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The Problem With Sleep Right Now Is Shame About Sleep

How to stop feeling bad about your sleep and get a good night’s rest

Chrissy Lawler saw her social life dry up awhile back. There were fewer invitations. Snarky comments about her behavior. A good friend told her that she no longer wanted to hang out.

When Lawler asked what was wrong, she was surprised by the answer. You’re not that fun anymore—you leave early to go to bed, she says her friends told her.

“I was devastated,” says Lawler, who is 38 and lives in Las Vegas. “People turned away from me because I prioritized my sleep.”

It’s hard enough to snooze at night. Now there’s a new source of worry: Sleep shame—the subtle, and not so subtle, ways that people judge and undermine how and when we rest.

No one is immune. Are you, like Lawler, an early bird up with the dawn? You’re considered boring. A night owl who sleeps in? What a sloth. Enjoy an afternoon nap? How irresponsible. And how much shut-eye did you get last night anyway? Doesn’t matter, it’s never enough.

Much of the shaming is cultural, psychologists say. We live in a society that values hard work, where we’ve been told since we were small children that “the early bird gets the worm.”

Our nearest and dearest—who can be disappointed and judgy when we don’t do things their way—can be part of the problem, too. And making matters even worse: We’re often the ones shaming ourselves. (I felt guilty recently after my Oura ring informed me I had almost six hours of sleep debt.)

“We get shamed if we express our need for sleep and we get shamed if we don’t sleep enough,” says Wendy Troxel, a psychologist and senior behavioral scientist at Rand and author of a book on couples and sleep. “But this is not how sleep works—it is not a test to pass.”

While reporting this story, I heard about a woman who said she was ghosted by someone she was dating after she explained that she goes to bed early, adult siblings who got into a spat after one suggested the other would “get more done” if she got up earlier, and a man who said his personal trainer berated him for not getting enough sleep.

When Ann Turner’s husband asked—one too many times—if she was “going to bed already?” after she said good night at 9 p.m., she stopped giving her usual excuses, such as that she woke up early. “Stop sleep-shaming me!,” the 58-year-old therapist, who lives in Bethesda, Md., blurted out. “I’m tired, and there’s nothing wrong with going to bed when I’m tired.” (He says he now understands.)

The biggest problem with sleep shame, experts say, is that it makes our problems spiral. Think of it as a finger trap, the little prank toy that tightens around your fingers the harder you pull, says Alex Dimitriu, a psychiatrist who specializes in sleep issues in Menlo Park, Calif. “The more you force yourself, the worse it is,” he says. “The trick is to relax and not try so hard.”

Sleep shame is driven by the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach, experts say. Yet we all have different sleep needs, both in terms of amount and timing. Some people are natural early birds, others night owls. These chronotypes, as they’re called, are biologically set and typically hard to change, Rand’s Troxel says. A theory I have long loved, as a night owl, holds that evolution set us up this way to ensure there was always someone in the tribe awake to tend the fire and watch for danger. Forcing yourself to sleep outside your optimal time can lead to poorer sleep, Troxel says.

Many people, like me, also end up shamed by their sleep trackers. This is where our growing obsession with achieving optimal sleep—an issue that researchers call orthosomnia—becomes harmful. “Sleep naturally varies day to day, but people lose sight of the big picture,” says Zlatan Krizan, a professor of psychology who runs a laboratory that studies sleep and personality at Iowa State University.

So what’s a sleep-ashamed person to do? Here is some advice from the experts.

How much sleep you need—and the timing—is innate. You’ll feel less ashamed if you remember this.

Reframe your sleep as a performance-enhancing strategy, says Troxel. We expect pilots, surgeons and athletes to get their rest. Why not you?

“The stakes are high no matter who you are,” she says. “Your health, your well-being, your relationships, your ability to perform at your best are all shaped by the quality of your sleep.”

Don’t judge your sleep health based on just one night.

