Curiosity killed the cat, the adage goes, but in the case of Ace the kitten, the fault lies with a defective pet-food container, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Philadelphia’s federal court.
Valentina Mallozzi, of Montgomery County, says in the complaint that, in July, Ace managed to get into a locked Iris pet food container she ordered from Amazon. But once the 3-pound kitten was inside, the airtight lid dropped and locked Ace inside.
The lawsuit, filed last week, accuses Iris USA of creating a defective product that it markets as safe for pets. The complaint says Mallozzi is one of many pet owners who tragically lost their cat to an Iris container.
The complaint aims to represent all people in the United States who purchased an Iris container. The complaint does not include an estimate of how many people are included in the class, or how much money Iris would owe each person.
Iris USA, a subsidiary of Japanese plastics manufacturer Iris Ohyama, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mallozzi bought the Iris airtight stackable containers for $29.99 from Amazon in March, the complaint says. The containers have a locking mechanism that Iris claimed is designed to “keep pets from sneaking a second or even third breakfast with the secure locking latch,” according to the complaint.
Screenshot of a post in the Prevent Pet Suffocation Facebook group, which shares the story of Peach the cat who died trapped in a Iris USA food storage container, from Valentina Mallozzi’s lawsuit against the company.
The problem, the suit says, is that cats can open the latch from outside, climb in, and get trapped as the mechanism automatically locks them in. The airtight seal that keeps pet food fresh makes the trap deadly, as a “pet will suffocate within a few minutes,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit cites posts from the Prevent Pet Suffocation Facebook group in which cat owners share stories about their beloved pets getting trapped in an Iris container.
One post included in the complaint shares the story of Baby Bear, a family’s cat who was found dead in an Iris container by an 8-year-old girl.
“My cat, Max, also suffocated in an Iris pet food container,” a woman responded. “I know the pain you’re going through.”
Iris USA was put on notice, and not only by people on social media, the complaint says. In March, the Center for Pet Safety, a Virginia-based nonprofit, put out a report evaluating the risk food containers represent for pet suffocation that specifically calls out Iris.
The latch mechanism on the lid “significantly increases the risk of pet suffocation,” the report says.
The lawsuit says the product should have come with a label warning of the suffocation risk for pets that can unlatch the lid.
Jefferson Health says it will terminate Lehigh Valley Health Network’s contracts with UnitedHealthcare next year, stating United, the nation’s largest health insurer, is paying less than their negotiated rates, Jefferson said Monday.
The contracts will remain in effect until Jan. 26 for Medicare Advantage patients and until April 25 for patients with commercial insurance through their employer. In the last 18 months, Lehigh Valley Health facilities treated 70,000 people with United insurance, Jefferson said.
“Like all health systems, we are facing significant headwinds as costs rise faster than reimbursement,” Mark Whalen, Jefferson’s chief strategy and transformation officer, said in an email.
“When reimbursement falls substantially below negotiated levels, it threatens our ability to fulfill our mission of providing exceptional care to all patients.”
Whalen said Jefferson will continue working to secure a better deal with United, as it has for more than two years.
United said in a statement that its most recent proposal went to Lehigh Valley in April. “We have yet to receive a counter proposal from the health system, whose last proposal was provided in December 2024 and included a near 30% price hike in the first year of our contract,” the statement said.
Jefferson countered with a statement saying that its dealings with United are not part of a normal contract renegotiation. “This ongoing dispute is caused by United Healthcare’s implementation of a multiyear 30% price decrease that was not agreed to, not accepted and is not sustainable, Whalen said.
The timing of the United announcement is noteworthy. Medicare Advantage open enrollment is underway until Dec. 7 for plans that take effect Jan. 1.
The potential termination of United’s Medicare plans on Jan. 26 puts United’s customers who depend on Lehigh Valley for health services in a quandary. Should they stick with United or switch to another plan, such as those offered by Jefferson’s insurance arm?
United said Jefferson’s decision to make its announcement during open enrollment looked like “a negotiating tactic.”
The Minnesota company has about 27,500 Medicare Advantage enrollees in the main counties served by Lehigh Valley Health doctors, according to federal data from September.
The impasse does not affect Philadelphia-area Jefferson patients with insurance from UnitedHealthcare.
Insurance regulations require notice to patients before contracts end.
In March, Jefferson went out-of-network with Cigna Health for a few weeks during a similar impasse in negotiations. Jefferson and Cigna quickly reached a deal after the termination.
The worst of the coronavirus pandemic that started nearly six years ago is well in the past, but Philadelphia’s biggest nonprofit health systems are still contending with the financial disruption unleashed by the virus that led to thousands of deaths in the area.
