Business and Economy

Trump seeks to shore up support among rural voters hard hit by tariffs, economic fallout of war with Iran.

United States President Donald Trump has sought to reassure farmers hard-hit by tariffs and the economic fallout of the US-Israeli war with Iran during a visit to Wisconsin.

The stop in Chippewa Falls on Friday for a farming roundtable comes months before the midterm elections in November. Trump was seeking to bolster support for Republican US Representative Derrick Van Orden, who has been targeted by Democrats hoping to take control of the chamber.

Van Orden has closely aligned with Trump and has long espoused the president as the best leader for rural Americans. Democrat challenger Rebecca Cook has proven a strong fundraiser and has led Van Orden in recent polls.

Democrats are considered favourites to take control of the US House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans, in the midterms.

“I love the place,” Trump said, referring to Wisconsin, “and hopefully you’re going to be voting Republican, because frankly, Republican is – I call it the sane way to go.”

Success for Democrats would allow the party to seriously restrict Trump’s agenda in the final two years of his term.

The Wisconsin visit was also more broadly aimed at shoring up support among farmers, who had largely backed the president in his 2024 election bid.

Farmers have been particularly hard-hit by Trump’s aggressive tariff policies, with many countries limiting imports of US products, notably soybeans, in response. The tariffs have also made importing items needed for daily operations more expensive.

The administration has sought to offset the fallout with temporary aid packages for farmers.

At the same time, fertiliser costs have surged since the US and Israel launched the war with Iran on February 28, with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz increasing prices of several key components, including urea.

An April survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 70 percent of farmers in the US reported they cannot afford all of their fertiliser needs.

The average gas price of $4.04 per ⁠gallon of petrol this week was also $1.08 higher than a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association.

Trump assured those gathered that the administration had “largely finished” the war “one way or the other”.

He vowed fertiliser and gas prices would come “way down”.

The visit comes as several polls have shown Trump’s overall approval rating hovering at all-time lows, about or under 40 percent.

His approval was lower on specific issues, with a Marquette Law School poll conducted from May 20-26 finding just 19 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of gas prices. Only 22 percent approved of his handling of inflation and cost of living.

Several top Republicans have also warned that several of Trump’s recent actions could risk alienating voters concerned about the economy.

That included a $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation fund” launched by the Department of Justice to repay individuals, including Trump supporters, who allege they were victims of political prosecutions.

The Department of Justice has since abandoned the plan.

Trump has also requested $1bn in funding for security for his controversial White House ballroom, despite earlier saying that taxpayers would not have to foot the bill.

Anthropic is proposing that the world’s top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, warning that the technology is improving so quickly that there’s a risk humans would lose control.

The company behind the Claude chatbot said in a blog post on Thursday that, as cutting-edge AI gets increasingly faster at carrying out tasks, “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause” its development.

Anthropic said its internal research institute plans to explore the issue in collaboration with others and “take actions” to help build the systems for a credible slowdown or pause, without being more specific.

Anthropic rival OpenAI argued for a different approach in a report published on Wednesday, saying that “democratic governments — not private companies acting alone — must ultimately determine the rules, safeguards, and accountability mechanisms”.

“Our view is that decisions about the pace of AI innovation should not be left to any one lab, company, or special interest group,” it said.

AI models are getting faster, with rapid increases in how quickly they can carry out software tasks like coding on their own, Anthropic said in its post. Based on current trends and given enough computing power, an AI system could be able to design and develop its own successor, in what is known as “recursive self-improvement”.

Self-building AI would be a major technological milestone that would bring benefits in science, healthcare and other areas, Anthropic said, but it “also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems”.

Some tech industry figures have long warned of such a scenario.

Anthropic’s post comes after a different warning this week from a team of researchers at the University of Toronto who showed how AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI “worm” that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network.

“I think it’s really important that people understand that it’s not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns,” lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview.

The authors of the Anthropic post, company cofounder Jack Clark and Marina Favaro, head of its research institute, said the pause would be used to enable “societal structures and alignment research” to keep up with AI advances. Alignment is industry shorthand for making sure the technology matches human values and intentions.

The proposed coordination would let advanced AI labs verify that global rivals have actually stopped or slowed their work, “and that a bad actor could not use the auspices of a coordinated slowdown to jump ahead in secret”.

The company said a coordinated global mechanism is needed because, without it, a slowdown in AI development could let the “least cautious” players catch up and add to pressure on companies and governments as they make tough choices about AI safety.

Fears that advanced AI systems may get out of human control and cause societal harm have risen as the technology becomes increasingly capable. Anthropic’s own Mythos model sent shockwaves through industries, including banking and software, earlier this year with its ability to find vulnerabilities in existing code.

But regulation has been slow, especially in the US, where most leading AI labs are based. A Trump administration executive order earlier this week put the onus on the labs themselves, asking them to voluntarily submit their most capable models for government cybersecurity testing before public release.

Safety focus

AI researchers have also urged a pause before, but have had little success. Elon Musk, who owns AI lab xAI, was among the backers of a 2023 push by the non-profit Future of Life Institute to halt AI development for six months to allow time for safety guardrails.

Anthropic has long positioned itself as a safety-focused AI lab. Earlier this year, it refused to let the US military use its models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, prompting backlash from the government, which put it on a national security blacklist, set to take effect later in 2026.

Anthropic’s post comes as the company and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI race to sell shares on the stock market, in an IPO that could value Anthropic at nearly a trillion dollars.

Papernot notified Canadian cybersecurity authorities prior to releasing his report, which shows how researchers developed the worm in a laboratory by using an “open-source” AI tool that is easy for software developers to cheaply access and modify.

“In the past, cyber attackers would focus on targets that are very high value,” he said. “Banking systems, hospitals, electricity grids, water treatment systems, schools.”

Papernot agreed that there should be more collaboration between companies, government agencies and academic researchers to develop countermeasures as AI-powered hacking tools supercharge the search for computer vulnerabilities.

“That old laptop you have in your basement that you don’t check on regularly doesn’t seem like a very high-value target, but it can be used as a launch pad to attack these higher-value targets,” he said. “Anything connected to the internet is now at risk because of how low the cost has become to mount these cyberattacks.”

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is targeting a valuation of nearly $1.77 trillion in its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), paving the way for the largest stock market debut in history.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, SpaceX said that it plans to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, raising approximately $75bn.

The eye-popping valuation would make SpaceX the world’s seventh-largest company by market capitalisation, ahead of Musk’s electric vehicle maker Tesla and social media giant Meta, and just behind Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.

It would also eclipse energy giant Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut, which raised $26bn at a valuation of $1.7 trillion.

Musk, who holds a roughly 42 percent stake in SpaceX, is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire upon the company’s debut on the New York-based Nasdaq stock exchange on June 12.

Despite the public listing, Musk will retain effective control of SpaceX with more than 82 percent of voting rights, the result of a dual-class stock structure that grants certain shares 10 votes instead of one.

