Axios Closer

June 10, 2025
🎶 Folgers is waking up to higher costs due to ... well, you know.
Today's newsletter is 636 words, a 2½-minute read.
🔔 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.6%.
🥶 Today's stock spotlight: J.M. Smucker (-15.6%). The consumer foods company projected a decreased profit for its fiscal year on higher coffee costs and struggles with its Hostess brand. (More below👇)
1 big thing: Tariffs are roasting coffee prices
President Trump's tariffs are roasting coffee sellers.
Why it matters: Coffee importers and retailers are being squeezed by a 10% duty on raw beans, with some warning of higher prices ahead.
🫘 Between the lines: The J.M. Smucker Co. — which sells Folgers, Dunkin' and Cafe Bustelo coffee brands — is citing coffee as its No. 1 raw material cost.
- 🚛 American companies have few domestic options for raw, unroasted coffee beans — known as green coffee — so they can't do much to limit their exposure to import duties.
- Coffee prices were up 9.6% in April, according to the Consumer Price Index, which reports May prices tomorrow.
💵 The impact: The extra duties lowered Smucker's profits and will lead to further price increases, CFO Tucker Marshall said on the company's earnings call today.
- ☕️ At Starbucks, the increased duties are causing the world's largest coffee chain to "look at how the tariffs will impact the cost and then the price that we need to provide to the customer," Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol tells Axios today in an interview in Las Vegas, though he added that "we have no plans right now to pass on pricing."
- "Fortunately for us, we have a very diverse way of buying, and then we roast everything in the United States," Niccol said. "So it's really just the green coffee that we're dealing with, which has got that 10% tariff.
The bottom line: Someone — companies or consumers — will have to swallow these tariffs.
2. Zuck's hiring 🤑
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, frustrated with the pace of Meta's AI development and public stumbles, is creating a new "superintelligence" team dedicated to building the world's most advanced AI platform, the New York Times and Bloomberg reported today.
- 💰 Zuck is said to be personally leading recruiting for the roughly 50-person team, and he's splashing out seven- to nine-figure packages to hire top talent.
Zoom in: Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang has been tapped to join the new Meta lab, per the Times. Meta's been in talks to invest billions of dollars in Scale and bring on some of its employees.
- 🧠 The team's mission for Meta: to develop an AI with powers that ultimately exceed those of the human brain.
The bottom line: Cost doesn't matter in the race for AI dominance.
3. Other happenings
🔍 Google today reportedly offered buyouts to employees across the company, including in its search, ads and commerce divisions. (CNBC)
📺 Paramount Global plans to cut its U.S. personnel by 3.5%. The company is seeking regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance Media. (CNBC)
🚚 Toyota and Daimler Truck finalized a two-year-old deal to merge their truck manufacturing businesses. Hino Motors and Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus will become part of the same holding company by April. (Bloomberg)
🚗 Volvo Cars said its global vehicle sales fell 12% in May. The automaker has been hit hard by increased U.S. automotive tariffs. (Euronews)
4. Ronald McDonald House Charities rebrand
Ronald McDonald House Charities, which provides services globally to ill children and their families, is rebranding and refreshing its logo ahead of an ambitious expansion goal.
- 🎯 Why it matters: The charity aims to double the number of families it serves by 2030.
What's happening: The name and logo will start rolling out to chapters in October, with an aim to fully migrate worldwide by the end of 2027.
- The launch will be supported with a multimedia campaign featuring TV and radio spots and content from celebrity influencers, per Joanna Sabato, the charity's global chief marketing and communications officer.
🏥 By the numbers: Ronald McDonald House has more than 250 chapters in 62 countries, offering out-of-hospital housing and in-hospital family rooms, among other services.
- It now provides more 1,000 different programs, saving families hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses.
- 💵 Support via McDonald's Corp. accounts for about 25% of overall system revenue, Katie Fitzgerald, CEO of Ronald McDonald House, tells Axios.
🖍️ Fun fact: The first Crayola crayons rolled off the assembly line at Binney & Smith Company on this day in 1903. Since then, it's sold over 230 billion of them.
Today's newsletter was edited by Pete Gannon and copy edited by Sheryl Miller.
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