Sleep metrics are hard to understand unless you are a sleep scientist, says Iowa’s Krizan. He suggests you choose a long-term goal when using your sleep tracker. Maybe you want to identify what messes with your slumber, such as working out late, or monitor your patterns over time.

“Sleep is naturally variable and flexible,” he says. “It can take weeks, or months, to understand what is really going on.”

Your partner’s early bedtime when you want to stay up isn’t lazy, selfish or a reflection of their love. It’s a biological need.

Research shows that couples with different sleep habits may have more conflict. To avoid this, discuss your individual needs. Then come up with a compromise.

Troxel recommends that couples spend quality time together in bed before the early bird goes to sleep, cuddling, bonding, being intimate. Then the night owl can get out of bed and continue on with his or her evening.

“Preserving the ritual of being together before bedtime is more important than sleeping together,” she says.

Labeling sleep shame can help you address it. This is true even when you are the one beating yourself up.

It helps to have a short, go-to mantra. Joshua Tal, a psychologist in New York who specializes in sleep issues, suggests: “Every person has different sleep needs and these are mine.”

But if that makes you feel defensive, try ignoring the comments. “The ultimate response to sleep bullies is to nod and smile,” Tal says.

When Lawler’s friends ditched her for going to bed early, she was doubly frustrated: Not only is she a mother of four who needs to wake up early, she also is a therapist who specializes in helping parents teach their kids to sleep.

So she reminded herself that her desire to go to bed early doesn’t make her boring or anti-fun; it means that she’s putting her health, her family and her productivity first.

“If I realize that my good sleep matters, then I am immune to other people’s judgment,” she says. “It’s my life, and nobody is going to care about my well-being more than I will.”

Private equity owners slash valuation of Swiss watchmaker Breitling

Performance of luxury brand has faltered since CVC sold majority stake to Partners Group in 2023

Breitling’s private equity owners have slashed the valuation of the Swiss watchmaker to as little as half its 2023 level, as performance has faltered under CVC and Partners Group’s joint ownership.

The two buyout firms are reviewing the strategy of Breitling after pressure from CVC, three people familiar with the matter said, as the brand has struggled with an expensive store rollout at a time of subdued demand for luxury watches and US tariffs on Switzerland.

Amsterdam-listed CVC handed over majority ownership of the company to Partners as part of a $4.5bn sale three years ago, after selling a small interest to the Swiss buyout firm in 2021. CVC had initially bought the 140-year-old watch brand for about €800mn in 2017, but held on to a roughly 20 per cent stake in 2023 through a new fund.

The 2023 deal was controversial inside Partners Group, according to two people familiar with the matter, due to questions over how much more Breitling could expand after its rapid growth under CVC’s ownership.

The two buyout firms still share control, but Partners Group holds significant sway with more than 50 per cent of the shares and Partners co-founder Fredy Gantner chairing the watch group’s board.

CVC has marked its stake down to about 0.5 times invested capital, based on the level at which it reinvested in 2023, according to a person familiar with the matter. Partners Group values its holding at roughly 0.7 times, which a person close to the firm said was because it invested at a lower valuation in 2021 than it did in 2023.

Partners Group, CVC and Breitling said there had been “no differences of opinion between [the private equity firms] about Breitling’s strategy”.

The Swiss watch industry is notoriously opaque, making it difficult to assess performance with precision. Most leading brands are privately held and disclose little financial information.

But momentum at Breitling has cooled since 2022, with industry data suggesting the brand’s climb up the Swiss watch revenue rankings has plateaued.

Morgan Stanley and Swiss consultancy LuxeConsult estimate that Breitling’s sales declined about 3 per cent last year, lagging both the broader Swiss watch market and the sector’s strongest private brands.

Performance in the UK — which accounts for 8 per cent of revenues — has been particularly troubling, one of the people said, with sales in the country down 25 per cent in the year to March 2025. In the US, its largest market, Breitling is facing stiff competition from brands such as TAG Heuer and Tudor. 

Last August Moody’s downgraded Breitling’s debts, noting a “sharp” decline in earnings in the year ending March 2025, “exacerbated by increased fixed costs” stemming from opening more Breitling shops.

