Apple Debuts $2,000 Foldable iPhone

Apple's new CEO unveils the company's first foldable iPhone, and its price starts at almost $2,000. Plus, the criminal trial for Chinese tech giant Huawei kicks off in New York City, and why states are ripping up their tax breaks for data centers. Rolling back these tax exemptions is actually one of the few concrete things politicians can do to win brownie points with their constituents. It's Wednesday, September 9. I'm Alex Osolef for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines, and business stories that move the world today. Apple had its biggest product event in years today. It debuted a truly new iPhone, the first foldable iPhone, called the Duo. It's almost like a tablet, but it still fits in your pocket. The larger screen also lets people use more than one app at a time. For example, you can watch a video and text at the same time. Introducing the new iPhone was Apple's new CEO, John Turnis. He took over last week, becoming Apple's third CEO since 1997. His predecessor, Tim Cook, and the rest of Apple's executive team sat in the front at the event as Turnis spoke. The bad news for consumers was that Apple increased iPhone prices, though not as much as some analysts projected. The cost of memory and storage chips inside the smartphone has quintupled since last fall. That's meant that Apple has raised prices across its device lineup to protect its profit margins. For the new foldable Duo, prices start at about $2,000. Foldable phones aren't new, and growth in the category has stalled. Industry analysts say Apple has an opportunity to capture almost half of all revenue from sales of foldables just this year, even though the Duo won't be released until October 23. In other tech news, the Justice Department's criminal trial against Chinese tech giant Huawei has kicked off in Brooklyn. The case dates from the First Trump Administration, and is going to trial now after a nearly eight-year wait. In opening statements today, prosecutors told the jury that Huawei systematically stole trade secrets from American companies. Dave Michaels, who covers corporate law enforcement for the journal, breaks down the Justice Department's argument. The government says that Huawei is responsible for a pattern of trade secret stuff going back 25, 26 years, stealing technology secrets, intellectual property from competitors, including, and now these names are not in the indictment, but they've been previously reported, companies like Cisco and T-Mobile. There are very specific claims in the indictment that a Huawei employee was caught sneaking photos at a trade show of the inside of arrivals networking devices, and that it paid a university professor to pose as a researcher interested in getting a company's memory devices so that Huawei could copy it. Examples that the Justice Department says amounts to a long-running criminal enterprise, and that also Huawei violated sanctions against Iran by doing business in Iran and misleading banks about the extent of its business in Iran. The trial comes just a couple of weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is supposed to go to Washington to meet with President Trump. Huawei has said that this is a false narrative that a lot of the charges have been recited earlier in civil lawsuits that have all been resolved. The fact that the United States government is prosecuting a Chinese technological national champion is certainly an inconvenient thing to be going on when the two leaders are meeting in Washington trying to address a bunch of really thorny issues. Disappointed investors sent bond yields higher today. After the Treasury said it would buy back up to $6 billion in longer-term debt tomorrow. Some investors had expected a larger buyback, and that sent the 10-year yield to its highest level since 2023. U.S. stock indexes traded lower today. The Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P all lost less than 1 percent. It was their third straight day in the red. And in energy prices, more fighting in the Middle East sent international oil higher. Brent futures closed today above $101 a barrel. The last time they went above $100 was in July. Triple-digit prices for oil sound scary, the kind of thing that could torpedo the economy. But oil at 100 is actually pretty typical for this century if you adjust for overall inflation. By that measure, oil has averaged around $95 in 2026 prices. Coming up, you're not imagining it. Why returning something you bought online feels harder than ever. More after the break. For years, states have offered tax breaks to companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google to get them to build data centers. Those huge tech projects were seen as investments in the state. But now, in more than 10 states, lawmakers are starting to roll back those tax exemptions. For more, I'm joined now by WSJ Tech Policy Reporter, Amrith Ramkumar. Amrith, we've talked before on the show about the public backlash against data centers. Why are politicians responding by getting rid of tax breaks? Rolling back these tax exemptions is actually one of the few concrete things politicians can do to win brownie points with their constituents while also still leaving the door open for future development. A lot of these moves are framed as pauses, things that give these politicians leeway in the future if public sentiment improves toward data centers. An interesting one to look at is Ohio, where the governor essentially had to freeze new approvals for tax exemptions after a local media outlet reported that it was over $1.5 billion in exemptions for tech giants last year. That's more than 10 times what Ohio had estimated it would cost, right? And that gap really shows how badly the states miscalculated, because they put these policies in place a decade ago when data centers were powering us watching Netflix or doing some pretty boring stuff. They were not designed for this environment where you have hundreds of billions of dollars in spending on data centers for AI, and that's why the value has really exploded. So Ohio is one of the big destinations for data centers. What are some other states where we're seeing this play out? You also have people in Texas talking about potentially getting rid of these tax exemptions, and New Jersey just two years ago voted to have a $500 million tax exemption for data centers, and already they've clawed back half of that. Like it can be a lot of money, and it can change the economics of doing projects in a state. The tech executives and industry groups say, we'll just leave and go to another state, and there are states that are still very, very welcoming to these facilities, despite all the rhetoric and all the local backlash places, like Indiana, West Virginia, Wyoming. That was WSJ Tech Policy reporter, Amrith Rumkumar. Thanks, Amrith. Thanks for having me. A new financial disclosure from Steve Whitcoff, President Trump's Middle East envoy showed that last year, Whitcoff earned more than $100 million from the entity tied to world liberty financial. That's the crypto company Whitcoff co-founded with Trump and his family members in 2024. Whitcoff's income from the holding company last year was more than triple what he reported in 2024, even as the crypto company's token has plunged in value since it became publicly treatable last fall. The journal has learned that Ilhan Omar, the Democratic representative from Minnesota, has been cleared of wrongdoing after she overstated her wealth in documents submitted to Congress last fall. A disclosure filed last year showed Omar and her husband had assets of between $6 and $30 million, a big jump from the previous year that raised questions from other lawmakers. But an amended filing estimated the couple's assets to be less than $100,000. The determination to clear Omar came from a nonpartisan group called the Office of Congressional Conduct, or OCC. It was confidential, but it was viewed by the Wall Street Journal. The OCC recommended that the House Ethics Committee dismiss allegations against Omar that she reported false or incomplete information. Omar's office said she hasn't heard from the Justice Department or the House Ethics Committee about any pending investigations. And finally, buying things online is more convenient than buying it at a store, usually. But returning something when you don't want it, that's not always as simple. Okay, seriously, I can't be the only one with this problem. But why is making returns so hard? One of my biggest pet peepes ever is having to return stuff. Like, I don't know why it is the worst thing ever. Like having to ship out something and return it. And now it's getting even harder. There are the surprise fees, the shorter return windows, and more questions about why someone is making a return at all. Some customers are even getting messages that, based on their patterns of returns, they might not get a refund back the next time they try to return something. So what gives? Retailers lose money on returns. So more of them are charging fees. The E-commerce platform loop returns says 68% of retailers charge fees on returns some of the time. The number of retailers that charged fees five years ago, 43%. Then again, there are the retailers that go the other way. Recently, I tried to return something to target and they told me just to not bother sending the item back and gave me a refund anyway. So tell us, what is your pet peeve on returns? Let us know in the Spotify comments. And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis with supervising producer Tally Art Bell. I'm Alex Oselef for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music)