In today’s edition: an EU-Trump trade deal, the Lionnesses’ victory, and the improbability and impact of Mira Murati’s $2 billion.
– Mission impossible. Earlier this month, Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab confirmed long-rumored news: the AI company had closed a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation.
It was the largest seed round ever, in the history of venture capital and startups. It was hardly underreported. And yet, there’s an aspect to this news that hasn’t seemed to have been fully appreciated—just how unlikely, and meaningful, this is for female founders.
Murati is, undoubtedly, in a league of her own as a founder. The Albania-born former CTO of OpenAI, she helped create ChatGPT and start the generative AI revolution. She left OpenAI earlier this year to build her own company. She brought top talent with her; the question everyone wants to know the answer to is what, exactly, she is building.
Mira Murati raised a record-breaking $2 billion seed round for Thinking Machines Lab.
Not that many details are known about what Thinking Machines is doing. But a source familiar with what Murati is building tells me that it’s creating powerful AI systems capable of tackling the world’s toughest problems—climate change, disease eradication, and more. The company is eager to bring along the world’s smartest people in other fields—like science—rather than only those who work in the AI industry itself, all before AI systems become too powerful for that to matter. And its more open approach is expected to benefit businesses, policymakers, and others.
But Thinking Machines is entering the game late, hence the $2 billion: it needs compute and talent to compete with the AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google that have a years-long head start.
In an environment where startups with at least woman on the founding team took in $38 billion in funding last year—and those founded solely by women earned 2.1% of VC dollars, for a total sum of $3.7 billion, across about 800 deals—the $2 billion number is extraordinary.
A report released by Female Founders Fund and Inc. last week showed what women are doing with the paltry share of venture funding they are getting; last year women were responsible for 24% of exits. They put capital to work more efficiently, earning 78 cents of revenue for every dollar raised, compared to 31 cents at male-founded startups.
So imagine what will be possible with $2 billion—and a generational founder at the helm. Known investors in the company include Accel, AMD, Cisco, Jane Street, Nvidia, and ServiceNow. They’re surely expecting their investment to pay off (see: $12 billion valuation). But more important is how Murati and her capital will impact humanity. The true entry of Thinking Machines into the AI race helps diversify the perspectives that will shape the future of our world. And Murati’s achievement lets other women know, in frontier tech and beyond—what seems impossible, can be possible.
Fintech giant PayPal launched a new payment option on Monday that will let smaller U.S. merchants accept more than 100 cryptocurrencies, including mainstays like Bitcoin and Ethereum but also zanier options like Trump’s memecoin and even the novelty token Fartcoin. Any U.S. business using PayPal’s online payments processing platform can opt in, said a spokesperson.
PayPal will charge merchants a promotional fee of 0.99% on transactions for the first year and then up the charge to 1.5%, Frank Keller, an executive vice president, told Fortune. Those fees are less than the 1.57% average rate that U.S. businesses paid to credit card companies in 2024, according to the Nilson Report.
“There’s a worldview where you can imagine that the world is moving on chain,” said Keller, referring to putting data on blockchains. “Is that happening overnight? No. Some people say long time periods. Other people say very short time periods. I think we will see movement.”
To settle the transactions, PayPal will let users connect existing crypto wallets they own to a checkout page. Depending on a buyer’s crypto wallet, PayPal will sell the cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. The proceeds of that sale will be converted into PayPal’s own stablecoin, which will then be converted into U.S. dollars sent back to the merchant.
“Imagine a shopper in Guatemala buying a special gift from a merchant in Oklahoma City,” Alex Chriss, president and CEO of PayPal, said in a statement. “Using PayPal’s open platform, the business can accept crypto for payments.”
The move to let customers pay businesses with crypto is PayPal’s latest push into digital assets.
Among the Fortune 500, the fintech giant has been an early adopter of crypto. In 2020, PayPal said that U.S. users would be able to buy, sell, and hold a select group of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. It then expanded that capacity to Venmo.
But, during the so-called crypto winter of 2022, PayPal ratcheted down its public rhetoric on crypto. Now, as crypto markets are soaring and President Donald Trump’s administration casts a favorable eye on digital assets, it’s charging ahead.
In September, it let businesses buy, hold, and sell crypto from their merchant accounts. And its stablecoin PYUSD, which the company launched in 2023, has increased its market capitalization about 70% since the beginning of the year to about $850 million, according to CoinGecko.
PayPal plans to expand the ability for merchants to accept crypto to larger enterprise customers in the U.S. and globally, but a spokesperson declined to provide a timeline.
In 2023, amid a national reckoning on issues of race in America, seven Army bases’ names were changed because they honored Confederate leaders.
Now, those same bases are reverting back to their original names, this time with different namesakes who share Confederate surnames — the Army found other service members with the same last names to honor.
The move is stirring up conversation in and outside military circles. Skeptics wonder if the true intention is to undermine efforts to move away from Confederate associations, an issue that has long split people who favor preserving an aspect of southern heritage and those who want slavery-supporting revels stripped of valor.
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, a civil rights group, said the latest renaming is a “difference without a distinction.”
The wiping away of names that were given by the Biden administration, many of which honored service members who were women or minorities, is the latest move by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to align with Trump’s purging of all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of the Army responded to emailed requests for comment.
Confederate names return
Federal law now bars the military from returning to honoring Confederates, but the move restores names know by generations of soldiers. Following the election of President Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery, 11 southern states seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy, or the Confederate States of America, to preserve slavery an institution that enslaved millions of African Americans. Their secession led to the Civil War, which the Confederates ultimately lost in 1865.
By restoring the old names with soldiers or figures who were not Confederates, “they are trying to be slick,” Morial said.
For example, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which was changed to Fort Liberty by the Biden administration, was the first to have its original name restored, in June. The Army found another American service member with the same last name, a World War II soldier. Hegseth signed an order restoring the name in February.
“By instead invoking the name of World War II soldier Private Roland Bragg, Secretary Hegseth has not violated the letter of the law, but he has violated its spirit,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., wrote in a statement opposing the defense secretary’s “cynical maneuver.”
In March, Hegseth reversed the 2023 decision changing Fort Benning in Georgia to Fort Moore.
The same name restoring process applied to the additional seven bases: Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Polk in Louisiana and Fort Rucker in Alabama.
Other name changes
Last week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced that he was restoring the name of the state’s largest National Guard training site.
In a social media post announcing the name, Landry wrote that in Louisiana, “we honor courage, not cancel it.” Attached was what seemed to be an AI-generated image of a headstone with the word “Wokeism” on it.
“Let this be a lesson that we should always give reverence to history and not be quick to so easily condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations,” Landry wrote.
Bases aren’t the only military assets being renamed. In late June, Hegseth announced that the USNS Harvey Milk would be renamed after a World War II sailor who received the Medal of Honor, stripping the ship of the name of a killed gay rights activists who served during the Korean War.
