We're seeing a slowdown in all trade lanes with China, says Pacific Merchant Shipping's Mike Jacob
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Fast Company
7 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Fly by Jing is launching chili crisp ketchup
Fly by Jing, the beloved CPG brand that's helped make high-quality chili crisp a staple in many American households, announced today that it's fusing its iconic sauce with an unexpected condiment: ketchup. The new product, called Chili Crisp Ketchup, launches today in a limited run online, retailing for $15 a bottle. It was made in collaboration with Frankie Gaw, a creator and author known for remixing Asian cuisine with classic American products. According to a press release, Chili Crisp Ketchup combines Fly by Jing's bestselling Original Sichuan Chili Crisp with a ketchup base 'to create a spicy, savory, and smooth blend that's at once novel and nostalgic.' For Fly by Jing founder Jing Gao, the brand's move to fuse its core product with a classically American condiment is an evolution of its overarching goal to help Western consumers 'experiment more wildly' with traditionally Chinese flavors and integrate them into their existing routine. But the Chili Crisp Ketchup also serves a secondary purpose: helping Fly by Jing diversify its supply chain in the wake of President Trump's sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports. Fly by Jing spices up ketchup Gao's concept for Fly by Jing first took shape in 2018, when she noticed that the market for chili crisp was rapidly expanding in Western markets. She saw an opportunity to introduce a broader customer base to the iconic flavors of her hometown, Chengdu, China, and to create her own chili crisp with higher quality ingredients than other competitors on the market. The first step was spending several years just courting Sichuan suppliers and merchants to source the chili crisp's 18 premium ingredients. Since its launch in 2019, Fly by Jing has transformed from a crowd-funded direct-to-consumer (DTC) project to a staple on grocery store shelves, now offering its products in 11,000 stores nationwide including major retailers like Target, Safeway, and Walmart. The company has also debuted additional products like a spicy vinaigrette, a line of instant noodles, and an ultra-hot oil that's appeared on the YouTube show Hot Ones. The concept for a ketchup-slash-chili-crisp actually came from a TikTok video made by Gaw, who used chili crisp to create his own custom ketchup blend. Gaw and Gao connected over the concept, which Gao saw as a natural evolution of her brand's central thesis. 'From day one, we've really tried to decrease the barriers for people to understand Sichuan flavors,' Gao says. She specifically recalls launching the brand's original flavor through collaborations with ice cream shops to show how unexpectedly delicious the pairing could be. 'Showing these flavors truly are good on everything, I think it was really helpful for Western audiences who hadn't experienced this before,' she adds. A satisfying squeeze bottle Fly by Jing's Chili Crisp Ketchup comes in the brand's first-ever squeeze bottle, which Gao's team has actually been conceptualizing for several years. The main challenge with the proposition was making the squeeze format work with the chunky, gritty textures of a good chili crisp. In this case, Gao says, they were able to solve that problem by sifting out some of the larger components and relying more on the deep flavors of the oil itself, which is then balanced with the sweet tanginess of the ketchup. For his part of the collaboration, Gaw assisted in the tasting process and also designed the squeeze bottle's label. The package is a major visual departure from Fly by Jing's other branding, swapping its ' dopamine design ' neon colors for a retro Americana look (and a swaggy image of Gaw's own grandma, clad in a flaming cowboy hat). As of right now, Chili Crisp Ketchup is a limited edition product. Gao plans to test consumer interest through an initial DTC launch, which will help determine whether the product is a good candidate to roll out in retail. Weathering Trump's tariff headwinds In the meantime, Fly by Jing is also testing several other squeeze bottle sauces with production components based in the U.S. and other countries as part of a broader supply chain diversification effort. That's because some of the important ingredients across its portfolio of product offerings—the premium spices and aromatics that are specially sourced from Sichuan, China— are subject to the Trump administration's tariffs on China. Currently, those tariffs equal a 55% tax on imported ingredients, though they could jump up to rates as high as 145% if the Trump administration doesn't relent on its plan to boost them in the next three months.