CVC started the programme of store openings in 2017, but the recent expansion of Breitling’s boutique network to around 300 stores had been controversial, one analyst said. “That rollout is coming to an end,” a person familiar with the strategy said.

Breitling’s owners are now considering cost cuts, that person added.

Known for its chronographs and aviation heritage, Gantner regarded Breitling as a trophy asset for his Swiss firm, one former Partners employee told the FT last year, and a mock Breitling shop sits in Partners’ global headquarters near Zurich. “People’s impression was that it is his baby,” the employee said.

One person close to Partners Group said that Breitling’s momentum relative to direct competitors remained intact, and that they were “confident Breitling will be a strong initial public offering candidate in 2028, maybe 2027, maybe 2029”.

Another person close to the firm added that the company had made “significant investments into growth initiatives” such as the purchases of two watch brands and sponsorships with NFL and Aston Martin.

Moody’s said its rating downgrade stemmed from Breitling’s “high sales concentration in a single brand” compared with larger and more diversified watch groups.

The rating agency also cited the brand’s “highly leveraged financial structure” and history of borrowing to return cash to shareholders. The company borrowed over €1bn to pay dividends under CVC’s ownership, according to PitchBook. 

Moody’s added that Breitling retained “adequate liquidity” and “positive long-term growth prospects”, however.

US infrastructure investor hopes to use Southern Marinas as launch pad for further acquisitions in sector

Stonepeak is closing in on a deal to acquire Southern Marinas that would value the business at more than $700mn, as a superyacht boom drives a wave of takeovers in the sector.

The US infrastructure investor could reach an agreement in the coming weeks with the boatyard operator’s owner KSL Capital Partners, according to people familiar with the matter, although they cautioned that no final decisions had been taken.

Southern, which is expected to fetch between $700mn and $800mn, is not the only marina business on the block, as private investment firms seek to capitalise on rising demand for berths amid a proliferation of ultra-wealthy boat owners.

CVC is also exploring a sale of Greece-based D-Marin, the high-end yacht marinas business it acquired in 2020, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, private equity group Centerbridge Partners is looking to offload its minority stake in Suntex Marinas in a deal the FT previously reported could value the group above $4bn, although it could instead opt to sell the holding to a continuation fund to allow some investors to cash out.

Investment firms are attracted to the marina sector thanks to rising demand for yacht-related services and the opportunity to consolidate a fragmented market where many businesses operate independently and may be owned by families or management.

Following the Stonepeak acquisition, Southern Marinas may look to buy up more independent marina businesses, the people said.

Blackstone’s infrastructure arm last year struck a $5.6bn deal to buy Safe Harbor Marinas, the largest US marina group and superyacht servicing business, in a milestone deal that spurred further interest.

Marinas garner revenues by selling berths or renting them out for seasons or even years at a time. That can offer investors steady sources of cash flow.

“You’ve got an industry which is remarkably attractive,” said John Nery, managing partner at Squircle Capital, which owns superyacht repair group MB92.

“It is fuelled by fundamental growth driven by consumer interest,” he added. “People are buying bigger boats, people are buying more boats.”

The pick-up in dealmaking comes as private capital firms face pressure from their own backers to sell off some assets and return cash.

Infrastructure investors have been a relative bright spot for activity, raising large funds to buy up assets that are viewed as steady sources of profits amid market fluctuations.

Stonepeak, CVC and KSL declined to comment.

Greece eyes central role in Europe’s post-Russia gas market

US LNG arriving at entry points in Greece can be exported by pipeline to the Balkans and beyond

Greece is positioning itself as Europe’s southern gateway for liquefied natural gas imports, mostly from the US, as the EU prepares for a complete ban on Russian gas supplies by 2027.

Athens is betting that Greece’s geography, alongside expanded LNG capacity, infrastructure upgrades and close ties with Washington, can secure it a central role in Europe’s gas market after the Russian ban comes into force.

Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow supplied roughly 40 per cent of the EU’s gas. By 2024, that share had fallen to about 11 per cent. Much of the gap has been filled by US LNG, which now accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the EU’s LNG imports.

“We are no longer going to fund the attacker,” said Stavros Papastavrou, Greece’s energy minister, in an interview with the FT. More work needed to be done to phase out Russian fossil fuels, he said. “This decoupling will not happen by itself.”

Since taking office in 2025, Papastavrou has pushed for closer ties with the US, presenting energy as an anchor of transatlantic relations at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Brussels.

What began as emergency LNG deliveries from the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have evolved into a longer-term realignment of EU energy supplies, he said. “US energy has become a structural pillar of Europe’s security architecture.”

The EU has also dramatically cut its imports of oil from Russia. Greek-owned tankers have continued to transport Russia’s oil exports elsewhere, particularly in periods when the quoted spot oil price in Russian ports has been low enough to allow them to do so while complying with the price cap imposed by Kyiv’s allies.

Greece’s ambition to become a key entry point for US gas supplies is visible at Revithoussa, the island west of Athens that hosts Greece’s main LNG terminal. US cargo was unloading at the recently expanded terminal earlier this month.

From there, re-gasified LNG moves into the Balkans and beyond via the ‘‘vertical corridor’’, a south-to-north system set up by Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine after 2022, when Russia halted pipeline gas exports to Bulgaria after Sofia refused to pay in roubles.

The vertical corridor countries largely adapted existing infrastructure to make the south-to-north system, but Bulgaria is making a €400mn investment to remove bottlenecks by 2027. Before 2022, Europe’s gas had for decades flowed from north to south.

Greece began diversifying supplies before the invasion of Ukraine, said Maria Rita Galli, who was until recently chief executive of Greece’s gas grid operator, DESFA. She cited the €4.5bn TAP gas pipeline completed in 2020, linking the Greek-Turkish border to Italy via Albania and the Adriatic Sea.

“When the crisis hit, we were in a stronger position,” she said.

Athens also completed the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria pipeline and boosted capacity with two new compressor stations in the north of the country.

For the vertical corridor, commercial signals are mixed, with near-term demand uncertain. Buyers are waiting for bottlenecks in the pipeline system to be unblocked and for EU regulations to allow for more long-term bookings.

There is higher interest for further in the future when Russian gas is expected to have been banned. LNG buyers are already booking up slots for ships to load at the terminal in Revithoussa through to 2040.

“This year was the first time the market has been very active on a long-term basis,” Galli said. “They consider Greece a strategic entry point.”

High prices are also a problem. “When you add up the tariffs from Greece through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary — or on to Ukraine — the total becomes significant. At present, it is too high for this to be a commercially viable long-term route,” Julian Bowden, senior visiting research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said at an FT webinar this month.

Papastavrou and other energy ministers from Vertical Corridor countries will meet their US counterpart Chris Wright in Washington on Tuesday, underscoring the Trump administration’s growing interest in the region.

US LNG, however, is structurally more expensive than prewar Russian pipeline gas and subject to global price swings.

Critics argue that Europe risks exchanging one geopolitical dependency for another. More than 80 per cent of Greece’s LNG imports in 2025 came from the US.

Bowden points out, though, that the structure of US gas exports — dispersed across multiple companies — makes political intervention far more difficult. “This is not the Kremlin pulling levers. Washington does not have the same capacity to weaponise gas supply,” he said.

Palantir sues magazine that revealed Switzerland rejected its approaches

Peter Thiel-chaired data intelligence group alleges that Republik did not give it sufficient right to reply

Palantir is suing a small Swiss magazine that detailed the country’s government repeatedly rejecting its services, as the data intelligence group grapples with European fears over US companies managing sensitive state systems.

Online magazine Republik published two articles in December revealing the Peter Thiel-chaired group’s unsuccessful efforts over several years to win Swiss federal government contracts. Authorities repeatedly raised concerns about data sovereignty legal compliance, it reported, citing documents obtained under freedom of information requests.

