President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration efforts have bumped up against the limits of his “buy American” economic goals. His administration’s detention of hundreds of South Korean Hyundai employees in Georgia now threatens Trump’s attempts to encourage manufacturing investment in the U.S., and Trump is trying to walk back the damage.

The president is trying to “limit the fallout” of the raid on the new Hyundai plant, said CNBC. Foreign companies investing in the U.S. should “bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products,” he said Sunday in a Truth Social post. “We welcome them.” The damage may already be done. 

What did the commentators say?
The Hyundai raid was a “massive own goal” by the Trump administration, said The Economist. The state of Georgia wooed the company to “breathe life back into agricultural counties” that were losing young people to cities with more and better jobs. This shift was good for local businesses. More than 20 new companies that “sell materials or component parts to Hyundai” have sprung up within an hour’s drive of the new plant.

South Korea “just learned a deep lesson“ about dealing with Donald Trump, Allison Morrow said at CNN. Trump had recently met in the Oval Office with South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung to tout the country’s $350 billion in investments in American manufacturing. The raid “landed like a slap” in Seoul’s face, with images of workers “shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles” being loaded onto buses. The lesson? “Any deal you strike with Donald Trump’s government comes with a giant asterisk.”

What next?
More than 300 workers have returned to South Korea by plane after a week in custody. Only one decided to stay in the U.S. after being “kept in cramped and unsanitary conditions” during the detention, said Time. “Nobody is going to stay and work when it’s like this,” said Jang Young-seol, an engineer who worked for a subcontractor at the plant.

Nearly two decades ago, the collapse of the subprime home loan market sparked the Great Recession and devastated the economy. There are echoes of that history in the recent collapse of Tricolor Holdings, a subprime auto lender.

Tricolor’s bankruptcy filing last week has “prompted questions about the health” of the auto finance sector, said Financial Times. The Texas firm was a “fast-growing lender” that quadrupled in size in recent years, making most of its loans to low-income Latino immigrants and other “borrowers with limited credit histories.” 

President Donald Trump’s deportations undercut that business model. Many borrowers were “deported back to Mexico, and they abandoned the vehicles,” said one former Tricolor employee. 

And there were additional problems. Tricolor faces a federal fraud investigation, and the broader auto loan market has been marked by a growing number of borrower defaults and car repossessions. 

How does this affect the financial markets?
The crisis is “ensnaring giants including JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock,” companies that are among outlets that “lent hundreds of millions of dollars” to Tricolor, said Bloomberg. Perhaps that should not be a surprise. The auto loan market has shown “clear signs of strain,” with “mounting consumer stress and a surge in delinquencies” forcing other subprime lenders into bankruptcy and car repossessions rising to their highest level since 2009. 

Is this like the subprime mortgage crisis?
Opinions differ. Tricolor’s troubles “aren’t likely to upend the broader financial services industry” as what happened in 2008, said CNN. The $1.7 trillion car loan market is an eighth the size of the home mortgage sector. That makes subprime auto loans a “very different animal.”

What’s next?
Tricolor’s collapse “isn’t just about one company,” said Moneywise. When an auto lender fails and borrowers cannot pay their loans, it “signals trouble for the whole economy.” It also becomes a headache for borrowers in general. Lenders are “getting pickier” about who they lend to, so “buying a car will get even harder.” The one spot of hope is that the Federal Reserve could soon cut interest rates, which could “provide some relief.”

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum gives El Grito de Independencia (The Cry of Independence) speech at the Zócalo Square in Mexico City. She’s the first woman to lead Independence Day celebrations in 215 years.
Yuri Cortez / Getty Images

Fall is award season and not just for TV. This is the time of year when some of the publications that most know what’s afoot in the food world knight their chosen favorites for the year. For some pubs, that means dubbing a select handful of places as the best restaurants of the year. For others, it’s about name-dropping the country’s best chefs. However you use your abacus with that data, it means there’s a lot of good eating to be had.

Avize, Atlanta
Atlanta loves a lemon-pepper wing. It wasn’t until Avize opened that Atlanta discovered it also loves lemon-pepper frog legs. The Alpine-Atlantan cooking of Avize’s Karl Gorline slips right into the “tradition of Atlanta chefs expanding upon Southern food by leaning into their heritage,” said Pervaiz Shallwani at Bon Appétit when picking Avize for one of 2025’s Best New Restaurants.

Comadre Panadería, Austin
You know you are in a Mexican panadería when you spot a concha, those domed, crackly pastries named for their resemblance to a shell. And you know you are at Comadre when those conchas have a red-berry coating or are loaded with chunks of chocolate. 

Whether it’s pink cake with locally milled corn flour or a delicate polvoron with Texas pecans and mesquite, Comadre focuses on “making food that’s nostalgic and makes you feel warm and fuzzy while still honoring really nutritious ingredients,” owner Mariela Camacho said to the outlet. She won a coveted 2025 Best New Chef nom from Food & Wine. 

Mawn, Philadelphia
A little Cambodia and quite Philly, Mawn is a noodle house that stretches not just its dough but also its wings. Chef Phila Lorn snagged a 2025 Best New Chef award from Food & Wine for his free-wheeling cooking that “casts a wide net of Southeast Asian flavors,” said the outlet. 

Steak comes seasoned with prohok (fermented fish paste). Cold noodles are slicked with tahini, ground lamb and chile jam. An entire fish is served with fish sauce vinaigrette. And rice pudding, in various forms, is always on the menu. It’s all easy to admire. What’s more challenging is snagging a reservation.