• An RTO mandate influenced 36% of senior-level job seekers in their decision to seek a new role.
• A survey found some workers pulled out of a hiring process for jobs that required office time.
• While some CEOs adjust, it's unclear how long workers might be able to resist heading to the office.

Some work-from-home holdouts aren't giving up.

In a poll, 36% of people seeking senior-level jobs said a return-to-office mandate factored into their decision to look for a new role — even if they had good reason to go back to the office.

One in three also said they'd walked away from a hiring process in the past year because the would-be employer required people to be in the office, according to a recently released survey by research firm Gartner.

The survey, conducted in January among nearly 3,000 job seekers, echoed Gartner research from late 2023 that found one in three execs faced with an RTO mandate planned to ditch their employer because of it. That earlier survey also found that 19% of non-exec workers would likewise quit if forced to pick up their commute again.

The results from both snapshots underscore that while many workers — and even CEOs — appear to have tapped out on the RTO fights, there is still a segment of people unwilling to give up video meetings and at-home lunches.

But now, as the market for white-collar jobs appears to be slowing, it remains unclear how long workers can ghost their cubicles.

'They still would leave'

Caroline Ogawa, a director in the HR practice at Gartner, told Business Insider that the findings showed how even when execs understood why the big boss would want them back in the office, that rationale wasn't necessarily enough.

"They overwhelmingly felt like the organization provided a convincing reason" to return to the office, she said. "But they still would leave if they were asked" to come back.

Ogawa said the findings were also notable because high-up executives are often the people tasked with implementing RTO mandates. However, when it comes to what they want, some still desire autonomy about where they work.

"Often, they're the ones kind of holding the bag for those decisions," she said. But when it comes to their own actions in the job market, "they're behaving like you would expect all candidates to behave."

For many workers, that behavior is wanting to retain the choice they had just a couple of years ago during the Great Resignation and believing they still have the upper hand over employers.

Ogawa previously told BI that while it appears demand for white-collar workers is slipping, many desk workers want to retain agency and call the shots about where and when they do their jobs.

Hybrid is here to stay

Some CEOs appear to be hearing workers. In a recent survey by KMPG US, just 34% of US CEOs of large companies said they expect their people will be back in the office five days a week in the next three years. That's a big drop from a prior survey in 2023, when 62% of CEOs held that expectation.

"Hybrid is likely here to stay," Paul Knopp, chair and CEO at KPMG US, told BI in April.

Not all workers who want to log on from home are doing so. Erik Bernard, a 26-year-old who works in IT in Australia, chose a higher-paying government job over a less lucrative role where he could work from home most days. Yet, he recently told BI that he's not sure he made the right decision.

On the day he gets to work from home — and avoid the hourlong drive to the office — he says he can get more sleep and time at the gym.

"It's about quality of life," he said.

What's at stake with RTO

Gartner's Ogawa said now that we've had a few years of hybrid setups and other work arrangements, it's becoming clearer for companies and workers what the stakes are around RTO pushes.

She said companies will have to ask whether perceived benefits from priorities such as collaboration or innovation will outweigh the risks of potentially losing some workers who are firm about not making the trek to their desks.

For some employers, saying goodbye to the at-home crowd might be acceptable, Ogawa said.

"They might not be looking to retain folks who wouldn't want to come back to the office," she said.

• Gladys Nkengasong, 27, moved to the UK in 2021 for school and stayed on to work as a consultant. 
• Nkengasong said she doesn't enjoy British drinking culture and finds people to be less friendly.
• But she loves how London is livable, walkable, and convenient. Plus, it feels safer than the US. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation and emails with Gladys Nkengasong, a 27-year-old consultant who moved to the UK from Atlanta in 2021. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in a few different places — mainly the Ivory Coast and Atlanta. My parents are diplomats, so we moved around a lot.

I was doing my bachelor's in Atlanta, and then I moved to England to do my master's. I started out in Southampton. Then, in 2022, I moved to London.

I always tell people to move to a different country in their 20s — but don't move to London.

Moving to London can be tough if you're used to American salaries and social life

I've looked into moving to New York. When I saw the rents, I was like, "Oh, this is not feasible."

I live with a roommate, pretty close to central London. I pay about £1,500 (around $1,880) in rent. We have a few amenities, like a gym and a yoga room.

It is affordable, but I think what makes it unaffordable is the salaries. For my first role after my master's, I was making £25,000 (around $26,900). My friend who moved to New York when I moved to London started at $80,000. We had the same degree.