Critics express concern over Confederate associations and inefficiency
Morial said there are other ways to recognize unsung heroes instead of returning a base to a name that has long been associated with Confederate leaders.
“No county on Earth would name its military based after people that tried to overthrow the government,” Morial said. “So, why are people holding on to these names?”
Stacy Rosenberg, associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said she is concerned with the inefficiency of renaming bases. She said the cost of changing signages across seven bases could be used for something else that might have more impact.
There is no immediate cost estimate for changing all the signs at the bases.
Rosenberg said it made sense to move away from Confederate heroes as namesakes but that the latest move seems like a way to appeal to Trump’s political base.
“I think what we really need to consider is does whoever the base is named after have such a service record that warrants the honor of having their name associated with that base?” Rosenberg said.
Angela Betancourt, a public relations strategist at Betancourt Group and a United States Air Force Reservist said the ongoing renaming of military bases is a form of branding for what each administration views the military should represent.
While she understands why people are upset about military bases reverting to a name associated with the Confederacy, Betancourt said that should not take away from the new namesake’s heritage and legacy.
“It doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing to do,” Betancourt said. “There’s certainly heroes, especially African American and diverse heroes, that should be honored. I think this is a good way to do it.”
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The Associated Press reporters Lolita C. Baldor, John Hanna and Sara Cline contributed to this report.
When Amrita Bhasin, 24, learned that products from South Korea might be subject to a new tax when they entered the United States, she decided to stock up on the sheet masks from Korean brands like U-Need and MediHeal she uses a few times a week.
“I did a recent haul to stockpile,” she said. “I bought 50 in bulk, which should last me a few months.”
South Korea is one of the countries that hopes to secure a trade deal before the Aug. 1 date President Donald Trump set for enforcing nation-specific tariffs. A not-insignificant slice of the U.S. population has skin in the game when it comes to Seoul avoiding a 25% duty on its exports.
Asian skin care has been a booming global business for a more than a decade, with consumers in Europe, North and South America, and increasingly the Middle East, snapping up creams, serums and balms from South Korea, Japan and China.
In the United States and elsewhere, Korean cosmetics, or K-beauty for short, have dominated the trend. A craze for all-in-one “BB creams” — a combination of moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen — morphed into a fascination with 10-step rituals and ingredients like snail mucin, heartleaf and rice water.
Vehicles and electronics may be South Korea’s top exports to the U.S. by value, but the country shipped more skin care and cosmetics to the U.S. than any other last year, according to data from market research company Euromonitor. France, with storied beauty brands like L’Oreal and Chanel, was second, Euromonitor said.
Statistics compiled by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, show the U.S. imported $1.7 billion worth of South Korean cosmetics in 2024, a 54% increase from a year earlier.
“Korean beauty products not only add a lot of variety and choice for Americans, they really embraced them because they were offering something different for American consumers,” Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said.
Along with media offerings such as “Parasite” and “Squid Games,” and the popularity of K-pop bands like BTS, K-beauty has helped boost South Korea’s profile globally, she said.
“It’s all part and parcel really of the same thing,” Lovely said. “And it can’t be completely stopped by a 25% tariff, but it’s hard to see how it won’t influence how much is sold in the U.S. And I think what we’re hearing from producers is that it also really decreases the number of products they want to offer in this market.”
Senti Senti, a retailer that sells international beauty products at two New York boutiques and through an e-commerce site, saw a bit of “panic buying” by customers when Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on goods from specific countries, manager Winnie Zhong said.
The rush slowed down after the president paused the new duties for 90 days and hasn’t picked up again, Zhong said, even with Trump saying on July 7 that a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea would go into effect on Aug. 1.
Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia subsequently reached agreements with the Trump administration that lowered the tariff rates their exported goods faced — in Japan’s case, from 25% to 15% — still higher than the current baseline of 10% tariff.
But South Korea has yet to clinch an agreement, despite having a free trade agreement since 2012 that allowed cosmetics and most other consumer goods to enter the U.S. tax-free.
Since the first store owned by Senti Senti opened 16 years ago, beauty products from Japan and South Korea became more of a focus and now account for 90% of the stock. The business hasn’t had to pass on any tariff-related costs to customers yet, but that won’t be possible if the products are subject to a 25% import tax, Zhong said.
“I’m not really sure where the direction of K-beauty will go to with the tariffs in place, because one of the things with K-beauty or Asian beauty is that it’s supposed to be accessible pricing,” she said.
Devoted fans of Asian cosmetics will often buy direct from Asia and wait weeks for their packages to arrive because the products typically cost less than they do in American stores. Rather than stocking up on their favorite sunscreens, lip tints and toners, some shoppers are taking a pause due to the tariff uncertainty.
Los Angeles resident Jen Chae, a content creator with over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, has explored Korean and Japanese beauty products and became personally intrigued by Chinese beauty brands over the last year.
When the tariffs were first announced, Chae temporarily paused ordering from sites such as YesStyle.com, a shopping platform owned by an e-commerce company based in Hong Kong. She did not know if she would have to pay customs duties on the products she bought or the ones brands sent to her as a creator.
“I wasn’t sure if those would automatically charge the entire package with a blanket tariff cost, or if it was just on certain items,” Chae said. On its website, YesStyle says it will give customers store credit to reimburse them for import charges.
At Ohlolly, an online store focused on Korean products, owners Sue Greene and Herra Namhie are taking a similar pause.
They purchase direct from South Korea and from licensed wholesalers in the U.S., and store their inventory in a warehouse in Ontario, California. After years of no duties, a 25% import tax would create a “huge increase in costs to us,” Namhie said.
She and Greene made two recent orders to replenish their stock when the tariffs were at 10%. But they have put further restocks on hold “because I don’t think we can handle 25%,” Namhie said. They’d have to raise prices, and then shoppers might go elsewhere.
The business owners and sisters are holding out on hope the U.S. and Korea settle on a lower tariff or carve out exceptions for smaller ticket items like beauty products. But they only have two to four months of inventory in their warehouse. They say that in a month they’ll have to make a decision on what products to order, what to discontinue and what prices will have to increase.
Rachel Weingarten, a former makeup artist who writes a daily beauty newsletter called “Hello Gorgeous!,” said while she’s devoted to K-beauty products like lip masks and toner pads, she doesn’t think stockpiling is a sound practice.
“Maybe one or two products, but natural oils, vulnerable packaging and expiration dates mean that your products could go rancid before you can get to them,” she said.
Weingarten said she’ll still buy Korean products if prices go up, but that the beauty world is bigger than one country. “I’d still indulge in my favorites, but am always looking for great products in general,” she said.
Bhasin, in Menlo Park, California, plans to keep buying her face masks too, even if the price goes up, because she likes the quality of Korean masks.
“If prices will go up, I will not shift to U.S. products,” she said. “For face masks, I feel there are not a ton of solid and reliable substitutes in the U.S.”
