Atlantic Container Line, a major shipping firm that specializes in transatlantic cargo transport, is warning that the steep fees could force it to halt all of its US-linked business.

“There’s a lot of shaking of heads, and what I’ll call just shock,” Andrew Abbott, CEO of ACL, told CNBC.

Atlantic Container Line, a major shipping firm that specializes in transatlantic cargo transport, is warning that the steep fees could force it to halt all of its US-linked business. Atlantic Container Line

The US-based company operates five ships on its US-Europe trade route — with each ship sailing regularly between the two destinations multiple times per year.

The US Trade Representative recently updated the rules under Section 301 — a law used to respond to unfair foreign trade practices, often involving China.

The new rule, which went into effect started on Oct. 14, unexpectedly reclassified ACL’s ships.

Under the new USTR rule, every vessel is charged the Section 301 port fee five times per year — that’s once for each US port call the government counts as a taxable event.

“That’s 25 vessels being charged $1.4 million a year,” Abbott told CNBC. “We are looking at a tariff total of $34 million a year.”

“There’s a lot of shaking of heads, and what I’ll call just shock,” Andrew Abbott, CEO of ACL, told CNBC. CNBC

ACL runs five ships that carry mostly containers (about 80% of their cargo), but also some big items like tractors, cars, and power plant machinery (around 10%).

Because of how their ships are built — not what they usually carry — the government now considers them “vehicle carriers” — also known as “roll-on/roll-off” vessels (Ro/Ro) — instead of “container ships.”

But Abbot told CNBC that out of the 10% of the company’s Ro/Ro freight, just 1% is passenger cars.

The US Trade Representative recently updated the rules under Section 301 — a law used to respond to unfair foreign trade practices, often involving China. President Trump is seen above. Aaron Schwartz – Pool via CNP/Shutterstock

He said that his company’s ships are a “unique hybrid” that combine elements of both container ships and vehicle carriers that “do not exist anywhere else in the world.”

“The vessel should be classified by the majority of freight we move,” Abbott told CNBC.

“That’s containers. We have always been considered a Container vessel. This time around, Customs and Border Protection changed it to Ro/Ro container.”

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“Vessels have long been required to report their International Classification of Ships by Type (ICST) code to CBP,” the USTR said in a statement to CNBC.

“USTR’s responsive action utilizes this existing reporting to CBP as a mechanism to determine applicability of service fees under the Section 301 action.”

Under the new USTR rule, every vessel is charged the Section 301 port fee five times per year — that’s once for each US port call the government counts as a taxable event. Costfoto/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

The USTR added: “To clarify, we note that International Classification of Ships by Type (ICST) is based on the construction characteristics of the marine structure and not upon its particular use or cargo carried at a point in time.”

Abbott responded that container ships that ship from China are exempt from tariffs.

“Big ‘Ro/Ro’ carriers can spread the fees out over their entire ship. We only have 1% of our ship with cars, and yet we are hit with the full costs, and we are the only carrier with an HQ in the USA,” he told CNBC.

“I thought that USTR wanted to encourage people to be in the USA, not push them away. But they are simply showing us the door,” Abbott said.

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The chain faced intense backlash after unveiling a new logo and redesigned stores that longtime fans said stripped away what they loved most about the brand.

Cracker Barrel’s restaurants, long known for their kitschy Americana décor, were recast in a style critics called drab and soulless.

The uproar grew after the company dropped its iconic logo of an elderly man leaning on a barrel.

A March press release said Prophet was hired to redesign Cracker Barrel restaurants and lead a new brand marketing campaign.

At the time, the company said: “In collaboration with Cracker Barrel, they are focused on shaping a new brand vision that will enhance market share while preserving the company’s unique heritage. This new strategy will inform brand communication, restaurant redesigns, brand marketing campaigns and a redefined employee value proposition.”

Cracker Barrel recently bowed to customer feedback after they responded negatively to a rebrand. BACKGRID

Separately, Prophet CEO Michael Dunn pledged $4 million in 2020 for the firm’s DEI initiatives, saying the company would “bring in Black team members across every level of the firm,” hire a DEI-specific recruiter and provide $4 million in pro bono work to social justice organizations, according to a 2020 blog post.

Fox News Digital found no evidence that Prophet’s DEI commitments were connected to Cracker Barrel’s rebranding.

In August, the brand unveiled its new logo, which dropped the illustration of a man – “Uncle Herschel” – resting his arm on top of a wooden barrel, a folksy image that has embodied the brand’s Southern hospitality for the last 56 years. Some interpreted the change as an appeal to the woke movement.

A March press release said Prophet was hired to redesign Cracker Barrel restaurants and lead a new brand marketing campaign. BACKGRID

The logo change sparked a backlash that wiped over $140 million off the chain’s market value at the height of the crisis as customer outrage and investor unease fueled what became the steepest losing streak in months. Shares are down over 7% year-to-date.

President Donald Trump even weighed in, calling on the chain to return to its roots.

“Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before,” Trump wrote in an Aug. 26 post on Truth Social.

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“They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major News Conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again,” Trump added.

Later that day, Cracker Barrel reversed its plans.

