By Alina Lee

In March 2025, Poppi made headlines with a $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo that caught the attention of investors and media alike. The prebiotic soda brand, founded by Allison Ellsworth, began in 2018 as “Mother Beverage” — a homemade apple cider vinegar drink sold at farmers markets before landing a spot on Shark Tank.

For years, the soda industry has seen a steady decline, struggling to keep up with growing consumer demand for healthier options. Meanwhile, drinks like kombucha, wellness shots, and gut health supplements have a loyal niche following but are rarely fun or easy to love; most come with a vinegary taste, muted branding, and a vaguely clinical feel.

So how did Poppi manage to combine gut health and soda and turn them into a vibrant, viral brand with mass appeal, especially among Gen Z women? It leveraged the power of TikTok.

In 2021, Ellsworth posted a TikTok video sharing Poppi’s origin story. The video went viral, generating $100,000 in sales within 24 hours. From there, Poppi leaned all in on content. Recognizing the platform’s potential, the company hired a dedicated community manager, shifted a portion of its marketing budget to TikTok, and began experimenting with creator partnerships and trend-driven content. Soon, videos featuring organized fridge restocks, gut health Q&As, and wellness routines highlighting the brightly colored cans helped the brand build an organic following that blended seamlessly into Gen Z and millennial culture. Throughout 2023 and 2024, influencers like Alix Earle, Avery Woods, and Jackie Aina featured Poppi in their GRWM videos, placing the soda squarely alongside beauty staples like Glossier, Milk Makeup, and Laniege, positioning Poppi as just as essential to the daily routine. 

Poppi’s product delivered on its promise — a soda with prebiotic benefits, low sugar, and good flavor — but its brand appeal was just as important. Consumers weren’t just drinking it for the health benefits; they were opting into a lifestyle. The brand also blurred the line between consumer and creator. In 2024, Poppi gifted custom sweatsuits to social media creators as part of a Coachella partnership. Later that year, they launched a limited-edition Target apparel line featuring the drink’s iconic color palette. By capitalizing on the kind of exclusivity that influencer culture thrives on, the company turned its loyal following into a walking billboard for the brand, solidifying the theme of community that had characterized their entire advertising journey. Thanks to TikTok, when you drank Poppi, you didn’t just feel healthier; you felt like you were joining an exclusive club, now with its own merch. 

This “grassroots” influencer marketing approach extended to the brand’s college sorority partnerships, an ideal slice of Poppi’s target demographic. Sororities were already known to post coordinated, high-visibility content during the viral #RushTok recruitment season. By sponsoring events with banners, branded T-shirts, and product samples, Poppi inserted itself directly into that ecosystem and enabled sororities to do the content creation for them. 

As Poppi’s presence grew, so did its celebrity alignment. In June 2023, the brand became the official sponsor of the Miami Pickleball Club, co-owned by Naomi Osaka, Patrick Mahomes, Kygo, and others, tapping into one of Gen Z and Millennials’ fastest-growing sports. Less than one year later, in February 2024, Poppi dropped a Super Bowl commercial (its first-ever national commercial, and the most-watched ad of the game), capturing 29.1 million views. Then came their partnership with 7-Eleven, which they celebrated with an interactive 7-Eleven pop-up complete with slushies, merch, and Instagram-ready installations. Their earlier pop-ups — Hamptons houses, U.S. Open collabs, Bloomingdale’s with Marc Jacobs — had already been blurring the line between soda and lifestyle.

Now, in 2025, it’s clear that behind the aesthetics was a deliberate strategy. Poppi spent years building brand loyalty with a very specific audience in mind: Gen Z and Millennials, particularly Gen Z and Millennial women. From TikTok to Target shelves, every move was designed to meet that demographic where they already were and make them feel like the brand was built for them.

In the end, Poppi’s success didn’t come from simply creating a new category. Their ability to organically embed themselves within Gen Z internet behavior was a crisp execution of marketing fundamentals: know your audience, speak their language, and show up where it matters. Rather than chasing trends, Poppi positioned itself to become one, prioritizing community-building and continually reinforcing those bonds through relatable content and experiences. And in doing so, it showed what it takes to build the next generation of consumer brands. 

By Nathan Balis 

During the last two decades, China has outpaced the U.S. in Africa, building a vast economic footprint through trade, investment, and infrastructure. While Beijing’s engagement is slowing, Washington’s response remains tepid — risking a long-term loss of influence on the continent. The Biden administration has taken steps in the right direction, increasing engagement and investment, but these efforts remain insufficient. Meanwhile, a return to the transactional foreign policy of the Trump era — marked by skepticism of long-term development aid and attacks on USAID — would only weaken America’s ability to build lasting economic partnerships on the continent. To compete effectively, the U.S. must commit to sustained, strategic investment that fosters genuine economic growth and stability in Africa.

In 2000, General Secretary Jiang Zemin of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced the Go Out policy as a national strategy, incentivizing its enterprises to invest overseas. In 2013, Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), seeking to establish global trade routes, including in Africa, by investing in infrastructure projects such as railways, ports, highways, and energy facilities. In addition, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has met every three years since 2000, creating three-year action plans that include Chinese pledges of loans, grants, and export credits.

China is now sub-Saharan Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner, with 20% of the region’s exports going to China and about 16% of imports coming from China, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Simultaneously, China has become the largest bilateral creditor to Africa. China’s share of total sub-Saharan African external public debt grew from 2% before 2005 to 17% by 2021, according to the World Bank. Furthermore, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region has surged, accounting for nearly 23% of annual FDI inflows in 2021. Through three principal geoeconomic instruments — trade, investment and credit — China has achieved a staggering level of influence across the continent.

