CTA Chief Slams Trump Tariff Plan in Main CES Address

Tariffs “are taxes paid for by American businesses and the American people and the world,” Shapiro said. Touching on another hot-button political issue, Shapiro called for “sensible” immigration reform, but said U.S. policies should promote immigration by “highly skilled” workers.

CTA warned in a new report that tariffs could mean a decline of up to $143 billion in U.S. consumer purchasing power in just their first year and a decline of as much as 37% in the purchase of smartphones (see 2501060057).

Shapiro noted the dramatic changes in government coming this year. “These days, it feels like everyone is pivoting.” The U.S. and Canada “are in the midst of a dramatic pivot in government, but so is the rest of the world," he said. “Progress has never come from standing still,” adding, “We have to adopt or become obsolete.”

“Successful companies don’t just ride the wave of change, they create it,” Shapiro said. Developments like AI, autonomous vehicles and quantum computing “aren’t just changing industries, they’re solving some of the world’s biggest challenges.” For instance, AI “is revolutionizing automation and decision-making.” Autonomous vehicles make roads safer and provide new options for the elderly and people with disabilities, he added.

AI is expected to be the hot topic of CES this year. Accordingly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in the opening keynote address Monday, highlighted “agentic AI” as the next key development. “The age of AI agentics is here,” he said, predicting that it would offer a “multitrillion-dollar opportunity” and change how people work. “AI agents are the new digital workforce,” he said: “The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future.”

AI is for decision-making, which requires personal data to train the AI model, said Nicole Peng, research vice president at Informa. People will “stop and think” about whether they want to share the data with their company and the “public world,” and what the risks are of sharing, she said.

Jack Narcotta, principal analyst-smart home at Omdia, said the use of data is an “existential question” for companies offering smart-home technology. Data is “very personal,” he said: Beyond just user IDs and passwords, “you’re now talking about palm prints and potentially eye scans and pictures of your face.” People must understand how the data can help them, or they won’t be willing to share it, he said.

Speakers agreed that one issue is how quickly consumers will learn to use AI capabilities on smartphones and other devices.

Maite Bezerra, principal analyst at Wards Intelligence, recalled the “learning curve” with her first smartphone, when she learned about using apps. “Now, I think, there will be a learning curve on how do I use these [AI] agents and how do I take best advantage.” People have devices with new capabilities but often don’t understand how to use them, she said.

New technologies on wireless devices must be user friendly and produce reliable results that consumers want, said Mark Linton, Microsoft vice president-partner sales. “If you’re using a bot, and it hallucinates, do you go back to use that bot again” and do you trust that AI service with your data? “If it’s not easy to use, you won’t use it at all."

Durga Malladi, senior vice president-technology planning & edge solutions at Qualcomm Technologies, said his parents can't use all the features on their smartphones. “I’m sure they want to, but they just can’t,” he said: “We have made our devices so complex and that’s what makes them really awesome, but they really have to be easier to use as well.”

Malladi said after a presentation he made last year, someone with vision impairment approached him. The man said “the smartphone revolution” had passed him by, and he didn’t know how to use his phone. Accordingly, we must think about more than just “the tech-savvy crowd” when we design phones, Malladi said.