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AP audience engagement editor Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Marvel’s first family has finally found box office gold. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” the first film about the superheroes made under the guidance of Kevin Feige and the Walt Disney Co., earned $118 million in its first weekend in 4,125 North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.
That makes it the fourth biggest opening of the year, behind “A Minecraft Movie,” “Lilo & Stitch” and “Superman,” and the biggest Marvel opening since “Deadpool & Wolverine” grossed $211 million out of the gate last summer. Internationally, “Fantastic Four” made $100 million from 52 territories, adding up to a $218 million worldwide debut. The numbers were within the range the studio was expecting.
The film arrived in the wake of another big superhero reboot, James Gunn’s “Superman,” which opened three weekends ago and has already crossed $500 million globally. That film, from the other main player in comic book films, DC Studios, took second place with $24.9 million domestically.
The box office success of “First Steps” and “Superman” means “the whole notion of superhero fatigue, which has been talked about a lot, can I think be put to rest. I always say it’s bad movie fatigue, not superhero fatigue,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore.
“First Steps” is the latest attempt at bringing the superhuman family to the big screen, following lackluster performances for other versions. The film, based on the original Marvel comics, is set during the 1960s in a retro-futuristic world led by the Fantastic Four, a family of astronauts-turned-superhuman from exposure to cosmic rays during a space mission.
The family is made up of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), who can stretch his body to incredible lengths; Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who can render herself invisible; Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), who transforms into a fiery human torch; and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who possesses tremendous superhuman strength with his stone-like flesh.
The movie takes place four years after the family gained powers, during which Reed’s inventions have transformed technology, and Sue’s diplomacy has led to global peace.
Both audiences and critics responded positively to the film, which currently has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and promising exit poll responses from opening weekend ticket buyers. An estimated 46% of audiences chose to see it on premium screens, including IMAX and other large formats.
The once towering Marvel is working to rebuild audience enthusiasm for its films and characters. Its two previous offerings this year did not reach the cosmic box office heights of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which made over $1.3 billion, or those of the “Avengers”-era. But critically, the films have been on an upswing since the poorly reviewed “Captain America: Brave New World,” which ultimately grossed $415 million worldwide. “Thunderbolts,” which jumpstarted the summer movie season, was better received critically but financially is capping out at just over $382 million globally.
Like Deadpool and Wolverine, the Fantastic Four characters had been under the banner of 20th Century Fox for years. The studio produced two critically loathed, but decently profitable attempts in the mid-2000s with future Captain America Chris Evans as the Human Torch. In 2015, it tried again (unsuccessfully) with Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller. They got another chance after Disney’s $71 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019.
The “Fantastic Four’s” opening weekend results were a little less than some rival studio projections, Dergarabedian said. Nonetheless, the film is expected to carry movie theater earnings well into August.
Holdovers dominated the top 10, but one other newcomer managed to make the chart. The dark romantic comedy “Oh, Hi!” earned $1.1 million from 866 screens.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” landed in third place in its fourth weekend with $13 million, followed by “F1” with $6.2 million. The Brad Pitt racing movie also passed $500 million globally. “Smurfs” rounded out the top five with $5.4 million in its second weekend.
The box office is currently up over 12% from last year.
Top 10 movies by domestic box office
With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
1. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” $118 million.
2. “Superman,” $24.9 million.
3. “Jurassic World Rebirth,” $13 million.
4. “F1: The Movie,” $6.2 million.
5. “Smurfs,” $5.4 million.
6. “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” $5.1 million.
The Trump administration’s decision to impose a 17% duty on fresh tomatoes imported from Mexico has created a dilemma for the country providing more tomatoes to U.S. consumers than any other.
The import tax that began July 14 is just the latest protectionist move by an administration that has threatened dozens of countries with tariffs, including its critical trading partner Mexico. It comes as the Mexican government tries to also negotiate its way out of a 30% general tariff scheduled to take effect Aug. 1.
While the impacts of the tomato tariff are still in their infancy, a major grower and exporter in central Mexico shows how a tariff targeting a single product can destabilize the sector.
Surviving in times of uncertainty
Green tomato plants stretch upward row after row in sprawling high-tech greenhouses covering nearly six acres in the central state of Queretaro, among the top 10 tomato producing states in Mexico.
Climate controlled and pest free, Veggie Prime’s greenhouses in Ajuchitlan send some 100 tons of fresh tomatoes every week to Mastronardi Produce. The Canadian company is the leading distributor of fresh tomatoes in the U.S. with clients that include Costco and Walmart.
Moisés Atri, Veggie Prime’s export director, says they’ve been exporting tomatoes to the U.S. for 13 years and their substantial investment and the cost to produce their tomatoes won’t allow them to make any immediate changes. They’re also contractually obligated to sell everything they produce to Mastronardi until 2026.
“None of us (producers) can afford it,” Atri said. “We have to approach our client to adjust the prices because we’re nowhere near making that kind of profit.”
In the tariff’s first week, Veggie Prime ate the entire charge. In the second, its share of the new cost lowered when its client agreed to increase the price of their tomatoes by 10%. The 56-year-old Atri hopes that Mastronardi will eventually pass all of the tariff’s cost onto its retail clients.
Mexican tomato exports brought in $3 billion last year
Experts say the tariff could cause a 5% to 10% drop in tomato exports, which last year amounted to more than $3 billion for Mexico.
The Mexican Association of Tomato Producers says the industry generates some 500,000 jobs.
Juan Carlos Anaya, director general of the consulting firm Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agrícolas, said a drop in tomato exports, which last year amounted to more than 2 billion tons, could lead to the loss of some 200,000 jobs
Experts: U.S. will have difficulty replacing fresh Mexican tomatoes
When the Trump administration announced the tariff, the Commerce Department justified it as a measure to protect U.S. producers from artificially cheap Mexican imports.
California and Florida growers that produce about 11 million tons would stand to benefit most, though most of that production is for processed tomatoes. Experts believe the U.S. would find it difficult to replace Mexico’s fresh tomato imports.
Atri and other producers are waiting for a scheduled review of the measure in two months, when the U.S. heads into fall and fresh tomato production there begins to decline.
In reaction to the tariff, the Mexican government has floated the idea of looking for other, more stable, international markets.
Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said Thursday that the government is looking at possibilities like Japan, but producers quickly cast doubt on that idea, noting the tomatoes would have to be sent by plane, raising the cost even more.
Atri said the company is starting to experiment with peppers, to see if they would provide an option at scale.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said recently her administration would survey tomato growers to figure out what support they need, especially small producers who are already feeling the effects of a drop of more than 10% in the price of tomatoes domestically over fears there will be a glut in Mexico.
A worker prunes plants inside a greenhouse at the Veggie Prime tomato farm, which exports to the United States, in Ajuchitlan, Mexico, Wednesday, July 23, 2025.
Good morning. As AI continues to revolutionize business, companies are fundamentally rethinking their workforce strategies for the decade ahead—and exploring new options.