In Atlanta, I was making more working part-time than I was full time in London.

People in London tend to stick with friends they formed in school. My therapist was like, "In London, you will be the person who has to initiate a lot." That's what I found myself doing, but it gets so tiring.

It can get really lonely. You can go out and spend the whole day and not speak to anyone. Whereas, in Atlanta, at the gas station, someone's talking to you. You're at Target, someone's talking to you.

Something that affected my entire London experience so far is that I run into a lot of people who have a lot of negative sentiments about Americans.

If I meet someone and they're like, "Oh, where are you from?" I'm like, "Canada."

Some people love Americans, and then some really don't. But I didn't realize how many people didn't until I moved.

I felt alienated by British drinking culture

In my first job in London, people in the office would always have pub drinks after work. I used to decline a lot.

But then my manager called me into a meeting and was like, 'We just don't feel you're very enthusiastic. It just doesn't feel like you like being around us." I had a strong feeling it was because of this pub drink thing.

I don't drink casually. If I drink, we're celebrating something.

Socially, a lot of people's first instinct is to say, "Hey, let's grab a drink. Let's go out to this bar, let's go to this event," and everyone is drinking. It's just not my cup of tea. I started noticing that it really alienates you in London.

I started going to the pub, and a month later, my manager was like, "We feel like you're part of the family now."

At work at my agency in Atlanta, things weren't really centered around drinking. If we wanted to do something after work, it would be, like, biking. Or we had a communal area in our office and everyone would go have finger foods, chat, or play a game.

There is so much about London I love — even the gray weather

In the US, when I go into a room or a venue, I'm always hyperaware of all the exits and where to go if something goes wrong.

I have been at a house party that got shot up, and there was only one exit, which was the front door. Everyone was going the same way; I got trampled and sprained my ankle. After that, I never went to concerts. I thought it was just because I wasn't really a fan of crowds.

When I got to London, I became a concert person because I didn't have that paranoia — that fear — of gun violence.

I also really like the weather — I love when it gets cold and I need a jacket.

One of my favorite things about London is anytime people from home come over, I'm like, "Let's take a trip." I love that it's close to Europe and I can get a £30 (around $37) flight to the south of France.

A huge plus for me is how livable London is. It's extremely walkable. And despite its size, it's surprisingly convenient. You're always within reach of a convenience store, ethnic grocery shop, or specialty stores like camera shops.

Every neighborhood has its own character, so you're bound to find one that speaks to you.

I want to try other cities, but I think I'm just going to end back up in London. I really love London.

• Paradise Valley, Arizona, is attracting wealthy residents from across the US, especially California.
• The average resident of Paradise Valley is older and wealthier than the rest of the state.
• Nearly everyone in Paradise Valley owns their home, with a median sale price of $3.3 million.

Paradise Valley, Arizona, is among the places attracting millionaires from around the country, including residents of California looking to escape high taxes.

Dubbed the "Beverly Hills of Arizona," Paradise Valley is located in the desert hills northwest of Phoenix and just east of Scottsdale, another city attracting millionaires.

Though it's a relatively small community, Paradise Valley is known for its several high-end resorts, spacious and secluded lots, and natural beauty. Joan Levinson, a luxury real-estate agent in Arizona, previously told Business Insider that Paradise Valley offers residents privacy while still being a quick drive to big-city amenities.

Maricopa County, which includes Paradise Valley and Scottsdale, is Arizona's most populated county. Data shows that several wealthy counties in California, including Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Orange, are losing residents to Arizona, with many landing in Maricopa County.

Paradise Valley, in particular, has long attracted the rich and famous and for years topped a list of Arizona's wealthiest zip codes. Muhammad Ali, who died in 2016, and Stevie Nicks have lived there along with billionaires like Bennett Dorrance, the Campbell Soup heir, and the late Bruce Halle, the founder of Discount Tire.

The average resident of Paradise Valley is a 54-year-old, college-educated, married white man who makes more than $220,000 a year and owns a home that costs several million dollars, according to Census Bureau and real estate data.

Most Paradise Valley residents own their homes, which are typically worth millions

With an estimated population of 12,658 as of 2020, Paradise Valley's median household income of $221,333 far surpasses that of Arizona and the US generally, which are both around $74,500.

More than seven out of 10 Paradise Valley residents have a bachelor's degree, while 34% have a graduate or professional degree.

The main industries in Paradise Valley are the hospitality and medical trades, but many residents are CEOs, professional athletes, and business owners who work outside the community, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority.