Operating conditions for hospitals started improving in 2023, but “the slope of the recovery is a bit more shallow than a lot of health systems had planned for,” said Mark Pascaris, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, one of three major credit ratings agencies.
Patients have returned, but the pandemic led to a resetting of expensesfor labor and supplies at a higher level, Pascaris said. “That’s been the challenge over the last two or three or four years now, trying to manage through a very challenging expense situation,” he said.
To show how the financial landscape has changed, The Inquirer compiled financial data for the region’s six biggest health systems that have fiscal years ending June 30 each year. The analysis compared average operating profits in three years before the pandemic (fiscal years 2017-19) to the results in most recent three years (fiscal years 2023-25).
All six systems showed a substantial drop in a measure of earnings that excludes certain accounting expenses and interest costs. This slice of financial results is known as earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization. Abbreviated as EBIDA, it’s a primary indicator watched by influential credit ratings agencies.
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The experience of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia clearly illustrates what has happened: The organization’s aggregate revenue in the most recent three fiscal years was 58% higher than it was in the three years that ended June 30, 2019, but its EBIDA climbed only by half a percentage point.
“Hospitals and healthcare systems across the country continue to face significant headwinds, driven by reimbursement challenges, increased supply and labor costs, uncertain governmental pressures, and the continued ripple effect of the pandemic,” CHOP said in a statement.
Officials at ChristianaCare, Main Line Health, and Temple University Health System echoed CHOP’s remark.
“Margins were far better prior to the pandemic, largely due to lower supply and labor costs,” Main Line’s chief financial officer Leigh Ehrlich said. “Those costs rose sharply during the pandemic and continue to rise.”
ChristianaCare’s CFO Rob McMurray noted: Not only have Medicare and Medicaid rates not kept up with inflation, but more people have those government forms of insurance for people 65 and older and for low-income people.
The nonprofit is expanding from its base in northern Delaware to Southeastern Pennsylvania and is expanding alternative formats, such as hospital-care-at-home and micro hospitals, to reduce costs, McMurray said.
A significant worry for Temple University Health System is the impact of the 2025 budget reconciliation bill, sometimes called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The North Philadelphia nonprofit estimates that Medicaid cuts in that law will cost it $519 million over the next 10 years, said Jerry Oetzel, the system’s CFO.
Debra Andrews’ marketing firm, Marketri, gets mail and phone calls out of a Market Street address in Center City. But none of her employees work in the Philadelphia area. Neither does she.
When she started the business in 2004, having a small office in Doylestown gave the new firm a feeling of “legitimacy,” she says. Butshe gave up the space in 2008 when she learned the building would be converted into homes.
“I only really at that time had one employee based in Philly and decided, well, let’s just do this remote,” said Andrews. Now she has 15 employees working across 11 states.
The share of employees working remotely in Philadelphia has declined, according to U.S Census data, and several large employers in the region have been pushing for more in-office time.But for employers that have remained remote, some are finding that it can provide positive returns.
For Andrews, offeringremote work has allowed her to hire the best person for a role regardless of where they live, but it doesn’t mean workers get to set their own hours — they’re expected to be on from roughly 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in their time zones, she says.
“We run very much like a normal business, we just happen to work from our homes,” said Andrews.
The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), which has been based in Philadelphia for over 100 years and owns a building on Market Street, redesigned its space to have more collaborative areas and fewer offices, as the organization committed to allowing more remote work. It’s also leased part of the building.
“An empty building is not a problem — it’s a challenge to solve. It’s not a reason to bring people back,” said Janelle Endres, NBME’s vice president of human resources.
The nonprofit creates tests for healthcare professionals, and employs about 575 people, most of whom are in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland. Prior to the pandemic, NBME offered a hybrid work model to most employees, and it has since “doubled down” on remote work, said Endres, adopting a “remote first” approach in 2024 — as many other employers were stiffening or increasing their requirements for in-office work.
Staff was as productive or more so when working remotely during the pandemic, and employees appreciated the setup, Endres said. Going back to pre-pandemic work norms could have created “an employee satisfaction problem,” she said.
Some 60% of NBME employees are eligible for remote positions and choose to work remotely. Others chose to be hybrid.
“Nobody’s raking in big bonuses here, so we have to think about: What are the things that really set us apart and make us a unique employer?” said Endres. “Work-life balance and flexible schedules [are among] those things.”
In exchange for flexibility, Endres said, “We expect that you will contribute in really strong ways, that you’ll perform well, that you’ll give back just as much as we’re giving.”
“Give the people what they want, and they’re going to be like, ‘I better do a good job. I don’t want to lose this job,’” Endres said.