The Texas-based firm’s decision to set a specific share price ahead of its IPO marks a break from usual practice.

Companies preparing for a public listing usually announce a preliminary price range that can be adjusted based on investor interest.

“The genuine surprise is that SpaceX fixed a price before the investor roadshow began,” Fabien Yip, a market analyst at online trading and investment company IG Group, told Al Jazeera.

“To me, this reflects Musk’s control over the deal terms and his confidence that the book will fill.”

Founded by Musk in 2002, SpaceX is best known for designing and launching rockets, spacecraft and reusable launch vehicles on behalf of NASA and private companies.

The company also provides internet services and artificial intelligence models through its Starlink and xAI divisions.

Musk has outlined lofty ambitions for SpaceX, including to establish a “self-sustaining” city on Mars, “make life multiplanetary,” and “extend the light of consciousness to the stars”.

SpaceX’s listing will be a test of investors’ confidence in Musk’s vision, which has yet to translate into profits at the company.

SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.9bn on revenue of 18.7bn in 2025, followed by a $4.3bn loss in the first quarter of this year.

Jay R Ritter, an emeritus professor at the University of Florida who specialises in IPOs, said the SpaceX IPO differs from Saudi Aramco’s blockbuster listing as the state-owned oil company had a track record of generating large revenues and profits.

“SpaceX, in contrast, has trailing annual revenue of less than $20bn, and is not profitable,” Ritter told Al Jazeera.

“So, one company’s valuation was – and is – based on its demonstrated profitability, while the other company’s valuation is based on potential.”

“With SpaceX, there is a risk that cash flows will be used to send hundreds of thousands of people to Mars, at a loss,” Ritter added.

Despite SpaceX’s lack of profitability, market sentiment is strong, said IG’s Yip, noting that buyers of investment products linked to the listing are pricing the company’s end-of-first-day market capitalisation at $2.2 trillion.

“The Tesla parallel is perhaps worth drawing: It debuted in 2010 as a loss-making company and largely tracked the S&P 500 for years, only breaking away decisively once it turned profitable for the first time in Q1 2013,” Yip said, referring to the benchmark stock index on Wall Street.

“SpaceX investors are making a similar bet on future growth, with the added complexity that SpaceX’s addressable market – rockets, satellite internet, AI – is considerably broader than Tesla’s was at listing.”

The administration of US President Donald Trump has proposed new tariffs of up to 12.5 percent on imports from 60 economies after determining they had failed to curb trade in goods made with forced labour, an assertion that was rejected by US trading partners.

The proposal from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), issued late on Tuesday, comes from a Section 301 unfair trade practices investigation designed to help rebuild US President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, struck down by a US Supreme Court decision in February.

Despite laws banning them, the products of forced labour are deeply embedded in supply chains across the world. European lawmakers bristle at the accusation that the region is less effective than the US at curbing the trade in such goods, with one describing the US findings as “utterly absurd”. Business leaders said the US move created more confusion for companies.

The USTR proposed 10 percent additional duties on imports from Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan and Britain. The USTR said all had plans or partial schemes in place.

The trade agency said it would impose additional duties of 12.5 percent on the remaining 45 countries that it investigated. These include China, India, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement. “This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field.”

The USTR said it would accept public comments on the proposed tariffs and other remedies through July 6, with a public hearing scheduled for July 7.

The announcement comes ahead of the July 24 expiration of a 10 percent temporary tariff imposed by the Trump administration on February 20, the day the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It also shows how determined the Trump administration is about building a wall of tariffs around the US economy, the world’s largest, despite repeated setbacks in court.

After the loss in the Supreme Court, Trump turned to another law to impose temporary 10 percent tariffs globally. But those stopgap levies expire July 24. And a specialised trade court ruled last month that they, too, were illegal – though the government can continue collecting them while that case works its way through the courts.

Unjustified tariffs

The European Commission said the tariffs were unjustified and reiterated its commitment to the trade deal sealed with Washington last year.

Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, which voted on Tuesday to accept that trade deal, said the new tariffs were expected, but said the results of the US investigation were still “utterly absurd” given a 2024 EU law to ban imports of forced labour products.

“The impression is increasingly emerging that a tariff measure is sought first, and only then is a suitable legal justification found,” he said. However, he added that the key question would be whether the additional tariffs would exceed those agreed between both sides last July.

The US’s largest trading partner, the EU, agreed last July to accept tariffs of 15 percent on a broad range of its exports. In its report, the USTR said the EU anti-forced labour measures only came into force in December 2027 and lacked key elements.

It was unclear whether the proposed tariffs – which the US release described as “additional duties” – would come on top of levies agreed in bilateral deals signed with the US.

Britain said it was in regular talks with the US and was taking action to tackle forced labour. It added that the preferential access to US markets that it had negotiated for UK businesses remained in place.

Mexico said that goods that were compliant under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) would be exempt from the new tariffs.

Taiwan said it was “hopeful and confident” that the final results would reflect agreements already reached, securing relatively preferential treatment.

Beijing, facing 12.5 percent tariffs, said that it opposed all forms of unilateral tariffs and that there was no forced labour in China. India, confronted with the same rate, said it was engaged with Washington on the Section 301 proceedings, noting the proposed tariffs were not final.

“There will be deep concerns in the international business community that the US [forced labour law could] become a global template,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce.

“Anyone can make a claim, get a shipment impounded and the company has to prove no forced labour in supply chain.”

Certain exemptions

The USTR said it would exempt from tariffs products including energy, rare earths and some other metals, beef, coffee, certain fruits and vegetables, pharmaceuticals, organic chemicals and aircraft parts.

It also said it was proposing a textile mechanism that would allow for a certain volume of apparel and textile imports to enter the US at a reduced tariff rate, without giving details.

The ICC’s Wilson said the list of exemptions, stretching for more than 76 pages, suggested sensitivities over the potential cost-of-living hit to food and other goods with known forced-labour risks.

“It doesn’t make sense if the object of this is to enhance controls on modern slavery,” he said.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has proposed a new 25 percent tariff on imports from Brazil amid allegations of unfair trading practices.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the new punitive tariffs late on Monday, stemming from issues including digital trade and illegal deforestation.

The new tariffs would be imposed under Section 301 of US trade policy — a statute that gives the US government broad authority to impose trade sanctions based on violations of trade agreements, as well as what it deems “unfair” trade practices under the Trade Act of 1974.

Greer said there has been an investigation that began in July. The practices under investigation were related to issues such as illegal deforestation, ethanol market access, and anticorruption enforcement, among other key issues, according to the summary released by the US Department of Commerce on Tuesday.

In the 107-page document, the US government said that trade practices between the two nations “are unreasonable and burden or restrict US commerce”, and pointed to agreements that Brazil has with Mexico and India.

“Brazil’s trade arrangements with Mexico and India also create incentives to offshore US production by creating a financial advantage to exporting to Brazil from these countries, as opposed to exporting from the United States,” the document says.