Some European leaders are pushing to reduce their reliance on US technology due to the Trump administration’s often antagonistic rhetoric towards the continent. This month, Palantir chief executive Alex Karp himself told investors there was “real hesitance” in parts of Europe towards adopting its tools.

The files unearthed by Republik include an internal Swiss Armed Forces review from December 2024. The report, reviewed by the FT, decided against using Palantir technology for Swiss military data since there was a risk that US authorities could gain access to the sensitive files.

Palantir’s lawsuit, filed in January, is not seeking damages or making libel claims against Republik, but instead alleges that the company was not given sufficient right to reply under Swiss media law. The company objects to Republik’s presentation of the public documents and believes its right to reply has been wrongfully denied.

“All we have asked Republik to do is to print our concise, fact-on-fact counter statement to their misleading reporting, that’s it. It’s our right under Swiss law,” Palantir said in a statement.

Republik’s managing director Katharina Hemmer said Palantir had wanted the magazine to publish a very lengthy counterstatement to each article. Republik believed the proposed statements did not fairly address or rebut the reporting, she said, adding that the magazine stands by its reporting.

While right of reply actions are a common tool in Switzerland, it is unusual for a large international company to file one against a local media organisation.

A judge will probably make a decision in March.

The report has drawn attention beyond Switzerland. Last week, a UK lawmaker cited it during a debate on defence contracts with Palantir. Backbench Labour MP Clive Lewis told parliament that “even the Swiss army has rejected Palantir as a platform on national security grounds”, demanding that Britain “pivot away” from the firm.

Palantir derives a significant share of its revenue from US government contracts, including work with defence and immigration authorities, which has at times drawn political controversy. But international customers accounted for a declining share of overall sales last year, and Karp noted this month that some non-US clients have favoured domestic providers.

The Republik articles framed the company’s actions as a multiyear, cross-ministry campaign to embed itself in core Swiss state infrastructure. But Swiss authorities repeatedly rebuffed Palantir’s proposals, the reports show.

The company engaged the Swiss Armed Forces and defence ministry, contacted the Federal Chancellery during the Covid crisis, approached the Federal Office of Public Health, held discussions with the money-laundering reporting office, and pitched the Federal Statistical Office.

In a blog post, Palantir said the article “paints a false and misleading picture”. It “hinders important discussions about the modernization of European software and how technology should be procured”, Palantir said.

A Swiss government official said they understood that the armed forces review was a particularly “sensitive issue” for Palantir.

Switzerland’s Department of Defence did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s now possible to see a future where smart eyewear could be ubiquitous

It may have taken more than a decade, but smart glasses are finally taking off. Sales of Meta Platforms’ Ray-Ban AI specs more than tripled last year to more than 7mn units. Yet shares in EssilorLuxottica, the €110bn Franco-Italian eyewear maker that makes the devices, have been falling. Squint a little, and that isn’t so strange after all.

It might seem like partnering with the Facebook owner on its next big thing is a win. After the false start of earlier models such as Google Glass, it’s now possible to see a future where smart eyewear — which allows consumers to receive notifications, access navigation and interact with AI from within their field of vision — could become ubiquitous. Smart glasses helped drive an 11 per cent increase in EssilorLuxottica’s sales in 2025.

And to the extent that the devices offer a valuable service to consumers sick of walking into lampposts as they peer into their smartphones, they will expand the market for all-day specs beyond those with impaired vision. EssilorLuxottica already has a big slice of the market, with brands including Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol, alongside luxury licenses such as Chanel, Prada and Versace.

But there’s another way of seeing it. While the value of a pair of Ray-Bans comes from the brand itself and the quality of the frames, a big chunk of the value of a pair of smart Ray-Bans comes from something else: the software and apps being piped into the wearer’s pupils. As users prize the function more and more, they may care less about the form.