9 minutes ago
Ukraine, left out in Trump-Putin summit, fears setbacks on key peace issues
LONDON -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin "will not achieve anything" if peace talks exclude Ukraine. Decisions taken without Kyiv's input will be "stillborn decisions," Zelenskyy continued. "They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," the president said in an address to the nation last weekend. Ukrainian expectations for the summit in Alaska are low, amid fears in Kyiv that the American and Russian leaders will seek to dictate Ukraine's future without its participation. Zelenskyy's talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday, though, did appear to find consensus on key Ukrainian demands according to subsequent statements from Zelenskyy and his European counterparts, including that Kyiv will be the one to decide on any territorial concessions and that no such concessions can occur without binding security guarantees. "We must learn from the experience of Ukraine, [and] our partners, to prevent deception by Russia," Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday. "There is no sign now that the Russians are preparing to end the war," he added. "Our coordinated efforts and joint steps -- of Ukraine, the United States, Europe, all countries that want peace -- can definitely force Russia to make peace." Trump said Wednesday after the virtual meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders that there will be "severe consequences" against Russia if Putin did not agree to stop his war on Ukraine. Oleksandr Merezhko -- a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body's foreign affairs committee -- likened the coming Alaska summit to the 1938 Munich Agreement -- a pre-World War II accord by which European powers allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia without Prague's consent. "Putin secured a one-on-one meeting with Trump, providing an opportunity to influence U.S. policy and push for abandonment of Ukraine and European allies," Merezhko told ABC News. "Putin would like to use the summit to persuade Trump to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress on a ceasefire and give him a pretext to walk away from the negotiations," Merezhko said. "Putin is a very masterful manipulator and he will go into Friday's meeting well prepared," Merezhko added. "He will go in with well-prepared, planned and rehearsed talking points." John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now working at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, said Putin "wants a deal with Trump that will be presented to Kyiv and other European capitals as a fait accompli." The Kremlin's goals remain the "elimination of Ukraine as a state and as a culture, elimination of NATO and undermining of the U.S. global positions," Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. There are several key -- and thorny -- issues for the two leaders to discuss. Territory Territory has been a main source of conflict between the two countries since Russia's annexation of Crimea and fomentation of separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Putin has remained firm in his demands. Any peace settlement, Moscow has said, must include "international legal recognition" of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and four regions it has occupied to varying degrees since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia demanded that Ukrainian troops withdraw entirely from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions -- including areas that Russian troops do not control. The Kremlin claimed to have annexed all four regions in September 2022. Moscow also wants Kyiv to give up on any designs on taking back occupied Crimea. Ahead of Friday's meeting, Trump suggested that a "swapping of territories" could lead to a peace deal. However, Ukrainian officials quickly rejected that idea. Zelenskyy held that the country would not give up any of its land, saying in a Saturday statement, "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers." The president has since said that any decisions on territorial concessions must be made by Ukraine, and that no such concessions can occur without Ukraine receiving binding security guarantees that include the U.S. NATO ambitions Russian officials are also looking for their own "security guarantees" regarding NATO, by which Ukraine would be permanently excluded from the alliance, which has a mutual defense agreement among members. Putin has regularly expressed concern over NATO's eastward expansion, framing the alliance's growth as an existential security threat to Russia. He has repeatedly warned the alliance against accepting Ukraine as a member, accusing the organization of trying to turn the country into a launch pad for aggression. