Flagship

Trump issues more tariff threats

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened more countries with high tariffs, as analysts warn of the salvo’s geopolitical costs. Trump’s letters dictating higher rates effective Aug. 1 hit Southeast Asia especially hard, creating a “tariff wall” around the export-dependent region, the Financial Times wrote. That has rankled Washington’s partners, some of whom have called for more intraregional trade. “Many in Asia are going to ask, ‘Is this how the U.S. treats its friends?‘” one analyst said. Trump sees the tariffs less as an economic tool, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman wrote, and more as a mechanism to “rebalance global influence”: He threatened Brazil with 50% duties, accusing the country of a “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Deflation weighs on China

Falling prices across a range of sectors — from pork to apartments — are weighing on China’s economic recovery. Producer prices fell the most in nearly two years in June, while consumer costs fell month-over-month, despite eking out a narrow yearly gain. Deflation has especially hit food prices, with pork tumbling 8.5% since last June. Prices for secondhand apartments have fallen, too, deepening Beijing’s property woes and underlining China’s challenges beyond the US trade war, CNBC wrote. Experts have sounded the alarm over the economy in recent days, especially destructive price wars, which could spur policymakers to ramp up stimulus efforts, analysts said.

Russian media shifts tone on Trump

The Russian press has changed its tone on Donald Trump after the US president lashed out at Vladimir Putin. Pro-Kremlin media had heaped praise on Trump as Washington-Moscow ties thawed earlier this year. But after Trump voiced frustration with Russia — “We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin,” he said Tuesday — one pundit accused Trump of “an absence of geopolitical achievements,” and a tabloid criticized his “mercurial temperament,” the BBC wrote. Trump’s exasperation with Putin reflects how the Kremlin’s strategy of saying it wants peace, while simultaneously stepping up strikes on Ukraine, has begun to falter, The Wall Street Journal wrote. Hours after Trump’s rebuke, Russia launched its biggest drone attack since the start of the war.

Growing calls for China to invite Trump

A growing chorus of Chinese scholars is calling on Beijing to invite US President Donald Trump to attend a military celebration there. China is planning a Sept. 3 parade to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat that ended World War II — Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend, and extending an invitation to Trump would offer “a rare chance for diplomacy,” Chinese writer Deng Yuwen argued in Foreign Policy: Beijing should signal it is “capable of simultaneously engaging both Washington and Moscow.” Several other Chinese opinion leaders have made similar arguments in recent weeks, including on an influential mainland news site seen as nationalist.

Nvidia hits $4T market cap

Nvidia on Wednesday became the first company in history to reach a $4 trillion valuation. The market cap milestone for the US firm, which makes hardware to power the artificial intelligence boom, marks a rebound from earlier this year, when the rise of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek caused Nvidia’s shares to dip. The achievement also comes despite US chip export restrictions that have dented sales to China. But the company is still signaling its commitment to the Chinese market: CEO Jensen Huang plans to visit Beijing next week, before launching an AI chip specifically designed for China, the Financial Times reported. Beijing also wants to use 115,000 Nvidia chips to power dozens of data centers, according to Bloomberg.

X CEO stepping down

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said Wednesday she is resigning, compounding challenges facing the Elon Musk-owned social media company. Her announcement comes one day after a chatbot run by X’s parent company made antisemitic comments and praised Hitler. A seasoned media executive, Yaccarino was tapped in 2023 to stem the advertising exodus that followed Musk’s aggressive loosening of the site’s content moderation policies, and combined cajolery with strong-arm tactics — including lawsuits — to rebuild that financial pillar, which once accounted for nearly 90% of the company’s revenue. Results appear mixed, with projected ad revenue in 2025 remaining at about half of pre-Musk levels. The site is “more toxic for advertisers than ever and losing its political relevance,” a Bloomberg columnist argued.

Using AI for scientific reviews

The use of artificial intelligence to quickly assess scientific literature — and its misuse to create fake papers — requires a radical rethink of how scientists synthesize evidence, leading academics argued. Studies can be wrong, so to assess the state of a scientific field, researchers collate all the literature in a systematic review or meta-analysis. But that is time-consuming, and reviews are often years out of date upon publication. AI can speed up reviews, but the technology also allows unscrupulous researchers to churn out shoddy or fake data, polluting the body of research. Instead of one-off reviews, the academics wrote in Nature, science should use ongoing evidence syntheses, constantly updated as new research comes in — or as fake studies are debunked and removed.

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Register now to join Semafor editors for a timely conversation on what’s fueling this crisis — and how we can begin to restore connection and resilience in the next generation.

July 16, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

US incarceration rate is falling

The US prison population is about to fall off a cliff, a leading academic argued. The country has the world’s fifth-highest incarceration rate. But in 2023 those imprisoned fell to 1.2 million from 1.6 million in 2009, Keith Humphreys wrote in The Atlantic. Prison populations lag crime rates by decades, so the effects of the great crime decline that began in the 1990s is still being felt, and prisoner numbers will soon fall as low as 600,000, which would drop the US from the fifth to the 75th-highest incarceration rate. Soon the penal system will not “have enough inmates to justify its… staggering costs,” although shrinking would invoke the ire of public-sector unions.

Greenland sharks’ pupping ground

The breeding grounds of the mysterious Greenland shark, the world’s longest-living vertebrate, may have been found. The slow-moving creatures are among the biggest sharks, up to 21 feet long and weighing more than a ton. The oldest known was believed to be nearly 400 years old, and they do not reach sexual maturity until 100. But they live in the North Atlantic depths and their life cycle is little-known. Analysis of the numbers of sharks recorded in different locations found that newborns were only found in the mid-Atlantic Ridge, suggesting that might be their pupping ground, and that larger juveniles were most abundant in the Skagerrak strait between Denmark and Norway, so that may act as a “nursery” for young sharks.

Golden age for star pianists

The world is in a golden age for star pianists. While the idea of the classical music celebrity is often traced back to 19th-century Europe, a new class of heavyweights has bubbled up out of East Asia, preceding the rise of Western pianists like Víkingur Ólafsson, Igor Levit, and Alice Sara Ott, the Financial Times wrote. Streaming and social media have helped the pianists reach new, and younger audiences, boosting the classical music business. “There are very few violinists who could sell out Carnegie Hall,” the venue’s artistic director said, “but now we have 10 or 12 pianists who can, which was unheard of 20 years ago.”