Yet since 2017, Beijing’s economic engagement with Africa has lost momentum. China’s lending to sub-Saharan Africa has dwindled, dropping from nearly $29 billion in 2016 to under $1 billion in 2022—its lowest level in two decades. A struggling real estate sector, demographic pressures, and external shocks like COVID-19 and trade tariffs have all weighed on growth. The slowdown has consequences: the IMF estimates that a one percentage point dip in China’s growth rate drags Africa’s average growth down by 0.25 points within a year. Additionally, China’s shift toward green energy and Russian oil is squeezing African exporters by reshaping trade flows.

This shift presents the U.S. with an opening to expand its economic presence in Africa while promoting better lending standards and financial transparency. Chinese lending to the region increasingly undermines debt transparency, including terms that bar debtors from revealing terms or even the existence of certain loans. Debt transparency is crucial to mitigating risks of armed conflicts, trade fragmentation, inflation, and weak growth. Additionally, China frequently retains the right to demand repayment at any time, enabling its use of funding as diplomatic leverage.

With China retreating from major infrastructure projects, Washington has a prime opportunity to step in. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has identified three key sectors — health, clean energy, and transportation — where the U.S. could make the most impact. Strategic investments in these sectors would not only support Africa’s development priorities but also reinforce America’s economic leadership by:

1.    Leveraging the Development Finance Corporation (DFC): By offering better financing terms for African governments and businesses, the U.S. would unlock investment in sectors where Chinese engagement has slowed, such as infrastructure.

2.    Strengthening trade partnerships: The African Continental Free Trade Area represents a massive opportunity. Washington should explore ways to align U.S. trade policy with Africa’s regional trade initiatives and diversification objectives more closely.

3.    Developing early-stage pipelines: Unlike China’s state-driven economic model, U.S. firms often struggle to find viable, well-structured projects. Early-stage collaboration with African governments could improve project pipelines and create more opportunities for U.S. private-sector investment.

4.    Scaling up health and humanitarian assistance: Expanding programs in vaccine distribution and medical infrastructure strengthens diplomatic and cultural ties while opening doors for economic collaboration.

President Biden’s recent visit to Angola and his administration’s $600 million railway investment mark a step in the right direction but remain negligible compared to China’s multi-billion-dollar commitments. U.S.-Africa trade, currently valued at $69 billion, still lags far behind China-Africa trade, which stands at $262 billion.

Despite Trump’s late-term embrace of foreign aid, most notably through the creation of the DFC, his recent attacks on USAID and unnecessary antagonization toward the South African government are strategic missteps. The abrupt termination of numerous global programs, including critical health initiatives in countries like Uganda, undermines U.S. soft power and creates a void that Beijing is eager to fill. As China’s influence grows, African nations have increasingly aligned with it on key global issues, such as Taiwan, with 53 of 54 African nations recently signing a joint statement supporting China’s reunification efforts. If Washington hopes to maintain support and credibility in global conflicts, it must recognize that economic leadership in Africa is not just about development; it’s about securing partnerships in an era of intensifying great-power competition.

By Nathan Balis

As former President Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House in less than three months, United States trade policy appears poised for a dramatic shift toward protectionism. His proposals to set a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and a 10% to 20% blanket tariff on all imports promise to have severe economic consequences.

The complex, long-term effects of tariffs, compounded by the political rhetoric surrounding them, have fueled controversy. No matter how politically clouded the issue of tariffs has become, data from Trump’s 2018 tariffs – maintained by President Biden – shows they have had net negative effects on the domestic economy. 

While Trump’s tariffs may have provided short-term employment boosts in select industries, the long-term economic costs are steep: an estimated 142,000 jobs lost in downstream sectors, $625 per household in higher costs, a 0.1% reduction in capital stock, and a 0.2% hit to GDP. Combined, these policies amount to an $80 billion annual tax on Americans according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. 

President-elect Trump’s plans for his second term are projected be more extreme, including hiking taxes by another $524 billion annually and shrinking employment by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs. These values don’t reflect the total costs associated with retaliatory measures and a global trade war.

Indeed, tariffs are hard to justify on economic grounds alone. They must offer clear strategic value. They may, however, be warranted when national security is at risk, as outlined in Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

For instance, tariffs may be justified to reshore critical industries vital to U.S. defense and technology. The pandemic’s disruption of global supply chains has highlighted the need to reduce reliance on adversarial nations.

However, imposing harsh tariffs on key U.S. allies, such as South Korea, Japan, Germany, and France, risks undermining our nation’s alliances, which are our most vital foreign policy asset. This is of ever-increasing relevance in a world already destabilized by ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as a growing global challenge to U.S. power and democracy posed by authoritarian regimes.

Rather than relying on broad tariffs, United States trade policy should prioritize reshoring critical industries – such as semiconductor manufacturing – not only to the U.S. mainland, but also to allied nations with established infrastructure. This approach makes economic sense. For instance, South Korea, a key ally with a strong semiconductor industry, can absorb production more efficiently than newly built factories in the U.S. While the CHIPS and Science Act is a positive step, it cannot overcome the U.S. shortage of skilled labor needed to scale up advanced chip production. More importantly, reshoring industries to close allies strengthens U.S. alliances by deepening economic ties. The relocation of key supply chains to trusted partners offers the U.S. a more sustainable solution than unilateral tariffs, which risk isolating essential allies.

With global economic and geopolitical challenges mounting, U.S. trade policy will define its resilience. While tariffs carry economic costs, when applied strategically, they can enhance national security by protecting key supply chains and reinforcing alliances. The current steel tariffs are a step forward but should be fine-tuned through closer collaboration with Japan, a key U.S. ally and the world’s third-largest steel producer. By contrast, high tariffs on washing machines lack economic justification. In a world where alliances are as vital to security as domestic economic strength, the U.S. must craft trade policies with caution and foresight.