WSJ What’s News - American Tourists Are Everywhere

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

A.M. Edition for Aug. 11. Anthropic tries to shore up pre-IPO investor confidence amid growing public backlash against AI. Plus, Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary pits the party’s establishment against the far left. And WSJ’s Chelsey Dulaney explains how American tourists with an insatiable wanderlust are boosting Europe’s economies – whether locals like it or not. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anthropic tries to reassure investors ahead of its blockbuster IPO. You're seeing the company try and project confidence about the state of their business at a moment where who ultimately ends up winning the AI race and the business models of these AI labs that burn billions of dollars training models are still in question. Plus, another Democratic primary, this time in Wisconsin, pits the far left against the party establishment. and from wealthy boomers to restless Gen Ziers will look at the Americans grabbing their passports and traveling the globe.

It's Tuesday, August 11th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Anthropic is gearing up for what could be one of the largest IPOs in history this fall. The journal's Berber Jin reports that the company has kicked off a series of meetings with potential IPO investors in a bid to try and rally support for the listing.

In recent months, a lot of investors have grown a bit nervous about potential challenges to their business model, namely the rise of cheaper AI models being developed in China that are open-weight models, which means that they're customizable, generally less costs on the market, and a lot of businesses have been complaining

about the power that Anthropic has over-pricing, expensive AI prices, products and just the general dominance of the business. So in these meetings, anthropic executives have sought to quell a lot of investor concerns about these Chinese AI models, telling them that they don't think it's a big concern because of the sophistication of anthropics models. Another thing that they've addressed is the growing backlash against AI across the country and what anthropic executives have said in these meetings is that they plan to focus more of their efforts in the future on building AI applications for biology and health care,

which they said they hoped would be able to help turn the tide on some of that negative sentiment. We understand that Anthropic is targeting a public debut in September or early October, with top rival OpenAI now expected to follow with a listing as late as next year. President Trump's media company says that it's signed up more than 10 customers to a real-time feed of top-truth social accounts for between. $60,000 and $100,000 a month. Government watchdogs and congressional Democrats have criticized the service, arguing that the president is selling investors' access to market-moving information.

Interim Trump Media CEO Kevin McGern pushed back on that assessment. The criticism is misinformed, is the first thing I would say. Truth API provides machine-readable feeds of publicly available truth posts from the platform's top counts in milliseconds. Our customers will get published in publicly available posts fractionally faster. Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice. While the Iran War has boosted the importance of Trump's true social account with posts sending oil markets into wild swings, Trump media has languished, losing nearly $240 million in Q2 due largely to poorly timed bets on Bitcoin.

Washington's push to revive domestic shipbuilding is drawing the interest of foreign investors. South Korean conglomerate Hanwa is making a more than $1 billion offer for shipbuilder Austel USA, which, if successful, would hand it an Alabama shipyard and a number of major government contracts. Hanwa, which bought a historic Philadelphia shipyard in 2024, is separately planning an Arkansas munitions factory to supply American armed forces. While the latest U.S. inflation reading is due tomorrow and widely expected to show a continued easing after prices declined in June, and one supermarket staple in particular is providing relief. It's wholesale prices for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which are down about 37% from a year ago,

something that agriculture reporter Patrick Thomas says is a result of food companies' overestimating demand. Basically, you had chicken processors, so think of the big companies, Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Wayne Sanderson Farms, they had been ramping up production and anticipation of a drop-off in demand of beef. It's reached all-time high prices over the last year. And the general idea was that maybe we'd see some of this demand fall off in Americans kind of switching to a cheaper meat from beef to chicken. Well, beef demand volumes are actually up about 2% from last year, despite the high prices. So we have a chicken glut. For meat packers, this is not good news when they were relying on good chicken profits to offset some of the losses and beef right now.

For grocers, good thing, because they're paying less for the product. Same for restaurants, which ultimately trickles down to the consumer. It's primary day in a handful of states, including Battleground Wisconsin. Democrats, they are choosing their nominee for governor in a race that is once again testing the power of establishment Democrats against the parties far left. And representing the latter is State Representative Francesca Hong, a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose policy wish list includes free child care and mass transit, as well as the cancellation of all college debt, paid for, she says, by higher taxes on the wealthy and the elimination of business tax credits.

Hong has also tapped into rising anti-AI sentiment. We should be focusing on Wisconsin, not Wall Street, as governor on day one, I'll call a special session of the legislature for a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers. Hong has been leading in the polls, but with surveys showing that Democratic socialists are viewed negatively by more than half of registered Wisconsin voters, her opponents are warning that a Hong primary victory risks handing the general election to Republican Tom Tiffany. One of them, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley initially ended his campaign last month, but re-entered the race weeks later with the governor's endorsement and has since been playing up his broad appeal. This election is too important to gamboling.