But committing to a remote workplace didn’t mean “everyone’s just automatically happy,” said Endres. The organization plans some in-person days throughout the year as well as digital programming to foster culture, said Jenna Mierzejewski, manager of employee experience.
Endres acknowledged that NBME has encountered some instances where an employee seemsunderproductive or distracted: “We say that’s a management challenge. That’s not a remote-work challenge.”
Remote work ‘before it was cool’
Casey Benedict, CEO and founder of Maverick Mindshare, says her agency has been remote since “before it was cool.”
She has a P.O. Box in Malvern so she doesn’t have to list her home address as her business location. Beyond privacy, it’s also for professionalism, she said.
“It’s to create a little bit of a buffer between home life and business life,” said Benedict, who leads an agency focused on influencer marketing that has been remote since it launched in 2010.
Casey Benedict, CEO and founder of Maverick Mindshare, works from her home office.
She wants her staff to feel like they can attend to their personal needs, whether that’s picking up a child from the bus stop or going to a doctor’s appointment, says Benedict. She has three employees who are “core to the organization.”
“They can fully show up when they have more ownership and more control over the other parts of their lives that may pull them away from their desk,” she said.
Allowing that kind of flexibility avoids conflict, she says. And, it pays off for the company.
“The result is my team really does overdeliver and they enjoy what they do,” said Benedict. “They bring so much of themselves into it because they know that the structure is set up in a way to support them fully.”
Losing the commute
Three years before the pandemic started, three of Wendy Verna’s employees asked if they could work remotely. They told her there wasn’t enough in-person collaboration to make the commute to their South Street office worthwhile, she said.
Verna, president and founder of marketing firm Octo Design Group, initially said no. But six months later, they started trying out remote work.
“It wasn’t working for me,” said Verna, a self-ascribed “type A” person who likes to get out of the house and go to work. But she stuck with it because her employees were happy, and the remote setup worked for the company.
Ultimately she figured out why she was miserable leading a remote team. “It was a control thing for sure,” she said. “I felt like, if I don’t know where you are, what are you doing?”
She has established clear expectations for what remote work should look like at her firm. Cameras should be on for video calls, and employees should be ready to work during business hours, she says. And if employees plan to be out of town, they should let Verna know so she can determine how in-person tasks get done.
“They’re at home, but they cannot look like they rolled out of bed, because it’s just not my brand,” said Verna.
Verna is in the office three to four days a week, but 98% of the time, her five full-time employees, who live in the Philadelphia area, work remotely.
Wendy Verna’s employees asked her to go remote three years before the pandemic. While she still goes to the office often, her employees spend most of their time working remotely.
While she and her company have adjusted, Verna is still concerned about what employees lose by working remotely.
A commute can be useful to prepare for the workday in the morning or process the day in the evening, she says. During pandemic-related office closures she would walk around the block a few times before and after work to get a similar effect.
“When they sign off and you’re working from home, you run downstairs, well, all of a sudden, you’ve got chicken in the oven,” said Verna. “You don’t have time for that kind of debrief to yourself.”
She’s also concerned about how the remote lifestyle will affect young people looking for jobs, saying, “You’re only as good as your network.”
“This remote work is eliminating role models, and is eliminating mentors,” Verna said, “because I can’t mentor you behind a screen.”
The Top Workplaces program, now in its 17th year of recognizing Philadelphia-area companies that earn high marks from employees, is open for nominations for the 2026 awards at Inquirer.com/nominate.
Any Delaware Valley organization with 50 or more employees is eligible to participate at no cost. Standout companies will be honored in a special section of The Inquirer in September 2026.
To qualify as a Philadelphia Top Workplace, employees evaluate their workplace using a 26-question survey. Companies will be surveyed through April.
The Top Workplaces program returns to the Philadelphia region for 2026.
Energage, the Exton-based research partner for the project, conducts Top Workplaces surveys for media in 65 markets nationwide. For the 2025 awards, over 6,000 organizations in the Delaware Valley were invited to survey their employees. Based on employee survey feedback, 144 earned recognition as Top Workplaces.
“Earning a Top Workplaces award is a celebration of excellence,” said Eric Rubino, CEO of Energage. “It serves as a reminder of the vital role a people-first workplace experience plays in achieving success.”
Anyone can nominate an outstanding company. Nominees can be public, private, nonprofit, a school, or even a government agency. To nominate an employer or for more information on the awards, go to Inquirer.com/nominate or call 484-323-6270.
What do vacant retail spaces, garages, malls, and industrial buildings all have in common? Many have been repurposed into dedicated pickleball venues.
Pickleball courts have been popping up all over the Philadelphia region — indoor and outdoor, many privately owned or operated by chains, and some sponsored by or partnered with local government.