There is a comment period for the general public to weigh in on the proposed tariffs, which begins on Thursday. The written comment period ends on July 1, and there will be a public hearing in Washington on July 6.

Beef, coffee, rare earths, other metals, energy, and aircraft parts are among the products that would be exempt from the tariffs.

On CNBC, Greer said that it would release more findings on unfair trade practices in the next several weeks in order to address what Greer called a “giant” trade deficit.

However, the data shows that the US maintains a trade surplus with Brazil. In March, Brazil bought more goods, worth $3.3bn, from the US than it exported at $2.9bn, representing a $420m trade surplus.

Other countries under investigation include China and Vietnam.

The new tariff would partially replace a tariff of 50 percent on many Brazilian goods imposed last year by Trump, with 40 percent serving as a punishment for Brazil’s prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.

The White House also recently dropped tariffs on select aluminium, copper, and steel imports, which include agricultural equipment such as harvesters. Those tariffs will drop from 25 percent to 15 percent. The tariffs expire in December 2027.

The new tariffs come after the Supreme Court, in February, struck down the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which the White House used to impose its sweeping global tariffs.

“They are the first of many new tariffs to replace the IEPPA national security tariffs. The period of public comment will allow for potential modest tweaks and exemptions. Ultimately, it will add to some inflation pressure compared to the last few months but not compared to a year earlier,” Rachel Ziemba, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera.

Political tensions

The changes come despite President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Washington last month, as relations have deteriorated in recent months.

The US State Department has also designated two of Brazil’s criminal gangs as “terrorist organisations”, a move that supported Senator Flavio Bolsonaro’s position, Lula’s main rival in October’s election, and over the objections of Brazilian officials.

“I expressly asked President Trump not to tariff our companies,” Bolsonaro wrote on X on Tuesday. “Tariffs are not the solution.”

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

US tech giant says fundraising drive includes deal to sell $10 bn of stock to Berkshire Hathaway.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has announced plans to sell $80bn worth of shares to fund its rollout of artificial intelligence.

Alphabet said on Monday that the equity offerings would finance the rollout of AI infrastructure needed to meet “unprecedented customer demand”.

The US tech giant said the fundraising drive included a deal to sell $10bn of stock to Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate led for six decades by legendary investor Warren Buffett.

The remaining $70bn will come from $30bn in underwritten offerings – a type of share issuance where a financial institution buys stock to sell on to investors – and $40bn in staggered sales on the open market.

“The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply,” Alphabet said in a statement.

“By scaling its investments, the company seeks to expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.”

Shares of Alphabet, which has a market capitalisation of more than $4.5 trillion, were down about 1 percent in after-hours trading following the announcement.

Like other Silicon Valley giants, Alphabet, whose AI business spans the Gemini family of assistants, data centres and cloud services, has committed eye-watering sums to AI-related infrastructure.

The company said in its most recent earnings call that it expected its capital expenditures to reach $180-190bn this year, and rise “significantly” in 2027.

US tech behemoths, such as Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, are expected to spend some $800bn on AI-related capital investment in 2026, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs.

Troy Hooper, co-head of equity capital markets for the Americas at the financial intelligence provider Mergermarket, said Alphabet’s funding plans underscored the intensity of the race to lead the AI buildout.

“For hyperscalers, compute capacity is a direct driver of future revenue,” Hooper told Al Jazeera.

“By leaning into equity, Alphabet is bringing in permanent capital rather than burdening a balance sheet already absorbing record capex,” Hooper said, using the shorthand for capital expenditure.

Hooper said US tech giants have come to view underinvestment in AI as an “existential risk” and over-investment as “merely expensive”.

“The logic is simple: under-investing is an existential risk; over-investing is merely expensive. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are following the same calculus,” Hooper said.

“Ownership at scale lowers the marginal cost of training advanced models, building a moat smaller competitors will struggle to match. The message is clear: The winners of the AI era will be decided not just by algorithms, but by who owns the largest and most efficient compute platforms.”

Anthropic, which operates AI chatbot Claude, did not disclose the size or the terms of the offering.

Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, teeing up what could become a watershed moment for Wall Street’s AI frenzy.

The move, announced on Monday, sets up a high-stakes test of whether investor appetite for the AI revolution that has reshaped white-collar work around the world can match the sky-high expectations surrounding the booming sector.

Anthropic, which operates AI chatbot Claude, did not disclose the size or the terms of the offering. Confidential submissions let companies advance IPO preparations while shielding sensitive financial details from rivals and the public.

Anthropic last raised $65bn at a post-money valuation of $965bn in late May, putting it ahead of rival OpenAI. The company said at the time it was making annualised revenue of $47bn from selling its technology to people and organisations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf.

The crucial step towards a listing comes on the heels of SpaceX’s mega-IPO, which is on course to rewrite the record books as the Elon Musk-led company pursues a $75bn offering at a $1.75 trillion valuation.

Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders, and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fuelling concerns of an AI bubble.

OpenAI and Anthropic have become the face of the AI boom that has redrawn corporate strategies, sparked a global arms race for computing power and talent, and turned AI-linked companies into some of the market’s most richly valued firms.

Anthropic’s rapid rise in early 2026 rattled markets, triggering sharp sell-offs in software and IT stocks as investors worried its increasingly autonomous AI tools could upend traditional business models and accelerate disruption across industries.

“OpenAI and Anthropic are in a race to go public before capital runs out,” said analyst Gil Luria from the investment firm DA Davidson.

“The other reason for Anthropic to try to beat OpenAI out to the public market is that they will get to set the agenda for how a frontier model reports financials and do so in a way that is favourable to their financial model.”

OpenAI is also preparing to confidentially file for a US IPO in the coming weeks, adding to a wave of blockbuster ‌listings anticipated in the year ahead.

A market milestone

As many blockbuster listings race towards public markets, companies from SpaceX to AI giants are competing for a finite pool of investor capital.

“The combined demand for capital from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic will be so considerable that it is likely to create disruptions in the capital markets, so going early will be a great advantage,” Luria said.

The listing would represent one of the most consequential stock market debuts in years, potentially reshaping benchmark indexes, investor flows and the broader narrative driving US equities.

At close to a $1 trillion valuation, Anthropic would vault into the top tier of the S&P 500, alongside a handful of elite companies that dominate global equity markets.

An Anthropic debut would be a major boost for the long-sluggish IPO market, though experts and bankers warn an offering of such scale could drain liquidity and investor attention from smaller listings.

Nvidia is set to bring artificial intelligence to laptop and desktop computers with brands like Microsoft and Dell later this year as the US tech giant broadens its AI presence.

The Santa Clara, California-based AI chipmaker unveiled on Monday at its annual Nvidia GTC event in Taipei new powerful chips that would bring advanced AI functions to laptops and desktop computers.

