What to say? As corporate chieftains prepare for a round of no doubt excruciatingly painful fourth-quarter conference calls with Wall Street, they find themselves on unusually uncertain ground.

As the vegan lifestyle merges into the mainstream, fashion designers who appeal to that market strive to grow their business to the next level with venture capital and an organized supply chain. At a panel hosted by PETA in Los Angeles, designers from Vaute Couture, Delikate Rayne, Nicora Shoes and Susi Studio shared their strategies for sticking to their ethos of eschewing animal-based products while tapping into conventional business practices adopted by the apparel industry.

Donald Trump the candidate denounced China's trade policies. But one of his first acts as president handed the country its best chance yet to rival the U.S. as global economic leader.

Buyers from all over the world flock to Gitman Bros. to get a piece of timeless American style: oxford shirts, plaids and rep ties often cut slightly slimmer to appeal to the trendy and urbane.

Eladio Pop greets me for a tour of his 30-acre acre farm with a football-size cacao pod strapped to his back and a braided reed across his forehead. "Welcome to my paradise," he says, as we head into his Belizean rain forest brimming with cacao trees, pineapple shrubs, banana and mango trees, coconuts palms and a host of medicinal plants.

USC mechanical engineering junior Stephanie Balais developed a passion for aerospace after joining the university's AeroDesign team and helping to construct an airplane fuselage hours before transporting the plane to a competition in Kansas.

With each provocative tweet aimed at China from the president-elect, David Vered worries about a trade war that would hurt profits at his Los Angeles jeans company.