EXCLUSIVE: Whether heading into Chicago or leaving it behind on the Stevenson Expressway, commuters are driving past a new billboard campaign from Florida’s top business lobby.

Expanding its multimillion-dollar recruitment campaign into the Midwest, the Florida Chamber of Commerce is launching its next “Free Enterprise” billboard campaign targeting Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as the Chamber says data shows billions of dollars in income moving from Illinois to Florida.

“The billboards will look very much like the billboard we did in New York, but we’ll have two of them in Chicago, and we’ll be naming Governor Pritzker the runner-up ‘Florida Economic Developer of the Year,’” Florida Chamber President and CEO Mark Wilson exclusively told Fox News Digital.

“This isn’t personal, right? This is about policy. And the person responsible for all of Illinois’s policies is the governor there, just like our governor in Florida has top responsibility for what we do here,” he added. “When we look at how unsafe Chicago is, when we look at the extraordinarily high taxes that we have in Chicago — I’m from there, by the way, and so I have firsthand knowledge on what’s happening in Illinois and what’s happening in Chicago… And all of Illinois is losing people, more businesses are leaving Illinois than are moving to Illinois, and Illinois is losing billions of taxable income. And so the whole state is in a death spiral.”

FLORIDA CHAMBER CEO: COMPANIES EYE SUNSHINE STATE ‘FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY’ AFTER VIRAL MAMDANI BILLBOARD

An image of Pritzker shrugging can be seen on billboards facing traffic in both directions along I-55, with the ads naming him runner-up and thanking him for jobs moving to Florida. Their launch comes just over one month after the Chamber named New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani Florida’s “Economic Developer of the Year” as part of a Times Square campaign. The Chamber says the campaigns are intended to argue that progressive tax and economic policies encourage wealth, businesses and families to move to Florida.

Chicago is the next stop for the Florida Chamber’s “Free Enterprise” campaign, where they’re calling out Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. (Getty Images)

“Everything we do is scorecard driven, and we follow the data,” Wilson said when asked why Chicago was the next stop on the campaign. “New York earned the number one spot, and if you look at the data, Illinois earns the number two spot… Florida’s grown by about 1.9 million residents and Illinois’s lost [75,000] or 100,000 residents over the same period of time… When we look at taxable income that’s moved from Illinois to Florida, it’s over $2 billion that has left Illinois and relocated to Florida.”

Wilson also pointed to high-profile corporate exits from Chicago — most notably billionaire Ken Griffin moving hedge fund giant Citadel to Miami — as evidence for his argument that crime and tax burdens can drive employers out of the state.

“When bullet holes emerged in the Citadel building in Chicago, that was sort of one of the straws, right? You can’t decriminalize things and then tell everybody you have a safer community… people don’t buy that, and it’s not true,” the CEO noted.

“They’re raising taxes on the very people that are investing in manufacturing, they’re investing in the community. And in fact, people like Ken Griffin are investing hundreds of millions of dollars and philanthropy into public education into making our communities safer,” he continued. “This is about: bad policy in Illinois is moving Illinois in the wrong direction. It’s made Illinois less safe, it’s made it less competitive, and it’s made it a more expensive place to be.”

The campaign isn’t just targeting hedge funds and billionaires — Wilson said the Chamber is directly courting Illinois’ advanced manufacturing, aviation and tech startup sectors.

“Advanced manufacturing, for example, is one of our top priorities in Florida. We’re one of the only states with a chief manufacturing officer,” Wilson explained. “Florida is currently the No. 1 state in the country for new business startups. So as people are coming up with good ideas in Illinois only to have their government policies quash them, we want them to know that they’re more than welcome here in the Sunshine State.”

According to Wilson, the initial Times Square campaign pushed the Chamber’s overall earned-media valuation to more than $100 million. While he declined to disclose how much the Chamber is spending on the billboards, he said, “it takes millions of dollars a year to do what the Florida Chamber of Commerce does.”

