Good morning. The US turned 250 yesterday, which, other than making us wonder how we’d explain the existence of Hawk Tuah to George Washington, has got us thinking about the fascinating evolution of business in America. How’d we go from an agrarian society to one with Elon Musk and SpaceX? What are the most important US companies in history, and what will be the most important moving forward? Those questions and more are answered in today’s special edition delving into 250 years of American biz. |
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Over two-and-a-half centuries, the US has created a lot of companies. Here are some that changed business and culture, churned out legendary logos, and made commercials that will flash before our eyes on our deathbeds: Coca-Cola. The company that made those epic Freestyle machines at the movies (and the Federal Reserve) was officially incorporated in Atlanta in 1892 to sell the syrupy concoction created six years earlier by John S. Pemberton, a morphine-addicted chemist and former Confederate soldier. Today, Coke controls about 40% of the nonalcoholic beverage market. McDonald’s. Ray Kroc is credited with opening the first Mickey D’s in 1955. If you’re going off of the company’s corporate website, Kroc acquired the rights to the business from the McDonald brothers in 1961, but if you’re going off of the 2016 Michael Keaton film, Kroc ripped that burger empire right out from under them. It now spans 36,000 locations worldwide. Ford and GM. Ford Motor Company gave us the assembly line, eight-hour workdays, and, of course, the Mustang. Ford’s factories, along with those of its chief competitor, General Motors (GM), were ground zero for some of the most defining moments in labor union history. The 1936 Flint sit-down strike at GM saw 136,000 workers participate over 44 days and led to the recognition of the United Auto Workers at the company. General Electric. Tracing its origins back to Thomas Edison in 1892, GE ushered in a new era of consumerism with electric appliances like dishwashers and home refrigerators. Perhaps the company’s most iconic CEO, Jack Welch, introduced something even more integral to the business world: increasing shareholder value. Big Tech companies. Microsoft was the first company to hit a $500 billion market cap in 1999, a milestone Apple later surpassed, logging a $1 trillion market cap in 2018. Other Big Tech companies, like Amazon and Facebook (now Meta), kick-started the era of celebrity CEOs. The others: You’ve probably heard of Walmart, Disney, and Nike—all American. And don’t forget Chick-fil-A and Starbucks. Also, whatever brand Sam Elliott got hired to do a gravely voiceover for.—MM |
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Levi’s jeans. Rawlings baseballs. Harley-Davidson motorcycles. These are just a few products synonymous with America that are manufactured in other countries. That’s because the only thing more American than jeans, baseballs, and motorcycles is maximizing profits and undercutting competitors by using cheaper foreign labor and materials. The FTC requires a product advertised as “Made in USA” to be “all or virtually all” produced in the US, although companies can list caveats (e.g., “Couch assembled in USA from Italian leather and Mexican frame”). There are significant obstacles for products to get made 100% in the only country that has Waffle House:
- The US abides by 14 free trade agreements with 20 countries that either reduce or eliminate tariffs and shorten supply chains, making production abroad significantly cheaper.
- Per the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 11% of the value of US exports in 2021 came from inputs from other countries.
Have tariffs helped? President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff plan in April 2025 was designed to reinvigorate American production. The US did strike some trade deals in which other countries committed to investing in the US—but any impact could take years to materialize. In the meantime, the US Congress Joint Economic Committee found in February that the US lost 108,000 manufacturing jobs during the first year of Trump’s second term.—DL |
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When the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, the economy of the 13 colonies could be tipped into a recession by bad weather. Agriculture was the economy, with 95% of laborers, many of them enslaved, toiling on farms and plantations:
- Farmed or hunted commodities like tobacco, flour, rice, dried fish, whale oil, and indigo made up the vast majority of exports.
- The colonies imported cloth from Britain, as well as sugar products from the Caribbean, largely produced by enslaved laborers from Africa, who were also brought to the US.