I have the experience. I have the judgment and the record to build the type of coalition that we need to defeat Tom Tiffon. Elsewhere, President Trump's sway will face a test today in South Carolina as the sister of late Senator Lindsay Graham, Darlene Graham, tries to capitalize on his endorsement to top a field of nine GOP opponents. While polls show Graham with an advantage, a number of Republicans have expressed irritation that a rare Senate vacancy was handed to Graham's sibling, with one state rep saying that, quote, giving a Senate seat out like it's a condolence card is absolutely ridiculous. We'll get you the results from that race and others on tomorrow's pod. New York City Mayor Zoron Mamdani's Pieta Teratax has hit a legal hurdle. That's after a Staten Island judge yesterday ordered an emergency pause on.

on the surcharge after a group of homeowners argued that the city is illegally placing the onus on property owners to prove that they don't owe the tax. A Mamdani spokesman said the city planned to appeal the ruling and was confident in the surcharge and its ability to implement it fairly. The tax applies to homes worth $5 million or more, or co-ops and condos worth over a million dollars in which the owner isn't a primary resident. President Trump signed a new executive order yesterday calling for most children to receive fewer vaccines. The document urges parents to spread out vaccines across more visits to pediatricians and encourages states to mandate fewer vaccines for school attendance. It also calls for the measles, mumps, and rebella vaccination

to be given in separate shots rather than the combination shot commonly given in the U.S. The president also made some of his most extensive comments yet, linking childhood shots and autism, a connection that scientists have said is unfounded. Among them, Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The potential link between vaccines and autism has been studied in over 40 well-designed, methodologically well-designed studies in over seven countries involving over five million children. I'm not sure that there is anything that has been as thoroughly looked at as this question about whether or not there is a link between autism and vaccines?

And the answer is unequivocally no. There is no such link. And July was the hottest month on record in the U.S., with average temps reaching just shy of 77 degrees, the highest since Noah started keeping track some 132 years ago. That follows the hottest June on record on both sides of the Atlantic, and comes as Europe is currently facing major wildfires and widespread drought that's impacted widespread drought.

that's impacted water supply, irrigation, and energy production in several countries. That trend isn't letting up with the continent bracing for a sixth heat wave this week. At the same time, China will be getting too much water with typhoon dolphin dolphin expected to drop one-third of the country's annual rainfall over the next 24 hours. Coming up, it may be sweltering, but that is not stopping Americans from descending on Europe. We'll take a look at the super-spending American tourist after the break. Rewind the clock to 1990 and fewer than 5% of Americans had a passport.

Now, it's more than 50% evidence about the journal's Chelsea Delaney reports is a transformation of the American homebody identity and one that's having a global economic and cultural impact. Chelsea, that passport data point is really an eye-opening one. And at first, I sort of rejected the homebody identity, but then, Thinking more about it? I mean, TWA and Pan Am certainly played a role in putting the world within a day's reach, but not as broad a swath of Americans were traveling as is the case now. Is that kind of it? Yeah, definitely. International travel started out as this luxury for wealthy Americans. You go back to the 1800s. It was people going on these grand European tours, as young men, very wealthy. They were going to go and learn languages and see the Acropolis and things like that. And then over time, you know, it remained something that was very out of reach.

It was very expensive flights back in the 1980s in today's dollars would be over $2,000 to get from New York to London. Today you could take that flight for probably $500. So we've seen just over the years either through the technical revolution, the rise of the jet engine. And then there was a lot of deregulation. You know, there was more competition. You had these international air alliances. all of that has really opened up the world to Americans. And then you have the pandemic, which kept a lot of people at home.

When the world reopened, they went out in a really big way. So since then, we've just seen this boom of Americans going abroad. Last year, around 24 million Americans went to Europe, and it's been totally transformative for parts of the European economy. Yeah, Greece, four times the number of U.S. visitors last year compared to a decade earlier. And this isn't just a matter of preference, Chelsea. this sort of boom and travel is being enabled by, in many ways, the strength of the American economy. Yeah, I mean, Americans have just gotten a lot wealthier in recent decades, and the middle class has

expanded a lot. But a lot of comes down to boomers. You really can't overlook the role they're playing in this. You know, older Americans have $110 trillion in wealth now. So they've seen stock market gains, the value of their houses have increased. And so those people are going out. They're older. They want to get in this travel while they can. We talked to one person who said he spent six figures on travel every year. So they're playing a huge role. And then you also have Jin Z, which may say it's hard to buy a house. People are having kids later. And Jin Z sees travel as sort of a necessity for them. So I think on both ends of the spectrum, you see the boomers traveling out. And you also see Gen Z traveling a lot. The prioritization of experiences over the

accumulation of things, perhaps. Finally, Chelsea, I'm just curious, how is all of this going over in Europe? Obviously, there's an economic boost that would come along with more tourists, but it's also been several years since we saw those first big over-tourism protests in cities like Barcelona, and the numbers seem like they've only gone up since then. Yeah, I mean, the tourism boom has been pretty transformative for some European economies, especially some of the southern European ones like Portugal and Spain that were really in dire straits a decade ago. But it's also left a lot of locals feeling pushed out of their own cities. You know, housing prices have soared, their housing shortages, expenses for all sorts of everyday living costs have gone up.

up. And so you do see these protests pretty much every summer now. It's a bit of a catch-22 for governments and regulators because especially American tourists bring in a lot of money. Last year, Americans in Spain spent about $350 a day. French travelers only spent $150 a day. So, you know, Americans bring in a lot of money for businesses. So for a lot of economies, they don't want to give up what's been a real boost to their economies. And also, Americans tip. Some of us living in Europe, which that precedent hadn't been set for our own good, but it's a trend you can't deny. Reporter Chelsea Delaney, thanks as always for dropping by with this story. Thanks for having me. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show

was produced by Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with the news show. Until then, thanks for listening.