That’s already starting to happen with electric vehicles, where the real differentiator isn’t the engine but the software and screens that are loaded on to the chassis. It’s why newer upstarts such as Tesla and BYD have put a dent in legacy carmakers’ business. Smart watches, too, have reduced sales of ordinary mid-market timepieces: the number of Swiss watches sold globally has halved since 2000, according to the Swiss Watch Industry.

EssilorLuxottica already makes less profit on smart glasses than on its more traditional eyewear. Its operating margin fell 70 basis points to 16 per cent in 2025. And the market is getting crowded. Huawei and Alibaba already offer their own smart glasses. Apple may follow, and Google could try again. If glasses were merely stylish chunks of plastic and glass with brand cachet, they would have little chance. That’s no longer the case.

The big picture goes way beyond smart glasses. Investors have focused lately on the impact of AI on directly comparable services such as software. But as technology takes up more of the heavy lifting, physical and industrial goods, too, will face disruption. Glasses, cars, fridges, combine harvesters — even sectors that now seem far from AI’s reach will have to be viewed through a different lens.

With the DIP financing locked in, the retailer expects to pay $330 million to vendors over the next two weeks.

Saks Global took a big step forward in its bankruptcy case on Friday when a federal judge gave the final sign-off on the debtor-in-possession financing meant to see it through the Chapter 11 process and back to solvency.

The “first-day hearing” last month was a dramatic affair, with Amazon trying to hold up the financing over a commercial agreement that it said was backed by the retailer’s famed Fifth Avenue flagship. Amazon invested $475 million into Saks when it bought Neiman Marcus Group in late 2024, but has since soured on the relationship and has threatened to sue the retailer if warranted.

But the final sign-off was relatively drama-free and had lawyers for both the retailer and key vendors praising the process and the compromises made along the way on the $1.75 billion DIP package, provided by the company’s bondholders.

With the signature of Houston-based Judge Alfredo Pérez, the DIP package unleashed $330 million in funds that are expected to go to certain vendors with past-due bills within two weeks. Like the company’s initial appearance in court, Friday’s “second-day hearing” was held virtually.

Debra Sinclair, the Saks Global attorney from Willkie Farr & Gallagher, stressed the importance of the retailer’s relationship with its brand partners — a group that was hit hard as the company fell behind on payments and ultimately filed for Chapter 11 protection.

“As of today, we have more than 100 brands that have either executed or are coming close to executing trade agreements with the company,” Sinclair said. “Our brand partners … are at the heart of our business and we’re generating great momentum with them.”

She said Saks Global has also refocused “on their core commitment to luxury retail” over the past month and is ahead of schedule in closing 57 Saks Off 5th stores. The company is also shuttering nine full-line stores and has saved money by rejecting contracts while in bankruptcy.

“The company has been outperforming the DIP budget in terms of top-line revenue and merchandise receipts and we’ve also been working actively with our lenders,” Sinclair said. “We’re on track to meet our DIP milestones with respect to the business plan and a Chapter 11 plan. So it’s been a very productive first month of the case and we plan to keep making significant progress with our creditors and other stakeholders.

“We have come a very long way since the first-day hearing,” she said. “Amazon is no longer pursuing an objection to the DIP and we’ve resolved almost all of the formal objections and informal comments that we’ve received to date.”

The final DIP order represents weeks of back-and-forth between Saks Global and the creditors committee, made up of parties left hanging by the bankruptcy, including Amazon, Chanel Inc. (owed $136 million), Kering ($60 million), LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton ($26 million) and more.

The committee represents all the unsecured creditors, a group that includes many of fashion’s top brands. They come behind secured lenders, including banks and bondholders, in the bankruptcy process.

While vendors are among the last in line in bankruptcy, the DIP negotiations carved out some additional protections.

Sinclair summarized it this way: “With respect to any goods that are sold in the post petition, the new language gives our brand partners a lien on those proceeds of those goods that is senior to the DIP obligations, other than the [asset-backed loan] obligations and it’s senior to the pre-petition obligation, again, other than the ABL obligations.”

Additionally, she said that any concession merchandise that hasn’t been sold remains the property of the vendor.