More than 95% of Paradise Valley residents own their homes, compared to just 67% of all Arizona residents.

The median sale price for a home in Paradise Valley is $3.3 million, according to Redfin and Realtor.com. That's seven times greater than the statewide median sale price of $444,100. Over 82% of homes in Paradise Valley are worth a million dollars or more.

For the few Paradise Valley residents who don't own their home, the median gross rent was more than $3,500.

Residents of the Phoenix suburb also tend to be older than the state of Arizona and the larger US, which both have a median age of around 38.9.

Paradise Valley residents are also slightly more likely to be male than female, unlike Arizona at large or the US, which both have more women than men.

More than 82% of residents were white as of 2020, while nearly 8% were Asian.

• Google Ads was initially launched as Google AdWords, then renamed and revamped in recent years.
• Google has offered paid advertising on its search engine and other platforms since the year 2000.
• Google Ads uses a "pay per click" model where you pay a fee to Google when users click on your ads.

Google Ads is Google's advertising platform that businesses, brands, influencers, nonprofits, and anyone else willing to shell out some cash can use to place advertisements on various corners of the world wide web. 

Google Ads can pop up at the top of search results or in social media feeds, be displayed on websites embedded among webpage content, or run before or during YouTube videos.

The type of ad that internet users see, the frequency with which the ad is served, and the quality of the placement of a given Google Ad all depend on the advertiser's spend and the online behavior of the people who end up seeing it. This confluence helps make Google Ads a good investment for the advertiser and — often, anyway — a relevant experience for the people who see and may click on the ads. 

Launched as Google AdWords in 2000, the platform's name switched to Google Ads in 2018 and it's diversified in many ways in recent years.

Google Ads: The price and the potential

"Why is Google Ads so expensive?" is one of the most common questions associated with Google Ads. The simple answer is because it's effective and popular.

With so many different businesses, brands, and individuals vying for visibility on Google, the higher-ranking search terms get more and more expensive.

The average cost per click is around $3. In some cases, for search terms with very little competition, you may pay mere pennies for each ad click. Other ads may cost their creators $50 or more for every single click.

That's a lot of money for someone clicking on an image, video, or text ad that will lead them to your site, feed, or product — but it's no guarantee they'll take further action that will be profitable to you. 

But remember, you don't pay anything until that click happens. you'll never be hit with a surprise expense that's beyond your budget because you set a maximum spend for each ad. Plus, you know that every time you do pay for your Google ad, it's because someone took the exact action you hoped for.

So, to address another common question, "Is Google Ads free?" the answer is a resounding no. Unlike Google Business Profile, the free service to let business owners control how their business appears in Google search results, Google Ads will cost you.

Is Google Ads worth it, given the potentially high cost per click? If used well, absolutely yes.

Different types of Google Ads serve different purposes

There are five primary types of Google Ads: Search ads, which appear above and among the organic search results; video ads, which run before or during YouTube videos; Google Display Ads, which are embedded among the content of websites; Google Shopping Ads, which pop up with images, brief text, and pricing info when someone searches for a specific product or product category; and Google app ads, which are app-related and show up in the Google Play store, among search results, and on YouTube and other sites.

Google also offers more specialized ad campaigns, such as Performance Max, which comes with AI optimization to help your ads perform as well as possible. In February 2024, the company announced that the Google Gemini AI model will be incorporated into Performance Max to help advertisers build more effective campaigns.

The incorporation of AI into Google Ads has sparked concerns within Google and the advertising industry that automation will replace workers. Late in 2023, numerous media outlets reported that Google Ads would undergo a restructuring, to include layoffs.

Google's layoffs also affected Waze, the company's traffic and navigation app, in 2023 when its advertising system merged with Google Ads technology.

How to make money with Google ads

All Google ads offer advertisers the ability to tailor the ad to users. Said action can be a purchase, a subscription, a share, and more. 

The targeting comes in the form of selecting user traits like age, location, and interest.

Of course, the ad type you choose should be well-reasoned: if you're selling gardening tools, a search or shopping ad probably makes the most sense. But if you're trying to spread awareness of a new VR video game, then an ad on YouTube is a savvy idea.

The care with which you choose terms in a Google ad will help the advertisement perform well, although it's more expensive when you place high-ranking terms in your ad. That's because Google's algorithms deem advertisements with well-chosen and well-used keywords — words that read organically rather than stuffed in — as more relevant and will serve such ads more often and more prominently.

So, choose your words carefully, pick your ad type thoughtfully, set your budget realistically, and then prepare to edit and adapt your advertising strategy as the clicks roll in or don't. Google Ads is worth the money, but only if you also put in the effort.

