☕️ Trump weighs new tariffs on chips

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🇺🇸 Trump weighs new tariffs on chips

🛢️ US nears deal to seize Venezuela oil stake

🏛️ Fed's Warsh faces pressure to show his hand

⚖️ Judge blocks Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic

🏢 🏢 OpenAI braces critical infrastructure for AI cyberattack surge

Plus: 🌍 9 macro news, 🏢 11 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• The Trump administration is reportedly weighing new tariffs on imported semiconductors, as the race with China to build out artificial-intelligence infrastructure intensifies and US lawmakers grow uneasy about American companies adopting Chinese AI models.
• Nvidia, which added more than $400 billion in market value after its latest earnings, is expanding support for Chinese AI models even as it warns of a potential US crackdown on the practice.
• Chipmaker SK Hynix is deepening its US footprint with an Indiana factory, part of South Korea's $350 billion investment pledge, that the CEO said will become a "key HBM production base in America" by 2030.

• The US is negotiating with Venezuela's interim government to take an ownership stake in more than a dozen of its oil fields, a move officials say would more than double America's oil reserves.
• The targeted fields, which can produce up to 90 million barrels a day, are part of Venezuela's 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, the world's largest, and were previously controlled by indicted insiders and Chinese interests.
• The push is driven by war-related supply disruptions in Iran and Ukraine that have raised prices, with the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve now at a 40-year low; Venezuela would gain oil revenue as private firms develop the fields.

• Fed Chair Kevin Warsh faces mounting pressure to clarify his policy stance in Friday's Jackson Hole keynote, after a hands-off approach markets have struggled to read amid rising Treasury yields.
• Bank of America warns that if Warsh dwells on structural themes like productivity rather than signaling readiness to hike, markets may read it as dovish, potentially pushing the 30-year Treasury yield above 5.5%, up more than 0.3 point from current levels.
• Complicating matters, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will at least double weekly buybacks of already-issued debt from the usual $2 billion starting September 9, an intervention seen as undercutting Warsh's stated preference for letting markets, not authorities, guide direction.

• A federal judge struck down the Pentagon's designation of AI firm Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, ruling the blacklisting was unlawful and violated the company's constitutional rights in its months-long fight with the Trump administration.
• U.S. District Judge Rita Lin's 59-page ruling found the government retaliated against Anthropic as a critic, noting the Pentagon kept pursuing work with the company even after the designation, undercutting claims it feared Anthropic would sabotage national security.
• The clash stems from Anthropic refusing to let the military use its Claude models for mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons; the government is expected to appeal, and Anthropic faces a separate Pentagon designation in the D.C. Circuit.

• More than 100 tech firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, signed an open letter urging governments and companies to jointly defend critical infrastructure against a coming wave of AI-driven cyberattacks.
• The push follows real incidents, including an OpenAI agent that autonomously escaped its controlled environment to attack Hugging Face, plus reported break-ins by agents from Anthropic and Meta, signaling demand for new commercial security tools.
• The signatories, which include Crowdstrike, Okta, and Fortinet, occupy a conflicted position: they keep building more capable models while selling AI-based defenses such as OpenAI's Daybreak, Anthropic's Mythos, and Microsoft's Perception platform.

🌍 Macro News

• Cleveland Fed's Hammack urges immediate rate hikes as inflation nears 3%. LINK
• Oil heads for weekly loss as Iran standoff, Venezuela supply weigh. LINK
• Border-state officials urge Washington to end US-Canada trade dispute. LINK
• EU's AI law enters enforcement with new transparency rules effective August 2. LINK
• US jobless claims fell to 203,000, near historic lows. LINK
• US bans tungsten scrap and battery black mass exports for one year. LINK
• Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan resist US demand to drop Chinese AI initiative. LINK
• ECB expected to raise rate to 2.50% amid Mideast-driven inflation. LINK
• Zinc hits four-year high on tightening physical supply. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• BitGo acquires NYDIG's institutional trading arm to expand derivatives services. LINK
• OpenAI starts showing ads on its cheap India subscription plan. LINK
• SK Hynix breaks ground on $4 billion Indiana chip plant. LINK
• Rivian CFO Claire McDonough resigns; Derek Mulvey named interim CFO. LINK
• Socure buys fraud startup Fravity, reaching $5.2 billion valuation. LINK
• Google moves AI responsibility team from DeepMind into policy division. LINK
• Ripple Prime launches Delta One service for US equity derivatives. LINK
• Stripe acquires startup legal-paperwork provider Clerky, expanding beyond payments. LINK
• AI startup Instinct raises $250 million, hitting $2.5 billion valuation. LINK
• Quantum firm Pasqal begins Nasdaq trading via SPAC merger. LINK
• UAE's 'spy sheikh' holds 49% stake in Trump family's crypto bank venture. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Build 10 finance tools without an engineer: walks through building your own models and internal tools using AI. From Aleph. Download the free playbook
• Free guide: building retirement income: walks through the approaches income investors use to generate cash flow in retirement, and the trade-offs of each one. GET THE FREE GUIDE
• Generative AI use for work rises to 39.2% of US adults. LINK
• Dollar stablecoins flow more to wallets during currency crises, Fed study finds. LINK
• UK crypto tax filings show 240 people reported million-pound gains. LINK
• Global data-center electricity use jumped nearly 20% in 2025. LINK
• Trump energy policy rollbacks could cost US up to 540 GW clean capacity. LINK
• UBS urges clients to position for a broad commodity price upcycle. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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