CEO Jensen Huang said that the new development is “going to reinvent the PC [personal computer]”.

The changes come amid three years of collaboration between Microsoft and Nvidia and pit the latter against companies like chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices and personal computer brands Intel and Apple.

“This is going to be the new PC,” Huang said as he unveiled Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchip — which combines CPU, or central processing unit, and GPU, or graphics processing unit, capabilities — that would power new Windows laptop and desktop computer models in what the company called “AI personal computers”, expected to debut in the fall of this year.

The chip, developed with Taiwan’s MediaTek, will be in compact desktops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and GIGABYTE to follow.

Nvidia, which is already the world’s most valuable company, said the reinvention will be for creating and gaming.

“When it has an autonomous [AI] agent, an agent that’s helping you, that understands you, you could talk to it. It could look at you. You could ask it to read files, go help you do some research. It could do a lot more,” Huang said.

Microsoft said in a separate statement that the personal computers running on Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchips would be able to support “highly capable AI models” and complex workloads. With the new superchips, these personal computers can run AI agents locally, Nvidia said.

“This is the first across the lineup of PC reinvention for 40 years,” Huang said.

Nvidia’s move is significant at a time when demand is growing for the use of personal AI agents, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at the technology research and advisory group Omdia.

“For consumers, it means more choices, which is always a good thing,” Su said.

Neil Shah, analyst and co-founder of Counterpoint Research, described Nvidia’s announcement as a move that’s “revolutionising how PCs would look like in the next 10 years”.

The new laptops and desktop computers “will drive agentic AI applications in every home”, Shah said, with an aim of having an “AI supercomputer” in each household.

Also during Monday’s speech, Nvidia’s Huang said its new Vera CPUs for data centres are in full production and are “going to be our new major growth driver” on the boom of AI agents, with early customers including Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceXAI.

Huang also revealed a humanoid robot reference design that could act as a blueprint for future research, especially within the higher education sector. Nvidia said its “Isaac GR00T” stands nearly 1.83 metres (6 feet) tall and has the humanoid chassis of Chinese robot maker Unitree’s H2. It is equipped with five-fingered dexterous hands, made by Singapore-based robotics startup Sharpa, that are capable of finely controlled movements.

Reception for AI PCs has been mixed so far. HP reported last week that the devices helped prop up quarterly sales, but Dell said earlier this year that demand had fallen short of initial expectations. Qualcomm, looking to capitalise on AI demand, has also been offering AI PCs with Microsoft.

On Wall Street, Nvidia stock rose nearly 4 percent on the news in midday trading. Microsoft ticked up 2.5 percent and Dell surged 9.3 percent. Competitors AMD and Intel, on the other hand, are on the decline. AMD is down 0.1 percent from the market open, and Intel is down by 2.5 percent.

Jerome Powell says the US central bank is undergoing a ‘stress test’ like other institutions in the current era.

Former US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has warned against the politicisation of monetary policy amid President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the independence of the central bank.

In a speech at an awards ceremony in Boston on Sunday, Powell said that the Fed had been undergoing a “stress test” like many other institutions in the Trump era.

Powell said the US Congress had “wisely” chosen to insulate the central bank from political pressure and that all other advanced economies had similar norms upholding the independence of monetary policy.

“These protections have served the public well, and administrations from both parties have respected them,” Powell said after accepting the 2026 John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

“If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences, then future administrations will do so as well,” Powell said.

“The public would lose faith that the central bank will make decisions based only on what’s best for all Americans.”

Powell, who stepped down as the head of the central bank last month, said that the Fed’s credibility would be “lost” in such a scenario.

“That credibility enables the Fed to support a strong and stable economy for the benefit of American families and businesses,” he said.

“Our credibility has been built and sustained over many decades, and we have a duty to safeguard that priceless asset for our fellow citizens and for generations to come.”

Powell, who made the usual decision to stay on as one of the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors after stepping down as chair, also offered a broader defence of democratic institutions generally.

“Partisan political differences are normal – indeed essential – in a thriving democracy. But we ought to be united in our commitment to the higher principles that define our nation,” Powell said.

“Chief among them is respect for the rule of law. As John Adams wrote, ours is ‘a government of laws and not of men’. Our public institutions carry us forward through change. These institutions embody our commitment to freedom, democracy, and service of the public good.”

While Powell did not mention Trump by name, the US president has waged a sustained pressure campaign against the central bank for not heeding his demands to cut interest rates more sharply.

Trump repeatedly threatened Powell with dismissal during his tenure, while Trump appointee and ally Jeanine Pirro opened a short-lived criminal investigation into Powell’s congressional testimony about ongoing renovation works at the Fed’s headquarters.

Trump also ordered the removal of Fed governor Lisa Cook over unproven claims of mortgage fraud, though the Supreme Court has ruled that she can remain in her position while it considers a legal challenge against her firing.

Under the Federal Reserve Act, the US president must demonstrate “cause”, widely interpreted to mean malfeasance, to remove any of the Federal Reserve’s governors.

The John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award was created in 1989 to honour those who demonstrate courage in public service without regard to professional or personal consequences.

Past winners of the award, which is named after Kennedy’s Pulitzer-winning book Profiles in Courage, include former US President Barack Obama, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Department of Commerce issues guidance on chip restrictions amid concerns about loopholes in export control regime.

The United States has issued a notice affirming its restrictions on shipments of semiconductors to subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China amid concerns about loopholes in Washington’s export control regime.

The Department of Commerce said in the guidance issued on Sunday that its licensing requirements for the export of advanced AI chips applied to all businesses with headquarters or a parent company in China.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which falls under the Commerce Department, said it issued the clarification in response to questions about whether it was enforcing preexisting licence requirements after it had overturned former President Joe Biden’s AI Diffusion Framework.

“The answer is yes,” the BIS said in the notice.

Unveiled in the final days of the Biden administration, the AI Diffusion proposed the implementation of a globe-spanning framework to control access to AI chips, including export caps for all but the closest US allies.

The framework drew backlash from tech firms, including Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip company, which cast the proposal as a threat to innovation and cross-border collaboration.

President Donald Trump’s administration scrapped the framework last May, ahead of its implementation, citing the “burdensome new regulatory requirements” and the harm it would do to Washington’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

Chip giant Nvidia, whose top-of-the-line Blackwell GPUs are banned for export to China, said it had already been operating in keeping with the clarified rules.

“The guidance reaffirms that NVIDIA’s sales and vetting process is correct – consistent with our existing approach, licences are required to ship controlled products to PRC headquartered companies,” a Nvidia spokesperson told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

AMD and Intel, Nvidia’s main competitors in the GPU space, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

TSMC, which manufactures the most advanced chips on behalf of clients such as Nvidia, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The BIS also did not respond to inquiries.

Chris McGuire, a former State Department official who worked on technology policy in the Biden administration, accused the Trump administration of providing Chinese companies a loophole to buy export-controlled chips.