“In Illinois, what we’re hoping is that the governor’s office reflects on the data,” Wilson said. “Illinois has half as many people as Florida, but their budget and their debt is significantly larger than Florida… And what we hope to hear is that Illinois wants to take us up on our offer to join forces and introduce free enterprise into every aspect of Illinois. The people of Illinois deserve that. The businesses of Illinois deserve that.”

Gov. Pritzker did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Looking ahead, Wilson acknowledged that Florida’s rapid economic boom brings a heavy responsibility for state and business leaders to avoid the very pitfalls currently plaguing northern hubs.

“The biggest risk to the Florida model is that we allow to happen in Florida, what leaders in Illinois, New York and California allowed to happen there,” Wilson warned. “If you go back a few decades, California was a national leader. Everybody wanted to be like California… and they let it go.”

Wilson said Florida’s growth brings a responsibility for state and business leaders to avoid problems he sees in states including Illinois, New York and California.

“I often hear a refrain of, ‘Hey, at least we’re not Illinois or California or New York.’ And the challenge is we need to compare ourselves to Florida’s potential, right? Florida versus Florida.”

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Though the Chicago billboards will remain active along I-55 for just one week, Wilson said the Free Enterprise Florida campaign will continue, with additional states potentially targeted.

“Our goal in all of this is to give a wake-up call to the residents of these states,” Wilson said. “We want America to win. And if you want to look at the future of what America can look like, you look no further than what Florida has done.”

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TUCSON, Ariz. — A self-described online investigator has raised new questions about a photo showing Tommaso Cioni, the son-in-law of missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, seated with an unidentified man, the latest in a series of unverified claims that have continued to circulate online more than seven months into the investigation.

Guthrie, the mother of “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on February 1 from her home in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills area. Authorities believe she was taken from her home the night before. Cioni, who is married to Guthrie’s daughter Annie, is among the last people known to have seen her before her disappearance; according to reports, Guthrie had dinner at Annie’s home that evening before Cioni drove her back to her own residence.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which is leading the investigation, has stated that no members of the Guthrie family, including Cioni, are considered suspects in the case. Despite that clearance, online interest in Cioni and his wife has continued, fueled in part by a series of posts from an account identifying itself as JLR, run by a user who describes himself as an independent investigator. That same account previously claimed, without independent verification, that Cioni and Annie had left Tucson, and has separately suggested the couple has been withholding information related to the case.

In the most recent post, JLR shared a photo showing Cioni wearing a sleeveless T-shirt while sharing a meal with another man wearing an orange or peach-colored shirt and sporting a white beard. “Tommaso Cioni eating with a mystery man. A frequently seen acquaintance. Who is he? Where is Nancy Guthrie?” JLR wrote alongside the image. The post did not identify the second man in the photograph, and no public evidence has emerged connecting him to Guthrie’s disappearance.

The post drew a range of reactions from other social media users, illustrating the mix of speculation and skepticism that has characterized much of the online commentary surrounding the case. One commenter speculated about a possible family resemblance between Cioni and the unidentified man, writing, “I would guess related or closely resembles. Look at the fact they both are wearing t shirts with circle logos on the front. Kinda odd.” Another commenter offered a more measured response while still entertaining the possibility of a connection to the case, writing, “Maybe a relative. Could be possible the porch guy. You never know. If not family that done this to Nancy it has to be someone they know. But family isn’t off the table… No but elderly person should ever had to go through what Nancy possibly went through So sad.” A third commenter addressed JLR directly rather than commenting on the photo itself, writing, “The Guthrie family should show some appreciation to you. You are the only one that keeps their mom as a priority. You are a good one!”

None of these reactions constitute confirmed evidence linking the man in the photograph, or Cioni himself, to Guthrie’s disappearance. The renewed attention on Cioni also follows earlier public comments from former NewsNation journalist Ashleigh Banfield, who suggested Cioni could potentially be considered a suspect in the case, a characterization that remains at odds with the sheriff’s department’s own public statements clearing the family.