Saks is working to establish its critical vendor list, which will include brands that get special treatment in court.

“The company has agreements with several vendors including some of its largest vendors and is continuing to negotiate agreements with vendors generally regarding payment of pre-petition and go-forward concession consignment and wholesale goods,” Sinclair said.

Benjamin Butterfield, the Morrison & Foerster attorney representing unsecured creditors at the hearing, described the DIP agreement as “hard-fought.”

“This facility provides over a billion dollars in new liquidity to the company,” Butterfield said. “Nearly $600 million of that is slated to go out to clean up pre-petition claims on the vendors [including the $330 million set to go out over the next two weeks].”

Those payments on debts accrued before Saks Global went bankrupt on Jan. 14 will go to critical vendors as well as concessions and consignment vendors.

“We want the company to be on solid footing going forward and this facility does that. It’s also going a long way … to restoring relationships with vendors,” he said.

“From the committee’s perspective, we think vendors should feel very comfortable doing business with this company going forward,” Butterfield said.

That should be music to the ears of Saks Global’s chief executive officer Geoffroy van Raemdonck, who’s racing to get the company back into shape so it can exit bankruptcy and forge a new identity in luxury retailing.

But there’s still a long way from here to there, with many vendors still grumbling over past-due bills that will now be paid down only pennies on the dollar. And more store closures are expected to be in the offing.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the president’s tariffs has jolted Washington and the business world. Here’s what to watch next.

Good morning. Andrew here. We’ve spent the past 24 hours speaking with policymakers, business leaders, economists and legal experts to parse the implications of the Supreme Court’s landmark 6-3 ruling that overturned most of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

Trump’s tariff-based war has been the most significant shift in American trade policy in decades. It reshaped relationships with longtime allies and forced an expansive redrawing of global supply chains. For over a year, the president used these duties as the ultimate form of leverage: a carrot-and-stick approach where he extracted concessions by raising or lowering trade barriers at will.

That cudgel is no longer his — at least not to wield so freely. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the words “regulate importation” in the law underpinning those levies, known as IEEPA, “cannot bear the weight” of giving a president the power to tax independent of Congress. Despite claiming the decision would have little impact, Trump was visibly frustrated at a White House news conference yesterday, explicitly chastising the conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — both of whom he appointed — who joined the majority ruling.

“I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. And while Supreme Court justices traditionally attend the State of the Union, scheduled for Tuesday, Trump said of the majority: “They’re barely invited. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if they come.”

The administration says it won’t retreat. Shortly after the decision, Trump immediately announced that he would impose 10 percent global tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Then on Saturday, Mr. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that he would raise the tariffs to 15 percent.

These levies won’t last long: Unlike IEEPA, Section 122 has a strict 150-day limit. After that, Trump must get permission from a divided Congress to extend them. And while IEEPA raised over $133 billion in 2025 alone, Section 122 is expected to generate roughly $33 billion over its five-month window, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax policy advisory group — a drop in the $1.8 trillion federal budget deficit.

In a dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that the ruling could put the U.S. Treasury in a serious bind. “The U.S. may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers,” he wrote.

When asked on Fox News yesterday whether the government would actually pay out those refunds, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “If there is a payout, it’s just going to be the ultimate corporate welfare.” At the Economic Club of Dallas yesterday, he said he had a “feeling the American people won’t see it.”