• Mark Zuckerberg eliminates nonessential choices by doing things like wearing the same outfit daily.
• The Meta CEO's daily schedule includes jiujitsu and MMA training and one bad habit that many share.
• The first thing Zuckerberg does when he wakes up each morning at 8 is check his phone.

Between steering Meta through a "year of efficiency," trying to popularize Threads, and engaging in a "will they, won't they" with Elon Musk regarding an MMA cage-fight challenge, Mark Zuckerberg has had a lot on his plate over the last year.

While the Facebook founder dedicates many hours to work, he still spends time traveling, tucking his kids in at night, and even bulking up through his pandemic-era hobbies of jiujitsu and mixed martial arts.

Zuckerberg, who turned 40 years old on May 14th, also famously saves time and brainpower by nixing nonessential choices. Most notably, he wears the same outfit nearly every day.

Here's a look at the typical daily routine of Zuckerberg, based on what he's said in prior interviews:

After waking up about 8 a.m., the Meta CEO immediately checks Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp on his phone, before he even puts in his contacts.

The social-media session typically lasts only a few minutes but can take longer depending on current events, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live Q&A.

"The first thing I do is look at my phone. I look at Facebook to see what's going on in the world," he said. "It's a pretty sad situation, to be honest. I have contacts, and I can't see very well. And before I put my contacts in, I often look to see what is going on Facebook."

Zuckerberg acknowledged that checking his phone first thing in the morning was a bad habit.

"You get like a million messages of stuff that come in, and it's usually not good. People reserve the good stuff to tell me in person," he told Joe Rogan in 2022. "It's almost like you wake up and you're punched in the stomach." He added: "Now I need to go reset myself and be able to be productive and not be stressed out about this."

Once he's gotten his morning updates, it's time to work out. Zuckerberg used to go for a workout at least three times a week, often running. Now he stays away from running and instead does jiujitsu and MMA.

"I used to run a lot, but the problem with running is you can think a lot," he told Rogan in 2022.

Instead, he started asking himself: "What's a thing that's both super engaging physically but also intellectually, where you can't afford to focus on something else? MMA is the perfect thing because if you stop paying attention for one second, you're going to end up on the bottom."

In June 2023, he said on Lex Fridman's podcast that he did three or four jiu jitsu and MMA sessions weekly, in addition to strength and conditioning work and mobility training.

It's unclear what Zuckerberg eats for breakfast, but he recently said that as part of his training, he aimed for 4,000 calories a day.

In July 2023, Zuckerberg told McDonald's on Threads that he wanted "20 nuggets, a quarter pounder, large fries, Oreo McFlurry, apple pie, and maybe some cheeseburgers for later?"

Zuckerberg famously wears the same thing almost every day, with a "work uniform" consisting of jeans, sneakers, and a gray T-shirt.

Zuckerberg sticks with the same outfit to reduce the brainpower spent on making minor decisions.

When asked about his wardrobe in 2014, he told an audience: "I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community."

He has, however, shown off a new twist on his famous t-shirt attire after hours, recently rocking a chain necklace while watching an MMA fight.

Zuckerberg said in 2015 that he put in 50 to 60 hours a week at Facebook but thought about the social-media platform constantly.

"I spend most of my time thinking about how to connect the world and serve our community better, but a lot of that time isn't in our office or meeting with people or doing what you'd call real work," he told CNN in 2015.

"I take a lot of time just to read and think about things by myself," he added. "If you count the time I'm in the office, it's probably no more than 50 to 60 hours a week. But if you count all the time I'm focused on our mission, that's basically my whole life."

Zuckerberg has preferences for meetings at work.

"I actually like trying to have a rule," he told Forbes. "For every hour of meeting that I have, the team sends out the pre-reads in advance. I want to have at least an hour to read the materials and think about it. And then I want to have at least an hour to follow up with different people after the meeting."

As for his approach to work, colleagues have likened Zuckerberg's undivided attention to the Eye of Sauron.

Sauron, the chief antagonist in the "Lord of the Rings" series, is shown in some films as a flaming, disembodied eye, interpreted as a metaphor for evil, ever looming over Middle-earth.

"They're like, 'You have this unending amount of energy to go work on something. And if you point that at any given team, you will just burn them,'" Zuckerberg told Tim Ferriss in 2022.

"I just think the engagement that you get of having, like, an immediate feedback loop around thinking about something and then getting to go talk to the people who are working on this is so much better than going and scheduling a meeting that you'll have three weeks later," he said.