While they’ve been prolific, these facilities aren’t instant moneymakers. Local businesses offering the sport have been strategic and made adjustments in efforts to make a profit.
“Folks who invest in pickleball need to make sure they do a sound economic impact study and run the numbers to understand what a complex will support,” said Justin Maloof, chief competition officer of USA Pickleball, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Pickleball’s skyrocketing popularity
Pickleball, a combination of tennis and ping-pong, is the fastest-growing sport in the U.S., with about 20 million players in 2024, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA)’s 2025 Topline Participation Report. The sport grew by 223% in three years, with every age group seeing increased participation.
Venues offer memberships and pay-as-you-go options, with costs varying widely. Some municipalities offer play free of charge with no membership or court time fees. Other clubs have multitiered packages ranging in price up to $350 per month. Without a membership, hourly fees can run upward of $15 per hour.
With close to 16,000 pickleball locations, including 4,000 new sites in 2024, according to SFIA, competition is stiff and business models for new venues continue to evolve.
“We are seeing a definite shift toward permanent pickleball courts,” Maloof said. “In the early years, most of the pickleball courts were temporary or converted courts, including underutilized basketball or tennis courts or hardwood gymnasium floors.”
Those makeshift courts employed temporary nets and line markings that were often created from tape or chalk. As demand grew, players gravitated to dedicated courts with permanent nets and clear lines. Investors refit existing buildings or converted outdoor spaces, which has been quicker and more cost-effective than building new facilities from scratch.
Pickleball is played on the courts to the right while padel is played on the courts to the left at Viva Padel & Pickleball in Philadelphia.
Keeping start-up and operating costs low
When Viva Padel & Pickleball opened in June in East Poplar, the founders invested just under $1 million on an outdoor venue featuring four pickleball and four padel courts. One of the Viva investors already owned the lot that had previously been used for parking.
To entice clients, the group created a business model built on multiple tiers, ranging from a pay-as-you-go plan for casual players to a monthly fee premium plan for folks who play every day.
“The flexible business model allows people to buy in and test it out,” said cofounder and CEO Mehdi Rhazali. “We can target many different audiences.”
In the first three months, the club acquired 150 members in addition to drop-in players. That was a successful enough start to open a second indoor facility, set to open this fall.
For their second location, the investors partnered with the Magarity family, who have repurposed their tennis club in Flourtown into a pickleball and padel venue. They felt that converting to pickleball and padel would bring in more participants and more community usage, Rhazali said.
The clubs will run independently so joining one will not give players membership to both.
“With an indoor model, you have to cap your membership” to avoid overcrowding, Rhazali said. “We are planning on offering a lot of programming and options for members and nonmembers in the Flourtown location.”
The cost to refit an outdoor surface, most often a former basketball or tennis court, is $35,000 to $40,000, according to Carl Schmits, chief technology officer for USA Pickleball, based in Lake Oswego, Ore. That covers just the cost of the surface, not buying or leasing the space, or outfitting the venue.
The indoor court facility build-out is accelerating, driven by franchise operations including Life Time and Dill Dinkers, Schmits said. Closed retail spaces, such as former Bed Bath & Beyond stores, are being repurposed for pickleball,with 10 courts per facility on average.
For a smaller venue, perhaps a former garage or manufacturing facility, it costs about $10,000 to refinish the floor, create separations between the courts, and add lighting, Schmits said.
“A smaller operation would ideally need to see revenue of over $100,000 per year per court,” Schmits said.
Overcoming challenges
Delco Turf & Pickle will celebrate its first anniversary on Nov. 27. The locally owned venue offers nine indoor courts and an outdoor surface, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Half of the building is a turf field for other sports.
On the pickleball side, the Boothwyn business started as a pay-as-you-go club, and then began offering memberships three months later. Last month they added additional tier levels.
“We are trying to get the word out that we are here, we do a great job, and we have a great product,” said Adam Devlin, general manager and director of pickleball operations. The first year was a learning experience, he said.
By the time their infrastructure was in place, many local players had already committed to other clubs. This year, investors are counting on cold weather to bring in business, as many of the other courts nearby are outdoor.
To keep staffing and overhead low, the club is fully automated. Clients use an app to sign up, pay, and enter the facility. Staff are on-site during busy times.
Filling off-peak time remains a challenge for most clubs.
At the Delco club, the turf side of the venue picks up the slack, getting business from school and community groups. At Viva, Rhazali’s group is pursuing partnerships with schools and businesses to provide team-building events at the facility.
The community pickleball courts in Woolwich Township are shown lit up at night.
Local government hops on the pickleball bandwagon
Many municipalities, from the Philly suburbs to the Shore, offer pickleball, sometimes in repurposed tennis or basketball courts. Generally, their fees cover the costs of upkeep and staff and may be supplemented by the local government.