“Chinese companies have been buying these chips, very likely at scale. And because BIS has not updated export control regulations to clearly state what it IS enforcing, all of this was legal,” McGuire said in a post on X.

“This clarification does make clear that Blackwell shipments to China-headquartered companies outside of China are now illegal again – which is good, although obviously we have to see how many shipments have already gone to assess how much damage was done,” McGuire said.

“BIS’ statement acknowledges these shipments have been happening when it says companies who bought chips under this loophole don’t have to stop using them.”

The US has rolled out numerous restrictions on the supply of high-end technology to China, as Washington and Beijing battle for dominance in AI.

In December, Trump announced that he would allow Nvidia to sell its H200 chip to China, in a major loosening of Washington’s export controls.

While not Nvidia’s most advanced chip, the H200 is about six times as powerful as the H20, the most advanced chip previously allowed for export to China.

Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products, CNN said in its lawsuit.

United States news channel CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in New York federal court, alleging the AI search engine provider is unlawfully distributing its copyrighted content, marking the latest legal tussle between the AI firm and a news publisher.

The complaint, filed on Thursday, said that Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products and distribute “identical or substantially similar” competing content.

“You can’t copyright facts,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in response to the lawsuit.

CNN is asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking Perplexity from violating its intellectual property rights.

“CNN’s lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits,” the Warner Bros-owned news company said in a statement.

“By exploiting CNN’s reporting in this manner, Perplexity violates the protections afforded by copyright law and undermines the economic incentives that make original newsgathering possible,” CNN said in the complaint.

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and writers have worried about their content being repurposed to appear in the results of a chatbot query, triggering battles over copyright, compensation and ownership.

CNN’s lawsuit is one of dozens of high-stakes US cases brought by copyright owners, including news outlets, authors and publishers, against tech companies over alleged misuse of their work to train large language models. Anthropic was the first AI company to settle one of these cases last year, agreeing to pay $1.5bn to resolve a class action lawsuit from a group of authors.

The CNN suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought against Perplexity, which uses AI to scour websites and answer users’ queries, alleging the company has infringed copyrights and unlawfully scraped data to train its technology.

Perplexity is also facing lawsuits from The New York Times, Reddit and Dow Jones, among others.

Several news firms have now signed licensing deals and partnerships with Big Tech and generative AI companies to ensure that their models have access to verified sources of news, while also compensating publishers and linking back to original articles.

Canada has announced plans to buy a fleet of early warning planes from Sweden’s Saab rather than a competing option from Boeing as it seeks to reduce its reliance on the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday that Canada would opt for Saab’s GlobalEye, which is based on Bombardier’s Global 6500 jet. Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail plane – which has suffered from delays and cost overruns – had also been in contention.

“With a suite of advanced sensors and mission systems, Saab’s GlobalEye will be a key resource for the Canadian Armed Forces to detect and deter threats across the Arctic,” Carney told a defence conference in Ottawa.

The Prime Minister pledged in March that Canada would take full responsibility for protecting its vast Arctic territory, after relying for decades on a partnership with the US to monitor its more than 4.4 million square km (1.7 million square miles) of land and sea, a territory larger than India.

Carney’s Liberal government last year announced plans to ramp up defence spending. The US and other allies had complained for years that Canada was not meeting longstanding NATO targets on military expenditure; Carney announced in March that Canada hit that target of spending 2 percent of its GDP on defence last year.

In a statement, Saab said it planned to invest in research and development work in Canada as part of any deal.

Although Carney did not give details of the fleet size or the cost of a potential contract, military officials had earlier said they were looking to buy six early warning aircraft.

Philippe Lagasse, associate director of international affairs at Ottawa’s Carleton University, said Canada’s decision to buy the GlobalEye planes was “an important test case for the Carney government’s policy of pivoting away from American military capability”.

He said in a statement that the decision confirms Canada’s relationship with Sweden, a new NATO ally that has also been eager to strengthen its ties to the Canadian military.

Canada has previously said it wants to work more closely with the Nordic countries in the Arctic on defence and other issues, in a global environment in which the US has become a less reliable partner.

“GlobalEye is already creating jobs in Canada, and working with the Canadian supply chain. This decision ties our two nations even closer together,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a social media post.

Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters.

Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to probe whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer.

Carney later told reporters Ottawa would make a decision on the fighter fleet in due course and declined to comment when asked whether the military would be operating two jets.

Last week, a Pentagon official, speaking after Washington suspended planned biannual defence talks with Canada, said the delay in making a decision on the F-35s showed how Ottawa was prioritising politics over defence issues.

Still, Lagasse of Carleton University said he expected Canada would ultimately decide to stick with a fleet of F-35 jets rather than splitting the fleet by buying some Saab Gripens.

“If the government was determined to buy Gripens, I would have expected them to make the announcement alongside this [GlobalEye] decision,” he said.

Trade tensions

The announcement came amid ongoing trade tensions between US and Canada after US President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Canada after taking office last year, alongside multiple comments threatening to annex the country and make it the 51st state of the US.

Historically, nearly 80 percent of Canada’s exports have been to the US. While the vast majority of those were protected under the USMCA, the trade agreement between the two countries that also includes Mexico, that is now due for a review, which starts on July 1, and Trump has said the US does not really need that deal.

While the US has announced bilateral talks with Mexico, there has been no mention of Canada.

Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Goettman will lead bilateral talks in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday focused on “economic security and rules of origin for key industrial goods,” the department said in a statement on Wednesday.

USTR said the US and Mexico will hold a second round of negotiations in Washington on June 16-17, focused on agriculture and “a level playing field,” with a third set of talks in Mexico City scheduled for the week of July 20.

The first Trump administration held trilateral negotiating rounds with both Mexico and Canada to create the existing USMCA, which replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020.

But so far, there have been few discussions between US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and his Canadian counterpart, Canada-US Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, since early March, and no formal launch of a US-Canada negotiating process.

Taipei, Taiwan – For Li, an engineer at Taiwanese computer giant ASUS, the AI boom sweeping Taiwan has made it an exciting time to work in tech.

Taiwan is a semiconductor powerhouse, producing about 90 percent of the most advanced chips used to power leading AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude.

“I’ve felt Taiwan’s tech and computer industry becoming more vibrant,” Li, who asked not to be identified by his real name, told Al Jazeera, pointing to events such as the upcoming Computex tech and AI expo running from June 2 to 6.

Still, Li worries that the spoils of Taiwan’s AI windfall are not being shared equally.

“Most industries unrelated to tech don’t seem to be feeling the benefits, so it doesn’t feel evenly distributed at the moment,” Li said, explaining that many of his former classmates working outside of tech do not appear to be doing as well.

“It’s mainly the industries at the front of this tech wave that are benefitting.”

Taiwan’s economy is growing at a pace that would be the envy of any country.

Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 8.63 percent in 2025, followed by a heady 13.69 percent expansion in the first three months of this year.