“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company posted on X.

In May, Cracker Barrel, beloved for its Southern comfort food, front-porch rocking chairs and gift shop filled with knickknacks and old-fashioned sweets, launched an ambitious overhaul of its 660-plus restaurants – an effort that quickly backfired.

The sweeping makeover included “decluttered” dining rooms, a revamped menu and other changes aimed at updating a brand long rooted in nostalgia.

The post Cracker Barrel ends partnership with consulting firm Prophet — behind logo change after intense backlash appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The 19-year-old New York University student could have picked up a cool $40 million — $25 million after taxes — from the sale of digital assets by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family firm launched nine months ago after Barron persuaded his dad about the benefits of crypto, Forbes reported.

“Barron knows so much about this,” commander-in-chief said during an interview in September after the launch. “Barron’s a young guy, but he knows it — he talks about his wallet. He’s got four wallets or something, and I’m saying, ‘What is a wallet?’”

Barron Trump, seen here at his father’s second inauguration, is listed as a “co-founder” on World Liberty Financial’s website. AFP via Getty Images

World Liberty has been a financial bonanza for the family. In March, World Liberty announced that it had sold $550 million worth of tokens.

An Office of Government Ethics filing released by President Trump last week declared he had made $57 million from token sales.

It also said that the real estate mogul held a 75% stake in his umbrella company, DT Marks Defi LLC, with unnamed “third parties” holding the other 25%.

Barron Trump is listed as a “co-founder” of World Liberty Financial alongside the president, as well as Eric and Donald Trump Jr, the president’s two eldest sons.

Forbes, which provided no direct evidence for its claims of Barron Trump’s massive digital windfall, suggested that he owned a 7.5% stake in the Delaware-based umbrella firm.

The stake would mirror what the NYU freshman holds in the Trump Organization’s Washington, DC hotel, Forbes said.

The Post has approached a Trump Organization spokesperson for comment.

Trump once derided digital assets such as Bitcoin as “a scam” but he has since U-turned and embraced cryptocurrencies. REUTERS

Barron Trump’s name does not appear in the company’s solitary SEC filing from October 30 last year.

Also listed as business partners in the venture are Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and his son, Zachary.

An analysis by Bloomberg, the financial news outlet, estimates the president’s net worth has doubled since the start of his 2024 campaign, standing at just over $5.4 billion

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Disney and Universal sued a prominent artificial intelligence start-up for copyright infringement on Wednesday, bringing Hollywood belatedly into the increasingly intense battle over generative A.I.

The movie companies sued Midjourney, an A.I. image generator that has tens of millions of registered users. The 110-page lawsuit contends that Midjourney “helped itself to countless” copyrighted works to train its software, which allows people to create images (and soon videos) that “blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters.”

“Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the companies said in the lawsuit, which was filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles.

Midjourney could not immediately be reached for comment.

A.I. start-ups like Midjourney, which was introduced in 2022, train their software with data scraped from the internet and elsewhere, often without compensating creators. The practice has resulted in lawsuits from authors, artists, record labels and news organizations, among others. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims, saying their actions fall under “fair use.”)

But Disney and Universal are the first major Hollywood studios to file copyright infringement lawsuits.

Creative workers in the entertainment capital have been increasingly frustrated about studio silence on the matter. “They have not protested the theft of this copyrighted material by the A.I. companies, and it’s a capitulation on their part to still be on the sidelines,” Meredith Stiehm, president of the Writers Guild of America West, told The Los Angeles Times in February.

The Midjourney lawsuit indicates that Disney and Universal, the two most powerful traditional entertainment companies, have been biding their time. While taking detailed aim at Midjourney for infringing on prominent characters like Darth Vader, the Minions, the “Frozen” princesses, Shrek and Homer Simpson, the lawsuit reads like a shot across the bow to A.I. companies in general.

The studios framed the generative A.I. theft as a problem that “threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television and other creative arts.” The U.S. film and television business supports 2.3 million jobs and pays $229 billion in annual wages, according to the most recent economic figures from the Motion Picture Association, a Hollywood lobbying group.

“We are bullish on the promise of A.I. technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity,” Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s general counsel, said in an email. “But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an A.I. company does not make it any less infringing.”

Kim Harris, general counsel of NBCUniversal, which includes the Universal movie studio, said in a separate email: “We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content.”

Disney sent Midjourney a “cease and desist” notice last year, and the A.I. firm did not respond aside from acknowledging receipt, according to the lawsuit. Universal sent a similar notice last month and has not received a response of any kind.

The suit asks for Midjourney to pay damages, but does not include an exact monetary demand. Disney and Universal also want a judge to stop Midjourney from “offering its forthcoming video service without appropriate copyright protection measures.”

Midjourney is one of the most popular text-to-image generators: Users type a description of what they want to see and the bot spits back images seconds later. (Competitors include Stability AI and DALL-E, developed by OpenAI.) Midjourney sells subscriptions for monthly fees ranging from $10 for a basic plan to $120 for a “mega” one, depending on the processing speed, among other factors. It had roughly $300 million in revenue last year, up from $50 million in 2022.