“Anything that gets people off the couch and active is a healthy thing,” said Doug Horton, competition and tournament director for 08085 Pickleball, which covers Woolwich and Logan Townships. “It brings people together and builds relationships.”
The two Gloucester County towns, just a few miles apart, share 14 pickleball courts, eight in Woolwich Township and six in Logan Township. The Woolwich courts were built and paid for by the developer who erected the surrounding homes in June 2024, as a perk to the community. The Logan courts, once a skate park, were recently repurposed to meet the demand for pickleball.
The club, which has more than 1,000 members, offers free memberships with no charge for court time. Anyone is welcome to join, but memberships are required as a way to assess the level of each player and ensure games are competitive.
The Logan program is recognized and supported as an official sport by the township, similar to their youth programs. In Woolwich Township, sponsorships, fees for lessons, leagues and tournaments support the program without the use of tax dollars.
Pickleball has also been available in Philadelphia’s Dilworth Park this fall, through a partnership between City Pickle and Center City District, a business improvement district. City Pickle offered season passes and open play time, as well as select open play sessions for no cost.
As more courts and venues pop up, pickleball will eventually reach a point of saturation in the region.
“In the early ’80s there was a heavy build-out of racquetball and tennis facilities, with the perspective ‘If we build it, they will come,’” Schmits said. “In hindsight, we look at how many closed.”
To area businesspeople, he cautioned: “Be sure to do the due diligence to understand the economic impact in your area.”
The start of the harvest in September is usually when China, the world’s biggest importer of soybeans, puts in a flurry of orders to the farms of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indiana.
This year, however, Chinese importers aren’t buying. In retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Beijing has cut off Midwestern farmers from their largest and most lucrative overseas customer: China accounted for half — or $12.6 billion — of U.S. soybean exports last year.
For the first time since November 2018, China imported no soybeans from the U.S. in September, data from China’s General Administration of Customs showed Monday.
“We’re in uncharted territory in terms of a complete absence of Chinese buyers for the harvest that is currently coming in,” said Even Pay, director of agriculture research at Trivium China, a research firm based in Beijing.
For Beijing, halting U.S. soybean imports has been an easy and relatively cost-free way to pile pressure on Trump ahead of a planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.
Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One last weekend, said he wanted China to return to its previous level of purchases and that he thought Beijing was ready to make a deal on soybeans.
But while American farmers lobby Trump to get them back into China, there isn’t similar pressure within China for the government to allow purchases from U.S. suppliers. That “gives Beijing a great deal of negotiating leverage,” Pay said.
On Tuesday, Trump took to social media to call China’s decision to not buy U.S. soybeans “an Economically Hostile Act” and said the U.S. was considering “terminating” buying cooking oil from China as retribution.
But Beijing has shrugged off Trump’s threats. Analysts say it is ready to extend the purchasing freeze for the rest of the year.
Here’s how China has turned its massive market for soy into a trade war weapon.
Why does China buy so many soybeans?
China consumes far more soybeans than any other country in the world, but it grows less than a fifth of what it needs — just enough to cover all the tofu and soy sauce used in Chinese cooking.
It buys everything else from abroad — importing more than the rest of the world combined — and the U.S. has traditionally been one of its top suppliers.
Those imported beans mostly feed huge numbers of pigs, chickens, and other livestock, as meat consumption by wealthier Chinese families has grown rapidly. Despite efforts to develop alternatives, soybeans accounted for 13% of animal feed in 2023.
The remaining imported soybeans mostly become cooking oil: soybean oil’s mild taste and ability to withstand high heats make it perfect for stir-fries. Chinese producers favor U.S. or Brazilian imports over more expensive homegrown soybeans.
For U.S. farmers, it’s hard to find a replacement for Chinese demand. “It’s just an enormous market,” said Phil Luck, director of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.
How has China curbed reliance on American farmers?
China has worked hard to curb its reliance on U.S. soy imports, especially after the trade conflict of Trump’s first term ended in 2020 when Beijing agreed to buy $200 billion in American products, including soybeans (although it bought far less than it promised.)
Beijing has since pushed Chinesefarms to consolidate and expand domestic output. It has launched trial programs for previously banned genetically modified crops. And it is aiming to lower the ratio of soybeans in animal feed to 10% by 2030, down from 18% in 2017.
A Ministry of Agriculture report released in May said that these efforts meant import demand would steadily fall over the coming years.
But thanks to limited farming land and ballooning demand, China is still a long way from its goals to meet half of its soybean needs with domestic crops and will rely on imports for years to come, analysts said.
So who is supplying China instead?
Chinese analysts are blunt about their country’s growing preference to buy from anywhere but the U.S.