Exports surged 34.9 percent last year to $640.7bn, with more than two-thirds of the total being tech-related goods and services.

Semiconductors alone account for more than 20 percent of Taiwan’s GDP, according to US trade data, with the vast majority of production handled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), whose top customers include Nvidia and Apple.

TSMC by itself accounts for more than 40 percent of the value of the island’s stock market.

While impressive, the rapid economic expansion has raised concerns about being overreliant on the growth of AI.

Taiwan’s Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-lung has sounded the alarm about an emerging “K-shaped economy,” where certain sectors grow rapidly while others fall into stagnation.

While critical to Taiwan’s economy, the semiconductor industry is far from the largest source of jobs.

The sector employs only about 300,000 people in a workforce of 11 million, according to data compiled by Dachrahn Wu, director of National Central University’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development.

The broader electronics and IT manufacturing industry employs about one million people, compared with about seven million working in the service sector, according to Wu’s data.

The heavy reliance on a single industry for growth marks a shift from the Asian Tiger era of the 1960s to 90s, when Taiwan’s economy was driven by hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to James Lin, a historian who specialises in Taiwan’s post-war economic transformation.

“From the 1970s to 1990s, economic growth was concentrated in the hands of small and medium family enterprises that exemplified the ‘living room factory’ model, where family-owned businesses focused on producing one part for a consumer product,” Lin told Al Jazeera.  

“The benefits of this period were thus more widely distributed across Taiwanese society,” Lin said.

“By contrast, today, wealth inequality is growing in Taiwan as land is becoming more expensive and large corporations like TSMC attract the lion’s share of foreign capital investment rather than small corporations.”

Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, said Taiwan’s economic model has left it at risk of becoming a “dual society” where tech sweeps up talent, funding and resources at the expense of other industries.

“It’s very hard if you’re not in [the semiconductor] sector in Taiwan right now,” Garcia Herrero told Al Jazeera, pointing to low wages for workers in non-tech roles and rising costs for businesses.

Some of Taiwan’s challenges are out of its control, said Chao-Hsi Huang, associate dean at the Taipei School of Economics and a former director at Taiwan’s central bank.

Those challenges include US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have partially exempted semiconductors but hit exporters in non-tech industries.

“The traditional [manufacturing] sector suffers higher tariffs than other competing countries like Korea or Japan, or even Southeast Asian countries, due to the fact we are not able to sign free trade agreements,” Huang told Al Jazeera.

“We are treated differently, and that’s a difficulty we are facing.”

Critics have placed other issues on the shoulders of the government, including a weak currency that has made exports more competitive but chipped away at consumers’ purchasing power.

Taiwan’s government denies engaging in currency manipulation, though it acknowledges intervening in the market to smooth out “volatility” when the new Taiwan dollar falls or rises sharply against other currencies.

After two decades of stagnation through the 2010s, wages are growing again – albeit unevenly.

Real average wages grew 1.4 percent in 2025, while median wages rose 1.35 percent, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).

Still, 70 percent of Taiwanese earned less than the average, a statistic attributable to the distorting effect of much higher salaries in the tech sector, where pay is nearly double the national average.

For Taiwanese frustrated with stagnant pay, Taiwan’s soaring stock market has offered some consolation.

Riding the AI boom, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) more than doubled in value between 2019 and 2025 to $2.2 trillion, according to HSBC.

Regulatory changes introduced in 2020 made it easier for small-time investors to buy single stocks, encouraging a rush of everyday Taiwanese into the market.

In January, the TWSE reported that the number of trading accounts had reached 13.77 million – equivalent to 60 percent of Taiwan’s population – while hailing the bourse as a “cornerstone for inclusive prosperity and shared growth”.

Though more equal than neighbours such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China, Taiwan’s wealth divide has grown over the decades.

In 1980, Taiwan had a Gini coefficient of 0.308 – a measurement of wealth distribution where 0 indicates perfect equality – putting it on par with contemporary Norway, according to the DGBAS.

By 2024, Taiwan’s Gini coefficient had grown to 0.341 – lower than many countries but still a significant rise.

“I feel that the benefits of economic growth haven’t been distributed evenly,” Ryan, an engineer in the local tech sector who asked not to be identified by his real name, told Al Jazeera.

“Some industries or asset holders benefit significantly, but ordinary office workers often experience a rise in prices and housing costs, rather than an easier life,” he said.

Wei-ting Yen, an assistant research fellow at the research institution Academia Sinica, said while the semiconductor and stock market booms have helped some Taiwanese, they have heightened the angst of others.

In a survey of 1,195 Taiwanese voters carried out last month, 40 percent said their household was financially either “anxious” or “very anxious” due to rising living costs, particularly housing.

“I think subjectively, they’re anxious that they’re not accumulating wealth and it’s not enough to help them buy a house or an apartment,” Yen told Al Jazeera.

“Housing prices have been going crazy worldwide, and the stock market has been going crazy, [but] for people who do not have extra money to invest in those two options, it creates even more frustration and anxiety around them,” she said.

Coffee chain has seen ‘very significant’ drop in sales after campaign that evoked deadly crackdown, local operator says.

Starbucks Korea has suffered a “very significant” drop in sales after a marketing campaign that evoked a brutal 1980 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters triggered a public outcry, according to the coffee chain’s local operator.

Shinsegae Group, whose subsidiary E-Mart owns the coffee chain in South Korea, has faced mounting criticism over its so-called “Tank Day” campaign, launched on the anniversary of the May 18 Gwangju Uprising, when the military government deployed troops and tanks to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Shinsegae Group chairman Chung Yong-jin made a public apology and asked people not to take out any anger on Starbucks Korea employees and front-line staff.

“I take it very seriously, the fact that many people felt deep pain and anger because of Starbucks Korea’s inappropriate marketing campaign,” Chung said.

“I will take all responsibility for the incident.”

Chung also asked people not to take out their frustration on staff at Starbucks shops, saying the responsibility lies with management. There were no immediate reports of major incidents at stores.

Chung issued his first apology on May 19, saying in a statement that the campaign caused “deep pain to the victims and bereaved families of the May 18 Democratization Movement as well as to the public”.

Shinsegae fired the head of Starbucks Korea last week after apologising over the campaign. Starbucks Global also apologised and said that an investigation had begun.

A Shinsegae official said sales had fallen sharply since the marketing controversy.

“While sales are not our main concern at the moment, we have seen a very significant drop,” said the official.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Jeon Sangjin, a senior Shinsegae Group executive, said the company had yet to find conclusive evidence that Starbucks Korea marketing employees intended to mock the pro-democracy movement, an accusation the employees have denied.

However, he said some employees refused management requests to hand over their smartphones during a weeklong internal review.

Jeon said the company would look at the results from the police inquiry, and any employee found to have intended to ridicule protesters would be fired.

The anger over the campaign has triggered public calls for boycotts, amplified by government officials, including Interior and Safety Minister Yoon Ho-jung, who said Starbucks products will no longer be used at government events and lamented the chain’s “anti-historical behaviour”.

