony to launch a program at Walmart that checks each of those boxes and will help serve millions of people,” Ismail said.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is hoping that Americans’ love for ranch will boost its sales.

On June 17, the burrito chain is launching Adobo Ranch, a spicier take on the iconic condiment that has transcended salads to adorn pizza, chicken wings and chips. The menu item is Chipotle’s first new dip since queso blanco, which launched in 2020.

The debut comes as Chipotle tries to recover from a rough start to the year. In the first quarter, the company reported its first same-store sales decline since 2020. Executives cited a pullback from consumers who had become more concerned about the economy.

The company also lowered the top end of its outlook for full-year same-store sales growth and said traffic wouldn’t grow until the second half of the year.

Shares of Chipotle have fallen 12% this year, dragging its market cap down to $71 billion.

But Adobo Ranch could help to boost the company’s sales if it draws cautious diners back to the chain’s restaurants.

The dipping sauce is made with adobo peppers, sour cream and herbs and spices, according to the company. Adding Adobo Ranch to an order will cost an extra 75 cents.

Ranch outsells ketchup, although NIQ retail sales data shows that mayo still holds the top spot as the favorite condiment of U.S. consumers.

One day after seeing their largest-ever one-day drop, Tesla shares recovered some losses Friday as the spat between CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump that exploded into public view Thursday took appeared to take a breather heading into the weekend.

Shares in the electronic vehicle maker gained as much as 5% amid broader market gains following a report showing the U.S. added more jobs in May than forecast.

Even with Friday’s rally, Tesla shares are still down approximately 21% in 2025 — a decline that accelerated last week following Musk’s departure from the Trump administration.

Musk, the world’s richest person and until recently Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief, said last week he was leaving as the head of his Department of Government Efficiency project to refocus on his businesses.

Those companies — Tesla, the satellite and space-launch company SpaceX, the social media platform X and the brain tech startup Neuralink — have faced growing criticism as Musk oversaw deep cuts to the federal workforce. Tesla sales around the world have fallen sharply this year.

Trump and Musk traded escalating insults Thursday afternoon, with the president threatening on his Truth Social platform to ‘terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.’ Yet there was no sign of any follow through on the threat Friday. At the same time, a senior White House official told NBC News that Trump is “not interested” in a call with Musk.

Tesla stock closed more than 14% lower Thursday. The automaker is Musk’s only publicly traded company — and one that the president tried to boost as recently as March, drawing sharp criticism on ethical grounds for turning the White House driveway into a car showroom just as the company’s stock was plunging.

The Trump-Musk rift has dented Tesla’s stock anew after Musk slammed the GOP spending bill as ‘a disgusting abomination” in a post on X last week.

‘Bankrupting America is NOT ok!’ he wrote in another post, part of an ongoing barrage of public ridicule.

Musk began speaking out after an electric-vehicle tax credit that would help incentivize Tesla purchases was not included in the bill, which is estimated to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Musk has lobbied congressional Republicans for that tax credit, NBC News reported Wednesday.

‘I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn’t decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk told ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ over the weekend.

As Trump spoke about the former DOGE chief in the Oval Office on Thursday alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Musk began firing off dozens of posts on X.

‘Whatever,’ he wrote. ‘Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill. In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!’

Trump pushed back further on Musk’s criticism.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people. He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it,” he said during the meeting with Merz. “All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate because that’s billions and billions of dollars, and it really is unfair.”

As Trump continued speaking, Musk posted another comment: ‘False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!’

Tech analyst Dan Ives said the EV tax credit isn’t the main factor behind Tesla’s stock slide. “The reason Tesla stock’s off the way it is — and I think overdone — is because of the view that this means that Trump is not going to play nice when it comes to regulatory” issues, he told CNBC on Thursday. The feud between the two men is “not what you want to see as a Tesla shareholder,” Ives added.

‘Where is this guy today??’ Musk added Thursday in yet another post, resharing a compilation of Trump’s past tweets including one in which Trump called the federal debt ‘a national security risk of the highest order.’

‘Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,’ Musk added on social media. ‘Such ingratitude.’

Musk is the richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. His net worth of $368 billion is $125 billion more than that of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is ranked second. Musk spent $250 million supporting Trump’s most recent campaign.

The president quipped from the White House that he thinks Musk ‘misses the place.’

‘I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office,’ Trump said. ‘He’s got nice offices too, but there’s something about this one.’

The president’s own publicly traded company, Trump Media & Technology Group, has also suffered in the market. Shares of the Truth Social parent company fell more than 8% Thursday and are down over 41% so far this year.

