Donald Trump's genius has always been marketing: himself, his properties, his political campaigns. But when it comes to the effects of his tariffs, the master has either lost a step or is facing a challenge that even he hasn't yet figured out how to spin. 'Somebody said, 'Oh, the shelves are gonna be open,'' the president said on Wednesday. 'Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.' Americans, he said, will not 'have to go out of our way.' Presidents have asked Americans to sacrifice for the national good before. A few months after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt extolled those resisting the Axis overseas before making a plea to those at home. 'There is one front and one battle where everyone in the United States'every man, woman, and child'is in action, and will be privileged to remain in action throughout this war. That front is right here at home, in our daily lives, and in our daily tasks,' he said. 'This will require, of course, the abandonment not only of luxuries but of many other creature comforts. Every loyal American is aware of his individual responsibility.'...

Grocery-delivery giant Instacart announced Thursday the acquisition of Wynshop, a provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions for grocers. The deal will help Instacart improve its enterprise solutions, enabling retailers to enhance their online experiences. Wynshop launched its platform in 2020 and provides online storefronts for grocers, working with clients such as Wakefern Food Corp. and Pattison Group. Its offerings range from real-time AI-powered personalization tools and in-store order fulfillment solutions. For now, Wynshop will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary, with its technology being integrated into Instacart's platform over time. The integration is expected to strengthen Instacart's e-commerce, advertising, fulfillment, and in-store offerings....

Kintsugi, a Silicon Valley-based startup that helps companies offload and automate their sales tax compliance, has raised $18 million in new funding led by global indirect tax technology solution provider Vertex. The startup plans to enable more small and medium businesses to use its AI-enabled capabilities for tax calculations and filings. The ongoing growth of e-commerce and cross-border trade, combined with increasingly complex tax regulations, has driven global demand for tax automation solutions. Kintsugi aims to aid companies with its software that integrates with revenue-generating points, whether that's Shopify, Stripe, Chargebee, QuickBooks, or a custom API implementation. This helps bring a 360-view of revenue and lets the startup ingest the data and calculate taxes instantly. 'Our goal is like what Uber did for taxi cabs and Stripe did for credit card payments. We want to do it for the compliance piece in 171 countries,' said Pujun Bhatnagar (pictured above, left), co-founder and CEO of Kintsugi, in an exclusive interview....

Inflation was high, economic growth was stagnant, and food prices were soaring: It was the 1970s, and everyone needed to eat to stay alive, but no one had any money. So a few enterprising grocery stores had an idea'they began purchasing their own food straight from the manufacturer, putting it in ostentatiously no-frills packaging, and selling it for significantly less than the name-brand stuff. These products were called 'generics,' and if out-of-control costs were the problem, they were the solution. Well, sort of. The peas were starchy; the corn was bland. Generics weren't awful, but they weren't that good, either. 'They basically were kind of a lesser version of products that people wanted to buy,' Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University, told me. Before Fitzsimons was a consumer psychologist, he was a high-school stock clerk at his local grocery store, and he remembers a lot of the store-brand stuff being 'terrible.' It went on the bottom shelf, and both the retailer and the consumer knew that it was an inferior product. 'There was,' Greg Sleter, the executive editor of the trade publication Store Brands, told me, 'nothing sexy about it.' People hated generics so much that the name itself became a mild insult, synonymous with anything unoriginal or uninspired....