Zuckerberg has various interests outside work.

He's tried to learn Mandarin Chinese, he challenged himself in 2015 to read a new book every two weeks, and he's hit the water on an electric surfboard, meme-worthy amounts of sunscreen included.

Zuckerberg has also added cattle farming to his list of hobbies as of late.

In January, he said he'd started raising cattle on his Hawaii ranch.

"My goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world," he wrote on Instagram. "The cattle are wagyu and angus, and they'll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch."

Zuckerberg's daily schedule tends to vary more when he travels. He's been known to hit the road to meet with world leaders.

He's met with figures including Pope Francis in Rome in 2016, French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018, and former US president Donald Trump in 2019.

Zuckerberg also spends time with his family.

He married his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, in 2012. Zuckerberg and Chan share three daughters, Maxima, August, and Aurelia.

Zuckerberg has a nightly routine with his children.

"Sometimes they will read books together. Sometimes they'll code together," Chan said of Zuckerberg's bedtime routine with the kids. "Mark has been doing that with August since she turned 3."

Zuckerberg told Fridman in 2022 about a "goodnight things" routine with his daughters.

"I basically go through with Max and Augie: 'What are the things that are most important in life?'" he said.

He points out their health, friends and family, and having something they're looking forward to.

Chan told Forbes that her husband also sang a Jewish prayer, Mi Shebeirach, to his kids and always tucked them in, unless he had a board meeting or was traveling. She added that his work dinners took place after the girls went to sleep.

Zuckerberg sleeps more than most of his fellow tech CEOs.

"I don't stay up super late at night," he told Forbes, adding that he aimed for eight hours of sleep a night and used an Oura ring to track his rest.

Áine Cain and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this story.

• Gold prices are reaching record highs because of strong buying by central banks.
• Central banks in countries aligned with China are diversifying their assets from the US dollar into gold.
• Central banks are favoring gold as a politically neutral, safe asset, insulated from sanctions.

Gold prices are on a tear recently thanks to strong buying by central banks — a signal that the precious metal is increasingly seen as a geopolitical hedge.

Last week, a top International Monetary Fund official pointed to gold's role in a potential fragmentation of the global economic and financial order.

"After years of shocks — including the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine — countries are reevaluating their trading partners based on economic and national security concerns," said Gita Gopinath, an IMF deputy managing director

In particular, some countries are rethinking their heavy reliance on the US dollar in their international transactions and foreign reserve holdings, she said.

Demand for gold has risen because it's seen as a "politically neutral safe asset, which can be stored at home and be insulated from sanctions or seizure," said Gopinath.

Central banks accounted for one-quarter of gold demand in 2022 and 2023, as the institutions bought over 1,000 tons of gold each year, according to the World Gold Council in a recent report.

The world's central banks continued buying gold, snapping up 290 tons of gold in the first quarter of this year — the strongest start to any year on record, according to the council.

Gold as a hedge against US dollar-based sanctions risk

Concerns about the US dollar's outsized influence and power in the world economy have been brewing for years. The West's unprecedented slate of sanctions and weaponization of the dollar against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine have heightened the push for de-dollarization.

To be sure, the greenback is so entrenched in the global economy that most experts don't expect it to lose its dominance and status as the world's reserve currency in the foreseeable future.

But countries around the world — particularly those aligned with China — are increasingly hedging their political risks by loading up on alternative assets, and in particular, gold.

The share of gold in the foreign reserves of the "China bloc" has been rising since 2015, said IMF's Gopinath. Other than Russia, she did not name any other country in the "China bloc."

In contrast, the share of gold in the foreign reserves of countries in the "US bloc" has been broadly stable.

This suggests that gold purchases by some central banks may have been driven by concerns about sanctions risk, Gopinath said.

In China's case, the share of gold in its foreign exchange reserves increased from under 2% in 2015 to 4.3% in 2023. Meanwhile, its proportion of holdings of US Treasury and Agency bonds fell from 44% to about 30%, according to IMF's Gopinath.

Central banks will keep buying, despite high prices

While China's central bank gold buying has been hogging the headlines, other central banks are also loading up on gold. The World Gold Council wrote in its recent report that other big gold buyers included Turkey and India.

JPMorgan analysts wrote in a March report that they expect central banks to continue with their pace of buying this year while being "less sensitive to prices." This means gold prices are likely to stay high this year.

To be sure, the ongoing gold rush is not just based on geopolitics.