The country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, said on X last week that the campaign displayed “inhumane and disgraceful behaviour by cheap profiteers who deny the values of the South Korean community, basic human rights and democracy”.

Hundreds of people are estimated to have died ⁠or gone missing when Chun Doo-hwan’s military government cracked down on the protests in Gwangju.

Many details remain unconfirmed, including who gave the order to open fire.

For nearly 20 years, Mario Habib has run a barbershop in Beirut’s Furn el Chebbak neighbourhood – through wars, economic collapse and political crisis in Lebanon. Mario says many customers now come not just for haircuts, but for relief, conversation and a sense of normal life in a country where, as he puts it, ‘normal life itself became the dream’.

Cuba has announced the first shipment in an expected donation from China of about 60,000 tonnes of rice, as the Caribbean island contends with an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

In a series of social media posts on Sunday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed that the first load of 15,000 tonnes had arrived a day earlier in the port of Havana.

He also expressed “deep gratitude” to China, as well as to members of the European Parliament who denounced the pressure campaign his government faces.

Since January, the United States has increased its sanctions against Cuba, as part of a hardline turn under the second term of President Donald Trump.

“Thank you very much for the solidarity, and for the firm and unequivocal condemnation of the collective punishment to which our people are being subjected,” Diaz-Canel wrote, likening Cuba’s situation to “genocide”.

While Trump has sought to check China’s growing influence on Latin America, Cuba has increasingly relied on the Asian superpower for assistance.

Already, China has donated solar panels to Cuba to help update its ageing energy grid and transition the island away from fossil fuels. Currently, Cuba relies on imports for nearly 60 percent of its oil supply, according to the International Energy Agency.

But since the start of the year, the Trump administration has largely blocked the export of oil to Cuba.

The de facto oil blockade began shortly after January 3, when the US launched a military operation to abduct and imprison Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump followed that operation with the announcement that no more oil or funds would be transferred from Venezuela to Cuba.

By the end of the month, he had also issued an executive order identifying Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatening economic penalties to any country that supplies it with oil.

Since then, only a single Russian tanker has been permitted to reach the island. Earlier this month, Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy announced that the island had exhausted its oil supplies.

While Cuba is no stranger to power outages, the recent crisis has caused island-wide blackouts and has brought public services — including transportation and medical care — to a standstill in many areas.

But Trump has continued to impose sanctions on the island’s communist government, in an apparent effort to force regime change.

Media reports have indicated he has sought Diaz-Canel’s resignation and would be open to a situation akin to Venezuela’s, where Maduro’s government has been left largely intact, though Maduro himself has been replaced.

Trump has also repeatedly suggested he may consider a military response should Cuba fail to give in to his demands, though his administration has sent mixed messages about possible intervention on the island.

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something, and it looks like I’ll be the one that does it,” Trump said last week from the Oval Office.

Negotiations between the two countries, however, are likely to be strained after the Trump administration unveiled a murder indictment against Cuba’s former president, Raul Castro, for the 1996 downing of two planes run by Cuban exiles.

Since the 1960s, Cuba has been under a sweeping US trade embargo that has weakened its economy.

US officials, however, have blamed the Cuban government for economic mismanagement and the oppression of its people, particularly political dissidents.

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio disclosed that the Trump administration offered $100m in humanitarian aid to Cuba, on the condition it implement “meaningful reforms”.

In Sunday’s posts, however, Diaz-Canel sought to project defiance in the face of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign.

“The ‘maximum pressure’ strategy — which some in the US morbidly trumpet — is part of a strategy intended to justify the false narrative of an impending collapse, and thereby pave the way for military intervention,” he wrote.

Diaz-Canel added that Cuba would continue to strengthen its ties with the US’s economic and political rival, China.

“The cherished bonds of friendship and cooperation that unite us grow stronger in these crucial times,” he said.

The United States and India are seeking to mend ties after a year of diplomatic see-saw during which tariffs were imposed and then quickly scrapped because of the US-Israel war on Iran.

This is just one example of how international relations and conflict have become more complex and interlinked in recent years.

So, is pragmatism replacing ideology in today’s diplomatic world?

Presenter: Scott McLean

Guests:

Brahma Chellaney – Professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research

Chris Weafer – Chief executive officer at Macro-Advisory strategic consultancy

Shaun Rein – Founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group

Warsh will lead the central bank at a time when its independence has come under scrutiny amid political pressure.

Kevin Warsh has been sworn in as the new chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors, succeeding Jerome Powell, who has held the position since 2018.

Warsh took the oath of office on Friday, following a contentious nomination period, with the Senate voting along party lines on both his confirmation to the Board of Governors and as chairman. Only Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman broke with his Democratic colleagues to advance his nomination.

Warsh, 56, will lead the central bank at a time when its independence has come under scrutiny amid political pressure on the historically non-partisan institution.

US President Donald Trump, aware of that critique, in his opening remarks said, “I want Kevin to be totally independent and do a great job. Don’t look at me and don’t look at anybody. Just do your own job”.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, ahead of a vote by the full Senate, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Warsh of being a “sock puppet” for Trump. Warsh denied the allegations and said he would remain independent in his monetary policy decisions.

When Joe Biden was president, Warsh advocated against cutting interest rates, but changed his tune when Trump took office. In December 2025, Trump said that he would only appoint someone to lead the central bank who agreed with him on cutting rates.

Regardless, Warsh cannot unilaterally make policy decisions. He is one of 12 voting members.

The first policy meeting Warsh will lead will be on June 16-17.

Inflationary pressures

Pressure from the White House to cut rates comes amid rising inflation in the US economy.

Consumer prices increased 0.6 percent in April after a 0.9 percent rise in March, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index report released by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month.

On an annual basis, prices were also higher, rising 3.8 percent compared with the same month in 2025, marking the largest increase in three years. The largest surge has been in energy prices, which have risen 17.9 percent over the last year.

US consumers are feeling the strain at the pump. The average price for a gallon of petrol (3.78 litres) is $4.56, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices. That is up from $2.98 per gallon on February 28, when the US and Israel first struck Iran.

After he was sworn in, Warsh said he was “not naive” about the challenges facing the US economy, and that inflation can be lower and growth strong.

Surging prices could put pressure on the central bank not to cut rates. Analysts from JPMorgan Chase forecasted last month that rates will likely remain unchanged until mid-2027 and anticipated then that rates could rise rather than be cut.

“With inflation having run significantly above 2 percent over the past five years, with further increases in inflation likely to occur as a result of the conflict in the Middle East, and with emergent price pressures in a few categories that appeared unrelated to tariffs or energy prices, the staff viewed the possibility that inflation would be more persistent than anticipated as a salient risk,” the central bank said in the newly released minutes of its April policy meeting.