Firewood was the main energy source, accounting for 18% of the US GDP in the late 1700s. Centuries before Silicon Valley’s AI agents, most of the world’s innovation took place in Britain and Continental Europe. But stateside tech bro Ben Franklin did develop a revolutionary iron stove that minimized smoke during indoor cooking over a fire. Richer than the BritishAt the time of the shot heard ’round the world, American colonists were technically the most prosperous people on Earth, enjoying higher incomes than even their counterparts in the mother country. An average American earned almost 14 pounds per year, compared to 10 to 12 pounds for a Brit. Plus, colonial wealth was more equally distributed, with over 50% of white Americans being property holders, compared to just a small sliver of the Englishmen. Instead of taking anti-aging peptide injections, affluent citizens like Philadelphia merchants or Southern planters flaunted their wealth with a dinner party display of a single pineapple, which could cost around $8,000 in today’s dollars. But…the 13 colonies weren’t the biggest New World cash cow, as Britain’s sugar- and pineapple-producing Caribbean islands, including Barbados and Jamaica, had higher value exports.—SK |
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Some of the most significant business achievements in modern American history walked so that you could pause Netflix to grab your Uber Eats burrito from the door. Take my hand, we’re going down memory lane with the Wall Street Journal. Early 1800s: Mass production is born. Factories start replacing people with machines, leading workers to form some of the country’s first trade unions. 1882: Thomas Edison flips the switch on the world’s first commercial power station in Manhattan, marking the downfall of gas lamps and the beginning of 2am benders the electrical age. 1902: Air conditioning is invented to stop magazines from wrinkling at a humid publishing plant in Brooklyn, and the innovation soon becomes key to Southern expansion. Thank you to mechanical cooling for all those wild nights in Miami. 1903: The Wright brothers fly a plane for 12 seconds, teeing up the first commercial airline flight roughly a decade later. 1930s: Refrigerators proliferate in private homes after the invention of Freon, enabling families to skip the pickling, smoking, or salting and just forget about whatever’s on the bottom shelf. 1955: Dr. Jonas Salk introduces the polio vaccine, which he decides not to patent in order to keep its cost low. Late 1950s: The first microchips are created by different inventors in Texas and California, igniting the modern semiconductor industry and ultimately shrinking computers from room-sized to pocket-sized. 1990s: Web browsers, including Netscape and Internet Explorer, start bringing the World Wide Web to the masses, in the modern-day version of our ancient ancestor-fish crawling out of the water. 2000: The US makes GPS commercially available after developing the satellite utility for military use in the 1970s. 2007: Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone, sounding the death knell for BlackBerry and your attention span. 2022: OpenAI releases ChatGPT, kicking off the race for business leaders to say “AI” as many times as possible on earnings calls.—ML |
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In 1776, no one could have predicted that in 250 years, Nvidia, a graphics processing unit manufacturer, would be the world’s most valuable company by market cap (okay, Benjamin Franklin probably did). So, take that under advisement as we try predicting the companies that will shape the United States over the next 250 years. AI 4 life: It’s hard to know where AI will eventually take us, but companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are poised to dominate. Also, keep an eye on Amazon’s massive cloud business, which shows no signs of slowing down as it accommodates multiple companies’ computing and storage needs. A safe ’bet: Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is especially well positioned for the future. Aside from its search, cloud, and smartphone businesses:
- The company’s Gemini AI models have been holding their own against competition.
- It has a ~14% stake in AI giant Anthropic and a 6.1% stake in SpaceX.
- It’s a major player in quantum computing.
- Its self-driving unit, Waymo, is rapidly expanding.
Power struggle: Between data centers and Europeans returning home from the World Cup and deciding they need air conditioning, energy demand is surging. Exxon Mobil and Chevron are on top right now, but the future could belong to atomic-fusion startups like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy, and Zap Energy. Future-proof: Death will probably still be around in 250 years, so healthcare businesses likely aren’t going anywhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, Johnson & Johnson is the one best positioned for the future.—BC |
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In ascending order, these are the Americans whose time would be most wasted by bending down to pick up a penny, according to Business Insider. Net worth estimates are adjusted for inflation. Cornelius Vanderbilt: $284.6 billion. The shipping tycoon, known as “the Commodore,” started as a steamship captain and operator before pivoting to railroads and feuding with other robber barons over control of America’s new freight lines. The only major philanthropic donation he made before his 1877 death was $1 million to build Vanderbilt University. Larry Page: ~$300 billion. The co-founder and original CEO of Google got his fortune started with $3.8+ billion from the search engine’s 2004 IPO. And the equity keeps on giving: The vast majority of his current wealth comes from his 6% stake in Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Page still serves on the board of Alphabet (for which he receives $1 annually). Andrew Carnegie: $475.2 billion. After emigrating from Scotland as a child, Carnegie built up the US steel industry, replacing wooden bridges with iron ones and later selling his steel business to fellow magnate and rival J.P. Morgan for $480 million. He also became a naturalized American citizen. The Pittsburgh-based businessman called for labor rights publicly but crushed unions at his own mills. He died in 1919 after donating much of his fortune to music, education, and libraries. John D. Rockefeller: $516 billion. The patriarch of one of New York City’s famed families became the world’s first billionaire thanks to oil. He dominated US oil production through his company, Standard Oil, until the Supreme Court decided in 1911 that it was an unconstitutional monopoly. His wealth peaked in 1937, the same year that he died, at 1.5% of the US GDP. Elon Musk: ~$1 trillion. The richest of them all is the recently minted world’s first trillionaire. The South African-born Musk got his start in the 1990s, using a loan from his father to found a digital city guide company that was bought for ~$300 million in 1999. From there, he co-founded PayPal and made another small fortune from its acquisition, then launched SpaceX and invested in Tesla. His stakes in those companies—especially SpaceX—account for almost all of his current net worth. He became a naturalized US citizen in 2002.—ML |
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- These iconic companies no longer exist, but you probably still remember them.
- How much do you know about the American Revolution? Take this quiz to find out.
- It’s not Independence Day weekend without hot dogs. Which one wins the taste test?
- Watch this short, wild history of the two-dollar bill.
- How much money did the Founding Fathers actually have?
- Bake with the help of the iconic King Arthur Baking Company, founded in 1790.**
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