President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk had one of the more unlikely coalitions in modern politics—until it abruptly, and very publicly, fell apart.
Now, the two speak about once a month, after a group of advisors worked to repair the relationship, the Wall Street Journal reported. The effort included late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance, and came after Musk torched Trump, Republicans and the broader administration on social media.
Musk has since expressed some regret about his time in politics. The world’s richest person told The Economist last month that he thinks he “got a little too involved in politics, got carried away frankly.”
Let’s get into the headlines,
Chris Dobstaff Associate Editor, Newsletters
Follow me on Forbes.com
Who is the richest person in the world today?
First Up
Consumer sentiment on the U.S. economy fell unexpectedly this month, ending two months of gains, dropping to 51 in the University of Michigan’s widely tracked reading—well below consensus estimates of 54.5.
Iran’s leadership accused President Donald Trump of “fanciful delusions” over his insistence that the Strait of Hormuz would become a U.S. territory.
Paramount Skydance is looking to settle with the 12 states that have sued to block its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Jared Mortensen
Daily Cover Story
Small Brands Get Famous On TikTok Shop, But Amazon Is Still King
Read Article
Jared Mortensen got a preview of what might be possible on TikTok Shop back in 2023 while he was in Guangzhou, China, visiting both a factory that produces his Real Men Apparel Co.’s underwear and a friend who sells a clothing line to Chinese women. The friend was live streaming on the Chinese social media platform Douyin, owned by ByteDance, then the owner of TikTok.
“They were doing like $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 an hour, selling women’s apparel,” Mortensen recalls. “I was like, ‘Holy crap. They’re printing money.’”
Mortensen returned home to Wichita, Kansas and created a TikTok Shop account for his brand in October 2023, just a month after the shopping platform launched in the U.S. Today, he has 11 livestreamers and content creators on his staff of 25, as well as contracts with about 2,000 independent TikTok creators to generate videos for his underwear line. (The creators get a percent of the sales they generate.)
“The thing is with TikTok, you have to post a lot. It’s very intense,” Mortensen says. “You have to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall.”
Despite all that content, many users appear to log on to TikTok to browse and discover new products—and then go elsewhere to complete a purchase. Even Real Men, with its TikTok video machine, still does just 15% in $10 million of annual sales on TikTok Shop, compared to 50% on Amazon and 35% on its own website.
Why It Matters
Even with the disparity in where sales are completed, online retailers still value the visibility TikTok brings them. “It saved my business,” Mortenson says. He credits the platform with raising his brand’s profile and sales (including on other platforms) when he was facing a cash crunch.
More
7 Tips For Small Sellers Getting Started On TikTok Shop
Business + Finance
Social media platform Reddit will join the S&P 500 on Tuesday, replacing a real estate investment trust that was recently acquired. Inclusion in the index exposes the stock to a broader pool of investors, and Reddit shares closed up about 13% Friday, though the stock is still down more than 20% on the year.
Wealth + Entrepreneurship
Four Seasons Resorts Nevis Getty Images
Homeowners at a Bill Gates-owned Four Seasons resort in the Caribbean filed a lawsuit alleging deteriorating conditions on the five-star property. According to the suit, each homeowner paid $100,000 to get in the door at Four Seasons Resort Nevis, a quiet island retreat favored by celebrities, but members say they’ve paid millions more in management fees for repairs that were never completed. Cascade, the family office of Bill Gates, told Forbes it intends to “vigorously defend itself against the claims.”
Presented by ZS
Transformation matters.
In the drive toward innovation, seeing the unseen is essential. By merging deep expertise with advanced analytics and AI, ZS helps you decode intricate patterns and navigate the road to groundbreaking discoveries.
Stay ahead with ZS
Tech + Innovation
Cami Clark and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19. AFP via Getty Images
New details have emerged on Cami Clark, the low-profile wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who tried to court Jeffrey Epstein as an investor for her “luxury porn company” and women’s health startup in 2012, according to the Wall Street Journal. Clark married Amodei in 2022 after previously dating former Google chief Eric Schmidt, and the Journal described her as a “sounding board and strategic adviser” for Amodei and Anthropic.
Money + Politics
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to finish constructing President Donald Trump’s planned $600 million White House ballroom, after multiple lower courts ruled against the project. The Supreme Court will likely weigh in on the emergency request within the week, with the administration arguing that a federal appeals court’s block on the construction is a “blatant abuse of discretion.”
Facts + Comments
The massive infrastructure buildout to support AI may ultimately require more than $2 trillion in borrowing costs—roughly double what Wall Street’s bond market can finance, Apollo’s chief economist says, leaving a big gap for private credit:
More than 40%
The share of new long-term, investment-grade corporate debt that’s related to AI, according to Apollo’s Torsten Slok
$738 billion
The combined capital spending projections for Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta this fiscal year
‘A significant opportunity’
With public markets constrained by “concentration and ratings,” more than $1 trillion of AI infrastructure financing could come from private lenders, Slok writes