• Who is at the front of the line for refunds? Major multinationals — including Costco, Toyota, Goodyear and Alcoa — have already sued the government. Time is ticking: Under normal circumstances, companies face a complex formula and a tight deadline to seek reimbursement. If they miss that window, the right to a refund expires.
• How might the government challenge refunds? The Treasury Department is expected to argue in court that companies lack standing to claim a refund if they passed 100 percent of the tariff cost to consumers. If the company didn’t technically lose money, does the government get to keep the now-invalidated tax? This could take years to litigate. The issue came up in oral arguments, and as Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent, “the refund process is likely to be a ‘mess.’”
• What is Trump’s next backup plan? The Section 122 tariffs would expire in July. If Congress refused to extend them — especially with the midterm elections coming up — would the administration pivot to Section 301 (unfair trade practices) or Section 232 (national security)? The administration “will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs,” Bessent said yesterday. He added that in addition to the 10 percent tariffs under 122 (which Mr. Trump later announced he would raise to 15 percent), the administration could turn to “potentially enhanced Section 232 and Section 301” levies that would “result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue” this year.
• Are Trump’s trade deals still valid? Tariffs were the leverage he used to reach pacts with China, Britain, the E.U. and Japan. If the IEEPA levies are now invalidated, do those countries have a legal right to walk away from the concessions they made?
• Will companies risk Trump’s wrath? Yesterday’s ruling opened the door to a potential tariff refund windfall of more than $175 billion, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. But the claims process is hardly straightforward and could involve significant audits. Would companies want to risk that, or worse: a retaliatory investigation into them or their industry under Section 301?

Rival telecoms groups are considering new bid for Patrick Drahi’s French business

Altice France’s total indebtedness is more than €1bn higher than stated in last year’s sweeping restructuring due to additional liabilities, as rival telecoms groups consider a new joint bid.

Total debts and liabilities at the company, controlled by billionaire Patrick Drahi, amount to about €17bn, according to four people with knowledge of the details.

Altice France had announced that its restructuring, completed in October, would cut consolidated net debt to about €15.5bn from €24bn. At quarterly earnings to the end of September 2025, the company reported total net debt of €16bn.

The people said the differences were mainly because of Altice’s use of financial products related to supplier payments and asset securitisation. Quarterly accounts show liabilities including reverse factoring — a type of supply chain financing — and securitisation totalling €772mn as of the end of September 2025. Accounting standards do not always require companies to classify these line items as debt. 

Altice France began due diligence at the start of the year with a consortium of three rival French telecoms operators — Bouygues, Iliad and Orange — who are negotiating a joint bid for the bulk of the business, including mobile operator SFR.

An earlier offer by the same consortium with an enterprise value of €17bn was rejected by Drahi in October as too low. 

A new bid for Altice France has yet to materialise because of the complexity of splitting the business between three rival operators and agreeing a price, the people said. The company’s debt and liabilities add to those complications, they added.

Any potential deal would face tough scrutiny by competition regulators in Brussels and Paris, who have a history of opposing consolidation in the sector without significant remedies. 

Drahi built his telecoms empire using vast amounts of debt at a time when interest rates were at record lows. However, as rates have risen, that debt has become increasingly unsustainable. 

Altice France has struggled as sales and earnings have fallen. However, Drahi was allowed to retain control in the restructuring by creditors in order to negotiate a sale. Separate restructuring negotiations with creditors are under way at Altice USA, the only part of Drahi’s sprawling business that is listed, and are expected to begin at Altice International. 

The Altice France negotiations are also seeking to agree terms for liability clauses demanded by Drahi to compensate him if the deal is blocked on competition grounds, the people said.

The consortium meanwhile is seeking legal protection against potential tax and legal liabilities, including possible liabilities linked to ongoing criminal investigations of Drahi’s former right-hand man Armando Pereira, two of the people said.

There is time pressure to secure an agreement as the business struggles and Altice France faces substantial debt repayments starting in 2028.

Four people with knowledge of the situation said that if the company failed to secure a deal either with the consortium or to sell smaller parts of the business such as its broadband network XpFibre, Altice France would be back in restructuring within 18 months. 

Another person familiar with the details disputed this, saying that if a wider deal is not possible, Altice can sell off assets piecemeal. The person added that the business was sustainable after the restructuring.

Two people involved in the talks with French telecoms operators said that if there was no deal by spring, the negotiations would be likely to falter. “If in April we can’t find a deal, no deal is possible,” one of the people said.

But one of the other people said the complexity of the deal meant no timeline could be set for a potential agreement.

Altice France, Iliad, Bouygues and Orange declined to comment.