Midjourney has been in the news for at least a year and a half for generating vivid images of copyrighted material. The New York Times reported in February 2024, for instance, that typing “animated toys” into Midjourney resulted in near-exact images of Buzz Lightyear and other characters from “Toy Story,” a movie made by Pixar, which is owned by Disney.

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The partners at his firm, Symphony Technology Group, were concerned. Where would he get the money? Surely not from their smallish PE fund based in Menlo Park, Calif., with just $10 billion in assets?

His answer was emphatic: He and his investors — a slew of rich dudes as well as another, larger private equity house – had put together the money even if most of it isn’t his. And as of last week, Chisholm is said to have convinced skeptical partners at Symphony that he actually can buy the Celtics in a record-setting, $6.1 billion deal.

Bill Chisholm is said to have convinced skeptical partners at Symphony that he actually can buy the Celtics in a record-setting, $6.1 billion deal. Symphony Technology Group

Yet, nearly a week after revealing his stunning bid, he has yet to convince many in the sports business world, on Wall Street and even among his dealmaking colleagues in Silicon Valley. Symphony is known for mid-sized buyouts and investments. Chisholm himself is scarcely known on Wall Street or in the sports business.

Then there’s the strict rules for buying a team imposed by the NBA.

A prospective owner – or so-called “control person” – must come up with cash, not debt. It must be 15% of the deal price, half of which needs to be delivered immediately, and the other half in three years’ time. That means Chisholm would need to plunk down at least $450 million in cash now, and the rest later – no small chunk of change for anyone who’s not a billionaire several times over.

For comparison, buyout baron Josh Harris, one of the co-founders of PE giant Apollo Management, set the previous record price for buying NFL’s Washington Commanders for $6.05 billion. He’s worth more than $10 billion.

Josh Harris, one of the co-founders of PE giant Apollo Management, set the previous record price for buying NFL’s Washington Commanders for $6.05 billion. Getty Images

Other nagging questions linger. Chisholm lives in California, not Boston. He isn’t even a season ticket holder. (An associate says he grew up in the Boston area and watches nearly every game on TV).

One NBA owner told The Post “I have no clue who he is.” A banker who knows him from Silicon Valley deal making says: “This doesn’t add up.”

One of those skeptics also appears to be Steve Pagliuca, a senior adviser to the giant PE firm Bain Capital, and a minority owner of the team (Pagliuca did not return a request for comment).

“Pags,” as he is known locally, is a voluble presence on the Boston sports scene. Recently, he tried to throw shade on Chisholm’s bid, posting on X that his own bid “was a fully guaranteed offer at a record price…we had no debt or private equity money that would potentially hamstring our ability to compete in the future.”

The Celtics have one of the highest payrolls in the NBA, and high debt levels from the new owners could make that difficult to meet. Getty Images

The Celtics, it should be noted, have one of the highest payrolls in the NBA, and high debt levels from the new owners could make that difficult to meet.

The 56-year-old Chisholm declined to comment on any of this. But people who know Chisholm and bankers representing the current owners, the father-and-son team of Irv and Wyc Grousbeck, say he meets all of the league’s requirements.

One associate says he is worth close to $4 billion, the result of three decades of steady deal making after leaving Dartmouth to embark on a career in private equity. He told his partners in the meeting a few weeks ago he plans to come up with $500 million in cash now and $500 million later to meet the league requirements, sources confirmed to The Post.

Bankers, meanwhile, say his bid fairly bested marquee names in the business of sports – including Pagliuca.

Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck and minority owner Steve Pagliuca in 2012. Pagliuca said his bid “had no debt or private equity money that would potentially hamstring our ability to compete in the future.” AP

Chisholm hired Goldman Sachs to assemble his equity team, but also worked closely with Grousbeck’s formidable banking ensemble: Gregg Lemkau, the long-time Goldman Sachs dealmaker who now runs BDT & MSD Partners; and Mary Erdoes, the powerful head of JPMorgan’s wealth management business.

“Mary would never give the greenlight to this unless he has the money,” said one top JPMorgan executive with knowledge of the matter. A person close to Lemkau added of Chisolm: “His was by far the highest bid,” adding that “it’s financed” – Wall Street jargon meaning debt to pay for the deal is all lined up.

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A person close to Chisholm denies that he put up any debt in the deal himself, though this person also declined to comment on any borrowing by other equity players. In addition to several investors who haven’t weren’t mentioned in the press release for the deal, Chisholm’s money includes a $1 billion-plus commitment from the PE firm Sixth Street, which is well known in sports circles. Sixth Street has the largest single investment in the team.

It doesn’t hurt to know that Lemkau, the banker repping the Grousbecks, and Chisholm go way back. Both are Dartmouth grads and played on the school’s soccer team together. People who know them say they’re not besties but they have stayed in touch over the years and remain friendly.

“There’s a lot of rumors out there about Bill’s bid, but it’s from parties with an agenda,” said one person close to Chisholm. “His money is real.”

The post How Bill Chisholm shocked even partners at his own firm with Boston Celtics bid — as speculation swirls over whether he can pay appeared first on Our Story Insight.