Q: I read your column every week and have learned a lot. Thank you for all the info. I live in Chicago and have a deep-cycle battery for my pop-up camper that I keep in my unheated garage between trips. I have it on a maintenance charger. Should I bring it indoors during the Chicago winter, or will the charger keep it ready (and undamaged) for ...Read more

ST. LOUIS — Retail and restaurant groups are promising to fight “with all available options” against the increase in the state’s minimum wage approved by voters this week.

The measure will increase prices for consumers and “impose significant financial burdens” on restaurants, grocery stores and other small businesses in Missouri, ...Read more

The United Auto Workers' campaigns to keep President-elect Donald Trump out of the White House, to organize more nonunion auto plants and to pressure Stellantis NV over its commitments to an idled Jeep plant in Illinois haven't gone as planned.

But UAW President Shawn Fain on Friday characterized his term atop the union so far as "the most ...Read more

Taxes may not be the first thing on your mind following the presidential election, but there’s no doubt that tax policy will play a key role in the year ahead, given that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is set to expire at the end of 2025.

The TCJA was the largest overhaul of the tax code in three decades, with massive changes for both ...Read more

Here is a question for the full-time workers out there.

If you added up all the minutes you squander or misallocate in a week, whether because you’re stuck on a call with a client who won’t say goodbye, or you’re sitting in another meeting that could have been an email, or tracking down your missing stapler, would that add up to an hour? ...Read more

If you’re thinking of buying an electric car or an energy-saving heat pump eligible for federal tax credits and rebates, now might be the time.

President-Elect Donald Trump has labeled the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act the “green new scam.” He’s pledged to rescind funding for the Biden administration’s signature 2022 climate law, ...Read more

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Donald Trump was helpful to the carrier in his first term, and he expects his return to the White House to be “positive” for Delta.

“We worked with President Trump well in his first term,” Bastian said during an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Bastian, who has led Atlanta-based Delta...Read more

The flow of Californians leaving for other states declined last year by the largest amount in the nation.

My trusty spreadsheet’s review of new state-to-state migration data from the Census Bureau shows 127,542 fewer California left in 2023 for elsewhere in the U.S. compared with 2022. Next came New York, down 64,054. Economic rival Texas had...Read more

SAN JOSE, California — All three of the Bay Area’s airports remain stuck well below their pre-coronavirus heights — but the airports in San Jose and Oakland lag far behind the pace of San Francisco airport’s post-COVID rebound.

Adding to the disquieting trends, the passenger trends in 2024 for both San Jose International Airport in the ...Read more

Steve Schwarzman’s early endorsement of Donald Trump is proving to be a canny wager.

The Blackstone Inc. chief’s pledge in May to “vote for change” and root for Trump marked a turning point for Schwarzman, who had previously distanced himself from the former president.

It also set him apart from high-profile business chiefs, including...Read more

An inherited IRA may be the most complex issue to handle well when wrapping up an estate. If you’ve recently inherited an individual retirement account, you can find yourself at the tricky three-way intersection of estate planning, financial planning and tax planning. One wrong decision can lead to expensive consequences, and good luck trying ...Read more

The most valuable companies in the world have grown to impressive heights in recent years, with nine publicly traded companies reaching market capitalizations of roughly $1 trillion or more. All but one of the companies come from the tech sector, with many offering products and services that consumers use every day. Several of them also made it ...Read more

A high-ranking Google director was texting with two of the company’s executives about digital-ads prices when he mentioned that the changes they were discussing could lead to lawsuits. Suddenly, he realized the chat’s history function was on, so the conversation would not be automatically deleted, and could be found by adversaries in any ...Read more

The chief technology officer at Land O’Lakes has a secret to making the cooperative, its owners and its customers more digitally adept: the human touch.

A majority of Teddy Bekele’s calendar is purple — the color assigned to one-on-one meetings — as he spends his days vacuuming up knowledge and dispensing it in turn.

“It’s not just...Read more

Tesla Inc. was admonished by a US agency over how the carmaker was promoting its driver-assistance technology on social media months before the regulator opened a defect investigation of the system.

In a May 15 email sent to Tesla representatives, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official flagged seven social media posts the ...Read more

A breakneck rally in Tesla Inc. shares on Friday catapulted the electric-vehicle maker’s market value back over the coveted trillion-dollar mark, as investors bet that Donald Trump’s return to the White House can be a positive force for Elon Musk’s company.

Shares of the company closed up 8.2% at $321.22 Friday, taking their gains this ...Read more

The Bay Area has long held the title for attracting the most venture capital funding in the nation, and that naturally includes the hot market for artificial intelligence startups. After all, San Francisco is home to some of the most prominent AI players, including ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

But the Greater L.A. area is growing its presence in this ...Read more

Stellantis NV plans to cut about 400 workers at an east Detroit warehousing facility early next year.

The indefinite layoffs will affect all workers at the Freud Street parts sequencing facility, which is near the company's Detroit Assembly Complex-Jefferson plant. Stellantis said it's transitioning the operations to a third-party.

"As ...Read more