Investor Watch: July 9, 2026

SMART CITIES

By special arrangement with IMD – International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, we present here an adapted excerpt of the 2026 IMD Smart City Index (SCI), released in March 2026.

In bonus online-only content, read our interview with SCI contributor and IMD World Competitiveness Center Economist Fabian Grimm.

AEROSPACE

How is what’s happening on the ground affecting what’s up in the air?

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Photo courtesy of KDC

Last week we received word that KDC and Hugs Café Inc. recently completed the new $10 million, 13,500-sq.-ft. Hugs headquarters in McKinney, Texas, which brings together Hugs Café, the Hugs Training Academy and administrative offices under one roof. Hugs Café Inc is a nonprofit social enterprise in McKinney dedicated to providing meaningful training and competitively paid employment for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“The opening marks a transformative investment in workforce development and expanded employment opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” said a KDC release, which noted that the new headquarters was designed to “significantly expand the organization’s training capacity, positioning Hugs to broaden its local impact while scaling its model to reach communities nationwide.”

The new facility was made possible by the generous support of KDC, H-E-B, Sammons Enterprises Inc., Compatriot Capital, CA Hartnell, Brasfield & Gorrie, Lynn Family Foundation, MCDC, McKinney Arts Commission, The Mabee Foundation, Tomes Auto Group, Sue and Gary Reichling, FS Foundation, the Hugs Board and individual donors.

“This new space allows us to grow our programs and serve more individuals than ever before,” said Lauren Smith, CEO at Hugs Café Inc. “It represents a major step forward in our mission to create meaningful training and employment opportunities. We are deeply grateful for the community support and partnerships that have helped bring this vision to life and continue to make our work possible every day.”

Site Selection Managing Editor Kelly Barraza interviewed Smith for the Workforce 2026 story “Hugs Café: Serving Up Something Unique.”

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Image by Juliana Sahran: Getty Images

“Since the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in February, the Trump administration has not backed down from its high tariff ambitions. Instead, it is looking to reconstruct the tariff wall through a sweeping expansion of investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974—covering sixty economies and targeting forced labor and structural excess capacity,” writes Madeline Chalecki, assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. “While that effort is underway, the administration has enacted a 10% surcharge on all imports into the U.S. under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Yet this provision only provides temporary authority and is set to expire on July 24 unless reauthorized by Congress.

“On June 2, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced proposed rates from the forced labor 301 investigation, and the rest are expected within days,” Chalecki wrote in her detailed analysis posted last month. “This first round of remedies gives us insight into how the administration plans to build a new tariff regime. Drawing on what we know, we have modeled the potential new 301 architecture to show how much revenue the government can hope for. Our first estimate is that a Section 301-based regime could generate up to $169 billion, assuming 2025 import levels.”

Among other actions, on June 18, the USTR initiated a Section 301 investigation of Germany “to determine whether persistent underpayment for innovative pharmaceutical products by Germany is unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce.” On July 7, the Section 301 Committee was due to convene public hearings in the main hearing room of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Go to this web page to read comments turned in from across the nation by the deadline of July 6 and to see the array of panelists expected to speak at the multi-day hearings.

Photo courtesy of NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA

On June 30 the National Science Foundation released a series of stunning images celebrating the launch from the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile of the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). This particular 1.7-gigapixel image shows a field of stars in the constellation Lupus. “Rubin Observatory’s unique design combines enormous light-collecting power, the ability to move rapidly across the sky and a wide field of view,” the NSF stated. “Its 3200-megapixel camera — the largest digital camera in the world — is now capturing a new, detailed image approximately every 40 seconds.”

“It is amazing and humbling to be here at this time and place as we start the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, after more than two decades of incredible work by our dedicated team,” said Bob Blum, director of Rubin Observatory at NSF NOIRLab. “Rubin Observatory is for everyone; the LSST will change how we do astronomy and astrophysics, allowing researchers anywhere to participate in cutting-edge science.”

“It’s taken 20 years of hard science, engineering, and more to get to the point where we can call ‘action’ as we start rolling on this blockbuster movie of the Universe,” said Phil Marshall, deputy director of Rubin Operations for SLAC. “Millions of alerts in just the last couple of months show that Rubin is up and running as a discovery machine. Now we’re putting it all together.”

NSF said that in just a month and a half, during early optimization surveys, Rubin discovered over 11,000 never-before-seen asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects and 380 trans-Neptunian objects. “When the LSST is complete, the final dataset will contain billions of objects with trillions of measurements, all accessible through regular data releases,” the agency announced. “This is the first time so much astronomical data will be available to so many people, opening the door to new kinds of discovery by both scientists and the public. Rubin invites anyone in the world to engage with its data and explore the dynamic Universe in ways never before possible.”