UPS
DELIVERING CONTRACTS
After missing Wall Street revenue expectations at the end of 2023, UPS rebounded in a big way this April by securing the U.S. Postal Service’s highly coveted and lucrative air-delivery contract, which runs through 2030. The company beat out FedEx, which held the contract for the past 20 years and received about $2 billion annually from USPS. Investors are optimistic: UPS’s most recent quarterly profits surpassed expectations despite weaker package-delivery demand as the company weathers the transition out of the pandemic retail economy. It secured another significant deal last year, negotiating the largest private-sector union contract in the U.S. with the Teamsters without a strike. The five-year agreement boosts pay and enhances working conditions and safety, including by putting air-conditioning in more trucks. But in January UPS announced 12,000 layoffs, which CEO Carol Tomé said would generate $1 billion in savings as the logistics behemoth shifts its focus to higher-margin shipments. —Nik Popli
TIKTOK
A PIVOTAL MEDIA MOMENT
Et tu, Biden? TikTok, it turns out, has been betrayed by one of its own. It was just 10 weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden joined TikTok’s over 150 million American users that he signed a law on April 24 that would ban the popular streaming app unless Beijing-based parent ByteDance divests. TikTok strenuously denies sending American user data to the Chinese government, though nobody disputes its power: beyond redefining celebrity for Gen Z, 32% of Americans ages 18 to 29 regularly get news from TikTok. And therein lies the rub; despite protestations of independence, topics sensitive for China—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet—figure significantly less on TikTok than on rival social networks. How that influence might be wielded before November’s presidential election is a huge question—one the Biden campaign has half-answered by promising to keep posting until any ban, in a video posted on the platform in April. “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
