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Greetings! You wouldn’t know it from checking out Temu’s website today—it’s as full of schlocky cheap items as ever—but the Chinese-owned shopping site is not what it was a few months ago. Thanks to changes made in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it now lists all the items on the home page as coming from “local” warehouses rather than being directly shipped from China under the duty-free de minimis loophole, which has now closed. The selling point, the listings advertise, is “no import charges.” Buyer beware! The warehouses may be local, but nothing else about these items is. Check out this listing for binoculars: If you snoop around a bit, you will eventually discover that it is coming from a “local” warehouse used by a company based in—Shenzhen! These socks came from a different part of China. It’s a good bet that most of the items on Temu listed as coming from local warehouses are originating in China and imported in bulk to a U.S. warehouse. Tariffs may not yet have affected their prices—they could have been imported before Trump imposed his initial tariffs on Chinese imports in February. But eventually the prices will rise on those bulk items as well to reflect new tariffs, wherever the rate ends up. (The Trump administration announced Monday that it would cut the tariff rate to 30% from 145%, at least temporarily.) For bargain shoppers, that should be sobering news. (But remember what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said about the American dream!). It may be even more worrying for buyers of shares of PDD Holdings, the Chinese parent of Temu. Its stock was up 6% today, part of a rally sparked by today’s tariff cuts, and is up 20% so far this year. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given that Temu’s future is now under a very big and black cloud. While PDD doesn’t detail Temu’s financial performance, its overall revenue rose 200% between 2022, when Temu was launched, and 2024. And while Temu could in theory prosper outside the U.S., PDD’s securities filings note that “governments in other jurisdictions” are also considering changes that make importing from China “more costly or complicated.” How many people will keep shopping on Temu if it can’t keep stocking cheap stuff? Let’s face it, Temu is so much fun to scroll through—check out this listing for a “mystery box” from China—that ordering a couple of items counts as entertainment. That works if the items cost only $10. But at a higher price, the fun disappears. Perhaps economists should devise a sensitivity analysis to measure how demand for junk diminishes as prices rise past $10. The same goes for PDD shares—they might have been worth a whirl when Temu was soaring. No longer. Here’s a horrifying thought: Amazon is planning a new kind of TV ad that uses artificial intelligence to try to match an ad to the mood of the show in which the ad runs, according to Variety. For example, Variety says, during a sad scene an ad could show tissues. Or during a car chase scene an ad could promote the cars involved in the chase. Variety quotes an Amazon executive saying the idea is that viewers will see these new ads as “extensions of the entertainment experience, not interruptions.” Yeah, right. What will the ads show during a murder investigation—ads for a stain remover? • Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, has had discussions with Accel for its latest financing, a $500 million capital raise at a $14 billion valuation, including the investment, according to a person familiar with the matter. • Sterling Anderson, co-founder and former chief product officer of autonomous trucking company Aurora Innovation, is joining General Motors as its chief product officer, the automaker said Monday. • David Bailey, the Bitcoin Magazine CEO who advised Donald Trump on crypto policy during his 2024 campaign, raised $710 million to launch a bitcoin investment company, more than double the amount it had targeted. The fundraising was among the largest for companies that plan to invest in bitcoin. • FedEx will start delivering Amazon packages for the first time since 2019, the companies confirmed on Monday. The partnership will involve delivery of “select large packages,” a FedEx spokesperson said. Dealmaker was named the “Best in Business” newsletter for its insightful coverage of private technology and the AI hype cycle. Start receiving the newsletter here. | 