This topic came up during a panel session at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference last week. Jess O’Reilly, Workday’s general manager for the ASEAN business, reflected on how a major Southeast Asian bank is considering a skills-based approach to employment.
“I was in Thailand a couple of weeks ago with a huge bank, and they’re really looking at their 10-year strategy and saying, ‘We don’t even know if our people are going to have a traditional full-time job anymore,’” O’Reilly said. Instead of planning around fixed job roles, the bank is considering pivoting to what it calls a “skills economy.” Here, every project or initiative is treated like a gig assignment—team members are chosen for their specific skill sets relevant to the project at hand.
What’s particularly notable is the bank’s approach to continuous learning and reskilling. O’Reilly explained that there’s always room for someone new to build their skills within these project teams. For example, the bank might set aside 1% of a project team for employees looking to reskill—people who say, “I don’t have these skills yet, but I have experience in adjacent areas and I want to learn.” By doing so, the company ensures that fresh talent is constantly cycling into critical roles.
O’Reilly posed the question: How do we use AI not just for automation, but as the backbone for identifying and matching skills with project needs? She argued that AI can help organizations inventory existing skills, identify opportunities, and make it easier to create space for upskilling and onboarding new talent through gig-style projects.
Perhaps a gig-based workplace would also inject variety into the day-to-day. And many companies are considering moving away from job-centric structures and toward a skills-focused approach, according to Deloitte’s report, “Becoming an AI-enabled, skills-based organization.” The firm finds that companies integrating both AI and skills-based approaches will be better positioned to predict talent gaps, improve talent placement, retain high performers, and reduce mis-hires.
AI and skills-based approaches could also mean that entry-level positions aren’t eliminated by automation—instead, new hires would be selected for specific skill sets that can be expanded and developed.
Skill requirements for jobs are constantly changing, noted Peiying Chua, head economist for APAC at LinkedIn, during the panel session. “For entry-level workers, this presents the opportunity to upskill and work on different sets of abilities—to build human-centric skills, agility, and creativity,” she said.
S&P 500 futures traded up this morning on news that the U.S. and the EU, America’s largest trading partner, have struck a deal that imposes 15% tariffs on imported goods. The U.S. markets love that certainty. But the devil is in the details—which is why European stocks are rising faster than U.S. futures this morning.
Stocks are up this morning on the certainty of a new trade deal between the U.S. and the EU. American businesses and consumers will now face a 15% tariff on all imports from Europe, while President Trump confirmed the EU tariff level has been reduced to zero. Previously, the tariff level on both sides was just under 3%.
President Trump, visiting his golf courses in Scotland, is positioning the deal as a win. The agreement includes a large amount of direct investment into the U.S. by Europe, including: $750 billion of energy purchases, $600 billion in extra direct investment, and the purchase of “a vast amount of military equipment,” the president said.
S&P 500 futures moved up 0.27% this morning but the STOXX Europe 600 rose by more than double that in early trading.
Why are investors in Europe so happy about Trump’s great victory over them? The devil is in the details, and the pact seems to contain several advantages for the EU.
The auto tariffs, for instance, now benefit European manufacturers over North American competitors. The 15% level is lower than that faced by Canada and Mexico, which are much nearer the U.S. auto market. “How can the administration square a 15% tariff on cars from Europe and Japan, while manufacturers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico are laboring under 25% tariffs?” Patrick Anderson, CEO of the Anderson Economic Group, told The New York Times.
The deal does not require the EU to alter its digital services tax on large tech companies.
There is also no current change in drug pricing rules. The pharma industry is one of Europe’s biggest, and Trump has long complained that Europeans get drugs cheap because companies inflate pricing in the U.S.
Meanwhile the “new” direct investment and military purchases may likely have happened anyway—Europe is fighting a war against Russia on its Eastern flank, after all.
“Europe is already the largest foreign investor in the U.S., with European direct investment increasing by roughly $200 billion from 2023 to 2024. Three times that over an undefined period is hardly a great coup,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted.
Simon Nixon, who writes the Wealth of Nations Substack, said: “The real win from the EU’s perspective is that it has successfully fended off Trump’s demands that it rewrite its regulatory rulebook to benefit U.S. companies. In particular, Trump had been demanding changes to EU digital services rules, agricultural rules and pharmaceutical pricing.
“The irony is that this is the one thing that U.S. companies would have most wanted out of any trade deal. Instead, they have been hit with a massive hike in tariffs on imports … without any increase in EU market access.”
In Europe, analysts seem to be concluding that deal is mostly Scotch mist. The tariff level itself is much lower than what Trump previously threatened, and the accompanying investment will get lost in the mail.
“The EU and the U.S. agreed that U.S. consumers should pay more tax—levied at 15% for imports from the EU. EU President von der Leyen made vague pledges to buy stuff from and invest in the U.S., without the necessary authority to make those pledges reality. Pharmaceuticals and steel seem to be excluded from this deal. The result is better for the U.S. economy than the worst-case scenario, but worse for the U.S. economy than the situation in January this year,” UBS’s Paul Donovan told clients this morning.
Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:
S&P 500 futures were up 0.3% this morning, premarket, after the index closed up 0.4% on Friday, hitting a new all-time high at 6,388.64.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.67% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.14% in early trading.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 27, 2025 in Turnberry, Scotland.
Jeff Bezos sold over $5.7 billion in Amazon stock between late June and July—including $735 million on his wedding day to Lauren Sanchez—under a pre-arranged trading plan. Despite the large selloff, Bezos still holds roughly 884 million Amazon shares and maintains a net worth of $252 billion. Recent SEC filings also revealed donations of over 600,000 shares to undisclosed nonprofits.
Jeff Bezos’s lavish wedding to Lauren Sanchez last month may have cost him a pretty penny—but even on the day of his nuptials the Amazon founder was generating millions.
On June 27, the day Bezos and Sanchez said their vows, the billionaire sold millions of shares in online giant Amazon as part of a wider plan to offload stock.
An SEC filing seen by Fortune shows that on June 27, Bezos sold more than 3.3 million Amazon shares at a price of between $221 and $223 a share. The resulting windfall for the transaction date of his wedding alone was $735 million, per Fortune calculations.
And while other newlyweds might expect to see their wealth take a hit during their honeymoon, Bezos’s wealth soared as he continued his selloff with six further Form 4 filings made between late June and late July.
Between July 3 and 7, Bezos offloaded a further three million shares at approximately $224 apiece, on July 8 and 9 a further 500,000 shares were sold at a similar price, and between July and July 14 sold a further 6.7 million shares for between $224 and $226 per stock.
On July 15, Bezos sold a further 733,000 shares for $227 each, and between July 21 and 22 offloaded a further 6.6 million shares at $227.5 to $229.5 each. The most recent transaction, from July 23 and July 24, also offloaded more than 4.1 million shares at between $228 to $233 apiece.