President Donald Trump has escalated his sudden rupture with Elon Musk by implying the government could sever ties with the tech titan’s businesses.

‘The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it,’ Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.

Various estimates have been put forward about just how much Musk’s firms, primarily SpaceX and Tesla, benefit from U.S. government contracts and subsidies. The Washington Post has put the figure at $38 billion, with SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell estimating that company alone benefits from $22 billion in federal spending. Reuters has reported that the true figure is classified because of the nature of many of the contracts Musk’s firms are under.

NASA relies on SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The agency’s only other option at the moment is to pay around $90 million for a seat aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsule.

Last year, SpaceX was selected to develop a vehicle capable of safely de-orbiting the International Space Station in 2030, when NASA and its partner space agencies agreed to end operation of the orbiting laboratory. SpaceX is also expected to play a major role in NASA’s efforts to return astronauts to the moon and eventually travel beyond to Mars.

Later Thursday afternoon, Musk posted that he would begin ‘decommissioning’ SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which regularly flies astronauts and cargo to the ISS, in response to Trump’s threat.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said the agency ‘will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space.’

‘We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met,’ she said in a statement on X.

Tesla, meanwhile, has benefited from approximately $11.4 billion in total regulatory credits aimed at boosting electric-vehicle purchases, though that figure also includes state-level subsidies. Musk has claimed he no longer needs the credit, which he says now primarily benefits rivals.

Following Trump’s threat, shares in Tesla, which had already fallen 8% on Thursday as the tit-for-tat escalated on social media, declined as much as 15% following Trump’s post. SpaceX is privately held and its shares do not trade on the open market.

Trump’s warning came as part of a stunning exchange with Musk — who spent more than $250 million to help him get elected — that erupted into public view.

Earlier in the day, president told reporters in the Oval Office that he was disappointed in Musk’s criticism of the Republican policy bill that is making its way through Congress. Musk has blasted the bill, calling it a ‘disgusting abomination,’ amid concerns it would worsen the U.S. fiscal deficit.

Musk, who officially left his White House role last week to spend more time on his companies, spent much of Thursday launching into a tirade on X, his social media platform, where he posted a variety of critiques of Trump, the bill and other Republican politicians.

A make-good on Trump’s threat would come at a sensitive time for Tesla, which has seen global sales plunge partly in response to Musk’s very involvement with the Trump campaign. Year to date, its shares are down some 25%.

Trump’s warning also raises the specter that Trump could resurface pending government investigations into Musk’s firms. According to a report in April from Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Musk’s firms were facing $2.37 billion in potential federal liabilities when Trump took office in January.

Since then, many of those actions have been paused or outright dismissed alongside the rise of the previously Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency, which gutted many of the agencies looking into Musk’s businesses.

Procter & Gamble will cut 7,000 jobs, or roughly 15% of its non-manufacturing workforce, as part of a two-year restructuring program.

The layoffs by the consumer goods giant come as President Donald Trump’s tariffs have led a range of companies to hike prices to offset higher costs. The trade tensions have raised concerns about the broader health of the U.S. economy and job market.

P&G CFO Andre Schulten announced the job cuts during a presentation at the Deutsche Bank Consumer Conference on Thursday morning. The company employs 108,000 people worldwide, as of June 30, according to regulatory filings.

P&G faces slowing growth in the U.S., the company’s largest market. In its fiscal third quarter, North American organic sales rose just 1%.

Trump’s tariffs have presented another challenge for P&G, which has said that it plans to raise prices in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. The company expects a 3 cent to 4 cent per share drag on its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings from levies, based on current rates, Schulten said. Looking ahead to fiscal 2026, P&G is projecting a headwind from tariffs of $600 million before taxes.

P&G, which owns Pampers, Tide and Swiffer, is planning a broader effort to reevaluate its portfolio, restructure its supply chain and slim down its corporate organization. Schulten said investors can expect more details, like specific brand and market exits, on the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call in July.

P&G is projecting that it will incur non-core costs of $1 billion to $1.6 billion before taxes due to the reorganization.

“This restructuring program is an important step toward ensuring our ability to deliver our long-term algorithm over the coming two to three years,” Schulten said. “It does not, however, remove the near-term challenges that we currently face.”

P&G follows other major U.S. employers, including Microsoft and Starbucks, in carrying out significant layoffs this year. As Trump’s tariffs take hold, investors are watching Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report for May for signs of whether the job market has started to slow. While the government reading for April was better than expected, a separate reading this week from ADP showed private sector hiring was weak in May.

Shares of P&G fell more than 1% in morning trading on the news. The stock has fallen 2% so far this year, outstripped by the S&P 500′s gains of more than 1%. P&G has a market cap of $407 billion.