“From China’s perspective, the U.S. is an unpredictable supplier,” said Niu Haibin, director of the Center for Latin America Studies at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
Tariffs mean U.S. soybeans no longer have a price advantage and China has already identified alternative suppliers to fill the gap. “The longer we rely on alternative sources, the dimmer the outlook for U.S. soybean exports to China becomes,” Niu said.
Those suppliers include Argentina, Uruguay, and even Russia. But it is Brazil, the world’s largest soybean exporter, that has been the big winner from China’s U.S. embargo.
China would typically alternate between hemispheres, buying from Brazil during its March to June harvest season and then from the U.S. for the remainder of each year.
But this year, instead of switching to American farms, China kept placing orders from Brazil. It imported $4.7 billion in soybeans from the country in August and only $100 million worth from the U.S.
That continued in September, when China bought 7.2 million tons of soybeans from the South American country — 93% its total exports, according to Anec, Brazil’s national association of grain exporters.
China’s effort to secure Brazilian soybeans goes far beyond merely placing big orders.
Chinese state-owned companies have takenstakes in the major Brazilian ports of Paranaguá, Açu, and Santos. COFCO, China’s largest agricultural importer, has the exclusive rights to runa major new terminal at Santos that opened in March and will expand the port’s throughput by 15 million tons per year when it reaches full capacity in 2026.
And Beijing is still trying to lower barriers for Brazilian exporters to access its vast market. The two countries are working on plans to build a railway connecting Brazil to Peru’s Chancay port that could cut shipping times to Asia dramatically.
What does this mean for U.S.-China trade talks?
With plentiful supply from South America, China has been projecting confidence that it can cold-shoulder American farmers for as long as is necessary to reach a trade deal.
Beijing once worried that U.S. wouldn’t sell China its soybeans, but it is now the U.S. that is anxious for China to buy, declared one widely shared article published on social media app WeChat last week.
In response to Trump’s recent threat to retaliate by halting cooking oil trade — which Chinese analysts took to mean the U.S. stopping purchases of used oil that can be turned into biodiesel — the state-owned Global Times newspaper declared that “there is no shortage of buyers for China’s used cooking oil.”
That defiant tone is helped by China’s sizable stockpiles. Its soybean imports hit a record in May and were up 5.3% year-on-year for January to September to reach 95 million tons, according to China’s customs agency.
Beijing is in a position where it could hold out for months — possibly until new South American crops arrive in early 2026 — without needing to procure U.S. soybeans, said Pay, the Trivium analyst.
Trump’s focus on soybean purchases has only strengthened Beijing’s belief that this is an easy way to squeeze the U.S. with minimal costs at home.
In Beijing, “there’s definitely a sense that the U.S. is in chaos and there’s room for putting political pressure on targeted groups,” said Jack Zhang, director of the Trade War Lab at the University of Kansas.
It also gives Xi something to offer Trump in exchange for what China really wants.
“Part of the calculation,” Zhang said, “is that the U.S. will negotiate over these small but pressing concerns and relent on some of the larger structural stuff that China’s more worried about.” These include U.S. export controls on advanced computer chips.
But even if a deal is struck this month, it may be too late for U.S. farmers to make up for orders already lost.
“China’s in a pretty good position. We really want to resolve this. They don’t need to,” said Luck, the CSIS analyst. Even if China started placing orders the day after Xi and Trump meet, U.S. soybean farmers “still probably lost half of the season, so we’re on the clock here,” he said.
STANTON, Tenn. — Stanton, Tenn., population 450, welcomed a massive new neighbor a few years ago: a Ford electric-truck factory and a joint-venture battery plant slated to employ 6,000 workers.
Ford’s 2022 groundbreaking triggered an influx of construction activity into the former cotton-and-soybean farmlands outside of Memphis. Hard-hatted workers filled local diners. Developers scrambled to build homes and fire stations
Stanton is quieter these days. Ford over the past 18 months repeatedly delayed phases of the project. The EV truck plant is slated to begin initial production in 2027 and start sending deliveries the next year, a timeline delayed several times from the original plan of coming online in 2025.
Ford said it “will be nimble in adjusting our product launch timing to meet market needs and customer demand while targeting improved profitability.”
The Ford complex is part of the so-called Battery Belt, a swath of factories stretching across the U.S. heartland that spans from Georgia to Indiana. Roughly two dozen battery projects worth tens of billions in investment have been announced this decade, promising to inject tens of thousands of jobs in Republican-dominated states like Georgia and Kentucky.
By last year, though, Americans’ waning enthusiasm for electric cars led automakers to delay or scrap some factory projects. Now, the additional fallout from U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent policy changes is descending on the Battery Belt.