The total selloff—and with Amazon stock up 5.5% over the past month alone—has netted Bezos some $5.7 billion in total, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index estimates.
It’s easy to assume that offloading millions of shares would reduce Bezos’s stake significantly in the company with a market cap of near-$2.5 trillion. Not so, as the SEC filings reveal Bezos still owns approximately 884 million Amazon shares.
This puts him roughly on a par with some of Amazon’s largest institutional shareholders. Yahoo Finance, for example, reports Vanguard as the top institutional shareholder with 832 million shares.
With Amazon stock up 26% over the past year, and up roughly 46% over the past half decade, Bezos now sits on a net worth of $252 billion (per Bloomberg), making him the third-richest person on the planet.
Maintaining distance
Of course, Bezos himself isn’t orchestrating the sales of millions of shares on a weekly basis.
The SEC filings show the stock sales are occurring according to a SEC Rule 10b5-1 trading plan established in early May. The rule creates a standard practice for an officer of a publicly listed company to sell shares in a preplanned way, without accusations of insider trading.
The 10b5-1 plan has a number of stipulations, chief among them that a formula (not a person) determines the number, price, and date of the trades. A third party who cannot be influenced by the client must also be employed to conduct the sales. Similar action has been taken by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in recent weeks, who used 10b5-1 filings to offload shares while achieving a billionaire wealth status.
But Bezos’s SEC history also reveals the billionaire is offloading sales not only for wealth gain but for philanthropy.
On the 27th of June, the same day Bezos’s selloff began, Morgan Stanley filed a note on behalf of Bezos in a Form 144 filing. The filing reads: “On May 13, May 14, and June 3, 2025, the reporting person contributed 633,812 shares to non-profit organizations, which may have sold such shares during the three months preceding the date of this Form 144.”
The form does not reveal which organization received the shares.
While Bezos has not signed The Giving Pledge (a commitment from the world’s wealthiest to donate the majority of their fortune to philanthropy) he has publicly stated he intends to donate the majority of his wealth during his lifetime to philanthropic causes, telling CNN in 2022 he was “building the capacity to be able to give away this money.”
When 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary in June, business titans across the country slid into panic mode at the possibility of the self-described democratic socialist running New York City. Many wondered whether Gen Z was rejecting capitalism outright. Was this the demise of “late capitalism” that we have heard so much about on social media?
I set out to find out whether C-suite executives should be worried. In short: No. That was the resounding answer from members of Gen Z and the people who study them in the business and political worlds.
But young people do have a demand of their leaders: Pure honesty. “I think a lot of historical communications in politics, business and otherwise have been built on a mirage,” said Ziad Ahmed, the 26-year-old head of United Talent Agency’s Gen Z–focused marketing advisory practice, Next Gen. “Let’s not say the real thing that’s happening. Let’s hide behind PR talking points.” This isn’t going to cut it, Ahmed said: “If the world is on fire, tell me the world is on fire. Don’t tell me that, actually, you might like the heat.”
HR leaders, take note: Transparency and fairness are key values for Gen Z workers, said Charlene Li, an author who advises companies on digital transformation. Leaders need to clearly state how success is measured and offer tangible opportunities and financial rewards to employees who meet these measures, she says. Additionally, she advises business leaders to take a look at the demographics of who is getting promotions and raises, and think critically about company—and C-suite—makeup.
“Diversity of thought, of background, is the number one driver of innovation,” she told me, “and really the number one driver of growth.”
For more on what Gen Z craves from their workplaces, check out my full story here.
Kristin Stoller Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media [email protected]
In 2019, when Revathi Advaithi took the CEO role at Singapore-based Flex (No. 10 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500), the company’s stock was trading at just under $7, its longtime CEO had recently been ousted, and the broader contract manufacturing industry lacked financial discipline.
Advaithi, who had only interacted with Flex as a supplier, wasn’t stepping into familiar terrain, but she didn’t overthink it. “It was a quant problem,” she says. “I thought I could double the stock. And if it doesn’t work in two years, I’ll go do something else.”
That kind of grounded pragmatism has defined her leadership philosophy for decades. No matter the role, she starts with a deceptively simple framework: Define the portfolio, clarify the value to customers, and understand why they’re willing to pay for it. “Strategy doesn’t need to be flashy,” she says. “Every job I’ve had, I’ve just focused on those two things.”
Her first year at Flex was spent putting that into practice. She told the board not to expect decisions until she had completed a full strategic review. Upon completion, the diagnosis was clear: The company needed to exit hyper-commoditized segments, such as smartphones and laptops, where pricing power was weak and volatility was high. Flex would instead double down on complex manufacturing for sectors like health care, industrials, and automotive—areas where execution mattered and margins could follow.
But even a disciplined plan was quickly stress-tested. Two months into Advaithi’s tenure, the U.S. government placed Huawei—then one of Flex’s largest customers—on the Entity List, forcing a rapid response across supply chains and customer relationships. Then came the pandemic and a global logistics crunch. Through it all, Advaithi says the basic playbook didn’t change. “Get your portfolio right. Make sure you can win for customers. Execute.”
That consistency extended to how Flex presented itself to investors. The company made a conscious shift away from chasing growth for its own sake and began emphasizing capital discipline, margins, and long-term resilience.
Advaithi’s path to Flex came after a moment of career inflection. While running North America for Eaton in 2015, she was asked to take over its global electrical business following leadership turnover. She accepted, but was open with the incoming CEO that he should feel free to choose his own team. “If a great CEO role comes your way,” he told her, “I won’t stop you.” She turned down another offer in the industrial sector before accepting Flex—a less regulated, more fragmented industry where she saw room to impose operational order.
One of her more prescient bets was the early decision to invest in the intersection of compute and power, well before the current AI boom. “Long before Nvidia and GPUs took off, I figured compute was going to become power-hungry,” she says. Flex began acquiring capabilities in power infrastructure for data centers.
Today, roughly a quarter of its business supports AI infrastructure, putting it in a differentiated position among contract manufacturers.
Venture capitalists love the spotlight. They’re on X, they’re in the White House, and they’re constantly chasing press coverage of Series A deals into B2B SaaS companies that might become the next Salesforce, but could just as likely fold in a few years.
Today’s VCs hold an inordinate amount of cultural capital, and for good reason: They fund many of the companies that undergird not only our economy, but our social fabric, and they are often instrumental in shaping tomorrow’s trends. But still, they represent a small fraction of the broader investment landscape, which is why I’m always astounded by the sheer scale of the private equity industry.
I spent the past few months reporting on Ares Management, an alternative asset manager that spun out of Apollo in the late 1990s. Originally, I was interested in the firm because of its role in the booming field of private credit, which has become such a buzzword that it seems like high finance’s equivalent of AI (and they’re related, with much of new private credit capital going to fund data centers).