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, said in March that Moscow is seeking "the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance." Ukrainian officials have continued in their bid to join NATO -- an ambition that has the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians and is enshrined in the national constitution. During a news conference earlier this year, Zelenskyy offered to step down from the presidency in exchange for admission to NATO. "If to achieve peace you really need me to give up my post -- I'm ready. I can trade it for NATO membership, if there are such conditions." NATO nations, while backing Ukraine in its defensive war, have refused to allow Kyiv's accession to the alliance. The alliance agreed at a 2008 summit that Ukraine "will become a member of NATO," but the leaders of key allied nations -- including the U.S. -- have said Kyiv cannot accede while it is at war. Limits to Ukraine's military Russian officials have demanded limits to the size of Ukraine's military, which Moscow has framed as necessary to ensure its own security -- a claim dismissed by Kyiv as false. During peace negotiations in the opening days of the full-scale invasion, Moscow demanded that Ukraine reduce its military size to 50,000. Zelenskyy, however, has expressed concern that any reductions to Ukraine's military could allow Russia to secure more Ukrainian land, even with Western support. "The best thing is a strong army, a large army, the largest army in Europe. We simply have no right to limit the strength of our army in any case," he said in December. Russia is also demanding limits on Ukraine's weapons arsenals and the sophistication of its military technology. In the days leading up to Friday's meeting between Trump and Putin, Ukraine has increased its long-range drone strikes into Russia. Ukrainian officials have said such attacks are part of its strategy to force the Kremlin into genuine peace talks. Sanctions The lifting of international sanctions on Russia may also be discussed during Friday's meeting. Russia is currently the world's most sanctioned country with "50,000 or so measures," according to The Center for European Policy Analysis. Russian officials have stated that a peace treaty should include lifting sanctions imposed since 2022. The European Union has refused requests to reduce sanctions against Russia before a peace deal is secured, and Zelenskyy has called Putin's suggestion that reductions could lead to lasting peace "manipulative." Trump has threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia and its top trading partners if Putin fails to commit to a ceasefire. Earlier this month, the U.S. announced additional tariffs on India related to its purchases of Russian oil. "Everyone sees that there has been no real step from Russia toward peace, no action on the ground or in the air that could save lives," Zelenskyy said earlier this week. "That is why sanctions are needed, pressure is needed."
CNBC
9 minutes ago
- CNBC
Economist Sumerlin confirms he's in the running for Fed chair, backs big interest rate cut
Economist Marc Sumerlin, one of nearly a dozen reported contenders for Federal Reserve chair, said Thursday he'd be interested in the job and believes an aggressive interest rate cut would be appropriate. Sumerlin, a former senior economist under then-President George W. Bush, said on CNBC that lowering the Fed's key rate would be an easy decision now. The current yield structure combined with weakness in the labor market and stable inflation "tells us that we could easily do a 50 basis point cut ... without disrupting anything at all. So it seems like pretty much a no-brainer to me." A basis point equals 0.01%, so 50 basis points would be half a percentage point. With the field looking wide open to succeed current Chair Jerome Powell, Sumerlin's position on rates puts him at least directionally in line with President Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly pushed the Fed to ease, advocating cuts of up to 3 percentage points, but the Powell-led Federal Open Market Committee has kept is benchmark funds rate unchanged since last lowering in December 2024. As far as the nomination sweepstakes goes, Sumerlin, currently managing partner for Evenflow Macro, confirmed that he was contacted by the White House last week. He noted that he is close friends with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has taken a leading role in the search for the next chair, saying the two have been discussing monetary policy "weekly for probably 12 years." "I got a call last Wednesday that said there was going to be a list [and] I was going to be on it. That's as much as I know right now," he said. "I'm waiting for more guidance on where we go from here." Sumerlin indicated that he would be interested in the nomination so long as certain conditions are met. "I think if it's the Fed chair, it's mission critical to the world. You have to be willing to do that," he said. "I've never met the president before. It would depend on us seeing eye to eye." Sumerlin stressed the importance of Fed independence, something that has come under question has Trump has taken the historically unprecedented step of criticizing Powell and his fellow policymakers publicly and in stark terms. He's called Powell a "loser" and "stupid" and has criticized the FOMC for being complacent. "You have to go into it knowing that every day you're going to walk in and just do the best job you can for the American people, and you're going to get criticism and be prepared to deal with that," Sumerlin said. "Ideally, you'd want to go in knowing that you're in synch. In synch goes both ways, and that would be part of the process trying to figure it out." In addition to Sumerlin, other candidates include current governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and former Governor Kevin Warsh, along with about half a dozen others.
