Using AI to reduce your call center costs seems like a no-brainer. But a new study from AI-powered CX measurement company Laivly shows many companies aren’t truly giving it enough thought, and it’s costing them money. More than two in five projects are delayed, 53% are over budget, and 48% have lost revenue—28% because AI can’t handle customer needs, and 20% just aren’t sure why or how much.

There is, however, cost savings and customer satisfaction to be found with AI. I talked to Laivly founder and CEO Jeff Fettes about how to successfully bring AI to your call center. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

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The FIFA World Cup is over, and President Donald Trump is back on the trade offensive against co-host nation Canada. On Monday, he issued his latest broadside on the U.S.’s northern neighbor: a 50% tariff on most goods from Canada, including wine, dairy, cement, furniture and ice hockey gear. The new tax is justified by a 1930 law that allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 50% on countries deemed to be discriminating against U.S. goods—which the Trump administration says Canada is doing with U.S. cars, alcohol and dairy.

While this is more grounded in law than a threatened tariff over wildfire smoke that polluted air in the northeast sector of the U.S. last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said this is Trump’s latest action that goes against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, negotiated by Trump during his first term, and which Trump decided not to renew. The new tariffs go into effect in 30 days. Carney said the Canadian government is ready to negotiate with Trump to address “outstanding issues,” saying that Trump’s tariff war is costing American consumers.

Looking at inflation numbers, it doesn’t seem to be having too steep of a cost now, but that’s likely because consumer prices as a whole fell about 0.5% between May and June, slowing the inflation rate to 3.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While this represents the largest one-month drop in inflation rates since April 2020, it may be short-lived. The majority of the drop came from stabilizing oil prices because of a pause in hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. But in the last week, the war again intensified, pushing average gas prices to more than $4 a gallon on Monday for the first time in a month.

The leadership hole at the IRS is getting deeper. Ken Kies, Treasury’s top tax policy official who has also been serving as acting chief counsel of the IRS, will........

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