Ford CEO Jim Farley last week offered the prediction that electric-car sales could fall by around 50% following the Sept. 30 expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for buyers, echoing other gloomy forecasts for the EV market.
The uncertain fate of these massive, high-tech factories and their employment has rattled the small rural communities that spent years hitching their economic futures to these projects.
“That’s on everybody’s mind, quite frankly,” said Allan Sterbinsky, who retired as mayor of Stanton in December and advocated for the site for years before Ford came to town. Some residents worry that Ford will never follow through on the plant, the former mayor said. Others hope the company will repurpose the 3,600-acre site if demand doesn’t increase for EVs.
A Ford spokesperson pointed to the automaker’s community work in Stanton, including grants to public safety organizations as part of a broader $9 million commitment to the area.
A Reuters review of U.S. battery-investment plans shows those worries are justified. The industry appears headed toward a huge glut of factory capacity, if all those projects were to move ahead as planned.
By 2030, the planned battery plants would provide the capacity to produce 13 million to 15 million EVs annually, according to figures provided to Reuters by research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. But the industry now might only need about one-quarter of that factory space. S&P Global Mobility predicts only around 3 million EVs will be produced that year, and some would likely use batteries imported from other countries.
Some of that excess roughly 10 million-EV worth of battery capacity would likely be used for hybrids and extended-range EVs as well as the booming energy storage industry, but there is still a sizable gulf, said Stephanie Brinley, S&P Global Mobility automotive analyst.
The demise of the $7,500 tax credit — which had been in place for more than 15 years to persuade Americans to try green cars — is only the highest profile of several anti-EV measures put forth by the Trump administration. Combined, they further jeopardize battery projects and other electric-car-related investments, experts say. In the last few months, several automakers have canceled, delayed or downsized EV projects.
Meanwhile, a pot of tens of billions of dollars available to companies that make EV batteries domestically has tighter restrictions that will likely reduce the amount of federal money that flows to the battery sites.
“All of a sudden, much of what was originally going to benefit from these credits now no longer can to a large degree,” said Jennifer Stafeil, tax auto sector lead for KPMG.
Trump has said he is not anti-EV, but prefers that consumers decide what cars to buy, without government influence. He also has criticized EV-friendly regulations implemented under former President Joe Biden, which Trump has said were costly and threatened American auto jobs.
One of the nation’s largest EV projects, Hyundai Motor’s $12.6 billion assembly plant and joint-venture battery factory near Savannah, Ga., is moving ahead. Last month the project suffered a setback when federal law enforcement raided it. Hyundai has said the fallout would delay the battery plant by at least two to three months.
In the three years since Hyundai announced the megasite, 21 suppliers have opened operations near the site.
“Hyundai is committed to offering a diverse product lineup, including internal combustion, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and EV models. We understand that every customer is unique, and we strive to meet a wide range of needs,” a company spokesperson said.
The complex is gearing up to hire 8,500 employees by 2031, and is paying wages 25% above the county average, said Trip Tollison, president of the Savannah Economic Development Authority.
Tollison acknowledged that some in the community worry about the uncertain future of the nascent EV industry that underpins all that development. He is hopeful Hyundai can flexibly shift to hybrid production if the EV market doesn’t take off.
“That’s how you provide opportunities like this to lift people out of poverty,” he said.
A lawsuit by online message board Reddit gives you a glimpse at the knockdown boxing match behind chatbot conversations.
In one corner are artificial intelligence services that gobble information from across the internet to help you plan a vacation or create silly videos. In the other corner are companies that are sometimes unwilling or overwhelmed sources of that data.
In its lawsuit, similar to ones against AI companies by news organizations, Hollywood studios, book authors, and others, Reddit alleges that the start-up Perplexity benefited from improperly using its website as AI fuel.
The claims are an example of warnings from Reddit, Wikipedia, and others that say if the boxing match continues as is, AI services may kill the websites and other source material that we love.
Dating back at least to the death of Napster a quarter-century ago, there have been constant fights over technology upstarts that remix media and information or deliver it in new ways. AI could be the most intractable fight of all.
AI ‘bank robbers’ vs. Reddit
The 20 years of our Reddit debates about the best Welsh restaurants and quiet air conditioners are gold for AI services. They typically need truckloads of online information like that to “train” their computers and serve up responses to your AI queries.
Reddit knows how valuable it is and laid out ground rules for AI companies that wanted to profit from siphoning Reddit message boards in bulk: AI companies needed a paid contract with Reddit and to respect its guardrails.
Some companies, including Google and ChatGPT parent company OpenAI, agreed to Reddit’s terms. For AI companies that didn’t agree, Reddit put up digital walls to block AI companies’ spiderlike software that crawls over websites to harvest their information.