Ares’ bread and butter business is lending to other alternative assets firms like KKR and Apollo, raising money to help fund their buyouts of middle market companies that most venture firms would never be interested in (though that’s changing), and occasionally taking small equity stakes themselves. The strategy has paid off, especially with the rise of private equity more broadly after the 2008 financial crisis, with Ares now aiming to grow its assets under management to $750 billion by 2028. Compare that to Insight Partners, one of the larger venture players dabbling in private equity, which has $90 billion.
As with tokenization, private credit is taking on an increasingly greater role in our economy as companies take longer to go public or decide never to go public at all. Rather than turning to public markets for funding, they must look to other means, with firms like Ares waiting in the wings.
For everyday investors, that limits the type of companies where they can put their money—though some firms like Apollo are starting to offer vehicles like ETFs, as well as tokenized funds, that provide access to private companies. Critics argue that the lack of transparency, however, creates a whole host of potential problems.
A firm like Ares may have less name recognition than a Sequoia or Andreessen Horowitz, though it has arguably a greater role in shaping how money moves in our economy (and they’re taking on a higher profile through sports, with three Ares executives among the new Baltimore Orioles leadership group). These are the “masters of the universe” that Tom Wolfe famously wrote about in his 1987 Wall Street classic The Bonfire of the Vanities, but they’re often more hidden from view. You can read my feature on Ares’ rise, including its unique structure of a CEO and two co-presidents leading its next era of growth.
The new Baltimore Orioles ownership group, with David Rubinstein alongside three executives from Ares Management: Michael Arougheti, Michael Smith, and Mitchell Goldstein.
In today’s CEO Daily: Clay Chandler talks to DBS Group’s Tan Su Shan.
The big story: E.U. signs trade deal with the U.S.
The markets: Investors love a deal.
Analyst notes from Deutsche Bank on U.S. negotiations with China, ING on the US-EU trade deal, and Goldman Sachs on the upcoming Fed meeting.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. “Even the CEO’s job can be replaced by AI.”
That was the WhatsApp message DBS Group’s board sent Tan Su Shan on the day they named her chief executive of Southeast Asia’s largest and most profitable bank. Tan shared the moment with me last week at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI Singapore conference — and her reaction landed like a challenge to the rest of the audience: “If the CEO can be replaced, so can everything else.”
That mix of excitement and existential threat ran through two days of debate among more than 70 leaders from nearly 20 countries.
Singapore’s digital minister Josephine Teo outlined her country’s AI strategy of carving a middle path between the U.S. and China, explaining how the city‑state of 6 million is shaping policy between Big Data superpowers. On another panel, executives from three of Asia’s most sophisticated data center operators debated Malaysia’s data center boom and the region’s prospects for satisfying the demand for energy. U.S. policy analysts also dissected the U.S.–China AI rivalry and Trump’s new AI action plan at the gathering. And digital artist Refik Anadol stunned the room with AI‑generated works that seemed equal parts data and dream.
Other panels tackled hard questions: Is AI wiping out entry‑level jobs? Can it adapt to local languages and cultures? Will it narrow global inequality — or widen it? Leaders from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Walmart, Accenture, Rakuten, Indeed, and others weighed in, often bluntly.
I left Singapore astonished by AI’s speed of change — and sobered by how much depends on leadership choices. Tan’s own advice to DBS employees, and perhaps to every executive navigating the shift, came down to four R’s: reinvent, stay relevant, be resilient, and act responsibly.
Many boardrooms, caught up in a post-ChatGPT frenzy, are trying to incorporate AI into their corporate workflows.
Generative AI may be the first technological advance to allow for greater automation of service and knowledge work, whether it’s at a call center or a management consultancy. But does letting workers generate emails or PowerPoint presentations faster really lead to greater productivity? Ramine Tinati, the lead at Accenture’s APAC Center for Advanced AI, speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference last week, wasn’t so sure.
“If you give employees a tool to do things faster, they do it faster. But are they more productive? Probably not, because they do it faster and then go for coffee breaks,” Tinati explained.
Instead, “if you reinvent the work then suddenly those coffee breaks don’t become meaningful anymore because you’re doing something else,” Tinati said, adding that some companies in Asia may be slower to adopt AI because “they don’t think about reinventing the work.” (Accenture is a founding partner of Brainstorm AI)
Companies have, of course, been embracing forms of artificial intelligence to boost productivity for years, even before the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. May Yap, chief information officer at manufacturing solutions provider Jabil, said that her company had been using automation and AI to augment their so-called Golden Eye, the army of workers inspecting phones for scratches and blemishes.
“Golden Eye” workers spend eight hours a day on inspections and working that long means that “errors will creep in,” Yap said. AI helped to augment the inspection process to account for possible mistakes from human workers.
Chee Wee Ang, the chief AI officer at Singapore’s Home Team Science and Tech Agency, a government agency that develops tech capabilities for national security, said AI has helped improve processes significantly.
“Some of the information extraction… we see like 200% [improvement]. So that’s a significant improvement in terms of ROI,” Ang said.
Yet Ang also pointed out that beyond improving productivity, AI advancements are allowing Singapore’s Home Team to do things that it couldn’t do before like responding to new kinds of crime or emergency. Singapore’s Home Team has 10 departments including the police force, emergency services, and immigration authorities.
Reskilling
AI will inevitably lead to some job losses as certain roles become obsolete. But that can unnerve employees who are worried about getting automated out of a job. Employees already report concerns that they are being used to train their AI replacements.
Panelists last week agreed that the way forward for affected employees would be reskilling and moving people into adjacent roles.
“Transformation is scary, right? When you hear the word transformation, people don’t like it,” Yap, from Jabil, said last week. She made it clear that Jabil wanted to augment, not replace, its human workforce. She added that “general skills sets” and “good leadership traits” cannot be taken away by AI, regardless of how it might automate other tasks.
Ang added that it was “very difficult to find in Singapore familiar with [generative AI],” meaning that his team has hired people with adjacent skill sets without direct experience. Another limitation? The lack of GPUs, as the Home Team has to work with on-site processors due to the sensitive nature of its work.
And Tinati was optimistic that AI could liberate human employees to work on more productive things. “Their skills are now being uplifted to do other things, whether it’s supervisory work or…learning other skills which allow them to support higher order tasks in the development cycle,” he said.
Ramine Tinati, APAC Center for Advanced AI Lead at Accenture (left), May Yap, chief information officer at Jabil (centre), and Chee Wee Ang, chief AI officer at Singapore’s Home Team Science and Tech Agency, speaking at Brainstorm AI Singapore on July 23, 2025.
Accenture
Banking executives have claimed AI can help both their corporations and their clients. AI tools can speed up know-your-customer checks, help improve customer service channels, or spread access to wealth management tools to those outside the high-net-worth-income bracket.
Yet the most pressing need for AI, according to Sopnendu Mohanty, co-founder of the Global Finance and Technology Network (GFTN), is to help banks get loans to low-income populations and solve the financial inclusion challenge.