CME Group’s FedWatch tool, which tracks the likelihood of monetary policy decisions, says there is a 97 percent chance that rates will remain unchanged at the next policy meeting.

As petrol prices rise, new survey suggests economic confidence in the US is at -45, the worst since 2022.

Only 16 percent of Americans view the economy in the United States as “good” or “excellent”, a new Gallup poll suggests, as inflation continues to rise amid the war on Iran.

The survey, released on Friday, deepens US President Donald Trump’s political woes ahead of the midterm elections in November, which will determine whether his Republican Party can retain control of Congress.

The survey, dubbed Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, showed confidence in the economy has dropped to -45.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said economic conditions are poor and 34 percent rated them as fair. At the same time, 76 percent said they think the economy getting worse, while 20 percent said it is getting better.

The index averages the results on economic conditions, currently at -33 and economic outlook, currently at -56.

It was the worst set of findings on the economy that the index recorded since 2022 when the cost of living rose after the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Petrol costs in the US have skyrocketed since the start of the conflict with Iran late in February. The average price of one gallon (3.8 litres) of gasoline has risen to $4.55 from less than $3 before the US and Israel launched the war.

According to official government reports, consumer prices overall rose in March and April due to the energy crisis.

Iran has responded to the US and Israeli strikes – which killed several top officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as hundreds of civilians – by closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, sending oil and gas prices soaring.

The US has also imposed a naval siege on Iranian ports, deepening the strain on energy supplies across the world.

Despite the ceasefire that began in April, the blockades have persisted in the absence of a permanent end to the war, and Iran is now claiming sovereignty over Hormuz, which operated as a free international passageway before the war.

Parts of the strait run through Iranian and Omani territorial waters.

Although the US is one of the world’s largest oil producers, energy prices are set globally, so the disruption has spiked costs for American consumers.

As a candidate, Trump promised to be a president of “peace”, saying he would pursue “America first” policies that would prioritise domestic issues over foreign interventions.

But the US president joined Israel in attacking Iran without direct provocation. His administration argues that the military campaign is necessary to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. And Trump’s own intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard has said that Tehran is not building a nuclear bomb.

Trump has repeatedly argued that the cost of the war is worth it, stressing that petrol prices will drop rapidly once the conflict is over.

Last month, the US State Department released a legal justification of the war, saying that Washington joined the conflict “at the request of and in the collective self-defence of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defence”.

The Gallup survey on Friday is the latest in a series of negative polls for the Trump administration.

A New York Times/Sienna poll released earlier this week suggested that only 31 percent of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the war with Iran.

Earlier this month, the US president suggested the economic fallout from the war and its effect on people in the US do not play a role in his approach to Iran.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” he said. “I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

The deal, valued at more than $300m, gives Murdoch control of a storied magazine and a podcast division with a reach valued by advertisers.

Media scion James Murdoch has agreed to acquire New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network in a deal that will significantly expand his portfolio and stands to boost his influence over news and entertainment.

“This acquisition reflects both our interest in the forward edge of culture and our deep commitment to ambitious journalism,” Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said in a statement on Wednesday announcing the transaction. His company Lupa Systems will buy both properties from Vox Media.

The deal, valued at more than $300m, gives Murdoch control of a storied magazine known for its coverage of culture, politics and fashion, and a podcast division whose reach, among a demographic coveted by advertisers, rivals that of cable television news networks, according to several people with direct knowledge of the acquisition. The politics news site Vox.com is also included.

Murdoch and his wife Kathryn Murdoch were intimately involved in courting key talent from Vox, specifically Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, stars of the popular Pivot podcast, as well as several other programmes on the company’s podcast network.

“I like James and Kathryn,” Swisher said in a phone interview. “Unlike many other media owners these days, they’re savvy about the business and willing to take smart risks.”

Vox’s podcast division was valued much higher than New York Magazine in the transaction, two of the people said, spotlighting the importance of making sure top programmes were locked in. Pivot, for example, has three years remaining on its contract, which will continue under Murdoch. Swisher met with the investor and his wife Kathryn several times before the deal came together.

“In a company like Vox, if its talent doesn’t like something, it’s not gonna happen,” Galloway said in an interview. He added, “James is the only Murdoch that this deal could have happened with.”

Several years ago, James was locked in a fierce dispute with his father over the editorial direction and future control of the family’s media empire. In 2019, he founded Lupa after stepping down as chief executive of 21st Century Fox. In 2020, he resigned from the board of News Corp, the publishing arm of the family’s media empire, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content”.

Vox’s podcast and publishing assets will operate as a subsidiary of Lupa Systems, which also owns Art Basel, which hosts annual events in Paris, Miami, Hong Kong, and Doha, and Tribeca Enterprises, the media and entertainment company cofounded by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal.

Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff will join Lupa Systems and will continue to lead the brands under the Vox Media label, he said in a note to the company’s staff, adding the deal is expected to close in four to six weeks.

New York Magazine’s publications include The Cut, Vulture and Intelligencer, with a digital audience of tens of millions and more than 400,000 paying subscribers currently.

The acquisition does not include other Vox Media brands such as Eater, Popsugar and The Verge. These brands, along with SB Nation and The Dodo, will become an independent company under a new corporate name.

James’s father, Rupert Murdoch, once owned New York Magazine from the late 1970s till he sold it in 1991.

Hotel operators avoid a ‘very real threat’ by signing a deal with 25,000 workers as the city hosts the 2026 tournament.

New York City hotel operators and ⁠unions have reached an eight-year labour deal covering about 25,000 workers, averting a strike over wages, workloads and staffing levels that had threatened to disrupt the city ⁠before the FIFA World Cup, said the head of the Hotel Association of New York City.

Vijay Dandapani, the association’s president and chief executive, said on Tuesday that the mood among owners was “overall positive” after weeks of negotiations, though the industry made significant concessions.

“We came ‌a long way from where things were,” Dandapani said.

The United States will cohost the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.

While FIFA, football’s global governing body and tournament organiser, was not involved in the talks, the prospect of an influx of fans raised the stakes.

A union campaign had warned of a possible strike and urged visitors to avoid affected hotels.

The potential walkout was a “very real threat”, Dandapani said, noting recent labour actions in US cities including Los Angeles and ⁠Boston.

Dandapani said a figure of about $200,000 reflected compensation at the end of the agreement, not at the outset.

Hotel owners entered the talks aiming to preserve profitability, arguing New York’s lodging market has not ⁠fully recovered from the pandemic. Occupancy remains below 2019 levels, and inflation-adjusted room rates have yet to catch up, he ⁠said.

He also cited broader pressures, including the US-Israel war on Iran, tariffs and visa issues.

The deal follows the withdrawal of a proposed city measure that operators said would have sharply raised labour costs by limiting room attendants’ workloads and requiring double pay beyond certain ‌thresholds. Owners estimated it could have lifted wage costs by about 40 percent.

The new pact will still add costs, though operators expect tourism demand and major events to ‌support ‌revenue.