Investigators have continued to describe the case as active rather than cold, even in the absence of new public developments regarding a named suspect. The FBI has previously released doorbell camera footage showing a masked, armed individual at Guthrie’s home around the time of her disappearance, and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department has said its investigation continues to focus on forensic and digital evidence analysis. No suspect has been publicly named in the seven-plus months since Guthrie went missing.

The recurring pattern of online speculation surrounding Cioni and his wife reflects a broader dynamic that has defined much of the public conversation around Guthrie’s disappearance since it first drew national attention, driven in significant part by Savannah Guthrie’s prominence as a longtime television anchor. Self-described investigators and amateur online sleuths have continued to scrutinize photographs, social media activity and personal details associated with the Guthrie family throughout the case, often without the kind of independent verification that would typically accompany claims made through official law enforcement channels.

Authorities have not commented specifically on the photo shared by JLR or on the identity of the man pictured alongside Cioni. As with previous claims circulated by the same account and others like it, the latest post amounts to unverified online speculation rather than a development confirmed by investigators actively working the case.

With no new suspect named and the investigation continuing to rely on forensic and digital evidence review, the gap between the volume of online theorizing surrounding Guthrie’s disappearance and the pace of confirmed information released by investigators has remained a defining feature of the case throughout the seven months since Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson-area home.

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Trump’s new tariff tantrums

Textile stocks fell up to 5% on Monday after Trump signed the bipartisan Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 into law, paving the way for increased economic pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

The new law gives the Trump administration the power to impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries buying Russian oil and gas, potentially exposing major buyers such as India and China to higher duties on exports to the US, the single-largest market for India’s textile and apparel exporters.

“Any additional tariffs under this Act will be very difficult to absorb for the MSME-dominated Indian textile and apparel sector already under stress due to several factors, including the continuing turmoil in West Asia. It will severely impact our ability to sell in the United States, our most significant market by a distance,” said Ashwin Chandran, Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI).

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Also read | Trump’s tariff tantrums return? Gokaldas Exports, other textile stocks drop up to 5% after Trump signs Russia sanctions bill

India to cut down Russian oil imports?

Indian refiners could now cut back purchases of crude shipments from Russia after the sweeping US sanctions bill, Reuters reported. The government could limit Russian crude imports in the near term to 20% to 30% of India’s total in order to shed its position as the top buyer of Moscow’s seaborne oil, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, adding that the government meanwhile continues to negotiate with the US.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington this week. Xi Jinping is set to arrive in the US on Wednesday, marking the first time in more than a decade. Markets will closely watch for signs of an extension of a tariff truce announced after a Trump-Xi summit in South Korea last October and set to expire on November 10. That deal paused a trade war in which the world’s two largest economies threatened global supply chains with tit-for-tat tariffs that topped 100%.

India-New Zealand FTA

At the same time, India and New Zealand finalised the free trade agreement (FTA) on Monday which is set to come into force on October 20. “Almost exactly three years ago, I committed that National would secure a free trade deal with India within our first term if elected. And today, we finalised the deal, which comes into force next month,” New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in a post on X.

“It is exciting to think of how many businesses will grow as a result of this FTA, and then consider what that means for them, for the people who work for them, and for the country as a whole. It means more opportunities for exporters, stronger growth for businesses, and more jobs and higher incomes for New Zealand,” Luxon added.

Also read | India-New Zealand FTA finalised; 100% of Indian exports to get duty-free access from October 20

Disclaimer: This article has been written by Debaroti Adhikary, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an Investment Adviser. Debaroti Adhikary and his/her ‘relative(s)’ (as defined under Section 2(77) of the Companies Act, 2013) do not hold any financial interest in the companies mentioned in this article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution. They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of The Economic Times Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment. Brokerage disclaimers here.

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Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

This article was written by

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.