Opening Day is music to the ears of baseball fans—and Major League Baseball’s owners are likely pretty giddy themselves.
The value of MLB’s 30 teams continues to rise, hitting an average of $2.6 billion in 2024, an 8% increase from last season. Leading the pack is the New York Yankees, who have led the ranking of baseball’s most valuable clubs every year since Forbes started the list in 1998 and are now worth an estimated $8.2 billion. Another plus for the owners: Regular-season attendance surpassed 71 million fans last year, its best figure since 2017.
Despite the good news, there is also cause for concern in the baseball business. MLB’s growth is starting to lag behind other sports, with NFL and NBA teams appreciating at a much higher rate over the past five years. With the Minnesota Twins for sale and the Tampa Bay Rays potentially headed for the auction block, time will tell how much investors actually value baseball.
FIRST UP
Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images
Wall Street firms are warning investors that the stock market’s recovery from a possible tariff-induced trade war could be fragile. In a Wednesday note, UBS strategist Maxwell Grinacoff expressed “concerns of renewed weakness” in the stock market unless “policy uncertainty abates,” while Barclays strategists slashed their end-of-year price target for the S&P 500 by more than 10%, predicting that “earnings [will] take a hit as tariffs contribute to material slowing in U.S. activity.”
MORE: Shares of American tech leaders Nvidia and Tesla each dropped nearly 6% Wednesday, as the chip designer and EV maker lost a combined $222 billion in market capitalization. The heavy losses contributed to a more than 1% decline in the benchmark S&P 500 and more than 2% drop for the tech-concentrated Nasdaq.
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BUSINESS + FINANCE
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office.
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump announced a new 25% tariff on all cars and trucks imported into the U.S. on Wednesday afternoon, calling the tariff the “start of liberation day.” The president said the tariff will go into effect on April 2, and that it will stay in place for the entirety of his term. Trump also teased tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals and lumber, though he did not provide specific details.
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group unveiled a $21 billion investment plan to boost manufacturing in the U.S. on Tuesday, one day before Trump’s auto tariff announcement. The investment is set to go through 2028 and includes a $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana, as well as a commitment of $9 billion to expand production capacity of its vehicles—under the Kia, Hyundai and Genesis brands—in the U.S.
MORE: In a post on Truth Social early Thursday, Trump warned that “large scale tariffs, far larger than currently planned,” will be placed on the EU and Canada if they work together to “do economic harm to the USA,” a threat that comes just days after the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, traveled to France and the U.K.
WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
Tesla has had a rough start to 2025. Sales in California, its main U.S. market, plummeted 31% in January from a year ago, and the numbers in Europe are even worse. But the most dire news for the EV maker is what’s happening in China, as the country’s domestic EV companies are starting to beat Tesla on, well, everything. BYD, the country’s biggest carmaker, sold far more EVs in China than Tesla last year, and it just unveiled a new five-minute battery charging system—four times faster than Tesla’s Superchargers.
TECH + INNOVATION
Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Anthropic, the company started in 2021 by OpenAI defectors with the goal of expanding AI while emphasizing guardrails, is bringing its powerful Claude models to more businesses. On Wednesday, the $62 billion company announced a 5-year, $100 million partnership with data storage and analytics company Databricks—a deal that will let Databricks customers such as Comcast and Conde Nast use Claude to create and deploy AI agents for their businesses.
While drone deliveries have yet to take off in the U.S., Irish drone startup Manna has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the effort, and founder Bobby Healy claims his is the only company that’s turning a profit on each delivery. “Irony of all ironies, Europe is the only place to run a drone delivery business today because it has scalable, concrete regulation,” Healy told Forbes.
MONEY + POLITICS
Breaking with the Trump Administration, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) called for an expedited inspector general investigation into the leak of highly sensitive military attack plans to a journalist, and contradicted the White House narrative that the group chat didn’t include classified information. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Wicker chairs, that the information was not classified.
