AI Adoption Accelerates as Tariffs and Inflation Risk Loom Under New Legislation
The Age of AI: Full Speed Ahead
The pace of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is no longer evolutionary—it’s revolutionary. As we preluded in our economic commentary in Q1 of 2024, AI tools have now moved from niche use cases into mainstream business operations across finance, logistics, healthcare, and customer service. Companies leveraging AI are seeing gains in productivity, cost efficiency, and innovation velocity. According to recent industry reports, nearly 75% of mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations have deployed at least one AI solution in their workflows. In our own business at Future Bright, we’ve seen enhanced efficiencies in tasks like documentation, retirement projections, investment research and data dissemination.
The velocity of changes due to A.I. also brings challenges. Workforce displacement concerns, regulatory uncertainty, and data privacy risks are emerging as critical points for leaders to address in tandem with scaling these tools.
The Big Beautiful Bill: Promise Meets Pressure
The July 4th passage of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”—a sweeping economic and infrastructure reform package—has set the stage for significant shifts in domestic commerce. The bill promises investments in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and AI development incentives. But it’s not without caveats.
To stimulate U.S.-based production, the bill reintroduces aggressive tariffs on imported technology components and industrial inputs. While this aims to reduce dependency on foreign supply chains, businesses face a new wave of cost pressures that could ripple through pricing models. The result? We’ll likely experience rising input costs, margin compression, and a renewed risk of inflation as companies pass expenses down the line. We are paying close attention to these factors with respect to portfolio allocation. While we caught a nice market wave off the April lows, this next U.S. corporate earnings season, which kicks off in mid-July, could be more challenging. The stock market has been pressing new all-time highs in the last few weeks, so a lot must go right for this market to continue its ascent.
The good news is that we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg of how transformative A.I. could be. Undoubtedly, there are companies that stand to reap significant rewards from this next wave of innovation. Conversely, there are companies that might suffer because of a shift to A.I. It will continue to require a tactical investment approach.