Gold's current price surge is also helped by a strong dollar, which is spurring some emerging countries to hedge their currency risks. In China, people are also snapping up gold to hedge against domestic economic uncertainties.

The spot gold price is currently around $2,340 an ounce, down from its record-high above $2,400 an ounce in April.

• China wants its chip hungry tech giants to buy local, per The Information. 
• Companies like Alibaba were told to pare down their spending on foreign-made chips like Nvidia's.
• The new directive would be a huge downer for Nvidia, which sees the country as a key market.

Chinese officials are asking domestic tech giants to buy locally-made AI chips instead of Nvidia's, The Information reported on Monday.

Major tech companies like Alibaba, Baidu, TikTok parent company ByteDance, and Tencent were told to pare back their spending on foreign-made chips like Nvidia's, the outlet reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Chinese tech giants, The Information's sources said, are now expected to purchase equal numbers of locally and foreign-made AI chips for their new data centers.

According to the outlet, the directive hasn't been strictly enforced, and it is unclear if any penalties will be imposed for non-compliant companies.

Representatives for China's National Development and Reforms Commissions, its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the four tech giants didn't respond to The Information's requests for comments. Nvidia declined to comment on The Information's reporting too.

The Chinese government's new directive is a huge downer for Nvidia, who has been working hard to come up with specialized offerings for the Chinese market.

Nvidia is developing three new GPUs for China — the H20, L20, and L2. All three chips are designed to meet the restrictions under prevailing US sanction rules, Reuters reported in January, citing two people familiar with the matter.

China is a critical market and key revenue generator for Nvidia. The country accounted for 19% of Nvidia's data center chip revenue in fiscal year 2023. In February, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress told investors that US export restrictions caused China's revenue share to plunge to a "mid-single-digit percentage."

"If China can't buy from the United States, they'll just build it themselves. So the US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the Financial Times in May 2023.

But Nvidia's hard work could very well unravel with these new developments.

"If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don't have a contingency for that," Huang said in the same interview with the FT. "There is no other China, there is only one China."

A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment when approached by BI.

Nvidia's travails highlights the immense challenges faced by companies that are caught between the geopolitical headwinds of US-China tensions.

Cupertino-based tech giant Apple, for instance, has been working to diversify its supply chains away from China.

Besides banking on India to make its iPhones, Apple has invested nearly $16 billion in investments in Vietnamese suppliers, Bloomberg reported in April, citing a statement it obtained.

"We are rapidly approaching what we call a 'two tech stack divide,' where in essence, each country, the US and China, are effectively walling off or ring-fencing their tech stacks from each other," TPW Advisory founder, Jay Pelosky told BI's Yuheng Zhan. 

Representatives for China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

• Big US airlines are suing over a rule that requires upfront fee disclosures.
• The Biden administration is fighting "junk fees" across industries, including baggage fees.
• The airlines argue that fee transparency will confuse consumers. 

Major US airlines sued the Department of Transportation on Friday over a rule that requires upfront fee disclosures for costs like baggage and itinerary changes.

The Biden administration has made fighting the hidden costs it calls "junk fees" a priority across industries, from banks to event companies.

Under the rule, which goes into effect on July 1, airlines have to display fees the first time a consumer sees the fare, not in a hyperlink or separate page. The rule also requires airlines to inform passengers that they do not need to purchase a specific seat to travel and to include all mandatory fees when advertising fares.

The DOT said in late April that these rules could save consumers over $500 million annually from airlines' "unnecessary or unexpected fees."

Fees have become a major revenue driver for airlines. The DOT said its data showed airline revenue from baggage fees alone jumped by more than 30% between 2018 and 2022. Last year, airlines raked in almost $5.5 billion in baggage fees, per the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and many airlines upped their baggage fees this year.

The airlines suing — which include United, Delta, American, Jet Blue, and Alaska Airlines, along with smaller peers and a lobbying group — argue that fee transparency will confuse consumers. Southwest Airlines, which allows two free checked bags and does not have change or cancel fees, did not join the group.

The rule "is a bad solution in search of a problem," said lobbying group Airlines for America in a Monday statement. Lobbyist groups across industries are fighting the Biden administration's war on junk fees through lawsuits.

The airline lobby successfully pressured Congress in 2018 to drop a plan to limit baggage and change fees, a law the Trump administration opposed.

In a DOT statement about the lawsuit, the agency said it plans to "vigorously defend" the new rule.

"Many air travelers will be disappointed to learn that the airline lobby is suing to stop these common-sense protections," the DOT's statement said.