According to Reddit, Perplexity’s CEO promised Reddit’s top lawyer more than a year ago to respect Reddit’s digital walls. Perplexity, which makes what it calls an AI “answer” engine and an AI-specialized web browser, instead found another way to siphon Reddit pages, the company says.
(The Washington Post has partnerships with Perplexity and OpenAI.)
Reddit’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a New York federal court, said that Perplexity hired at least one data-siphoning middleman to grab many billions of pages of Reddit material indirectly, from Google search results.
Those middlemen allegedly used technically sophisticated tactics to get around Google’s digital defenses against unwanted siphoning by bots. Reddit said that it obtained this information from a subpoena to Google in a different, secret lawsuit.
Reddit’s lawsuit compared what Perplexity and the bot-for-hire middlemen did to “bank robbers” who know they can’t get into the bank vault and “break into the armored truck carrying the cash instead.”
In a post on Reddit, Perplexity said that Reddit is after money. The lawsuit is a “sad example of what happens when public data becomes a big part of a public company’s business model,” Perplexity said.
Google said that it has “strong technical measures to prevent this type of malicious abuse, because it undermines the choices websites make about who can access their content.”
What this means for you
Experts have said that the law generally protects technology companies that take copyrighted materials like news articles, books, and movies and put them to a new, creative use. Many AI companies say that their products meet that legal standard.
Blake Reid, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said that Reddit’s case adds an extra wrinkle: The company doesn’t hold the copyright to Reddit posts. The people who created those posts do. Reid said that helps make the lawsuit’s outcome unpredictable.
Regardless, AI keeps running into a paradox: To be useful, new forms of AI rely on ingesting vast swaths of the past, present, and future internet. But doing so can increase costs and divert users from websites, which imperils the internet we use.
We’ve heard similar complaints before. Entertainment companies sued YouTube for giving you free access to their creations. Music companies have howled over TikTok letting you create dance videos to Taylor Swift tunes. News organizations have groused that Google and Facebook let you browse the news without buying newspapers or visiting news websites.
The content companies have typically found ways to grudgingly live with, and even profit from, the technology upstarts. AI is different, said Toshit Panigrahi, CEO of TollBit, which helps websites get paid for AI data collection.
AI services grab information at warp speed and at industrial scale from so many places, including news and entertainment sites, cruise operators, and furniture sellers. Panigrahi said that the old pattern — technology changes are good for us and the owners of digital creations — may no longer apply.
“This is changing how the internet works fundamentally,” he said.
Another experiential retail concept is coming to the region. This time it’s a live social-gaming venue at the King of Prussia Mall.
Massachusetts-based Level99 announced this week that it plans to bring its next “sprawling adult playground” to the Montgomery County shopping destination in 2027. The move marks the company’s first foray into the Philadelphia market.
The 46,000-square-foot venue will include 50 “life-size mini games” geared toward adults, according to a news release, and a full-service restaurant and bar serving local craft beer.
“Level99 goes beyond your conventional entertainment venue — it’s a place to play, explore, and actively connect,” Matthew DuPlessie, founder and CEO of Level99, said in a statement.
The venue is moving into the ground floor of the former JCPenney, which closed in 2017.
It will be across the mall from the 100,000-square-foot Netflix House. The immersive experience for fans of the streaming service’s shows is set to open Nov. 12 in the former Lord & Taylor department store.
Level99 customers race through the venue’s signature “Axe Run” game, one of 50 mini-challenges set to be part of King of Prussia’s location when it opens in 2027.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Level99 to King of Prussia, further elevating our commitment to delivering dynamic, experience-driven destinations,” Mark Silvestri, president of development for mall owner Simon Property Group, said in a statement. ”This innovative concept brings a new layer of interactive entertainment to King of Prussia and is a perfect complement to our growing lineup of immersive offerings.”
In the Philadelphia region, Cherry Hill Mall is set to open a Dick’s House of Sport next year. The 120,000-square-foot space will include a climbing wall, golf simulators, a running track, and batting and soccer cages.
And along with the forthcoming Netflix House, the King of Prussia Mall recently opened the Philadelphia area’s first Eataly, a 21,000-square-food Italian-centric marketplace and wine shop.
At Level99 venues, customers can choose from 50 mini-games that test mental and physical skills.
At existing Level99 locations, pricing starts at $29.99 per person for two hours of play, according to its website. Prices increase on weekends and holidays, and if a customer wants more time.
Level99 is supported by Act III Holdings, a $1.5 billion private-equity investment firm led by Panera Bread cofounder and Cava chairman Ron Shaich. Last month, Act III executives announced a $50 million commitment to the chain’s expansion into new markets, including Philadelphia.
