Good morning. Today, e-commerce sellers prepare for the end of that lucrative loophole; Meta projects confidence amid economic anxiety; Bezos-backed Slate Auto adopts the inverse of Tesla’s launch strategy; and an irate judge slaps down an Apple fee for developers.

Friday’s looming demise of the so-called de minimis tariff exemption on cheap Chinese goods is causing big e-commerce players to hike prices and threatening the business models of others, Liz Young and Shen Lu write.

Companies are “thinking about this in existential terms,” said Juan Pellerano-Rendón, CMO at logistics company Swap Commerce. “Everyone’s trying to use different tactics, but at the end of the day, I don’t think that any brand can wholly absorb these changes to de minimis.”

Orthopedic-shoe seller Kuru Footwear has been moving its China-made inventory in bulk from its usual warehouse in Canada to one in the U.S. so it can at least pay tariffs on the wholesale price instead of the retail value.

Kuru also ran a sale over the past week to fulfill as many U.S. orders of China-made goods as possible out of Canada before May 2.

Meta said growth would hold steady in the coming months, blunting concern that tariffs would hurt its ad sales, Meghan Bobrowsky reports.

The company in recent years has become more dependent on Chinese marketers seeking U.S. consumers.

But Meta projected sales for the current quarter would rise between 8% and 16% year-over-year, sending shares up more than 3% in after-hours trading.

Meta’s chief financial officer said that the company has seen some pullback from Asian advertisers anticipating the end of the de minimis loophole.

Even so, however, Meta’s results appeared to show less impact from tariffs compared to peers. Snap shares plunged Tuesday after it said it was seeing some headwinds and declined to provide a revenue estimate.

More tea leaves from earnings: McDonald’s regulars are reducing their visits, fueling worries about an economic malaise fanning across the restaurant sector. Brands are pushing deals to try to improve sales. [WSJ]

The EV startup Slate Auto has unveiled an exquisitely disruptive mini-pickup, to be made in the U.S. and priced under $27,500, Dan Neil writes.

Based in Troy, Michigan, and backed by billionaire investors including Jeff Bezos, Slate will take an unorthodox approach to the American market.

Rather than starting with a high-profit luxury model to bootstrap company finances—the Tesla Way—Slate will address the mass market with a “radically simple, radically affordable” product, aggregating razor-thin profits into a business case.

The auto industry has been so focused on “autonomy and technology,” Chief Commercial Officer Jeremy Snyder said in a presentation, “it’s driven prices to a place that most Americans can’t afford.”

A federal judge hammered Apple for violating an antitrust ruling on App Store rules and took the extraordinary step of referring the matter to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation, Rolfe Winkler reports.

“Apple willfully chose not to comply with this court’s injunction,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in a ruling specifically chiding CEO Tim Cook.

Rogers in 2021 had ordered Apple to let app developers send customers to their own websites in order to get around Apple’s fees of up to 30%.

Apple responded by making developers pay a different 27% fee if they use an alternate payment method. The judge said that and other barriers the company put in place “thwarted the injunction’s goals.”

Cracker Barrel is updating its menu and decor, but some diners miss the old country charm. [WSJ]

Panera Bread introduced a Croissant Clutch handbag with jokes about “carb couture” and dreams of matching the success of its earlier Panera BAGuette. [Fast Company] 

Prada reported higher revenue for the first quarter as its Miu Miu brand continued to boom, helping the luxury group escape the spending downturn haunting the sector. [WSJ]

Retail startup Offe Market is trying to reinvent the off-price model as a “T.J. Maxx for indie brands.” [Modern Retail]

Google added some long-awaited transparency to its Performance Max ad product, which some marketers have called a “black box.” [AdExchanger]

Disney brought together its in-house creative agencies under Chief Brand Officer Asad Ayaz. [Deadline] 

The CEO of Madwell sent an email to staffers saying the troubled independent agency would shut down at 11:59 p.m. last night. [Adweek]