GFTN is backed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It was previously known as Elevandi, which organized the annual Singapore Fintech Festival. Now, GFTN has expanded its remit to provide advisory services to emerging markets on how to best leverage technology in their finance sectors, while putting forward Singapore as a model.
During a Wednesday conversation at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference, Mohanty laid out why banks still struggle to expand their lending.
“When you are borrowing money from a bank, the bank asks you for collateral. That’s the standard process of lending,” he said. Yet “the low-income segment has no collateral,” meaning the traditional model for financing can’t serve those people.
“That model cannot [solve] the global need for credit,” Mohanty said, describing it as the “elephant in the room.”
The World Bank reports that only about a quarter of people in low-and middle-income economies engaged in formal borrowing from a bank or credit card company last year.
For Mohanty, banks are still focused on how to use AI to increase productivity—such as by allowing them to “fire hundreds of people.”
“That’s not what we want AI to do,” he argued. Instead, AI can instead help create “credible, predictive, golden source behavioral data, which will replace the need for collateral.”
Several Southeast Asian companies, like Grab, Sea and Goto, are expanding into financial services and serve underbanked customers, leveraging data collected from their main businesses like ride-hailing and e-commerce.
Mohanty, who was the first fintech officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank, also pointed to the importance of creating infrastructure to handle identity data. He specifically cited India’s Aadhaar system, which offered every Indian resident a unique ID number—for some, the first ID they might have ever had.
Yet Mohanty also hoped that, within a decade, identity might be taken out of the hands of the government. “You don’t need a state to control and deliver that trusted ID,” he suggested, and instead rely on decentralized networks.
But in the nearer term, Mohanty expressed a worry about how AI could threaten jobs. “My biggest priority now is going to be upskilling,” he said. “If we don’t upskill our people, we are heading to a massive economic disaster.”
Earlier this year, Singapore launched a scheme to improve proficiency in AI across the entire workforce, including in sectors like retail and manufacturing. The country also plans to triple the number of “AI practitioners” to 15,000 over the next few years.
On Tuesday, at Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore, digital minister Josephine Teo said that the pool of “AI practitioners” will include professionals like lawyers and doctors, as well as those from the manufacturing sector. These practitioners “will become the early adopters of AI and then they show their peers how to make better use of it,” she said.
Russia on Sunday began direct commercial flights to North Korea, in a further sign of closer ties with its Asian ally helping its offensive in Ukraine.
The first Moscow-Pyongyang flight, operated by Russia’s Nordwind Airlines, took off at 1625 GMT, according to the Sheremetyevo airport’s website.
It is scheduled to land in the North Korean capital some eight hours later.
But initially, the route will only be serviced once a month, Russia’s transport ministry said.
Nordwind Airlines — which used to carry Russians to holiday destinations in Europe before the EU imposed a ban on Russian flights — had tickets priced at 45,000 rubles ($570).
“This is a historical event, strengthening the ties between our nations,” Oleg, a Nordwind employee managing the flight who did not want to give his full name, told AFP at the airport.
He also declined to say how many passengers were on board.
“For the first time in more than 70 years of diplomatic relations, we are launching direct flights between the capitals of our countries,” Russia’s deputy transport minister Vladimir Poteshkin was quoted as saying by the ministry’s Telegram account.
Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that the first return flight from Pyongyang to Moscow would take place on Tuesday.
Russia and North Korea restored train links on June 17 after suspending them in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.
The two countries have been forging closer military bonds in recent years, with Pyongyang supplying troops and weapons for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.
They signed a mutual defence pact last year, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea.
North Korea confirmed for the first time in April that it had deployed a contingent of its soldiers to the frontline in Ukraine, alongside Russian troops.
U.S. stock futures pointed to more gains after a week filled with record highs as Wall Street cheered the U.S.-EU trade deal announced on Sunday. Investors are also bracing for a frantic week loaded with market-moving events such as earnings from top companies, key economic reports, the Fed’s policy meeting and more trade news.
Wall Street looks to begin a jam-packed week on a high note as investors cheer the U.S.-EU trade deal that was announced on Sunday.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 161 points, or 0.36%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.34%, and Nasdaq futures rose 0.46%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury was flat at 4.386%. The U.S. dollar dipped 0.12% against the euro but was steady against the yen.
Trump’s deals with the EU and Japan set 15% tariffs rates on both trade parters, who have also vowed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S.
Gold edged down 0.15% to $3,330.50 per ounce. U.S. oil prices rose 0.1% to $65.22 per barrel, and Brent crude climbed 0.1% to $68.51.
Investors will not be able to look away over the coming week as every single day could produce significant market-moving news.
High-stakes trade negotiations between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are scheduled to start on Monday in Stockholm. That comes as a tariff truce between the two sides is due to end Aug. 12, though they are reportedly going to extend the deadline by 90 days.
Tariff drama will continue throughout the week as other countries try to reach deals with the U.S. before Friday’s deadline, when a pause on aggressive “reciprocal” rates will expire.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs face legal challenges, with a court hearing scheduled Thursday on whether the president has authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose wide-ranging duties.
On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve will begin its two-day policy meeting. Analysts don’t expect the central bank to adjust rates, but Governor Christopher Waller has indicated he will dissent and call for a cut.
Chairman Jerome Powell’s press briefing on Wednesday afternoon will likely be dominated by questions related to the White House’s attacks about renovations at the Fed’s headquarters and calls from Trump allies for Powell to be ousted due to the project’s cost overruns.
Meanwhile, several closely watched datasets are due that will offer more clues on how tariffs may—or may not—be impacting the economy. On Tuesday, reports on consumer confidence, home prices, and job openings will come out.
On Wednesday, ADP’s private-sector payroll survey, second-quarter GDP data, and pending home sales are scheduled.
On Thursday, weekly jobless claims and the personal consumption expenditures report, which includes the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, are due.
And on Friday, the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing activity index, and construction spending round out the week in data.
Don’t forget earnings. Boeing announces quarterly results on Tuesday, Microsoft follows on Wednesday, while Apple and Amazon report Thursday. Oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron put out their numbers on Friday.
Boeing Co. expects more than 3,200 union workers at three St. Louis-area plants that produce U.S. fighter jets to strike after they rejected a proposed contract Sunday that included a 20% wage increase over four years.
The International Machinists and Aerospace Workers union said the vote by District 837 members was overwhelmingly against the proposed contract. The existing contract was to expire at 11:59 p.m. Central time Sunday, but the union said a “cooling off” period would keep a strike from beginning for another week, until Aug. 4.
Union leaders had recommended approving the offer, calling it a “landmark” agreement when it was announced last week. Organizers said then that the offer would improve medical, pension and overtime benefits in addition to pay.
The vote came two days before Boeing planned to announce its second quarter earnings, after saying earlier this month that it had delivered 150 commercial airliners and 36 military aircraft and helicopters during the quarter, up from 130 and 26 during the first quarter. Its stock closed Friday at $233.06 a share, up $1.79.