The Supreme Court has upheld the Biden Administration’s ban on “ghost guns,” allowing federal regulations for firearms that can be purchased as a kit online and assembled at home, following nearly a decade of growing concerns about the largely untraceable weapons. The Court ruled 7-2 in favor of regulations for ghost guns, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting.
TRENDS + EXPLAINERS
Frank Bisignano, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Social Security Administration, faced questions about the agency’s future during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee this week. Bisignano was asked about a number of controversies facing the agency—including DOGE’s access to social security data and threats from the acting commissioner to shut SSA down. At the hearing, Bisignano said that personally identifiable information should be protected, though he would not commit to a request to “lock out” DOGE.
MORE: The SSA said in a Wednesday statement it was backing down from a plan that would have eliminated the ability for new applicants to prove their identity over the phone, announcing the adjustment after its initial proposal received backlash.
DAILY COVER STORY
Meet The Crypto Billionaire Who Helped The Trumps Make $400 Million
Justin Sun
Gareth Brown for Forbes
Chinese blockchain entrepreneur Justin Sun’s admiration of Donald Trump began in middle school, while he was living in Huizhou, a city in China’s Guangdong province just north of Hong Kong. Sun’s teacher encouraged his class to watch American television to learn vernacular English, so Sun tapped peer-to-peer file sharer BitTorrent, a service that years later he would own, and began downloading reruns of The Apprentice.
The precocious Sun says he was captivated by the American tycoon’s lessons in cutthroat competition, showmanship and, of course, ego—anathema in a society steeped in the principles of Confucianism and Chinese socialism.
So it felt like fate that Sun heard late last year that the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, was faltering despite the fact that the patriarch had just been elected president of the United States.
It was easy to see why. World Liberty was going to be another decentralized finance platform, of which there are hundreds already, but it offered no equity, lacked credible management and its tokens would be illiquid. The fact that the Trumps could have easily self-financed the $30 million needed to launch, but chose against it, underscored why no one else wanted to either.
The 34-year-old couldn’t miss the potential dividend sitting in front of him. Since March 2023, Sun has been facing a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleging fraudulent market manipulation and selling unregistered securities. Now he had come across a way to single-handedly enrich the person about to lead the executive branch of the U.S. government, the SEC included.
In late November, Sun plunked down the $30 million ostensibly needed to cover operating expenses. That $30 million ignited a buying frenzy that primarily benefits the Trump family. As if Sun’s actions weren’t helpful enough, a few weeks later he invested another $45 million into World Liberty Financial, 75% of which went directly into Trump’s pocket.
WHY IT MATTERS Justin Sun loves a publicity stunt. But in bailing out Donald Trump’s crypto venture—helping net the president and his family $400 million—Sun has boosted his efforts to create a global payment system using his Tron platform, with 300 million users and counting.
MORE The Future Of Crypto And Blockchain: Fintech 50 2025
FACTS + COMMENTS
As Wall Street’s profits rose 90% in 2024, bankers within New York City’s securities industry also saw higher bonuses, according to a statement from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli:
$244,700: The average bonus for a Wall Street banker last year, a 31.5% increase from the year prior
$47.5 billion: The total estimated bonus pool, the largest amount on record since 1987
$600 million: The additional income tax revenue expected from last year’s bonuses, according to an estimate from DiNapoli
STRATEGY + SUCCESS
If you’re in the market for a new home, you know that mortgage rates have been stuck in the 6% to 7% band since late 2022 with no clear trendline. While the Fed is expected to cut interest rates this year, forecasts for mortgage rates show a subtle slide down toward 6%, but not much more. Wild cards—like tariffs impacting the price of lumber or immigration policy upending the construction labor market—could make things more volatile.
VIDEO
QUIZ
Mega Millions is raising ticket prices from $2 in order to boost the average jackpot win to more than $800 million from about $450 million. What is the new ticket price?
A. $3
B. $4
C. $5
D. $6
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Caroline Howard.