The union did not say specifically why members rejected the contract, only that it “fell short of addressing the priorities and sacrifices” of the union’s workers. Last fall, Boeing offered a general wage increase of 38% over four years to end a 53-day strike by 33,000 aircraft workers producing passenger aircraft.
“Our members are standing together to demand a contract that respects their work and ensures a secure future,” the union said in a statement.
Dan Gillan, general manager and senior Boeing executive in St. Louis, said in a statement that the company is “focused on preparing for a strike.” He described the proposal as “the richest contract offer” ever presented to the St. Louis union.
“No talks are scheduled with the union,” said Gillan, who is also vice president for Boeing Air Dominance, the division for the production of several military jets, including the U.S. Navy’s Super Hornet, as well as the Air Force’s Red Hawk training aircraft.
Two US F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters during the Cope Thunder exercise between the US Pacific Air Forces and the Philippine Air Force, at Clark Air Base on April 7.
President Donald Trump said the EU will invest $600 billion in the U.S., buy $750 billion of American energy products, and purchase “vast amounts” of weapons as part of a trade deal that sets a 15% tariff. It comes a week after a similar agreement with Japan, which pledged to invest $550 billion in key U.S. industrial sectors.
Now that trade deals have been clinched with the European Union and Japan, the U.S. looks to focus on China as the world’s two biggest economies prepare for high-stakes talks.
Negotiations between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are scheduled to start on Monday in Stockholm.
That comes as a trade truce between the two sides is due to end Aug. 12, though they are reportedly going to extend the deadline by 90 days.
U.S. deals with Japan and the EU could offer a blueprint for China. The EU will invest $600 billion in the U.S., buy $750 billion of American energy products and purchase “vast amounts” of weapons, according to Trump.
It comes a week after a similar agreement with Japan, which vowed to invest $550 billion in key U.S. industrial sectors. Both the EU and Japan will face a 15% tariff on most of their exports to the U.S.
Bessent highlighted the $550 billion pledge as a key reason the U.S. and Japan were able to settle on a levy that was lower than the 25% rate Trump had threatened earlier.
“They got the 15% rate because they were willing to provide this innovative financing mechanism,” he told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, when asked if other countries could get a similar rate.
Similarly, Trump had hinted that the EU would have to “buy down” the threatened tariff rate of 30% and pointed to the Japan deal.
But talks with Beijing may be tougher.
“When Japan broke down and made a deal the EU had little choice,” Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, said in a note on Sunday. “The biggest piece in the trade deal puzzle still remains, and the Chinese are unlikely to be as willing to fold.”
Without a lasting agreement between the U.S. and China, tariffs could soar back to prohibitively high levels that would effectively cut off trade. In April, Trump had set tariffs on China at 145%, prompting Beijing to retaliate with its own levy of 125%.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has reached deals elsewhere in Asia, with the Philippines and Indonesia facing 19% tariffs while Vietnam has a 20% duty. That’s as Trump seeks to discourage the trans-shipment of Chinese goods via other countries in the region.
Any pledges of investment in the U.S. also come as Trump’s tariffs face legal challenges, with a court hearing scheduled Thursday on whether the president has authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose wide-ranging duties.
On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the EU’s $750 billion in U.S. energy purchases would come over the next three years, meaning they will happen while Trump is in office.
But U.S. tariffs could be invalidated before any money is spent, and Wall Street is skeptical that Japan will fully deliver on a target that isn’t a binding commitment.
“Our trading partners and major multinationals know Trump’s tariffs are on shaky legal ground,” they wrote. “Therefore, we find it hard to believe many of them are going to make massive investments in the US they would not have otherwise made in response to tariffs that may not last.”
President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met in Scotland on Sunday to iron out a US-EU trade deal. Without an agreement, the EU was due to get hit with a 30% tariff rate on Aug. 1, up from the current “reciprocal” duty of 10%. Last week, Trump reached a trade with Japan that set a 15% rate.
The U.S. and European Union agreed on trade terms that include a 15% rate on most EU products as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in American industry.
President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met in Scotland on Sunday to iron out the agreement.
Trump said the EU will invest $600 billion in the U.S. and buy $750 billion of U.S. energy, with “vast amounts” of American weapons also in the mix. He also said the EU will be “opening up their countries at zero tariff.”
Von der Leyen said the 15% rate was “all inclusive,” but Trump said later that it didn’t apply to pharmaceuticals and metals though it does for autos.
“I think that basically concludes the deal,” he told reporters. “It’s the biggest of all the deals.”
Von der Leyen also said the agreement would “rebalance” trade between the two partners. The U.S. goods trade deficit with the 27-member EU was $235.6 billion in 2024, a 12.9% increase from 2023, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
She later confirmed that the $750 billion in U.S. energy purchases would come over the next three years, while adding that both sides will drop tariffs to zero on aircraft, plane parts, certain chemicals, and chip equipment as well as some farm products and raw materials.
A deal with America’s biggest trading partner removes a key source of market uncertainty and the threat of a damaging trade war.
Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone, said in a note that European carmakers are among the big winners from the deal as tariffs on autos will drop to 15% from the current 25%, securing a similar carveout that Japan obtained last week. U.S. defense and energy stocks also stand to gain.
“Stocks hardly need much of an excuse to rally right now, and agreement of the ‘biggest ever deal’ – Trump’s words, not mine – not only removes a key left tail risk that the market had been concerned about, but also yet again reiterates that the direction of travel remains away from punchy rhetoric, and towards trade deals done,” he wrote.
Heading into their meeting, Trump and von der Leyen said they saw a 50-50 chance of reaching a deal. Trump ruled out pharmaceuticals from any deal and said the tariff rate on the EU wouldn’t go below 15%.
The EU already faces a 50% U.S. tariff on steel and aluminum. Without a deal by Aug. 1, the EU was set to get hit with a 30% “reciprocal” tariff, up from 10%.
Last week, Trump reached a trade with Japan that set a 15% rate and included a pledge for Tokyo to invest $550 billion in key U.S. industrial sectors, with Trump able to direct the funds.
In fact, Trump has hinted that the EU would have to “buy down” the threatened tariff rate of 30% and pointed to the Japan deal.
In case no deal with the U.S. was made, the EU had already pre-planned retaliatory tariffs of up to 30% on more than $100 billion worth of goods American exports, such as aircraft, cars and bourbon whiskey.
Meanwhile, other U.S. trading partners are also staring down the Aug. 1 deadline, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that no further extensions will be given.
But the U.S. and China are reportedly extending their trade truce by 90 days as talks between Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng scheduled to start on Monday in Stockholm. Without an extension, their tariff pause was scheduled to end on Aug. 12.
“When Japan broke down and made a deal the EU had little choice. The biggest piece in the trade deal puzzle still remains, and the Chinese are unlikely to be as willing to fold,” Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, said in a note. “The next big durable theme in markets is security, and the EU deal only accelerates it.”
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